“That is she, Monsieur L'Abbé,” said Hoel Grall, with a peculiar twitch of his coarse mouth, as if from pain. “That is she with the little child!”
René Drucquer bowed his head, saying nothing. The Deux Frères slowly edged alongside the old quay in her usual berth above the sardine boats. A board was thrown across from the rail to the quay, and the priest stepped ashore alone. He went towards the smiling young wife without any hesitation; she stood there surrounded by the wives of the sailors on board the Deux Frères, with her snowy coiffe and spotless apron, holding her golden-haired child by the hand. All the women curtsied as the priest approached, for in these western provinces the Church is still respected.
“My daughter,” said the Abbé, “I have bad news for you.”
She smiled still, misunderstanding his calmness.
“Ah, mon père,” she said, “it is the season of the great winds now. What a long voyage it has been! And you say it is a bad one. My husband is no doubt in despair, but another voyage is sure to be better; is it not so? I have not seen Loic upon the deck, but then my sight is not good. I am not from Audierne, mon père, but from inland where we cannot see so far.”
The priest changed colour; no smile came into his face in response to hers. He stepped nearer, and placed his hand upon her comely arm.
“It has been a very bad voyage for your poor husband,” he said. “The Holy Virgin give you comfort.”
Slowly the colour vanished from the woman's round checks. Her soft, short-sighted eyes filled with a terrible, hopeless dismay as she stared at the young priest's bowed head. The women round now began to understand, and they crossed themselves with a very human prayer of thankfulness that their husbands and brothers had been spared.
“Loic is dead?” she said, in a rasping voice. For some moments she stood motionless, then, in obedience to some strange and unaccountable instinct, she began turning up the sleeves of her rough brown dress, as if she were going to begin some kind of manual work.
“The Holy Virgin comfort you, my daughter; and you, my little one,” said the priest, as he stooped to lay his hand upon the golden head of the child.