Flower of the Gorse

CHAPTER II

THE FEAST OF SAINTE BARBE

On the morning of December 4 in that same year a postman walked up the narrow path leading to the front door of Mère Pitou's house in the Rue Mathias, Pont Aven, and handed in a bundle of letters. The family was at breakfast, the petit déjeuner of coffee and rolls that stays the appetite in every French household until a more substantial meal is prepared at noon. The weather was mild and bright, though a gusty sou'westerly wind was blowing; so door and windows were open.

Barbe saw the postman ere he unlatched the garden gate, and rose excitedly, nearly upsetting a cup in her haste.

"Why, what's the rush?" cried Ingersoll. "And who in the world are all these letters for?"

"Father dear, have you forgotten the date? This is Barbe's name day," said Yvonne.

"Oh, that's the explanation of tonight's festivity," laughed Ingersoll. "Sorry. It quite slipped my mind. Of course she has wagonloads of friends who make a point of remembering these things. Lucky Barbe! And, by the way, Madame, what about those pictures which the Lady of Le Faouet was to dispose of? It's high time she was getting busy. Here are three months sped and – if anything rather a slump in Ingersolls. Actually, my best commission thus far is a series of picture postcards of Le Pouldu – with benefits deferred till next season."

"Perhaps the good saint knew that you kept your tongue in your cheek while you were seeking her help," retorted Madame.

"Impossible. It was lolling out. You ungrateful one, didn't I climb the hill twice for your sake?"

Barbe exchanged a friendly word with the postman, who was well aware of the cause of this sudden increase in the mail delivery at the cottage. Then she ran in.

"One for you, M'sieu' – all the rest for me," she announced gleefully.

Ingersoll took his letter. It bore the Pouldu postmark and the printed name of a hotel. Usually such missives came from brother artists; but the handwriting on the envelop was essentially of the type that French hotelkeepers cultivate for the utter bamboozling of their foreign patrons. Yvonne glanced at it with some curiosity, and was still more surprised to see the look of humorous bewilderment on her father's face when he had mastered its contents.

"I take back everything I said, or even thought, about Sainte Barbe," he cried. "Learn how she has squelched me! The proprietor of the chief hotel at Le Pouldu offers four hundred francs for a picture of the plage with his hotel in the center. Certainly four hundred is a heap short of a thousand, which was the sum I named to her saintship; but then, a hôtelier isn't a dealer, and he promises to pay cash if the sketch is delivered in a week, because he wants it for a summer poster. Yvonne, have you finished breakfast? Run and find Peridot, there's a dear, and ask him if we can sail to Le Pouldu this morning. It'll save time to go by sea, and the tide will serve, I know. If Peridot says the weather is all right, drop in at Julia's, and invite Tollemache. We'll lunch gloriously with my hotel man, rub in the best part of the drawing afterward, and be back here in good time for the feast."

Yvonne hurried out. The hour was half-past eight, and the tide in the estuary of the Aven was already on the ebb. But she had not far to go. The Rue Mathias (nowadays glorified by a much more ambitious name) was not a minute's walk from the bridge that gives the village its name. Another minute brought her to the quay, where the brawling river escapes from its last millwheel, and tumbles joyously into tidal water. She was lucky. Peridot was there, mending a blue sardine net, – a natty, square-shouldered sailor, unusually fair for a Breton, though his blond hair was French enough in its bristliness, as a section of his scalp would have provided a first-rate clothes brush. He touched his cap with a smile when she appeared, and in answer to her query raised to the heavens those gray-green eyes which had earned him such a euphonious nickname.

"Yes, Mademoiselle Yvonne, we can make Le Pouldu by ten o'clock with this wind," he said. "We may get a wetting; but it won't be the first. Is – er – is Madeleine coming?"

"Not today. She promised to help Mère Pitou with tonight's supper. You will be there?"

"Wind and weather permitting, Ma'mselle. We go in your own boat, I suppose?"

"Yes. Can you allow fifteen minutes?"

"There will be plenty of water for the next half-hour."

Yvonne raced off again, this time to the Hotel Julia, not the huge modern annex, – that dominates the tiny marketplace of Pont Aven, – but the oldtime hostelry itself, tucked in snugly behind its four sycamores, like some sedate matron ever peering up in wonderment at its overgrown child across the street. In winter the habitués – the coterie of artists and writers who cluster under the wing of the famous Julia Guillou – eat in the dining room of the smaller hotel.

Crossing the terrace, a graveled part of the square shielded by the trees, Yvonne met Mademoiselle Julia herself, bustling forth to inspect eggs, poultry, and buckets of fish. This kindly, outspoken, resourceful-looking woman has tended and housed and helped at least two generations of painters. In her way she has done more for art than many academies.

