CHAPTER I - THE SKIRMISH

Hark! a bullet hurtles through the air!

Sylvestre stops short to listen!

He is upon an infinite meadow, green with the soft velvet carpet of spring.  The sky is gray, lowering, as if to weigh upon one’s very shoulders.

They are six sailors reconnoitring among the fresh rice-fields, in a muddy pathway.

Hist! again the whizz, breaking the silence of the air - a shrill, continuous sound, a kind of prolonged zing, giving one a strong impression that the pellets buzzing by might have stung fatally.

For the first time in his life Sylvestre hears that music.  The bullets coming towards a man have a different sound from those fired by himself:  the far-off report is attenuated, or not heard at all, so it is easier to distinguish the sharp rush of metal as it swiftly passes by, almost grazing one’s ears.

Crack! whizz! ping! again and yet again!  The balls fall in regular showers now.  Close by the sailors they stop short, and are buried in the flooded soil of the rice-fields, accompanied by a faint splash, like hail falling sharp and swift in a puddle of water.

The marines looked at one another as if it was all a piece of odd fun, and said: 

“Only John Chinaman! pish!”

To the sailors, Annamites, Tonquinese, or “Black Flags” are all of the same Chinese family.  It is difficult to show their contempt and mocking rancour, as well as eagerness for “bowling over the beggars,” when they speak of “the Chinese.”

Two or three bullets are still flying about, more closely grazing; they can be seen bouncing like grasshoppers in the green.  The slight shower of lead did not last long.

Perfect silence returns to the broad verdant plain, and nowhere can anything be seen moving.  The same six are still there, standing on the watch, scenting the breeze, and trying to discover whence the volley came.  Surely from over yonder, by that clump of bamboos, which looks like an island of feathers in the plain; behind it several pointed roofs appear half hidden.  So they all made for it, their feet slipping or sinking into the soaked soil.  Sylvestre runs foremost, on his longer, more nimble legs.

No more buzz of bullets; they might have thought they were dreaming.

As in all the countries of the world, some features are the same; the cloudy gray skies and the fresh tints of fields in spring-time, for example; one could imagine this upon French meadows, and these young fellows, running merrily over them, playing a very different sport from this game of death.

But as they approach, the bamboos show the exotic delicacy of their foliage, and the village roofs grow sharper in the singularity of their curves, and yellow men hidden behind advance to reconnoitre; their flat faces are contracted by fear and spitefulness.  Then suddenly they rush out screaming, and deploy into a long line, trembling, but decided and dangerous.

“The Chinese!” shout the sailors again, with their same brave smile.

But this time they find that there are a good many - too many; and one of them turning round perceives other Chinese coming from behind, springing up from the long tall grass.

At this moment, young Sylvestre came out grand; his old granny would have been proud to see him such a warrior.  Since the last few days he had altered.  His face was bronzed, and his voice strengthened.  He was in his own element here.

In a moment of supreme indecision the sailors hit by the bullets almost yielded to an impulse of retreat, which would certainly have been death to them all; but Sylvestre continued to advance, clubbing his rifle, and fighting a whole band, knocking them down right and left with smashing blows from the butt-end.  Thanks to him the situation was reversed; that panic or madness that blindly deceives all in these leaderless skirmishes had now passed over to the Chinese side, and it was they who began to retreat.

It was soon all over; they were fairly taking to their heels.  The six sailors, reloading their repeating rifles, shot them down easily; upon the grass lay dead bodies by red pools, and skulls were emptying their brains into the river.

They fled, cowering like leopards.  Sylvestre ran after them, although he had two wounds - a lance-thrust in the thigh and a deep gash in his arm; but feeling nothing save the intoxication of battle, that unreasoning fever that comes of vigorous blood, gives lofty courage to simple souls, and made the heroes of antiquity.

One whom he was pursuing turned round, and with a spasm of desperate terror took a deliberate aim at him.  Sylvestre stopped short, smiling scornfully, sublime, to let him fire, and seeing the direction of the aim, only shifted a little to the left.  But with the pressure upon the trigger the barrel of the Chinese jingal deviated slightly in the same direction.  He suddenly felt a smart rap upon his breast, and in a flash of thought understood what it was, even before feeling any pain; he turned towards the others following, and tried to cry out to them the traditional phrase of the old soldier, “I think it’s all up with me!” In the great breath that he inhaled after having run, to refill his lungs with air, he felt the air rush in also by a hole in his right breast, with a horrible gurgling, like the blast in a broken bellows.  In that same time his mouth filled with blood, and a sharp pain shot through his side, which rapidly grew worse, until it became atrocious and unspeakable.  He whirled round two or three times, his brain swimming too; and gasping for breath through the rising red tide that choked him, fell heavily in the mud.

CHAPTER II - “OUT, BRIEF CANDLE!”

About a fortnight later, as the sky was darkening at the approach of the rains, and the heat more heavily weighed over yellow Tonquin, Sylvestre brought to Hanoï, was sent to Ha-Long, and placed on board a hospital-ship about to return to France.

He had been carried about for some time on different stretchers, with intervals of rest at the ambulances.  They had done all they could for him; but under the insufficient conditions, his chest had filled with water on the pierced side, and the gurgling air entered through the wound, which would not close up.

He had received the military medal, which gave him a moment’s joy.  But he was no longer the warrior of old - resolute of gait, and steady in his resounding voice.  All that had vanished before the long-suffering and weakening fever.  He had become a home-sick boy again; he hardly spoke except in answering occasional questions, in a feeble and almost inaudible voice.  To feel oneself so sick and so far away; to think that it wanted so many days before he could reach home!  Would he ever live until then, with his strength ebbing away?  Such a terrifying feeling of distance continually haunted him and weighed at every wakening; and when, after a few hours’ stupor, he awoke from the sickening pain of his wounds, with feverish heat and the whistling sound in his pierced bosom, he implored them to put him on board, in spite of everything.  He was very heavy to carry into his ward, and without intending it, they gave him some cruel jolts on the way.

They laid him on one of the iron camp bedsteads placed in rows, hospital fashion, and then he set out in an inverse direction, on his long journey through the seas.  Instead of living like a bird in the full wind of the tops, he remained below deck, in the midst of the bad air of medicines, wounds, and misery.

During the first days the joy of being homeward bound made him feel a little better.  He could even bear being propped up in bed with pillows, and at times he asked for his box.  His seaman’s chest was a deal box, bought in Paimpol, to keep all his loved treasures in; inside were letters from Granny Yvonne, and also from Yann and Gaud, a copy-book into which he had copied some sea-songs, and one of the works of Confucius in Chinese, caught up at random during pillage; on the blank sides of its leaves he had written the simple account of his campaign.

Nevertheless he got no better, and after the first week, the doctors decided that death was imminent.  They were near the Line now, in the stifling heat of storms.  The troop-ship kept on her course, shaking her beds, the wounded and the dying; quicker and quicker she sped over the tossing sea, troubled still as during the sway of the monsoons.

Since leaving Ha-Long more than one patient died, and was consigned to the deep water on the high road to France; many of the narrow beds no longer bore their suffering burdens.

Upon this particular day it was very gloomy in the travelling hospital; on account of the high seas it had been necessary to close the iron port-lids, which made the stifling sick-room more unbearable.  Sylvestre was worse; the end was nigh.  Lying always upon his wounded side, he pressed upon it with both hands with all his remaining strength, to try and allay the watery decomposition that rose in his right lung, and to breathe with the other lung only.  But by degrees the other was affected and the ultimate agony had begun.

Dreams and visions of home haunted his brain; in the hot darkness, beloved or horrible faces bent over him; he was in a never-ending hallucination, through which floated apparitions of Brittany and Iceland.  In the morning was called in the priest, and the old man, who was used to seeing sailors die, was astonished to find so pure a soul in so strong and manly a body.

He cried out for air, air! but there was none anywhere; the ventilators no long gave any; the attendant, who was fanning him with a Chinese fan, only moved unhealthy vapours over him of sickening staleness, which revolted all lungs.  Sometimes fierce, desperate fits came over him; he wished to tear himself away from that bed, where he felt death would come to seize him, and rush above into the full fresh wind and try to live again.  Oh! to be like those others, scrambling about among the rigging, and living among the masts.  But his extreme effort only ended in the feeble lifting of his weakened head; something like the incompleted movement of a sleeper.  He could not manage it, but fell back in the hollow of his crumpled bed, partly chained there by death; and each time, after the fatigue of a like shock, he lost all consciousness.

To please him they opened a port at last, although it was dangerous, the sea being very rough.  It was going on for six in the evening.  When the disk was swung back, a red light entered, glorious and radiant.  The dying sun appeared upon the horizon in dazzling splendour, through a torn rift in a gloomy sky; its blinding light glanced over the waves, and lit up the floating hospital, like a waving torch.

