BRITTANY
"She hasn't had a holiday for nearly four years," said Molly. "I'm glad
she's gone for this summer. She wouldn't take Thomasine--she said she
wanted to be all, all alone, just for three months. Then she would come
back to work."
"Brittany--"
"Yes. A little place on the coast that she knew. She said she wanted
the sea. I thought perhaps that she had written to you--"
"Not since May," said John Fay. "There was a proposed extension of a
piece of work of mine in the West. I was called out there to see about
it, and I had to go. I was kept for weeks. I tried to get back, but I
couldn't--I was in honour bound. Then when I came her boat had sailed.
And now I--"
He measured the table with his fingers. "Do you think she would hate me
if I turned up in that place in Brittany?"
Molly considered it. "She's a reasonable being. Brittany isn't for the
benefit of just one person."
"Ah, but you see I should want to talk to her."
Molly pondered that, too. "Well, I should try, I think. If she doesn't
want to talk she will tell you so...."
Hagar's village was a small village, a grey patch of time-worn houses,
set like a lichen against a cliff with a heath above. Before it ran a
great and far stretch of brown sands. There was a tiny harbour where
the fishing-boats came in, and all beyond the thundering sea. The place
boasted a small inn, but she did not stay there. The widow of the curé
had to let a clean large room, overlooking a windy garden, and the
widow and her one servant set a table with simple, well-cooked fare.
Hagar stayed here, though most of the time, indeed, she stayed out upon
the brown, shell-strewn, far-stretching sands.
She walked for miles, or, down with the women at evening, she watched
the boats come one by one to haven, or, far from the village, beneath
some dune-like heap of sand, she sat with her hands about her knees
and watched the shifting colour of the sea. She had a book with her;
sometimes she read in it, and sometimes it lay unopened. All the
colours went over the sea, the surf murmured, the sea-birds flew, the
salt wind bent the sparse grass at the top of the dune. On such an
afternoon, after long, motionless dreaming, she changed her posture,
turning her eyes toward the distant village. A man was walking toward
her, over the firm sand. She watched him at first dreamily, then,
suddenly, with a quickened breath. While the distance between them was
yet great, she knew it to be Fay.
He came up to her and held out his hand. She put hers in it. "Did I
startle you?" he said. "If you don't want me, I will go away."
"I thought you were bridge-building in the West."
"I could get away at last. I crossed the Atlantic because I wanted to
see you. Do you mind, very much?"
"Do I mind seeing you here, in Brittany? No, I do not know that I mind
that.... Sit down and tell me about America. America has seemed so far
away, these still, still days ... farther away than the sun and the
moon."
Long and clean-limbed, with his sea-blue eyes and quizzical look, Fay
threw himself down upon the sand beside her. They talked that day of
people at home, of the work he had been doing and of her long absence
at Gilead Balm. She made him see the place--the old man who had
died--and Old Miss and Miss Serena and Captain Bob and the servants and
Lisa.
"They are going to live on there?"
"Yes. Just as they have done, until they, too, die.... Oh, Gilead Balm!"
Late in the afternoon, the sun making a red path across the waters,
and the red-sailed boats growing larger, coming toward the land,
they walked back to the village together. He left her at the door of
the curé's house. He himself was staying at the inn. She did not ask
him how long he would stay, or if he was on his way to other, larger
places. The situation accepted itself.
There followed some days of wandering together, through the little grey
town, or over the green headland to a country beyond of pine trees and
Druid stones, or, in the evening light, along the sands. They found a
sailboat, with an old, hale boatman, for hire, and they went out in
this boat. Sometimes the wind carried them along, swift as a leaf;
sometimes they went as in a sea-revery, so dreamily. The boatman knew
all the legends of the sea; he told them stories of the King of Ys
and the false Ahés, and then he talked of the Pardons of his youth.