"Is Monsieur Tollemache at breakfast, Mademoiselle?" inquired Yvonne.

Julia smiled broadly. Evidently it was the most natural thing imaginable that the pretty American girl, known to everyone in the village, should be asking the whereabouts of the stalwart youngster who would never be an artist, but was one of the hotel's most valued guests.

"Oui, ma chérie! I heard him shouting to Marie for three boiled eggs not so long ago. Out of three eggs one hatches a good meal. And how is your father? I haven't set eyes on him this week."

"He is so busy, Mademoiselle. There is so little daylight."

"Bring him to dinner on Sunday. We're roasting two of the biggest geese you ever saw!"

"He will be delighted, I'm sure."

Then Julia marched to conquer the venders of eatables. There would be a terrific argument; but the founder of modern Pont Aven would prevail.

Yvonne looked in through an open window of a delightful room, paneled in oak – on every panel a picture bearing a signature more or less eminent in the world of color. Tollemache was there, tapping his third egg.

"Lorry," she said, "Father and I are sailing to Le Pouldu. Will you come?"

"Will a duck swim?" was the prompt reply. "When do we start?"

"Soon. Be at the quay in ten minutes."

"By the clock. Plenty of oilskins in the locker?"

"Yes."

She sped away. A Frenchman, an artist who knew the Breton coast in all weathers, shook his head.

"Dangerous work, yachting off Finistère in December," he said. "What sort of boat are you going in?"

"Ingersoll's own tub, a vague– a sardine boat, you know."

"First-rate craft, of course. But mind you're not caught in a change of wind. The barometer is falling."

"Oh, as for that, we'll probably have Peridot in charge, and he was born with a caul; so he'll never be drowned. Even if he's not there, Ingersoll and Yvonne are good sailors, and I'm no fresh-water amateur."

"Well – good luck! I only ask you not to despise the Atlantic. Why is Ingersoll going to Le Pouldu at this time of the year?"

"Don't know, and don't care. It's an unexpected holiday for me; so my Salon study of the Bois d'Amour in winter must miss a day."

The Frenchman sighed; whether on account of the doubtful prospect before Tollemache's Salon picture or because of his own vanished youth, it would be hard to say.

"What a charming peasant girl – and how on earth did she acquire English with that perfect accent?" said a woman, a newcomer.

"She is the daughter of a celebrated American artist," explained the Frenchman.

"But why does she wear the Breton costume?"

"Because she has good taste."

"Oh! Is that a hit at current fashions?"

The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders. "Madame asked for information," he said. "To wander off into an essay on clothes would be impolite."

Before nine o'clock the Hirondelle, registered No. 415 at Concarneau, was speeding down the seven kilometers of the Aven estuary on a rapid-falling tide. Owing to the force and direction of the wind it would have been a waste of time to hoist a sail, even in those reaches of the winding river where some use might have been made of it. Tollemache and Peridot (whose real name was Jean Jacques Larraidou) rigged two long sweeps, and Yvonne took the tiller, keeping the boat in mid-stream to gain the full benefit of the current. In forty minutes they were abreast of the fortlike hotel at Port Manech, the summer offshoot of the Hotel Julia, and a steel-blue line on the horizon, widening each instant, told of the nearness of the sea. It was an uneven line too, ever and anon broken by a white-capped hillock.

Peridot, pulling his oar inboard, poised himself erect for a few seconds with an arm thrown round the foremast, and gazed steadily seaward. "She'll jump a bit out there," he said; though the fierce whistling of the wind drowned his words. He was aware of that, because he converted both hands into a megaphone when he turned and shouted to Yvonne. "We'll take the inside passage, Ma'mselle."

Before attempting to hoist the foresail he rummaged in a locker and produced oilskin coats and sou'westers. There was no delay. The four donned them quickly. Yvonne had changed her Breton dress for a short skirt and coat of heather mixture cloth, because coif and collar of fine linen were ill adapted to seagoing in rough weather.

Peridot held up three fingers. The girl nodded. Peridot and Tollemache hauled at the sail, and Yvonne kept the boat in the eye of the wind until three reefs were tied securely. Then the Hirondelle swung round to her task. She careened almost to the port gunwale under the first furious lash of the gale, and a sheet of spray beat noisily on oilskins and deck. But the stanch little craft steadied herself, and leaped into her best pace.

Ingersoll dived into the cabin, and reappeared with his pipe alight, the bowl held in a closed and gloved hand. Tollemache made play with a cigarette. Peridot clambered aft to relieve Yvonne.