But no air rushed in; the little there was outside, was powerless to enter and drive before it the fevered atmosphere.  Over all sides of that boundless equatorial sea, floated a warm and heavy moisture, unfit for respiration.  No air on any side, not even for the poor gasping fellows on their deathbeds.

One vision disturbed him greatly; it was of his old grandmother, walking quickly along a road, with a heartrending look of alarm; from low-lying funereal clouds above her, fell the drizzling rain; she was on her way to Paimpol, summoned thither to be informed of his death.

He was struggling now, with the death-rattle in his throat.  From the corners of his mouth they sponged away the water and blood, which had welled up in quantities from his chest in writhing agony.  Still the grand, glorious sun lit up all, like a conflagration of the whole world, with blood-laden clouds; through the aperture of the port-hole, a wide streak of crimson fire blazed in, and, spreading over Sylvestre’s bed, formed a halo around him.

At that very moment that same sun was to be seen in Brittany, where midday was about to strike.  It was, indeed, the same sun, beheld at the precise moment of its never-ending round; but here it kept quite another hue.  Higher up in the bluish sky, it kept shedding a soft white light on grandmother Yvonne, sitting out at her door, sewing.

In Iceland, too, where it was morning, it was shining at that same moment of death.  Much paler there, it seemed as if it only showed its face by some miracle.  Sadly it shed its rays over the fjord where La Marie floated; and now its sky was lit up by a pure northern light, which always gives the idea of a frozen planet’s reflection, without an atmosphere.  With a cold accuracy, it outlined all the essentials of that stony chaos that is Iceland; the whole of the country as seen from La Marie seemed fixed in one same perspective and held upright.  Yann was there, lit up by a strange light, fishing, as usual, in the midst of this lunar-like scenery.

As the beam of fiery flame that came through the port-hole faded, and the sun disappeared completely under the gilded billows, the eyes of the grandson rolled inward toward his brow as if to fall back into his head.

They closed his eyelids with their own long lashes, and Sylvestre became calm and beautiful again, like a reclining marble statue of manly repose.

CHAPTER III - THE GRAVE ABROAD

I cannot refrain from telling you about Sylvestre’s funeral, which I conducted myself in Singapore.  We had thrown enough other dead into the Sea of China, during the early days of the home voyage; and as the Malay land was quite near, we decided to keep his remains a few hours longer; to bury him fittingly.

It was very early in the morning, on account of the terrible sun.  In the boat that carried him ashore, his corpse was shrouded in the national flag.  The city was in sleep as we landed.  A wagonette, sent by the French Consul, was waiting on the quay; we laid Sylvestre upon it, with a wooden cross made on board - the paint still wet upon it, for the carpenter had to hurry over it, and the white letters of his name ran into the black ground.

We crossed that Babel in the rising sun.  And then it was such an emotion to find the serene calm of an European place of worship in the midst of the distasteful turmoil of the Chinese country.  Under the high white arch, where I stood alone with my sailors, the “Dies Iroe,” chanted by a missionary priest, sounded like a soft magical incantation.  Through the open doors we could see sights that resembled enchanted gardens, exquisite verdure and immense palm-trees, the wind shook the large flowering shrubs and their perfumed crimson petals fell like rain, almost to the church itself.  Thence we marched to the ceremony, very far off.  Our little procession of sailors was very unpretentious, but the coffin remained conspicuously wrapped in the flag of France.  We had to traverse the Chinese quarter, through seething crowds of yellow men; and then the Malay and Indian suburbs, where all types of Asiatic faces looked upon us with astonishment.

Then came the open country already heated; through shady groves where exquisite butterflies, on velvety blue wings, flitted in masses.  On either side, waved tall luxuriant palms, and quantities of flowers in splendid profusion.  At last we came to the cemetery, with mandarins’ tombs and many-coloured inscriptions, adorned with paintings of dragons and other monsters; amid astounding foliage and plants growing everywhere.  The spot where we laid him down to rest resembled a nook in the gardens of Indra.  Into the earth we drove the little wooden cross, lettered: 

SYLVESTRE MOAN, AGED 19.

And we left him, forced to go because of the hot rising sun; we turned back once more to look at him under those marvellous trees and huge nodding flowers.

CHAPTER IV - TO THE SURVIVORS, THE SPOILS

The trooper continued its course through the Indian Ocean.  Down below in the floating hospital other death-scenes went on.  On deck there was carelessness of health and youth.  Round about, over the sea, was a very feast of pure sun and air.

In this fine trade-wind weather, the sailors, stretched in the shade of the sails, were playing with little pet parrots and making them run races.  In this Singapore, which they had just left, the sailors buy all kinds of tame animals.  They had all chosen baby parrots, with childish looks upon their hooknose faces; they had no tails yet; they were green, of a wonderful shade.  As they went running over the clean white planks, they looked like fresh young leaves, fallen from tropical trees.

Sometimes the sailors gathered them all together in one lot, when they inspected one another funnily; twisting about their throats, to be seen under all aspects.  They comically waddled about like so many lame people, or suddenly started off in a great hurry for some unknown destination; and some fell down in their excitement.  And there were monkeys, learning tricks of all kinds, another source of amusement.  Some were most tenderly loved and even kissed extravagantly, as they nestled against the callous bosoms of their masters, gazing fondly at them with womanish eyes, half-grotesque and half-touching.

Upon the stroke of three o’clock, the quartermasters brought on deck two canvas bags, sealed with huge red seals, bearing Sylvestre’s name; for by order of the regulations in regard to the dead, all his clothes and personal worldly belongings were to be sold by auction.  The sailors gaily grouped themselves around the pile; for, on board a hospital ship, too many of these sales of effects are seen to excite any particular emotion.  Besides, Sylvestre had been but little known upon that ship.

His jackets and shirts and blue-striped jerseys were fingered and turned over and then bought up at different prices, the buyers forcing the bidding just to amuse themselves.

Then came the turn of the small treasure-box, which was sold for fifty sous.  The letters and military medal had been taken out of it, to be sent back to the family; but not the book of songs and the work of Confucious, with the needles, cotton, and buttons, and all the petty requisites placed there by the forethought of Granny Moan for sewing and mending.

Then the quartermaster who held up the things to be sold drew out two small buddhas, taken in some pagoda to give to Gaud, and so funny were they that they were greeted with a general burst of laughter, when they appeared as the last lot.  But the sailors laughed, not for want of heart, but only through thoughtlessness.

To conclude, the bags were sold, and the buyer immediately struck out the name on them to substitute his own.

A careful sweep of the broom was afterward given to clear the scrupulously clean deck of the dust and odds and ends, while the sailors returned merrily to play with their parrots and monkeys.

CHAPTER V - THE DEATH-BLOW

One day, in the first fortnight of June, as old Yvonne was returning home, some neighbours told her that she had been sent for by the Commissioner from the Naval Registry Office.  Of course it concerned her grandson, but that did not frighten her in the least.  The families of seafarers are used to the Naval Registry, and she, the daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother of seamen, had known that office for the past sixty years.

Doubtless it had to do with his “delegation”; or perhaps there was a small prize-money account from La Circe to take through her proxy.  As she knew what respect was due to “Monsieur lé Commissaire,” she put on her best gown and a clean white cap, and set out about two o’clock.

Trotting along swiftly on the pathways of the cliff, she neared Paimpol; and musing upon these two months without letters, she grew a bit anxious.

She met her old sweetheart sitting out at his door.  He had greatly aged since the appearance of the winter cold.

“Eh, eh!  When you’re ready, you know, don’t make any ceremony, my beauty!” That “suit of deal” still haunted his mind.

The joyous brightness of June smiled around her.  On the rocky heights there still grew the stunted reeds with their yellow blossoms; but passing into the hollow nooks sheltered against the bitter sea winds, one met with high sweet-smelling grass.  But the poor old woman did not see all this, over whose head so many rapid seasons had passed, which now seemed as short as days.

Around the crumbling hamlet with its gloomy walls grew roses, pinks, and stocks; and even up on the tops of the whitewashed and mossy roofs, sprang the flowerets that attracted the first “miller” butterflies of the season.

This spring-time was almost without love in the land of Icelanders, and the beautiful lasses of proud race, who sat out dreaming on their doorsteps, seemed to look far beyond the visible things with their blue or brown eyes.  The young men, who were the objects of their melancholy and desires, were remote, fishing on the northern seas.

But it was a spring-time for all that - warm, sweet, and troubling, with its buzzing of flies and perfume of young plants.

