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Flower of the Gorse

by Louis Tracy · English · Gutenberg #46178 · 452,227 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Flower of the Gorse

Author: Louis Tracy


        
Release date: July 2, 2014 [eBook #46178]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLOWER OF THE GORSE ***

FLOWER OF THE GORSE

by

LOUIS TRACY

Author of
The Wings of the Morning,
One Wonderful Night, etc.







[Illustration]

New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 1915 by Edward J. Clode.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                  _Dans la ville des meunières,
                    Pont Aven, pays d'Amour,
                  Au Bord des ruisseaux d'eau claire,
                    Fleur d'Ajonc chante toujours._

                                       --BRETON SONG.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                CONTENTS

        I _The Tower and the Well_
       II _The Feast of Sainte Barbe_
      III _The Wreck_
       IV _The Home-coming_
        V _The Lifting of the Veil_
       VI _A Lull_
      VII _Mischief_
     VIII _The Tightening of the Net_
       IX _Showing How Harvey Raymond Began the Attack_
        X _Madeleine's Flight_
       XI _Mutterings of the Storm_
      XII _Wherein both the Reef and Mr. Raymond Yield Information_
     XIII _Showing How Tollemache Took Charge_
      XIV _A Breton Reckoning_

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          FLOWER OF THE GORSE




                               CHAPTER I

                         THE TOWER AND THE WELL


"_O, là, là!_ See, then, the best of good luck for each one of us this
year!"

Although Mère Pitou's rotund body, like Falstaff's, was fat and scant o'
breath, and the Pilgrims' Way was steep and rocky, some reserve of
energy enabled her to clap her hands and scream the tidings of high
fortune when the notes of a deep-toned bell pealed from an alp still
hidden among the trees.

Three girls, fifty paces higher up the path, halted when they heard that
glad cry--and, indeed, who would not give ear to such augury?

"Why should the clang of a bell foretell good luck, Mother?" cried
Barbe, the youngest, seventeen that September day, and a true Breton
maid, with eyes like sloes, and cheeks the tint of ripe russet apples,
and full red lips ever ready to smile shyly, revealing the big, white,
even teeth of a peasant.

"Mother" signaled that explanations must await a more opportune moment.

"Madame Pitou can't utter another word," laughed Yvonne, the tallest
girl of the trio.

"She has had some secret on the tip of her tongue all day," said
Madeleine, who was so like Barbe that she might have been an elder
sister; though the sole tie between the two was residence in the same
village. "Don't you remember how she kept saying in the train?--'Now,
little ones, ask Sainte Barbe to be kind to you. She'll hear your
prayers a kilometer away, even though you whisper them.'"

"Yes, and Mama would have liked us to begin singing a hymn when we
started from the foot of the hill, but she thought Monsieur Ingersoll
and Monsieur Tollemache would only be amused," put in Barbe.

"They would certainly have been amused before Madame Pitou reached the
top, singing!" tittered Yvonne.

"Is it possible that I shall ever be as stout as Mama?" murmured Barbe,
and the mere notion of such a catastrophe evoked a poignant anxiety that
was mirrored in her eyes.

"Ah, Mignonne, now you know the form your petition to Sainte Barbe must
take," smiled Yvonne.

"It's all very well for you, Yvonne, to chaff us smaller ones," pouted
Madeleine. "You're tall, and slim, and fair, and you carry yourself like
the pretty American ladies who come to Pont Aven in the season, the
ladies who wear such simple clothes, and hardly look a year older than
their daughters, and walk leagues in men's boots, and play tennis before
_déjeuner_. Of course you can't help being elegant. You're American
yourself."

The recipient of this tribute turned it aside deftly. "Sometimes I think
I am more Breton than American," she said.

"Yes, everyone says that," agreed Barbe loyally. "Next year, Yvonne,
they'll make you Queen of the Gorse."

With the innocence of youth, or perhaps with its carelessness, Barbe had
raised a topic as prickly as the gorse itself, because Madeleine had
been a maid of honor that year, and might reasonably expect the regal
place in the succeeding Fête of the Fleurs d'Ajonc. Happily, Yvonne, if
endowed with a sense of humor, was eminently good-natured and tactful.

"Nothing of the sort," she replied. "My father will never allow me to be
photographed, and there would be a riot in Pont Aven if the shops
couldn't sell picture postcards of the Queen."

"Hurry up!" cried single-minded Barbe. "Let's pray to Sainte Barbe
before Mother comes, or she'll be telling me what I must ask for, and I
mean to take your advice, Yvonne."

                  *       *       *       *       *

Two faces were turned instantly toward the invisible shrine of the
puissant saint, and it would place no heavy strain on the intellect to
guess what favors were sought. But Yvonne hesitated. She had not been
reared in the precise religious faith of her companions. Opinions
garnered in the Bohemian atmosphere of John Ingersoll's studio were in
ill accord with the uncompromising dogma taught in the convent on the
hill overlooking the estuary of the Aven and labored by every sermon
preached in the picturesque church near the bridge.

Yet at that instant some words uttered by her father reached her ears,
and, moved by sudden impulse, she raised her eyes to the tiny arch of
light that marked the spot near the summit where the interlacing
branches of the avenue of elms came to an end.

"Sweet Lady Barbara," she breathed, "if you have it in your power to
favor us poor mortals, please give my dear father a happy year!"

The bell, after a few seconds of silence, renewed its clamor, and the
pretty unbeliever accepted the omen. Her friends, of course, regarded
the answer as more than propitious: it was an assurance, an undoubted
promise of saintly intercession.

"I love Mama more than anyone in the world, but I couldn't bear to
measure a meter round my waist," said Barbe confidently.

"Even though I may never be Queen, it is something to have been a maid
of honor," said Madeleine, demurely conciliatory now that her prayer was
safely lodged.

Yvonne heard, but paid no heed. She was looking at the three people
approaching the ledge of rock on which she and the others were standing.

Madame Pitou, like the girls, wore the costume of Brittany, conforming,
of course, to the time-honored fashion that allots a special headgear to
womankind in each district. Thus the coif supplies an unerring label of
residence. A woman from Pont Aven would recognize a woman from Riec and
another from Concarneau though she had never seen either before in her
life; while all three would unite, without possibility of error, in
saying of a fourth, "She comes from Auray."

The two men in Mère Pitou's company were just as surely classed by their
attire as the women by their coifs. Both were artists, and each obeyed
the unwritten law which says that he who would paint must don a
knickerbocker suit, wear a wide-brimmed felt hat, disregard collar
buttons, and display a loosely knotted necktie. Ingersoll, the elder,
was content with clothes of brown corduroy which had seen many, if not
better, days. His boots were strong and hobnailed, and his easy stride
up the rough and uneven track would reassure one who doubted the stamina
of his seemingly frail body. Tollemache, who affected gray tweed, a
French gray silk tie, gray woolen stockings, and brown brogues, looked
what he was, a healthy young athlete who would be equally at home on
springy heather whether carrying an easel or a gun.

Tollemache had caught Mère Pitou's arm when she announced the message of
the bell.

"One more outburst like that, my fairy, and we'll have to carry you up
the remainder of the hill," he grinned.

"_Mon Dieu!_ but I'm glad I made the best part of the pilgrimage in a
train and a carriage!" twittered Madame. "Yet, though I dropped, I had
to warn the little ones that the dear saint knew they were coming to her
shrine."

"Is that what it means?"

"What else? A pity you are not a good Catholic, Monsieur Tollemache, or
you might be granted a favor today."

"Oh, come now! That's no way to convert a black Presbyterian. Tell me
that Sainte Barbe will get my next picture crowned by the Academy, and
I'll fall on my knees with fervor."

"_Tcha!_ Even a saint cannot obtain what Heaven does not allow."

Ingersoll laughed. "Mère Pitou may lose her breath; but she never loses
her wit," he said. "Now I put forward a much more modest request. Most
excellent Sainte Barbe, send me some mad dealer who will empty my studio
at a thousand francs a canvas!"

Yvonne heard these words; yet, be it noted, she asked the saint to make
her father happy, not prosperous. It was then that the bell rang a
second time.

"_Tiens!_" exclaimed Madame Pitou. "The saint replies!"

"Like every magician, you achieve your effect by the simplest of
contrivances--when one peeps behind the scenes," said Ingersoll. "Old
Père Jean, custodian of the chapel, who will meet us at the summit,
keeps a boy on guard, so that all good pilgrims may be put in the right
frame of mind by hearing the bell accidentally. The boy saw our girls
first, and then spied us. Hence the double tolling. Now, Madame, crush
me! I can see lightning in your eye."

"Mark my words, Monsieur Ingersoll, the saint will send that dealer, and
he will certainly be mad, since none but a lunatic would pay a thousand
francs for any picture of yours."

Ingersoll seized her free arm. "Run her up, for Heaven's sake,
Tollemache!" he cried in English. "Her tongue has scarified me every day
for eighteen years, and age cannot wither, nor custom stale, its
infinite variety."

Laughing, struggling, crying brokenly that _ces Américains_ would be the
death of her, and tripping along the while with surprising lightness of
foot,--for Mère Pitou had been noted as the best dancer of the gavotte
at any _pardon_ held within a radius of ten miles of Pont Aven,--she was
hurried to the waiting girls.

                  *       *       *       *       *

"Ah, that rascal of a father of yours!" she wheezed to Yvonne, relapsing
into the Breton language, as was her invariable habit when excited,
either in anger or mirth. "And this other overgrown imp! When they're
beaten in argument they try to kill me. _Gars!_ A nice lot I'm bringing
to the holy chapel!"

"Never mind, _chère maman_," said the girl, taking her father's place,
and clasping the plump arm affectionately. "When we descend the other
side of the hill you'll have them at your mercy. Then you can tell them
what you really think of them."

"They know now. Artists, indeed! Acrobats, I call them! Making sport of
a poor old woman! Not that I'm astonished at anything Monsieur Ingersoll
does. Everybody admits that he is touched here," and she dabbed a fat
finger at her glistening forehead, "or he wouldn't bury himself alive in
a Brittany village, because he really has talent. But that hulking
Monsieur Tollemache ought to be showing off his agility before you girls
instead of lugging me up the Pilgrims' Way. _Cré nom!_ When little
Barbe's father--Heaven rest his soul!--met me here one fête day before
we were married, he wouldn't rest till he had swung himself round Sainte
Barbe's tower by the shepherd's hooks; and me screaming in fright while
I watched him, though bursting with pride all the time, since the other
girls were well aware that he was only doing it to find out if I cared
whether or not he fell and broke his neck."

"What's that?" inquired Tollemache; for Madame Pitou was speaking French
again. "Where is this tower?"

"Oh, you'll shiver when you see it! You Americans eat so much beef that
you can never leave the earth. That's why Frenchmen fly while you walk."

"Or run, my cabbage. You must admit that we can run?"

"The good Lord gave you those long legs for some purpose, no doubt."

"Well, _Maman_, we offered our petitions. What did you ask for?" said
Yvonne.

Madame flung up her hands with a woebegone cry. "May the dear saint
forgive me, but the monkey chatter of those two infidels put my prayer
clean out of my head!"

"Gee whizz!" exclaimed Tollemache. "This time I'll run in earnest, or
I'll catch it hot and strong," and he made off.

"No harm done," said Ingersoll. "Mère Pitou has all she wants in this
world, and will enter the next with pious confidence."

For once the elderly dame kept a still tongue. Like every Breton woman,
she was deeply religious, and rather given to superstition, and the
momentary lapse that led her to forget a carefully thought out plea for
saintly aid caused a pang of real distress.

Yvonne guessed the truth, and sympathized with her. "Father dear," she
said, "promise now, this minute, that you will bring us all here again
next year on Barbe's fête day, and that we shall fall on our knees while
Madame offers her prayer, or she will be unhappy all day."

Ingersoll read correctly the look of reproach his daughter shot at him,
and was genuinely sorry. He too understood the tribulation that had
befallen his friend.

"By Jove!" he said instantly, "better than that, though I make the
promise willingly, Madame Pitou and I must do immediate penance for our
sins--she for neglect and I for irreverence--by going halfway down the
hill again and toiling back."

He was by no means surprised when Mère Pitou took at his word. Away they
went, and Yvonne did not fail to grasp the meaning of her father's
significant glance toward the belfry as he turned on his heel. On no
account was the boy to miss the arrival of yet a third batch of
pilgrims!

                  *       *       *       *       *

Now, the belfry stood on the farther edge of a tiny plateau of rock and
gorse that crowned the summit. On the left was Père Jean's cottage with
its stable and weaving shed. Among the trees in the background rose the
diminutive spire of Sainte Barbe's chapel, and it was evident that the
slope of the hill was precipitous, because spire and treetops, though
quite near, were almost on a level with the girl's eyes. From the side
of the belfry a paved causeway led to a quaintly carved and
weather-beaten open-air altar, and long flights of broad steps fell
thence on one hand to the door of the chapel and on the other to the
first of many paths piercing the dense woodland of the hillside.

Père Jean, a sprightly and wizened old peasant dressed in white linen,
was already chatting with Tollemache and the other two girls. The boy,
thinking the avenue was clear, had gone to the cottage for a tray of
picture postcards.

Yvonne followed, and sent him to his lookout with definite instructions.
"Make no mistake," she said, "and we'll buy at least a franc's worth of
cards later." Then she rejoined her friends.

"Yes, I've seen it done," Père Jean was saying. "Sailors were the best;
but the shepherds were brave lads too. Nowadays it is forbidden by the
prefect."

"Why? Were there many accidents?" inquired Tollemache.

"Oh, yes, a few. You see, it seems easy enough at the commencement; but
sometimes the heart failed when the body was swinging over the cliff. It
is fatal to look down."

Madeleine's shoulders were bent over a low parapet. Yvonne, leaning on
her, saw that the caretaker was talking of the feat that Barbe's father
had accomplished many years earlier. The altar at the end of the
causeway was shielded by a squat, square tower. In its walls, about six
feet above the causeway, some iron rings were visible. They hung loose;
but their staples were imbedded in the masonry, and each ring was about
a yard apart from its fellow. A mass of rock gave ready access to the
first pair; but thenceforth the venturesome athlete who essayed the
passage must swing himself in air, gripping a ring alternately in the
left hand and in both hands.

On one side, the left, the tower sank only to the level of the path
beneath; but a glance over the opposite parapet revealed an awesome
abyss.

Madeleine shuddered when she felt Yvonne's hand. "To think that men
should be so foolish as to risk their lives in such a way!" she
murmured.

"I suppose that anyone who let go was killed?" said Tollemache.

"_Mais, non, M'sieu'_," Père Jean assured him. "The blessed saint would
not permit that. No one was ever killed, I'm told. But the prefect has
forbidden it these twenty years."

"Are the rings in good condition?"

"Certainly, M'sieu'. Where now does one get such iron as was made in
those days?"

"Let's test some of 'em, anyhow," said Tollemache, and before the
horrified girls realized what he meant he had leaped from parapet to
rock, and was clinging to a couple of rings.

                  *       *       *       *       *

"Oh, Monsieur Tollemache!" screamed Barbe.

"Please come back, Monsieur!" cried Madeleine.

"Hi! Hi! It is forbidden by the prefect!" bellowed Père Jean.

But Yvonne, though angry and pallid with fright, only said, "Don't be
stupid, Lorry. I should never have thought you would show off in that
silly manner."

She spoke in English. Tollemache, gazing down at her in a comical,
sidelong way, answered in the same language.

"I'm not showing off. Do you think that any Frenchman ever lived who
could climb where I couldn't?"

"No one said a word about you."

"Yes. Mère Pitou said I'd shiver when I saw the place. Now watch me
shiver!"

He swung outward. Even in her distress, Yvonne noticed that he took a
strong pull at each ring before trusting his whole weight to it. But she
made no further protest, nor uttered a sound; though Madeleine and Barbe
were screaming frantically, and the old caretaker's voice cracked with
reiteration of the prefect's commands.

Tollemache was soon out of sight round the angle of the tower, and the
two Breton girls ran to the other parapet to watch for his reappearance.
Not so Yvonne. The dread notion possessed her that she might see
Laurence Tollemache dashed to his death on those cruel rocks some sixty
feet beneath, and she knew that, once witnessed, the horrific spectacle
would never leave her vision. So she waited spellbound in front of the
altar, and gazed mutely at some tawdry images that stood there. Could
they help, these grotesque caricatures of heavenly beings, carved and
gilded wooden blocks with curiously inane eyes and thick lips? Her
senses seemed to be atrophied. She was aware of a feeling of dull
annoyance when the boy, attracted by the screams and Père Jean's shrill
vehemence, came running from his post, and thus would surely miss the
second appearance of her father and Mère Pitou. But the young peasant
was quick witted. He had seen the "pilgrims" turn and resume the ascent;
so he dashed into the belfry, because he could thence obtain a rare view
of an event that he had often heard of but never seen,--a man swinging
himself round Sainte Barbe's tower by the shepherd's hooks, such being
the local name of the series of rings.