"We'll make Le Pouldu in little more than the hour," he said.

"It's blowing half a gale," said the girl.

"Yes. If the wind doesn't veer, we should have a record trip. But we shouldn't start back a minute after three o'clock."

"Oh, my father will see to that. Moreover, we're due at Mère Pitou's at six."

Peridot showed all his white teeth in a smile. Madeleine would be there. He meant to marry Madeleine. There was no use in asking her to wed until after the Festival of the Gorse Flowers next August, since her heart was set on being Queen. Once that excitement was ended, Heaven willing, Madeleine Demoret would become Madame Larraidou!

In taking the rudder the man was not showing any distrust of Yvonne's nerve; but there was just a possibility that a crisis might call for instant decision, when the only warning would come from that sixth sense which coastal fishermen develop in counteracting the sea's fitful moods.

Perhaps once during the hour – perhaps not once in a year – some monstrous wave would roar in from the Atlantic, seeking to devour every small craft in its path. No one can account for these phenomena. They may arise from lunar influence, or from some peculiar action of the tides; but that they occur, and with disastrous results if unheeded, every fisherman from Stornoway to Cadiz will testify. Their size and fury are more marked in a southwesterly gale than at any other time, and the only safe maneuver for a boat sailing across the wind is to bring her sharply head on to the fast-moving ridge, and ride over it. Yvonne knew of these occasional sea dragons, but had never seen one. She knew what to do too, and for an instant was vexed with Peridot. He read her thought.

"I'd trust my own life to you, Ma'mselle," he said gallantly; "but I'd never forgive myself if anything happened to you."

She smiled in spite of her pique. To make her voice heard without screaming, she put her lips close to his ear. "This time, if anybody goes, we all go," she cried. He shook his head. "No, no, Ma'mselle. The sea will never get me," he said. "Hold tight here. This is the bar."

Certainly, even among experienced yachtsmen, there would not be lacking those who might have regarded the Hirondelle's present voyage as a piece of folly. There is no wilder coast in Europe than the barrier of shaggy rock that France opposes to the ocean from St. Malo to Biarritz. At Finistère, in particular, each headland is not a breakwater, but a ruin. During heavy storms the seas dash in frenzy up a hundred feet of shattered cliff, the Atlantic having smashed and overthrown every sheer wall of rock ages ago.

Of course the adventurers were not facing a No. 8 gale. That, indeed, would have been rank lunacy. But the estuaries of the Aven and the Belon, joining at Port Manech, were sending down no inconsiderable volume of water to meet a strong wind, and the opposing forces were waging bitter war. A mile farther on a channel ran between the mainland and a group of rocks called Les Verrés. There the tide and wind would not be so greatly at variance, and the partly submerged reef would lessen the force of the sea; though the only signs of its existence were a patch of high-flung spray and a small tower, with a black buoy at its easterly extremity. This was what Peridot had called the "inside passage." To the landsman it was a figure of speech. To the sailor it meant seas diminished to half their volume as compared with the "dirt" outside.

The Hirondelle raced through the turmoil at the bar as though she enjoyed it, and, once the islets were to windward, the journey became exhilarating. None of the four people on board displayed the least concern. Indeed, they reveled in the excursion. When their craft swept into the sheltered cove at Le Pouldu, not without a tossing on another bar, and was brought up alongside the small quay, their flushed faces and shining eyes showed that they looked on the outing as a thoroughly enjoyable one.

They were ready for an early luncheon too, and did full justice to the menu. Afterward, while Ingersoll planned his picture, Yvonne and Tollemache strolled along the right bank of the Laita to the hamlet of Le Pouldu.

The girl told her companion of the singular coincidence that brought her father an unexpected commission by that morning's post; but Tollemache pooh-poohed it.

"You're becoming almost as superstitious as these Bretons," he said. "It's high time your father took you to New York for a spell. Spooks can't live there since the automobile came along. They don't like the fumes of petrol, I fancy. But these silly Bretons appeal to a saint or dread a devil for every little thing. One stained-glass proposition can cure rheumatism in a man and another spavin in a horse. It's unlucky to gather and eat blackberries because the Crown of Thorns was made out of brambles. You can shoot a wretched tomtit; but you mustn't touch a magpie. If you want to marry a girl, you pray to Saint This; if you're anxious to shunt her, you go on your marrow-bones to Saint That. I'm fond of Brittany and its folk; but I can't stomach their legends. Look at that pin-dropping business at Sainte Barbe's well! Poor Madeleine couldn't get a pin home to save her life; whereas everybody knows that she and Peridot will make a match of it before this time next year."