And all this soulless freshness smiled upon the poor old grandmother, who was quickly walking along to hear of the death of her last-born grandson.  She neared the awful moment when this event, which had taken place in the so distant Chinese seas, was to be told to her; she was taking that sinister walk that Sylvestre had divined at his death-hour - the sight of that had torn his last agonized tears from him; his darling old granny summoned to Paimpol to be told that he was dead!  Clearly he had seen her pass along that road, running straight on, with her tiny brown shawl, her umbrella, and large head-dress.  And that apparition had made him toss and writhe in fearful anguish, while the huge, red sun of the Equator, disappearing in its glory, peered through the port-hole of the hospital to watch him die.  But he, in his last hallucination, had seen his old granny moving under a rain-laden sky, and on the contrary a joyous laughing spring-time mocked her on all sides.

Nearing Paimpol, she became more and more uneasy, and improved her speed.  Now she is in the gray town with its narrow granite streets, where the sun falls, bidding good-day to some other old women, her contemporaries, sitting at their windows.  Astonished to see her; they said:  “Wherever is she going so quickly, in her Sunday gown, on a week-day?”

“Monsieur lé Commissaire” of the Naval Enlistment Office was not in just then.  One ugly little creature, about fifteen years old, who was his clerk, sat at his desk.  As he was too puny to be a fisher, he had received some education and passed his time in that same chair, in his black linen dust-sleeves, scratching away at paper.

With a look of importance, when she had said her name, he got up to get the official documents from off a shelf.

There were a great many papers - what did it all mean?  Parchments, sealed papers, a sailor’s record-book, grown yellow on the sea, and over all floated an odour of death.  He spread them all out before the poor old woman, who began to tremble and feel dizzy.  She had just recognized two of the letters which Gaud used to write for her to her grandson, and which were now returned to her never unsealed.  The same thing had happened twenty years ago at the death of her son Pierre; the letters had been sent back from China to “Monsieur lé Commissaire,” who had given them to her thus.

Now he was reading out in a consequential voice:  “Moan, Jean-Marie-Sylvestre, registered at Paimpol, folio 213, number 2091, died on board the Bien Hoa, on the 14th of .”

“What - what has happened to him, my good sir?”

“Discharged - dead,” he answered.

It wasn’t because this clerk was unkind, but if he spoke in that brutal way, it was through want of judgment, and from lack of intelligence in the little incomplete being.

As he saw that she did not understand that technical expression, he said in Breton: 

“Marw eo!”

“Marw eo!” (He is dead.)

She repeated the words after him, in her aged tremulous voice, as a poor cracked echo would send back some indifferent phrase.  So what she had partly foreseen was true; but it only made her tremble; now that it was certain, it seemed to affect her no more.  To begin with, her faculty to suffer was slightly dulled by old age, especially since this last winter.  Pain did not strike her immediately.  Something seemed to fall upside down in her brain, and somehow or another she mixed this death up with others.  She had lost so many of them before.  She needed a moment to grasp that this was her very last one, her darling, the object of all her prayers, life, and waiting, and of all her thoughts, already darkened by the sombre approach of second childhood.

She felt a sort of shame at showing her despair before this little gentleman who horrified her.  Was that the way to tell a grandmother of her darling’s death?  She remained standing before the desk, stiffened, and tearing the fringes of her brown shawl with her poor aged hands, sore and chapped with washing.

How far away she felt from home!  Goodness! what a long walk back to be gone through, and steadily, too, before nearing the whitewashed hut in which she longed to shut herself up, like a wounded beast who hides in its hole to die.  And so she tried not to think too much and not to understand yet, frightened above all at the long home-journey.

They gave her an order to go and take, as the heiress, the thirty francs that came from the sale of Sylvestre’s bag; and then the letters, the certificates, and the box containing the military medal.

She took the whole parcel awkwardly with open fingers, unable to find pockets to put them in.

She went straight through Paimpol, looking at no one, her body bent slightly like one about to fall, with a rushing of blood in her ears; pressing and hurrying along like some poor old machine, which could not be wound up, at a great pressure, for the last time, without fear of breaking its springs.

At the third mile she went along quite bent in two and exhausted; from time to time her foot struck against the stones, giving her a painful shock up to the very head.  She hurried to bury herself in her home, for fear of falling and having to be carried there.

CHAPTER VI - A CHARITABLE ASSUMPTION

“Old Yvonne’s tipsy!” was the cry.

She had fallen, and the street children ran after her.  It was just at the boundary of the parish of Ploubazlanec, where many houses straggle along the roadside.  But she had the strength to rise and hobble along on her stick.

“Old Yvonne’s tipsy!”

The bold little creatures stared her full in the face, laughing.  Her coiffe was all awry.  Some of these little ones were not really wicked, and these, when they scanned her closer and saw the senile grimace of bitter despair, turned aside, surprised and saddened, daring to say nothing more.

At home, with the door tightly closed, she gave vent to the deep scream of despair that choked her, and fell down in a corner, her head against the wall.  Her cap had fallen over her eyes; she threw off roughly what formerly had been so well taken care of.  Her Sunday dress was soiled, and a thin mesh of yellowish white hair strayed from beneath her cap, completing her pitiful, poverty-stricken disorder.

CHAPTER VII - THE COMFORTER

Thus did Gaud, coming in for news in the evening, find her; her hair dishevelled, her arms hanging down, and her head resting against the stone wall, with a falling jaw grinning, and the plaintive whimper of a little child; she scarcely could weep any more; these grandmothers, grown too old, have no tears left in their dried-up eyes.

“My grandson is dead!” She threw the letters, papers, and medal into her caller’s lap.

Gaud quickly scanned the whole, saw the news was true, and fell on her knees to pray.  The two women remained there together almost dumb, through the June gloaming, which in Brittany is long but in Iceland is never-ending.  On the hearth the cricket that brings joy was chirping his shrill music.

The dim dusk entered through the narrow window into the dwelling of those Moans, who had all been devoured by the sea, and whose family was now extinguished.

At last Gaud said:  “I’ll come to you, good granny, to live with you; I’ll bring my bed that they’ve left me, and I’ll take care of you and nurse you - you shan’t be all alone.”

She wept, too, for her little friend Sylvestre, but in her sorrow she was led involuntarily to think of another - he who had gone back to the deep-sea fishery.

They would have to write to Yann and tell him Sylvestre was dead; it was just now that the fishers were starting.  Would he, too, weep for him?  Mayhap he would, for he had loved him dearly.  In the midst of her own tears, Gaud thought a great deal of him; now and again waxing wroth against the hard-hearted fellow, and then pitying him at the thought of that pain which would strike him also, and which would be as a link between them both - one way and another, her heart was full of him.

CHAPTER VIII - THE BROTHER’S GRIEF

One pale August evening, the letter that announced Yann’s brother’s death, at length arrived on board the Marie, upon the Iceland seas; it was after a day of hard work and excessive fatigue, just as they were going down to sup and to rest.  With eyes heavy with sleep, he read it in their dark nook below deck, lit by the yellow beam of the small lamp; at the first moment he became stunned and giddy, like one dazed out of fair understanding.  Very proud and reticent in all things concerning the feelings was Yann, and he hid the letter in his blue jersey, next his breast, without saying anything, as sailors do.  But he did not feel the courage to sit down with the others to supper, and disdaining even to explain why, he threw himself into his berth and fell asleep.  Soon he dreamed of Sylvestre dead, and of his funeral going by.

Towards midnight, being in that state of mind that is peculiar to seaman who are conscious of the time of day in their slumber, and quite clearly see the hour draw night when to awaken for the watch - he saw the funeral, and said to himself:  “I am dreaming; luckily the mate will come and wake me up, and the vision will pass away.”

But when a heavy hand was laid upon him and a voice cried out:  “Tumble out, Gaos! watch, boy!” he heard the slight rustling of paper at his breast, a fine ghastly music that affirmed the fact of the death.  Yes, the letter!  It was true, then?  The more cruel, heartrending impression deepened, and he jumped up so quickly in his sudden start, that he struck his forehead against the overhead beam.  He dressed and opened the hatchway to go up mechanically and take his place in the fishing.

CHAPTER IX - WORK CURES SORROW

When Yann was on deck, he looked around him with sleep-laden eyes, over the familiar circle of the sea.  That night the illimitable immensity showed itself in its most astonishingly simple aspects, in neutral tints, giving only the impression of depth.  This horizon, which indicated no recognisable region of the earth, or even any geological age, must have looked so many times the same since the origin of time, that, gazing upon it, one saw nothing save the eternity of things that exist and cannot help existing.

It was not the dead of night, for a patch of light, which seemed to ooze from no particular point, dimly lit up the scene.  The wind sobbed as usual its aimless wail.  All was gray, a fickle gray, which faded before the fixed gaze.  The sea, during its mysterious rest, hid itself under feeble tints without a name.

Above floated scattered clouds; they had assumed various shapes, for, without form, things cannot exist; in the darkness they had blended together, so as to form one single vast veiling.

But in one particular spot of the sky, low down on the waters, they seemed a dark-veined marble, the streaks clearly defined although very distant; a tender drawing, as if traced by some dreamy hand - some chance effect, not meant to be viewed for long, and indeed hastening to die away.  Even that alone, in the midst of this broad grandeur, appeared to mean something; one might think that the sad, undefined thought of the nothingness around was written there; and the sight involuntarily remained fixed upon it.

