There seemed nothing lively or youthful around her, whose fresh youth yearned for youth. Her beauty would fade away, lonely and barren. The wind from the sea came in from all sides, blowing her lamp about, and the roar of the waves could be heard as in a ship. Listening, the ever-present sad memory of Yann came to her, the man whose dominion was these battling elements; through the long terrible nights, when all things were unbridled and howling in the outer darkness, she thought of him with agony.
Always alone as she was, with the sleeping old granny, she sometimes grew frightened and looked in all dark corners, thinking of the sailors, her ancestors, who had lived in these nooks, but perished in the sea on such nights as these. Their spirits might possibly return;and she did not feel assured against the visit of the dead by the presence of the poor old woman, who was almost as one of them herself.
Suddenly she shivered from head to foot, as she heard a thin, cracked voice, as if stifled under the earth, proceed from the chimney corner.
In a chirping tone, which chilled her very soul, the voice sang:
"Pour la peche d'Islande, mon mari vient de partir, Il m'a laissee sans le sou, Mais--trala, trala la lou!"Then she was seized with that peculiar terror that one has of mad people.
The rain fell with an unceasing, fountain-like gush, and streamed down the walls outside. There were oozings of water from the old moss-grown roof, which continued dropping on the self-same spots with a monotonous sad splash. They even soaked through into the floor inside, which was of hardened earth studded with pebbles and shells.
Dampness was felt on all sides, wrapping them up in its chill masses;an uneven, buffeting dampness, misty and dark, and seeming to isolate the scattered huts of Ploubazlanec still more.
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.
