Marie and little Pierre were to make their journey to Plouherzel in Goello, and Yves had wanted, nevertheless, to spend the night on shore in Brest, to celebrate the New Year with some old friends. I could have stopped him by asking him to stay and keep me company; but the coldness between us persisted; and I had let him go. And this night of the 31st December is of all nights perhaps the most dangerous, a night when Brest gives itself up wholly to a riot of alcohol.
As I climbed on deck, I saluted rather sadly this first morning of the New Year, and I began the mechanical promenade, the hundred paces of the watch, thinking of many past things.
And especially I thought of Yves, who was my present preoccupation. During the last fortnight, on this Sèvre, it seemed to me that the affection of this simple brother who had long been the only real friend I had in the world, was slowly, hour by hour, drifting from me. And then, also, I was angry with him for not behaving himself better, and it seemed to me, that, for my part, too, I loved him less. . . .
A black bird passed above my head, uttering a mournful croaking.
"Good luck to you!" said a sailor who was making his morning ablution in cold water. "Here's some one come to wish us a happy New Year! . . . You ugly croaker! Anyhow, you are a sign that better things are to follow."
Yves returned at seven o'clock, walking very straight, and answered the roll-call. Afterwards he came to me, as usual, to wish me good morning.
I quickly saw, from his eyes slightly dulled and his voice slightly altered, that he had not been as abstemious as he should. And I said to him in the tone of a curt order:
"Yves, you will not return to shore to-day."
And then I affected to speak to others, conscious that I had been unduly severe and none too pleased with myself.
Midday. The dockyard, the ships are emptying, becoming deserted as on days of holiday. Everywhere the sailors may be seen on their way out for the day, all very smart in their clean Sunday clothes, brushing off with eager hand the least trace of dust, adjusting for one another their large blue collars. Walking briskly they soon reach the gates and press forward into Brest.
When it comes to the turn of those on the Sèvre Yves appears with the others, well brushed, well washed, and very bare about the neck, in his best clothes.
"Yves, where are you going?"
He gave me an angry glance such as I had not had from him before. It seemed to defy me and I read in it still the fever and bewilderment of alcohol.
"I am going to join my friends," he said. "Sailors from my country, whom I have arranged to meet, and who are expecting me."
Then I attempted to reason with him, taking him aside, obliged to say what I had to say very quickly, for time pressed, obliged to speak low and to maintain an appearance of complete calm, for it was necessary that the others who were standing quite near us should not know what was passing. And I began to feel that I had taken a wrong road, that I was no longer myself, that my patience was exhausted. I spoke in the tone which irritates and does not persuade.
"I am going, I am going, I tell you," he said at the end, trembling, his teeth clenched. "Unless you put me in irons to-day, you will not stop me."
He turned away, defying me to my face for the first time in his life, and moved to rejoin the others.
"In irons? Very well then, Yves; in irons you shall be."
And I called a sergeant-at-arms, and gave him out loud the order to lead him away.
Oh! the glance he gave me as he turned away, obliged to follow the sergeant-at-arms who prepared to take him below, before all his fellows, to descend into the hold in his brave Sunday clothes! He was sobered, assuredly; for his gaze was penetrating and his eyes were clear. It was I who hung my head under this expression of reproach, of sorrowful and supreme amazement, of sudden disillusion and disdain.
And then I went back to my room.
Was it all over between us? I thought it was. This time I had lost him indeed.
I knew that Yves, with his obstinate Breton character, would not return; his heart, once closed, would never open again.
I had abused my authority over him, and he was of those, who, before force, rebel and will not yield.
I had begged the officer on duty to let me continue in charge for this day, not having the courage to leave the ship—and I continued my endless walk up and down the deck.
The dockyard was deserted within its high walls. There was no one on deck. The sound of distant singing came from the low-lying streets of Brest. And, from the crew's quarters below, the voices of the sailors of the watch calling at regular intervals the Loto numbers with the little jokes usual among sailors, which are very old and always gain a laugh.
"—22, the two quartermasters out for a walk!"
"—33, the legs of the ship's cook!"
And my poor Yves was below them, at the bottom of the hold, in the dark, stretched on the floor in the cold, with his foot in an iron ring.
What should I do? . . . Order him to be set free and sent to me? I foresaw perfectly well how this interview might turn out: He standing before me, impassive, sullen, his bonnet, respectfully doffed, braving me by his silence, his eyes downcast.
And, if he refused to come—and he was quite capable of this in his present mood—what then? . . . How could I save him from the consequences of such a refusal of obedience? How could I then extricate him from the mess I should have made between our own private affairs and the blind rules of discipline?
Now, night was falling and Yves had been nearly five hours in irons. I thought of little Pierre and of Marie, of the good folk of Toulven, who had put their hope in me, and then of an oath I had sworn to an old mother in Plouherzel.
And above all, I realized that I still loved my poor Yves as a brother. . . . I went back to my room and began hurriedly to write to him; for this must be the only means of communication between us; with our characters, explanations would never be successful. I wrote quickly, in large letters, so that he could still read them: darkness was coming on quickly, and, in the dockyard, a light is a thing forbidden.
Then I said to the sergeant-at-arms:
"Bring Kermadec to speak to the Officer of the Watch, here in my room."
I had written:
"DEAR BROTHER,—I forgive you and I ask that you too will forgive me. You know well that we are now brothers, and that, in spite of everything, we must stick together through thick and thin. Are you willing that all that we have done and said on the Sèvre should be forgotten, and are you willing to make one more firm resolution to be sober? I ask this of you in the name of your mother. If you will write 'Yes' at the bottom of this paper, all will be over and we will not speak of it again.
"PIERRE."
When Yves came in, without looking at him, and without waiting for a reply, I said to him simply:
"Read this which I have just written for you." And I went out, leaving him alone.
He came out quickly, as if he had been afraid of my return, and, as soon as I heard that he was some distance away, I re-entered my room to see what he had answered.
At the bottom of my letter—in letters still larger than mine, for it was growing darker—he had written: "Yes, brother," and signed: "YVES."
"Jean-Marie, go as quickly as you can and tell Yves that I am waiting for him on shore, on the quay."
This was ten minutes later. It was clearly necessary that we should meet—after having written one another thus—in order to make the reconciliation complete.
When Yves arrived, his face had changed and he was smiling as I had not seen him smile for many a long day. I took his hand, his poor topman's hand, in mine; it was necessary to squeeze it very hard to make it feel the pressure, for work had greatly hardened it.
"But why did you do that? It wasn't kind, you know."
And this was all he found to say to me by way of reproach.
The guard at night on the Sèvre was not very strict.
