CHAPTER XV
THE NEW SHIP
At Paimpol lives a large, stout woman named Madame Tressoleur. In one
of the streets that lead to the harbour she keeps a tavern, well known
to all the Icelanders, where captains and ship-owners come to engage
their sailors, and choose the strongest among them, men and masters
all drinking together.
At one time she had been beautiful, and was still jolly with the
fishers; she has a mustache, is as broad built as a Dutchman, and as
bold and ready of speech as a Levantine. There is a look of the
daughter of the regiment about her, notwithstanding her ample nun-like
muslin headgear; for all that, a religious halo of its sort floats
around her, for the simple reason that she is a Breton born.
The names of all the sailors of the country are written in her head as
in a register; she knows them all, good or bad, and knows exactly,
too, what they earn and what they are worth.
One January day, Gaud, who had been called in to make a dress, sat
down to work in a room behind the tap-room.
To go into the abode of our Madame Tressoleur, you enter by a broad,
massive-pillared door, which recedes in the olden style under the
first floor. When you go to open this door, there is always some
obliging gust of wind from the street that pushes it in, and the new-
comers make an abrupt entrance, as if carried in by a beach roller.
The hall is adorned by gilt frames, containing pictures of ships and
wrecks. In an angle a china statuette of the Virgin is placed on a
bracket, between two bunches of artificial flowers.
These olden walls must have listened to many powerful songs of
sailors, and witnessed many wild gay scenes, since the first far-off
days of Paimpol--all through the lively times of the privateers, up to
these of the present Icelanders, so very little different from their
ancestors. Many lives of men have been angled for and hooked there, on
the oaken tables, between two drunken bouts.
While she was sewing the dress, Gaud lent her ear to the conversation
going on about Iceland, behind the partition, between Madame
Tressoleur and two old sailors, drinking. They were discussing a new
craft that was being rigged in the harbour. She never would be ready
for the next season, so they said of this /Leopoldine/.
"Oh, yes, to be sure she will!" answered the hostess. "I tell 'ee the
crew was all made up yesterday--the whole of 'em out of the old
/Marie/ of Guermeur's, that's to be sold for breaking up; five young
fellows signed their engagement here before me, at this here table,
and with my own pen--so ye see, I'm right! And fine fellows, too, I
can tell 'ee; Laumec, Tugdual Caroff, Yvon Duff, young Keraez from
Treguier, and long Yann Gaos from Pors-Even, who's worth any three on
'em!"
The /Leopoldine/! The half-heard name of the ship that was to carry
Yann away became suddenly fixed in her brain, as if it had been
hammered in to remain more ineffaceably there.
At night back again at Ploubazlanec, and finishing off her work by the
light of her pitiful lamp, that name came back to her mind, and its
very sound impressed her as a sad thing. The names of vessels, as of
things, have a significance in themselves--almost a particular meaning
of their own. The new and unusual word haunted her with an unnatural
persistency, like some ghastly and clinging warning. She had expected
to see Yann start off again on the /Marie/, which she knew so well and
had formerly visited, and whose Virgin had so long protected its
dangerous voyages; and the change to the /Leopoldine/ increased her
anguish.
But she told herself that that was not her concern, and nothing about
him ought ever to affect her. After all, what could it matter to her
whether he were here or there, on this ship or another, ashore or not?
Would she feel less miserable with him back in Iceland, when the
summer would return over the deserted cottages, and lonely anxious
women--or when a new autumn came again, bringing home the fishers once
more? All that was alike indifferent to her, equally without joy or
hope. There was no link between them now, nothing ever to bring them
together, for was he not forgetting even poor little Sylvestre? So,
she had plainly to understand that this sole dream of her life was
over for ever; she had to forget Yann, and all things appertaining to
his existence, even the very name of Iceland, which still vibrated in
her with so painful a charm--because of him all such thoughts must be
swept away. All was indeed over, for ever and ever.
She tenderly looked over at the poor old woman asleep, who still
required all her attention, but who would soon die. Then, what would
be the good of living and working after that; of what use would she
be?
Out of doors, the western wind had again risen; and, notwithstanding
its deep distant soughing, the soft regular patter of the eaves-
droppings could be heard as they dripped from the roof. And so the
tears of the forsaken one began to flow--tears running even to her
lips to impart their briny taste, and dropping silently on her work,
like summer showers brought by no breeze, but suddenly falling,
hurried and heavy, from the over-laden clouds; as she could no longer
see to work, and she felt worked out and discouraged before this great
hollowness of her life, she folded up the extra-sized body of Madame
Tressoleur and went to bed.
She shivered upon that fine, grand bed, for, like all things in the
cottage, it seemed also to be getting colder and damper. But as she
was very young, although she still continued weeping, it ended by her
growing warm and falling asleep.