Sometimes they skirted the coast, sometimes they went so far out that
the land was but an eastward-lying shadow. The next day, perhaps, they
wandered inland, over the heath among dolmens and menhirs, or, seated
on old wreckage upon the sands, the dark blue sea before them, now
they talked and now they kept company with silence. They talked little
rather than much. The place was taciturn, and her mood made for quiet.
It was not until the fourth day that he told her for what he had come.
"But you know for what I came."
"Yes, I know."
"If you could--"
"I want," said Hagar, "more time. Will you let it all rest for a little
longer? I don't think I could tell you truly to-day."
"As long as you wish," he said, "if only, in the end--"
Two days after this they went out in the afternoon in the boat. It had
been a warm day, with murk in the air. At the little landing-place Fay,
after a glance at the dim, hot arch of the sky, asked the boatman if
bad weather might be brewing. But the Breton was positive.
"Nothing to-day--nothing to-day! To-morrow, perhaps, m'sieu."
They went sailing far out, until the land sunk from sight. An hour or
two passed, pleasantly, pleasantly. Then suddenly the wind, where they
were, dropped like a stone. They lay for an hour with flapping sail
and watched the blue sky grow pallid and then darken. A puff of wind,
hot and heavy, lifted the hair from their brows. It increased; the sky
darkened yet more; with an appalling might and swiftness the worst
storm of the half-year burst upon them. The wind blew a hurricane; the
sea rose; suddenly the mast went. Fay and the Breton battled with the
wreckage, cut it loose--the boat righted. But she had shipped water
and her timbers were straining and creaking. The wind was whipping her
away to the open sea, and the waves, continually mounting, battered her
side. There was a perceptible list. Night was oncoming, and the fury
above increasing.
Hagar braided her long hair that the wind had loosened from its
fastening. "We are in danger," she said to Fay.
"Yes. Can you swim?"
"Yes. But there would be no long swimming in this sea."
They sat in the darkness of the storm. When the lightnings flashed each
had a vision of the other's face, tense and still. There was nothing
that could be done. The sailor, who was hardy enough, now muttered
prayers and now objurgations upon the faithless weather. He tried to
assure his passengers that not St. Anne herself could have foreseen
what was going to occur that afternoon. Certainly Jean Gouillou had
not. "That's understood," said Hagar, smiling at him in a flash of
lightning; and, "Just do your best now," said Fay.
The wild storm continued. Wind and wave tossed and drove the helpless
boat. Now it laboured in the black trough of the waves, now it
staggered upon the summits; and always it laboured more heavily, and
always it was more laggard in rising. The Breton and Fay took turns in
bailing the water out. It was now, save for the lightning, dark night.
At last it was seen--though still they worked on--that there was little
use in bailing. The boat grew heavier, more distressed. The sea was
running high.
"Some wave will swamp us?"
"Yes. It is a matter of time--and not long time, I think."
Hagar put out her hands to him. "Then I will tell you now--"
He took her hands. "Is it your answer?"
"Yes, my dear.... Yes, my dear."
They bent toward each other--their lips met. "Now, whether we live or
whether we die--"
The wild storm continued. The slow sands of the night ran on, and
still the boat lived, though always more weakly, with the end more
certainly before her. The Breton crossed himself and prayed. Hagar and
Fay sat close together, hand in hand. After midnight the storm suddenly
decreased in force. The lightning and thunder ceased, the clouds began
to part. In another hour there would be a sky all stars. The wind that
had been so loud and wild sank to a lingering, steady moaning. There
was left the tumultuous, lifted sea, and the boat sunken now almost to
her gunwales.
Fay spoke in a low voice. "Are you afraid of death?"
"No.... You cannot kill life."
"It will not be painful, going as we shall go--if it is to happen. And
to go together--"
"I am glad that we are going together--seeing that we are to go."
"Do you believe that--when it is over--we shall be together still?"
"Consciously together?"
"Yes."
"I do not know. No one knows. No one can know--yet. But I have faith
that we shall persist, and that intelligently. I do not think that
we shall forget or ignore our old selves. And if we wish to be
together--and we do wish it--then I think we may have power to compass
it."
