An Iceland Fisherman Part 14

"_La Marie_, ahoy! how are ye, lads?"

"Halloa! Gaos, Laumec, Guermeur!"

The spectre s.h.i.+p was the _Reine-Berthe_, also of Paimpol, and so the sailors were from neighbouring villages; that thick, tall fellow with the huge, black beard, showing his teeth when he laughed, was Kerjegou, one of the Ploudaniel boys, the others were from Plounes or Plounerin.

"Why didn't you blow your fog-horn, and be blowed to you, you herd of savages?" challenged Larvoer of the _Reine-Berthe_.

"If it comes to that, why didn't you blow yours, you crew of pirates--you rank mess of toad-fish?"

"Oh, no! with us, d'ye see, the sea-law differs. _We're forbidden to make any noise!_"

He made this reply with the air of giving a dark hint, and a queer smile, which afterward came back to the memory of the men of the _Marie_, and caused them a great deal of thinking. Then, as if he thought he had said too much, he concluded with a joke:

"Our fog-horn, d'ye see, was burst by this rogue here a-blowing too hard into it." He pointed to a sailor with a face like a Triton, a man all bull-neck and chest, extravagantly broad-shouldered, low-set upon his legs, with something unspeakably grotesque and unpleasant in the deformity of strength.

While they were looking at each other, waiting for breeze or undercurrent to move one vessel faster than the other and separate them, a general palaver began. Leaning over the side, but holding each other off at a respectable distance with their long wooden props, like besieged pikemen repelling an a.s.sault, they began to chat about home, the last letters received, and sweethearts and wives.

"I say! my old woman," said Kerjegou, "tells me she's had the little boy we were looking for; that makes half-score-two now!"

Another had found himself the father of twins; and a third announced the marriage of pretty Jenny Caroff, a girl well known to all the Icelanders, with some rich and infirm old resident of the Commune of Plourivo. As they were eyeing each other as if through white gauze, this also appeared to alter the sound of the voices, which came as if m.u.f.fled and from far away.

Meanwhile Yann could not take his eyes off one of those brother fishermen, a little grizzled fellow, whom he was quite sure he never had seen before, but who had, nevertheless, straightway said to him, "How d'o, long Yann?" with all the familiarity of bosom acquaintance. He wore the provoking ugliness of a monkey, with an apish twinkling of mischief too in his piercing eyes.

"As for me," said Larvoer, of the _Reine-Berthe_, "I've been told of the death of the grandson of old Yvonne Moan, of Ploubazlanec--who was serving his time in the navy, you know, in the Chinese squadron--a very great pity."

On hearing this, all the men of _La Marie_ turned towards Yann to learn if he already knew anything of the sad news.

"Ay," he answered in a low voice, but with an indifferent and haughty air, "it was told me in the last letter my father sent me." They still kept on looking at him, curious at finding out the secret of his grief, and it made him angry.

These questions and answers were rapidly exchanged through the pallid mists, so the moments of this peculiar colloquy skipped swiftly by.

"My wife wrote me at the same time," continued Larvoer, "that Monsieur Mevel's daughter has left the town to live at Ploubazlanec and take care of her old grand-aunt--Granny Moan. She goes out to needlework by the day now--to earn her living. Anyhow, I always thought, I did, that she was a good, brave girl, in spite of her fine-lady airs and her furbelows."

Then again they all stared at Yann, which made him still more angry; a red flush mounted to his cheeks, under their tawny tan.

With Larvoer's expression of opinion about Gaud ended this parley with the crew of the _Reine-Berthe_, none of whom were ever again to be seen by human eyes. For a moment their faces became more dim, their vessel being already farther away; and then, all at once, the men of the _Marie_ found they had nothing to push against, nothing at the end of their poles--all spars, oars, odds and ends of deck-lumber, were groping and quivering in emptiness, till they fell heavily, one after the other, down into the sea, like their own arms, lopped off and inert.

They pulled all the useless defences on board. The _Reine-Berthe_, melting away into the thick fog, had disappeared as suddenly as a painted s.h.i.+p in a dissolving view. They tried to hail her, but the only response was a sort of mocking clamour--as of many voices--ending in a moan, that made them all stare at each other in surprise.