"Look here, Yves, we are going to spend this first night of the New Year on shore, in Brest, and you are going to have dinner with me, as my guest. That is a thing we have never done and it will be fun. Quickly, go and brush your clothes (for he had got very dirty in irons in the hold), and let us go."
"Oh! but we must be quick, though. Let me rather brush myself when we get on shore. The gun will sound directly, and we shall not have time to get out."
We were in a remote part of the docks, very far from the gates, and we started off at once almost running.
But, as luck would have it, when we were but half-way, the gun sounded and we were too late.
There was nothing for it but to return to the Sèvre, where it was cold and dark.
In the wardroom there was a pitiful lantern in a wire cage, which had been lit by the fireman patrol, but no fire. And it was there we passed the first night of the new year, dinnerless through our own fault, but content nevertheless that we had found each other again and had made friends.
Nevertheless something still worried Yves.
"I did not think of it before: but perhaps it would have been better if you had left me in irons until the morning, on account of the others, you know, who won't be able to make out what has happened. . . ."
But about his future conduct, he had no misgiving at all; to-night he felt very sure of himself.
"In the first place," he said, "I have found a sure method; I will never go ashore again except with you, and you will take me where you will. In that way, you see. . . ."
Sunday, 31st March, 1881.
Toulven, in spring; the lanes full of primroses. A first warm breeze stirs the air, a surprise and a delight; it stirs the branches of the oaks and beeches, and the great leafless woods; it brings us, in this grey Brittany, the scent of distant places, memories of sunlit lands. A pale summer is at hand, with long, mild evenings.
We are all outside at the cottage door, the two old Keremenens, Yves, his wife, and Anne, little Corentine, and little Pierre. Religious chants, which we had first heard in the distance, are slowly drawing near. It is the procession coming with rhythmic step, the first procession of spring. It is now in the green lane. It is going to pass in front of us.
"Lift me, godfather, lift me!" says little Pierre, holding out his hands for me to take him in my arms, so that he may see better.
But Yves forestalls me and raising him very high, places him standing on his shoulders; and little Pierre smiles to find himself so tall and thrusts his hands into the mossy branches of the old trees.
The banner of the Virgin passes, borne by two young men, thoughtful and grave of mien. All the men of Trémeulé and of Toulven follow it, bareheaded, young and old, hat in hand, with long hair, brown or whitened by age, which falls on Breton jackets ornamented with old embroideries.
And the women come after: black corselets embroidered with eyes, a little restrained hubbub of voices pronouncing Celtic words, a movement of large white things of muslin on the heads. The old nurse follows last, bent and hobbling, always with her witch-like movements; she gives us a sign of recognition and threatens little Pierre, in fun, with the end of her stick.
It passes on and the noise with it.
Now, from behind and from a distance, we see the long procession as it ascends between the narrow walls of moss, a long lane of white wide-winged head-dresses and white collarettes.
It moves on, in zigzags, ascending always towards Saint Eloi of Toulven. It is a strange sight, this long procession.
"Oh! what a lot of coifs!" says Anne, who is the first to finish her rosary, and who begins to laugh, struck with the effect of all these white heads enlarged by the muslin wings.
And now it has disappeared—lost in the distances of the vault of beech trees—and one sees only the tender green of the lane and the tufts of primroses scattered everywhere: eager growths which have not waited for the sun, and which cluster on the moss in large compact masses, of a pale sulphur yellow, a milky amber colour. The Bretons called them "milk flowers."
I take little Pierre's hand and lead him with me into the woods, in order to leave Yves alone with his relations. They have very serious matters, it seems, to discuss together: those interminable questions of profits and distribution which, in the country, take so large a place in life.
This time it has to do with a dream Yves and his wife have dreamt together: to realize all their possessions and build a little house, covered with slate, in Toulven. I am to have my room there in this little house, and in it are to be put the old-fashioned Breton things I love, and flowers and ferns. They do not want to live any more in the large towns, not in Brest particularly—it is not good for Yves.
"It is true," he says, "that I shall not often be at home; but when I am, we shall all be very happy there. And then, you know, later on when I take my pension . . . it is for then really; I shall settle down very nicely in my house and my little garden."
His pension! That is ever the sailor's dream. It begins in early youth, as if the present life were only a time of trial. To take his pension, at about forty; after having traversed the world from pole to pole, to possess a little plot of earth of his own, to live there very soberly and to leave it no more; to become someone of standing in his village, in his parish church—a churchwarden after having been a sea-rover; the devil turned monk and a very peaceful one. . . . How many of them are mown down before they reach it, this more peaceful hour of ripe age? And yet, if you ask them, they are all thinking of it.
This sure method which Yves had discovered for keeping sober had succeeded very well; on board he was the exemplary sailor he had always been, and, on shore, we were never apart.
Since that miserable day which began the year 1881, the relations between us had completely changed, and I treated him now in every respect as a brother.
On board this Sèvre, a very small boat, we officers lived in a very cordial intimacy. Yves was now of our band. At the theatre, in our box; sharing our enterprises which for the most part were insignificant enough. Rather shy at first, refusing, slipping away, he had ended by accepting the position, because he felt that he was loved by us all. And I hoped by this new and perhaps unusual means to attach him to me as much as possible, and to raise him out of his past life and win him from his former friends.
That thing which it is usual to call education, that kind of polish which is applied thickly enough, it is true, on so many others, was entirely wanting in my brother Yves; but he had naturally a kind of tact, a delicacy much rarer, which cannot be assumed. When he was in our company, he kept himself always so well in his place, that in the end he himself began to feel at ease. He spoke very little, and never to say those banal things which everybody says. And when he put off his sailor's clothes and dressed himself in a well-fitting grey suit with grey suede gloves to match, then, though preserving still his careless sea-rover's carriage, his high-held head and his bronzed skin, he had all at once quite a distinguished air.
It used to amuse us to take him with us and present him to smart people upon whom his silence and bearing imposed and who found him rather haughty. And it was comical, next day, to see him once more a sailor, as good a topman as before.
Little Pierre and I, then, were in the woods of Toulven, looking for flowers during the family council.
We found a great many, pale yellow primroses, violet periwinkles, blue borage, and even red silenes, the first of the spring.
Little Pierre gathered as many as he could, in a state of great excitement, not knowing which way to run, panting hard, as if in the throes of a very important work; he brought them to me very eagerly in little handfuls, very badly picked, half-crushed in his little fingers, and too short in the stalk.
From the height we had reached we could see woods as far as eye could command; the blackthorns were already in flower; all the branches, all the reddish sprigs, full of buds, were waiting for the spring. And, in the distance, in the midst of this country of trees, Toulven church raised its grey spire.