"It has sometimes seemed to me," said Fay, "that After Death may prove
to be just Life with something like fourth dimensional powers. All
this life a memory as of childhood, and a power and freedom and scope
undreamed of now--"
"It is possible. All things are possible--save extinction.--I think,
too, it will be higher, more spiritual.... At any rate, I do not fear.
I feel awe as before something unknown and high."
"And I the same."
Off in the east the stars were paling, there was coming a vague and
mournful grey. The boat was sinking. The two men had torn away the
thwarts and with a piece of rope lashed them together. It would be
little more than a straw to cling to, in the turbulent wide ocean,
miles from land. All were cold and numbed with the wind and the rain
and the sea.
Purple streaks came into the east, a chill and solemn lift to all the
sea and air and the roofless ether. Hagar and Fay looked at the violet
light, at the extreme and ghostly calm of the fields of dawn. "It is
coming now," said Fay, and put his arm around her. The boat sank.
The three, clinging to the frail raft they had provided, were swung
from wave to wave beneath the glowing dawn.... The wind was stilled
now, the water, under the rising sun, smoothed itself out. They
drifted, drifted; and now the sun was an hour high.... "Look! look!"
cried the Breton, and they looked and saw a red sail coming toward
them.
A day or two later Hagar and Fay met at the gate of the curé's widow,
and climbing through the grey town came out upon the heath above. It
was a high, clear afternoon, with a marvellous blue sky. They walked
until they came to a circle of stones, raised there in the immemorial,
dark past. When they had wandered among them for a while, they rested,
leaning against the greatest menhir, looking out over the grey-green,
far-stretching heath to a line of sapphire sea. "It grows like a
dream," said Hagar. "Death, life--life, death.... I think we are
growing into something that transcends both ... as we have known both."
"Hagar, do you love me?"
"Yes, I love you.... It's a quiet love, but it's deep."
They sat down in the warm grass by the huge stone, and now they talked
and now they were silent and content. Little by little they laid their
plans.
"Let us go to London. I will go to Roger Michael's. We will marry
quietly there."
"Lily and Robert will want to come from Scotland."
"Well, we'll let them." Hagar laughed, a musical, sweet laugh. "Thomson
is in London with Mr. Greer. Dear old Thomson! I think he'll have to
come."
"Couldn't we have," said Fay, "a month in some old, green, still,
English country place?"
"With roses to the eaves and a sunken lane to wander in and at night a
cricket chirping on the hearth.... We'll try."
"And in October sail for home."
"And in October sail for home."
She looked at him with eyes that smiled and yet were grave. "You're
aware that you're marrying a working-woman, who intends to continue to
work?"
"I'm aware."
Her candid eyes continued to meet his. "I wish a child. While it needs
me and when it needs me, I shall be there."
His hand closed over hers. "Is it as though I did not know that--"
She kissed him on the lips. "And you're aware that I shall work on
through life for the fairer social order? And that, generally speaking,
the Woman Movement has me for keeps?"
"I'm aware. I'm going to help you."
"South America--"
"I'm not wedded," said Fay, "to South American governments. There are
a plenty of bridges to be built in the United States."
The grey-green silent heath stretched away to the shining sea. The
grasses waved around and between the grey altars of the past, and the
sky vaulted all, azure and splendid. Two sea-birds passed overhead with
a long, clarion cry. Two butterflies hung poised upon a thistle beside
them. The salt wind blew from the sea as it had blown against man and
woman when these stones were raised. They sat and talked until the sun
was low in the west, and then, hand in hand, walked back toward the
village.
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U. S. A
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious errors of punctuation and diacritics repaired.
Inconsistent hyphenation fixed.
P. 254: older women -> older woman.
P. 314: Englantine -> Eglatine.
P. 328: others changes appeared -> other changes appeared.
P. 335: left at table -> left at the table.
P. 349: Duplicate line removed: "Yes, and Mr. Laydon."