It was in the evening, after supper, that Yves' mother solemnly
recommended her son to my care. It was a trust that has endured until
now.
She had understood, with her mother's instinct, that I was not what I
appeared to be, and that I should be able to exercise over the destiny
of her last son a very important influence.
"She says," translated her daughter, "that you are deceiving us, sir,
and that Yves, too, is deceiving us to please you; that you are not one
like ourselves. . . . And she asks, since you voyage together, if you
will look after him."
Then the old woman began to tell me the story of Yves' father, a story
which I had heard long before from Yves himself. I listened to it
willingly, nevertheless, recited by this young girl, before the wide
Breton fireplace where the flames danced over a beech log.
"She says that our father was a very handsome sailor, so handsome that
no one in the country had ever seen so handsome a man walk the earth. He
died, leaving thirteen of us, thirteen children. He died as many sailors
of our country die. One Sunday when he had been drinking he put to sea
at night in his boat, in spite of a strong wind that blew from the
north-west, and he never returned. Like his sons, he was a man without
fear; but his head was not good. . . ."
And the poor mother looked at her son Yves.
"She says," continued the daughter, "that my parents lived at Saint
Pol-de-Léon, in Finistère, that Yves was one year old, and that I was
not yet born when our father died, that she then left Saint Pol and
returned to Plouherzel in Goëlo, her native country. My father left his
affairs in great disorder; almost all the money that at one time we had
had been spent in the tavern, and my mother had no longer wherewithal to
feed us. It was then that my two elder brothers, Gildas and Goulven,
left to become ship-boys on ocean-going ships.
"We have not seen much of them in the country here since their
departure, and yet it cannot be said that they have ceased to care about
us. They many times surrendered their sailors' pay in order to help my
mother to bring us up, us younger ones, Yves, my sister who is here, and
me.
"But Goulven deserted, sir, more than fifteen years ago, in a fit of
temper."
"They, too," said the old woman, "are handsome and brave sailors, their
heart is true as gold. . . . But they have their father's head, and
already they have taken to drinking heavily."
"My brother Gildas," the daughter went on, "served for seven years on
board an American ship engaged in whale fishing in the great ocean. That
voyage made him very rich; but it seems that it is a hard calling, is it
not, sir?"
"Yes, a hard calling indeed. . . ." I have seen them at work in the
great ocean, these sailors in question, half whale fishers and half
pirates, who pass years in the great swell of the southern seas without
ever touching inhabited land.
"He was so rich, my brother Gildas, when he returned from this fishing,
that he had a large sack filled full with pieces of gold."
"He poured them here on to my knees," said the old woman, holding out
the skirt of her dress as if to receive them again, "and my apron was
filled with them. Large golden coins of other countries, marked with all
sorts of heads of kings and birds.[1] There were some of them quite new,
with the portrait of a woman wearing a crown of feathers,[2] a single
one of which was worth more than a hundred francs. Never had we seen so
much gold. He gave a thousand francs to each of his sisters and a
thousand to me, his mother, and bought me this little house in which we
live. He squandered the rest in amusing himself at Paimpol and in doing
things which, certainly, were not good. But they are all like that, sir,
you know it better than I. For two months they spoke of none but him in
the town.
"Then he left us again and we have not seen him since. He is a brave
sailor, sir, is my son Gildas, but he has been ruined as his father was
by his fondness for liquor."
And the old woman bowed her head sadly as she spoke of this incurable
plague which destroys the families of Breton sailors.
There was silence for a time, and then she spoke again to her daughter
in an earnest voice, looking at me the while.
"She asks, sir, if you will make her this promise . . . about my
brother. . . ."
Her anxious, searching gaze, fixed on me, affected me strangely. It is
no doubt true that all mothers, however far apart in station they may
be, have, in certain hours, the same expression. . . . And now it seemed
to me that this mother of Yves had some resemblance to mine.
"Tell her that I swear to look after him _all my life, as if he were my
brother._"
And the daughter repeated, translating slowly into Breton:
"He swears that he will look after him all his life as if he were his
brother."
The old mother had risen, upright as ever, stern and brusque; she had
taken from the wall a picture of Christ and had advanced towards me,
addressing me as if she wished to take me at my word, there and then,
with naïve, impulsive simplicity:
"It is on this, sir, that she asks you to swear."
"No, mother, no!" said Yves, in confusion, trying to interpose, to stop
her.
But I held out my arm towards this picture of Christ, a little
surprised, a little moved, perhaps, and I repeated:
"I swear to do what I have said."
But my arm trembled a little because I foresaw that my responsibility
would be a heavy one in the future.
And then I took Yves' hand. His head was bowed in thought:
"And you will do what I tell you, you will follow me . . . _brother?_"
And he replied, in a low voice, hesitating, his eyes turned away, but
with the smile of a child:
"Why, yes . . . of course I will."
[Footnote 1: The Chilean _Condors._]
[Footnote 2: The twenty piastre piece of California (the whalers
usually turn their savings into this money).]