CHAPTER XVII

I walked for about an hour. By chance I had taken the same road as yesterday with Yves, and I had passed again the cross of Kergrist.

Now Paimpol and the sea, and the islands, and the headlands wooded with dark fir trees, had disappeared behind a fold of the ground; a more mournful country stretched before me.

This February day was calm and very dreary; the air was almost mild, and in places the sky was blue, but mainly it was overclouded, as this Breton sky always is.

I made my way along damp lanes, bordered, according to old usage, by high banks of earth, which shut out the view sadly. The short grass, the damp moss, the bare branches told of winter. At the corners of the road old calvaries stretched out their grey arms; they bore simple carvings, quaintly altered by the centuries: the instruments of the Passion, or perhaps a distorted figure of Christ.

At wide intervals were straw-thatched cottages, green with moss, half buried in the earth and the dead branches. The trees were stunted, stripped by the winter, twisted by the wind from the sea. Not a soul in sight and silence everywhere.

A chapel of grey granite with an enclosure of beeches and tombs. . . . Ah! yes, I recognize it without ever having seen it, the chapel of Plouherzel! Yves had often spoken of it to me on board during the night watch, during the clear nights at the other side of the world, when we used to dream of home. "When you reach the chapel," he used to say, "it is quite near; you have but to turn into the path on the left, and two hundred yards away is our home."

I turned to the left and, by the side of the little road, I saw the cottage.

It was solitary, quite low and overshadowed by old beech trees.

It looked out upon a mournful expanse of country, the distances of which were shaded in dark grey. There were interminable, monotonous plains with phantoms of trees; a salt water lake at the hour of low water, an empty lake hollowed out of the granite strata, a deep meadow of seaweed, with an island in the middle.

A strange island, formed of a single piece of polished granite, like a back, having the shape of a large beast sitting. One looked about for the sea, the real sea which with the returning tide must come to fill these abandoned reservoirs, but there was no sign of it anywhere. A cold dark mist was rising on the horizon, and the winter sunshine was beginning to fade.

Poor Yves! So this is his home; a lonely cottage by the roadside; a poor little Breton cottage, in a turning off a remote lane, low-pitched, under a lowering sky, half buried in the earth, with ancient little granite walls overgrown with parietaries and moss.

All his memories of childhood are centred here; it was his cradle, his nest; a cherished home in which his mother lived, a home to which, in far-off countries, in the great cities of America and Asia, his imagination always brought him back. He thought of it with love, of this little corner of the world, during the fine calm nights at sea and during the riotous nights of brutal pleasure which made up his life of adventure. A poor, lonely cottage, at the turning of a road, and that was all.

In his dreams at sea it was this that he saw: under a threatening sky, amid the mournful country of this land of Goëlo, these old damp little walls overgrown with parietaries; and the neighbouring cottages in which kind old women in white Breton head-dresses used to spoil him when he was a child; and then, at the corner of the roads, the granite calvaries, corroded by the centuries. . . .

Merciful heavens! How dreary this country is! How dreary and how depressing!

I knocked at the door and a young girl who resembled Yves appeared on the threshold.

I asked her if this was indeed the house of the Kermadecs.

"Yes," she said, a little surprised and apprehensive. And then, suddenly:

"Ah! you, sir, are the friend of my brother who arrived with him at Brest yesterday evening?"

But she was rather concerned to see that I came alone.

I entered. I saw the cupboards, the Breton beds, the old plates in rows on the plate stand. Everything looked clean and respectable; but the cottage was very small and humble.

"All our relations are rich," Yves had often told me. "It is only we who are poor."

I was shown one of those beds in the form of a cupboard, with two places, which had been prepared for Yves and me. I was to occupy the upper shelf, which was decorated with thick hangings of reddish cloth, very clean and very stiff.

"Won't you sit down? They will be back from the town very soon now."

But no. I thanked her and went away.

Half-way to Paimpol, as night was falling, I perceived in the distance a large blue collar, in a little trap which was being driven briskly in the direction of Plouherzel: the little carriage of friend Jean bringing back Yves and his mother. I had just time to hide myself behind a hedge; if they had recognized me, there would have been no escape from them, of that I was certain.

It was quite dark when I reached Paimpol, and the little street lamps were lit. I tried to mingle in the crowd which moved about the square and consisted for the most part of those sailors who are known in these parts as Icelanders, men who exile themselves every summer, for six months, in the dangerous fishing expeditions to the cold northern seas.

None of these men was alone. They perambulated the streets, singing, with young women on their arm, sisters, sweethearts, mistresses. And these pictures of happiness and life made me feel my own utter loneliness. I walked about alone, miserable and unknown to them all, in my borrowed clothes which resembled theirs. People stared at me. "Who is that? A stranger in search of a ship? We have never seen him before."

I felt cold at heart and impulsively I turned away to take once more the road to Plouherzel. After all, perhaps I should not be greatly in the way of my simple friends there, if I went and warmed myself a little among them.

I had forgotten all about dinner and walked rapidly, fearful lest I should arrive too late, fearful lest I should find the cottage shut up for the night and my friends in bed.