A Tale of Brittany (Mon frère Yves)

CHAPTER XCVII

December, 1882.

I was walking on the quay at Bordeaux. A very smart person came up to me, hat doffed, holding out his hand: Barrada! A Barrada transformed, having shed his beard and his one-and-thirty years at the same time, no doubt, as he laid aside his blue collar, with cheeks carefully shaved, a budding moustache, and the air of a young lover of twenty.

The old distinction and beauty of line were still there, but his face now was happier and kinder, as if brightened by a deep joy.

He had married at last his little Spanish sweetheart. The gold he used to carry in his belt had furnished their home; and he had found occupation as a stevedore, a very lucrative calling, it seems, in which he could use to perfection his great strength and instinctive "handiness." He made me promise solemnly that on the return of the Primauguet I would call at Bordeaux with Yves and come and see him.

He, at any rate, was happy!

And the end of this wanderer over the sea made me think. I asked myself whether my poor Yves, who, with a heart as good, had offended far less against the laws of decent society, might not also find one day a little happiness. . . .

CHAPTER XCVIII

Telegram: "Toulon, 3rd April, 1883.—To Yves Kermadec, on board the Primauguet, Brest. You have been appointed mate. All good wishes.

"PIERRE."

It was his joyous welcome, his home-coming feast, for, only twenty-four hours before, the Primauguet, returned from its distant cruise in the Pacific, had come to anchor in the waters of France.

And these golden stripes which I sent to Yves by telegraph, he did not water them, as he had watered formerly his stripes of wool. No, times had changed; he took refuge in the spar-deck, in the corner where his sack and locker were, which he regarded as his little home; he hurried down to this quiet spot in order that he might be alone to contemplate this happiness which had come to him, to read and read again this blessed little blue paper which had opened before him an entirely new era.

It was so wonderful, so unexpected, after his past bad conduct!

I had been to Paris to ask this favour, intriguing hard for my adopted brother, and making myself answerable for his future conduct. A woman friend had been good enough to exert in my cause her very powerful influence, and, with her help, the promotion of Yves was carried by assault, difficult though it was.

And Yves could not cease from contemplating his good fortune in all its aspects. . . . First, instead of asking for a short leave which might perhaps have been given to him very grudgingly, now, with his gold stripes he could depart straightway for Toulven; he would be put on the reserve list for three months at least, perhaps for four; he would have the whole summer to spend with his wife and son, in the little house which was now completed, and where they were only waiting for him to enter into occupation. . . . And secondly, they were quite rich, which was by no means a drawback. . . .

Never in the life of this poor wandering toiler had there come an hour so happy, a joy so deep as that which his brother Pierre had just sent him by telegraph. . . .

CHAPTER XCIX

When the winds brought me back to Brittany again, it was in the last days of May, when the Breton spring was at its fairest.

Yves had already been six weeks in his little house at Toulven, arranging my room, and preparing everything for my arrival.

The ship on which I had embarked had left the Mediterranean and was going north in the Atlantic, bound for the northern ports and Brest where it was to be laid up.

18th May, at sea. Already one feels that Brittany is near. It is fine still, but the day is one of those fine Breton days which are calm and melancholy. The smooth sea is of a pale blue, the salt air is fresh and smells of seaweed; over everything there is a veil of bluish mist, very transparent and very tenuous.

At eight o'clock in the morning we round the point of Penmarc'h. The Celtic rocks, the tall sad cliffs become visible little by little and draw nearer.

Now there are real banks of mist—but very light still, summer mists—which rest everywhere on the distances of the horizon.

At one o'clock, the channel of the Toulinguets, and then we enter Brest.

19th May. Eight days' leave. At midday I am in the train, on my way to Toulven.

Rain all the way over the Breton countryside. The meadows, the shady valleys are full of water.

From Bannalec to Toulven is an hour's drive through the woods. With my eyes fixed in front of me I watch for the granite steeple of the church in the distance of the green horizon.

