CHAPTER III
THE WOMEN AT HOME
At Paimpol, one fine evening of this same year, upon a Sunday in June,
two women were deeply busy in writing a letter. This took place before
a large open window, with a row of flowerpots on its heavy old granite
sill.
As well as could be seen from their bending over the table, both were
young. Once wore a very large old-fashioned cap; the other quite a
small one, in the new style adopted by the women of Paimpol. They
might have been taken for two loving lasses writing a tender missive
to some handsome Icelander.
The one who dictated--the one with the large head-dress--drew up her
head, wool-gathering. Oh, she was old, very old, notwithstanding her
look from behind, in her small brown shawl--we mean downright old. A
sweet old granny, seventy at least. Very pretty, though, and still
fresh-coloured, with the rosy cheeks some old people have. Her
/coiffe/ was drawn low upon the forehead and upon the top of the head,
was composed of two or three large rolls of muslin that seemed to
telescope out of one another, and fell on to the nape. Her venerable
face, framed in the pure white pleats, had almost a man's look, while
her soft, tender eyes wore a kindly expression. She had not the
vestige of a tooth left, and when she laughed she showed her round
gums, which had still the freshness of youth.
Although her chin had become as pointed "as the toe of a /sabot/" (as
she was in the habit of saying), her profile was not spoiled by time;
and it was easily imagined that in her youth it had been regular and
pure, like the saints' adorning a church.
She looked through the window, trying to think of news that might
amuse her grandson at sea. There existed not in the whole country of
Paimpol another dear old body like her, to invent such funny stories
upon everybody, and even upon nothing. Already in this letter there
were three or four merry tales, but without the slightest mischief,
for she had nothing ill-natured about her.
The other woman, finding that the ideas were getting scarce, began to
write the address carefully:
"TO MONSIEUR MOAN, SYLVESTRE,
ABOARD THE /MARIE/,
c/o CAPTAIN GUERMEUR,
IN THE SEA OF ICELAND, NEAR RYKAWYK."
Here she lifted her head to ask: "Is that all, Granny Moan?"
The querist was young, adorably young, a girl of twenty in fact; very
fair--a rare complexion in this corner of Brittany, where the race
runs swarthy--very fair, we say, with great grey eyes between almost
black lashes; her brows, as fair as the hair, seemed as if they had a
darker streak in their midst, which gave a wonderful expression of
strength and will to the beautiful face. The rather short profile was
very dignified, the nose continuing the line of the brow with absolute
rectitude, as in a Greek statue. A deep dimple under the lower lip
foiled it up delightfully; and from time to time, when she was
absorbed by a particular idea, she bit this lower lip with her white
upper teeth, making the blood run in tiny red veins under the delicate
skin. In her supple form there was no little pride, with gravity also,
which she inherited from the bold Icelandic sailors, her ancestors.
The expression of her eyes was both steady and gentle.
Her cap was in the shape of a cockle-shell, worn low on the brow, and
drawn back on either side, showing thick tresses of hair about the
ears, a head-dress that has remained from remote times and gives quite
an olden look to the women of Paimpol.
One felt instinctively that she had been reared differently than the
poor old woman to whom she gave the name of grandmother, but who is
reality was but a distant great-aunt.
She was the daughter of M. Mevel, a former Icelander, a bit of a
freebooter, who had made a fortune by bold undertakings out at sea.
The fine room where the letter had been just written was hers; a new
bed, such as townspeople have, with muslin lace-edged curtains, and on
the stone walls a light-coloured paper, toning down the irregularities
of the granite; overhead a coating of whitewash covered the great
beams that revealed the antiquity of the abode; it was the home of
well-to-do folk, and the windows looked out upon the old gray market-
place of Paimpol, where the /pardons/ are held.
"Is it done, Granny Yvonne? Have you nothing else to tell him?"
"No, my lass, only I would like you to add a word of greeting to young
Gaos."
"Young Gaos" was otherwise called Yann. The proud beautiful girl had
blushed very red when she wrote those words. And as soon as they were
added at the bottom of the page, in a running hand, she rose and
turned her head aside as if to look at some very interesting object
out on the market-place.
Standing, she was rather tall; her waist was modelled in a clinging
bodice, as perfectly fitting as that of a fashionable dame. In spite
of her cap, she looked like a real lady. Even her hands, without being
conventionally small, were white and delicate, never having touched
rough work.
