CHAPTER LXXIX

"Hello! Is that you, Kermadec."

"Yes, Monsieur Kerjean."

"And on French leave, I bet?"

"Yes, Monsieur Kerjean."

So much indeed might have been guessed from his appearance.

"And so, I understand you are married, Yves? Someone from Paimpol, that big fellow Lisbatz, I think, told me you were a family man."

Yves shrugged his shoulders with a movement of bad-tempered carelessness, and said:

"If you are looking for men. Monsieur Kerjean . . . it will suit me very well to join your ship."

It was not the first time that this Captain Kerjean had enrolled a deserter. He understood. He knew how to take them and afterwards how to manage them. His ship, _la Belle-Rose_, which sailed under the American flag, was leaving on the following day for California. Yves was acceptable to him; he was indeed an excellent acquisition to a crew such as his.

The two moved aside and discussed, in a low voice, their treaty of alliance.

This took place in the Mercantile docks, on the morning of the second day after he had left his home.

The day before he had been to Recouvrance, skirting the walls, in an attempt to get news of his little Pierre. From a distance, he had seen him looking out of the window at the people passing below, with a little bandage round his head. And then he had returned on his tracks, sufficiently reassured, in the half-muddled condition of drunkenness in which he still was; he had returned on his tracks to "go and find his friends."

On this morning he had awakened at daybreak, in a hangar on the quay where his _friends_ had left him. His drunkenness had now passed, completely passed. The fine October weather continued, fresh and pure; things wore their customary aspects, as if nothing had happened, and his first thoughts were thoughts of tenderness for his son and for Marie; and he was on the point of rising and going back to them and asking them to forgive him. Some minutes passed before he realized the extent of his misfortune, realized that all was over, that he was lost. . . .

For how could he go back to them now? It was impossible! For very shame he could not.

Besides, he had escaped from the ship after being ordered to irons and, since, had absented himself for three whole days. These were not matters easily dismissed. And then to take once more those same resolutions, taken twenty times before, to make once more those same promises, to say once more those same words of repentance. . . . It did not bear thinking on. He smiled bitterly in self-pity and disgust.

And then again his wife had bidden him to "go!" He remembered that vividly, and her look of hate, as she showed him the door. No matter that he had deserved it a thousand times, he could never forgive her that, he who was so used to being lord and master. She had driven him away. So be it then, he had gone, he was following his destiny, she would never see him again.

This backsliding was all the more repugnant to him, in that it followed upon this period of decent peace during which he had caught a glimpse of and begun to realize a higher life; and this return to misery seemed to him a thing decisive and fatal. He observed now that he was covered with dust and mud and filth of other sort, and he began to dust himself, raising his head, and gradually assuming an expression of grimness and disdain.

That he should have fallen like a senseless brute on his little son and injured his poor little forehead! He became to himself a miserable, repulsive thing at the thought of it.

He began to break with his hands the sides of a wooden box which lay near him, and under his breath, after an instinctive glance round to see that he was alone, he called himself, with a bitter, mocking smile, vile names such as sailors use.

Now he was on his feet, looking determined and dangerous.

To desert! If he could join some ship and get away at once! There should be one in the docks; in fact that day there were many. Yes, he would desert at any price and disappear for ever!

His decision had been taken with an implacable resolve. He walked towards where the ships lay, his shoulders well back, his head high, the Breton self-will in his half-closed eyes, in his frowning brows.

He said to himself: "I am worthless, I know it, I always knew it, and they had far better let me go my ways. I have done my best, but I am what I am and it is not my fault."

And he was right perhaps: _it was not his fault._ As he was now he was not responsible; he yielded to mysterious influences which had their origin in the remote past and came to him with his blood; he was a victim of the law of heredity working through a whole family, a whole race.