CHAPTER LXVIII

_Sunday_, 31_st March_, 1881.

Toulven, in spring; the lanes full of primroses. A first warm breeze stirs the air, a surprise and a delight; it stirs the branches of the oaks and beeches, and the great leafless woods; it brings us, in this grey Brittany, the scent of distant places, memories of sunlit lands. A pale summer is at hand, with long, mild evenings.

We are all outside at the cottage door, the two old Keremenens, Yves, his wife, and Anne, little Corentine, and little Pierre. Religious chants, which we had first heard in the distance, are slowly drawing near. It is the procession coming with rhythmic step, the first procession of spring. It is now in the green lane. It is going to pass in front of us.

"Lift me, godfather, lift me!" says little Pierre, holding out his hands for me to take him in my arms, so that he may see better.

But Yves forestalls me and raising him very high, places him standing on his shoulders; and little Pierre smiles to find himself so tall and thrusts his hands into the mossy branches of the old trees.

The banner of the Virgin passes, borne by two young men, thoughtful and grave of mien. All the men of Trémeulé and of Toulven follow it, bareheaded, young and old, hat in hand, with long hair, brown or whitened by age, which falls on Breton jackets ornamented with old embroideries.

And the women come after: black corselets embroidered with eyes, a little restrained hubbub of voices pronouncing Celtic words, a movement of large white things of muslin on the heads. The old nurse follows last, bent and hobbling, always with her witch-like movements; she gives us a sign of recognition and threatens little Pierre, in fun, with the end of her stick.

It passes on and the noise with it.

Now, from behind and from a distance, we see the long procession as it ascends between the narrow walls of moss, a long lane of white wide-winged head-dresses and white collarettes.

It moves on, in zigzags, ascending always towards Saint Eloi of Toulven. It is a strange sight, this long procession.

"Oh! what a lot of coifs!" says Anne, who is the first to finish her rosary, and who begins to laugh, struck with the effect of all these white heads enlarged by the muslin wings.

And now it has disappeared--lost in the distances of the vault of beech trees--and one sees only the tender green of the lane and the tufts of primroses scattered everywhere: eager growths which have not waited for the sun, and which cluster on the moss in large compact masses, of a pale sulphur yellow, a milky amber colour. The Bretons called them "milk flowers."

I take little Pierre's hand and lead him with me into the woods, in order to leave Yves alone with his relations. They have very serious matters, it seems, to discuss together: those interminable questions of profits and distribution which, in the country, take so large a place in life.

This time it has to do with a dream Yves and his wife have dreamt together: to realize all their possessions and build a little house, covered with slate, in Toulven. I am to have my room there in this little house, and in it are to be put the old-fashioned Breton things I love, and flowers and ferns. They do not want to live any more in the large towns, not in Brest particularly--_it is not good for Yves._

"It is true," he says, "that I shall not often be at home; but when I am, we shall all be very happy there. And then, you know, later on when I take my pension . . . it is for then really; I shall settle down very nicely in my house and my little garden."

His pension! That is ever the sailor's dream. It begins in early youth, as if the present life were only a time of trial. To take his pension, at about forty; after having traversed the world from pole to pole, to possess a little plot of earth of his own, to live there very soberly and to leave it no more; to become someone of standing in his village, in his parish church--a churchwarden after having been a sea-rover; the devil turned monk and a very peaceful one. . . . How many of them are mown down before they reach it, this more peaceful hour of ripe age? And yet, if you ask them, they are all thinking of it.

This _sure method_ which Yves had discovered for keeping sober had succeeded very well; on board he was the exemplary sailor he had always been, and, on shore, we were never apart.

Since that miserable day which began the year 1881, the relations between us had completely changed, and I treated him now in every respect as a brother.

On board this _Sèvre_, a very small boat, we officers lived in a very cordial intimacy. Yves was now of our band. At the theatre, in our box; sharing our enterprises which for the most part were insignificant enough. Rather shy at first, refusing, slipping away, he had ended by accepting the position, because he felt that he was loved by us all. And I hoped by this new and perhaps unusual means to attach him to me as much as possible, and to raise him out of his past life and win him from his former friends.

That thing which it is usual to call education, that kind of polish which is applied thickly enough, it is true, on so many others, was entirely wanting in my brother Yves; but he had naturally a kind of tact, a delicacy much rarer, which cannot be assumed. When he was in our company, he kept himself always so well in his place, that in the end he himself began to feel at ease. He spoke very little, and never to say those banal things which everybody says. And when he put off his sailor's clothes and dressed himself in a well-fitting grey suit with grey suede gloves to match, then, though preserving still his careless sea-rover's carriage, his high-held head and his bronzed skin, he had all at once quite a distinguished air.

It used to amuse us to take him with us and present him to smart people upon whom his silence and bearing imposed and who found him rather haughty. And it was comical, next day, to see him once more a sailor, as good a topman as before.

Little Pierre and I, then, were in the woods of Toulven, looking for flowers during the family council.

We found a great many, pale yellow primroses, violet periwinkles, blue borage, and even red silenes, the first of the spring.

Little Pierre gathered as many as he could, in a state of great excitement, not knowing which way to run, panting hard, as if in the throes of a very important work; he brought them to me very eagerly in little handfuls, very badly picked, half-crushed in his little fingers, and too short in the stalk.

From the height we had reached we could see woods as far as eye could command; the blackthorns were already in flower; all the branches, all the reddish sprigs, full of buds, were waiting for the spring. And, in the distance, in the midst of this country of trees, Toulven church raised its grey spire.

We had been out so long that Corentine had been placed on the look out in the green lane to announce our return. We saw her from a distance, jumping, dancing, playing all sorts of tricks alone, her big head-dress and her collarette fluttering in the wind. And she shouted loud:

"They are coming, big Peter and little Peter, hand in hand."

And she turned it into a rhyme and sang it to a lively Breton air as she danced in time:

"See here they come together And they hold each other's hand, Peter big and Peter little Are coming hand in hand."

Her big head-dress and her collarette aflutter in the breeze, she danced like some little doll which had become possessed. And night was falling, a night of March, always mournful, under the leafless roof of the old trees. A sudden chill passed like a shudder of death over the woods, after the sunny warmth of the day:

"And they hold each other's hand, Peter big and Peter little! And little black man Peter!"

"Little black man" was the nickname Yves had borne, and she gave it now to her little cousin Pierre, on account of the bronzed colouring of the Kermadecs. Thereupon I called her "Little Miss Golden Locks," and the name stuck to her; it suited her well, on account of the curls which were for ever escaping from her head-dress, curls like skeins of golden silk.

Everybody in the cottage seemed very pleased, and Yves took me aside and told me that matters had been arranged very satisfactorily. Old Corentin was giving them two thousand francs and an aunt was lending them another thousand. With that they would be able to buy a piece of land for a term of years and begin to build immediately.

We had to leave immediately after dinner in order to catch the diligence at Toulven and the train at Bannalec. For Yves and I were returning to Lorient, where our ship was waiting for us in the harbour.

At about eleven o'clock, when we had got back to the chance lodging we had booked in the town, Yves, before going to bed, began to arrange in vases the flowers we had gathered in the woods of Toulven.

It was the first time in his life that he had ever done anything of the kind; he was surprised at himself that he should find pleasure in these poor little flowers to which he had never before given a thought.

"Well, well!" he said. "When I have my own little house at Toulven, I shall have flowers in it, for it seems to me that they look very well. But it is you, you know, who have given me the idea of these things. . . ."