True, she had been at first little /Gaud/ (Daisy), paddling bare-
footed in the water, motherless, almost wholly neglected during the
season of the fisheries, which her father spent in Iceland; a pretty,
untidy, obstinate girl, but growing vigorous and strong in the bracing
sea-breeze. In those days she had been sheltered, during the fine
summers, by poor Granny Moan, who used to give her Sylvestre to mind
during her days of hard work in Paimpol. Gaud felt the adoration of a
young mother for the child confided to her tender care. She was his
elder by about eighteen months. He was as dark as she was fair, as
obedient and caressing as she was hasty and capricious. She well
remembered that part of her life; neither wealth nor town life had
altered it; and like a far-off dream of wild freedom it came back to
her, or as the remembrance of an undefined and mysterious previous
existence, where the sandy shores seemed longer, and the cliffs higher
and nobler.
Towards the age of five or six, which seemed long ago to her, wealth
had befallen her father, who began to buy and sell the cargoes of
ships. She had been taken to Saint-Brieuc, and later to Paris. And
from /la petite Gaud/ she had become Mademoiselle Marguerite, tall and
serious, with earnest eyes. Always left to herself, in another kind of
solitude than that of the Breton coast, she still retained the
obstinate nature of her childhood.
Living in large towns, her dress had become more modified than
herself. Although she still wore the /coiffe/ that Breton women
discard so seldom, she had learned to dress herself in another way.
Every year she had returned to Brittany with her father--in the summer
only, like a fashionable, coming to bathe in the sea--and lived again
in the midst of old memories, delighted to hear herself called Gaud,
rather curious to see the Icelanders of whom so much was said, who
were never at home, and of whom, each year, some were missing; on all
sides she heard the name of Iceland, which appeared to her as a
distant insatiable abyss. And there, now, was the man she loved!
One fine day she had returned to live in the midst of these fishers,
through a whim of her father, who had wished to end his days there,
and live like a landsman in the market-place of Paimpol.
The good old dame, poor but tidy, left Gaud with cordial thanks as
soon as the letter had been read again and the envelope closed. She
lived rather far away, at the other end of Ploubazlanec, in a hamlet
on the coast, in the same cottage where she first had seen the light
of day, and where her sons and grandsons had been born. In the town,
as she passed along, she answered many friendly nods; she was one of
the oldest inhabitants of the country, the last of a worthy and highly
esteemed family.
With great care and good management she managed to appear pretty well
dressed, although her gowns were much darned, and hardly held
together. She always wore the tiny brown Paimpol shawl, which was for
best, and upon which the long muslin rolls of her white caps had
fallen for past sixty years; her own marriage shawl, formerly blue,
had been dyed for the wedding of her son Pierre, and since then worn
only on Sundays, looked quite nice.
She still carried herself very straight, not at all like an old woman;
and, in spite of her pointed chin, her soft eyes and delicate profile
made all think her still very charming. She was held in great respect
--one could see that if only by the nods that people gave her.
On her way she passed before the house of her gallant, the sweetheart
of former days, a carpenter by trade; now an octogenarian, who sat
outside his door all the livelong day, while the young ones, his sons,
worked in the shop. It was said that he never had consoled himself for
her loss, for neither in first or second marriage would she have him;
but with old age his feeling for her had become a sort of comical
spite, half friendly and half mischievous, and he always called out to
her:
"Aha, /la belle/, when must I call to take your measure?"
But she declined with thanks; she had not yet quite decided to have
that dress made. The truth is, that the old man, with rather
questionable taste, spoke of the suit in deal planks, which is the
last of all our terrestrial garments.
"Well, whenever you like; but don't be shy in asking for it, you know,
old lady."
He had made this joke several times; but, to-day, she could scarcely
take it good-naturedly. She felt more tired than ever of her hard-
working life, and her thoughts flew back to her dear grandson--the
last of them all, who, upon his return from Iceland, was to enter the
navy for five years! Perhaps he might have to go to China, to the war!
Would she still be about, upon his return? The thought alone was agony
to her. No, she was surely not so happy as she looked, poor old
granny!
And was it really possible and true, that her last darling was to be
torn from her? She, perhaps, might die alone, without seeing him
again! Certainly, some gentlemen of the town, whom she knew, had done
all they could to keep him from having to start, urging that he was
the sole support of an old and almost destitute grandmother, who could
no longer work. But they had not succeeded--because of Jean Moan, the
deserter, an elder brother of Sylvestre's, whom no one in the family
ever mentioned now, but who still lived somewhere over in America,
thus depriving his younger brother of the military exemption.
Moreover, it had been objected that she had her small pension, allowed
to the widows of sailors, and the Admiralty could not deem her poor
enough.
When she returned home, she said her prayers at length for all her
dead ones, sons and grandsons; then she prayed again with renewed
strength and confidence for her Sylvestre, and tried to sleep--
thinking of the "suit of wood," her heart sadly aching at the thought
of being so old, when this new parting was imminent.
