It was manifest that Yann meant to accompany them; perhaps all the way home. They walked on, all three together, as if following the cat's funeral procession; it was almost comical to watch them pass; and the old folks on the doorsteps grinned at the sight. Old Yvonne, in the middle, carried the dead pet; Gaud walked on her right, trembling and blushing, and tall Yann on the left, grave and haughty.
The aged woman had become quiet now; she had tidied her hair up herself and walked silently, looking alternately at them both from the tail of her eyes, which had become clear again.
Gaud said nothing for fear of giving Yann the opportunity of taking his leave; she would have liked to feel his kind, tender eyes eternally on her, and to walk along with her own closed so as to think of nothing else; to wander along thus by his side in the dream she was weaving, instead of arriving so soon at their lonely, dark cottage, where all must fade away.
At the door occurred one of those moments of indecision when the heart seems to stop beating. The grandam went in without turning round, then Gaud, hesitating, and Yann, behind, entered, too.
He was in their house for the first time in his life—probably without any reason. What could he want? As he passed over the threshold he touched his hat, and then his eyes fell and dwelt upon Sylvestre's portrait in its small black-beaded frame. He went slowly up to it, as to a tomb.
Gaud remained standing with her hands resting on the table. He looked around him; she watched him take a silent inspection of their poverty. Very poor looked this cottage of the two forsaken women. At least he might feel some pity for her, seeing her reduced to this misery inside its plain granite and whitewash. Only the fine white bed remained of all past splendour, and involuntarily Yann's eyes rested there.
He said nothing. Why did he not go? The old grandmother, although still so sharp in her lucid intervals, appeared not to notice him. How odd! So they remained over against one another, seeming respectively to question with a yearning desire. But the moments were flitting, and each second seemed to emphasize the silence between them. They gazed at one another more and more searchingly, as if in solemn expectation of some wonderful, exquisite event, which was too long in coming.
“Gaud,” he began, in a low grave voice, “if you're still of a mind now——”
What was he going to say? She felt instinctively that he had suddenly taken a mighty resolution—rapidly as he always did, but hardly dared word it.
“If you be still of a mind—d'ye see, the fish has sold well this year, and I've a little money ahead——”
“If she were still of a mind!” What was he asking of her? Had she heard aright? She felt almost crushed under the immensity of what she thought she premised.
All the while, old Yvonne, in her corner, pricked up her ears, feeling happiness approach.
“We could make a splice on it—a marriage, right off, Mademoiselle Gaud, if you are still of the same mind?”
He listened here for her answer, which did not come. What could stop her from pronouncing that “yes?” He looked astonished and frightened, she could see that. Her hands clutched the table edge. She had turned quite white and her eyes were misty; she was voiceless, and looked like some maid dying in her flower.
“Well, Gaud, why don't you answer?” said Granny Yvonne, who had risen and come towards them. “Don't you see, it rather surprises her, Monsieur Yann. You must excuse her. She'll think it over and answer you later on. Sit you down a bit, Monsieur Yann, and take a glass of cider with us.”
It was not the surprise, but ecstasy that prevented Gaud from answering; no words at all came to her relief. So it really was true that he was good and kind-hearted. She knew him aright—the same true Yann, her own, such as she never had ceased to see him, notwithstanding his sternness and his rough refusal. For a long time he had disdained her, but now he accepted her, although she was poor. No doubt it had been his wish all through; he may have had a motive for so acting, which she would know hereafter; but, for the present, she had no intention of asking him his meaning, or of reproaching him for her two years of pining. Besides, all that was past, ay, and forgotten now; in one single moment everything seemed carried away before the delightful whirlwind that swept over her life!
Still speechless, she told him of her great love and adoration for him by her sweet brimming eyes alone; she looked deeply and steadily at him, while the copious shower of happy tears poured adown her roseate cheeks.
“Well done! and God bless you, my children,” said Granny Moan. “It's thankful I be to Him, too, for I'm glad to have been let grow so old to see this happy thing afore I go.”
Still there they remained, standing before one another with clasped hands, finding no words to utter; knowing of no word sweet enough, and no sentence worthy to break that exquisite silence.
“Why don't ye kiss one another, my children? Lor'! but they're dumb! Dear me, what strange grandchildren I have here! Pluck up, Gaud; say some'at to him, my dear. In my time lovers kissed when they plighted their troth.”
Yann raised his hat, as if suddenly seized with a vast, heretofore unfelt reverence, before bending down to kiss Gaud. It seemed to him that this was the first kiss worthy of the name he ever had given in his life.
She kissed him also, pressing her fresh lips, unused to refinements of caresses, with her whole heart, to his sea-bronzed cheek.
Among the stones the cricket sang of happiness, being right for this time. And Sylvestre's pitiful insignificant portrait seemed to smile on them out of its black frame. All things, in fact, seemed suddenly to throb with life and with joy in the blighted cottage. The very silence apparently burst into exquisite music; and the pale winter twilight, creeping in at the narrow window, became a wonderful, unearthly glow.
“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.
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