So the bell tolled its deep, strong notes, and simultaneously Madeleine
and Barbe shrieked in a wilder pitch of frenzy. Tollemache had just
swung round the second angle of the tower. His left hand had caught the
outermost ring on that side; but the staple yielded, and he vanished.

"Ah, _mon Dieu!_ he has fallen!" cried Barbe, collapsing forthwith in a
faint.

Fortunately Madeleine saved her from a nasty tumble on the rough stones;
though she herself was nearly distraught with terror. Père Jean raced
off down the right-hand flight of steps, moving with remarkable celerity
for so old a man, and gasping in his panic:

"_Mille diables!_ What will _M'sieu' le Préfet_ say now?"

Evidently the caretaker feared lest Sainte Barbe's miraculous powers
should not survive so severe a test. Yet his faith was justified. A
shout was heard from the tower's hidden face.

"_Je m'en fiche de ça!_" was the cry. "I'm right as a nail. I've got to
return the way I came--that's all."

Yvonne listened as one in a dream. She saw her father and Madame Pitou
crossing the plateau. For an instant her eyes dwelt on the features of
the frightened boy peering through an embrasure in the belfry. From some
point beneath came the broken ejaculations of Père Jean, who was craning
his neck from some precarious perch on the edge of the precipice to
catch a glimpse of the mad American's shattered body. Madeleine was
sobbing hysterically over the prostrate Barbe, and endeavoring with
nervous fingers to undo the stiff linen coif round the unconscious
girl's throat.

Now, after leaving the cottage, Yvonne had looked at the chapel, the
entrance to which lay at the foot of the left-hand stairway. The
sanctuary had a belfry of its own, a narrow, circular tower, pierced
with lancet windows beneath a pointed roof. These windows were almost on
a line with and about ten feet distant from the top of the wall of rock
left by the excavation that provided a site for the building. Through
one of them, which faced the causeway, could be seen a tiny white statue
of Sainte Barbe. No more striking position could have been chosen for
it. The image was impressive by reason of its very unexpectedness.

Hardly conscious of her action, Yvonne turned to the saint now to invoke
her help. She murmured an incoherent prayer, and as she gazed distraught
at the Madonna-like figure, so calm, so watchful in its aery, she heard
the rhythmic clank of iron as the rings moved in their sockets. One
fleeting glance over the left parapet revealed Tollemache in the act of
swinging himself to the pair of rings above the rock that gave foothold.

Again he peered down at her, twisting his head awkwardly for the
purpose. "Nothing much to it," he laughed, jerking out breathless words.
"Of course it was a bit of a twister when that ring came away; but----"

He was safe. Yvonne deigned him no further heed. She hurried to Barbe's
side.

                  *       *       *       *       *

"For goodness' sake help me to shake her and slap her hands!" she cried
to Madeleine. "Monsieur Tollemache has spoiled the day for us already,
and Mère Pitou will be ill if she thinks Barbe is hurt."

Barbe, vigorous little village girl, soon yielded to drastic treatment,
and was eager as either of her friends to conceal from her mother the
fact that she had fainted.

Tollemache, feeling rather sheepish in face of Yvonne's quiet scorn,
strolled to the top of the steps down which Père Jean had scuttled. The
old man's voice reached him in despairing appeal.

"M'sieu'! Speak, if you are alive! Speak, _pour l'amour de Dieu_!"

"Hello there!" he cried. "What's the row about? Here I am!"

Père Jean gazed up with bulging eyes, and himself nearly fell over the
precipice. "Ah, _Dieu merci_!" he quavered. "But, M'sieu', didn't you
hear me telling you that the prefect----"

"What's the matter?" broke in Ingersoll's quiet tones. "You all look as
if you had seen a daylight ghost."

"I behaved like a vain idiot," explained Tollemache, seeing that none of
the girls was minded to answer. "I tried to climb round the tower by
those rings, and scared Yvonne and the others rather badly."

"How far did you go?"

"Oh, I was on the last lap; but a ring gave way."

Ingersoll knew the place of old, and needed no elaborate essay on the
danger Tollemache had escaped. His grave manner betokened the depth of
his annoyance.

"What happened then?" he said. "I went back, of course."

"Where did the ring break?"

"It didn't break. I pulled the staple out. That one--you see where the
gap is."

Ingersoll leaned over the parapet. A glance sufficed.

"You crossed the valley face of the tower twice?" he said.

"Couldn't help myself, old sport."

"Then you described yourself with marvelous accuracy,--a vain idiot,
indeed!"

"Dash it all!" protested Tollemache. "I've only done the same as scores
of Frenchmen."

"Many of whom lost their lives. You had a pretty close call. Lorry, I'm
ashamed of you!"

Mère Pitou added to Tollemache's discomfiture by the biting comment that
her man had got round the tower, whereas _he_ had failed.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Altogether it was a somewhat depressed party that was shown round the
quaint old chapel of the patroness of armorers and artillerists by Père
Jean, who had lost a good deal of his smiling bonhomie, and eyed
Tollemache fearfully, evidently suspecting him of harboring some
fantastic design of dropping from the gallery to the floor, or leaping
from the chapel roof to the cliff.

Their spirits revived, however, as they descended a steep path to Sainte
Barbe's well. Every chapel of Saint Barbara has, or ought to have, a
well, and that at Le Faouet (three syllables, please, and sound the
final T when you are in Brittany) is specially famous for its prophetic
properties in affairs of the heart. Thus, a spring bubbles into a trough
surmounted by a canopy and image of the saint. In the center of the
trough, beneath two feet of limpid water, the spring rises through an
irregular orifice, roughly four inches square, and all unmarried young
people who visit the shrine try to drop pins into the hole. Success at
the first effort means that the fortunate aspirant for matrimony will
either be married within a year or receive a favorable offer.

So, after luncheon, which had been carried by a boy from the village on
the hill opposite the Pilgrims' Way, the girls produced a supply of
pins. Barbe was the first to try her luck. Three pins wriggled to the
floor of the well; but a fourth disappeared, and Mère Pitou took the
omen seriously.

"You will be married when you are twenty-one, _ma petite_," she said,
"and quite soon enough, too. Then your troubles will begin."

Madeleine failed six times, and gave up in a huff. Yvonne's second pin
vanished.

"_O, là, là!_" cried Mère Pitou, still deeply interested in this
consultation of the fates. "Mark my words, you'll refuse the first and
take the second!"

The old lady darted a quick look at Ingersoll; but he was smiling. He
had schooled himself for an ordeal, and his expression did not change.
Tollemache, too, created a diversion by seizing a pin, holding it high
above the surface of the water, whereas each of the girls had sought
apparently to lessen the distance as much as possible, and dropping it
out of sight straight away.

"Look at that!" he crowed. "My girl will say _snap_ as soon as I say
_snip_. Here's her engagement ring!"

Plunging his left hand into a pocket, he brought to light the ring and
staple torn from Sainte Barbe's tower. When hanging with one hand to the
last hold-fast, on the wall overlooking sixty feet of sheer precipice,
he had calmly pocketed the ring that proved treacherous.

Evidently Laurence Tollemache was a young man who might be trusted not
to lose his head in an emergency.

Mère Pitou was not to be persuaded to tempt fortune, and Ingersoll, who
was sketching the well rapidly and most effectively, was left alone,
because Barbe, who would have called him to come in his turn, was bidden
sharply by her mother to mind her own business.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Tollemache and Yvonne climbed the rocky path together when they began
the return journey to Le Faouet. In the rays of the afternoon sun the
rough granite boulders sparkled as though they were studded with
innumerable small diamonds.

"Haven't you forgiven me yet, Yvonne?" he said, noticing her distrait
air.

She almost started, so far away were her thoughts. "Oh, let us forget
that stupidity," she replied. "I was thinking of something very
different. Tell me, Lorry, has my father ever spoken to you of my
mother?"

"No," he said.

"Do you know where she is buried?"

"No."

She sighed. Her light-hearted companion's sudden taciturnity was not
lost on her. Neither Madame Pitou, Ingersoll's friend and landlady
during eighteen years, nor Tollemache, who worked with him daily, could
read his eyes like Yvonne, and she knew he was acting a part when he
smiled because Sainte Barbe's well announced that she would be married
at the second asking. And the odd thing was that she had endeavored to
drop the first pin so that it would not fall into the fateful space.
None but she herself had noted how it plunged slantwise through the
water as though drawn by a lodestone.

Even Tollemache nursed a grievance against the well's divination. "I
say," he broke in, "that pin proposition is all nonsense, don't you
think?"

For some occult reason she refused to answer as he hoped she would. "You
never can tell," she said. "Mère Pitou believes in it, and she has had a
long experience of life's vagaries."

From some distance came Madeleine's plaint. "Just imagine! Six times! In
six years I shall be twenty-five. I don't credit a word of it--so there!
At the last _pardon_ Peridot danced with me all the afternoon."

Even little Barbe was not satisfied. "Mama said the other day," she
confided, "that I might be married before I was twenty."

Ingersoll and Mère Pitou, bringing up the rear, were silent; Madame
because this hill also was steep, and Ingersoll because of thoughts that
came unbidden. In fact, Sainte Barbe had perplexed some of her pilgrims.




                               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?"

"The sea will be a trifle worse, Monsieur; but we'll travel on an even
keel."

"And be swept by an occasional wave from stem to stern?"

"I've heard of such things," grinned Peridot.

"And very uncomfortable things they are too. Yvonne, you must decide.
Shall we take the rough passage, or hire the hotel auto?"

Yvonne rounded her eyes at her father, and stepped on board the
Hirondelle.

He laughed. "That settles it!" he cried. "'Of Christian souls more have
been wrecked on shore than ever were lost at sea.' But I warn you, my
merry adventuress. Before half an hour has passed you may be ready to
cry with honest old Gonzalo in 'The Tempest,' 'Now would I give a
thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown
furze, anything,' obviously having the coast of Finistère in his mind."

                  *       *       *       *       *

The behavior of the maritime folk of Le Pouldu showed that there was an
element of risk in the voyage. Knots of fishermen watched Peridot's
preparations with a professional eye, and spat approval when he cast
loose a small jibsail. A few carried interest so far that they climbed
the seaward cliff to watch the boat's progress across the Basse Persac
and Basse an Hiss, the two nearest shallows on the homeward line across
the Anse du Pouldu.

The Hirondelle passed the bar of the Laita quickly and safely. A sea
that would have smothered her in churning water broke within a boat's
length. After that escape she made a drier passage than her occupants
expected. She was abreast of Douélan, and Yvonne was listening to the
thunder of the Atlantic on the black reef that stretches from Kerlogal
Mill to Les Cochons de Beg Morg, while her eyes were watching the
changing bearings of the church spires of Moëlan and Clohars, when a
shout from Peridot recalled her wandering thoughts.

"There's a steam yacht out there, making heavy weather," he said.

Ingersoll had evidently noted the other vessel already, because he had
gone into the cabin--not the cubbyhole of a sardine boat, but the hold
converted into a saloon fitted with a table screwed to the deck, and
four comfortable bunks--and reappeared with a pair of binoculars. From
that moment all eyes were fixed on the newcomer.

At a guess she might be coming from Brest to Lorient, because it was
safe to assume that her Captain was not a fool, and he must have started
the day's run before the change of wind. It must remembered that the
very conditions that helped the five-ton Hirondelle were the worst
possible for the sixty- or seventy-ton stranger, hard driven into a head
sea whipped by a fierce wind. She had shaped a course outside l'Isle
Verte, and was well clear of the Ar Gazek shallow when first sighted by
those on board the Hirondelle. The tidal stream was running strongly
there, and Yvonne with difficulty repressed a cry of dismay when the
yacht's bare masts and white funnel vanished completely in a cloud of
spray.

"If that fellow has any sense, he'll turn while he is able, and make for
Concarneau," said Peridot, as the spume dissipated, and the stricken
vessel's spars came into view again.

"Perhaps he doesn't know this coast. Can we signal him?" inquired the
girl.

"He wouldn't take any notice of a fishing boat. The skipper of a
ten-centime steam yacht thinks more of himself than the commander of an
Atlantic liner. Of course he should make Lorient tonight--if he
understands the lights."

The self-confident Peridot seldom qualified his words: now he had twice
spoken with an if. Yvonne hauled herself forward, and joined her father
and Tollemache.

                  *       *       *       *       *

"Peridot thinks that the vessel out there may get into difficulties,"
she said. "I suggested that we should signal her; but he says she would
pay no heed."

"What sort of signal?"

"To turn back--Concarneau for choice."

"Let's try, anyhow. Lorry, you'll find a codebook in the chart locker,
and flags in the one beneath. Look for 'Recommend change of course' or
something of the sort, and the Concarneau code letters. Get the
necessary flags, and we'll run 'em up."

Peridot, who missed nothing, understood Tollemache's quick descent into
the cabin. His shout reached father and daughter clearly.

"They're signaling from the Brigneau station already. It'll do no harm
if we give him a tip too."

During the next ten minutes the situation remained unchanged, save that
yacht and fishing boat neared each other rapidly, the Hirondelle
traveling three kilometers to the yacht's one, while lines of flags,
each identical--whereat Tollemache winked at Yvonne and preened
himself--fluttered from signal station and mast. The yacht disregarded
these warnings, and pressed on.

Ingersoll was watching her through the glasses; but Yvonne's keen vision
hardly needed such aid.

"They must have seen both signals," she said. "There are two men on the
bridge. What a big man one of them is! Can you make out her name, Dad?"

"No. I've been trying to; but the seas pouring over the fore part render
the letters indistinct. You have a look. Mind you brace yourself tight
against that stay."

He handed her the binoculars, and Yvonne lost a few seconds in adjusting
the focus.

"The first letter is an S," she announced. "There are six. The last one
is an A. Oh, what a blow that sea must have given her! It pitched on
board just beneath the bridge. Why, what's the matter? She is swinging
round!"

The girl was sufficiently versed in the ways of the sea to realize that
no shipmaster would change course in that manner, nor attempt such a
maneuver at the instant his craft was battling against hundreds of tons
of water in motion.

"_Gars!_" yelled Peridot excitedly. "She's broken down--shaft snapped,
or propeller gone!"

                  *       *       *       *       *

At once the fierce and thrilling struggle had become a disaster. The
yacht was drifting broadside on, utterly at the mercy of wind and tide.
Unless a miracle happened, she would be ground to matchwood on that
rock-bound coast within a few minutes. Unhappily she had gained
considerable speed in the direction where destruction awaited her before
her crew could let go the anchor. The agonized watchers from shore and
boat knew when a fluke caught in some crevice of the rocks buried twelve
fathoms deep, because the vessel's bows were brought up against the sea
with a jerk. Then she fell away again. The cable couldn't stand the
strain. It had parted.

"Good God!" groaned Ingersoll. "Every soul on board will be drowned
before our eyes!"

Yvonne could not speak. Neither could she see. She was blinded with
tears. The suddenness of the affair was appalling. At one instant she
had been following a fascinating fight between man and the elements, a
fight in which man was gaining ground yard by yard. Now by some trick of
Fate man was delivered, bound and crippled, to become the sport of
savage and relentless enemies. She heard her father shouting to Peridot:

"Bear a couple of points to port. They may lower a boat."

"No use," came the answer. "Better crack on. They'll strike on Les
Verrés. We may pick up one or two in the channel if they wear life
belts."

Tollemache had leaped down into the cabin. He was out on deck again now,
bareheaded, having discarded oilskin coat and sou'wester. A cork jacket
was strapped round his tall, alert body. If any life could be snatched
back from the abyss, Tollemache might be trusted not to spare himself in
the effort. In that moment of stress the cheery, devil-may-care American
artist had become a calm, clear-headed man of action. He looked almost
heroic, standing on the sloping deck forward, with one sinewy,
brown-skinned hand clasping a mast-hoop, and the other thrust into a
pocket of his Norfolk jacket. By a queer trick of memory Yvonne was
reminded of her fright when she saw Lorry clinging to the rings of
Sainte Barbe's tower. He had come through that ordeal unscathed.

Would he conquer in this far more dreadful test? There he could depend
on his own taut muscles and iron nerve. Here he was at the mercy of
circumstances. Still, it was helpful to see Lorry's fingers clenched on
a ring. Somehow it seemed to offer good augury.