Yvonne did not like to hear her friends' amiable weaknesses exposed thus ruthlessly. "If Homer nods, a poor girl who has watched ever so many love affairs since A.D. 235 may surely be forgiven an occasional mistake," she said.

"Has she been at it so long? What is the yarn?"

"Please don't speak so disrespectfully of Saint Barbara. Because she wanted to marry someone whom her father didn't approve of he imprisoned her in a tower, and when she was converted to Christianity beheaded her."

"The old rascal! Did the other fellow – the one she liked – climb the tower? Perhaps that accounts for the rings."

"It is possible. I have no doubt men were just as foolish seventeen centuries ago as they are today."

"Thanks. That personal touch helps a lot. But, supposing I asked your father to sanction – "

"If you will apply the moral, I must remind you that I am to refuse my first offer. But don't let us talk nonsense. It is time we made for the harbor."

"Crushed again!" murmured Tollemache, assuming an air of blithe indifference. He was only partly successful. Stealing a glance at Yvonne, he noted her heightened color and a curiously defiant glint in her blue eyes. Unconsciously she quickened her pace too, and Tollemache interpreted these outward and visible tokens of displeasure as hostile to the notion that had sprung into thrilling life in his mind that day at Le Faouet, when he peered down into Yvonne's agonized face when he was clinging like a fly to the wall of the tower.

"She regards me as a silly ass," he communed bitterly, "and not without good cause. What place do I fill in the world, anyhow? God created me a live-wire American, and the devil egged me on to spoil clean canvas. I'm little better than a hobo, and she knows it. Well, I'll swallow my medicine.

"I say, Kiddie," he cried aloud, "you needn't go off in a huff just because I was talking through my hat. Wait till I light a cigarette."

Though he was not sure that the bantering protest had deceived her, she pretended that it had; so the object aimed at was achieved. But Tollemache was of the tough fiber that regards no sacrifice as worth while unless it is complete.

"If you knew the facts, Yvonne, you'd never get mad with me when I talk about marrying anybody," he went on. "Why do I live in Pont Aven all the year round? Because it's cheap. Last year I earned three hundred and twenty francs for three pictures. At that rate of progress any girl who married me would jolly soon starve."

Yvonne remembered the famous three. Two were portraits of the oleograph order, in which Tollemache had shamelessly flattered his sitters. For these he received the three hundred francs. The twenty were paid for a sketch of a new villa which the builder wished to send to his mother-in-law! Still, she allowed herself to be surprised.

"Of course I knew you were only joking, Lorry," she said. "And while we are on the subject, I may as well tell you that I shall never leave my father. What you say about your means is rather astonishing, for all that. How can you possibly hire autos and live as you do?"

"Oh, I don't," he explained, with a sudden grimness of tone that she had never heard before. "My father pays all my bills, – living expenses, tailors, and that sort of thing, you know. The moment I marry without his approval I revert to my pocket-money allowance."

The girl knew they were trenching again on a dangerous topic. She was so exquisitely sensitive that she felt the imminence of some avowal that it would be better, perhaps, not to hear.

"What does money matter if we are happy?" she cried cheerfully. "And our small community in Pont Aven is a very united and pleasant one, don't you think?"

"Top notch," said he. "There's Ingersoll, coming down from the front. Bet you fifty centimes he has washed in a little gem – something I couldn't touch if I tried every day for ten years!"

"Dad is really very clever," agreed Yvonne, momentarily deaf to the irony of the words. "I often wonder why he has remained in our village eighteen years. People say he would soon find a place in Paris or New York. Sometimes I fancy that my mother's death must have distressed him beyond measure. He never speaks of her, even to me. Perhaps he can't bear to revive sad memories."

"I can understand that," said Tollemache. "I believe I should go dotty if married to a woman I really loved, and I lost her."

Yvonne darted into a shop to buy caramels. She had to escape somehow. When she emerged one side of her face was bulging, and she held out a cardboard box.

"Take one," she gurgled. Not yet twenty, she was sufficient of a woman to play a part when it suited her. By the time the two had joined Ingersoll they were boy and girl again, and the curtain, lifted for an instant on a tragedy, had fallen.

Tollemache, searching for some commonplace remark to relieve the tension of his own feelings, noticed the drift of smoke curling from a cottage chimney.

"What has happened to the wind?" he said.

"It has veered to the southeast, Monsieur," answered Peridot.

"I thought something of the sort had taken place, but was so busy that I did not pay any heed," said Ingersoll. Then his forehead wrinkled reflectively. "Southeast from southwest," he muttered. "On a rising tide that change should kick up a nasty sea. Is the return trip quite safe, Peridot?"