CHAPTER XXI

"Good morning, Yves!"

"Good morning, Pierre!"

And we throw open to the light of the morning the shutters of our cupboard.

This "Good morning, Pierre!" preceded by a little smile of intelligence, is said with hesitation, in a shy voice; it is "Good morning, Captain!" that Yves is accustomed to say, and he is rather disconcerted at finding himself on awakening, so near me and under the necessity of calling me by my name. To impose upon the good people of Plouherzel and preserve the character given me by my borrowed clothes, we had concerted this show of intimacy.

The sunshine of yesterday had departed and the high wind of the night was no more. It was typical Brittany weather and the whole country was enveloped in the same immense grey cloud. The light was the light of twilight, and was so pale and wan that it seemed that it had not strength enough to enter through the little windows of the cottages. Of distant things one could distinguish nothing; a fine drizzle, like a watery dust, filled the air.

We had to make the promised round of visits to uncles, cousins, old friends of boyhood; and these little homesteads were very scattered, for Plouherzel is not a village, but a region around a chapel.

Often we had far to walk, along muddy lanes, between moss-covered banks, under the vault of old dead beech trees and under the veil of the grey sky.

And all these cottages were alike, low, sunk in the earth, gloomy; their thatched roof, their rough granite walls, made green with scurvy grass, with lichen and the fresh moss of winter. Within, dark, primitive, with press-beds protected by pictures of the saints or statues of the Blessed Virgin.

We were received everywhere in most cordial fashion, and everywhere we needs must eat and drink. There were long conversations in Breton, with which, in my honour, was mingled, with indifferent success, a little French. It was of the childhood of Yves that these good people loved most to talk. Dear old men and dear old women recounted with glee the pranks he used to play; and, by all accounts, they were very numerous.

"Oh! he was a terrible fellow, you may take our word for it!"

Yves received these compliments with his big, placid air and drank at every opportunity.

The devil-may-care sea-rover was taking shape already, it seemed, in the heart of the little wild boy; the little Yves, who ran barefoot about these lanes of Plouherzel, was the unconscious germ of the sailor of later days, wild, truant, uncontrollable.

Towards evening, at low tide, we descended, Yves and I, into the bed of the salt-water lake, into the meadow of brown seaweed. We carried, each of us, a slice of black bread well buttered, and a large knife for opening shell-fish. A feast of his boyhood which he wanted to renew with me: shell-fish eaten raw with bread and butter.

The sea had receded for many miles, laying bare the vast fields of seaweed, the deep meadow in which the herbage was brown and briny, with strange living flowers. All around, granite walls enclosed this immense pond, and the isle shaped like a couchant beast, stripped to its feet, disclosed the bottom of its black base. There were many other granite blocks also, which had been hidden under water at high tide and now were visible, rising up, with their long trimmings of seaweed hanging like wet bedraggled hair. On the mournful plain many of them might be seen scattered all about, in strange attitudes of awakening.

The cold air was impregnated with the acrid odour of sea-wrack. Night came on slowly, with silent stealth, and all these large backs of stone began to take on the appearance of herds of monsters. We took the shell-fish on the end of our knives and ate them as they were, all living, with our slices of bread, being both hungry and in haste to be done before the light should fail.

"It's not so good as it used to be," said Yves when he had finished eating. "And somehow it seems to me melancholy here. . . . When I was little, I remember, there were times when I had the same feeling, but not so strongly as to-night. Let us go, shall we?"

Rather surprised by what he said, I replied to him:

"My poor Yves, I think you are becoming like me!"

"Like you, do you say?"

And he looked at me with a long melancholy smile, which revealed to me new things in him, new and indefinable things. And I realized that evening that he had in fact, much more than I should have thought, ways of thinking, ideas, sensations, similar to mine.

"And do you know," he continued, as if following still the same train of thought, "do you know there is one thing which troubles me often when we are far away, at sea or in countries overseas? I scarcely dare to tell you. . . . It is the idea that I might die perhaps and not be buried in our cemetery here."

And he pointed to the steeple of Plouherzel Church, which could be seen above the granite cliffs in the far distance, like a grey arrow.

"It is not from any religious feeling, as you will understand; for you know that I have no love for the clergy. No, it is just an idea that comes to me, I cannot tell you why. And when I am unhappy enough to think of this thing, I cease somehow to be brave."