                              CHAPTER III

                               THE WRECK


There were brave hearts, too, on board the vessel now seemingly doomed
to utter destruction. Each of her two masts carried canvas, and when the
cable parted a ready command had evidently sent the crew racing to cast
loose both sails from their lashings. But the very trimness and tautness
of everything on board proved the yacht's final undoing. Knives were
brought into play, and the foresail was hoisted within a few seconds.
The yacht answered her helm promptly. There seemed to be a real chance
that she might haul into the wind and clear the black fangs of Les
Verrés, in which case she would either run into the small estuary at
Brigneau, or at the worst beach herself on the strip of sand there.

At that moment the occupants of the Hirondelle saw her name, the Stella,
and they were on the point of breaking into a frantic cheer of relief
when the unlucky craft crashed into a submerged rock, swung broadside
on, and was saved from turning turtle only by another rock which stove
her in amidships.

"Ah, Les Verrés have caught her! I thought they would. God help those
poor fellows!"

It was Peridot who spoke, and the mere fact that he had abandoned hope
sounded the requiem of the Stella and all her company.

Then indeed her plight was like to have passed beyond human aid. She was
lodged on the outer fringe of an unapproachable reef, whence a rapidly
rising tide would lift her at any minute. Being built of steel, she
would sink forthwith, because her bows were crushed and plates started
below the load line. She carried four boats; but, with the ingenuity of
malice that the sea often displays in its unbridled fury, the two to
port were crushed to splinters when she heeled over, and those to
starboard, swinging inward on their davits, filled instantly, since the
waves poured in cascades over the hull, as though the mighty Atlantic
was concentrating all its venom on that one tiny adversary.

The marvel was that no one was swept overboard. Nothing could have saved
the men on deck had the Stella lurched on to her beam ends without
warning; but the fleeting interval while she was being carried round on
the pivot of her fore part enabled them to guard against the expected
shock. Nine figures were visible, two standing on the port rails of the
bridge, and the others on the deck rails, every man having braced his
shoulders against the deck itself. Masts, funnel, and upper saloon were
practically vertical with the plane of the sea, and the hull quivered
and moved under the assault of each wave. Yet the very injuries that
would swamp the vessel instantly when she rolled into deep water now
gave her a brief lease of life. The rocks that pierced the hull held her
fast. Her plight resembled that of some poor wretch stabbed mortally who
breathes and groans in agony, only to die when the knife that causes his
distress is withdrawn.

                  *       *       *       *       *

The horror of the sight brought a despairing cry to Yvonne's lips.
"Peridot, Peridot, can nothing be done?" she shrieked, turning to the
Breton sailor as though, at his prayer, the sky might open and
Providence send relief.

The boat was now nearly abreast of the wreck, and running free before
the wind. The girl's frantic appeal seemed to arouse the three men from
a stupor of helplessness.

"Look out, everybody!" shouted Peridot. "We're going head on."

It was a dangerous maneuver in a heavy sea; but fortune favored the
Hirondelle in so far that no mountainous wave struck her quarter as she
veered round. All were equally alive to the possibility of disaster.
Ingersoll, though he uttered no word till the boat had reversed her
course, was almost moved to protest.

"We are powerless," he said, coming aft to make his voice audible. "Even
if some of the yacht's people are swept clear of the reef, they will be
smothered long before they drift in this direction. The thing was so
unexpected that none of them has secured a cork jacket, or even a life
belt."

"There is one chance in a hundred, Monsieur," said Peridot, speaking so
that Ingersoll alone could hear. "The point is--will you take it? You
and Monsieur Tollemache would agree, of course. Will you risk
Mademoiselle's life as well?"

"A chance? What sort of chance?"

"I know every inch of Les Verrés. A little inlet, not much longer than
the yacht, and perhaps forty feet wide, runs in from the south just
where she lies. Her hull and the reef itself form a breakwater. We can
make it, and get a line aboard."

"Then for the love of Heaven why wait?"

"One moment, Monsieur. We have yet a second or two for decision. You see
how the wreck lifts each time a sea hits her. The tide is rising. If she
shifts when we are in there, goodby to the Hirondelle!"

The eyes of the two met, and Ingersoll wavered, but only as a brave man
takes breath before essaying some supreme test of hardihood.

"My daughter would never forgive me if she knew I chose the coward's
path," he said. "Go ahead, Peridot! Tell us what we have to do, and it
shall be done."

A cheerful chuckle was the Breton's answer as he thrust the tiller over
to port and sent the boat reeling on the starboard tack. Once she was
fairly balanced, he began to bellow instruction.

"Within a couple of minutes I'll put her head on again, and we'll drift
alongside the ship yonder. Monsieur Ingersoll and Monsieur Tollemache
will each take a sweep, and fend the after part off the rocks.
Mademoiselle will remain for'ard, and be ready to drop the anchor as a
last resource if I find the tide running too strong for the sweeps to
hold us back. Leave the rest to me!"

                  *       *       *       *       *

It is a glorious heritage of the English-speaking race that the men of
other nations regard sea valor as the birthright of its sons and
daughters. Peridot had stated the case for and against the attempted
rescue to Ingersoll as a father. When the die was cast, the decision
made, he counted on _ces Américains_ acting with the same cool heroism
he would himself display.

The Hirondelle quickly reached the position from which the Breton judged
it possible to drop into a natural dock, the existence of which he had
learned when catching lobsters and crabs. Wind and tide carried the boat
swiftly backward. At first it seemed that she was simply rushing to
destruction, and every eye was bent on the swirling maelstrom toward
which she was speeding rather than on the stricken yacht. Even Peridot's
face paled beneath its bronze, and he had a hand uplifted as a warning
to Yvonne to be ready instantly with the anchor, while Ingersoll and
Tollemache were standing, each with a long oar couched like a knight's
lance, when the Hirondelle swept past the bows of the wreck; only to be
checked immediately by a backwash from the higher part of the reef.

"_Dieu merci!_" sighed Peridot, jubilant because his faith was
justified. "Keep her steady now, _mes amis_, and with God's help we'll
succeed!"

A tremendous sea dashed over the Stella, and for one appalling moment it
appeared that she must roll bodily into deep water, and involve the
Hirondelle in her own ruin. But she settled again, with a rending of her
framework and inner fittings that was sweetest music in Peridot's ears,
since it meant that she was becoming wedged more firmly on the teeth of
the rock, and, owing to her construction, possessed no natural buoyancy
to be affected by the rising tide.

Already he had a coil of rope in his right hand, and was yelling orders
to the crew of the Stella. The noise of the seas pounding on Les Verrés
was deafening; but a hoarse cry from one of the men on the bridge
penetrated the din:

"No _comprenez_! Heave away!"

So they were English or Americans--which, none could tell. Even at a
distance of fifteen feet or thereabouts it was hardly possible to
distinguish nationality by facial traits owing to the torrents falling
continuously over the rounded hull, the smoke pouring from the funnel,
the flapping of the loosened sails, and the clouds of spray that lashed
the Hirondelle. At any rate, Tollemache, deciding instantly, as was his
way, sent back an answering shout:

"Haul in twenty feet of the rope when it reaches you, make fast, and
throw back the loose end. You must get across as best you can. No time
to rig a safer tackle."

"Ay, ay, Sir!" was the reply.

"Heave away, Peridot!"

Tollemache, though not neglecting his special duty, spared one glance
over his shoulder; but the rope did not undertake its spiral flight at
once. The resourceful Breton awaited a momentary lull in the wind. Then
the heavy coil was flung, and fell into the hands of one of the men on
the bridge. As he was securing it to a stanchion, his companion, he
whose gigantic stature had first caught Yvonne's attention, climbed into
the tiny wheelhouse, and reappeared almost immediately, carrying a woman
in his arms.

The sight caused a fresh thrill on board the Hirondelle. Somehow it was
totally unexpected.

"Fools!" said Tollemache, meaning, no doubt, that men might, if they
chose, venture their lives in fair fight against the storm gods, but
they had no right to subject a woman to the ordeal.

Ingersoll overheard, and understood. He even smiled. Lorry regarded
Yvonne as a chum to be trusted in fair weather or foul. It did not occur
to him that her father might reasonably have urged the same plea against
attempting a seemingly mad and impracticable rescue.

Evidently some fierce dispute was being waged on the Stella. The other
man on the bridge, who turned out to be the captain, had thrown back the
rope to Peridot, and summoned all hands to gather near. Now he was
urging the big man to intrust his inanimate burden to one of the
sailors, but met with the most positive refusal. Every second was vital,
and Peridot blazed into annoyance.

"_Gars!_" he roared. "If they waste time, I'll back out!"

The commander of the yacht, however, was well aware of the greatest
peril which threatened now; so without more ado he steadied the giant
while the latter raised the woman's body to his left shoulder, grasped
the double rope in both hands, and lowered himself into the water.

The passage was not difficult. The ropes were fairly taut, and the
distance between the two craft not more than sixteen feet. Indeed, such
a Hercules in physique might well regard the task as a mere nothing, and
he set out with quiet confidence, extending his left arm in each onward
movement, and closing up with the right.

Yvonne, watching his progress, suddenly yielded to another memory of
Tollemache swinging from the shepherds' hooks of Sainte Barbe's tower.
Suppose the rope were to break--just as one of the rings had come away
in Lorry's grip? Of course the notion was stupid. She knew that each
strand of that particular rope was sound, that it might be trusted to
hold the Hirondelle herself against the straining of wind and tide, let
alone bear the dead weight of two people; but a woman's intuition is
stronger than reason. And in this instance her foreboding came true,
though from a cause that she had not foreseen.

                  *       *       *       *       *

All at once Peridot uttered a yell that degenerated into a
semihysterical shriek; for temperament counts in such crises, and the
Breton nature was being strung to a high pitch.

"Hold tight, all hands! Here's a tidal wave!" The monster whose coming
the fisherman had feared all day was upon them before Tollemache could
translate the warning. It broke against the Stella's hull, and literally
dashed solid tons of water on the Hirondelle and the hapless pair now
midway between the two vessels. During some seconds the stanch sardine
boat seemed veritably to have foundered. Even in the convulsive and
choking effort needed to cling with the strength of desperation to the
nearest rope or stay, her occupants were aware that she sank appreciably
beneath the sheer weight and fury of that tremendous sea.

Then their blinded eyes emerged into blessed daylight again, their lungs
filled with air, the flood subsided, the Hirondelle rose, trembling like
a living creature, and the wave boomed away across the half-mile of
channel to tear at the rocks of Finistère in a last paroxysm.

Peridot, secure in the faith that one born with a caul could not drown,
was perhaps the first to regain his senses. When he swept the water from
his eyes he looked for the Stella; but that unfortunate little vessel
had only been driven still more tightly into the jaws of the reef,
though a great gap showed to starboard amidships. She was breaking in
two.

"God be thanked for that, at any rate!" he muttered.

The concession was due to the strong commonsense of a Breton, which told
him that signs and portents would prove of no avail against instant
death if the Stella had rolled over. Then, having ascertained that his
own people were safe, he looked for the colossus he had last seen
clutching the ropes. The ropes were there; but man and woman had
vanished. Something bobbed up among the spume and foam close to the
Hirondelle's side. He leaned over and grabbed a huge arm. With one
powerful tug he drew a body half out of the water. It was the man; but
the woman had been reft from his close embrace at the moment when some
chance of safety seemed to have come most surely within reach. His
sou'wester cap had been wrenched off, and, even when hauling the limp
body on board, Peridot knew that his quickness of eye and hand would
avail naught.

He held a corpse in his grasp. The top of the unfortunate man's skull
was visibly flattened, and the gray hair was already darkened by an
ominous dye. In all likelihood the wave struck him when least prepared,
tore his fingers from the ropes, and dashed him head foremost against
the Hirondelle's timbers.

Peridot was no sentimentalist. He did not waste a needless sigh over the
fate of one when the lives of many were trembling in the balance. Even
when he was placing the body at Yvonne's feet, where it would be out of
the way for the time, he peered up at her with a grim smile.

"Two gone, Ma'mselle," he said; "but with the help of the Madonna we'll
save the rest!"

A shriek from the girl's lips, and an expression of terror in her eyes
which assuredly was not there after the gallant Hirondelle had thrown
off her mightiest and most vindictive assailant, told him that some
worse tragedy was imminent. He turned, and saw Tollemache leaping into
the frothing vortex that raged between the stern of the boat and the
nearest rock. The Breton guessed instantly that the young American had
seen the drowning woman. Leaving the Stella momentarily in charge of
Ingersoll and Yvonne, he raced aft, and seized the sweep that Tollemache
had dropped. Simultaneously his friend's head rose above the maelstrom;
for the cork jacket bore Lorry bravely. He was clasping the woman's
apparently lifeless form with one hand, and battling against the sea
with the other when the long oar was thrust within reach, and he too was
drawn to the side.

Meanwhile Ingersoll, exercising splendid self control, had not deserted
his post. After the heavy backwash caused by the tidal wave, a sea had
curled in from the open to fill the inlet again, and the Hirondelle was
carried so near the reef that the stout oar bent under the strain of
fending her off, and might conceivably have snapped had not some
assistance been given by the ropes attached to the Stella. Another and
more normal backwash came in the nick of time, and the boat retreated to
her earlier position. Now, if the Fates were aught but merciless, there
might be a breathing space.

Peridot's gray-green eyes sparkled as they met Tollemache's brown eyes,
gazing up steadily from the swirl of waters.

"You all right?" he said, seizing the woman's arms.

"Why not?" said Tollemache. "Lift her aboard. Don't bother about me."

Ere Peridot had laid the dead or unconscious woman by the side of the
man who had already given his life for her sake, Tollemache was on deck
again, and lending a hand to the first sailor to cross by the ropes. The
survivors followed rapidly, and the last to leave the Stella was her
captain.

Ten men were rescued,--five sailors, including the master, two stokers,
an engineer, a steward, and a passenger. The two last were in the saloon
when the vessel struck, and had crawled on deck as best they could, the
passenger having sustained a broken arm, and the steward a sprained
ankle.

It was obvious, from the measures taken to safeguard the injured pair,
that they were in urgent need of attention; but Peridot knew that the
lives of all still trembled in the balance. So he bawled to Tollemache:

"Get the lady below, and as many of the others as you can pack in.
During the next few minutes I want none but sailors on deck. _Gars!_ Be
quick about it too! No, don't trouble about that poor fellow. He's
gone!"

                  *       *       *       *       *

Already he had cast off the ropes that formed the precarious bridge.
Tollemache told the shipwrecked crew what the Breton had said, and they
obeyed with the readiness of men who were aware of the paramount
necessity of prompt action.

The Stella's captain had already summed up the new problem facing the
Hirondelle, and issued his orders with decision. He and a sturdy
deckhand helped Tollemache and Ingersoll with the sweeps, which were now
to be used as oars, while the others carried the woman to the cabin, and
helped their disabled shipmates to make the descent.

Yvonne, though unwilling to leave the deck until the next ordeal was
ended, felt that she ought to sacrifice her own wishes to the need of a
sister in distress; but Peridot settled the matter by bidding her take
the tiller.

"We can't get back to the inside passage on this wind. If we tried it,
Les Verrés would catch us," he said. "We'll forge out a bit with the
sweeps. When clear of the yacht we'll be just clear of the reef too.
When you see me begin to haul at the sail put the helm hard over for the
seaward tack. We're going outside. You understand?"

"Perfectly," she said.

                  *       *       *       *       *

She ran between the four men laboring at the oars, well pleased to have
a task that would absorb her mind to the exclusion of all else, and
profoundly relieved because it took her away from the vicinity of the
dead body. Even as the Stella's company were climbing on board she could
not avoid an occasional glance at the huge and inert form at her feet.
It was a dreadful thing to see the soul battered out of such a
magnificent frame in such a way. Never before had she set eyes on a man
of similar proportions. He was inches over six feet in height, and stout
withal, so that he completely dwarfed the tall and sinewy frame of
Laurence Tollemache, who hitherto had loomed as a giant among undersized
Frenchmen. Oilskins and heavy sea boots added to the dead man's apparent
bulk. His face, which wore a singularly placid expression, was well
modeled. In youth he must have been extremely good looking; in middle
age--apparently he was over fifty--he still retained clear-cut features,
and strands of a plentiful crop of iron-gray hair dropped over a broad
and high forehead.

The woman whom he had declined to intrust to the care of any but himself
was probably his wife. Was she dead too? Yvonne wondered. It was almost
equally certain that the yacht was theirs; though perhaps they might
have hired it for a winter cruise in the Mediterranean by way of the
Spanish coast.

These thoughts flitted through the girl's brain as she followed the last
phases of the rescue. Now that her hand was on the tiller, and the open
sea began to show beyond the yacht's bowsprit, her mind was occupied by
the one remaining hazard to the exclusion of all else. She had every
confidence in Peridot's seamanship, having been out with him many a time
in weather that, if not quite so threatening as this, offered sufficient
test of skill and nerve. But she knew well that once the full force of
the tide was felt the oars would be useless, chiefly owing to their
unwieldy length, and the doubt remained whether the Hirondelle would
gain enough way to win out close hauled into deep water.

