Then Marie sat down, broken, utterly powerless, beside the cradle in
which their little son was sleeping.
Through the curtainless windows a whitish light began to enter, a pale,
pale light which made one feel cold.
Another day! In the street below could be heard the characteristic sound
of the lower quarters of Brest at the hour of the return to work:
thousands of wooden sabots hammering on the hard granite pavé. The
workers were returning to the dockyard, stopping on their way for one
last drink, in the taverns but just now opened which mingled with the
growing daylight the yellow light of their little lamps.
Marie remained there, motionless, perceiving with a painful acuteness
all these already familiar sounds of the winter mornings which ascended
from the street, voices husky with alcohol and the rumblings of sabots.
It was in one of those old many-storeyed houses, tall, immense, with
dark yards, rough granite walls as thick as ramparts, sheltering all
sorts of people, workmen, pensioners, sailors; at least thirty families
of drunkards. It was now four months since--on Yves' return from the
Antilles--she had left Toulven to come and live there.
A growing light entered through the windows, fell on the dirty,
dilapidated walls, penetrated little by little the whole of the large
room in which their modest little household furniture, now in disorder,
seemed lost. Clearly the day had come; and, out of thriftiness, she went
and blew out the candle, and then returned to sit by the window.
What was she going to do with this new day; should she work? No, she had
not the heart, and, then, what was the use?
Another day to be passed without a fire, with a heart that was dead,
watching the rain falling, watching and waiting! Waiting, waiting in an
anxiety that grew from hour to hour, waiting for the coming of the
darkness, for the moment when the hammering of the sabots would begin
once more in the grey street below, when the workers' day was done. For
Yves and the other sailors whose ships were in the port were released at
the same time as the workers in the dockyard; and then, every evening,
leaning out of her window, she would watch the flood of humanity pass,
searching, with anxious eyes, among all these groups, looking for him
who had taken from her her life.
She could recognize him from afar, by his tall figure and his bearing;
his blue collar towered over the others. When she had discovered him,
walking quickly, hastening towards their lodging, it seemed to her that
her poor heart overflowed, that she breathed better; and when she saw
him at last beneath her, entering the old low doorway, she was almost
happy. He had come--and when he was there and had embraced them both,
her and little Pierre, the danger was past, he would not go out again.
But if he was late, gradually she felt herself wrung with anguish. . . .
And when the hour was passed, and night came and the crowd had dispersed
and he had not returned, oh! then began those sinister evenings she knew
so well, those mortal evenings of waiting which she spent, the door
open, seated in a chair, her hands joined, saying her prayers, her ear
straining at all the sailors' songs which came from outside, trembling
at every sound of footsteps which she heard on the dark staircase.
And then, very late, when others, her neighbours, were in bed and could
no longer see her, she descended; in the cold, in the rain, she went out
like one possessed to wait at street corners, listen at the doors of
pot-houses where men were drinking still, press her pallid cheek against
the window-panes of taverns.