This _Reine-Berthe_ did not come back with the other Icelandic fishers; and as the men of the _Samuel-Azenide_ afterward picked up in some fjord an unmistakable waif (part of her taffrail with a bit of her keel), all ceased to hope; in the month of October the names of all her crew were inscribed upon black slabs in the church.

From the very time of that apparition--the date of which was well remembered by the men of the _Marie_--until the time of their return, there had been no really dangerous weather on the Icelandic seas, but a great storm from the west had, three weeks before, swept several sailors overboard, and swallowed up two vessels. The men remembered Larvoer's peculiar smile, and putting things together many strange conjectures were made. In the dead of night, Yann, more than once, dreamed that he again saw the sailor who blinked like an ape, and some of the men of the _Marie_ wondered if, on that remembered morning, they had not been talking with ghosts.

CHAPTER XII--THE STRANGE COUPLE

Summer advanced, and, at the end of August, with the first autumnal mists, the Icelanders came home.

For the last three months the two lone women had lived together at Ploubazlanec in the Moan's cottage. Gaud filled a daughter's place in the poor birthplace of so many dead sailors. She had sent hither all that remained from the sale of her father's house; her grand bed in the town fas.h.i.+on, and her fine, different coloured dresses. She had made herself a plainer black dress, and like old Yvonne, wore a mourning cap, of thick white muslin, adorned merely with simple plaits. Every day she went out sewing at the houses of the rich people in the town, and returned every evening without being detained on her way home by any sweetheart. She had remained as proud as ever, and was still respected as a fine lady; and as the lads bade her good-night, they always raised a hand to their caps.

Through the sweet evening twilight, she walked home from Paimpol, all along the cliff road inhaling the fresh, comforting sea air. Constant sitting at needlework had not deformed her like many others, who are always bent in two over their work--and she drew up her beautiful supple form perfectly erect in looking over the sea, fairly across to where Yann was it seemed.

The same road led to his home. Had she walked on much farther, towards a well-known rocky windswept nook, she would come to that hamlet of Pors-Even, where the trees, covered with gray moss, grew crampedly between the stones, and are slanted over lowly by the western gales.

Perhaps she might never more return there, although it was only a league away; but once in her lifetime she had been there, and that was enough to cast a charm over the whole road; and, besides, Yann would certainly often pa.s.s that way, and she could fancy seeing him upon the bare moor, stepping between the stumpy reeds.

She loved the whole region of Ploubazlanec, and was almost happy that fate had driven her there; she never could have become resigned to live in any other place.

Towards this end of August, a southern warmth, diffusing languor, rises and spreads towards the north, with luminous afterglows and stray rays from a distant sun, which float over the Breton seas. Often the air is calm and pellucid, without a single cloud on high.

At the hour of Gaud's return journey, all things had already begun to fade in the nightfall, and become fused into close, compact groups. Here and there a clump of reeds strove to make way between stones, like a battle-torn flag; in a hollow, a cl.u.s.ter of gnarled trees formed a dark ma.s.s, or else some straw-thatched hamlet indented the moor. At the cross-roads the images of Christ on the cross, which watch over and protect the country, stretched out their black arms on their supports like real men in torture; in the distance the Channel appeared fair and calm, one vast golden mirror, under the already darkened sky and shade-laden horizon.

In this country even the calm fine weather was a melancholy thing; notwithstanding, a vague uneasiness seemed to hover about; a palpable dread emanating from the sea to which so many lives are intrusted, and whose everlasting threat only slumbered.

Gaud sauntered along as in a dream, and never found the way long enough.

The briny smell of the sh.o.r.e, and a sweet odour of flowerets growing along the cliffs amid th.o.r.n.y bushes, perfumed the air. Had it not been for Granny Yvonne waiting for her at home, she would have loitered along the reed-strewn paths, like the beautiful ladies in stories, who dream away the summer evenings in their fine parks.

Many thoughts of her early childhood came back to her as she pa.s.sed through the country; but they seemed so effaced and far away now, eclipsed by her love looming up between.