Still her heart leaped with high courage as her eyes took in the bold
and striking picture presented by the deck of the fishing boat during
that brief transit through broken seas. In the immediate foreground a
small hatchway framed the weather-tanned faces of two men lodged in the
companionway so as to avoid overcrowding the cabin. Behind were her
father and the yacht's Captain at one oar, and Tollemache and a sailor
at the other, pulling with the short, jerky, but powerful stroke alone
possible in the conditions. Ingersoll's sallow, well marked,
intellectual features were in sharp contrast with the fiery red skin,
heavy cheeks and chin, bullet head, and short neck of the man by his
side. For an instant the eyes of father and daughter met. He smiled
encouragement, and the odd notion occurred to Yvonne that strangest of
all the occurrences in an hour packed with incident was the fact that
the thin hands that could achieve such marvels by the delicate
manipulation of a camel's hair brush should be able to toil manfully at
a cumbrous oar.

Then she looked at Lorry, and he grinned most cheerfully.

Skipper and sailor wore the stolid expression of men who didn't know,
and didn't particularly care, what happened next. If anything, their
watchful glances betrayed a total lack of belief in the wisdom of
intrusting the helm to this slip of a girl.

Amidships, and slightly forward, Peridot was standing, both hands laced
in the rope that should hoist the sail. The small jib had not been
lowered. It was now flapping in the wind with reports like irregular
pistol shots; but Yvonne knew it would fill and draw instantly when the
tiller brought the boat's head around.

And beyond Peridot was the body of the man who had been snatched from
life with such awful suddenness. The broad back and slightly
outstretched legs kept it motionless no matter how the deck tilted; but
the front skirts of the oilskin coat crackled noisily in the gale, and a
lock of hair, though soaked and thick with salt, freed itself from the
clammy forehead, and moved fitfully in every gust.

The artist instinct in the girl's heart dominated every other emotion at
that moment. She felt that she could transfer this somber scene to
canvas if she was spared. And what a study of action it would make! What
staring lights and shadows! What types of character! The four men in
strenuous effort, the anxious faces peering from the semiobscurity of
the hatch, Peridot's sturdy figure braced for prompt and fierce
endeavor, the still form with sightless eyes peering up at the sky, and
all contained within the narrow compass of the deck, with the boat's
prow now cutting the horizon, now threatening to take one last horrific
dive into a wave overhanging it like a moving hillock! Beyond were a
slate-blue sea flecked with white and scurrying clouds tipped with
russet and gold by the last beams of a wintry sun.

All this, and more, Yvonne caught in one wide-eyed glance. She saw every
touch of color, every changeful flicker of light on the wet deck and
glistening oilskins. Tollemache alone supplied a different note. The
light brown squares of the cork jacket, and the dust-colored canvas
straps that clasped it to his body, stood out in marked relief. He, who
had been overboard and submerged for a few seconds, looked bone dry. The
others, wet as he no doubt, Ingersoll alone excepted, seemed to have
come straight from the depths.

                  *       *       *       *       *

But Peridot, watching the sea with sidelong glance, suddenly bent in a
very frenzy of exertion, and Yvonne, thrusting her right foot against
the low gunwale, put the tiller to port and leaned against it until her
left knee touched the deck. The men at the oars imitated her as best
they might, while striving to keep the boat moving.

At the first mighty pull of the partly raised sail the Hirondelle
flinched and fell back a little. Then she took hold, as sailors put it,
and careened under the strain until the iron socket on the starboard
sweep was wrenched off its pin, and Tollemache and the sailor were hard
pressed to keep it from swinging inboard and dealing Yvonne a blow.
Something black and sinister showed for a second in the yeasting froth
beneath the boat's quarter; whether rock or patch of seaweed none could
tell, though five pairs of eyes saw it.

Peridot's call came shrilly, "Keep her there, Ma'mselle!" Back swung the
tiller, and Yvonne "kept her there," though during a long minute the
Hirondelle tore at the rudder as a startled horse snatches at the bit,
and it seemed as if she must capsize without fail.

Again the Breton's cry rang out, "Ease her now, Ma'mselle!"

The boat fell away before the wind. Soon she was on an even keel, save
for the unavoidable rolling and pitching that resulted from the furious
seas. But, if stout canvas and trustworthy cordage held, they were safe
as though tied to the quay in the land-locked harbor at Pont Aven.
Already Les Verrés were a furlong or more in the rear. It was impossible
to see what had become of the Stella, because the spray was leaping high
over the reef, until its irregular crests were bitten off by the gale.
But a fishing smack which had gallantly put out from Brigneau was
signaled back before it crossed the bar, and the signal station was
hoisting a fresh set of flags which spelled in the _lingua franca_ of
the ocean, "Well done, Concarneau 415!" which was as near the
Hirondelle's name as the watchers on shore could get on the spur of the
moment.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Peridot paid Yvonne the greatest of all compliments by not coming aft to
relieve her. But her father, who had betrayed no flurry even when death
seemed unavoidable, drew near, and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"You're another Grace Darling, my dear!" was all he said.

But the look accompanying the words was enough, and the girl's eyes
began to smart painfully, because the sudden moisture in them revealed
how they had suffered from the spindrift.

And again, by sending her below on an errand of mercy, he only added
subtly to Peridot's tribute.

"We can spare you now, Yvonne," he said. "Tell those men to come on
deck, and you give an eye to the lady. You have some dry clothes down
there. If she has no bones broken, she will recover more quickly in a
warm bunk than under any other conditions. Get her undressed, and give
her a little cognac. Take some yourself,--don't spare it,--and pass the
bottle up here."

He took her place at the tiller, and she made off at once, only pausing
to pat Lorry's wet and shaggy head.

Six men came up the companion stairway; but two returned at her call to
lift the injured men into a lower and an upper bunk on the same side.
They had contrived already to bandage the broken arm with handkerchiefs.
The sprained ankle they could not deal with. The man with a broken arm
was making some outcry; but the other sufferer was patient and even
smiling.

"Gawd bless yer, Miss!" he said to Yvonne when he discerned her identity
in the dim light of the cabin. "If it 'adn't a been fer you an' yer
shipmites, we on the Stella 'ad as much chawnce as a lump o' ice in
hell's flimes!"

The Cockney accent was new in Yvonne's ear, and its quaintness helped to
soften the speaker's forcible simile.

"You'll soon be all right," she assured him. "We'll reach Pont Aven
within the hour, and the good folk there will look after you splendidly.
Please lie still now, as I must pin a blanket across these two bunks."

Then she was left alone with the insensible woman, who was alive, the
sailors said, but completely unconscious. She had fainted, they
believed, when the shaft snapped and the yacht was like to be lost
forthwith. The immersion in the sea seemed to have revived her for a few
seconds; but she swooned off again in the cabin, and, while the boat was
lurching so heavily, they thought it wiser to pillow her head on a coat
and not attempt to restore her senses.

                  *       *       *       *       *

On deck the captain of the Stella had picked out Ingersoll as the
probable owner of the Hirondelle. He came and stood by the artist's
side.

"Is this craft yours, Sir?" he inquired.

"Yes."

"And is that young lady your daughter, Sir?"

"Yes."

"Well, I need hardly say that we owe our lives to her, and you, and your
two friends. I've seen some rum things durin' thirty years at sea; but
I've never seen anything to ekal your pluck in runnin' into that death
trap. And that girl of yours--the way she behaved! Well, there! I never
could talk much. This time I'm clean stumped!"

"We did what we could. The real credit for your rescue lies with that
cool-headed Breton fisherman yonder. Is the poor fellow who was killed
the owner of the Stella?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And the lady is his wife?"

"Yes, Sir. Mr. and Mrs. Walter H. Carmac. Look out, Sir! You must ha
forgotten you were leaning against the tiller."

The sailor acted promptly in bringing the Hirondelle back on her course;
but, owing to her quickness in answering the helm, she had swung round a
couple of points when an involuntary movement, a sort of flinching on
Ingersoll's part, caused her to change direction.

Peridot came aft, smiling and debonair. "We're all a bit shaken,
Monsieur," he said, noting the increased pallor of Ingersoll's
ordinarily rather delicate-looking face. "A tot of cognac, eh? That's
what we want. What do you say, Monsieur?"

The bluff English skipper had caught the key word of the sentence, and
the Breton's merry eye supplied a full translation.

"Good for you, my hearty!" said he. "Gimme one fair pull at a bottle of
decent stuff now, an' I'll load you to the bung with the same once we're
ashore."




                               CHAPTER IV

                            THE HOME-COMING


Peridot had stipulated that the Hirondelle should start on her homeward
run "not a minute later than three o'clock." He had cast off from the
wharf at Le Pouldu slightly before that hour; but the wreck of the
Stella and its attendant circumstances--not least being the necessity
enforced by the change of wind to take the deep-sea course after leaving
the reef--cost a good deal of time. As a consequence daylight had almost
failed before the bar of the Aven was crossed.

On Pointe d'ar Vechen, within thirty feet of the Port Manech Hotel,
stands a tiny lighthouse which sheds a mild beam over the entrance to
the estuary. It is essentially a harbor light. A broad white band covers
the safe channel extending from Les Verrés to l'Isle Verte, a red sector
forbids the former, and a green one indicates the narrow inside passage
between reef and mainland.

In crossing the bar, of course, each color became visible in turn.
Ingersoll had seen the light scores of times. Never a week passed in
summer that he did not spend a day, or even three days, at sea with the
fishermen. His studies of the sardine fleet, in particular, were greatly
in request.

Yet on this night of nights, when the return to his beloved Pont Aven
might well be reckoned the close of the most notable achievement of his
whole life, he seemed to have collapsed physically and mentally. His
eyes had a vacant look. Their wonted expression of a somewhat sarcastic
yet not intolerant outlook on life had fled for the hour, and he peered
at the Breton and the sailor as though he had never before seen either.
His slight but usually alert and wiry frame appeared to have shrunk. He
remained deaf to Peridot's suggestion as to the brandy, and became
curiously interested in the red gleam of the lighthouse which came in
sight just before the bar was reached.

The Breton imagined that his employer's bodily resources had been unduly
taxed. Catching the eye of the yacht's skipper (whose name, by the way,
was William Popple), he nodded toward the tiller, pointed straight
ahead, and held up a finger. "Wan mineet," he said.

Captain Popple was not to be outdone in linguistic amenities.
"_Comprenny_," he grinned, and took control.

Peridot thrust his head into the hatch. "Ma'mselle," he said, "these
poor devils' teeth are chattering with the cold. Will you pass the
cognac?"

Yvonne felt the urgency of the request. Nearly every man was wet to the
skin, and the wind bit keenly. She abandoned her nurse's work for the
moment, opened a locker, and produced a bottle of generous size.

"Here you are," she said. "See that a little is left. I have given some
to the men, and I hope my other invalid will soon be able to take a
small quantity."

                  *       *       *       *       *

The fisherman removed a plug which had replaced the ordinary cork, and
handed the bottle to Captain Popple. The brandy was a fine old liquor,
brown, and mellow, and smooth to the palate, and Popple took a draft
worthy of a Russian grand duke.

"Gosh!" he said, passing the bottle to Ingersoll, "that's the stuff! It
warms the cockles of yer heart."

Ingersoll swallowed a mouthful. It seemed to restore his wits. The eye
of the lighthouse had changed from red to green. "It is singular," he
said, "how a quality of evil can be associated with certain colors. Red
means danger and possible death, while green implies a jealous love
perilously akin to hate."

He had not the least notion of the incongruity of such a remark just
then. He might have been making conversation for some boarding-school
miss whom Yvonne had brought on a summer cruise.

The other man, puzzled, stared stolidly into the gathering gloom.

"When you're plashin' at sea on a dark night you find them colored
sectors mighty useful, Sir," was all he could find to say.

Ingersoll roused himself, as though from sleep, and indeed he had been
wholly unconscious of his surroundings during the last few minutes. "Oh,
doubtless," he said apologetically, "I was thinking aloud, a foolish
habit. You were telling me about the owner of the Stella. Carmac is the
name, I think? I knew a Walter H. Carmac many years ago. He was very
tall, but slightly built. Surely a man cannot change his physique so
markedly in the course of, say, twenty years!"

"Well, as to that, Sir, on'y the other day I was talkin' of Mr. Carmac's
size to Mr. Raymond, the gentleman with the broken arm (Mr. Carmac's
secretary, he is), an' he said the guv'nor used to be thin as a lath
once. P'raps it was a case of laugh and grow fat. Very pleasant
gentleman, Mr. Carmac was; an' his lady too--one of the best. Excuse me,
Sir, but I couldn't help starin' at your girl. She's that like Mrs.
Carmac it's surprising. If anyone said they was mother an' daughter, I'd
agree at once--if I didn't know different."

There was a pause. Peridot had intrusted the supply of brandy to
Tollemache for further distribution. He came aft now, as careful
piloting would soon be needed.

"Once we're inside, Monsieur," he said, "we'll set the men at work by
turns with the sweeps. That will drive the chill away."

Ingersoll explained the scheme to the skipper, who gave it his hearty
approval.

"Did the yacht belong to Mr. Carmac?" went on the artist.

"Yes, Sir. He bought her a fortnight ago. She used to be Lord Aveling's
Nigger; but Mr. Carmac didn't like that name, and changed it to the
Stella, after his wife's Christian name."

"He didn't care to sail in a yacht called the Nigger, eh?"

A bitterness of aloes was in the words. Apparently they suggested some
unpleasing notion to Popple, who branched off to another topic.

"I've a sort of idea his heart was affected," he said. "I know that some
bigwig of a London doctor recommended a long voyage, and Mr. Carmac
bein' several times a millionaire he just up and grabbed the first
suitable craft that offered. Wouldn't wait for a survey. Took everything
for granted; though I warned him that white paint may cover a lot of
black sins. He an' the missis had planned a regular tour in the
Mediterranean, goin' from Gib to the Balearics, and dodgin' in and out
of ports all along the north coast until we brought up at Constantinople
sometime in April. I advised him to let me meet him at Gib or
Marseilles; but he was one of the men who will have their own way, and
nothin' would suit but that he should come straight aboard. We left
Southampton Tuesday evenin', and made Brest yesterday afternoon. Today
we were for callin' at Belle Isle and berthin' at Lorient; but the foul
weather met us, an' he was half inclined to put in at this very place
we're headin' for,--Pont Aven is the name, isn't it?--on'y poor Mrs.
Carmac wouldn't hear of it. She said Belle Isle was no distance, an'
made out she was a good sailor--which was hardly correct, because she
was ill as could be for the last two hours."

"Why didn't you turn back?"

"There was no turnin' back about Mr. Carmac, Sir. He wasn't built that
way, bein' a sure enough American. Though I've never known anybody more
devoted to his wife than he was, he ought to have let a younger man take
her across to your boat. Not as I mean to argy that anyone could have
held up against that sea. Lord love a duck! it was a oner an' no
mistake! But there, what has to be will be. Poor Mr. Carmac was fated to
hand in his checks on the coast of Finistère, an' we others weren't, and
that's all there is to it; though I'd be flyin' in the face of
Providence if I didn't say in the same breath that if four of the
pluckiest and best hadn't been aboard this 'ere craft, none of our
little lot would ever have seen daylight again."

                  *       *       *       *       *

Tollemache joined them. He had just exchanged a word with Yvonne, who
had evidently placed her guest in a bunk, because the gleam of an oil
lantern came through the open hatch, and, like the good yachtswoman she
was, she had passed out the side lights trimmed and ready for use.

"Well, Ingersoll," he said cheerily, "how are you feeling now?"

"Rather tired," was the unexpected answer.

"I'm not surprised at that. You've had a pretty strenuous time."

"Of course you, Lorry, have had the day of your life!"

"Y-yes. I wouldn't go through it again, though, for a small fortune;
that is, with Yvonne on board. It was nip and tuck when we were jammed
up against the reef."

"It didn't take you long, Sir, for all that, to jump in after Mrs.
Carmac," said Popple.

"Oh, is that the lady's name? What a weird specimen one of your
sailormen must be! I asked him the name of the yacht's owner, and he
didn't know it."

"If it's the beauty I saw you talkin' to, the swine didn't know his own
name when he kem aboard at Southampton," snorted Popple indignantly.
"Sink me! I've never seen a man so loaded. Took me for his long-lost
uncle. Me, mind you! If I hadn't been rather short-handed, I'd have run
him ashore to find an uncle in a policeman."

"He is sober enough now," laughed Tollemache. "I had some difficulty in
persuading him to take a sip of brandy. He said he was a teetotaler."

"He what? Which one?"

"That fellow there, leaning against the mast."

"Of all the swabs! Look here, Sir, you come with me an' listen!"

"But I don't want to get the poor chap into a row."