We had been out so long that Corentine had been placed on the look out in the green lane to announce our return. We saw her from a distance, jumping, dancing, playing all sorts of tricks alone, her big head-dress and her collarette fluttering in the wind. And she shouted loud:
"They are coming, big Peter and little Peter, hand in hand."
And she turned it into a rhyme and sang it to a lively Breton air as she danced in time:
"See here they come together
And they hold each other's hand,
Peter big and Peter little
Are coming hand in hand."
Her big head-dress and her collarette aflutter in the breeze, she danced like some little doll which had become possessed. And night was falling, a night of March, always mournful, under the leafless roof of the old trees. A sudden chill passed like a shudder of death over the woods, after the sunny warmth of the day:
"And they hold each other's hand,
Peter big and Peter little!
And little black man Peter!"
"Little black man" was the nickname Yves had borne, and she gave it now to her little cousin Pierre, on account of the bronzed colouring of the Kermadecs. Thereupon I called her "Little Miss Golden Locks," and the name stuck to her; it suited her well, on account of the curls which were for ever escaping from her head-dress, curls like skeins of golden silk.
Everybody in the cottage seemed very pleased, and Yves took me aside and told me that matters had been arranged very satisfactorily. Old Corentin was giving them two thousand francs and an aunt was lending them another thousand. With that they would be able to buy a piece of land for a term of years and begin to build immediately.
We had to leave immediately after dinner in order to catch the diligence at Toulven and the train at Bannalec. For Yves and I were returning to Lorient, where our ship was waiting for us in the harbour.
At about eleven o'clock, when we had got back to the chance lodging we had booked in the town, Yves, before going to bed, began to arrange in vases the flowers we had gathered in the woods of Toulven.
It was the first time in his life that he had ever done anything of the kind; he was surprised at himself that he should find pleasure in these poor little flowers to which he had never before given a thought.
"Well, well!" he said. "When I have my own little house at Toulven, I shall have flowers in it, for it seems to me that they look very well. But it is you, you know, who have given me the idea of these things. . . ."
At sea, on the following day, the first of April. Bound for Saint Nazaire. A full spread of canvas; a strong breeze from the north-west: the weather bad; the lighthouses no longer visible. We came into dock in the small hours, with a damaged bow and a broken foretopmast.
The 2nd is pay day. Drunken men stumble in the hold in the dark and there are broken heads.
A little liberty of two days, quite unexpected. On the road with Yves for Trémeulé in Toulven. This Sèvre is a good boat which never takes us away for long.
At ten o'clock at night, in the moonlight, we knock at the door of the old Keremenens and of Marie, who were not expecting us.
They wake up little Pierre in our honour, and sit him on our knees. Surprised in his first sleep he smiles and says how do you do to us very low, but afterwards does not make much ado about our visit. His eyes close in spite of himself and he cannot hold up his head. And Yves, disturbed at this, seeing him hanging his head, and looking at us in sidelong fashion, his hair in his eyes:
"You know, it seems to me that he has . . . that he has . . . a sly look."
And he looks at me anxious to know what I think of it, conceiving already a grave misgiving about the future.
Nobody in the world but my dear old Yves would have felt concern on such ludicrous grounds. I shake little Pierre, who thereupon becomes wide awake and bursts out laughing, his fine big eyes well opened between their long lashes. Yves is reassured and finds that in fact he does not look at all sly.
When his mother strips him, he looks like a classic baby, like the Greek statues of Cupid.
Toulven, 30th April.
The cottage of the old Keremenens, as darkness is falling on an evening of April. Our little party has just returned from a walk: Yves, Marie, Anne, little Corentine "golden locks," and "little black man" Pierre.
Four candles are burning in the cottage (three would be unlucky).
On an old table of massive oak, polished by the years, there are paper, pens and sand. Benches have been placed round. Very solemn things are about to happen.
We put down our harvest of herbs and flowers, which shed a perfume of April in the old cottage, and take our places.
Presently two dear old women enter with an important air: they say good evening with a curtsey, which makes their large starched collarettes stand upright, and sit down in a corner. Then Pierre Kerbras, who is engaged to Anne. At last everybody is placed and we are all complete.
It is the great evening for the settlement of the family arrangements, when the old Keremenens are going to fulfil the promise they have made to their children. The two of them rise and open an old chest on which the carvings represent Sacred Hearts alternating with cocks; they remove papers, clothing, and from the bottom, take a little sack which seems heavy. Then they go to their bed, lift up the mattress and search beneath: a second sack!
They empty the sacks on the table, in front of their son Yves, and then appear all those shining pieces of gold and silver, stamped with ancient effigies, which, for the last half century, have been amassed one by one and put in hiding. They are counted out in little piles; the two thousand francs promised are there.
Now comes the turn of the old aunt who rises and empties a third little sack; another thousand francs in gold.
The old neighbour comes last; she brings five hundred in a stocking foot. And all this is lent to Yves, all this is heaped before him. He signs two little receipts on white paper and hands them to the two old lenders who make their curtsey preparatory to leaving, but who are detained, as custom ordains, and made to drink a glass of cider with us.
It is over. All this has been done without a notary, without a deed, without discussion, with a confidence and a simple honesty that are things of Toulven.
"Rat-tat-tat!" at the door. It is the contractor for the building, and he arrives in the nick of time.
But with this gentleman it is desirable to use stamped paper. He is an old rogue from Quimper, with only a smattering of French, but he seems cunning enough for all that, with his town manners.
It is given to me to explain to him a plan which we had thought out during our evenings on board, and in which a room is provided for me. I discuss the construction in the smallest details and the price of all the materials, with an air of knowledge which imposes on the old man, but which makes Yves and me laugh, when by ill-luck our eyes chance to meet.
On a sheet bearing a twelve sou stamp I write two pages of clauses and details:
"A house built of granite, cemented with sand from the seashore, limewashed, joinered in chestnut wood, with skylit attic, shutters painted green, etc., etc., the whole to be finished before the 1st May of next year and at the price fixed in advance of two thousand nine hundred and fifty francs."
This work and this concentration of mind have made me quite tired; I am surprised at myself, and I can see that they all are amazed at my foresight and my economy. It is unbelievable what these good people have made me do.
At last it is signed and sealed. We drink cider and shake hands all round. And Yves now is a landowner in Toulven. They look so happy, Yves and his wife, that I regret no part of the trouble I have taken for them.
The two old ladies make their final curtsey, and all the others, even little Pierre, who has been allowed to stay up, come with me, in the fine moonlit night, as far as the inn.
Toulven, 1st May, 1881.
We are very busy, Yves and I, assisted by old Corentin Keremenen, measuring with string the land to be acquired.