Yann’s dazzled eyes grew accustomed to the outside darkness, and gazed more and more steadily upon that veining in the sky; it had now taken the shape of a kneeling figure with arms outstretched.  He began to look upon it as a human shadow rendered gigantic by the distance itself.

In his mind, where his indefinite dreams and primitive beliefs still lingered, the ominous shadow, crushed beneath the gloomy sky, slowly coalesced with the thought of his dead brother, as if it were a last token from him.

He was used to such strange associations of ideas, that thrive in the minds of children.  But words, vague as they may be, are still too precise to express those feelings; one would need that uncertain language that comes in dreams, of which upon awakening, one retains merely enigmatical, senseless fragments.

Looking upon the cloud, he felt a deep anguish, full of unknown mystery, that froze his very soul; he understood full well now that his poor little brother would never more be seen; sorrow, which had been some time penetrating the hard, rough rind of his heart, now gushed in and brimmed it over.  He beheld Sylvestre again with his soft childish eyes; at the thought of embracing him no more, a veil fell between his eyelids and his eyes, against his will; and, at first, he could not rightly understand what it was - never having wept in all his manhood.  But the tears began to fall heavily and swiftly down his cheeks, and then sobs rent his deep chest.

He went on with his fishing, losing no time and speaking to no one, and his two mates, though hearing him in the deep silence, pretended not to do so, for fear of irritating him, knowing him to be so haughty and reserved.

In his opinion death was the end of it all.  Out of respect he often joined in the family prayers for the dead, but he believed in no after-life of the soul.  Between themselves, in their long talks, the sailors all said the same, in a blunt taken-for-granted way, as a well-known fact; but it did not stop them from believing in ghosts, having a vague fear of graveyards, and an unlimited confidence in protecting saints and images, and above all a deep respect for the consecrated earth around the churches.

So Yann himself feared to be swallowed up by the sea, as if it would annihilate him, and the thought of Sylvestre, so far away on the other side of the earth, made his sorrow more dark and desperate.  With his contempt for his fellows, he had no shame or constraint in weeping, no more than if he were alone.

Around the boat the chaos grew whiter, although it was only two o’clock, and at the same time it appeared to spread farther, hollowing in a fearful manner.  With that kind of rising dawn, eyes opened wider, and the awakened mind could conceive better the immensity of distance, as the boundaries of visible space receded and widened away.

The pale aurora increased, seeming to come in tiny jets with slight shocks; eternal things seemed to light up by sheer transparency, as if white-flamed lamps had slowly been raised up behind the shapeless gray clouds, and held there with mysterious care, for fear of disturbing the calm, even rest of the sea.  Below the horizon that colossal white lamp was the sun, which dragged itself along without strength, before taking its leisurely ascent, which began in the dawn’s eye above the ocean.

On this day, the usual rosy tints were not seen; all remained pale and mournful.  On board the gray ship, Yann wept alone.  The tears of the fierce elder brother, together with the melancholy of this surrounding waste, were as mourning, worn in honour of the poor, obscure, young hero, upon these seas of Iceland, where half his life had been passed.

When the full light of day appeared, Yann abruptly wiped his eyes with his sleeve and ceased weeping.  That grief was over now.  He seemed completely absorbed by the work of the fishery, and by the monotonous routine of substantial deeds, as if he never had thought of anything else.

The catching went on apace, and there were scant hands for the work.  Around about the fishers, in the immense depths, a transformation scene was taking place.  The grand opening out of the infinitude, that great wonder of the morning, had finished, and the distance seemed to diminish and close in around them.  How was it that before the sea had seemed so boundless!

The horizon was quite clear now, and more space seemed necessary.  The void filled in with flecks and streamers that floated above, some vague as mist, others with visibly jagged edges.  They fell softly amid an utter silence, like snowy gauze, but fell on all sides together, so that below them suffocation set in swiftly; it took away the breath to see the air so thickened.

It was the first of the August fogs that was rising.  In a few moments the winding-sheet became universally dense; all around the Marie a white damp lay under the light, and in it the mast faded and disappeared.

“Here’s the cursed fog now, for sure,” grumbled the men.  They had long ago made the acquaintance of that compulsory companion of the second part of the fishing season; but it also announced its end and the time for returning to Brittany.

It condensed into fine, sparkling drops in their beards, and shone upon their weather-beaten faces.  Looking athwart ship to one another, they appeared dim as ghosts; and by comparison, nearer objects were seen more clearly under the colourless light.  They took care not to inhale the air too deeply, for a feeling of chill and wet penetrated the lungs.

But the fishing was going on briskly, so that they had no time left to chatter, and they only thought of their lines.  Every moment big heavy fish were drawn in on deck, and slapped down with a smack like a whip-crack; there they wriggled about angrily, flapping their tails on the deck, scattering plenty of sea-water about, and silvery scales too, in the course of their death-struggle.  The sailor who split them open with his long knife, sometimes cut his own fingers, in his haste, so that his warm blood mingled with the brine.

CHAPTER X - THE WHITE FOG

Caught in the fog, they remained ten days in succession without being able to see anything.  The fishing went on handsomely the while, and with so much to do there was no time for weariness.  At regular intervals one of them blew a long fog-horn, whence issued a sound like the howling of a wild beast.

Sometimes, out of the depths of white fog, another bellowing answered their call.  Then a sharper watch was kept.  If the blasts were approaching, all ears were turned in the direction of that unknown neighbour, whom they might perhaps never see, but whose presence was nevertheless a danger.  Conjectures were made about the strange vessel; it became a subject of conversation, a sort of company for them; all longing to see her, strained their eyes in vain efforts to pierce those impalpable white shrouds.

Then the mysterious consort would depart, the bellowing of her trumpet fading away in the distance, and they would remain again in the deep hush, amid the infinity of stagnant vapour.  Everything was drenched with salt water; the cold became more penetrating; each day the sun took longer to sink below the horizon; there were now real nights one or two hours long, and their gray gloaming was chilly and weird.

Every morning they heaved the lead, through fear that the Marie might have run too near the Icelandic coast.  But all the lines on board, fastened end to end, were paid out in vain - the bottom could not be touched.  So they knew that they were well out in blue water.

Life on board was rough and wholesome; the comfort in the snug strong oaken cabin below was enhanced by the impression of the piercing cold outside, when they went down to supper or for rest.

In the daytime, these men, who were as secluded as monks, spoke but little among themselves.  Each held his line, remaining for hours and hours in the same immovable position.  They were separated by some three yards of space, but it ended in not even seeing one another.

The calm of the fog dulled the mind.  Fishing so lonely, they hummed home songs, so as not to scare the fish away.  Ideas came more slowly and seldom; they seemed to expand, filling in the space of time, without leaving any vacuum.  They dreamed of incoherent and mysterious things, as if in slumber, and the woof of their dreams was as airy as fog itself.

This misty month of August usually terminated the Iceland season, in a quiet, mournful way.  Otherwise the full physical life was the same, filling the sailors’ lungs with rustling air and hardening their already strong muscles.

Yann’s usual manner had returned, as if his great grief had not continued; watchful and active, quick at his fishing work, a happy-go-lucky temper, like one who had no troubles; communicative at times, but very rarely - and always carrying his head up high, with his old indifferent, domineering look.

At supper in the rough retreat, when they were all seated at table, with their knives busy on their hot plates, he occasionally laughed out as he used to do at droll remarks of his mates.  In his inner self he perhaps thought of Gaud, to whom, doubtless, Sylvestre had plighted him in his last hours; and she had become a poor girl now, alone in the world.  And above all, perhaps, the mourning for his beloved brother still preyed upon his heart.  But this heart of his was a virgin wilderness, difficult to explore and little known, where many things took place unrevealed on the exterior.

CHAPTER XI - THE SPECTRE SHIP

One morning, going on three o’clock, while all were dreaming quietly under their winding-sheet of fog, they heard something like a clamour of voices - voices whose tones seemed strange and unfamiliar.  Those on deck looked at each other questioningly.

“Who’s that talking?”

Nobody.  Nobody had said anything.  For that matter, the sounds had seemed to come from the outer void.  Then the man who had charge of the fog-horn, but had been neglecting his duty since overnight, rushed for it, and inflating his lungs to their utmost, sounded with all his might the long bellow of alarm.  It was enough to make a man of iron start, in such a silence.

As if a spectre had been evoked by that thrilling, though deep-toned roar, a huge unforeseen gray form suddenly arose very loftily and towered threateningly right beside them; masts, spars, rigging, all like a ship that had taken sudden shape in the air instantly, just as a single beam of electric light evokes phantasmagoria on the screen of a magic lantern.

