"I'm afraid," I said to Sweetheart, "that there is a bar sinister
upon his escutcheon, but possibly it is only the indelible mark of the
conquering British foxhound."
Sweetheart said, "Nonsense!" and the expedition moved, Luff leading
with a series of ear-splitting orders in the dog language which we
perfectly understood.
In ten minutes we stood on the cliffs, the salt wind whipping our
faces. Saint-Gildas-des-Prés lay at our feet.
"I know," observed Sweetheart calmly, "all about this place. Captain
Ylven told me at breakfast."
"Well," said I, "what's that island on the horizon?"
Then she overwhelmed me with erudition, until I longed for Baedeker and
revenge.
"That is the Isle de Groix, and all about us is the Bay of Biscay. This
little hamlet on the cliff is St. Julien, and if we follow the coast
far enough we come to Lorient."
"Follow the coast? Which way?"
Sweetheart had forgotten, and I triumphed in silence, until she stamped
her foot and marched off to assist Luff in investigating a suspicious
hole in the cliff.
I went to the edge of the plateau and looked over. The surf thundered
against the rocks, tossing long strands of seaweed over the pebbly
beach. A man with a wooden rake stood in the water up to his knees. He
raked the seaweed from the breakers as a farmer rakes weeds from the
lawn. The salt wind began to sting my lips and eyes. My throat felt dry
and salty. I turned toward the hamlet of St. Gildas. I had not imagined
it so small. Besides our house there were but three others clustered
under the river bank. Behind it stretched woods and grain fields broken
by patches of yellow gorse. Across the river stood a stone chapel
almost lost in the miles of moorland. To the east and west the downs
covered with gorse and heather rolled to the horizon. Here and there
along the cliffs stood what appeared to be the ruins of ancient forts,
and on a rock, just where the river sweeps out into the sea, rose a
dirty white signal tower. The tower was low and squatty and wet. It
looked like some saline excrescence which had slowly exuded from the
brine-soaked rock. On the bar hundreds of white gulls rose and settled
as the tide encroached; curlew were running along the foam-splashed
shore under the eastern cliffs across the river.
On our side of the river the cliffs were covered with blackthorn and
hawthorn, with here and there a stunted oak, probably so placed by
Providence as general rendezvous for all the small twittering birds of
Finistère. Birds were everywhere. From the clouds came the ceaseless
carol of skylarks; from the grain fields and the flowering gorse rose
an unbroken chorus, taken up and repeated by flocks of microscopical
songsters among the blackthorns on the cliffs.
"This is paradise, this wilderness," I thought.
Then, as I heard Sweetheart's mocking voice from the cliff:
O frère Jacques,
Dormez vous!
"I'm not asleep!" I cried in answer. "What is it?"
"Luff has unearthed a poor little mole, but I won't allow him to hurt
it."
"Jack, dear," she said, as I came up, "couldn't we keep it as a pet?
See, the poor little thing is blind."
As it was blind we called it "Love," which later was changed to
"Cupid," and finally, when we discovered it true gormandizing
character, for "Cupid" we substituted "Cupidity," by which name it
flourished and fattened.
"What a change," said Sweetheart sadly, "from Blind Love to Blind
Greed!"
The mole grew very fat.