And now it appears reflected deep below in the mournful pool. The weather has cleared and the sky is blue again, a pale blue.

Toulven! . . . The diligence stops. Yves is there waiting for me, holding little Pierre by the hand.

We look at each other—and our first impulse is to laugh, on account of our moustaches. Our faces are altered, and we seem odd to each other. We had not seen each other since permission had been given to sailors to leave the upper lip unshaved. Yves expressed the opinion that it made us look much more knowing.

Then we shook hands.

And what a fine little fellow Pierre has become! So tall, so strong! We set off together, going through Toulven, where the good folk know me and come to their doors to watch us pass. We make our way through the narrow grey street, between the ancient houses, between the walls of massive granite. I recognize the old woman with the owl-like profile who presided at the birth of my godson; she nods to me from an open window. The large coifs, the collarettes, the spangles on the bodices, stand out, in the deep embrasures against the dark backgrounds, and the impression I receive as I pass by is one peculiar to Brittany, of olden times, of days remote and dead.

Little Pierre, whose hands we hold, walks now like a man. He had said nothing at first, a little overcome at seeing me again, but presently he begins to talk; upturning towards me his round face he looks at me as at a friend with whom he may share his thoughts, and a sweet small voice with which I am not yet very familiar pipes out with a strong Breton accent:

"Godfather, have you brought me my sheep?"

Fortunately I had remembered my promise of a year ago; this sheep on wheels for little Pierre is in my trunk. And I have brought also some candlesticks with owls' heads on them (heads of the parrots of France) which I had promised to my other baby—Yves.

And here is the house, gay and white and new, with its Breton window frames, its green shutters, its attic store-room, and, behind, the horizon of the woods.

We enter. Below in the open-hearthed kitchen, Marie and little Corentine are waiting for us.

But, immediately, Yves hurries me away, impatient that I should see their handsome white room upstairs, with its muslin curtains and its cherry wood furniture.

And then he opens another door.

"And now, brother, you are in your own room?"

And he looks at me, anxious to see the effect produced, after all the pains his wife and he have taken to ensure that I should find everything to my taste.

I enter, touched, moved. It is all white, my room, and filled with a delicious fragrance. There are flowers everywhere, flowers which they have gone very far to find for me; in vases on the mantelpiece, bunches of mignonette and large bouquets of sweetpeas; in the fireplace, a mass of heather.

But they could not bring themselves to put in my room the old furniture, the old Breton odds and ends, and they excused themselves saying they had found nothing that seemed to them nice enough and suitable enough; and so they had gone to Quimper and bought me a bed like their own, in cherry wood, a light wood, bright and slightly reddish in colour. The tables and chairs are of the same wood. The smallest details have been arranged with tender thought; on the walls, in gilt frames, are drawings which I had made in earlier days and a large photograph of the tower of Saint Pol-de-Léon, which I had given Yves at the time when we were together in the misty waters of the North.

The boards of the floor are as clean as newly-sawn wood.

"You see, brother, everything is as spotless as on board," says Yves, who himself has taken the greatest pains to make it so, and who removes his shoes whenever he goes up so that he may not dirty the stairs.

And I must see everything, go everywhere, even into the store-room where the potatoes are laid by, and the logs of wood for the winter; even into the little vestibule of the staircase where is suspended, like the ex-voto of a sailor in a chapel of the Virgin, a miniature ship which Yves had made during his spare time in the crow's nest of the Primauguet; and finally into the garden where the strawberries and various green things are beginning to push up their fresh shoots in long neat rows.

Now we sit down at the table, Yves, Marie, little Corentine, little Pierre and I, round the spotless white cloth on which the dinner has been placed. And Yves, my brother Yves, becomes self-conscious and nervous all at once in his rôle of master of the house. And so it is I who have to carve, and, as it is the first time in my life, I get a little confused too.