In spite of all, she went on thinking of Yann as engaged in a degree--a restless, scornful betrothed, whom she never would really have, but to whom she persisted in being faithful in mind, without speaking about it to any one. For the time, she was happy to know that he was off Iceland; for there, at least, the sea would keep him lonely in her deep cloisters, and he would belong to no other woman.

True, he would return one of these days, but she looked upon that return more calmly than before. She instinctively understood that her poverty would not be a reason for him to despise her; for he was not as other men. Moreover, the death of poor Sylvestre would draw them closer together. Upon his return, he could not do otherwise than come to see his friend's old granny; and Gaud had decided to be present at that visit; for it did not seem to her that it would be undignified.

Appearing to remember nothing, she would talk to him as to a long-known friend; she would even speak with affection, as was due to Sylvestre's brother, and try to seem easy and natural. And who knows? Perhaps it would not be impossible to be as a sister to him, now that she was so lonely in the world; to rely upon his friends.h.i.+p, even to ask it as a support, with enough preliminary explanation for him not to accuse her of any after-thought of marriage.

She judged him to be untamed and stubborn in his independent ideas, yet tender and loyal, and capable of understanding the goodness that comes straight from the heart.

How would he feel when he met her again, in her poor ruined home? Very, very poor she was--for Granny Moan was not strong enough now to go out was.h.i.+ng, and only had her small widow's pension left; granted, she ate but little, and the two could still manage to live, not dependent upon others.

Night was always fallen when she arrived home; before she could enter she had to go down a little over the worn rocks, for the cottage was placed on an incline towards the beach, below the level of the Ploubazlanec roadside. It was almost hidden under its thick brown straw thatch, and looked like the back of some huge beast, shrunk down under its bristling fur. Its walls were sombre and rough like the rocks, but with tiny tufts of green moss and lichens over them. There were three uneven steps before the threshold, and the inside latch was opened by a length of rope-yarn run through a hole. Upon entering, the first thing to be seen was the window, hollowed out through the wall as in the substance of a rampart, and giving view of the sea, whence inflowed a dying yellow light. On the hearth burned brightly the sweet-scented branches of pine and beechwood that old Yvonne used to pick up along the way, and she herself was sitting there, seeing to their bit of supper; indoors she wore a kerchief over her head to save her cap. Her still beautiful profile was outlined in the red flame of her fire. She looked up at Gaud. Her eyes, which formerly were brown, had taken a faded look, and almost appeared blue; they seemed no longer to see, and were troubled and uncertain with old age. Each day she greeted Gaud with the same words:

"Oh, dear me! my good la.s.s, how late you are to-night!"

"No, Granny," answered Gaud, who was used to it. "This is the same time as other days."

"Eh? It seemed to me, dear, later than usual."

They sat down to supper at their table, which had almost become shapeless from constant use, but was still as thick as the generous slice of a huge oak. The cricket began its silver-toned music again.

One of the sides of the cottage was filled up by roughly sculptured, worm-eaten woodwork, which had an opening wherein were set the sleeping bunks, where generations of fishers had been born, and where their aged mothers had died.

Quaint old kitchen utensils hung from the black beams, as well as bunches of sweet herbs, wooden spoons, and smoked bacon; fis.h.i.+ng-nets, which had been left there since the s.h.i.+pwreck of the last Moans, their meshes nightly bitten by the rats.

Gaud's bed stood in an angle under its white muslin draperies; it seemed like a very fresh and elegant modern invention brought into the hut of a Celt.

On the granite wall hung a photograph of Sylvestre in his sailor clothes. His grandmother had fixed his military medal to it, with his own pair of those red cloth anchors that French men-of-wars-men wear on their right sleeve; Gaud had also brought one of those funereal crowns, of black and white beads, placed round the portraits of the dead in Brittany. This represented Sylvestre's mausoleum, and was all that remained to consecrate his memory in his own land.

On summer evenings they did not sit up late, to save the lights; when the weather was fine, they sat out a while on a stone bench before the door, and looked at pa.s.sers-by in the road, a little over their heads.

Then old Yvonne would lie down on her cupboard shelf; and Gaud on her fine bed, would fall asleep pretty soon, being tired out with her day's work, and walking, and dreaming of the return of the Icelanders. Like a wise, resolute girl, she was not too greatly apprehensive.