After we had lunched together at the best inn, we found that the
winter's morning had yielded place to a fine May day. In the empty
little streets, branches of lilac, clusters of wistaria, pink foxgloves
which no one had sown brightened the grey walls; the sun was really
shining and all about was a savour of spring.
And Yves took in everything, marvelling that no recollection of his
early childhood came back to him, seeking, seeking in the dim background
of his memory, recognizing nothing, and then, little by little, becoming
disillusioned.
On the grand'place of Saint Pol the crowd of the Sunday was assembled.
It seemed a picture of the Middle Ages. The cathedral of the old bishops
of Léon dominated the square, overwhelming it with its dark
denticulated mass, throwing over it a great shadow of bygone times.
Around were ancient houses with gables and little turrets; all the
drinkers of the Sunday, wearing aslant their wide felt hats, were
sitting at table before the doors. This crowd in its Breton dress,
living and alert here, this, too, might have been a crowd of olden days;
in the air, one heard vibrate only the harsh syllables, the northern
_ya_ of the Celtic tongue.
Yves passed rather distractedly into the church, over the memorial
stones and over the old bishops asleep beneath.
But he stopped, suddenly thoughtful, at the door, before the baptismal
font.
"Look!" he said. "They held me above this. And we must have lived quite
near here; my poor mother has often told me that, on the day of my
baptism, on the day, you know, when they so cruelly insulted us by not
ringing the bell for me, she had heard, from her bed, the singing of the
priests."
Unfortunately Yves had omitted to obtain from his mother, at Plouherzel,
the information necessary to identify the house in which they used to
live.
He had reckoned on his godmother, Yvonne Kergaoc by name, who, he
understood, lived quite close to the church. And on our arrival we had
asked for this Yvonne Kergaoc: "Kergaoc." . . . They remembered her
well.
"But from where do you come, my good sirs? . . . She is dead these
twelve years!"
As for the Kermadecs no one had any recollection of them. And it was
scarcely to be wondered at: it was more than twenty years since they
left the town.
We climbed the tower of Creizker; naturally it was high, it seemed never
to end, this point in the air. We greatly disturbed the old crows who
had their nests in the granite.
A marvellous lace-work of grey stone, which mounted, mounted endlessly,
and was so slender it produced sensations of vertigo. We climbed within
it by a narrow and steep spiral staircase, discovering through all the
openings of the "open tower" infinite vistas.
At the top, isolated, the two of us, in the keen air and the blue sky,
we saw things as a hovering bird might see them. First, below our feet,
were the crows which whirled in a dark cloud, giving us a concert of
mournful cries; much lower, the old town of Saint Pol, all flattened
out, a Lilliputian crowd moving about in its little grey streets, like a
swarm of ants; as far as eye could see, to the south, stretched the
Breton country up to the Black Mountains; and, to the north, was the
port of Roscoff, with thousands of strange little rocks riddling with
their pointed tops the mirror of the sea--the mirror of the great pale
blue sea which stretched away to mingle in the farthest distance with
the similar blue of the sky.
It pleased us to have succeeded at last in climbing this Creizker, which
had so many times watched us pass in the midst of that infinity of
water; it was so calm, planted there, so permanent, so inaccessible and
unchanging, while we, poor waifs of the sea, were at the mercy of every
angry wind that blew.
This granite lace-work which supported us in the air had been smoothed
and worn by the winds and rains of four hundred winters. It was of a
grey deepened by warm pinkish tones; and over it, in patches, was that
yellow lichen, that moss peculiar to granite, which takes centuries to
grow and throws its golden tint over all the old Breton churches. The
ugly-faced gargoyles, the little monsters with irregular features, who
live high up there in the air, were making faces at our side in the sun,
as if they resented being looked at from so near, as if they were
surprised themselves to be so old, to have endured through so many
tempests and to find themselves once more in the sunlight. It was these
people who had presided from above over the birth of Yves; it was these
people also who from afar watched us with friendliness as we passed by
at sea, when we, for our part, saw only a vague black shaft. And now we
were making their acquaintance.
Yves was still very disappointed, however, that he had discovered no
trace of his old home nor of his father; no recollection, either in the
memory of others or his own. And he continued to gaze upon the grey
houses below, especially at those which were nearest the foot of the
tower, awaiting some intuition of the place where he was born.
We had now only half an hour to spend in Saint Pol before catching the
evening diligence. Tomorrow morning we should have to be back in Brest,
where our ship was waiting to take us once more very far from Brittany.
We sat down to drink some cider in an inn on the _Place de l'Église_,
and there again we questioned the hostess, who was a very old woman. And
she, as chance would have it, started suddenly on hearing Yves' name.
"You are Yves Kermadec's son?" she said. "Oh! Did I know your parents! I
should think so, indeed. We were neighbours in those days. Why, when you
arrived in the world, they sent to fetch me. But you are like your
father, you know! I watched you when you came in. But you are not so
handsome as he, bless me, though, to be sure, you are a fine-looking
man."
