"Good morning, Yves!"
"Good morning, Pierre!"
And we throw open to the light of the morning the shutters of our
cupboard.
This "Good morning, Pierre!" preceded by a little smile of intelligence,
is said with hesitation, in a shy voice; it is "Good morning, Captain!"
that Yves is accustomed to say, and he is rather disconcerted at finding
himself on awakening, so near me and under the necessity of calling me
by my name. To impose upon the good people of Plouherzel and preserve
the character given me by my borrowed clothes, we had concerted this
show of intimacy.
The sunshine of yesterday had departed and the high wind of the night
was no more. It was typical Brittany weather and the whole country was
enveloped in the same immense grey cloud. The light was the light of
twilight, and was so pale and wan that it seemed that it had not
strength enough to enter through the little windows of the cottages. Of
distant things one could distinguish nothing; a fine drizzle, like a
watery dust, filled the air.
We had to make the promised round of visits to uncles, cousins, old
friends of boyhood; and these little homesteads were very scattered, for
Plouherzel is not a village, but a region around a chapel.
Often we had far to walk, along muddy lanes, between moss-covered banks,
under the vault of old dead beech trees and under the veil of the grey
sky.
And all these cottages were alike, low, sunk in the earth, gloomy; their
thatched roof, their rough granite walls, made green with scurvy grass,
with lichen and the fresh moss of winter. Within, dark, primitive, with
press-beds protected by pictures of the saints or statues of the Blessed
Virgin.
We were received everywhere in most cordial fashion, and everywhere we
needs must eat and drink. There were long conversations in Breton, with
which, in my honour, was mingled, with indifferent success, a little
French. It was of the childhood of Yves that these good people loved
most to talk. Dear old men and dear old women recounted with glee the
pranks he used to play; and, by all accounts, they were very numerous.
"Oh! he was a terrible fellow, you may take our word for it!"
Yves received these compliments with his big, placid air and drank at
every opportunity.
The devil-may-care sea-rover was taking shape already, it seemed, in the
heart of the little wild boy; the little Yves, who ran barefoot about
these lanes of Plouherzel, was the unconscious germ of the sailor of
later days, wild, truant, uncontrollable.
Towards evening, at low tide, we descended, Yves and I, into the bed of
the salt-water lake, into the meadow of brown seaweed. We carried, each
of us, a slice of black bread well buttered, and a large knife for
opening shell-fish. A feast of his boyhood which he wanted to renew with
me: shell-fish eaten raw with bread and butter.
The sea had receded for many miles, laying bare the vast fields of
seaweed, the deep meadow in which the herbage was brown and briny, with
strange living flowers. All around, granite walls enclosed this immense
pond, and the isle shaped like a couchant beast, stripped to its feet,
disclosed the bottom of its black base. There were many other granite
blocks also, which had been hidden under water at high tide and now were
visible, rising up, with their long trimmings of seaweed hanging like
wet bedraggled hair. On the mournful plain many of them might be seen
scattered all about, in strange attitudes of awakening.
The cold air was impregnated with the acrid odour of sea-wrack. Night
came on slowly, with silent stealth, and all these large backs of stone
began to take on the appearance of herds of monsters. We took the
shell-fish on the end of our knives and ate them as they were, all
living, with our slices of bread, being both hungry and in haste to be
done before the light should fail.
"It's not so good as it used to be," said Yves when he had finished
eating. "And somehow it seems to me melancholy here. . . . When I was
little, I remember, there were times when I had the same feeling, but
not so strongly as to-night. Let us go, shall we?"
Rather surprised by what he said, I replied to him:
"My poor Yves, I think you are becoming like me!"
"Like you, do you say?"
And he looked at me with a long melancholy smile, which revealed to me
new things in him, new and indefinable things. And I realized that
evening that he had in fact, much more than I should have thought, ways
of thinking, ideas, sensations, similar to mine.
"And do you know," he continued, as if following still the same train of
thought, "do you know there is one thing which troubles me often when we
are far away, at sea or in countries overseas? I scarcely dare to tell
you. . . . It is the idea that I might die perhaps and not be buried in
our cemetery here."
And he pointed to the steeple of Plouherzel Church, which could be seen
above the granite cliffs in the far distance, like a grey arrow.
"It is not from any religious feeling, as you will understand; for you
know that I have no love for the clergy. No, it is just an idea that
comes to me, I cannot tell you why. And when I am unhappy enough to
think of this thing, I cease somehow to be brave."