I
A MILE or so north of the fishy little Breton harbor town of Paimpol, the hamlet of Pors Lanec is represented by a scattered cluster of low-pitched, straggling cottages built of gray granite boulders splashed with yellow lichen, their thatch of furze and reeds or broom-bush secured by lashings of rope, and heavy flagstones from the fierce assaults of the western gales. One in especial stands on an incline trending toward the beach, below the level of the Paimpol road. Its rear wall is formed by a low cliff against which it has been built, and which, rearing some twenty feet above the level of its shaggy brown roof, and throwing out a natural buttress toward the sea, protects the poor dwelling from the icy northern winds. Three uneven steps, worn by the feet of generations of fisher-dwellers, lead to the door, whose inner latch is lifted by a length of rope-yarn, reeved through a hole. On each side of the door a window has been hollowed out in the solid masonry of the wall, and roughly glazed; and beneath the rude slate ledge of each is a weather-beaten bench of drift-oak, blackened by age and usage. The door standing open gives a glimpse of the usual Breton interior, bunches of dried herbs, nets, and baskets depending from the blackened rafters, carved sleeping-bunks set about the walls, a few quaint pewter and copper flagons hanging on pegs driven into the chimney, and reflecting the leaping blaze of the pine and beechwood branches burning on the hearth.
I do not know who lives in Mademoiselle Yvonne’s cottage now, but a year ago the western gale was churning the gray sea into futile anger, and thrashing the stunted bushes into a more bending shape. The sky was somber as the sea, with eastward-hurrying drifts of slaty cirrus, which separated to reveal pale, sun-washed sky-spaces, and closed again, making the gloom seem deeper than before.
It was the eighth of December, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception—the day of the Pardon des Islandais—and the morning Angelus was ringing from the storm-beaten little chapel on the heights above, where nosegays of artificial flowers and strings of shells adorned the image of Our Lady of Good Help, and white-capped women, and rugged-faced, long-haired men knelt, rapt and serious, on the sandy stone pavement. Others were hurrying into Paimpol, where the streets were decorated with white sheets bordered with holly and ivy leaves in readiness for the procession. And a fine, icy rain was driving before the wind, and Yvonne’s tables and chairs stood out of doors while their owner beat and scrubbed them vigorously with a birch-broom dipped in soap-suds.
“She works upon the fête day, yes; but for all that she is no heretic, the poor Yvonne,� a passer-by explained to a companion—a stranger who showed surprise at the unusual spectacle. “All days are alike to her—and Our Lady understands.�
The speaker, a brown-faced, vigorous woman of fifty, paused on the pathway, littered with brown trails of slippery seaweed, and cried:
“Hey! So you’re not going with us to Paimpol, Mademoiselle Yvonne?�
Mademoiselle Yvonne ceased flogging her table, and turned her face toward the questioner. It was a full, straight-featured, rather massive face, framed in the shell-fluted cap worn by unmarried women. The brows were broad, and from under the straight eyebrows looked a pair of eyes that were blue and clear and candid as those of the little boy who clung to the skirts of the woman who addressed her. As she drew herself up, resting on her birch-broom, it might be seen that she was tall and deep-chested and broad-bosomed, and that the massive plaits of hair coiled upon her temples were gray.
“Going to Paimpol! Sure, it is impossible,� said Mademoiselle Yvonne. “There is so much to do getting the house ready.� A rich deep color flushed her cheeks, staining her temples and tinting her full throat to the edge of her bodice. “When one is to be married, Madame understands——�
“So then! You have heard?� cried the neighbor with an elaborate pantomime of delight at the good news. “You have had a letter from Iceland at last?�
The clear blue eyes looked troubled for a moment.
“No. Not that,� said Mademoiselle Yvonne. “Not precisely a letter, but I have made out why the Marie au Secours delays so long. You see, they must have had a great catch at the cod-fisheries, and, being a man of brains, my Yann set out to make the most of his good luck. So the Marie au Secours will have merely touched at Paimpol, and then sailed down to the Gulf of Gascony, where fish fetch high prices, or even to the Sandy Isles.� One of her massive plaits, released by her vigorous movements from the confining pin, uncoiled and fell below her waist. “That is how it will have been, Madame Pilot!� exclaimed Yvonne, smiling and coiling up the beautiful hair.
“Without doubt, that is how it will have been!� assented the other.