Yves, at this compliment, glanced at me, repressing a strong inclination
to smile; and then the old woman, growing very talkative, began to tell
him a multitude of things over which more than twenty years had passed,
while he listened attentive and greatly moved.
Then she called some other old women, who also had been neighbours, and
they all began to talk.
"Bless my soul!" they said. "How is it that no one was able to answer
you sooner? Everybody remembers them, remembers your parents. But people
are stupid in these parts; and then, when strangers come in this way, it
isn't surprising that people should hesitate to talk."
Yves' father had left in the country round a reputation a little
legendary of a kind of giant of rare beauty, who was never able to
conform to the ways of others.
"What a pity, sir, that such a man should so often go astray! It was the
tavern that ruined him, your poor father; for all that, he was very fond
of his wife and children, he was very gentle with them, and in the
country round everybody loved him except M. le Curé."
"Except M. le Curé!" Yves repeated to me in a low voice, becoming
serious. "You see it is what I told you, on the subject of my baptism."
"One day, there was a battle, here on the square, in 1848, for the
revolution; your father withstood single-handed the market people and
saved the life of the Mayor."
"He had a big horse," said the hostess, "which was so wild that no one
dared to approach it. And people kept out of the way, I assure you, when
he passed mounted on the beast."
"Ah!" said Yves, struck suddenly with a recollection which seemed to
have come to him from a great distance. "I remember that horse, and I
recall that my father used to lift me up and sit me on it when it was
tied in the stable. It is the first recollection I have of my father and
I can just picture a little his face. The horse was black, was it not,
with white hoofs?"
"That's it! That's it," said the old woman. "Black with white hoofs. It
was a wild beast, and, bless my soul! what an idea for a sailor to have
a horse!"
The inn is full of men drinking cider. They make a cheerful noise of
glasses and Breton conversations. And gradually they gather round and
make a sort of circle about us.
The hostess has four granddaughters, all alike, and all ravishingly
pretty in their white coifs. They do not look like daughters of an inn.
They are the perfect type of the handsome Breton race of the north, and
they have the calm, thoughtful expression of those women of olden times
which the old portraits have preserved for us. They, too, gathered round
us, looking and listening.
We are questioned in our turn. Yves replies: "My mother is still living
at Plouherzel with my two sisters. My two brothers, Gildas and Goulven,
are at sea, on American whalers. I myself have been for the last ten
years in the Navy."
There is not much time to lose if we want to see before we go the old
home of the Kermadecs. It is quite near, by the very side of the church.
They show it to us from the door, and advise us to ask to be allowed to
see the room on the left, on the first floor; that is the room in which
Yves was born.
At the side of the house is the large abandoned park of the bishopric of
Léon, where, it seems, Yves, when he was quite a little child, used to
play every day in the grass with Goulven. It is very thick to-day, this
grass of May, and full of Easter daisies and silenes. In the park roses
and lilac are growing wild now, as in a wood.
We knock at the door of the house which the good women have pointed out
to us, and those who live there are a little surprised at the request we
make. But we do not inspire distrust, and they ask us only not to make a
noise when we enter the first floor room, on account of the old
grandmother who is sleeping there and is on the point of death. And
then, considerately, they leave us alone.
We enter on tiptoe. It is a large room, poor and almost empty. The
things in it seem to have a presentiment of the grim visitor who is
expected; one is tempted almost to ask whether he has not already
arrived, and our eyes glance uneasily at a bed, the curtains of which
are drawn. Yves looks all round, trying to stretch his intelligence into
the past, to force himself as it were to remember. But it is no use. It
is finished; and even here he can find nothing.
We were descending preparatory to leaving, when suddenly something came
back to him like a light in the distance.
"Ah!" he said, "I think now that I recognize this staircase. Wait! Below
there should be a door on that side leading into a yard, and a well on
the left with a large tree, and, at the back, the stable where we used
to keep the horse with the white hoofs."
It was as if there had suddenly come a break in the clouds. Yves stood
still on the stairs, gazing through this gap which had just been opened
on the past; he was thrilled to feel himself at grips with that
mysterious thing which men call memory.
Below, in the yard, we found everything as he had described it, the well
on the left, the tree, the stable. And Yves said to me with an emotion
of awe, removing his hat as if he were by a grave:
"Now I can see quite clearly my father's face."
It was high time to depart, and the diligence was waiting for us.
Throughout our journey over this golden-coloured moor, during the long
May twilight, our eyes were fixed on the Creizker tower which was
disappearing in the distance, and was lost at last in the depths of the
limpid darkness. We were bidding it adieu, for we were going to leave
to-morrow for very distant seas, where it would no longer be able to see
us pass.
"To-morrow morning," said Yves, "you must let me come into your room on
board very early, so that I may write at your desk. I want to tell all
that we have found out to my mother before leaving France. And, you
know, I am sure that tears will come into her eyes when my letter is
read to her."