Men appeared, almost close enough to touch them, leaning over the bulwarks, staring at them with eyes distended in the awakening of surprise and dread.

The Marie’s men rushed for oars, spars, boat-hooks, anything they could lay their hands on for fenders, and held them out to shove off that grisly thing and its impending visitors.  Lo! these others, terrified also, put out large beams to repel them likewise.

But there came only a very faint creaking in the topmasts, as both standing gears momentarily entangled became disentangled without the least damage; the shock, very gentle in such a calm had been almost wholly deadened; indeed, it was so feeble that it really seemed as if the other ship had no substance, that it was a mere pulp, almost without weight.

When the fright was over, the men began to laugh; they had recognised each other.

“La Marie, ahoy! how are ye, lads?”

“Halloa!  Gaos, Laumec, Guermeur!”

The spectre ship was the Reine-Berthe, also of Paimpol, and so the sailors were from neighbouring villages; that thick, tall fellow with the huge, black beard, showing his teeth when he laughed, was Kerjegou, one of the Ploudaniel boys, the others were from Plounes or Plounerin.

“Why didn’t you blow your fog-horn, and be blowed to you, you herd of savages?” challenged Larvoer of the Reine-Berthe.

“If it comes to that, why didn’t you blow yours, you crew of pirates - you rank mess of toad-fish?”

“Oh, no! with us, d’ye see, the sea-law differs. We’re forbidden to make any noise!”

He made this reply with the air of giving a dark hint, and a queer smile, which afterward came back to the memory of the men of the Marie, and caused them a great deal of thinking.  Then, as if he thought he had said too much, he concluded with a joke: 

“Our fog-horn, d’ye see, was burst by this rogue here a-blowing too hard into it.”  He pointed to a sailor with a face like a Triton, a man all bull-neck and chest, extravagantly broad-shouldered, low-set upon his legs, with something unspeakably grotesque and unpleasant in the deformity of strength.

While they were looking at each other, waiting for breeze or undercurrent to move one vessel faster than the other and separate them, a general palaver began.  Leaning over the side, but holding each other off at a respectable distance with their long wooden props, like besieged pikemen repelling an assault, they began to chat about home, the last letters received, and sweethearts and wives.

“I say! my old woman,” said Kerjegou, “tells me she’s had the little boy we were looking for; that makes half-score-two now!”

Another had found himself the father of twins; and a third announced the marriage of pretty Jenny Caroff, a girl well known to all the Icelanders, with some rich and infirm old resident of the Commune of Plourivo.  As they were eyeing each other as if through white gauze, this also appeared to alter the sound of the voices, which came as if muffled and from far away.

Meanwhile Yann could not take his eyes off one of those brother fishermen, a little grizzled fellow, whom he was quite sure he never had seen before, but who had, nevertheless, straightway said to him, “How d’o, long Yann?” with all the familiarity of bosom acquaintance.  He wore the provoking ugliness of a monkey, with an apish twinkling of mischief too in his piercing eyes.

“As for me,” said Larvoer, of the Reine-Berthe, “I’ve been told of the death of the grandson of old Yvonne Moan, of Ploubazlanec - who was serving his time in the navy, you know, in the Chinese squadron - a very great pity.”

On hearing this, all the men of La Marie turned towards Yann to learn if he already knew anything of the sad news.

“Ay,” he answered in a low voice, but with an indifferent and haughty air, “it was told me in the last letter my father sent me.”  They still kept on looking at him, curious at finding out the secret of his grief, and it made him angry.

These questions and answers were rapidly exchanged through the pallid mists, so the moments of this peculiar colloquy skipped swiftly by.

“My wife wrote me at the same time,” continued Larvoer, “that Monsieur Mevel’s daughter has left the town to live at Ploubazlanec and take care of her old grand-aunt - Granny Moan.  She goes out to needlework by the day now - to earn her living.  Anyhow, I always thought, I did, that she was a good, brave girl, in spite of her fine-lady airs and her furbelows.”

Then again they all stared at Yann, which made him still more angry; a red flush mounted to his cheeks, under their tawny tan.

With Larvoer’s expression of opinion about Gaud ended this parley with the crew of the Reine-Berthe, none of whom were ever again to be seen by human eyes.  For a moment their faces became more dim, their vessel being already farther away; and then, all at once, the men of the Marie found they had nothing to push against, nothing at the end of their poles - all spars, oars, odds and ends of deck-lumber, were groping and quivering in emptiness, till they fell heavily, one after the other, down into the sea, like their own arms, lopped off and inert.

They pulled all the useless defences on board.  The Reine-Berthe, melting away into the thick fog, had disappeared as suddenly as a painted ship in a dissolving view.  They tried to hail her, but the only response was a sort of mocking clamour - as of many voices - ending in a moan, that made them all stare at each other in surprise.

This Reine-Berthe did not come back with the other Icelandic fishers; and as the men of the Samuel-Azenide afterward picked up in some fjord an unmistakable waif (part of her taffrail with a bit of her keel), all ceased to hope; in the month of October the names of all her crew were inscribed upon black slabs in the church.

From the very time of that apparition - the date of which was well remembered by the men of the Marie - until the time of their return, there had been no really dangerous weather on the Icelandic seas, but a great storm from the west had, three weeks before, swept several sailors overboard, and swallowed up two vessels.  The men remembered Larvoer’s peculiar smile, and putting things together many strange conjectures were made.  In the dead of night, Yann, more than once, dreamed that he again saw the sailor who blinked like an ape, and some of the men of the Marie wondered if, on that remembered morning, they had not been talking with ghosts.

CHAPTER XII - THE STRANGE COUPLE

Summer advanced, and, at the end of August, with the first autumnal mists, the Icelanders came home.

For the last three months the two lone women had lived together at Ploubazlanec in the Moan’s cottage.  Gaud filled a daughter’s place in the poor birthplace of so many dead sailors.  She had sent hither all that remained from the sale of her father’s house; her grand bed in the town fashion, and her fine, different coloured dresses.  She had made herself a plainer black dress, and like old Yvonne, wore a mourning cap, of thick white muslin, adorned merely with simple plaits.  Every day she went out sewing at the houses of the rich people in the town, and returned every evening without being detained on her way home by any sweetheart.  She had remained as proud as ever, and was still respected as a fine lady; and as the lads bade her good-night, they always raised a hand to their caps.

Through the sweet evening twilight, she walked home from Paimpol, all along the cliff road inhaling the fresh, comforting sea air.  Constant sitting at needlework had not deformed her like many others, who are always bent in two over their work - and she drew up her beautiful supple form perfectly erect in looking over the sea, fairly across to where Yann was it seemed.

The same road led to his home.  Had she walked on much farther, towards a well-known rocky windswept nook, she would come to that hamlet of Pors-Even, where the trees, covered with gray moss, grew crampedly between the stones, and are slanted over lowly by the western gales.  Perhaps she might never more return there, although it was only a league away; but once in her lifetime she had been there, and that was enough to cast a charm over the whole road; and, besides, Yann would certainly often pass that way, and she could fancy seeing him upon the bare moor, stepping between the stumpy reeds.

She loved the whole region of Ploubazlanec, and was almost happy that fate had driven her there; she never could have become resigned to live in any other place.

Towards this end of August, a southern warmth, diffusing languor, rises and spreads towards the north, with luminous afterglows and stray rays from a distant sun, which float over the Breton seas.  Often the air is calm and pellucid, without a single cloud on high.

At the hour of Gaud’s return journey, all things had already begun to fade in the nightfall, and become fused into close, compact groups.  Here and there a clump of reeds strove to make way between stones, like a battle-torn flag; in a hollow, a cluster of gnarled trees formed a dark mass, or else some straw-thatched hamlet indented the moor.  At the cross-roads the images of Christ on the cross, which watch over and protect the country, stretched out their black arms on their supports like real men in torture; in the distance the Channel appeared fair and calm, one vast golden mirror, under the already darkened sky and shade-laden horizon.

In this country even the calm fine weather was a melancholy thing; notwithstanding, a vague uneasiness seemed to hover about; a palpable dread emanating from the sea to which so many lives are intrusted, and whose everlasting threat only slumbered.

Gaud sauntered along as in a dream, and never found the way long enough.  The briny smell of the shore, and a sweet odour of flowerets growing along the cliffs amid thorny bushes, perfumed the air.  Had it not been for Granny Yvonne waiting for her at home, she would have loitered along the reed-strewn paths, like the beautiful ladies in stories, who dream away the summer evenings in their fine parks.

Many thoughts of her early childhood came back to her as she passed through the country; but they seemed so effaced and far away now, eclipsed by her love looming up between.

In spite of all, she went on thinking of Yann as engaged in a degree - a restless, scornful betrothed, whom she never would really have, but to whom she persisted in being faithful in mind, without speaking about it to any one.  For the time, she was happy to know that he was off Iceland; for there, at least, the sea would keep him lonely in her deep cloisters, and he would belong to no other woman.

