CHAPTER V
THE DEATH-BLOW
One day, in the first fortnight of June, as old Yvonne was returning
home, some neighbours told her that she had been sent for by the
Commissioner from the Naval Registry Office. Of course it concerned
her grandson, but that did not frighten her in the least. The families
of seafarers are used to the Naval Registry, and she, the daughter,
wife, mother, and grandmother of seamen, had known that office for the
past sixty years.
Doubtless it had to do with his "delegation"; or perhaps there was a
small prize-money account from /La Circe/ to take through her proxy.
As she knew what respect was due to "/Monsieur le Commissaire/," she
put on her best gown and a clean white cap, and set out about two
o'clock.
Trotting along swiftly on the pathways of the cliff, she neared
Paimpol; and musing upon these two months without letters, she grew a
bit anxious.
She met her old sweetheart sitting out at his door. He had greatly
aged since the appearance of the winter cold.
"Eh, eh! When you're ready, you know, don't make any ceremony, my
beauty!" That "suit of deal" still haunted his mind.
The joyous brightness of June smiled around her. On the rocky heights
there still grew the stunted reeds with their yellow blossoms; but
passing into the hollow nooks sheltered against the bitter sea winds,
one met with high sweet-smelling grass. But the poor old woman did not
see all this, over whose head so many rapid seasons had passed, which
now seemed as short as days.
Around the crumbling hamlet with its gloomy walls grew roses, pinks,
and stocks; and even up on the tops of the whitewashed and mossy
roofs, sprang the flowerets that attracted the first "miller"
butterflies of the season.
This spring-time was almost without love in the land of Icelanders,
and the beautiful lasses of proud race, who sat out dreaming on their
doorsteps, seemed to look far beyond the visible things with their
blue or brown eyes. The young men, who were the objects of their
melancholy and desires, were remote, fishing on the northern seas.
But it was a spring-time for all that--warm, sweet, and troubling,
with its buzzing of flies and perfume of young plants.
And all this soulless freshness smiled upon the poor old grandmother,
who was quickly walking along to hear of the death of her last-born
grandson. She neared the awful moment when this event, which had taken
place in the so distant Chinese seas, was to be told to her; she was
taking that sinister walk that Sylvestre had divined at his death-hour
--the sight of that had torn his last agonized tears from him; his
darling old granny summoned to Paimpol to be told that he was dead!
Clearly he had seen her pass along that road, running straight on,
with her tiny brown shawl, her umbrella, and large head-dress. And
that apparition had made him toss and writhe in fearful anguish, while
the huge, red sun of the Equator, disappearing in its glory, peered
through the port-hole of the hospital to watch him die. But he, in his
last hallucination, had seen his old granny moving under a rain-laden
sky, and on the contrary a joyous laughing spring-time mocked her on
all sides.
Nearing Paimpol, she became more and more uneasy, and improved her
speed. Now she is in the gray town with its narrow granite streets,
where the sun falls, bidding good-day to some other old women, her
contemporaries, sitting at their windows. Astonished to see her; they
said: "Wherever is she going so quickly, in her Sunday gown, on a
week-day?"
"Monsieur le Commissaire" of the Naval Enlistment Office was not in
just then. One ugly little creature, about fifteen years old, who was
his clerk, sat at his desk. As he was too puny to be a fisher, he had
received some education and passed his time in that same chair, in his
black linen dust-sleeves, scratching away at paper.
With a look of importance, when she had said her name, he got up to
get the official documents from off a shelf.
There were a great many papers--what did it all mean? Parchments,
sealed papers, a sailor's record-book, grown yellow on the sea, and
over all floated an odour of death. He spread them all out before the
poor old woman, who began to tremble and feel dizzy. She had just
recognized two of the letters which Gaud used to write for her to her
grandson, and which were now returned to her never unsealed. The same
thing had happened twenty years ago at the death of her son Pierre;
the letters had been sent back from China to "Monsieur le
Commissaire," who had given them to her thus.
Now he was reading out in a consequential voice: "Moan, Jean-Marie-
Sylvestre, registered at Paimpol, folio 213, number 2091, died on
board the /Bien Hoa/, on the 14th of ----."
"What--what has happened to him, my good sir?"
"Discharged--dead," he answered.
It wasn't because this clerk was unkind, but if he spoke in that
brutal way, it was through want of judgment, and from lack of
intelligence in the little incomplete being.
As he saw that she did not understand that technical expression, he
said in Breton:
"/Marw eo/!"
"/Marw eo/!" (He is dead.)
She repeated the words after him, in her aged tremulous voice, as a
poor cracked echo would send back some indifferent phrase. So what she
had partly foreseen was true; but it only made her tremble; now that
it was certain, it seemed to affect her no more. To begin with, her
faculty to suffer was slightly dulled by old age, especially since
this last winter. Pain did not strike her immediately. Something
seemed to fall upside down in her brain, and somehow or another she
mixed this death up with others. She had lost so many of them before.
She needed a moment to grasp that this was her very last one, her
darling, the object of all her prayers, life, and waiting, and of all
her thoughts, already darkened by the sombre approach of second
childhood.
She felt a sort of shame at showing her despair before this little
gentleman who horrified her. Was that the way to tell a grandmother of
her darling's death? She remained standing before the desk, stiffened,
and tearing the fringes of her brown shawl with her poor aged hands,
sore and chapped with washing.
How far away she felt from home! Goodness! what a long walk back to be
gone through, and steadily, too, before nearing the whitewashed hut in
which she longed to shut herself up, like a wounded beast who hides in
its hole to die. And so she tried not to think too much and not to
understand yet, frightened above all at the long home-journey.
They gave her an order to go and take, as the heiress, the thirty
francs that came from the sale of Sylvestre's bag; and then the
letters, the certificates, and the box containing the military medal.
She took the whole parcel awkwardly with open fingers, unable to find
pockets to put them in.
She went straight through Paimpol, looking at no one, her body bent
slightly like one about to fall, with a rushing of blood in her ears;
pressing and hurrying along like some poor old machine, which could
not be wound up, at a great pressure, for the last time, without fear
of breaking its springs.
At the third mile she went along quite bent in two and exhausted; from
time to time her foot struck against the stones, giving her a painful
shock up to the very head. She hurried to bury herself in her home,
for fear of falling and having to be carried there.
