CHAPTER XCV

20_th October_, 1882.

I remember very well this day passed in Brittany. We three, under the grey sky, roaming the woods of Toulven, Marie, Anne and I.

My eyes still dazzled by sun and blue sea, and this Brittany, seen again so quickly and so suddenly for a few brief hours, absolutely as in the dreams we had of it at sea. . . . It seemed to me that I understood its charm for the first time.

And Yves was at the other side of the world, in the great ocean. How strange it was to feel that he was so far away and that I was here without him in these Toulven lanes!

We rushed about, all three, like people possessed, in the green lanes, under the grey sky, the large coifs of Marie and Anne blown back by the wind. For night was closing in and we wanted during this last hour to gather the harvest of ferns and heather, which, on the following morning, I was going to carry off to Paris. Oh! these departures, always coming too soon, changing everything, casting a sadness over the things you are about to leave, and plunging you afterwards into the unknown!

This time again, there was the pervading melancholy of the late autumn: the air was still mild, the verdure admirable, with almost the intense green of the tropics, but the Breton sky was there, grey and sombre, and already the savour of dead leaves and of winter. . . .

We had left little Pierre in the house so that we might walk more quickly. On our way we picked the last foxgloves, the last red silenes, the last scabious.

In the sunken lanes, in the green darkness, we passed long-haired old men, and women in cloth bodices embroidered with rows of eyes.

There were mysterious crossways in the woods. In the distance one could see the wooded hills ranged in monotonous lines, the unchanging ageless horizon of the country of Toulven, the same horizon as the Celts must have seen, the farthest planes losing themselves in the grey obscurities, in bluish tones tending to black.

And with what pleasure I had greeted my little Pierre, as I came along this road of Toulven! I had seen the little fellow in the distance and failed to recognize him; and he had run to meet me, skipping like a young goat. They had told him: "That is your godfather coming yonder," and he had rushed off at once. He had grown and improved in looks and had a more enterprising not to say boisterous air.

It was at this visit I saw for the first and last time little Yvonne, Yves' little daughter who was born after our departure, and who made on this earth only a brief appearance of a few months. She was very like him; the same eyes, the same expression. It was strange to see this resemblance of a small girl-baby to a man.

One day she returned to the mysterious regions whence she had come, called away suddenly by a childish malady, which neither the old nurse nor the learned woman brought in from Toulven had understood. And they laid her in the churchyard, the eyes that were so like Yves' closed for ever.

We had spent in the woods our two hours of daylight. It was not until after supper that Marie and I went to see, in the moonlight, what was to be their new home.

On the site of the oat field which we had measured in June of the preceding year stood now the four walls of Yves' house; it had yet no shutters, no floor, no roof, and, in the moonlight, looked like a ruin.

We sat down on some stones inside, alone together for the first time.

It was of Yves we talked, needless to say. She asked me anxiously about him, about his future, imagining that I knew better than she this husband whom she adored with a kind of fear, without understanding him. And I reassured her, for I was very hopeful: the sea-rover had a good and honest heart; and if we could touch him there, we ought in the end to succeed.

Anne appeared suddenly, having approached noiselessly in order to startle us:

"Oh, Marie!" she said, "move away quickly! See what an ugly shadow you are making behind you!"

We had not noticed it, but in the moonlight her head, with the wings of her coif moving in the wind, cast behind her, on the new wall, a shadow in the form of a very large and very ugly bat. It was enough to bring us misfortune.

In Toulven there was a music of bagpipes. To reach the inn, to which they were both escorting me, we had to pass through an unexpected fête, going on in the moonlight. It was the wedding of a well-to-do couple and there was dancing in the open, on the square. I stopped, with Anne and Marie, to watch the long chain of the gavotte whirl and pass, led by the shrill voice of the pipes. The full moon made whiter the coifs of the women which flitted past us as if carried away by wind and speed; on the breasts of the men we caught the fleeting glitter of embroidered gorgets and silver spangles.

At the farther end of Toulven we came upon another concourse. It did not seem natural, this animation in the village, at night; more coifs again, hurrying, pressing forward in order to get a better view; for a band of pilgrims was returning from Lourdes. They entered the village singing hymns.

"There have been two miracles, sir; we heard so this morning by telegraph."

I turned round and saw that it was Pierre Kerbras, Anne's sweetheart, who vouchsafed us this information.

The pilgrims passed, their large rosaries about their necks; behind came two infirm old women, who, for their part, had not been cured, and who were being carried in men's arms.

The following morning old Corentin, Anne and little Pierre, in their Sunday clothes, accompanied me in Pierre Kerbras' wagonette to the station at Bannalec.

In the compartment I entered two English women were already installed.

Little Pierre, his happy face the colour of a ripe peach, was lifted up to the carriage window to kiss me good-bye, and he burst out laughing at the sight of a little bulldog which the women carried in their blazoned travelling-bag. He was sorry enough that I was going away; but this little dog in the bag seemed to him so comical that he could not get over it. And the old ladies smiled also, and said that little Pierre was "a very beautiful baby."

And this was the last of Brittany for a long time; I had spent some twenty hours there, and, on the following morning, it was already far away from me.