True, he would return one of these days, but she looked upon that return more calmly than before.  She instinctively understood that her poverty would not be a reason for him to despise her; for he was not as other men.  Moreover, the death of poor Sylvestre would draw them closer together.  Upon his return, he could not do otherwise than come to see his friend’s old granny; and Gaud had decided to be present at that visit; for it did not seem to her that it would be undignified.  Appearing to remember nothing, she would talk to him as to a long-known friend; she would even speak with affection, as was due to Sylvestre’s brother, and try to seem easy and natural.  And who knows?  Perhaps it would not be impossible to be as a sister to him, now that she was so lonely in the world; to rely upon his friendship, even to ask it as a support, with enough preliminary explanation for him not to accuse her of any after-thought of marriage.

She judged him to be untamed and stubborn in his independent ideas, yet tender and loyal, and capable of understanding the goodness that comes straight from the heart.

How would he feel when he met her again, in her poor ruined home?  Very, very poor she was - for Granny Moan was not strong enough now to go out washing, and only had her small widow’s pension left; granted, she ate but little, and the two could still manage to live, not dependent upon others.

Night was always fallen when she arrived home; before she could enter she had to go down a little over the worn rocks, for the cottage was placed on an incline towards the beach, below the level of the Ploubazlanec roadside.  It was almost hidden under its thick brown straw thatch, and looked like the back of some huge beast, shrunk down under its bristling fur.  Its walls were sombre and rough like the rocks, but with tiny tufts of green moss and lichens over them.  There were three uneven steps before the threshold, and the inside latch was opened by a length of rope-yarn run through a hole.  Upon entering, the first thing to be seen was the window, hollowed out through the wall as in the substance of a rampart, and giving view of the sea, whence inflowed a dying yellow light.  On the hearth burned brightly the sweet-scented branches of pine and beechwood that old Yvonne used to pick up along the way, and she herself was sitting there, seeing to their bit of supper; indoors she wore a kerchief over her head to save her cap.  Her still beautiful profile was outlined in the red flame of her fire.  She looked up at Gaud.  Her eyes, which formerly were brown, had taken a faded look, and almost appeared blue; they seemed no longer to see, and were troubled and uncertain with old age.  Each day she greeted Gaud with the same words: 

“Oh, dear me! my good lass, how late you are to-night!”

“No, Granny,” answered Gaud, who was used to it.  “This is the same time as other days.”

“Eh?  It seemed to me, dear, later than usual.”

They sat down to supper at their table, which had almost become shapeless from constant use, but was still as thick as the generous slice of a huge oak.  The cricket began its silver-toned music again.

One of the sides of the cottage was filled up by roughly sculptured, worm-eaten woodwork, which had an opening wherein were set the sleeping bunks, where generations of fishers had been born, and where their aged mothers had died.

Quaint old kitchen utensils hung from the black beams, as well as bunches of sweet herbs, wooden spoons, and smoked bacon; fishing-nets, which had been left there since the shipwreck of the last Moans, their meshes nightly bitten by the rats.

Gaud’s bed stood in an angle under its white muslin draperies; it seemed like a very fresh and elegant modern invention brought into the hut of a Celt.

On the granite wall hung a photograph of Sylvestre in his sailor clothes.  His grandmother had fixed his military medal to it, with his own pair of those red cloth anchors that French men-of-wars-men wear on their right sleeve; Gaud had also brought one of those funereal crowns, of black and white beads, placed round the portraits of the dead in Brittany.  This represented Sylvestre’s mausoleum, and was all that remained to consecrate his memory in his own land.

On summer evenings they did not sit up late, to save the lights; when the weather was fine, they sat out a while on a stone bench before the door, and looked at passers-by in the road, a little over their heads.  Then old Yvonne would lie down on her cupboard shelf; and Gaud on her fine bed, would fall asleep pretty soon, being tired out with her day’s work, and walking, and dreaming of the return of the Icelanders.  Like a wise, resolute girl, she was not too greatly apprehensive.

CHAPTER XIII - RENEWED DISAPPOINTMENT

But one day in Paimpol, hearing that La Marie had just got in, Gaud felt possessed with a kind of fever.  All her quiet composure disappeared; she abruptly finished up her work, without quite knowing why, and set off home sooner than usual.

Upon the road, as she hurried on, she recognised him, at some distance off, coming towards her.  She trembled and felt her strength giving way.  He was now quite close, only about twenty steps off, his head erect and his hair curling out from beneath his fisher’s cap.  She was so taken by surprise at this meeting, that she was afraid she might fall, and then he would understand all; she would die of very shame at it.  She thought, too, she was not looking well, but wearied by the hurried work.  She would have done anything to be hidden away under the reeds or in one of the ferret-holes.

He also had taken a backward step, as if to turn in another direction.  But it was too late now.  Both met in the narrow path.  Not to touch her, he drew up against the bank, with a side swerve like a skittish horse, looking at her in a wild, stealthy way.

She, too, for one half second looked up, and in spite of herself mutely implored him, with an agonized prayer.  In that involuntary meeting of their eyes, swift as the firing of a gun, these gray pupils of hers had appeared to dilate and light up with some grand noble thought, which flashed forth in a blue flame, while the blood rushed crimson even to her temples beneath her golden tresses.

As he touched his cap he faltered.  “Wish you good-day, Mademoiselle Gaud.”

“Good-day, Monsieur Yann,” she answered.

That was all.  He passed on.  She went on her way, still quivering, but feeling, as he disappeared, that her blood was slowly circulating again and her strength returning.

At home, she found Granny Moan crouching in a corner with her head held between her hands, sobbing with her childish “he, he!” her hair dishevelled and falling from beneath her cap like thin skeins of gray hemp.

“Oh, my kind Gaud!  I’ve just met young Gaos down by Plouherzel as I came back from my wood-gathering; we spoke of our poor lad, of course.  They arrived this morning from Iceland, and in the afternoon he came over to see me while I was out.  Poor lad, he had tears in his eyes, too.  He came right up to my door, my kind Gaud, to carry my little fagot.”

She listened, standing, while her heart seemed almost to break; so this visit of Yann’s, upon which she had so much relied for saying so many things, was already over, and would doubtless not occur again.  It was all done.  Her poor heart seemed more lonely than ever.  Her misery harder, and the world more empty; and she hung her head with a wild desire to die.

CHAPTER XIV - THE GRANDAM BREAKING UP

Slowly the winter drew nigh, and spread over all like a shroud leisurely drawn.  Gray days followed one another, but Yann appeared no more, and the two women lived on in their loneliness.  With the cold, their daily existence became harder and more expensive.

Old Yvonne was difficult to tend, too; her poor mind was going.  She got into fits of temper now, and spoke wicked, insulting speeches once or twice every week; it took her so, like a child, about mere nothings.

Poor old granny!  She was still so sweet in her lucid days, that Gaud did not cease to respect and cherish her.  To have always been so good and to end by being bad, and show towards the close a depth of malice and spitefulness that had slumbered during her whole life, to use a whole vocabulary of coarse words that she had hidden; what mockery of the soul! what a derisive mystery!  She began to sing, too, which was still more painful to hear than her angry words, for she mixed everything up together - the oremus of a mass with refrains of loose songs heard in the harbour from wandering sailors.  Sometimes she sang “Les Fillettes de Paimpol” (The Lasses of Paimpol), or, nodding her head and beating time with her foot, she would mutter: 

“Mon mari vient de partir; Pour la péché d’Islande, mon mari vient de partir, Il m’a laissee sans lé sou, Mais - trala, trala la lou, J’en gagne, j’en gagne.”

(My husband went off sailing Upon the Iceland cruise, But never left me money, Not e’en a couple sous.  But - ri too loo! ri tooral loo!  I know what to do!)

She always stopped short, while her eyes opened wide with a lifeless expression, like those dying flames that suddenly flash out before fading away.  She hung her head and remained speechless for a great length of time, her lower jaw dropping as in the dead.

One day she could remember nothing of her grandson.  “Sylvestre?  Sylvestre?” repeated she, wondering whom Gaud meant; “oh! my dear, d’ye see, I’ve so many of them, that now I can’t remember their names!”

So saying she threw up her poor wrinkled hands, with a careless, almost contemptuous toss.  But the next day she remembered him quite well; mentioning several things he had said or done, and that whole day long she wept.

Oh! those long winter evenings when there was not enough wood for their fire; to work in the bitter cold for one’s daily bread, sewing hard to finish the clothes brought over from Paimpol.

Granny Yvonne, sitting by the hearth, remained quiet enough, her feet stuck in among the smouldering embers, and her hands clasped beneath her apron.  But at the beginning of the evening, Gaud always had to talk to her to cheer her a little.