She drove her stout elbow into the ribs of the woman who had whispered to her. “Not so loud! We people of the coast have sharper ears than you folks from inland.�
“When did he sail?�
“Twenty years ago, when she was eighteen, and all that gray hair gold.�
“Pfui! There was a blast!�
“We shall have to pick the wind’s bones all the way to Paimpol. So good-day, Mademoiselle.... Gaos, run and bid Mademoiselle Yvonne good-day.�
Madame Pilot nudged the other woman again, as much as to say: “Watch her with the child!�
Gaos obediently quitted his mother’s skirts, and Yvonne knelt down to kiss him. She whispered in the child’s ear coaxingly, and, as he hesitated, watched the innocent lips as though her fate in some inexplicable way hung upon their utterance.
“She always tries to get him to say it, and he never will!� said Madame Pilot under her breath.
“What?� mouthed the inland woman, with round, interested eyes.
The child spoke at that moment loudly and clearly.
“He will come back to-day!�
“Lord above! if he hasn’t said it!� cried Madame Pilot, and crossed herself under her ample cloak as the boy came running to her.
She caught his hand, and clattered on in her heavy wooden shoes, fighting her way resolutely against the wind, followed more slowly by the gaping inlander.
“You rogue! You little villain!� she cried to the child she dragged. “What made you say it?�
“Be-be-cause—bub—bub—boo—because it’s true!� roared Gaos, through angry sobs.
His mother, with a hasty invocation of her patron saint, dropped his hand, stopped where the beach-pathway merged in the Paimpol road, and looked back. Mademoiselle Yvonne was nowhere to be seen at first, but presently her figure mounted into view climbing the pathway to the chapel.
“She has gone to burn a candle for her good news,� said Madame Pilot. “Now which have I for a son ... a liar or a prophet? If one were to mistake and smack the prophet, it’s enough to bring a judgment down....� She shook her head mournfully. “But it is to be prayed for, all the same, that that great rogue Yann may never come wheedling back. Drowned, did you suppose? Dead? Not a bit of it!... He’s living on the fat of the land in Ploubazou, where he landed his last cargo of fish nineteen years ago, married a tavern-keeper’s daughter, and set up a sailor’s drinking-house himself; ‘The Chinese Cider Cellars,’ they call it. May Heaven punish such vagabonds!� panted Madame Pilot. “As for us in Pors Lanec, we’re peace-lovers and law-abiders, but there are stones and cudgels waiting for Monsieur Yann Tregnier whenever he shows his nose here.�
Madame Pilot stopped, as a broad-shouldered young man in a sailor’s cap and pilot-cloth jacket came tramping toward her along the puddly Paimpol road, whistling a cheerful tune. He wore thick town-made brogues instead of wooden sabots, and saluted the women in the country fashion, though to him personally they were unknown, and passed by, leaving the mother of the possible prophet staring; for he was known to her as the son of the Ploubazou tavern-keeper Yann Tregnier, christened Jean-Marie after his mother’s father. He was a well-looking, sturdy young fellow of eighteen, who had always hankered to join the Icelanders, as the cod-trawlers are called, and sail with the yearly fleet on the last day of February for the big, dangerous fisheries in the icy regions where the summers have no night. But Yann, his father, would not hear of it, and Jean-Marie had been apprenticed to a cooper in Paimpol. He had grumbled, but his fate appeared less hard now that he was in love with Gaud. Gaud lived with an aunt in the village of Pors Lanec, a place Jean-Marie knew as yet only by hearsay, since her parents lived in Paimpol, and she had met her lover while upon a visit to them. Pors Lanec lay by the beach a mile or two from Paimpol, Gaud had told him. The cottage was built against a great rock, the doorstep was the beach, and the sea the duck-pond before the door; he could not fail to recognize the place, Gaud had described it so clearly.
Gaud was a little delicate creature, with hair of burning gold hidden under her shell cap, and great violet-gray eyes, full of possible adoration for any likely young fellow who should come wooing to Pors Lanec, and the likely young fellow had come along in the person of Jean-Marie. And he had won her promise, and meant to marry her and settle down to the cooper’s trade in earnest. True, the girl was without a dower, and his father, with whom he had had a talk at Ploubazou last Sunday, had pulled a long lip at that piece of information, and he had said to the old man straight out: “Either I get Gaud or go to sea!�
“Either I get Gaud—or go to sea!� Jean-Marie repeated now in the most deep and manly voice he had at command. For the cottage built against the cliff had come in sight, a dwelling so weather-worn and lichen-stained that it might have been an excrescence upon the side of the rock that sheltered it. “Either I get Gaud....� Jean-Marie squared his shoulders, and marched down upon the cottage where Gaud lived. As his firm footsteps crossed the plateau of sandy rock that lay before the cottage door he heard a cry from within, and before he could lift a hand to the rope-yarn of the latch, the door was pulled violently back, thrown open, and a woman fell upon his breast with a sobbing shriek of joy.
“Yann! Oh, my beloved, at last!�
“Madame!� he stuttered.
