She looked impatiently toward me. Perhaps her eyes expressed more to me than her words; for her mother was Spanish, and Cécile had her mother’s great, black, saucer eyes, with their long fringe of jet lashes. Still, her look was not what I had expected to see. She wore sad-coloured draperies, but she was not in mourning. Her dress was rich, of Lyons silk, and this surprised me; for her people were poor, and a sailor’s widow is not always too well off at Bénévent. Seamen are, not uncommonly, judges of merchandise. Do we not trade with the Indies, and a thousand other outlandish places? In this way it came about that I involuntarily counted up the cost of Cécile’s costly habit and rich lace. But this mental inventory took hardly a second—certainly, less time than it takes me to tell.
“Cécile,” I said, “my poor girl, I wish that I could tell you good news. Your husband sailed with me. It was his lot to be one of the less lucky ones. Marc—”
“Is dead!” said Cécile, calmly. “I knew it all along—these three years. I felt it. Something told me long ago Marc was dead!”
She said this so quietly that I was astonished—perhaps a little shocked. Sailors’ widows in Bénévent mourn their husbands’ loss for years. My mother was a sailor’s widow ever since I knew her. No offer of a new ring could ever tempt her to throw aside the old one. She was true as Love.
I replied, with something of choking in my throat, but with hardness in my face, “Marc is dead, Cécile! He was drowned!”—for I could not bring myself to tell this beautiful woman, whom he had loved as only an honest sailor can love, the story of his fate, as I had told it to the comrades in the kitchen of “The Three Magpies” the night before. I desired to spare her this.
“So Marc is dead!” Cécile repeated, impassively. “Dead—as I always thought and said he was dead! Drowned! You saw it, Pierre?”
“The good God forgive me!” I said, “I saw it!”
As I said before, I held a levée that day in the parlour of my mother’s cottage. It gladdened my eyes, who would have worked my finger-nails below the quicks to save her from wanting anything—to see that the good soul was surrounded by the signs of plenty. She had wanted for nothing. Old Jean had tilled her piece of garden-ground to some purpose, and had never taken a sou as recompense for his work. Everybody had been kind to her. It brought tears into my eyes to hear of it. Her kitchen told a tale of plenty. From the smoke-blackened oak beams hung hams and flitches of bacon more than one would take the trouble to count. Bunches of garlic and strings of onions were there in plenty; and the great black kettle hanging always over the pine-wood fire, sent forth savoury steams, that made your heart leap into your mouth. The Widow Crépin’s was a pot-au-feu worth eating, I can tell you. Nor did we fail to wash down our food with draughts of good wine on every day of the week. I gave a supper that night to some of my friends. I had not quite forgotten the impression Cécile had made upon me in the morning. For Marc, the second officer, had been my friend ever since I could recollect sweetstuff. But we were merry together, talking of the old times, of my adventures in the desert island, of the good ship that had brought me safely back to Bénévent, and of other things.
Presently the name of Cécile was mentioned.
I shuddered involuntarily.