“Why don’t ye speak to me, my good girl?  In my time I’ve known many girls who had plenty to say for themselves.  I don’t think it ’ud seem so lonesome, if ye’d only talk a bit.”

So Gaud would tell her chit-chat she had heard in town, or spoke of the people she had met on her way home, talking of things that were quite indifferent to her, as indeed all things were now; and stopping in the midst of her stories when she saw the poor old woman was falling asleep.

There seemed nothing lively or youthful around her, whose fresh youth yearned for youth.  Her beauty would fade away, lonely and barren.  The wind from the sea came in from all sides, blowing her lamp about, and the roar of the waves could be heard as in a ship.  Listening, the ever-present sad memory of Yann came to her, the man whose dominion was these battling elements; through the long terrible nights, when all things were unbridled and howling in the outer darkness, she thought of him with agony.

Always alone as she was, with the sleeping old granny, she sometimes grew frightened and looked in all dark corners, thinking of the sailors, her ancestors, who had lived in these nooks, but perished in the sea on such nights as these.  Their spirits might possibly return; and she did not feel assured against the visit of the dead by the presence of the poor old woman, who was almost as one of them herself.

Suddenly she shivered from head to foot, as she heard a thin, cracked voice, as if stifled under the earth, proceed from the chimney corner.

In a chirping tone, which chilled her very soul, the voice sang: 

“Pour la péché d’Islande, mon mari vient de partir, Il m’a laissee sans lé sou, Mais - trala, trala la lou!”

Then she was seized with that peculiar terror that one has of mad people.

The rain fell with an unceasing, fountain-like gush, and streamed down the walls outside.  There were oozings of water from the old moss-grown roof, which continued dropping on the self-same spots with a monotonous sad splash.  They even soaked through into the floor inside, which was of hardened earth studded with pebbles and shells.

Dampness was felt on all sides, wrapping them up in its chill masses; an uneven, buffeting dampness, misty and dark, and seeming to isolate the scattered huts of Ploubazlanec still more.

But the Sunday evenings were the saddest of all, because of the relative gaiety in other homes on that day, for there are joyful evenings even among those forgotten hamlets of the coast; here and there, from some closed-up hut, beaten about by the inky rains, ponderous songs issued.  Within, tables were spread for drinkers; sailors sat before the smoking fire, the old ones drinking brandy and the young ones flirting with the girls; all more or less intoxicated and singing to deaden thought.  Close to them, the great sea, their tomb on the morrow, sang also, filling the vacant night with its immense profound voice.

On some Sundays, parties of young fellows who came out of the taverns or back from Paimpol, passed along the road, near the door of the Moans; they were such as lived at the land’s end of Pors-Even way.  They passed very late, caring little for the cold and wet, accustomed as they were to frost and tempests.  Gaud lent her ear to the medley of their songs and shouts - soon lost in the uproar of the squalls or the breakers - trying to distinguish Yann’s voice, and then feeling strangely perplexed if she thought she had heard it.

It really was too unkind of Yann not to have returned to see them again, and to lead so gay a life so soon after the death of Sylvestre; all this was unlike him.  No, she really could not understand him now, but in spite of all she could not forget him or believe him to be without heart.

The fact was that since his return he had been leading a most dissipated life indeed.  Three or four times, on the Ploubazlanec road, she had seen him coming towards her, but she was always quick enough to shun him; and he, too, in those cases, took the opposite direction over the heath.  As if by mutual understanding, now, they fled from each other.

CHAPTER XV - THE NEW SHIP

At Paimpol lives a large, stout woman named Madame Tressoleur.  In one of the streets that lead to the harbour she keeps a tavern, well known to all the Icelanders, where captains and ship-owners come to engage their sailors, and choose the strongest among them, men and masters all drinking together.

At one time she had been beautiful, and was still jolly with the fishers; she has a mustache, is as broad built as a Dutchman, and as bold and ready of speech as a Levantine.  There is a look of the daughter of the regiment about her, notwithstanding her ample nun-like muslin headgear; for all that, a religious halo of its sort floats around her, for the simple reason that she is a Breton born.

The names of all the sailors of the country are written in her head as in a register; she knows them all, good or bad, and knows exactly, too, what they earn and what they are worth.

One January day, Gaud, who had been called in to make a dress, sat down to work in a room behind the tap-room.

To go into the abode of our Madame Tressoleur, you enter by a broad, massive-pillared door, which recedes in the olden style under the first floor.  When you go to open this door, there is always some obliging gust of wind from the street that pushes it in, and the new-comers make an abrupt entrance, as if carried in by a beach roller.  The hall is adorned by gilt frames, containing pictures of ships and wrecks.  In an angle a china statuette of the Virgin is placed on a bracket, between two bunches of artificial flowers.

These olden walls must have listened to many powerful songs of sailors, and witnessed many wild gay scenes, since the first far-off days of Paimpol - all through the lively times of the privateers, up to these of the present Icelanders, so very little different from their ancestors.  Many lives of men have been angled for and hooked there, on the oaken tables, between two drunken bouts.

While she was sewing the dress, Gaud lent her ear to the conversation going on about Iceland, behind the partition, between Madame Tressoleur and two old sailors, drinking.  They were discussing a new craft that was being rigged in the harbour.  She never would be ready for the next season, so they said of this Leopoldine.

“Oh, yes, to be sure she will!” answered the hostess.  “I tell ’ee the crew was all made up yesterday - the whole of ’em out of the old Marie of Guermeur’s, that’s to be sold for breaking up; five young fellows signed their engagement here before me, at this here table, and with my own pen - so ye see, I’m right!  And fine fellows, too, I can tell ’ee; Laumec, Tugdual Caroff, Yvon Duff, young Keraez from Treguier, and long Yann Gaos from Pors-Even, who’s worth any three on ’em!”

The Leopoldine!  The half-heard name of the ship that was to carry Yann away became suddenly fixed in her brain, as if it had been hammered in to remain more ineffaceably there.

At night back again at Ploubazlanec, and finishing off her work by the light of her pitiful lamp, that name came back to her mind, and its very sound impressed her as a sad thing.  The names of vessels, as of things, have a significance in themselves - almost a particular meaning of their own.  The new and unusual word haunted her with an unnatural persistency, like some ghastly and clinging warning.  She had expected to see Yann start off again on the Marie, which she knew so well and had formerly visited, and whose Virgin had so long protected its dangerous voyages; and the change to the Leopoldine increased her anguish.

But she told herself that that was not her concern, and nothing about him ought ever to affect her.  After all, what could it matter to her whether he were here or there, on this ship or another, ashore or not?  Would she feel less miserable with him back in Iceland, when the summer would return over the deserted cottages, and lonely anxious women - or when a new autumn came again, bringing home the fishers once more?  All that was alike indifferent to her, equally without joy or hope.  There was no link between them now, nothing ever to bring them together, for was he not forgetting even poor little Sylvestre?  So, she had plainly to understand that this sole dream of her life was over for ever; she had to forget Yann, and all things appertaining to his existence, even the very name of Iceland, which still vibrated in her with so painful a charm - because of him all such thoughts must be swept away.  All was indeed over, for ever and ever.

She tenderly looked over at the poor old woman asleep, who still required all her attention, but who would soon die.  Then, what would be the good of living and working after that; of what use would she be?

Out of doors, the western wind had again risen; and, notwithstanding its deep distant soughing, the soft regular patter of the eaves-droppings could be heard as they dripped from the roof.  And so the tears of the forsaken one began to flow - tears running even to her lips to impart their briny taste, and dropping silently on her work, like summer showers brought by no breeze, but suddenly falling, hurried and heavy, from the over-laden clouds; as she could no longer see to work, and she felt worked out and discouraged before this great hollowness of her life, she folded up the extra-sized body of Madame Tressoleur and went to bed.

She shivered upon that fine, grand bed, for, like all things in the cottage, it seemed also to be getting colder and damper.  But as she was very young, although she still continued weeping, it ended by her growing warm and falling asleep.

CHAPTER XVI - LONE AND LORN

Other sad weeks followed on, till it was early February, fine, temperate weather.  Yann had just come from his shipowner’s where he had received his wages for the last summer’s fishery, fifteen hundred francs, which, according to the custom of the family, he carried to his mother.  The catch had been a good one, and he returned well pleased.

Nearing Ploubazlanec, he spied a crowd by the side of the road.  An old woman was gesticulating with her stick, while the street boys mocked and laughed around her.  It was Granny Moan.  The good old granny whom Sylvestre had so tenderly loved - her dress torn and bedraggled - had now become one of those poor old women, almost fallen back in second childhood, who are followed and ridiculed along their roads.  The sight hurt him cruelly.

The boys of Ploubazlanec had killed her cat, and she angrily and despairingly threatened them with her stick.  “Ah, if my poor lad had only been here! for sure, you’d never dared do it, you young rascals!”