First of all we had to select it, and that took us all yesterday morning. For Yves it was a very serious matter this fixing of the site of his little house, in which he pictured, in the background of a melancholy and strange distance, his retirement, his old age and death.
After many goings and comings we had decided on this spot. It is in the outskirts of Toulven, on the road which leads to Rosporden, on high ground, facing a little village square which is brightened this morning by a population of noisy fowls and red-cheeked children. On one side is Toulven and its church, on the other the great woods.
At the moment it is just an oatfield very green. We have measured it carefully in all directions; reckoned by the square yard it will cost fourteen hundred and ninety francs, without counting the lawyer's fees.
How steady Yves will have to be, and how he will have to save to pay all that! He becomes very serious when he thinks of it.
ON BOARD THE Sèvre, May, 1881.
Yves, who will soon be thirty years old, begs me to bring him from the town a bound manuscript book in order that he may commence to record his impressions, after my manner. He regrets even that he can no longer recall very clearly dates and past events so that he might make his record retrospective.
His intelligence is opening to a crowd of new conceptions; he models himself on me and perhaps makes himself more "complex" than he need. But our intimacy brings in its train another and quite unexpected result, namely that I am becoming much simpler in contact with him; I also am changing, and almost as much as he.
BREST, June, 1881.
At six o'clock, on the evening of the feast of St. John, I was returning with Yves from the "pardon" of Plougastel on the outside of a country omnibus.
In May the Sèvre had been as far as Algiers, and we appreciated, by contrast, the special charm of the Breton country.
The horses were going at full gallop, beribboned, with streamers and green branches on their heads.
The folk inside were singing, and, on top, next to us, three drunken sailors were dancing, their bonnets on one side, flowers in their button-holes, with streamers and trumpets, and, in mockery of those unfortunate enough to be short-sighted, blue spectacles—three young men, smart of bearing and intelligent in face, who were taking a last French leave before their departure for China.
Any ordinary man would have broken his neck. But they, drunk as they were, kept their feet, nimble as goats, while the omnibus careered at full speed, swinging from right to left in the ruts, driven by a driver who was as drunk as they.
At Plougastel we had found the uproar of a village fête, wooden horses, a female dwarf, a female giant, a fat lady, and a boneless man, and games and drinking stalls. And, in an isolated square, the Breton bagpipes played a rapid and monotonous air of olden times, and people in old-fashioned costume danced to this age-old music; men and women, holding hands, ran, ran like the wind, like a lot of mad folk, in a long frenzied file. It was a relic of old Brittany, retaining still its note of primitiveness, even at the gates of Brest, amid the uproar of a fair.
At first we tried, Yves and I, to calm the three sailors and make them sit down.
And then it struck us as rather comical that we, of all people, should assume the rôle of preacher.
"After all," I said to Yves, "it's not the first sermon of the kind we've preached."
"To be sure, no," he replied with conviction.
And we contented ourselves with holding on to the iron rails to prevent ourselves from falling.
The roads and the villages are full of people returning from the "pardon," and all these people are amazed at seeing pass this carriage-load of madmen with the three sailors dancing on the top.
The splendour of June throws over this Brittany its charm and its life; the breeze is mild and warm beneath the grey sky; the tall grass, full of red flowers; the trees, of an emerald green, filled with cockchafers.
And the three sailors continue to dance and sing, and at each couplet, the others, inside, take up the refrain:
"Oh! He set out with the wind behind him,
He'll find it harder coming back."
The windows of our carriage rattle with it. This air, which never changes and is repeated over and over again for some six miles of our journey, is a very ancient air of France, so old and so young, of so frank a gaiety and so good a quality, that in a very few minutes we too are singing it with the rest.
How beautiful Brittany looks, beautiful and rejuvenated and green, in the June sunshine!
We poor followers of the sea, when we find spring in our path, rejoice in it more than other people, on account of the sequestered life we lead in the wooden monasteries. It was eight years since Yves had seen a Breton spring, and we both had long grown weary of the winter, and of that eternal summer which in other parts reigns resplendent over the great blue sea; and these green fields, these soft perfumes, all this charm of June which words cannot describe held us entranced.
Life still holds hours that are worth the living, hours of youth and forgetfulness. Away with all melancholy dreams, all the morbid fancies of long-faced poets! It is good to sail, in the face of the wind, in the company of the most lighthearted among the children of the earth. Health and youth comprise all there is of truth in the world, with simple and boisterous merriment and the songs of sailors!
And we continued to travel very quickly and very erratically, zigzagging over the road among these crowds of people, between very tall hawthorns forming green hedges, and under the tufted vault of the trees.
And presently Brest appeared, with its great solemn air, its great granite ramparts, its great grey walls, on which also grass and pink foxgloves were growing. It was as it were intoxicated, this mournful town, at having by chance a real summer's day, an evening clear and warm; it was full of noise and movement and people, of white head-dresses and sailors singing.
5th July, 1881.
At Sea.—We are returning from the Channel. The Sèvre is proceeding very slowly in a thick fog, blowing every now and then its whistle which sounds like a cry of distress in this damp shroud which envelops us. The grey solitudes of the sea are all about us and we feel them without seeing them. It seems as if we were dragging with us long veils of darkness; we long to break through them; we are oppressed as it were to feel that we have been so long enclosed within them, and the impression grows that this curtain is immense, infinite, that it stretches for league on league without end, in the same dull greyness, in the same watery atmosphere. And then there is the endless roll of the waters, slow, smooth, regular, patient, exasperating. It is as if great polished and shining backs heaved and pushed us with their shoulders, raising us up and letting us fall.
Suddenly in the evening the fog lifts and there appears before us a dark thing, surprising, unexpected, like a tall phantom emerging from the sea:
"Ar Men Du (the Black Rocks)!" says our old Breton pilot.
And, at the same time, the veil is rent all round us. Ushant appears: all its dark rocks, all its reefs are outlined in dark grey, beaten by high-flung showers of white foam, under a sky which seems as heavy as a globe of lead.
Immediately we straighten our course, and taking advantage of the clearing, the Sèvre stands in for Brest, whistling no longer, but hastening and with every hope of reaching port. But the curtain slowly closes again and falls. We can see no longer, darkness comes, and we have to stand out for the open sea.
And for three long days we continue thus, unable to see anything. Our eyes are weary with watching.
This is my last voyage on the Sèvre, which I am due to leave as soon as we reach Brest. Yves, with his Breton superstition, sees something unnatural in this fog, which persists in midsummer as if to delay my departure.
It seems to him a warning and a bad omen.
BREST, 9th July, 1881.
We reach port at last, however, and this is my last day of duty on board. I disembark to-morrow.