At this dinner, I eat to please them; but this great happiness which I feel here near me and of which in some small measure I am the cause, this deep gratitude which surrounds me, all this moves me very strangely. To be in the midst of these rare things brings me the surprise of a new, delightful experience.

"You know," Yves says to me, low as if in confidence, "I go with her to mass now every Sunday."

And he makes in the direction of his wife a little grimace of childlike submission, very comical to see in one so serious. But his manner with Marie has quite changed, and I saw as soon as I entered that love had come at last to make its home for good and all in the new house. And my dear friends, therefore, have attained all that is best on earth. As Yves said "All that was wanted now was that the pendulum of time should stop so that this great happiness of their fulfilled dreams might never leave them."

They also are silent in their happiness, as if they feared they might frighten it away if they spoke too loud or too lightheartedly about it.

Besides we have to speak of the dead, of that little Yvonne who departed last autumn without waiting for the return of the Primauguet and whom Yves never saw; of old Corentin, her grandfather, who had found the cold weather of December too much for him.

It is Marie who speaks:

"He became very difficult towards the end, he who had always been so considerate. He said we did not know how to look after him, and he asked continually for his son Yves: 'Oh! if Yves were here he would help me; he would lift me in his strong arms and turn me over in my bed.' On the last night he called him without ceasing."

And Yves replied:

"What grieves me most when I think of our father, is that we were a little angry with each other on the day I went away, in connection with the settlement, you know. You cannot believe how often the recollection of that dispute with him comes into my mind."

Dinner is finished. It is evening, the long mild evening of May. We are walking, Yves and I, towards the church, to pay a visit to a white cross which stands there on a little flower-decked mound:

Yvonne Kermadec, thirteen months.

"They say that she was very like me," says Yves.

And this resemblance of the dead infant to him makes him very thoughtful.

As we look at the cross, the mound and the flowers, we both think of this mystery: a little baby girl who was of his blood, his issue, who had his eyes, and . . . probably, too, his nature, and who was given back so soon to the Breton earth. It is as if something of himself had already gone from him to mingle with the dust; it was like an earnest-money which he had already given to eternal nothingness. . . .

In four years, this little cross which may be seen now from the distance, will exist no longer; Yvonne and her mound and her flowers will be swept away. Even her little bones will be gathered up and mixed with the others, the bones of those long dead, under the church, in the ossuary.

For four years still the cross will remain, and those who pass may read this name of a little child. . . .

It stands on the edge of the pond. It is reflected in the deep, stagnant water, by the side of the tall grey steeple. On the mound the blooming carnations make white tufts, already indistinct in the oncoming darkness. The pond is like a mirror, pale yellow, of the colour of the dying daylight, of the sunset sky; and, all round, is the line, already dark, of the woods.

The flowers of the tombs give out their soft perfumes of the evening. A mild stillness surrounds us and seems to close in upon us. . . .

In the distance we hear the hooting of the owls, and we cannot distinguish now little Yvonne's white carnations. . . . The summer night has come.

Suddenly a loud noise startles us, amid this silence in which we were thinking of the dead. It is the Angelus sounding, very close, above us, in the steeple; and the air is filled with the deep vibrations of the bell.

Yet we had seen no one enter the church which is shut and dark.

"Who is ringing?" asks Yves anxiously. "Who can be ringing? I would not do it, ever. . . . I would not enter the church at this hour, not even for all the gold in the world!"

. . . We leave the cemetery; there is too much noise and the Angelus sounds strange there; it awakens unexpected echoes, in the waters of the pond, in the enclosure of the dead, in the darkness. Not that we are afraid of the poor little tomb with the white carnations; but there are the others, these mounds of turf which are all about us, these graves of men and women unknown. . . .

Ten o'clock. I am going to sleep for the first time under the roof of my brother Yves.

Later. We have already said good night, but he returns and opens my door.

"The flowers. They may not be good for you; it has just occurred to us. . . ."

And he takes them all away, the mignonette, the sweetpeas, even the bunches of heather.