It appeared that as she ran after them to beat them, she had fallen down; her cap was awry, and her dress covered with mud; they called out that she was tipsy (as often happens to those poor old “grizzling” people in the country who have met misfortune).

But Yann clearly knew that that was not true, and that she was a very respectable old woman, who only drank water.

“Aren’t you ashamed?” roared he to the boys.

He was very angry, and his voice and tone frightened them, so that in the twinkling of an eye they all took flight, frightened and confused before “Long Gaos.”

Gaud, who was just returning from Paimpol, bringing home her work for the evening, had seen all this from afar, and had recognised Granny in the group.  She eagerly rushed forward to learn what the matter was, and what they had done to her; seeing the cat, she understood it all.  She lifted up her frank eyes to Yann, who did not look aside; neither thought of avoiding each other now; but they both blushed deeply and they gazed rather startled at being so near one another; but without hatred, almost with affection, united as they were in this common impulse of pity and protection.

The school-children had owed a grudge to the poor dead grimalkin for some time, because he had a black, satanic look; though he was really a very good cat, and when one looked closely at him, he was soft and caress-inviting of coat.  They had stoned him to death, and one of his eyes hung out.  The poor old woman went on grumbling, shaking with emotion, and carrying her dead cat by the tail, like a dead rabbit.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear! my poor boy, my poor lad, if he were only here; for sure, they’d never dared a-do it.”

Tears were falling down in her poor wrinkles; and her rough blue-veined hands trembled.

Gaud had put her cap straight again, and tried to comfort her with soothing words.  Yann was quite indignant to think that little children could be so cruel as to do such a thing to a poor aged woman and her pet.  Tears almost came into his eyes, and his heart ached for the poor old dame as he thought of Sylvestre, who had loved her so dearly, and the terrible pain it would have been to him to see her thus, under derision and in misery.

Gaud excused herself as if she were responsible for her state.  “She must have fallen down,” she said in a low voice; “’tis true her dress isn’t new, for we’re not very rich, Monsieur Yann; but I mended it again only yesterday, and this morning when I left home I’m sure she was neat and tidy.”

He looked at her steadfastly, more deeply touched by that simple excuse than by clever phrases or self-reproaches and tears.  Side by side they walked on to the Moans’ cottage.  He always had acknowledged her to be lovelier than any other girl, but it seemed to him that she was even more beautiful now in her poverty and mourning.  She wore a graver look, and her gray eyes had a more reserved expression, and nevertheless seemed to penetrate to the inner depth of the soul.  Her figure, too, was thoroughly formed.  She was twenty-three now, in the full bloom of her loveliness.  She looked like a genuine fisher’s daughter, too, in her plain black gown and cap; yet one could not precisely tell what gave her that unmistakable token of the lady; it was involuntary and concealed within herself, and she could not be blamed for it; only perhaps her bodice was a trifle nicer fitting than the others, though from sheer inborn taste, and showed to advantage her rounded bust and perfect arms.  But, no! the mystery was revealed in her quiet voice and look.

CHAPTER XVII - THE ESPOUSAL

It was manifest that Yann meant to accompany them; perhaps all the way home.  They walked on, all three together, as if following the cat’s funeral procession; it was almost comical to watch them pass; and the old folks on the doorsteps grinned at the sight.  Old Yvonne, in the middle, carried the dead pet; Gaud walked on her right, trembling and blushing, and tall Yann on the left, grave and haughty.

The aged woman had become quiet now; she had tidied her hair up herself and walked silently, looking alternately at them both from the tail of her eyes, which had become clear again.

Gaud said nothing for fear of giving Yann the opportunity of taking his leave; she would have liked to feel his kind, tender eyes eternally on her, and to walk along with her own closed so as to think of nothing else; to wander along thus by his side in the dream she was weaving, instead of arriving so soon at their lonely, dark cottage, where all must fade away.

At the door occurred one of those moments of indecision when the heart seems to stop beating.  The grandam went in without turning round, then Gaud, hesitating, and Yann, behind, entered, too.

He was in their house for the first time in his life - probably without any reason.  What could he want?  As he passed over the threshold he touched his hat, and then his eyes fell and dwelt upon Sylvestre’s portrait in its small black-beaded frame.  He went slowly up to it, as to a tomb.

Gaud remained standing with her hands resting on the table.  He looked around him; she watched him take a silent inspection of their poverty.  Very poor looked this cottage of the two forsaken women.  At least he might feel some pity for her, seeing her reduced to this misery inside its plain granite and whitewash.  Only the fine white bed remained of all past splendour, and involuntarily Yann’s eyes rested there.

He said nothing.  Why did he not go?  The old grandmother, although still so sharp in her lucid intervals, appeared not to notice him.  How odd!  So they remained over against one another, seeming respectively to question with a yearning desire.  But the moments were flitting, and each second seemed to emphasize the silence between them.  They gazed at one another more and more searchingly, as if in solemn expectation of some wonderful, exquisite event, which was too long in coming.

“Gaud,” he began, in a low grave voice, “if you’re still of a mind now - ”

What was he going to say?  She felt instinctively that he had suddenly taken a mighty resolution - rapidly as he always did, but hardly dared word it.

“If you be still of a mind - d’ye see, the fish has sold well this year, and I’ve a little money ahead - ”

“If she were still of a mind!” What was he asking of her?  Had she heard aright?  She felt almost crushed under the immensity of what she thought she premised.

All the while, old Yvonne, in her corner, pricked up her ears, feeling happiness approach.

“We could make a splice on it - a marriage, right off, Mademoiselle Gaud, if you are still of the same mind?”

He listened here for her answer, which did not come.  What could stop her from pronouncing that “yes?” He looked astonished and frightened, she could see that.  Her hands clutched the table edge.  She had turned quite white and her eyes were misty; she was voiceless, and looked like some maid dying in her flower.

“Well, Gaud, why don’t you answer?” said Granny Yvonne, who had risen and come towards them.  “Don’t you see, it rather surprises her, Monsieur Yann.  You must excuse her.  She’ll think it over and answer you later on.  Sit you down a bit, Monsieur Yann, and take a glass of cider with us.”

It was not the surprise, but ecstasy that prevented Gaud from answering; no words at all came to her relief.  So it really was true that he was good and kind-hearted.  She knew him aright - the same true Yann, her own, such as she never had ceased to see him, notwithstanding his sternness and his rough refusal.  For a long time he had disdained her, but now he accepted her, although she was poor.  No doubt it had been his wish all through; he may have had a motive for so acting, which she would know hereafter; but, for the present, she had no intention of asking him his meaning, or of reproaching him for her two years of pining.  Besides, all that was past, ay, and forgotten now; in one single moment everything seemed carried away before the delightful whirlwind that swept over her life!

Still speechless, she told him of her great love and adoration for him by her sweet brimming eyes alone; she looked deeply and steadily at him, while the copious shower of happy tears poured adown her roseate cheeks.

“Well done! and God bless you, my children,” said Granny Moan.  “It’s thankful I be to Him, too, for I’m glad to have been let grow so old to see this happy thing afore I go.”

Still there they remained, standing before one another with clasped hands, finding no words to utter; knowing of no word sweet enough, and no sentence worthy to break that exquisite silence.

“Why don’t ye kiss one another, my children?  Lor’! but they’re dumb!  Dear me, what strange grandchildren I have here!  Pluck up, Gaud; say some’at to him, my dear.  In my time lovers kissed when they plighted their troth.”

Yann raised his hat, as if suddenly seized with a vast, heretofore unfelt reverence, before bending down to kiss Gaud.  It seemed to him that this was the first kiss worthy of the name he ever had given in his life.

She kissed him also, pressing her fresh lips, unused to refinements of caresses, with her whole heart, to his sea-bronzed cheek.

Among the stones the cricket sang of happiness, being right for this time.  And Sylvestre’s pitiful insignificant portrait seemed to smile on them out of its black frame.  All things, in fact, seemed suddenly to throb with life and with joy in the blighted cottage.  The very silence apparently burst into exquisite music; and the pale winter twilight, creeping in at the narrow window, became a wonderful, unearthly glow.

“So we’ll go to the wedding when the Icelanders return; eh, my dear children?”

Gaud hung her head.  “Iceland,” the “Leopoldine” - so it was all real! while she had already forgotten the existence of those terrible things that arose in their way.

“When the Icelanders return.”

How long that anxious summer waiting would seem!

Yann drummed on the floor with his foot feverishly and rapidly.  He seemed to be in a great hurry to be off and back, and was telling the days to know if, without losing time, they would be able to get married before his sailing.  So many days to get the official papers filled and signed; so many for the banns:  that would only bring them up to the twentieth or twenty-fifth of the month for the wedding, and if nothing rose in the way, they could have a whole honeymoon week together before he sailed.

“I’m going to start by telling my father,” said he, with as much haste as if each moment of their lives were now numbered and precious.