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.