We are in the heart of the Brest docks, where the Sèvre comes from time to time to rest between two high walls. High gloomy-looking buildings overlook us; around us courses of native rock support the ramparts, a roundway, a whole heavy pile of granite, oozing sadness and humidity. I know all these things by heart.
And as we are now in July there are foxgloves, and tufts of silenes clinging here and there to the grey stones. These red plants growing on the walls strike a note of summer in this sunless Brest.
I have a kind of pleasure, nevertheless, in going away. This Brittany always causes me, in spite of everything, a melancholy sense of oppression; I feel it now, and when I think of the novelty and the unknown which await me, it seems to me that I am about to awaken with the passing of a kind of night. . . . Whither shall I be sent? Who knows? In what particular corner of the earth shall I have to acclimatize myself to-morrow? No doubt in some country of the sun where I shall become another person altogether, with different senses, and where I shall forget, alas! the beloved things I am now about to leave behind me.
But my poor Yves and my little Pierre, I shall not part from either of them without a pang.
Poor Yves, who has so often himself had to be treated like a spoilt and capricious child, it is he now, at the hour of my departure, who surrounds me with a thousand kind attentions, almost childlike, at a loss to know what he can do to show sufficiently his affection. And this attitude in him has the greater charm, because it is not in his ordinary nature.
The time we have just passed together, in a daily fraternal intimacy, has not been without its storms. He still deserved in some degree, unfortunately, the epithets "undisciplined, uncontrollable," inscribed long ago in his sailor's pay-book; but he had improved very much, and, if I had been able to keep him near me, I should have saved him.
After dinner we came up on deck for our usual evening promenade.
I say for a last time:
"Yves, make me a cigarette."
And we begin our regular little walk up and down the wooden deck of the Sèvre. We know by heart all the little hollows where the water collects, all the angle blocks in which one's feet may be caught, all the rings over which one may stumble.
The sky is overcast for our last walk together, the moon hidden, and the air damp. In the distance, from the direction of Recouvrance, come as usual the eternal songs of the sailors.
We speak of many things. I give Yves much advice, and he, very submissive, makes many promises; and it is very late when he leaves me to seek his hammock.
At noon on the following day, my trunks scarcely packed and many visits unpaid, I am at the station with Yves and my friends of the wardroom who have come to see me off. I shake hands with them all, I think even that I embrace them, and then I depart.
A little before dark I reach Toulven, where I propose to stop for a couple of hours to make my adieux.
How green it is and decked with flowers, this Toulven, this fresh and shady region, the most delightful in Brittany!
There I find them waiting for me to cut little Pierre's hair. The idea that anyone would entrust me with such a task had never occurred to me. They told me "that I was the only one who could keep him quiet." The previous week, they had brought in the barber from Toulven, and little Pierre had made such a fuss that the first thing the scissors did was to cut his little ears; and it had been necessary to abandon the project. I made the attempt, however, in order to please them, hard put to it not to laugh.
Then when I had done, the notion came to me to keep one of the little brown curls which I had cut off, and I took it away with me, surprised that I should set so much store by it.
A Letter from Yves
"On board the Sèvre, Lisbon,
"1st August, 1881.
"DEAR BROTHER,—I am sending you this short letter in reply on the same day that I have received yours. I write in haste and am taking advantage of the luncheon hour. I am on the stand of the main mast.
"We put into Lisbon yesterday evening. Dear brother, we have had very bad weather this time; we have lost our head sails, the mizzen and the whaler. I may tell you also, that, in the heavy rolling of the ship, my kit-bag and my locker have disappeared, and all my possessions with them; I have suffered a loss of nearly a hundred francs in this way.
"You asked me what I did on the Sunday, a fortnight ago. My good brother, I remained quietly on board and finished reading 'Capitaine Fracasse.' And, since your departure, I have only been ashore once, on Sunday last; and I was very sober, for in the first place, I had sent home the whole of my month's money; I had drawn sixty-nine francs and sent sixty-five of them to my wife.
"I have had news from Toulven and it is all good. Little Pierre is very sharp and he can now run about very well. Only he is very naughty when he gets his little sea-gull mood on him, like me, you know; from what his mother says, he upsets everything he can get hold of. The walls of our house are already more than six feet above ground; I shall be very happy when it is quite finished, and especially when I see you installed in your little room.
"Dear brother, you bid me think of you often; I assure you that never an hour passes in which I do not think of you, and often many times in the hour. Besides, now, you understand, I have no longer anyone to talk to in the evening—and sometimes I have no cigarettes.
"I cannot tell you when we are leaving here, but please write to me at Oran. I hear we shall be paid at Oran, so that we may be able to go ashore and buy tobacco.
"I end, my dear brother, in embracing you with all my heart.
"Your affectionate brother who loves you. Ever yours,
"YVES KERMADEC.
"P.S.—If I have enough money at Oran, I will lay in a large supply of tobacco, and, especially for you, of that sort which is like the Turkish tobacco, which you are fond of smoking.
"The Captain has given me for you a table-napkin, the last you used on board. I have washed it, and, in doing so, I have torn it a little.
"As regards the manuscript book you gave me for writing my notes, that too was spoilt by the storm and I have laid it aside.
"Dear brother, I embrace you again with all my heart,
"YVES KERMADEC.
"P.S.—On board, things are just the same and the Captain has not changed his habit of insisting on the tidiness of the deck. There was a great dispute between him and the lieutenant, once more about the cacatois, you know. But they were good friends again, afterwards.
"I have also to tell you that in seven or eight months, I think we shall have another little child. A thing, however, which does not altogether please me, for I think it is a little too soon.
"Your brother,
"YVES."
I was in the Near East when these little letters of Yves reached me; they brought me, in their simplicity, the already far-off perfume of the Breton country.
My memories of Brittany were fading fast. Even now I seemed to see them as through a mist of dreamland; the reefs I had known so well, the lights on the coast, Cape Finistère with its great dark rocks; and the dangerous approaches to Ushant on winter evenings, and the west wind blowing under a mournful sky, in the fall of December nights. From where I was now, it all seemed a vision of a sunless country.
And the poor little cottage at Toulven! How small it seemed, lost at the side of a Breton lane! But it was the region of deep beech woods, of grey rocks, of lichens and mosses; of old granite chapels and high-growing grass speckled with red flowers. Here, sand and white minarets under a vault surpassingly blue, and sunshine, eternal, enchanting sunshine!
Another Letter from Yves
"BREST, 10th September, 1881.
"MY DEAR BROTHER,—I have to tell you that our Sèvre is being disarmed; we handed her over yesterday to the authorities at the docks; and, I can assure you, I am not very grieved about it.
