“So we’ll go to the wedding when the Icelanders
return; eh, my dear children?”
Gaud hung her head. “Iceland,” the
“Leopoldine”—so it was
all real! while she had already forgotten the existence
of those terrible things that arose in their way.
“When the Icelanders return.”
How long that anxious summer waiting would seem!
Yann drummed on the floor with his foot feverishly
and rapidly. He seemed to be in a great hurry
to be off and back, and was telling the days to know
if, without losing time, they would be able to get
married before his sailing. So many days to get
the official papers filled and signed; so many for
the banns: that would only bring them up to the
twentieth or twenty-fifth of the month for the wedding,
and if nothing rose in the way, they could have a
whole honeymoon week together before he sailed.
“I’m going to start by telling my father,”
said he, with as much haste as if each moment of their
lives were now numbered and precious.
All sweethearts like to sit on the bench at their
cottage door, when night falls.
Yann and Gaud did that likewise. Every evening
they sat out together before the Moans’ cottage,
on the old granite seat, and talked love.
Others have the spring-time, the soft shadow of the
trees, balmy evenings, and flowering rosebushes; they
had only the February twilight, which fell over the
sea-beaten land, strewn with eel-grass and stones.
There was no branch of verdure above their heads or
around them; nothing but the immense sky, over which
passed the slowly wandering mists. And their
flowers were brown sea-weeds, drawn up from the beach
by the fishers, as they dragged their nets along.
The winters are not very severe in this part of the
country, being tempered by currents of the sea; but,
notwithstanding that, the gloaming was often laden
with invisible icy rain, which fell upon their shoulders
as they sat together. But they remained there,
feeling warm and happy. The bench, which was
more than a hundred years old, did not seem in the
least surprised at their love, having seen many other
pairs in its time; it had listened to many soft words,
which are always the same on the lips of the young,
from generation to generation; and it had become used
to seeing lovers sit upon it again, when they returned
to it old and trembling; but in the broad day, this
time, to warm themselves in the last sun they would
see.
From time to time Granny Moan would put her head out
at the door to have a look at them, and try to induce
them to come in. “You’ll catch cold,
my good children,” said she, “and then
you’ll fall ill—Lord knows, it really
isn’t sensible to remain out so late.”
Cold! they cold? Were they conscious of anything
else besides the bliss of being together.
