At Paimpol lives a large, stout woman named Madame Tressoleur. In one of
the streets that lead to the harbour she keeps a tavern, well known to
all the Icelanders, where captains and ship-owners come to engage
their sailors, and choose the strongest among them, men and masters all
drinking together.
At one time she had been beautiful, and was still jolly with the
fishers; she has a mustache, is as broad built as a Dutchman, and as
bold and ready of speech as a Levantine. There is a look of the daughter
of the regiment about her, notwithstanding her ample nun-like muslin
headgear; for all that, a religious halo of its sort floats around her,
for the simple reason that she is a Breton born.
The names of all the sailors of the country are written in her head as
in a register; she knows them all, good or bad, and knows exactly, too,
what they earn and what they are worth.
One January day, Gaud, who had been called in to make a dress, sat down
to work in a room behind the tap-room.
To go into the abode of our Madame Tressoleur, you enter by a broad,
massive-pillared door, which recedes in the olden style under the first
floor. When you go to open this door, there is always some obliging gust
of wind from the street that pushes it in, and the new-comers make an
abrupt entrance, as if carried in by a beach roller. The hall is adorned
by gilt frames, containing pictures of ships and wrecks. In an angle
a china statuette of the Virgin is placed on a bracket, between two
bunches of artificial flowers.
These olden walls must have listened to many powerful songs of sailors,
and witnessed many wild gay scenes, since the first far-off days of
Paimpol--all through the lively times of the privateers, up to these of
the present Icelanders, so very little different from their ancestors.
Many lives of men have been angled for and hooked there, on the oaken
tables, between two drunken bouts.
While she was sewing the dress, Gaud lent her ear to the conversation
going on about Iceland, behind the partition, between Madame Tressoleur
and two old sailors, drinking. They were discussing a new craft that
was being rigged in the harbour. She never would be ready for the next
season, so they said of this _Leopoldine_.
“Oh, yes, to be sure she will!” answered the hostess. “I tell 'ee the
crew was all made up yesterday--the whole of 'em out of the old _Marie_
of Guermeur's, that's to be sold for breaking up; five young fellows
signed their engagement here before me, at this here table, and with my
own pen--so ye see, I'm right! And fine fellows, too, I can tell 'ee;
Laumec, Tugdual Caroff, Yvon Duff, young Keraez from Treguier, and long
Yann Gaos from Pors-Even, who's worth any three on 'em!”
The _Leopoldine_! The half-heard name of the ship that was to carry Yann
away became suddenly fixed in her brain, as if it had been hammered in
to remain more ineffaceably there.
At night back again at Ploubazlanec, and finishing off her work by the
light of her pitiful lamp, that name came back to her mind, and its very
sound impressed her as a sad thing. The names of vessels, as of things,
have a significance in themselves--almost a particular meaning of their
own. The new and unusual word haunted her with an unnatural persistency,
like some ghastly and clinging warning. She had expected to see Yann
start off again on the _Marie_, which she knew so well and had formerly
visited, and whose Virgin had so long protected its dangerous voyages;
and the change to the _Leopoldine_ increased her anguish.
But she told herself that that was not her concern, and nothing about
him ought ever to affect her. After all, what could it matter to her
whether he were here or there, on this ship or another, ashore or not?
Would she feel less miserable with him back in Iceland, when the summer
would return over the deserted cottages, and lonely anxious women--or
when a new autumn came again, bringing home the fishers once more? All
that was alike indifferent to her, equally without joy or hope. There
was no link between them now, nothing ever to bring them together, for
was he not forgetting even poor little Sylvestre? So, she had plainly to
understand that this sole dream of her life was over for ever; she had
to forget Yann, and all things appertaining to his existence, even the
very name of Iceland, which still vibrated in her with so painful a
charm--because of him all such thoughts must be swept away. All was
indeed over, for ever and ever.
She tenderly looked over at the poor old woman asleep, who still
required all her attention, but who would soon die. Then, what would be
the good of living and working after that; of what use would she be?
Out of doors, the western wind had again risen; and, notwithstanding its
deep distant soughing, the soft regular patter of the eaves-droppings
could be heard as they dripped from the roof. And so the tears of the
forsaken one began to flow--tears running even to her lips to impart
their briny taste, and dropping silently on her work, like summer
showers brought by no breeze, but suddenly falling, hurried and heavy,
from the over-laden clouds; as she could no longer see to work, and
she felt worked out and discouraged before this great hollowness of her
life, she folded up the extra-sized body of Madame Tressoleur and went
to bed.
She shivered upon that fine, grand bed, for, like all things in the
cottage, it seemed also to be getting colder and damper. But as she
was very young, although she still continued weeping, it ended by her
growing warm and falling asleep.