"I reckon on remaining for some time on shore, in the neighbourhood; also (since our little house is not very far advanced, as you will understand) my wife has come to live with me in Brest until it is finished. I think you will agree, dear brother, that we have done the right thing. This time we have taken rooms almost in the country, at Recouvrance, on the way to Pontaniou.
"Dear brother, I have to tell you that little Pierre was taken ill with colic as a result of eating too many berries in the woods, on that last Sunday when we were at Toulven; but he got over it. He is becoming a dear little chap, and I spend hours playing with him. In the evening all three of us go for a walk together; we never go out now unless we go together, and when one returns the other two return also!
"Dear brother, if only you were back in Brest, I should have everything I want; and you would see me now as I am, and you would be very pleased with me; for never have I been so peaceful.
"I should like to go away with you again, my dear brother, and to find myself on a ship bound for the Levant where I might find you. This is not to say that I do not want to continue the life I am now living, for I assure you I do. But that is not possible, because I am too happy.
"I end in embracing you with all my heart. Little Pierre sends his love; my wife and all my relations at Toulven ask to be remembered to you. They look forward to seeing you and I can promise you so do I.
"Your brother,
"YVES KERMADEC."
TOULVEN, October, 1881.
Pale Brittany once more in autumn sunshine! Once more the old Breton lanes, the beech trees and the heather! I thought I had said good-bye to this country for many a long day, and coming back to it I am filled with a strange melancholy. My return has been sudden, unexpected, as the returns and the departures of sailors so often are.
A fine October day, a warm sun, a thin white mist spread like a veil over the countryside. All about is that immense peace which is peculiar to the fine days of autumn; in the air a savour of dampness and of fallen leaves, a pervading sense of the dying year. I am in the well-known woods of Trémeulé, on the height overlooking all the region of Toulven. Below me, the lake, motionless under this floating mist, and, in the distance, wooded horizons, as they must have been in the ancient days of Gaul.
And those who are with me, sitting among the thousand little flowerets of the heather, are my Breton friends, my brother Yves and little Pierre, his son.
It has become in some sort my own country, this Toulven. A few short years ago it was unknown to me, and Yves, for all that even then I called him brother, scarcely counted for me. The aspects of life change, things happen, are transformed, and pass.
The heather is so thick that, in the distance, it looks as if the ground were covered with a reddish carpet. The tardy scabious are still in flower, on the top of their long stalks; and the first of the heavy rains have already littered the earth with dead leaves.
It was true, what Yves had written to me; he had become very steady. He had just been taken on board one of the ships in the Brest roadstead, which seemed to assure for him a stay of two years in his native country. Marie, his wife, was installed near him in the suburb of Recouvrance, waiting for the little house at Toulven, which was growing slowly, with very thick and solid walls, in the manner of olden times. She had welcomed my unexpected return as a blessing from heaven; for my presence in Brest, near them, reassured her greatly.
That Yves should have become so steady, and so suddenly, when so far as one could see there was no decisive circumstance to account for the change in him, was a thing scarcely to be believed! And Marie, in confirming her happiness to me, did so very timidly; she spoke of it as one speaks of unstable, fugitive things, with a fear lest their mere expression in words should break the spell and frighten them away.
And then one day the demon of alcohol crossed their path again. Yves came in with the sullen troubled look Marie had such cause to dread.
It was a Sunday in October. He arrived from his ship, where he had been ordered to irons, so he said; and he had escaped because it was unjust. He seemed very exasperated; his blue jersey was torn and his shirt open.
She spoke soothingly to him, trying to calm him. It so happened that the day was beautifully fine; it was one of those rare days of late autumn which have an exquisite and peaceful melancholy, which are as it were a last resting place of summer before the winter comes. She had on her best dress and her embroidered collarette, and had dressed little Pierre in all his finery, thinking they would all three go for a walk together in the soft sunshine. In the street, couples passed, in their Sunday clothes, making their way along the roads or into the woods as in the spring-time.
But no, it was not to be; Yves had pronounced the terrifying phrase she knew so well: "I am going to find my friends!" It was all over!
Then, almost distracted with grief, she had ventured on an extreme measure: while he was looking out of the window, she had shut and locked the door and hidden the key in her bodice. And he, who knew very well what she had done, turned round and said, hanging his head, his eyes glowering:
"Open the door! Open it! Do you hear me? I tell you to open the door."
He went and shook the door on its hinges; something restrained him yet from breaking it—which he could have done without any trouble. And then, no; he would make his wife, who had locked it, come and open it herself.
And he walked up and down the room, with the air of a wild beast, repeating:
"Open the door! Do you hear me? I tell you to open it."
The joyous sounds of the Sunday came up from the street. Women in wide head-dresses passed on the arm of their husbands or their lovers. The autumn sun illumined them with its tranquil light.
He stamped his foot and repeated again in a low voice:
"Open! I tell you to open!"
It was the first time she had attempted to retain him by force, and she saw that she was succeeding badly and she was strangely afraid. Without looking at him, she flung herself on her knees in a corner, and began to pray, out loud and very quickly, like one possessed. It seemed to her that she was approaching a terrible moment, that what was going to happen was more dreadful than anything that had happened before. And little Pierre, standing up, opened very wide his serious eyes, afraid also, but not understanding.
"You won't? You won't open it for me? . . . I will break it, then! You will see!"
There was a thud on the floor, then a heavy, horrible sound. Yves had fallen from his full height. The handle by which he had seized the door remained in his hand, broken, and he had been thrown backwards on his son, whose little head had struck against the corner of an iron fire-dog in the fireplace.
And then there was a sudden change. Marie ceased her praying. She got up, her eyes dilated and wild, and snatched her little Pierre from the hands of Yves, who was attempting to raise him. He had fallen without a cry, overcome at being hurt by his father. Blood trickled from his forehead and he uttered no word. Marie pressed him close to her breast, took the key from her bodice, unlocked the door with one hand and threw it wide open. . . . Yves watched her, frightened in his turn; she shrank away from him, crying:
"Go! Go! Go!"
Poor Yves! He hesitated now to pass out! He was trying to understand what had happened. This door which had now been opened for him, he had no longer use for it; he had a vague notion that this threshold was going, in some way, to be a fatal one to cross. And then, this blood he saw on the face of his little son and on his little collar. . . . Yes he wanted to know what had happened, to come near to them. He passed his hand over his forehead, feeling that he was drunk, making a great effort to understand what the matter was . . . God! No, he could not; he understood nothing. Drink, the friends who were waiting for him below, that was all.
She repeated once more, her son clasped close to her heart:
"Go! Go, I tell you!"
Then turning about he went downstairs and out.
"Hello! Is that you, Kermadec."
"Yes, Monsieur Kerjean."