"There'll be no row. Just language! It'll be a treat."

Tollemache, an overgrown schoolboy in some respects, accompanied Popple
gleefully. Broken scraps of the skipper's comments boomed back to
Ingersoll's unheeding ears.

"Guess you signed the pledge when the shaft snapped.... Coughin' up
stale beer all Tuesday night, an' all nex' day made you feel you weren't
fit to die on a Thursday.... You can't run a bluff of that sort on Saint
Peter. He'd smell your breath a mile off, an' say, 'To the devil with
any Jack who can't take his liquor decent-like when he's paid off
without fillin' up when he's signed on!'...You struck a wrong job in
goin' to sea. You ought to be a brewer's drayman."

                  *       *       *       *       *

"Peridot," said Ingersoll suddenly, "you saw something of the lady's
state of collapse when you pulled her on board. She is not likely to
recover her senses before we reach Pont Aven?"

"No, Monsieur, I think not. Women are marvels at times; but this one may
not even live. Mademoiselle Yvonne is doing what she can----"

"I know, I know! Now do me a great favor. When we berth at the quay
Mademoiselle and I will slip away quietly in the confusion and darkness.
See to it that none of the strangers learns our name. I'll warn Monsieur
Tollemache myself. Get all these people to Julia's. Tell her that the
lady, Madame Carmac, is very wealthy, and that the man with the broken
arm is Mr. Carmac's secretary; so every sort of expenditure will be met,
though Julia's kind heart would leave nothing undone for a shipwrecked
crew if they were paupers. There may be some inquiry about Mademoiselle
Yvonne; but refer to her only by her Christian name, and say she lives
at Madame Pitou's."

"_Oui, M'sieu'._" Peridot promised willingly enough. Nevertheless he was
obviously bewildered.

"I ask this," explained Ingersoll, "because my daughter and I will
depart for Paris by the first train tomorrow. You see, by extraordinary
mischance, this Mr. and Mrs. Carmac and I were not on good terms years
ago, and I don't wish old scores to be reopened."

"_Gars!_" spat Peridot. "You're not leaving Pont Aven because we pulled
these fools off Les Verrés?"

"No, no. I need a little holiday, and I'm taking it now. That is all. We
shall come back to the old life--never fear."

"You mean that, M'sieu'?"

"I swear it."

"Of course, M'sieu', you understand that I cannot silence the tongues of
the whole town?"

"I don't care what anybody hears tomorrow. Remember, if poor Madame
Carmac dies, no other person will have the slightest interest in my
whereabouts. If she lives, and is able to travel, she will certainly
endeavor to get away from Pont Aven as speedily as possible. Peridot, it
is Yvonne I am thinking of, not of myself."

"Monsieur, you can count on me absolutely."

"And not a word of this to a soul?"

"_Cré nom!_ I'll lie like a gendarme, even to Madeleine."

"But you need not lie at all. Simply forget what I have told you--as to
my reason for tomorrow's journey, I mean."

"Monsieur, it is forgotten already."

                  *       *       *       *       *

Tollemache came, chuckling. "Sorry you missed the skipper's homily,
Ingersoll," he said. "I laughed like a hyena. I hope the people in the
cabin couldn't overhear me. By Jove! to tell you the truth, I didn't
even remember that there was a dead man aboard."

"The best tragedies indulge in a what is called 'comic relief'," said
Ingersoll dryly. "Give Yvonne a hail, will you? I want a word with her."

Tollemache stooped to the hatch. "Yvonne!" he said.

"Yes," came the girl's voice.

Her father, intent on its slightest cadence, deemed it placid and
self-possessed.

"Socrates wants you."

Socrates was a title conferred on Ingersoll by his artist friends owing
to his philosophic habit of mind. Nothing disturbed him, they vowed.
Once, when the queer little steam tram that jingles into and out of Pont
Aven four times daily was derailed, some alarm was created by the fact
that Ingersoll, though known to be a passenger, was missing. When found
he was perched on the side of the overturned carriage in which he had
been seated. On climbing out through a window he discovered that from
this precise locality and elevation he obtained a capital view of a
wayside chapel; so he sketched it without delay. The chance, no less
than the point of view, might not offer again!

Yvonne appeared, her head and shoulders dimly visible in the frame of
the hatch. "What is it, Dad?" she inquired.

"We're in the river now, Dearest, and I thought you might join us on
deck. You have done all that is possible, I'm sure."

"I simply cannot desert that poor woman until she shows some signs of
returning consciousness."

"Oh, is she still insensible?"

"Yes. If only I could get her to swallow a little brandy."

"Well, she will be in the doctor's hands soon. Better leave matters to
him."

"But one must try."

"Of course. If you prefer remaining below----"

"Father dear, what else can I do?" She vanished again.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Ingersoll, having ascertained exactly what he wished to know, sighed in
sheer relief, and turned to Tollemache. "Lorry," he said, "have you a
dry cigar in your pocket? How stupid of me! You're soaked through and
through. I hope none of us picks up a stiff dose of pneumonia as the
sequel to today's excitement. Now a quiet word in your ear. Yvonne and I
are going away tomorrow for a week or so."

"Going away--from Pont Aven?"

Tollemache's voice executed a crescendo of dismay; but Ingersoll only
laughed, and, for the first time since that disastrous reef was left
behind, his manner reverted to its normal air of good-humored cynicism.

"Why select two words from a sentence and invest them with a
significance they don't possess? I put in a saving clause. A week, or
even two, can hardly be twisted into a lifetime."

"Does Yvonne know?"

"No. I have decided on the journey only within the last ten minutes.
We're taking a little trip to Paris solely to avoid the gush and
sentiment that will flow in Pont Aven during the next few days like a
river in flood. Moreover, Lorry, if you're wise, you'll come with us."

Tollemache little realized how truly spontaneous was his friend's
invitation. "D'ye mean that, Ingersoll?" he said elatedly.

"Why not? Don't let any question of expense stop you. This outing will
be my Christmas treat."

"Expense! Dash it all! I've money to burn. Er--that is--enough, at any
rate, to afford a jaunt to Paris. When do we start?"

"Soon after seven o'clock."

"By jing! Sharp work."

"If we really intend to escape, why stand on the order of our going?"

"I'm not saying a word. You rather took my breath away at first, you
know."

"You should allow for the kinks in the artistic temperament, Lorry.
Enthusiasm is too often the herald of despair."

"What sort of job do you really recommend me to take up, Socrates?"

Ingersoll smiled. "I am not in the habit of dealing my friends such
shrewd blows," he said. "I was talking of myself--and Yvonne. Make no
mistake about her. She has a sane mind in a sound body; but the artist's
nature will triumph some day, and she will surprise all of us. By the
way--nothing of this project to her till I have explained it. We shall
see you at Mère Pitou's, of course?"

"I've promised to shake a leg with Madame herself in a gavotte. You
don't suppose that Carmac's death will interfere with the feast?"

"Why should it?" said Ingersoll coldly. "The man is an utter stranger."

Tollemache did not strive to interpret his friend's mood. In so far as
it mystified him, and he gave it any thought, he assumed that the
tremendous physical exertion and nervous strain of those few minutes
when life or death was uncertain as the spin of a coin had affected an
ordinarily even-minded disposition.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Peridot interrupted their talk by asking Tollemache to lower the sail.
Coming in with wind and tide, the Hirondelle had scudded across the bar
without effort. Hardly a whiff of spray had touched her deck, and
pursuing waves lagged defeated in her wake.

The sweeps were manned by willing volunteers, and the wet and shivering
sailors soon restored vitality by tackling the work in relays. Usually
sardine boats are content to drift up the estuary on a remarkably rapid
tidal stream; so the Hirondelle made a fast trip that evening. The
change in the wind had blown away the clouds brought inland by the first
phase of the gale. The sky was clear, and stars were twinkling through
the violet haze that followed the sun's disappearance. Pinpoints of
light from the shores of the narrowing inlet scintillated from Port
Manech, the Château of Poulguin, and the few tiny hamlets that border
the Aven. Ever the opposing cliffs grew loftier, more abrupt, more
wooded, until a cluster of lighted windows and street lamps on the
water's edge at the end of one of the interminable bends showed that
Pont Aven was drawing near. Thereabouts the valley opened out again;
though the little town itself has been compelled to lodge its "Place"
and half its houses on the first easy slopes of the steepest hill in the
district.

Ingersoll, who had taken his turn at the oars with the others, contrived
to choke his impatience until the pollard oaks on the Chemin du Hallage
silhouetted their gnarled branches against the sky. That night the weird
arms, swaying and creaking in a wind that was, if anything, increasing
in force, had a sinister aspect in his troubled eyes. Each oak looked
like some dreadful octopus, whose innumerable suckers were searching
vindictively for an unwary victim. With an effort he brushed aside the
evil fantasy, and was about to summon Yvonne when a weird, uncanny,
elfin shriek came from the shadow of the largest and blackest tree.

"_O, ma Doue!_" [Breton for "_O, mon Dieu!_"] was the cry. "There he is!
See him, then, my brave Jean!" Peridot's mother was greeting her son in
a voice rendered eldritch by hysteria.

"_Eh, b'en Maman!_" the Breton shouted back. "What are thou doing there
at this time of night?"

A number of running black figures appeared on the quay, an unprecedented
thing, except in the conditions that actually obtained.

"_Que diable!_" growled Peridot, who had not bargained for a popular
ovation. "They know all about us. Someone must have telephoned from the
signal station at Brigneau."

He had summed up the position of affairs to a nicety. Brigneau had told
the whole story to Pont Aven, and assuredly it had lost nothing in the
telling. The signalers had seen every detail of the rescue through their
telescopes, and were of course keenly alive to the peril into which the
Hirondelle had plunged so gallantly and effectively.

The news had not long arrived; but sufficient time had elapsed that Pont
Aven was stirred to its depths. Even old Madame Larraidou, crippled with
rheumatism and sixty years of unremitting toil, had hobbled down to the
quay to welcome her own special hero.

A dense crowd of Bretons, with a sprinkling of the Anglo-American
community that remains faithful to Pont Aven in all seasons, had
gathered on the broad, low, stone wharf, and surged down to the river
itself on the sloping causeway provided for boats carrying passengers.
Nevertheless, if the signalmen had brought about this gathering, they
had also reported the presence on board the Hirondelle of three men and
a woman who were badly injured; so the local gendarmes had procured
stretchers, and three automobiles were in waiting.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Ingersoll, whose nerves were already on a raw edge, nearly abandoned the
struggle against Fate when he saw the dense concourse of people.
"Lorry," he said in an agonized tone that the younger man had never
before heard on his lips, "Lorry, help me now, or I'll crack up! Jump
ashore and ask those good folk to clear a path. You know what it means
if we get among them. I can't stand it. I can't! Bid them let us pass,
for the love of Heaven. Tell them we have to deal with death and broken
limbs. You go first. They'll listen to you."

Tollemache obeyed without demur. He was completely at a loss to
understand his friend's collapse; but its undoubted seriousness called
for decisive action. His vibrant, ringing tones dominated the cheers
that burst forth when the Hirondelle bumped into the quay.

"_Mes amis_," he cried, "hear me one moment, I pray you. The people we
have rescued are suffering. One is dead--others are in great danger.
Unless you make way, and permit us to bring the injured ones quietly and
speedily to the hotel, some may die on the road."

It sufficed. The cheers were hushed. The throng yielded place without
demur. A low susurrus of talk and the sobbing of women were the only
sounds that mingled now with the unceasing chant of the gale.

Ingersoll had literally forced himself to stoop into the companion
hatch. "Yvonne," he said in a curiously muffled voice.

"Yes, Dad," came the girl's answer.

He could not be sure, owing to his extremely agitated state, but fancied
that another voice gasped a word faintly.

"Come now, Dear! Come at once!" he appealed.

Again Yvonne's head and shoulders emerged. "Oh, Dad," she almost sobbed,
"Mrs.--Mrs. Carmac is conscious now. She beseeches me to remain with her
until--until----."

Ingersoll literally pulled his daughter up the few remaining steps. "We
are going straight home!" he cried, savagely impatient of the resistance
his plans were encountering at every turn. "I am ill--nearly demented!
You must come now!"

Still clasping her arm in a grip that left marks on her white skin for
days thereafter, he forced her to the side of the boat.

"Father dear, of course I'll come; but you are hurting me," she said
quietly. "Please don't hold me so tight."

He was deaf to her pleading. They raced together up the causeway. To
avoid attracting attention, Yvonne did not endeavor to hold back, and
bystanders wondered why the two made off at such a furious pace. Madame
Pitou, Madeleine, and Barbe, drawn to the quay like the rest of the
inhabitants, were divided between concern for father and daughter and
desire to witness the landing of the shipwrecked crew.

But Mère Pitou could not contain her anxiety. "_Tcha!_" she cried,
bustling through the crowd. "What's gone wrong with Monsieur Ingersoll
and Yvonne? They might have seen the devil out yonder. I must hurry
after them. I'll hear all the news later when Peridot comes."

The two girls went with her. For once feminine curiosity was less potent
than sympathy. Moreover, Tollemache's announcement of a death among the
rescued people had terrified them. They shuddered at the notion of the
solemn procession of men carrying a limp and heavy body. The mere sight
of such a thing would take the heart out of them for the evening's
merrymaking.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Ingersoll had passed the first mill--or the last--that bridles the
river, and was striding through the narrow street leading to the bridge,
when he became conscious of the force he was exerting on his
uncomplaining companion.

"I'm sorry, Yvonne," he said, freeing her arm immediately. "I forgot
myself. Really I hardly know what I am doing. Am I hurting you? Why
didn't you tell me?"

He spoke in a queer, choking voice which at any other time would have
aroused his daughter's affectionate solicitude. That night, however,
probably because she too was in an overwrought condition, she contented
herself by a seemingly nonchalant reply.

"It doesn't matter, Dad. A bruise more or less, after all that we have
gone through, is not of much account."

"I hurried you away----" he began; but, greatly to his surprise, Yvonne
interrupted the labored explanation he had in mind.

"I think I understand, Dad," she said. "Wouldn't it be better for both
of us if you left unsaid what you were going to say--at any rate, till
the morning? We are--how shall I put it?--somewhat unhinged by today's
events. You are weary and heartsick. I know I am. Let me go and see that
Mrs. Carmac is being cared for. I'll not remain long, and we can retire
soon after supper. Then, when we have slept perhaps, we shall wake into
a new world with nerves not so exhausted, or strained, as at this
moment."

Ingersoll, brooding on his own troubles, and feverishly eager to snatch
his daughter from a soul-racking ordeal, was wholly unaware of the
passionate tumult vibrating in every syllable of that appeal. He caught
the sound, not the significance, of the words that irritated him.

"Now you are talking nonsense!" he cried. "You cannot possibly know what
course I have decided on. It is this: I loathe the sensational element
attached to such an event as the rescue we have taken part in. You
hardly realize what it implies to you and me personally. Not only the
French but the English and American newspapers will send here a horde of
special correspondents and photographers. If we remain in Pont Aven, we
cannot escape them. They will take the cottage by storm, or, if we bolt
our door against intruders, we shall have to withstand a siege. To avoid
this, you and I are going to Paris by the early train tomorrow. Lorry is
coming too. He agrees with me--or, if I shouldn't say that--he is
delighted at the prospect of the outing."

"Poor Lorry!" said Yvonne.

"Why 'poor Lorry'? He is only too pleased at being invited."

"But, Dad, he doesn't know what you and I know."

A sudden terror fell on Ingersoll. "What do you mean?" he murmured
hoarsely, stopping short as though he had been struck by an invisible
hand.

During a few fateful seconds father and daughter stood in the center of
the four ways that meet as soon as the road from Paris crosses the Aven.
No one was near. The eternal plaint of the river was drowned by the
fierce wind whistling under the eaves of the old houses with
high-pitched roofs, and singing an anthem of its own around the pierced
spire of the neighboring church. Yvonne placed her hands on her father's
shoulders, and her sweet lips quivered in an irresistible rush of
agonized emotion.

"Dad," she said, striving vainly to keep her utterance under control,
"if you--wish--to go to Paris tomorrow--I--shall not try--to dissuade
you. But I--cannot come with you. I dare not! You see--I have just found
my mother--and--she may be dead tomorrow. Oh, Dad, Dad! No matter how my
mother may have erred--or what wrong she may have done you in the
past--I cannot abandon her now!"




                               CHAPTER V

                        THE LIFTING OF THE VEIL


It was well that Mère Pitou came upon them before another syllable was
uttered, since not all Ingersoll's philosophy could have withstood the
earthquake that had destroyed in an instant the carefully constructed
edifice of many years. His very soul was in revolt. Heart suggested and
brain lent bitter and cruel form to rebellious words; but, such is the
power of convention, the unexpected arrival of the sharp-tongued Breton
woman silenced him.

