At home, with the door tightly closed, she gave vent
to the deep scream of despair that choked her, and
fell down in a corner, her head against the wall.
Her cap had fallen over her eyes; she threw off roughly
what formerly had been so well taken care of.
Her Sunday dress was soiled, and a thin mesh of yellowish
white hair strayed from beneath her cap, completing
her pitiful, poverty-stricken disorder.
Thus did Gaud, coming in for news in the evening,
find her; her hair dishevelled, her arms hanging down,
and her head resting against the stone wall, with
a falling jaw grinning, and the plaintive whimper of
a little child; she scarcely could weep any more; these
grandmothers, grown too old, have no tears left in
their dried-up eyes.
“My grandson is dead!” She threw the letters,
papers, and medal into her caller’s lap.
Gaud quickly scanned the whole, saw the news was true,
and fell on her knees to pray. The two women
remained there together almost dumb, through the June
gloaming, which in Brittany is long but in Iceland
is never-ending. On the hearth the cricket that
brings joy was chirping his shrill music.
The dim dusk entered through the narrow window into
the dwelling of those Moans, who had all been devoured
by the sea, and whose family was now extinguished.
At last Gaud said: “I’ll come
to you, good granny, to live with you; I’ll
bring my bed that they’ve left me, and I’ll
take care of you and nurse you—you shan’t
be all alone.”
She wept, too, for her little friend Sylvestre, but
in her sorrow she was led involuntarily to think of
another—he who had gone back to the deep-sea
fishery.
They would have to write to Yann and tell him Sylvestre
was dead; it was just now that the fishers were starting.
Would he, too, weep for him? Mayhap he would,
for he had loved him dearly. In the midst of her
own tears, Gaud thought a great deal of him; now and
again waxing wroth against the hard-hearted fellow,
and then pitying him at the thought of that pain which
would strike him also, and which would be as a link
between them both—one way and another, her
heart was full of him.
One pale August evening, the letter that announced
Yann’s brother’s death, at length arrived
on board the Marie, upon the Iceland seas;
it was after a day of hard work and excessive fatigue,
just as they were going down to sup and to rest.
With eyes heavy with sleep, he read it in their dark
nook below deck, lit by the yellow beam of the small
lamp; at the first moment he became stunned and giddy,
like one dazed out of fair understanding. Very
proud and reticent in all things concerning the feelings
was Yann, and he hid the letter in his blue jersey,
next his breast, without saying anything, as sailors
do. But he did not feel the courage to sit down
with the others to supper, and disdaining even to
explain why, he threw himself into his berth and fell
asleep. Soon he dreamed of Sylvestre dead, and
of his funeral going by.