"And on French leave, I bet?"
"Yes, Monsieur Kerjean."
So much indeed might have been guessed from his appearance.
"And so, I understand you are married, Yves? Someone from Paimpol, that big fellow Lisbatz, I think, told me you were a family man."
Yves shrugged his shoulders with a movement of bad-tempered carelessness, and said:
"If you are looking for men. Monsieur Kerjean . . . it will suit me very well to join your ship."
It was not the first time that this Captain Kerjean had enrolled a deserter. He understood. He knew how to take them and afterwards how to manage them. His ship, la Belle-Rose, which sailed under the American flag, was leaving on the following day for California. Yves was acceptable to him; he was indeed an excellent acquisition to a crew such as his.
The two moved aside and discussed, in a low voice, their treaty of alliance.
This took place in the Mercantile docks, on the morning of the second day after he had left his home.
The day before he had been to Recouvrance, skirting the walls, in an attempt to get news of his little Pierre. From a distance, he had seen him looking out of the window at the people passing below, with a little bandage round his head. And then he had returned on his tracks, sufficiently reassured, in the half-muddled condition of drunkenness in which he still was; he had returned on his tracks to "go and find his friends."
On this morning he had awakened at daybreak, in a hangar on the quay where his friends had left him. His drunkenness had now passed, completely passed. The fine October weather continued, fresh and pure; things wore their customary aspects, as if nothing had happened, and his first thoughts were thoughts of tenderness for his son and for Marie; and he was on the point of rising and going back to them and asking them to forgive him. Some minutes passed before he realized the extent of his misfortune, realized that all was over, that he was lost. . . .
For how could he go back to them now? It was impossible! For very shame he could not.
Besides, he had escaped from the ship after being ordered to irons and, since, had absented himself for three whole days. These were not matters easily dismissed. And then to take once more those same resolutions, taken twenty times before, to make once more those same promises, to say once more those same words of repentance. . . . It did not bear thinking on. He smiled bitterly in self-pity and disgust.
And then again his wife had bidden him to "go!" He remembered that vividly, and her look of hate, as she showed him the door. No matter that he had deserved it a thousand times, he could never forgive her that, he who was so used to being lord and master. She had driven him away. So be it then, he had gone, he was following his destiny, she would never see him again.
This backsliding was all the more repugnant to him, in that it followed upon this period of decent peace during which he had caught a glimpse of and begun to realize a higher life; and this return to misery seemed to him a thing decisive and fatal. He observed now that he was covered with dust and mud and filth of other sort, and he began to dust himself, raising his head, and gradually assuming an expression of grimness and disdain.
That he should have fallen like a senseless brute on his little son and injured his poor little forehead! He became to himself a miserable, repulsive thing at the thought of it.
He began to break with his hands the sides of a wooden box which lay near him, and under his breath, after an instinctive glance round to see that he was alone, he called himself, with a bitter, mocking smile, vile names such as sailors use.
Now he was on his feet, looking determined and dangerous.
To desert! If he could join some ship and get away at once! There should be one in the docks; in fact that day there were many. Yes, he would desert at any price and disappear for ever!
His decision had been taken with an implacable resolve. He walked towards where the ships lay, his shoulders well back, his head high, the Breton self-will in his half-closed eyes, in his frowning brows.
He said to himself: "I am worthless, I know it, I always knew it, and they had far better let me go my ways. I have done my best, but I am what I am and it is not my fault."
And he was right perhaps: it was not his fault. As he was now he was not responsible; he yielded to mysterious influences which had their origin in the remote past and came to him with his blood; he was a victim of the law of heredity working through a whole family, a whole race.
At two o'clock on this same day on which he had concluded his bargain with Captain Kerjean, Yves, having bought some ordinary seaman's clothes, and changed clandestinely in a tavern on the quay, went on board the Belle-Rose.
He went all over the ship, which was badly kept and had aspects of primitive roughness, but which nevertheless seemed a stout and handy vessel, built for speed and the hazards of the sea.
Compared with the ships of the navy it looked small, short, and, above all, empty; an air of abandonment with scarce a soul on board; even at anchor this kind of solitude struck a chill to the heart. Three or four rough-looking seamen lounged about the deck; they composed the whole crew, and were about to become, for some years perhaps, Yves' only companions.
They began by staring at one another before speaking.
Throughout the day the fine weather continued, warm and peaceful; a sort of melancholy summer persisting into the autumn and bringing with it a kind of tranquillity. And on Yves, too, his decision irrevocably taken, a calm descended.
They showed him his little locker, but he had scarcely anything to put in it. He washed himself in cold water, adjusted his new clothes, with an air of something like vanity; he wore no longer the livery of the state which he had often found so irksome; he felt at ease, freed from all the bonds of the past, almost as much as by death itself. He began to rejoice in his independence.
On the following morning, with the tide, the Belle-Rose was going to put off. Yves scented the ocean, the life of the sea which was about to commence in the new fashion so long desired. For years this idea of deserting had obsessed him in a strange way, and now it was a thing accomplished. The decision he had taken raised him in his own eyes; he grew bigger as he felt himself outside the law; he was no longer ashamed, now that he was a deserter, of presenting himself before his wife; he even told himself that he would have the coinage to go to her that very night, before he went away, if only to take her the money he had received.
At certain moments, when the face of little Pierre passed before his eyes, his heart ached horribly; it seemed to him that this ship, silent and empty, was as it were a bier on which he was about to be carried living to his grave; he almost choked, tears welled into his eyes, but he checked them in time, with his strong will, by thinking of something else; and quickly he began to talk to his new-found friends. They discussed the method of manœuvring the ship with so small a crew, and the working of the large pulleys which had been multiplied everywhere to replace the arms of men, and which, so Yves thought, made the gear of the Belle-Rose unduly heavy.
In the evening, when it was dark, he went to Recouvrance and climbed noiselessly to his door.
He listened first before opening it; there was no sound. He entered softly.
A lamp was burning on the table. His son was alone, asleep. He leaned over his wicker cradle, which had the scent of a bird's nest, and placed his lips very gently on those of his child in order to feel once more his soft breathing. Then he sat down near him and remained still, so that his face might be calm again when his wife should enter.
Marie had seen him coming, and climbed the stairs after him, trembling.
In the last two days she had had time to consider in all its aspects the misfortune which had come upon them.
She had shrunk from questioning the other sailors, as the poor wives of absentees commonly do, to ascertain from them whether Yves had returned to his ship. She knew nothing of him, and she was waiting, prepared for the worst.