"_O, là là!_" she cried breathlessly. "If I had known you two were
making off in such a jiffy merely to stand in the Place au Beurre and
look at the stars, I wouldn't have waddled after you like the fat goose
that I am. What, then, is the matter? I thought you were hurrying home
because you were perished with cold, and I find the pair of you stuck in
the middle of the road. Monsieur Ingersoll, you at least are old enough
to have more sense. Both must be soaked to the skin; yet you keep Yvonne
out in this biting wind, to say nothing of a thin scarecrow like
yourself!"

Yvonne had dropped her hands when she heard the approaching footsteps.
Unconsciously she had raised her eyes to Heaven in agonized suppliance,
and her attitude was naturally inexplicable to her Breton friends. She
recovered some semblance of self control more quickly than her father.

"Madame," she said, "we were, in a sense, debating whether or not we
could spare the time to change our clothes before attending to the wants
of the poor people saved from Les Verrés. I think you are right. It
would be foolish to take any additional risk. Come, Father dear, let me
help you now."

She took her father's arm, and drew him on. He walked unsteadily, and
might have fallen if it had not been for Yvonne's support. The first mad
impulse that bade him pour forth a vehement protest against the
injustice of Fate had died down. He was as a man stricken dumb, and even
physically maimed, by some serious accident.

Mère Pitou, imagining that he was benumbed as the outcome of prolonged
exposure to the elements, was minded to rate him soundly; but happily
elected instead to pour the torrent of her wrath on things in general.
"A nice fête we'll have, to be sure!" she began. "There was I, boiling
beautiful white meat and roasting fat pullets when the news came that
the Hirondelle was acting the lifeboat off Les Verrés! I thought you'd
all be drowned, at the very least, and I wouldn't have been a bit
surprised, because anything might happen to that light-headed Monsieur
Tollemache and that grinning, good-for-nothing Peridot. _Cré nom!_ I
wouldn't have crossed the street if you two weren't aboard! And now the
bottom will be burnt out of the pan, and my four lovely fowls frizzled
to a cinder! Barbe, you little minx, run ahead and see that the big
kettle is put on to boil! Monsieur Ingersoll and Yvonne must have hot
baths, with mustard, and I'll stand over them till they swallow a good
tumblerful each of scalding wine. I'll give them Les Verrés--see if I
don't!"

Whereat Madame gurgled in momentary appreciation of her own wit, because
_verrée_ means "a tumblerful," and she had blundered on a first-rate
pun.

"_Chère maman_, we are not ill, nor likely to feel any bad effects from
a wetting," said Yvonne. "My father is shaken because, although
successful, we have brought one dead man to Pont Aven, and perhaps a
dead woman too."

"Ah, that's sad--that's dreadful!" wheezed Mère Pitou. "Poor things! Who
are they?"

"An Englishman gentleman--and his wife."

"They may be Americans. We hardly know yet." Ingersoll was striving
bravely to recover his poise. Those few words told Yvonne that he wished
their secret to remain hidden from all others--for the present, at any
rate.

"_Dieu merci!_ You can talk, then?" said Mère Pitou tartly. "Were they
coming to Pont Aven? Are they known here?"

"No. Their name is Carmac. They have never been here, I believe. They
were making for Lorient; but their yacht broke down and drove on the
reef. Had it not been for Peridot we could not have saved a soul on
board."

"Oh, he's a good sailor--I'll say that for him. His poor old mother was
there on the quay, screeching like an owl. She lost her man at sea, you
know. I hate the sea. I'll skin Barbe if she ever so much as looks at a
fisherman. Do you hear that, Madeleine?"

"Yes, Madame. But you can't skin every fisherman who looks at Barbe."

"Wait till I catch one at it! He'll find a shark in his nets that day.
Hurry now, you, and help Barbe to get those baths ready! I filled the
kettle before I came out, and lifted the wheat off, and as I shoved in
the damper of the oven the fowls shouldn't have taken much harm."

"Peridot will surely come soon," Madeleine ventured to say.

Mère Pitou, having made sufficient concession to her guests' feelings by
that revised estimate of the condition of the eatables, was moved to
withering sarcasm.

"Why do you think that matters to me?" she cried.

Madeleine was silenced; so Madame answered her own question.

"No man with eyes like a tomcat could ever turn my head!" she snorted.

For once her gift of biting repartee served a good purpose. It
effectually distracted attention from Ingersoll's half-demented state,
while father and daughter were given a breathing space before plunging
into an explanation that might affect the future in such wise that the
stream of life would never again flow on the placid course it had
followed during many happy and uneventful years.

Within the cottage, too, Mère Pitou's bustling ways interposed a further
barrier. She drove the artist to his room, set Madeleine to help Yvonne
undress, "and rub her till she's as red as a boiled lobster," prepared
two steaming glasses of mulled wine, scolded each unwilling patient
until the decoction was taken, and wanted to massage Ingersoll; an
attention that he avoided only by declaring positively that he would not
indulge in a hot bath at all unless she cleared out.

Luckily a wetting from salt water is seldom harmful if accompanied by
exercise, and Ingersoll had never been really chilled; while Yvonne had
not only kept comparatively dry, but had been shielded from the wind
during the homeward voyage. When the two met in the studio, a large room
that Ingersoll had built on the north side of the house, the frenzy and
tumult of a tremendous discovery had died down, and each was ready to
make due allowance for the other's suffering.

Yvonne wore her Breton dress, and her father had discarded his artist's
clothes for a suit of blue serge. Seldom, perhaps not twice in a year,
did he appear in evening dress. He shunned society, and disliked its
livery. For that reason he had removed from the Hotel Julia soon after
arriving at Pont Aven with Yvonne, then an engaging mite hardly a year
old. Ostensibly he wanted a spacious studio; in reality he sought
seclusion.

As for Yvonne, she did not even possess a dinner gown; though she and
her father were often welcome guests at the houses of the small artistic
coterie that makes the village its abiding place. But pictures, not
fashion plates, ruled the roost therein, and no _grande dame_ whom
chance brought to these friendly gatherings could plume herself that her
"Paris model" frock eclipsed the quaint charm of Yvonne's peasant
costume.

The girl had grown quite accustomed to the demand invariably put forward
by Ingersoll before accepting an invitation that he should be told the
names of any strangers who would be present. If she gave a passing
thought to the matter, she fancied that her father had early in life
quarreled with his relatives, and wished to avoid a haphazard meeting
with certain members of his family. Singularly enough, Tollemache, her
greatest friend among the men of Pont Aven, did not conceal the fact
that he too was at loggerheads with his own people. Only that day had he
been on the verge of some explanation of this unfortunate state of
affairs. How little did she dream then that the carefully hidden secret
which led her own father to bury his talents in a Brittany fishing
village soon after she was born would be dragged into light before the
sun went down!

                  *       *       *       *       *

When she entered the studio she found her father seated in a roomy
wickerwork chair, and gazing disconsolately into the flames of a roaring
log fire. He had aged within the hour; his already slight figure seemed
to have shrunk; he did not even turn his head when the door opened.

Her heart went out to him in a wave of tenderness. She dropped on her
knees by his side and put her arms round his neck.

"Dad dear," she murmured, "don't dwell on our troubles tonight, great as
they are. Let us rather be thankful that we were able to render some
service to our fellow creatures, and that our own lives were preserved
in a time of real danger. God works in His own wonderful way, doesn't
He, Dear? It was His will that we should have gone to Le Pouldu today.
It was surely by providential contriving that we should happen to be
near the reef when the Stella struck. Something more than idle chance
brought us there."

"Yes," he said, gazing into her eyes with the sorrow-laden expression of
a man who sees naught but misery before him, "it was not chance, Yvonne,
but the operation of a law as certain as death. The sins of the fathers
shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth
generations. I had almost forgotten that your mother lived. After
eighteen years she was dead to me. So far as you are concerned she might
as well have died in giving you birth. Then her memory would have been a
blessing rather than a curse."

"Hush, Dear! She may be dying even now. No, no, Darling, you shall not
say it!" and her soft lips stifled the terrible wish that his anguish
might have voiced.

For a little while neither could speak. Yvonne's head bent over her
father's knees, and he knew that she was crying. With a supreme effort
he strove to lessen the tension.

"Come, come, Sweetheart!" he said, stroking the mass of brown hair
beneath the lace coif. "You and I must face this difficulty together, or
goodness only knows what may be the outcome! Tell me now, if you are
able, how you learned that Mrs. Carmac was your mother."

"Oh, Dad, she recognized me at once!" sobbed the girl. "Poor thing, the
warmth of the blankets and a teaspoonful of brandy I forced between her
lips brought her round slowly."

"When?"

"After we crossed the bar."

"I feared as much," groaned Ingersoll.

Even in her distress Yvonne had the tact to avoid the thorny bypath
opened up by her father's involuntary cry. "She sighed deeply a few
times," she went on hurriedly, "and I could tell by her color that she
was about to revive. At last she opened her eyes, and looked at me in a
dazed way.

"'Yvonne!' she whispered.

"I was so overjoyed to find that she was not actually at the point of
death that I felt no surprise. 'Yes, Dear,' I said, 'you are with
friends, and that horrid wreck is a thing of the past.'

"But she continued to gaze at me as if I were a ghost. 'Yvonne
Ingersoll!' she said again.

"Then it struck me as really remarkable that she should know my name.
But I only asked her to drink a little more of the brandy, and rest
until we reached Pont Aven.

"'Rest!' she said in quite a clear voice. 'Why should I rest when Heaven
snatches me from a dreadful death and permits me to see my own daughter
after eighteen years? Or is this some other world? Why am I here? Where
have you come from?'

"For the moment I was sure her mind was unbalanced, and thought it best
to calm her by answering truthfully. 'My mother is dead, Dear,' I said;
'but you and I are living. You hardly realize now that your yacht was
wrecked on a reef near the mainland. By the mercy of Providence my
father's boat was close at hand, and we rescued you.'

"'Me only?' she cried, trying to rise in the bunk, and giving me such a
piercing look.

"'No,' I said, 'we took off all hands.'

"Dad dear, I simply didn't dare say that her husband alone had been
killed in trying to save her; so I put it that way, hoping she would not
ask me any more. But she did then succeed in lifting herself on an
elbow.

"'Child,' she said, 'they must not meet! God! They must not meet!'

"'Who must not meet?' said I, feeling rather frightened, as of something
unseen that threatened me in the dark.

"'Your father and Walter Carmac,' she replied.

"'If Mr. Carmac is your husband, he is still unconscious,' I assured
her, catching at the first straw that offered in the whirl of things.

"'Is your father on board?' she demanded, grasping my wrist.

"'Yes,' I said.

"Then she sank back into the bunk again, as though I had struck her, and
began to sob. 'Oh, it is cruel, cruel!' she wept. 'After all these years
my folly has found me out! Yvonne, Yvonne, don't you understand? I am
your mother! I left your father eighteen years ago. I left you, my
darling little baby! I sought freedom because your father was poor, and
I longed to be rich. Look at me! Look at me, I tell you! Can you deny
that I am your mother?'

"Oh, Dad, I knew in my heart that she was speaking truly; but even in
that moment of torture I tried to be loyal to you, and begged her to
close her eyes and let me cover her with the blankets. But she only
laughed, in a ghastly way that was worse than tears. Then she heard one
of the men in the other bunks groaning, and started up again, asking
wildly who was there. I told her that two men were badly injured, and
had been brought below. Unfortunately, I added that her husband was on
deck.

"'Husband!' she cried. 'I am not worthy of such a husband! I bartered my
very soul for luxury, and now I am being punished as I deserve. Yvonne,
one night in Paris your mother kissed you when you were lying asleep in
your cot, and hurried away to what I deemed liberty. I have lulled my
conscience for eighteen years into the belief that I was justified, that
I had acted for the best, since my extravagant tastes were even then
embittering your father's life. Yet the husband and child I abandoned
have saved my miserable life, saved the man too who came into my life
when I was free to marry again. Oh, why didn't you let me die? Perhaps I
am dying now. Yvonne, you have my face; but a kindly Heaven must have
spared you from having my nature. You, at least, will forgive. Kiss me
once before the end comes. If you are merciful, an Eternal Judge may not
condemn me utterly; for I have striven to atone by doing some good in
the world. Unhappy myself, I have tried to make others happy.'

"Father dear, I could not refuse. I took her in my arms. I suppose she
nearly fainted again, because she only spoke incoherently until she
heard your voice in the hatch, when she whispered your name and buried
her face in the clothes."

                  *       *       *       *       *

The girl's tremulous voice ceased, and there was no sound in the room
save the crackling of elm logs and the pleasant babble of flames in the
big open fireplace. At last, fearing lest he should break down
completely, Ingersoll gently untwined his daughter's clasp, rose, and
fumbled with a pipe,--man's sole harbor of refuge in emotional storms.

"Don't cry, Yvonne," he said brokenly. "It--it hurts. From what you tell
me I gather that your--mother--is in a more critical condition than I
imagined. Do you want to go to her--now?"

Yvonne too stood up. She brushed away the mist of tears, and looked at
him with shining eyes. "Dad," she said, and a vibration rang in her
voice that carried her father's memory back half a lifetime, back to the
days when youth was golden and love was deemed everlasting, "when my
mother was muttering in delirium, my own poor wits wandered. I asked
myself what it all meant, and I could not escape the bitter
understanding that came to me. Then I remembered what you said one day
when a wretched girl had been hounded out of the village because of her
transgression."

"What I said?" repeated Ingersoll, baffled in the effort to follow her
train of thought.

"Yes. You were speaking to some man who was angered by the merciless
attitude of the peasant women to one of their own sex. You blamed the
misleading teachings of narrow-minded theologians, and reminded him of
Christ's words to the Pharisees who brought before Him some poor
creature who had fallen. They taunted Him with the Mosaic law, which
ordered that she and her like should be pelted with stones; but He only
said that the man who was without sin among them should cast the first
stone. And the crowd melted, and Christ was left alone with the sinner,
whom He forgave. I did not know then just what you meant. I did not know
until I heard my mother confessing her fault, and asking me, her
daughter, for forgiveness."

"Unhappily our everyday world is not ruled by the maxims of Christ. The
girl you speak of went to Brest, and her body was found in the harbor a
fortnight later."

"I remembered that too."

"If you go to your mother now, you may set in motion influences that may
darken your whole life."

"If I did not go, I would never forgive myself--never!"

"Prudence, the merest sort of commonsense, warns me that we ought to get
away from Pont Aven by the first possible train."

"Father dear, what did Peridot say to you before he brought the
Hirondelle round into the wind off Les Verrés? I couldn't hear, of
course. But do you think I could not read your face? Had you not to
decide whether or not you would risk my life as well as your own? You
were sure of Lorry--who wouldn't be? But it came hard to sacrifice me as
well. Did you obey commonsense then? Did you even hesitate?"

Ingersoll threw up a hand in a gesture of sheer hopelessness, and
pretended to search for a box of matches on the mantelpiece. "So be it!"
he said wearily. "Don't think I am afraid of any rival in your
affection, Yvonne. Perhaps your woman's heart is wiser than my gray
head. But, mark you, I make two stipulations! No matter what transpires,
you must come home before eleven o'clock; and it is impossible,
absolutely impossible, that your mother and I should ever meet!"

He was choosing his words carelessly that night. How "impossible" it
would have seemed that morning had some wizard foretold the events of
the succeeding hours! But Yvonne also was deaf to all but his yielding.
She ran to him, and drew his face close to hers.

"Dad," she said, kissing him, "you are the best and dearest man in the
world. How could your wife ever have left you? If I live a hundred
years, I shall never understand that."

She was going; but he stayed her.

"Yvonne, be governed by one vital consideration. Those two men in the
cabin must have caught some glimmer of the truth from your mother's
ravings. But they are strangers, and their own troubles may have
preoccupied their minds to the exclusion of the affairs of others. The
only person in Pont Aven who knows something of my sad history is Madame
Pitou. She has been aware all these years that my wife was alive, or at
any rate that she was living after I came here. She is certainly to be
trusted. Take care that none other learns your mother's identity. I ask
this for her own sake."

The girl smiled wistfully. "Yet you would have me believe you an ogre!"
she said.

                  *       *       *       *       *

A few minutes later Tollemache arrived. He found his friend sitting by
the fire, with a pipe that had gone out between his lips.

"Hello, Socrates!" he cried. "You're togged for the party, I see.
Where's Yvonne?"

"She was unhappy because of that poor woman who lost her husband; so I
let her hurry off to Julia's. They've been taken there, I suppose?"

"Yes. It was awfully distressing. Peridot carried Mrs. Carmac off the
boat, and by some mismanagement the light from a lantern fell on her
husband's face. Ill as she was, she realized that he was dead. She
screamed something I couldn't attach any meaning to, and her cries as
she was being put into the hotel auto were heartrending. By gad! a
beastly experience!"

