In Brittany, during the winter of 1876, the _Sibylle_ had been back at
Brest for two days--after having completed its voyage round the
world--and I was with Yves, one evening in February, in a country
diligence which was carrying us towards Plouherzel.
It was an out-of-the-way place, this village where Yves' mother lived.
The diligence in which we sat was due to take us in four hours from
Guincamp to Paimpol, where we counted on spending the night; and from
there we should have a long way to go on foot.
On we went, jolted over a rough little road, plunging deeper and deeper
into the silence of the mournful countryside. The winter's night
descended on us slowly, and a fine rain obscured things in a grey mist.
We passed trees and more trees, showing one after another their dead
silhouette. At wide intervals we passed villages also--Breton villages,
dark thatched cottages and old churches with slender granite
steeples--little groups of homesteads, isolated and melancholy, which
quickly disappeared behind us in the night.
"Do you know," said Yves, "I came this way, at night, eleven years
ago--I was then fourteen--and I wept bitterly. It was the first time I
had left home, and I was travelling alone to Brest to join the navy."
I was accompanying Yves on this journey to Plouherzel partly for want of
something to do. The leave granted me was short, and I had not time, on
this occasion, to visit my home, so I was going to visit his, and to see
this village of his which he loved so well.
And, at the moment, I was rather sorry I had come. Yves, absorbed in the
happiness of his return, kept up a conversation with me out of
deference, but his thoughts were elsewhere. I felt that I was a stranger
in this world for which we were bound, and this Brittany, which I had
not yet learned to love, oppressed me with its sadness.
_Paimpol!_ We roll over cobbles, between old dark houses, and the
diligence stops. People are waiting there with lanterns. Breton words
and French words are interchanged.
"Are there any travellers for the Hôtel Pendreff?" pipes a small boy's
voice.
The Hôtel Pendreff! Surely the name is familiar to me. And now I
remember that nine years before, during my first year in the navy, I had
rested there for an hour, on a day in June, when my ship, by chance, had
anchored in a bay near by. I recollect it well; an old manor house,
turreted and gabled, presided over by two aged sisters named Le
Pendreff, both alike, in large white bonnets, making a picture of bygone
days. We will get down at the Hôtel Pendreff.
In the house itself nothing is changed. But one of the Le Pendreff
sisters is dead. She who remains was already so old nine years ago that
she can scarcely have grown older since. Her type, her bonnet, the
placid dignity of her bearing, are of a past generation.
It is good to dine before the great roaring fire, and cheerfulness
returns to us.
Afterwards, the good dame Le Pendreff, armed with a copper candlestick,
leads the way up a stone staircase and ushers us into a very large room,
where there are two beds of an old-fashioned type hung with white
curtains.
Yves, however, undresses himself very slowly and without conviction.
"Ah!" he says, suddenly putting on his blue collar again. "I am going to
continue the journey! In the first place, you understand, I should not
be able to sleep. It's true, I shall get home very late, I shall awaken
them after midnight, and that will startle them a little--I did that in
the year when I returned from the war. But I am so anxious to see them,
I cannot wait here."
And I, too, decided that I would follow his example.
Paimpol is asleep when we leave in the pale moonlight. I am accompanying
him for a part of his way, to help to pass the hours of the night. We
are now in the fields.
Yves walks very quickly; he is very excited, and goes over in his mind
the memories of his earlier returns.
"Yes," he said. "After the war I returned like this, about two o'clock
in the morning, and woke them up. I had walked from Saint Brieuc; I was
returning, very weary, from the siege of Paris. You will realize I was
quite young then. I had just become able seaman.
"And, I remember, I got a great fright that night: by the cross of
Kergrist, which we shall see in a minute at the turning of this road, I
came upon a little old man, very ugly, who stared at me with
outstretched arms, but without moving. And I am sure he was a ghost; for
he disappeared almost at once, beckoning with his finger as if he wanted
me to follow him."
Presently we reached this cross of Kergrist. We saw it rise up before us
as if it were someone approaching in the darkness. But there was no
ghost at its foot.
It was there I said good-bye to Yves and retraced my steps, for I, for
my part, was not going to Plouherzel. When we no longer heard the sound
of each other's footsteps in the silence of the winter's night, the
ghost of the little old man came back into our minds, and in spite of
ourselves we took to peering into the darkness of the undergrowth.