Meanwhile, the other victim of separation, the girl, had remained
seated at her window, gazing upon the golden rays of the setting sun,
reflected on the granite walls, and the black swallows wheeling across
the sky above. Paimpol was always quiet on these long May evenings,
even on Sundays; the lasses, who had not a single lad to make love to
them, sauntered along, in couples or three together, brooding of their
lovers in Iceland.
"A word of greeting to young Gaos!" She had been greatly affected in
writing that sentence, and that name, which now she could not forget.
She often spent her evenings here at the window, like a grand lady.
Her father did not approve of her walking with the other girls of her
age, who had been her early playmates. And as he left the cafe, and
walked up and down, smoking his pipe with old seamen like himself, he
was happy to look up at his daughter among her flowers, in his grand
house.
"Young Gaos!" Against her will she gazed seaward; it could not be
seen, but she felt it was nigh, at the end of the tiny street crowded
with fishermen. And her thoughts travelled through a fascinating and
delightful infinite, far, far away to the northern seas, where "/La
Marie/, Captain Guermeur," was sailing. A strange man was young Gaos!
retiring and almost incomprehensible now, after having come forward so
audaciously, yet so lovingly.
In her long reverie, she remembered her return to Brittany, which had
taken place the year before. One December morning after a night of
travelling, the train from Paris had deposited her father and herself
at Guingamp. It was a damp, foggy morning, cold and almost dark. She
had been seized with a previously unknown feeling; she could scarcely
recognise the quaint little town, which she had only seen during the
summer--oh, that glad old time, the dear old times of the past! This
silence, after Paris! This quiet life of people, who seemed of another
world, going about their simple business in the misty morning. But the
sombre granite houses, with their dark, damp walls, and the Breton
charm upon all things, which fascinated her now that she loved Yann,
had seemed particularly saddening upon that morning. Early housewives
were already opening their doors, and as she passed she could glance
into the old-fashioned houses, with their tall chimney-pieces, where
sat the old grandmothers, in their white caps, quiet and dignified. As
soon as daylight had begun to appear, she had entered the church to
say her prayers, and the grand old aisle had appeared immense and
shadowy to her--quite different from all the Parisian churches--with
its rough pillars worn at the base by the chafing of centuries, and
its damp, earthy smell of age and saltpetre.
In a damp recess, behind the columns, a taper was burning, before
which knelt a woman, making a vow; the dim flame seemed lost in the
vagueness of the arches. Gaud experienced there the feeling of a long-
forgotten impression: that kind of sadness and fear that she had felt
when quite young at being taken to mass at Paimpol Church on raw,
wintry mornings.
But she hardly regretted Paris, although there were many splendid and
amusing sights there. In the first place she felt almost cramped from
having the blood of the vikings in her veins. And then, in Paris, she
felt like a stranger and an intruder. The /Parisiennes/ were tight-
laced, artificial women, who had a peculiar way of walking; and Gaud
was too intelligent even to have attempted to imitate them. In her
head-dress, ordered every year from the maker in Paimpol, she felt out
of her element in the capital; and did not understand that if the
wayfarers turned round to look at her, it was only because she made a
very charming picture.
Some of these Parisian ladies quite won her by their high-bred and
distinguished manners, but she knew them to be inaccessible to her,
while from others of a lower caste who would have been glad to make
friends with her, she kept proudly aloof, judging them unworthy of her
attention. Thus she had lived almost without friends, without other
society than her father's, who was engaged in business and often away.
So she did not regret that life of estrangement and solitude.
But, none the less, on that day of arrival she had been painfully
surprised by the bitterness of this Brittany, seen in full winter. And
her heart sickened at the thought of having to travel another five or
six hours in a jolting car--to penetrate still farther into the blank,
desolate country to reach Paimpol.
All through the afternoon of that same grisly day, her father and
herself had journeyed in a little old ramshackle vehicle, open to all
the winds; passing, with the falling night, through dull villages,
under ghostly trees, black-pearled with mist in drops. And ere long
lanterns had to be lit, and she could perceive nothing else but what
seemed two trails of green Bengal lights, running on each side before
the horses, and which were merely the beams that the two lanterns
projected on the never-ending hedges of the roadway. But how was it
that trees were so green in the month of December? Astonished at
first, she bent to look out, and then she remembered how the gorse,
the evergreen gorse of the paths and the cliffs, never fades in the
country of Paimpol. At the same time a warmer breeze began to blow,
which she knew again and which smelt of the sea.
Towards the end of the journey she had been quite awakened and amused
by the new notion that struck her, namely: "As this is winter, I shall
see the famous fishermen of Iceland."
For in December they were to return, the brothers, cousins, and lovers
of whom all her friends, great and small, had spoken to her during the
long summer evening walks in her holiday trips. And the thought had
haunted her, though she felt chilled in the slow-going vehicle.
Now she had seen them, and her heart had been captured by one of them
too.