"What did she say, Lorry?"

"I hardly know. It sounded like a cry for Yvonne, and a protest against
Heaven that her husband should be taken and she left. 'I am the real
offender!' she said. 'The punishment should be mine, not his!' Somehow,
not the sort of thing you'd expect from a distracted wife. I guess she's
nearly out of her mind."

"Naturally. Think what it meant to a delicate woman to be imprisoned in
that deck saloon when the yacht keeled over. You see, Lorry, we were
buoyed up with the hope of being able to effect a rescue. She, on the
other hand, must have gazed into the opening doors of eternity. Pull up
a chair. There's time for a cigarette. Seven o'clock is the supper
hour."

Tollemache obeyed. Ingersoll relighted his pipe, and the two smoked in
silence for a while. Then the younger man glanced at his companion with
a quizzical scrutiny that was altogether approving.

"Glad to see you've bucked up, old sport," he said. "You were thoroughly
knocked out by the time we reached the quay. I know why, of course."

Ingersoll stooped to throw back into the fire a half-burnt log that had
fallen out on to the hearth. "Do you?" he said calmly.

"Great Scott! I should think so, indeed! It was one thing that we three
men should go into that death trap, but quite another that you should
bring Yvonne into it. Bless your heart, Yvonne was watching Peridot and
you, and told me what you were saying. 'Dear old Dad,' she said, 'he
feels like Jephthah when he had to sacrifice his daughter.' Made me go
cold all over. Gee whizz! I was pleased it wasn't I who had to make the
choice between turning back and running into safety--where my sister--or
my wife--was concerned."

Tollemache stammered and reddened as his tongue tripped on the
concluding words; but the older man paid no heed. He was too profoundly
relieved by an explanation that differed so materially from the avowal
he dreaded.

"By the way, Lorry, that journey to Paris is postponed," he said after a
pause.

"Good! It was hardly like you to bolt out of the place when you were
most needed. Those sailormen would be at sixes and sevens tomorrow if we
didn't show up."

"I must leave that part of the business to you," said Ingersoll slowly.
"I mean to efface myself entirely. Indeed, I'm thinking of paying a
long-deferred visit to Forbes, at Concarneau. Yvonne and you can manage
splendidly in my absence. Now, don't argue, there's a good chap. I
rather lost my head on being brought into contact with two people with
whom I quarreled years ago; or, to be precise, my animus was not against
the poor fellow who is dead. Of course his wife is bound to recall the
facts, and it would place her in a difficult position when she
discovered that I was one of her rescuers. Women are apt to form curious
notions about such matters. It was an extraordinary misfortune, to say
the least, that her husband should be the one man whom we failed to
save. I think you follow me?"

"Oh, yes--the irony of Fate, and that sort of thing," said Tollemache
with an air of wisdom. He was convinced that he understood the position
exactly.

Ingersoll stood upright, drew in a deep breath that was curiously like a
sigh, and tapped his pipe against the stone pillars of the fireplace. "I
hear sounds of revelry by night," he said. "Herri has arrived with the
bagpipes."

"Dash it all!" growled Tollemache. "I don't feel a scrap like dancing
this evening. That unhappy woman's shrieks are still ringing in my
ears."

"We must adjust ourselves to the conditions," said Ingersoll quietly.
"Life, like art, is a matter of light and shade. Each of us sails a tiny
craft through an unknown sea, and if we can give a brother or sister a
cheery hail--why, let us do it, though our own vessel be sinking
steadily. I'm in no mood for revel,--goodness knows!--but, with Yvonne
absent, you and I must help Mère Pitou to entertain her guests. Some
excellent folk are coming here from Nizon and Nevez. Her sister is
driving in from Riec. You'll hear some real old Breton ballads tonight.
Pity Yvonne isn't here to translate them. My acquaintance with the
language is limited; but Madeleine or Barbe will tell you the drift of
the words."

"Won't Yvonne be here later?" inquired Tollemache, striving to cloak his
disappointment.

"I'm inclined to think she will remain with Mrs. Carmac till eleven or
thereabouts."

"But the doctor is there--and a nurse."

"Unless I am greatly mistaken, Mrs. Carmac will prefer Yvonne to any
nurse. There is a cousinship of nationality, you know. Now, Lorry, no
grumbling. Let's make the best of things."

                  *       *       *       *       *

A knock at the door heralded the entrance of a dozen or more smiling and
self-possessed Bretons. The studio was the only room in the house large
enough to hold the company that would gather within the next few
minutes. The living room was packed with tables and chairs; hence, on
fête days, Ingersoll's quarters were invaded.

The artist was acquainted with everyone present, and Tollemache was no
stranger to the majority. Nearly all were of the well-to-do yeoman
class; for Mère Pitou belonged to an old family, and her husband, a
farrier, had been well thought of in Pont Aven. Men and women wore the
national costume, and appeared that evening in grand state. The women's
full-skirted dresses were of black cashmere, trimmed and slashed with
deep bands of black velvet; but this somber setting was merely a foil to
aprons and overbodices wrought in gold, silver, and bright-hued silk
threads, the whole blended in pretty designs with an oriental lavishness
of color and sheen.

The coifs, though bearing a general similarity of design, varied for
each district. The abundant and jet-black hair of these Breton dames and
demoiselles was waved over the forehead and coiled somewhat toward the
back of the head. Round the twisted tresses was placed, in the first
instance, the _petite coiffe_, a stiff white linen band three inches
deep, which, pinned securely, served as the basis of a dainty
superstructure. A strip of silk ribbon, cream, pink, or light blue, hid
the _petite coiffe_, and showed its tint through the meshes of the
coronet of fine lace and cambric forming the _grande coiffe_, with its
coquettish white streamers falling below the neck.

Round the throat, and deeply cut, was the broad linen collar, highly
starched, and so wide that its wings projected over the shoulders,
leaving a space across the top of the breast to reveal the lace edging
of an underbodice. These collars would puzzle any laundress who was not
a Bretonne if she were asked to prepare them, because their graceful
curves, molded to the slope of the shoulders and the straight line of
the back, are obtained by a process of wrinkling, or furrowing, effected
by the use of long straws when the linen has been lightly ironed when it
is still damp and pliable.

Age does not affect the style of dress. The girl of eight is attired
exactly like her grandmother, the only variation being seen in the
shoes, the younger people mostly donning white doeskin, and the older
ones black patent leather with silver buckles.

The men too, without exception, wore tight-fitting gray trousers, short
jackets of black cloth, with tabliers of black velvet and ornamental
buttons. Some dandies affected gold, silver, and colored silk embroidery
down each side of the front of the jacket. Their hats were low-crowned,
black felt wideawakes, with heavy bands of black velvet, carrying showy
buckles of silver on a rosette.

A more light-hearted, jovial, and picturesque company it would be
difficult to find, or, considering its nature, one more expensively
dressed. (Strangers, especially of the fair sex, who decide to purchase
"a Brittany costume" for the next fancy dress ball, are likely to be
unpleasantly surprised when they inquire the price. The materials are
invariably the best of their kind, and the lace and embroidery are
handworked. Naturally one such outfit lasts several years.)

                  *       *       *       *       *

Ingersoll moved among these free-mannered, laughter-loving folk as
though he had not a care in the world. Some notion of the disaster to
the Stella had spread, and he was called on for particulars, which he
gave in sufficient detail. The men appreciated the peril from which the
Hirondelle had extricated herself, the women were prodigal of their
sympathy with the American woman who had lost her husband. Tollemache,
listening to his friend's easy flow of talk, wondered more than ever
what sort of nervous attack it was that induced that amazing display of
terror at the moment of landing.

Supper was ended when Peridot put in an appearance. His face was
flushed, and his gray-green eyes had acquired a rather suspicious
luster. In a word. Captain Popple had discovered the excellence of
liqueur brandy, and Peridot, ordinarily an abstemious fellow, had proved
himself a less seasoned vessel than his host.

Madeleine was the first to notice his condition, and it troubled her.
She rather avoided him, and as a consequence he affected a loud-voiced
and boisterous good-humor.

"_Gars!_" he cried, seizing the opportunity when the girl refused to
dance the gavotte with him. "Where is Yvonne? She can foot it better
than any of you."

Now he had never before alluded to Yvonne by her Christian name. While
the Bretons are not toadies, they are polite, and the artist's daughter
ranked as an aristocrat in the village. An awkward silence fell. Even
Ingersoll shot an inquiring glance at the fisherman.

"Mademoiselle Yvonne is at the Hotel Julia," said Mère Pitou. "Pity she
didn't see you as she was going."

"Why?" grinned Peridot.

"Because you might have known then how to address her. By this time you
seem to have forgotten."

"_Que Diable!_ I meant no offense, Madame. I suppose she's looking after
the lady who claimed her as a daughter."

"What sayest thou, Imbecile?"

"Fact," said Peridot, with drunken gravity. "I asked a man who speaks
English what the lady was screaming as I tucked her into the auto, and
he told me----"

"Larraidou," broke in Ingersoll, pallid with sudden anger, "you had
better go home."

Then Peridot too flared into wrath. "What have I done wrong?" he cried.
"_Cré nom!_ they're as like as two peas in a pod! Come, now,
Monsieur--is there any harm in saying that?"

Ingersoll turned to Tollemache. "Lorry," he said, "oblige me by taking
our talkative friend to his house. He will be glad of it in the
morning."

So, protesting loudly that some people made a lot of fuss about nothing,
Peridot vanished with a shattered halo. But the mischief had been done.
Next day all Pont Aven would be discussing Mrs. Carmac's strange
delusion. In the view of the one man who knew the whole truth, it was
the beginning of the end.




                               CHAPTER VI

                                 A LULL


Peridot lived on the Toulifot, a steep and rocky road that once upon a
time was Pont Aven's main avenue to the interior of France. On the way
he was consumed with maudlin sorrow that his beloved patron, Monsieur
Ingersoll, should have forbidden him to take further part in the feast.

"Tell me, then, what was my fault," he protested to Tollemache. "Name of
a pipe! can't a fellow take a thimbleful of cognac to keep the cold
out?"

"Thimbleful!" laughed Tollemache. "The sort of thimble you used would
make a hat for any ordinary head."

"The skipper of the Stella is a _bon garçon_, and showed his gratitude,"
said Peridot. "I could have carried the liquor like a drum major if I
hadn't fasted at Le Pouldu so as to keep a good appetite for supper."

"Ah! That's it, is it? Well, I'll make matters straight with Monsieur
Ingersoll in the morning."

Tollemache had every reason to believe that the fisherman was speaking
the truth. He had not seen Peridot intoxicated during five years of
fairly close acquaintance.

"The worst thing is that Madeleine will be holding her nose in the air
every time she meets me for a month," came the dejected whine.

"I'll tell her too how the accident happened. You'll be joking about it
yourself tomorrow, old fellow."

"_Tiens!_ I've got it," and Peridot stood stock still in an attitude of
oracular gravity. "Monsieur Ingersoll was angry, not because I was a
trifle elevated, but on account of what I said about Ma'mselle Yvonne.
Queer thing if that lady should really be her mother!"

"Now I know for certain that you're drunk as an owl."

"Not me! _Gars!_ Funny things occur. I could say lots if I chose. Why
does Monsieur Ingersoll encourage Ma'mselle to dress _en Bretonne_? Why
won't he allow her to be photographed? Who has ever heard what became of
Madame Ingersoll? And aren't those two the image of each other?"

"Peridot," said Tollemache, "it would be a sad finish to a glorious day
if I were to knock you down."

"It would, Monsieur."

"But that is just what I'll do, as sure as Fate, if you utter another
word concerning Mademoiselle Yvonne or her father."

"Mad!" declared the other. "All you Americans are mad! A man never knows
how to take you."

"Would you stand by and hear anyone running down Madeleine Demoret or
her people?"

"Monsieur, I'd chew his ear!"

"Exactly. I'll spread your nose flat if you utter any more stupidities
with regard to Mademoiselle Yvonne."

The Breton whistled softly, and staggered on up the hill. Each few yards
thereafter he halted, and whistled, evidently expressing unbounded and
inarticulate surprise. All this was intensely annoying to the young
American; but it had to be endured. Even more trying was the
leave-taking at the door of the Larraidou cottage. The Breton caught
Tollemache's hand, and was moved to tears.

"Monsieur," he gurgled, "you have my regrets--a thousand regrets! I
understand perfectly. A Frenchman comprehends these things quicker than
any other man in the world, even when he has filled the lamp. _Gars!_ If
I chew ears and you flatten noses, between us we'll spoil the beauty of
any rascal who dares open his mouth against either Mademoiselle Yvonne
or Madeleine."

                  *       *       *       *       *

With difficulty Tollemache got rid of him, and strode back down the
hill. He had blundered into that foolish comparison of the two girls
without giving a thought to its possible significance. The one
consolation was that Peridot would be tongue-tied with shame next day,
and would probably remember only that he had made a fool of himself.

Passing the Hotel Julia, he ran into Yvonne hurrying down the steps of
the annex. Then, of course, he flung care to the winds.

"Well met!" he cried. "Socrates told me you were not coming home till
much later."

"But where have you been?" she asked. "I imagined you were at Madame
Pitou's ages ago."

"As though you couldn't tell by my swollen appearance that I had supped
on white wheat and fatted fowl," he rejoined. "Of course I was there.
I've been escorting Peridot home. He took an extra appetizer on an empty
stomach, and it upset him. How are the patients?"

"Dr. Garnier has set the broken arm and bandaged the sprain. He gave
Mrs. Carmac a stiff dose of bromide, and she is asleep. She will recover
if her nervous system withstands the shock."

"It was an extraordinary misfortune that the owner of the yacht should
be the one to have his head battered in. His wife realizes now that he
is dead, I suppose?"

"Yes, she knows."

They crossed the square together. To reach the Rue Mathias they had to
go round by the bridge and return by the right bank of the Aven. The
hour was not late, and many of the inhabitants were astir; but none gave
heed to the unusual spectacle of a Breton girl and a young man walking
in company, because both were recognized instantly, and in such matters
the American and English residents were a law unto themselves. Had they
been bred and born in the place, such a thing simply could not have
happened.

Somehow Tollemache felt a restraint that night that was both novel and
unpleasing. A barrier of some sort had been erected between Yvonne and
himself. He cudgeled his wits to find words that would break down the
obstacle, whatsoever it might be.

"We've had a lively evening at Madame's thus far," he said. "Riec and
Nevez shared the honors in the gavotte; but everybody agreed that Pont
Aven would have scored if you had been there."

"I couldn't have danced tonight, Lorry, on any account."

"I don't see why. Your father took a very sensible view. 'Why shouldn't
twenty hop because one has hooked it?' he said."

"Did he really say that?"

"Well, something to that effect."

"Poor old dad! He has had to sacrifice himself all his life."

"Don't you think you're making too much of the death of one man? Suppose
we hadn't taken Peridot with us? We couldn't possibly have approached
the reef, and twelve people would have gone under."

"Ten were strangers, and one cannot grieve for all the people who die
around us. But father knew Mr. and Mrs. Carmac years ago. Didn't he tell
you that?"

"Yes."

"Then you may be sure he is greatly upset. Now, Lorry, if there is any
talk of dancing when I appear, help my excuses by saying that I ought to
rest. In one sense I'm not really tired; in another I could fling myself
down in a dark corner and weep my eyes out."

"Your eyes are too pretty to spoil in that way," said Tollemache. "I'll
give Mère Pitou the tip, and she'll fix things, I have no doubt."

                  *       *       *       *       *

But Yvonne was not pressed to dance. She was so pale, the eyes that
Tollemache deemed too attractive that they should be marred by weeping
were so dilated and luminous with unshed tears, that these big-hearted
Bretons sympathized with her, and she was soon permitted to escape to
her own room.

Father and daughter exchanged few words. She supplied a brief account of
the doctor's view of the injured, and he only said:

"Thus far things are progressing well. Tomorrow morning I'm going to
Forbes's place, at Concarneau, for a few days. Tollemache and you can
help Mr. Raymond in his negotiations with the authorities. Mr. Carmac
was an American, by birth, if not by domicile; so it is probable that
his relatives will wish the body to be embalmed and taken to the United
States. I would advise Mr. Raymond to consult a notary, because French
procedure differs essentially from American methods. I've told Lorry
about our altered plans. Perhaps we three can take a combined trip to
Paris after Christmas. Goodnight, Sweetheart. Sleep well, and don't meet
tomorrow's cares halfway."

