But the Sunday evenings were the saddest of all, because
of the relative gaiety in other homes on that day,
for there are joyful evenings even among those forgotten
hamlets of the coast; here and there, from some closed-up
hut, beaten about by the inky rains, ponderous songs
issued. Within, tables were spread for drinkers;
sailors sat before the smoking fire, the old ones
drinking brandy and the young ones flirting with the
girls; all more or less intoxicated and singing to
deaden thought. Close to them, the great sea,
their tomb on the morrow, sang also, filling the vacant
night with its immense profound voice.
On some Sundays, parties of young fellows who came
out of the taverns or back from Paimpol, passed along
the road, near the door of the Moans; they were such
as lived at the land’s end of Pors-Even way.
They passed very late, caring little for the cold
and wet, accustomed as they were to frost and tempests.
Gaud lent her ear to the medley of their songs and
shouts—soon lost in the uproar of the squalls
or the breakers—trying to distinguish Yann’s
voice, and then feeling strangely perplexed if she
thought she had heard it.
It really was too unkind of Yann not to have returned
to see them again, and to lead so gay a life so soon
after the death of Sylvestre; all this was unlike
him. No, she really could not understand him now,
but in spite of all she could not forget him or believe
him to be without heart.
The fact was that since his return he had been leading
a most dissipated life indeed. Three or four
times, on the Ploubazlanec road, she had seen him
coming towards her, but she was always quick enough
to shun him; and he, too, in those cases, took the
opposite direction over the heath. As if by mutual
understanding, now, they fled from each other.
CHAPTER XV—THE NEW SHIP
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.
Copyrights
An Iceland Fisherman from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
