CHAPTER LXIV

Little Pierre is at Plouherzel, trying to play in front of his grandmother's door--quite lost as he looks at the motionless sheet of water before him, with the large beastlike shape which seems to be asleep in the centre, behind a veil of mist. There is free air and open sky here, to be sure, but the wind is keener than at Toulven, and the country more desolate; and children feel these things by instinct; in the presence of things forlorn, they have involuntary melancholies and silences--as birds have.

Here now are two little comrades who have come from a neighbouring cottage to take stock of him, the little new-comer. But they are not those of Toulven; they do not know the same games; the few little words which they are able to speak are not of the same Breton. And, therefore, not venturing much on one side or the other, they remain all three at gaze, with shy smiles and comical little airs.

It was yesterday that little Pierre arrived at Plouherzel with Marie Kermadec. Yves had written to his wife bidding her make this journey as soon as she could; the thought had come to him suddenly, the hope indeed, that this might reconcile them with his mother. For the old woman, always hard and headstrong, after having in the first instance flatly refused her consent to their marriage, had accepted it subsequently with bad grace, and, since, had not even troubled to answer their letters.

Poor forsaken old woman! Of thirteen children whom God had given her, three had died in infancy. Of the eight sons who had reached manhood, all of them sailors, the sea had taken seven--seven who had been lost in shipwreck, or else had disappeared abroad, like Gildas and Goulven.

Her daughters, too, had left her. One of them had married an Icelander, who had taken her away to Tréquier; the other, her head turned by religion, had entered the convent of the Sisters of Saint Gildas du Secours.

There remained only the little grandchild, the forsaken little daughter of Goulven. And all the old woman's love was centred in her--an illegitimate child, it is true, but the last survivor of that long shipwreck which had bereft her, one after another, of the others. This little child loved to watch the incoming tide from the shore of the sea water lake. She had been forbidden to do it, but one day she went thither alone and did not return. The next tide brought in a stiff little corpse, a little body of white wax, which was laid to rest near the chapel, under a wooden cross and a mound of green turf.

She still cherished a hope in her son Yves, the last, the best beloved, because he had remained the longest at home. . . . Perhaps he, at least, would return one day to live near her!

But it was not to be. This Marie Keremenen had stolen him from her; and, at the same time--a thing which counted in her rancour--she had taken from her also the money which this son had previously sent to help her to live.

And for two years now, she had been alone, quite alone, and would be alone to her last day.

In obedience to Yves, Marie had come yesterday, after two days' journeying, and knocked at this door with her child. An old, hard-featured woman, whom she recognized at once without ever having seen her, had opened to her.

"I am Marie, Yves' wife. . . . How do you do, mother?"

"Yves' wife! Yves' wife! So this then is little Pierre? This is my little grandson?"

Her eye had softened as she looked at the little grandson. She had made them enter, given them to eat, seen that they were warm and comfortable, and prepared for them her best bed. But for all that there was a coldness, an ice which nothing could thaw.

In the corner, surreptitiously, the grandmother embraced her grandchild with affection. But before Marie she gave no sign and remained always stiff and hard.

Now and then they spoke of Yves, and Marie said timidly that, since their marriage, he had reformed greatly.

"Tra la la! . . . Reformed!" repeated the old woman, assuming her ill-tempered air. "Tra la la! my child! . . . Reformed! . . . He has his father's head, they are all the same, they are all alike, and you have not seen the last of it in him; mark my words!"

Then poor Marie, her heart heavy, not knowing what to reply, nor what else to say during the long day, nor what to do with herself, waited impatiently for the time fixed by Yves for their departure. Very surely she would not return.