CHAPTER C

The "pendulum of time" has continued its swing. It even seems that it has moved more quickly than usual, for the week's leave which had been given me is almost over.

Every day we spend in the woods. The weather is splendid. The heather, the foxgloves, the red silenes, all are in flower.

There had been a great "pardon" on Sunday, one of the most famous of this region of Brittany: it was held near the chapel of Our Lady of Good Tidings—which stands alone in the heart of the woods as if it had been sleeping there, forgotten, since the middle ages.

It happened that the day before, the Saturday, we had sat down in the shade, Yves, little Pierre and I, near the church, in the hour of the great calm of noon. A very silent spot, above which the ancient oaks and beeches linked, as if they had been arms, their great moss-grown branches.

Two women had come, one young, the other old and decrepit; they wore the costume of Rosporden and seemed to have travelled far. They carried large keys.

And they opened the old sanctuary, which remains closed throughout the year, and began to prepare the altar for the feast of the following day.

In the green half-light of the windows and the trees, we saw them busying themselves about the statues of the old saints, dusting them, wiping them; and then sweeping the flagstones covered with dust and saltpetre.

At the foot of Our Lady someone, out of piety, had placed a skull, found, no doubt, in the earth of the wood. Greenish-looking, the cranium staved in, it gazed at us from the bottom of the chapel, with its two black eye sockets.

"Tell me, godfather, what is that? . . . Did someone find that face in the earth? . . ."

Little Pierre is vaguely disturbed by this thing, the like of which he had never seen; as if it was for him the first revelation of an order of sinister objects dwelling under the earth. . . .

The weather, for this day of pardon, was a little dull, but delightful nevertheless.

For ten hours, the bagpipes played in front of the chapel, under the great oaks, and gavottes were danced on the mossy turf.

That indescribable quality of Breton summers, which is somehow melancholy, is, if one may so express it, a compound of many things: the charm of the long, warm days, rarer here than elsewhere and sooner over; the tall-growing herbage fresh and green, with the extreme profusion of red flowers; and then the sentiment of olden times, which seems to slumber here, to permeate everything.

Old land of Toulven, great woods where the black fir trees, trees of the north, mingle already with the oaks and beeches; Breton countrysides, which seem to be wrapt still in the past. . . .

Great rocks covered with grey lichen, as fine as an old man's beard; plains in which the granite crops out of the ancient soil, plains of purple heather. . . .

They are impressions of tranquillity, of appeasement, which this country brings me; and also an aspiration towards a more complete repose under the mossy turf, at the foot of the chapels which are in the woods. And, with Yves, all this is vaguer, more inexpressible, but more intense also, as with me when I was a child.

To see us sitting together in the woods in the calm of these fine summer days, one would never imagine what our youth had been, what life we had lived, nor what terrible scenes there had been between us formerly, when first our two natures, very different and very alike, had come in conflict one with the other.

Every evening before we go to bed, we play with little Pierre a Toulven game, amusing enough, which consists in holding one another by the chin and reciting, without laughing, a long rigmarole: "By the beard of Minette I hold you. The first of us two who shall laugh . . . etc." At this game little Pierre is always caught.

After that come the gymnastics. Yves goes through the performance with his son, turning him over, making him "go about," head down, legs in the air, at arm's length, then raising him very high. "Tell me, little Pierre, when will you have arms like mine? Tell me! Oh, never; never arms like yours, father; I shall not suffer hardship enough for that, I am sure."

And when Yves, dishevelled, tired from having romped so much, says, as he readjusts his clothes, in his most serious way: "Now then, little Pierre has finished his gymnastics for the present," little Pierre comes to me with that smile which always gets for him what he wants: "It is your turn, godfather; come!" And the gymnastics begin again.

CHAPTER CI

The pendulum of time, inexorable, swings on. In a few hours I shall have to leave, and soon my brother Yves will depart also, both of us for distant parts, for the unknown.

It is the last day, the last evening. Yves, little Pierre and I are on our way to the cottage of the old Keremenens, where I am to say good-bye to grandmother Marianne.

