An Iceland Fisherman Part 23

Some one stopped before the door, and came up the small stone steps.

He!--O G.o.d!--he! Some one had knocked--it could be no other than he! She was up now, barefooted; she, so feeble for the last few days, had sprung up as nimbly as a kitten, with her arms outstretched to wind round her darling. Of course the _Leopoldine_ had arrived at night, and anch.o.r.ed in Pors-Even Bay, and he had rushed home; she arranged all this in her mind with the swiftness of lightning. She tore the flesh off her fingers in her excitement to draw the bolt, which had stuck.

"Eh?"

She slowly moved backward, as if crushed, her head falling on her bosom.

Her beautiful insane dream was over. She just could grasp that it was not her husband, her Yann, and that nothing of him, substantial or spiritual, had pa.s.sed through the air; she felt plunged again into her deep abyss, to the lowest depths of her terrible despair.

Poor Fantec, for it was he, stammered many excuses, his wife was very ill, and their child was stifling in its cot, suddenly attacked with a malignant sore throat; so he had run over to beg for a.s.sistance on the road to fetch the doctor from Paimpol.

What did all this matter to her? She had gone mad in her own distress, and could give no thoughts to the troubles of others. Huddled on a bench, she remained before him with fixed, glazed eyes, like a dead woman's; without listening to him or even answering at random or looking at him. What to her was the speech the man was making?

He understood it all; and guessed why the door had been opened so quickly to him, and feeling pity for the pain he had unwittingly caused, he stammered out an excuse.

"Just so; he never had ought to have disturbed her--her in particular."

"I!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Gaud, quickly, "why should I not be disturbed particularly, Fantec?"

Life had suddenly come back to her; for she did not wish to appear in despair before others. Besides, she pitied him now; she dressed to accompany him, and found the strength to go and see to his little child.

At four o'clock in the morning, when she returned to throw herself on the bed, sleep subdued her, for she was tired out. But that moment of excessive joy had left an impression on her mind, which, in spite of all, was permanent; she awoke soon with a shudder, rising a little and partially recollecting--she knew not what. News had come to her concerning her Yann. In the midst of her confusion of ideas, she sought rapidly in her mind what it could be, but there was nothing save Fantec's interruption.

For the second time she fell back into her terrible abyss, nothing changed in her morbid, hopeless waiting.

Yet in that short, hopeful moment she had felt him so near to her, that it was as if his spirit had floated over the sea unto her, what is called a foretoken (_pressigne_) in Breton land; and she listened still more attentively to the steps outside, trusting that some one might come to her to speak of him.

Just as the day broke Yann's father entered. He took off his cap, and pushed back his splendid white locks, which were in curls like Yann's, and sat down by Gaud's bedside.

His heart ached fully, too, for Yann, his tall, handsome Yann, was his first-born, his favourite and his pride; but he did not despair yet. He comforted Gaud in his own blunt, affectionate way; to begin with, those who had last returned from Iceland spoke of the increasing dense fogs that might well have delayed the vessel; and then, too, an idea struck him; they might possibly have stopped at the distant Faroe Islands on their homeward course, whence letters were so long in travelling. This had happened to him once forty years ago, and his own poor dead and gone mother had had a ma.s.s said for his soul. The _Leopoldine_ was such a good boat, next to new, and her crew were such able-bodied seamen.

Granny Moan stood by them shaking her head; the distress of her granddaughter had almost given her back her own strength and reason; she tidied up the place, glancing from time to time at the faded portrait of Sylvestre, which hung upon the granite wall with its anchor emblems and mourning-wreath of black bead-work. Ever since the sea had robbed her of her own last offspring she believed no longer in safe returns; she only prayed through fear, bearing Heaven a grudge in the bottom of her heart.

But Gaud listened eagerly to these consoling reasonings; her large sunken eyes looked with deep tenderness out upon this old sire, who so much resembled her beloved one; merely to have him near her was like a hostage against death having taken the younger Gaos; and she felt rea.s.sured, nearer to her Yann. Her tears fell softly and silently, and she repeated again her pa.s.sionate prayers to the "Star of the Sea."

A delay out at those islands to repair damages was a very likely event.

She rose and brushed her hair, and then dressed as if she might fairly expect him. All then was not lost, if a seaman, his own father, did not yet despair. And for a few days, she resumed looking out for him again.

Autumn at last arrived, a late autumn too, its gloomy evenings making all things appear dark in the old cottage, and all the land looked sombre, too.

The very daylight seemed crepuscular; immeasurable clouds, pa.s.sing slowly overhead, darkened the whole country at broad noon. The wind blew constantly with the sound of a great cathedral organ at a distance, but playing profane, despairing dirges; at other times the noise came close to the door, like the howling of wild beasts.

She had grown pale, aye, blanched, and bent more than ever, as if old age had already touched her with its featherless wing. Often did she finger the wedding clothes of her Yann, folding and unfolding them again and again like some maniac, especially one of his blue woolen jerseys, which still had preserved his shape; when she threw it gently on the table, it fell with the shoulders and chest well defined; so she placed it by itself on a shelf of their wardrobe, and left it there, so that it might for ever rest unaltered.

Every night the cold mists sank upon the land, as she gazed over the depressing heath through her little window, and watched the paltry puffs of white smoke arise from the chimneys of other cottages scattered here and there on all sides. There the husbands had returned, like wandering birds driven home by the frost. Before their blazing hearths the evenings pa.s.sed, cosy and warm; for the spring-time of love had begun again in this land of North Sea fishermen.

Still clinging to the thought of those islands where he might perhaps have lingered, she was buoyed up by a kind hope and expected him home any day.

CHAPTER IX--WEDDED TO THE SEA

But he never returned. One August night, out off gloomy Iceland, mingled with the furious clamour of the sea, his wedding with the sea was performed. It had been his nurse; it had rocked him in his babyhood, and had afterward made him big and strong; then, in his superb manhood, it had taken him back again for itself alone. Profoundest mystery had surrounded this unhallowed union. While it went on, dark curtains hung pall-like over it as if to conceal the ceremony, and the ghoul howled in an awful deafening voice to stifle his cries. He, thinking of Gaud, his sole, darling wife, had battled with giant strength against this deathly rival, until he at last surrendered, with a deep death-cry like the roar of a dying bull, through a mouth already filled with water; and his arms were stretched apart and stiffened for ever.

All those he had invited in days of old were present at his wedding. All except Sylvestre, who had gone to sleep in the enchanted gardens far, far away, at the other side of the earth.