“Our Lady sent me word you would return to-day, and even as I was upon my way to thank her for such grace, I turned back thinking. ‘If he should come and miss me!’�
The wind blew shrilly; the sky grew black with storm. Jean-Marie’s cheek was wet with rain or the woman’s tears. He was conscious of a dizziness. It was as though a web of some strange tissue were weaving in the chambers of his brain, and the pattern grew more and more familiar. The arms that clasped him were not those of a stranger; the heart that throbbed upon his own had rested there before. Even the cottage interior shown through the low doorway was familiar, and the oaken benches to right and left, had he not carved his name on one of them, his and another’s?
But even as these strange questions awakened in the mind of the young man, he was thrust violently back, and Yvonne was gazing, with still streaming eyes, at the face of a stranger, while, partly hidden by the tall figure of her aunt, appeared the little shrinking figure of Mademoiselle Gaud!
“Who is it?� asked Yvonne dully, without removing her eyes from that unknown face of the man whose step was like Yann’s.
“I—I believe—I think—’tis Monsieur Jean-Marie,� panted Gaud. “Sweet St. Agnes!� she prayed inwardly to her patron saint, “make her not ask me his other name! If she does I am sure I shall lie and say I do not know; so, sweetest St. Agnes, preserve me from sinning!� Next moment she breathed freely, for Yvonne stepped aside, leaving the threshold free to the stranger.
“Ask of his business, little one!� she said, without looking at Gaud, “and let him know that he was mistaken for one who has a right to be welcomed with open arms.�
She had a black woollen cloak loosely thrown about her shoulders. She sat down upon the seat to the right of the door, her elbow on her knee, her chin upon her hand, the dark folds half concealing the noble outlines of her form, her eyes fixed upon the most distant turn in the Paimpol road.
Jean-Marie was at liberty to proceed with his courting; Yvonne seemed to hear and see him no longer. Only as the lover grew gayer, and the clear laugh of Gaud sounded in unison with his, a quiver passed over the face of Yvonne. At twelve o’clock, when the dinner was ready, Gaud came dutifully to tell her. She only shook her head, and the midday meal of salt fish, potatoes, and cider was shared by the lovers.
When the dishes were washed, Jean-Marie proposed a stroll to the chapel on the cliff. Gaud, her pale cheeks tipped with a little crimson, like the leaves of a daisy, came to ask Yvonne’s permission.
“My mother allowed him to visit us in Paimpol,� she said meekly, flushing deeper as she remembered that she had introduced him as Monsieur Jean-Marie, the cooper’s apprentice, and that her mother knew nothing of his relationship to the man who had used her Aunt Yvonne so wickedly. Through the crystal of Gaud’s nature ran a little streak of deceptiveness. Like all weak things, she could be cunning where her love or her interest was concerned, and what did it matter what Jean-Marie’s father had done? she argued. He was not Jean-Marie. So she and her sweetheart set out upon their walk, keeping a decorous distance of at least six feet between them, and swinging unoccupied hands that, when the path grew narrow, would meet and cling. And Yvonne saw two figures appear in the distance upon the Paimpol road, neither of which caused her any emotion. Monsieur Blandon, the Paimpol doctor, was hirpling out upon his old white mare, to visit some of his Pors Lanec patients; half an hour must elapse before he could dismount at Yvonne’s door, the mare was so old and the road so stony. She looked away, far out to sea, and watched a tossing white sail upon the inky horizon, and with the instinct of one bred by the sea knew that there would be weather yet more stormy, for the seagulls and kittiwakes were hurrying inland. Then a heavy pair of wooden shoes clacked over the stones, and a vinous voice gave her “good-day.� It was one Piggou Moan, once a smart young fisherman and avowed rival of Yann, now the smuggler, the loafer, the drunkard of the hamlet.
“A drop o’ cider, Mademoiselle Yvonne, for old friendship’s sake and charity,� begged the toper. Yvonne scarcely looked at him, but made a slight motion of her hand toward the cottage door. With a slobbered blessing, red-nosed, ragged Piggou lurched in, lucky in the absence of Gaud, who would have found enough courage, at need, to have driven him forth with a broomstick. He reached a copper flagon from its peg, and went as if by instinct to the cider-cask that stood by the great, carved clothes-press. Minutes passed, and Piggou came out, brighter of eye if redder of nose than when he entered, wiping his dripping beard on his ragged sleeve.
“It’s long since you and Piggou had a crack together, Mademoiselle Yvonne—years it is, and years! I’m not as fine a fellow as I used to be, though you’re a comely figure of a woman still. Excuse the freedom, Mademoiselle!...�
She looked at the drunkard with cold dislike, and moved toward the farther end of the bench as his liquored breath and flaming face came near her.