She lives alone, now, under her moss-grown roof, under the spreading vault of the great oaks. Pierre Kerbras and Anne, who were married in the spring, are building in the village a proper house in granite, like that of Yves. All the children have departed.

Poor little cottage in which the white coifs and collarettes moved about so joyously on the day of the baptism! All that is over; now, the cottage is empty and silent. We sit down on the old oak benches, resting our elbows on the table on which the great baptismal feast was served. The old grandmother is on a stool, spinning at her distaff, her head bowed, looking already decrepit and forlorn.

Although the sun is not yet very low, inside the cottage it is dark.

Around us, none but old-fashioned things, poor and primitive. Large rosaries are hung on the rough granite of the walls; in corners, lost in shadow, one sees the oak logs amassed for the winter, and old household utensils, blackened and dusty, in ancient and simple forms.

Never had we realized so clearly that all this is of the past and far from us.

It is the old Brittany of an earlier time, almost dead.

Through the chimney filters the light of the sky, green tones fall from above on the stones of the hearth, and through the open door appears the Breton lane, with a ray of the setting sun on the honeysuckle and the ferns.

We become dreamers, Yves and I, on this visit we have come to pay to the dwelling of the grandparents.

Besides, grandmother Marianne speaks only Breton. From time to time Yves addresses her in this language of the past; she replies, smiles, seems pleased to see us; but the conversation quickly flags and silence returns.

Vague melancholy of the evening, dreams of far-off days in this old dwelling which soon will collapse by the roadside, which will fall into ruin like its old inmates, and which no one will ever rebuild.

Little Pierre is with us. He is very fond of this little cottage and of this old grandmother, who spoils him with adoration. He loves especially the little oaken cradle, a work of another century, in which he was put when he was born. He is longer than his cradle now and uses it, sitting within, as a see-saw, looking about him with his wide-open dark eyes. And now his grandmother, stooping near him, her back bent under her frilled collarette, begins to rock him herself to amuse him. And as she rocks she sings, and he, every now and then, interrupts the quavering notes with a burst of his child's laughter.

Boudoul galaïchen! boudoul galaïch du!

Sing, poor old woman, with your broken, trembling voice, sing the ancient lullaby, the air which comes from the distant night of dead generations, and which your grandchildren will no longer know!

Boudoul, boudoul! Galaïchen, galaïch du!

One expects to see gnomes and fairies descend by the wide chimney, with the light that comes from above.

Outside, the sun gilds stills the branches of the oaks, the honeysuckle and the ferns.

Inside, in the lonely cottage, all is mysterious and dark.

Boudoul, boudoul! Galaïchen, galaïch du!

Rock your little grandson, rock him still, old woman in white frilled collar! Soon the Breton songs, and the old Bretons who sing them, will be no more!

And little Pierre joins his hands to say his evening prayer.

Word for word, in a very sweet voice which has a strong Toulven accent, he repeats, watching us the while, all that his grandmother knows of French:

"Oh God, and blessed Virgin Mary, and good Saint Anne, I pray to you for my father, for my mother, for my godfather, for my grandparents, for my little sister Yvonne. . . ."

"For my Uncle Goulven who is far away at sea," adds Yves in a grave voice.

And still more solemnly:

"For my grandmother at Plouherzel."

"For my grandmother at Plouherzel," repeats little Pierre.

And then he waits for something more to repeat, keeping his hands joined.

But Yves is almost in tears at the poignant recollection which has suddenly come to him of his mother, of the cottage in which he was born, of his village of Plouherzel, which his son scarcely knows and which he himself will perhaps never see again. Life is like that for the children of the coast, for sailors; they go away, the exigencies of their calling separate them from beloved parents who scarcely know how to write to them and whom afterwards they never see.

I look at Yves, and, as we understand each other without speaking, I can imagine very well what is passing in his mind.

