Some of these Parisian ladies quite won her by their
high-bred and distinguished manners, but she knew
them to be inaccessible to her, while from others
of a lower caste who would have been glad to make
friends with her, she kept proudly aloof, judging them
unworthy of her attention. Thus she had lived
almost without friends, without other society than
her father’s, who was engaged in business and
often away. So she did not regret that life of
estrangement and solitude.
But, none the less, on that day of arrival she had
been painfully surprised by the bitterness of this
Brittany, seen in full winter. And her heart
sickened at the thought of having to travel another
five or six hours in a jolting car—to penetrate
still farther into the blank, desolate country to
reach Paimpol.
All through the afternoon of that same grisly day,
her father and herself had journeyed in a little old
ramshackle vehicle, open to all the winds; passing,
with the falling night, through dull villages, under
ghostly trees, black-pearled with mist in drops.
And ere long lanterns had to be lit, and she could
perceive nothing else but what seemed two trails of
green Bengal lights, running on each side before the
horses, and which were merely the beams that the two
lanterns projected on the never-ending hedges of the
roadway. But how was it that trees were so green
in the month of December? Astonished at first,
she bent to look out, and then she remembered how
the gorse, the evergreen gorse of the paths and the
cliffs, never fades in the country of Paimpol.
At the same time a warmer breeze began to blow, which
she knew again and which smelt of the sea.
Towards the end of the journey she had been quite
awakened and amused by the new notion that struck
her, namely: “As this is winter, I shall
see the famous fishermen of Iceland.”
For in December they were to return, the brothers,
cousins, and lovers of whom all her friends, great
and small, had spoken to her during the long summer
evening walks in her holiday trips. And the thought
had haunted her, though she felt chilled in the slow-going
vehicle.
Now she had seen them, and her heart had been captured
by one of them too.
The first day she had seen him, this Yann, was the
day after his arrival, at the “Pardon des
Islandais,” which is on the eighth of December,
the fete-day of Our Lady of Bonne-Nouvelle, the patroness
of fishers—a little before the procession,
with the gray streets, still draped in white sheets,
on which were strewn ivy and holly and wintry blossoms
with their leaves.
At this Pardon the rejoicing was heavy and
wild under the sad sky. Joy without merriment,
composed chiefly of insouciance and contempt; of physical
strength and alcohol; above which floated, less disguised
than elsewhere, the universal warning of death.
