Part 3 In The Shadow Chapter 5

One day, in the first fortnight of June, as old Yvonne was returninghome, some neighbours told her that she had been sent for by theCommissioner from the Naval Registry Office. Of course it concernedher grandson, but that did not frighten her in the least. The familiesof seafarers are used to the Naval Registry, and she, the daughter,wife, mother, and grandmother of seamen, had known that office for thepast sixty years.

　　Doubtless it had to do with his "delegation"; or perhaps there was asmall prize-money account from /La Circe/ to take through her proxy.

　　As she knew what respect was due to "/Monsieur le Commissaire/," sheput on her best gown and a clean white cap, and set out about twoo'clock.

　　Trotting along swiftly on the pathways of the cliff, she nearedPaimpol; and musing upon these two months without letters, she grew abit anxious.

　　She met her old sweetheart sitting out at his door. He had greatlyaged since the appearance of the winter cold.

　　"Eh, eh! When you're ready, you know, don't make any ceremony, mybeauty!" That "suit of deal" still haunted his mind.

　　The joyous brightness of June smiled around her. On the rocky heightsthere still grew the stunted reeds with their yellow blossoms; butpassing into the hollow nooks sheltered against the bitter sea winds,one met with high sweet-smelling grass. But the poor old woman did notsee all this, over whose head so many rapid seasons had passed, whichnow seemed as short as days.

　　Around the crumbling hamlet with its gloomy walls grew roses, pinks,and stocks; and even up on the tops of the whitewashed and mossyroofs, sprang the flowerets that attracted the first "miller"butterflies of the season.

　　This spring-time was almost without love in the land of Icelanders,and the beautiful lasses of proud race, who sat out dreaming on theirdoorsteps, seemed to look far beyond the visible things with theirblue or brown eyes. The young men, who were the objects of theirmelancholy and desires, were remote, fishing on the northern seas.

　　But it was a spring-time for all that--warm, sweet, and troubling,with its buzzing of flies and perfume of young plants.

　　And all this soulless freshness smiled upon the poor old grandmother,who was quickly walking along to hear of the death of her last-borngrandson. She neared the awful moment when this event, which had takenplace in the so distant Chinese seas, was to be told to her; she wastaking that sinister walk that Sylvestre had divined at his death-hour--the sight of that had torn his last agonized tears from him; hisdarling old granny summoned to Paimpol to be told that he was dead!

　　Clearly he had seen her pass along that road, running straight on,with her tiny brown shawl, her umbrella, and large head-dress. Andthat apparition had made him toss and writhe in fearful anguish, whilethe huge, red sun of the Equator, disappearing in its glory, peeredthrough the port-hole of the hospital to watch him die. But he, in hislast hallucination, had seen his old granny moving under a rain-ladensky, and on the contrary a joyous laughing spring-time mocked her onall sides.

　　Nearing Paimpol, she became more and more uneasy, and improved herspeed. Now she is in the gray town with its narrow granite streets,where the sun falls, bidding good-day to some other old women, hercontemporaries, sitting at their windows. Astonished to see her; theysaid: "Wherever is she going so quickly, in her Sunday gown, on aweek-day?""Monsieur le Commissaire" of the Naval Enlistment Office was not injust then. One ugly little creature, about fifteen years old, who washis clerk, sat at his desk. As he was too puny to be a fisher, he hadreceived some education and passed his time in that same chair, in hisblack linen dust-sleeves, scratching away at paper.

　　With a look of importance, when she had said her name, he got up toget the official documents from off a shelf.

　　There were a great many papers--what did it all mean? Parchments,sealed papers, a sailor's record-book, grown yellow on the sea, andover all floated an odour of death. He spread them all out before thepoor old woman, who began to tremble and feel dizzy. She had justrecognized two of the letters which Gaud used to write for her to hergrandson, and which were now returned to her never unsealed. The samething had happened twenty years ago at the death of her son Pierre;the letters had been sent back from China to "Monsieur leCommissaire," who had given them to her thus.

　　Now he was reading out in a consequential voice: "Moan, Jean-Marie-Sylvestre, registered at Paimpol, folio 213, number 2091, died onboard the /Bien Hoa/, on the 14th of ----.""What--what has happened to him, my good sir?""Discharged--dead," he answered.

　　It wasn't because this clerk was unkind, but if he spoke in thatbrutal way, it was through want of judgment, and from lack ofintelligence in the little incomplete being.

　　As he saw that she did not understand that technical expression, hesaid in Breton:

　　"/Marw eo/!""/Marw eo/!" (He is dead.)She repeated the words after him, in her aged tremulous voice, as apoor cracked echo would send back some indifferent phrase. So what shehad partly foreseen was true; but it only made her tremble; now thatit was certain, it seemed to affect her no more. To begin with, herfaculty to suffer was slightly dulled by old age, especially sincethis last winter. Pain did not strike her immediately. Somethingseemed to fall upside down in her brain, and somehow or another shemixed this death up with others. She had lost so many of them before.

　　She needed a moment to grasp that this was her very last one, herdarling, the object of all her prayers, life, and waiting, and of allher thoughts, already darkened by the sombre approach of secondchildhood.

　　She felt a sort of shame at showing her despair before this littlegentleman who horrified her. Was that the way to tell a grandmother ofher darling's death? She remained standing before the desk, stiffened,and tearing the fringes of her brown shawl with her poor aged hands,sore and chapped with washing.

　　How far away she felt from home! Goodness! what a long walk back to begone through, and steadily, too, before nearing the whitewashed hut inwhich she longed to shut herself up, like a wounded beast who hides inits hole to die. And so she tried not to think too much and not tounderstand yet, frightened above all at the long home-journey.

　　They gave her an order to go and take, as the heiress, the thirtyfrancs that came from the sale of Sylvestre's bag; and then theletters, the certificates, and the box containing the military medal.

　　She took the whole parcel awkwardly with open fingers, unable to findpockets to put them in.

　　She went straight through Paimpol, looking at no one, her body bentslightly like one about to fall, with a rushing of blood in her ears;pressing and hurrying along like some poor old machine, which couldnot be wound up, at a great pressure, for the last time, without fearof breaking its springs.

　　At the third mile she went along quite bent in two and exhausted; fromtime to time her foot struck against the stones, giving her a painfulshock up to the very head. She hurried to bury herself in her home,for fear of falling and having to be carried there.