To-day he is happy beyond his dream, many sombre things have been distanced and conquered, and yet, and yet . . . and afterwards? Here he is now plunged suddenly into I know not what dream of past and future, into a strange and unexpected melancholy! And afterwards?

Boudoul galaïchen! boudoul galaïch du!

sings the old woman, her back bent under her white frilled collar.

And afterwards? . . . Only little Pierre is inclined to laugh. He turns from one side to the other his vivacious head, bronzed and vigorous; merriment, the flame of a life quite new are still in his large dark eyes.

And afterwards? . . . All is dark in the abandoned cottage; it seems as if the objects there are talking mysteriously among themselves of the past; night is closing in around us on the great woods.

And afterwards? . . . Little Pierre will grow up and sail the seas, and we, my brother, we shall pass away and all that we have loved with us—our old mothers first—then everything and we ourselves, the old mothers of the Breton cottages as those of the towns, and old Brittany also, and everything, all the things of this world!

Boudoul galaïchen! boudoul galaïch du!

Night falls and a sadness unexpected, profound, weighs upon our hearts. . . . And yet, to-day we are happy.

CHAPTER CII

And the Celts mourned three barren rocks, under a lowering sky, in the heart of a gulf dotted with islets.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, SALAMMBÔ.

Yves and I take our departure, leaving little Pierre with his grandmother. We follow the green lane, under the vault of oaks and beeches, hearing in the distance, in the sonorousness of the evening, the noise of the rocking of the ancient cradle and the old lullaby and the outburst of child's laughter.

Outside, there is still daylight; the sun, very low, gilds the tranquil countryside.

"Let us go as far as the chapel of Saint Eloi," says Yves.

The chapel is on the top of the hill; very old it is, and corroded with moss, bearded with lichen, alone always, closed and mysterious in the midst of the woods.

It opens but once in the year, for the "pardon" of the horses, which are brought hither in great numbers, at the hour of a low mass which is said here for them. This "pardon" was held quite recently and the grass is still trodden down by the hoofs of the beasts which came.

This evening there is a strange tranquillity round the chapel. The wooded horizons, stretching out into the distance, are very peaceful, as if they were about to fall asleep. It seems also that it might be the evening of our own life, and that all that we had to do now was to rest here for ever, watching the night descend on the Breton countrysides, to let ourselves sink gently into this sleep of nature.

"All the same," says Yves, very thoughtful, "I feel sure that it will be to somewhere over there (over there means Plouherzel) that I shall return when I get old, so that they may lay me near Kergrist Chapel; you know, where I showed you? Yes, I am sure I shall find my way there to die."

Kergrist Chapel, in the district of Goëlo, under a lowering sky; the sea-water lake, and, in the middle, the granite islets, the great squatting beast asleep on the grey plain. . . . I can see the place now, as it appeared to me, many years ago already, on a winter's day. And I remember that there is Yves' native land, there is the earth which awaits him. When he is far away at sea, at night, in hours of danger, there is the grave of which he dreams.

"Yves, my dear brother, we are two great children, I assure you. Often very merry when there is no cause, here now we are sad and talking nonsense at a moment when peace and happiness by rare good fortune have come to us. I doubt very much if the newness of the experience is sufficient excuse.

"For who to look at us would imagine we were capable of dreaming these foolish things in our waking hours, simply because the night is falling and there is stillness in the woods?

"Think of it! We are neither of us more than thirty-two years old. Before us yet there should be many more years of life, years that will be filled with travel, with danger, with suffering. To each of us will come sunshine, and beauty, and love . . . and, perhaps, who knows?—between us there may be again scenes, rebellions, struggles!"

In many fewer words than there are above all this crossed his dream.

And he answered me with an air of sad reproach:

"But you know well, brother, that I am altered now, and that there is one thing which is finished for ever. There is no need to speak to me of that."

And I grip the hand of my brother Yves trying to smile as one who had completest confidence.

The stories of real life ought to be able to be finished at will like the stories in books. . . .

THE END