Perhaps he would not come back; she was prepared for that as for everything else, and was surprised that she could think of it with so much calmness. In that case her plans were made; she would not return to Toulven, for fear of seeing their partly built house, for fear also of hearing the name of her husband execrated daily in the home of her parents, to which she would have to go. Not to Toulven; but to the country of Goëlo, where there was an old woman who resembled Yves, and whose features suddenly assumed for her an infinite kindliness. It was at her door she would knock. She would be indulgent to him, for she was his mother. They would be able to speak without hatred of the absent one; they would live there, the two deserted women, together, and watch over little Pierre, uniting their efforts to keep him, their last hope, with them, so that he at least should not be a sailor.
And it seemed to her, too, that if one day, after many years perhaps, Yves, the deserter, should return seeking those who belonged to him it was to that little corner of the world, to Plouherzel, that he would come.
The night before, she had had a strange dream of Yves' return; it seemed to her that many years had passed and that she was already old. Yves arrived at the cottage in Plouherzel in the evening; he too was old, altered, wretched. He came asking forgiveness. Behind him Goulven and Gildas entered, and another Yves, taller than them all, with hair quite white, trailing behind him long fringes of seaweed.
The old mother received them with her stern face. In a voice infinitely sad she asked:
"How comes it that they are all here? My husband was lost at sea more than sixty years ago. . . . Goulven is in America. . . . Gildas in his grave in the cemetery. . . . How comes it that they are all here?"
Then Marie awoke in fear, understanding that she had been surrounded by the dead.
But this evening Yves had returned alive and young; she had recognized in the darkness of the street his tall figure and active step. At the thought that she was going to see him again and to determine her lot, all her courage and all her plans had deserted her. She trembled more and more as she ascended the staircase. . . . Perhaps after all he had simply passed the last two days on board and was now returning in the ordinary way. Perhaps they would settle down once more. . . . She paused on the stairs and prayed God that this might be true, a quick, heartfelt prayer.
When she opened the door, he was indeed there, sitting by the cradle and looking at his sleeping son.
Poor little Pierre was sleeping peacefully, the bandage still on his forehead where the fire-iron had cut it.
As soon as she entered, pale, her heart beating so violently as almost to hurt her, she saw at once that Yves had not been drinking: he raised his eyes to her and his gaze was clear; but he lowered them quickly again and remained bent over his son.
"Is he much hurt?" he asked in an undertone, slowly, with a calmness that surprised and frightened her.
"No, I have been to the doctor for the dressing. He says that it will not leave a mark. He did not cry at all."
They remained there, silent, one before the other, he still sitting near the little cradle, she standing, white-faced and trembling. There was no ill-will between them now; perhaps they loved each other still; but now the irreparable was accomplished and it was too late. She looked at the clothes he wore, which she had never seen him in before: a black woollen jersey and a cloth cap. Why these clothes? And this little parcel near him on the floor, out of which the end of a blue collar peeped? It seemed to contain his sailor's effects, put aside for ever, as if the real Yves was dead.
She found courage to ask:
"The other day, did you return to the ship?"
There was silence again. She was conscious of a growing anxiety.
"During the last three days, you have not returned?"
"No!"
Then she did not dare to speak again, fearing to hear the dreadful truth; trying to prolong the minutes, even these minutes compact of uncertainty and anguish, because he was still there, before her, perhaps for the last time.
At last the poignant question fell from her lips:
"What are you going to do then?"
And he, in a low voice, simply, with the calmness of an unalterable resolve, let fall the fatal word:
"Desert!"
Desert! . . . Yes, she had divined it only too well in the last few moments, when she saw his altered clothing, and this little parcel of sailor's kit carefully folded in a handkerchief.
She recoiled under the weight of the word, supporting herself with her hands against the wall behind her, almost choking. Deserter! Yves! lost! The thought of Goulven, his brother, passed through her mind, and of distant seas from which sailors never return. And, feeling her helplessness against this fate which crushed her, she remained silent, utterly overwhelmed.
Yves began to speak to her very kindly, pointing with sorrowful calm to the little parcel which he had brought.
"I want you, my poor Marie, to-morrow, when my ship has left, to send that on board, you understand. You never can tell! . . . If I am caught . . . It is always more serious to take away the property of the State! And this is the advance payment they have given me. . . . You will return to Toulven. . . . Oh! I will send you money, all I earn; you know, I shall not want much myself. We shall not see each other again, but you will not be too unfortunate . . . as long as I live."
She wanted to throw her arms round him, to hold him with all her strength, to struggle, to cling to him when he was going away, if needs be to let herself be dragged down the staircase, and even into the street. . . . But no, something held her bound where she stood: first the knowledge that all that she might do could be of no avail, and then a sense of dignity, there, where their son lay asleep. . . . And she remained against the wall, without a movement.
He had placed two hundred francs in large silver pieces on the table near him. They represented the payment that had been made to him in advance, all that remained of it, after he had paid for his clothes. He looked at her now very thoughtfully, very kindly, and with his woollen sleeve brushed off some tears that were rolling down his cheeks.
But he had nothing more to say to her. And now the last minute had come and all was over.
He bent again for a last time over his little son, then straightened himself and got up to go.
And the Celts mourned three barren rocks under a lowering sky, in the heart of a gulf dotted with islets.
—G. FLAUBERT, SALAMMBÔ.
The Coral Sea! At the Antipodes of our old world. Nothing but blue anywhere. Around the ship which proceeds slowly, the infinite blue spreads its perfect circle. The surface shines and glitters under the eternal sun.
Yves is there, alone, carried high in the air in a thing which oscillates slowly; he passes, in his top.
He gazes, with unseeing eyes at the limitless circle; he is as it were dazed with space and light. His expressionless eyes come to rest at hazard, for, everywhere, all is alike.
Everywhere, all is alike. . . . It is the great blind, unconscious splendour of things which men believe have been made for them. Over the surface of the waters pass life-giving breezes which no one breathes; warmth and light are poured out in abundance; all the sources of life are open on the silent solitudes of the sea and fill them with a strange glory.
The surface shines and glitters under the eternal sun. The great blaze of noon falls into the blue desert in a useless and wasted magnificence.
Presently Yves thinks he can discern in the distance a trail less blue, and his attention, which just now wandered idly over the sparkling and tranquil monotony, is concentrated upon it: it is no doubt the sea breaking into foam over the whiteness of coral, breaking on isles unknown, level with the water, which no map has yet shown.
How far away is Brittany—and the green lanes of Toulven—and his little son!
Yves has come out of his dream, and is watching, his hand shading his eyes, that distant trail which still shows white.
He does not look like a deserter, for he is wearing still the blue collar of the navy.
Now he can distinguish the breakers and the coral quite clearly, and he leans over a little in the air, and calls out to those below: "Reefs on the port bow."