Tollemache heard all that passed. Why, he knew not, but he found himself
regretting that they were not leaving Pont Aven by the first train in
accord with Ingersoll's original intent. He was more than ever conscious
of that invisible wall which was now casting its shadow on their cheery
intimacy. Yvonne would never again be a demure Breton maid or
straight-legged, long-haired American schoolgirl. She had become a woman
in an hour. Life had flung wide its portals, and the prospect thus
unfolded had saddened her inexpressibly.

What sinister influence had brought about this change? Could there be
any actual foundation for Peridot's vaporings? As he walked back to the
hotel through darkened streets he recalled certain vague rumors that had
reached his ears in early days. Ingersoll had always posed as a widower;
but someone had said that his married life was rather mysterious, since
there was no record of his wife's death or place of interment. It would
indeed be passing strange if the wreck of the Stella had brought to Pont
Aven the woman who was at once Yvonne's mother and the wife of a
complete stranger.

Tollemache buttoned the deep collar of an overcoat round his ears as he
crossed the river, because the wind was still bitingly cold. He caught a
glimpse of Mère Pitou's cottage on the opposite bank of the Aven. There
was a light in Yvonne's bedroom. Frankly in love, he threw her a kiss
with his fingers.

The action did him, in his own phrase, "a heap of good." After all, such
displays of emotion come naturally in France.

"I don't give a red cent who her mother was, or is, or what she has
been, or turns out to be," he communed. "It's Yvonne I want. If Yvonne
marries me some day, I'll be the happiest man who ever lived, and the
most miserable if she doesn't. So there you are, Lorry, my boy! You must
make the best of it, whichever way the flag falls."

                  *       *       *       *       *

Memories of peaceful and contented years flitted through Ingersoll's
mind while the steam tram lumbered next morning through tiny fields and
across rambling lanes to the quay of Concarneau. Other memories, vivid
and piercing, came of the period of love and dreams in Paris. Lithe and
graceful and divinely beautiful as her daughter was now, Stella Fordyce
had been then. An artist to her fingertips, she came to the studio where
Ingersoll was working, turning readily to the palette after some slight
defect in the vocal cords had put difficulties in the way of an operatic
career.

It seemed to be a genuine instance of love at first sight, and they were
married within three months of what was practically their first meeting;
though Ingersoll had seen her as a girl of fourteen several years
earlier. This step was not so foolish as it might have been in the case
of two young people without means. Ingersoll had an income of three
thousand dollars a year, and complete devotion to art in his student
days had enabled him to save a small capital, which he spent on an
establishment, and particularly on adorning an exceptionally handsome
and attractive wife.

It had been far better were they poverty-stricken. Mutual privations and
combined effort to improve their lot would have bound them by insoluble
ties. As it was the taste for pleasure and excitement crept into Stella
Ingersoll's blood. The first tiff between the two was the outcome of
some mild protest on Ingersoll's part when his wife wished to increase
rather than diminish her personal expenditure after Yvonne's birth.
There were tears, and of course the man yielded: only to raise the point
again more determinedly when an absurdly expensive dress was ordered for
a ball at the opera.

Thenceforth the road to the precipice became ever smoother and steeper;
though Ingersoll did not begin to suspect the crash that lay ahead until
his wife left him and fled to her relatives in America. Her callous
abandonment of the baby girl not yet a year old crushed to the dust the
man who loved her. She told him plainly why she had gone. She was "sick
to death" of petty economies. Indeed, her letter of farewell was
brutally frank.

"I think I have qualities that equip me for a society that you and I
together could never enter," she wrote. "Why, then, should I deny myself
while I am young, so that I may console vain regrets with copybook
maxims when I am old? I see clearly that I would only embitter your life
and spoil your career. Be wise, and take time to reflect, and you will
come to believe that I am really serving you well by seeking my own
liberty. Meanwhile I shall do nothing to bring discredit on your name. I
promise that, on my honor!"

Her honor! All his life John Ingersoll had hated cant, either in dogma
or phrase, and this ill-judged appeal stung him to the quick. He threw
the letter into the fire, left Paris next day, and his wife's strenuous
efforts to discover his whereabouts during the subsequent year failed
completely.

Then he heard by chance that she had divorced him, and married Walter H.
Carmac in her maiden name, and the tragic romance of his life closed
with a sigh of relief, because, as he fancied, the curtain had fallen on
its last act. He little dreamed that an epilogue would be staged nearly
nineteen years later.

He was in such a state of mental distress that at Concarneau he sat a
whole hour in a café opposite the station, meaning to return to Pont
Aven by the next train. But the man's natural clarity of reasoning came
to his aid. He forced himself to think dispassionately. Two vital
principles served as rallying points in that time of silent
battle,--Yvonne must not be reft with crude violence from the
grief-stricken and physically broken woman who claimed a daughter's
sympathy, and he himself must avoid meeting this wife risen from the
tomb. He had acted right, after all, in seeking refuge with his friend.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Yvonne that same morning found her mother sitting up in bed, sipping a
cup of chocolate. The nurse, a woman from the village, hailed the girl's
presence gleefully.

"Will you be remaining a few minutes, Mademoiselle she inquired, seeing
that invalid and visitor were on terms of intimacy.

"Yes, as long as you like, or will permit, Madame Bertrand," said
Yvonne.

"That is well, then. I can go to my house for a little half-hour. There
only two instructions. Madame must remain quiet. If she shows any signs
of faintness, send at once for Dr. Garnier."

"I shall be strict and watchful," smiled the girl, and the two were left
alone.

Her mother's first question threatened to disobey at least one of the
doctor's instructions. "Does your father know you have come here?" she
asked, and her voice trembled with foreboding.

"Yes, Dear. Now if you excite yourself in that way, I shall be expelled
by the doctor," for the graceful head collapsed to the pillow in sheer
gratitude, and the chocolate was nearly spilled.

"But you must tell me, Yvonne! Will he permit us to meet?"

"Do you think my father would forbid it? How you must have misunderstood
his real nature! He has even gone away from Pont Aven for a few days, so
that his presence in the village may not be irksome to you. Shall we try
and pretend to forget what has passed, Dear? It is useless to grieve now
over the mistakes of other years. And you will see, I am sure, that no
one in Pont Aven should be able even to guess at our true relationship.
I ask that for my father's sake. I love him dearly, and would not have
him suffer."

With a splendid effort the older woman raised herself in the bed and
summoned a wan smile. "Indeed, indeed," she cried, "I will do nothing
more to injure him! Is that a hand mirror on the dressing table? Please
give it me."

Yvonne hesitated, and her mother smiled again.

"I shall not grieve because of white and drawn cheeks," she said.

When she held, the mirror in a thin hand, and compared its reflection
with Yvonne herself with critical eyes, the girl grasped her true
intent. Her abundant hair, only a shade darker than Yvonne's own brown
tresses, framed the well poised head and slender neck. Distress and lack
of solid food had lent a pallor to cheeks and forehead which had the
curious effect of rendering the clear-cut features strikingly youthful.
Mouth and chin had a certain quality of hardness and obstinacy not
discernible in the girl's face. Otherwise they resembled sisters rather
than mother and daughter.

"Yvonne," she said wistfully, "if we say we are strangers, no one will
believe. I shall invent a twin sister. You are my niece. I quarreled
with my sister because she married an impoverished painter. Thin ice;
but it must carry us. Your father has done the wisest possible thing in
leaving Pont Aven today. He refuses to forgive my shabby treatment of a
sister; but Christian charity impels him not to forbid you from visiting
me. Don't volunteer this information. Let it be dragged from you
unwillingly. It is a cruel thing that my first advice to you should be a
lesson in duplicity; but I have earned that sort of scourge, and must
endure. Now you understand. We are aunt and niece. Don't be surprised if
I act a little when the nurse returns. By the way, write to your father
and tell him what I have said. I'm sure he will approve, and the fact
that I am eager to make this small atonement for the wrong I did him
will show that I still retain some sense of fair dealing."

"Yes, Dear, I'll write today. I don't think it is very wicked to adopt a
pretense that enables me to visit you without--without setting idle
tongues wagging."

"Without causing a village scandal, you might well have said," came the
bitter retort. "Very well, Yvonne, I will not say such things," for the
girl winced at the unerring judgment that supplied the words that had
nearly escaped her. "Now let us talk of other matters. Tell me something
of yourself. Where and how do you live? Why are you wearing that
costume? Do you dress like that habitually? And how wonderfully it
becomes you! Talk, Dear, and I'll listen, and if I fall asleep when you
are talking don't imagine that I am heedless and inattentive; for I have
been brought nearer happiness in this hour than I would have believed
possible yesterday. Do you realize that the wreck was directly due to my
folly? The captain wished to put into the Aven estuary when the storm
became very bad; but I refused to permit it. Wallie--that is Mr.
Carmac--always yielded to my whims, and he imagined I preferred Lorient
to Pont Aven. I didn't. I knew that your father lived here. His art
proved more enduring than a woman's faith. It has made him famous;
though I had the cruelty, the impertinence, to tell him once that he
would never emerge from the ruck. I never heard of you. For some reason
I thought you had died in infancy. Yvonne, Heaven forgive me, I may even
have wished it! But you see now why I wanted to avoid Pont Aven. As
though any of God's creatures can resist when He points the way!"

So it was the mother who did most of the talking, and the daughter who
listened, with never a word of reproach, and not even a hint that had a
wilful and conscience-tortured woman not imposed her imperious will on
the Stella's course the yacht would have ridden the gale in safety in a
roadstead five miles removed from the village of Pont Aven itself!

When Madame Bertrand bustled in her patient was asleep, and Yvonne's
cheeks were tear-stained.

"Poor lady!" murmured the Breton woman. "She's nothing but a bundle of
nerves. All night long, after the effect of the bromide had passed, she
kept crying out for her daughter--meaning you, Mademoiselle. What a
notion! Yet you are so alike!"

"With good reason, Madame," said the girl. "She is my mother's sister.
There was a family quarrel years ago. Please keep this to yourself;
though Madame Carmac will probably tell you of it later."

Yvonne was glad, when her father's letter arrived, to find that he
agreed with the little deception, which hurt none, and explained away
the seemingly inexplicable.

                  *       *       *       *       *

On the second day after the wreck Mrs. Carmac, outwardly at least, was
restored to good health, and assumed direction of her husband's affairs.

Sending for Captain Popple, she asked if any effort had been made to
salve the large sum of money and store of jewelry on board the yacht.
The red-faced mariner had evidently been giving thought to the same
problem.

"No, Ma'am," he said. "When the vessel struck those on deck had no mind
to go below, and those below were hard put to it to get on deck. We all
lost everything except what we stood up in. It has been blowin' great
guns ever since, and a French gentleman who knows every inch of the
coast tells me that the reef may be ungetatable for a fortnight, or even
a month, unless there's a change in the weather."

"When you say you lost everything do you mean that you and some members
of the crew lost money as well as clothing?"

"No, Ma'am. If any swab has the howdacity to pretend that a sovereign or
two has slipped out of his pockets, I won't believe 'im; but it'll be
hard to prove the contrary."

"Are you in any special hurry to return home? Have you another yacht in
view?"

Some men might have hesitated, but Popple was bluntly honest, both in
nature and speech. "Bless your heart, Ma'am!" he said huskily, "I'll get
no more yachts unless I'm a luckier man after turnin' fifty than ever I
was afore. The Stella was my last seagoin' job, an' no mistake."

"Then you will not suffer professionally by remaining here?"

"I'll stop as long as you like, Ma'am."

"Very well. I have telegraphed to my London bankers for a supply of
money, which should reach me tomorrow. I want you to arrange for salvage
operations. Employ a diver, and hire such other assistance as may be
necessary. It is important that a jewelcase in one of my trunks should
be recovered, if possible, also five thousand pounds in French and
English bank-notes which is in a leather wallet locked in a steamer
trunk beneath my husband's bed. That trunk also contains a number of
important papers. I shall be glad if it is brought to me unopened, no
matter what the expense. Meanwhile make out a list of all that is
reasonably owing to the men, and tell them I shall arrange at once for
their return to Southampton."

"I've done that already, Ma'am. Mr. Raymond tole me to get busy."

"Ah! That was thoughtful of him. In future, however, take orders from no
one but me."

Captain Popple was evidently about to offer a comment, but checked
himself in time. "Right you are, Ma'am," he said.

Mrs. Carmac smiled quietly. This outspoken sailor's face was easy to
read. Yvonne was present, and he hardly knew what to say.

"You had something else on the tip of your tongue, Captain," she
prompted. "Out with it! I have no secrets from this young lady."

"I don't like contradict'ry sailin' orders, Ma'am, an' that's a fact,"
admitted the skipper. "Mr. Raymond axed me not to do a thing, no matter
who gev the word, without consultin' him."

"His arm is broken, I believe?"

"Yes, Ma'am; but he's able to get about today."

"That simplifies matters. Kindly send him here."

The sailor raised his hand in a clumsy salute, and went out.

                  *       *       *       *       *

"I am not an admirer of Mr. Raymond," said Mrs. Carmac to Yvonne. "He
was a useful sort of person to my husband; but he has a Uriah Heep
manner which I dislike intensely. Now I shall get rid of him."

For an instant the Breton shrewdness of judgment came uppermost in the
girl. "Don't make an unnecessary enemy," she ventured to suggest.

"I simply purpose dismissing him on very generous terms."

"But--have you--forgotten--perhaps you never knew--how wildly you spoke
that night in the cabin of the Hirondelle? Mr. Raymond was there too. He
may have overheard a good deal."

Mrs. Carmac was momentarily staggered. "Do you think so?" she cried
rather breathlessly.

"There was every opportunity. I saw the man, and he retained his senses,
though in great pain."

"Thanks for the warning, Dear. I'll handle him gently."

"Shall I go?"

"I prefer that you should remain."

"But it might be better if you were to see him alone. He has not met me
since we came ashore."

"Well--you may be right. I'll take your advice. Don't leave me too long
alone. I mope when you are away."

Yvonne slipped out. She passed Raymond on the stairs; but he gave her no
heed, regarding her as belonging to the establishment.

                  *       *       *       *       *

The secretary was a small, slightly built man, and, contrary to the rule
that renders undersized mortals rather aggressive in manner, carried
himself with a shrinking air, as though he wished to avoid observation.
He had an intelligent face; though its general expression was somewhat
marred by a heavy chin and eyes set too closely together. He looked pale
and ill; which was only natural, because his broken arm, the right one,
had not been attended to by a doctor until nearly three hours after the
accident. He was about thirty-five, but looked much older that morning,
and Yvonne wondered if he had any forewarning of trouble, so compressed
were his thin lips and so frowning his brows.

He found his late employer's wife standing at the window, gazing down
into the little triangular Place, as Pont Aven calls its public square.
Yvonne was passing in front of the four sycamores. She had, in fact,
secured a mourning order for her friend, Le Sellin the tailor, and was
going to his shop on some errand connected therewith. Her mother noted
the girl's free and graceful walk, and approved the proud carriage of
her head, on which the white coif sat like a coronet. She sighed, and
did not turn until Yvonne had vanished. Then she faced the waiting
secretary.

"Ah, that you?" she said carelessly. "Pardon me if I seemed rude, Mr.
Raymond. My thoughts were wandering. My niece has just left me, and, as
I have not seen her for many years until she and her father saved our
lives the other evening, I was minded to watch her crossing the square."

"Your niece, did you say, Mrs. Carmac?"

Raymond's voice was pitched in the right key of hesitancy and interested
surprise; but this worldly wise woman was far too skilled a student of
human nature to miss the underlying note of skepticism.

"Usually I speak clearly," she said, with a touch of hauteur.

"Yes, of course. I caught the word quite accurately. But may I remind
you that you addressed her as your daughter in the cabin of the
Hirondelle?"

"Does it matter to you, Mr. Raymond, how I addressed her?"

"No, no. I was only anxious to correct my own false impression."

Mrs. Carmac suddenly bethought herself. "My wits are still wool
gathering," she cried. "Won't you sit down? I have a good many things to
discuss with you. Is your arm very painful? Happily I have never
suffered from a broken limb; but it sounds quite dreadful."

Raymond sank into a comfortable chair, steadying himself with his left
hand. "It's not so bad now," he said. "By comparison with the torture of
Thursday afternoon it is more than bearable. The chief misfortune lies
in the fact that my right arm is out of action. I had no idea how little
use I made of my left hand until I tried to write with it."

"The doctor seems to be a very clever man; but if you think it advisable
to have your injury seen to by an expert----"

"Oh, it's only a simple fracture. I have every reason to believe that it
is properly set. Indeed, all it needs now is efficient dressing--and
time."

"How did you come to break it?"

"I was flung down the companionway when the yacht turned on her beam
ends."

"But the last thing I remember, and very vividly too, is that you and I
were holding to a rail and looking out through the forward window of the
deck saloon. We felt a curious trembling of the hull, and the vessel
swung round from the wind. There was a strange lull, and Captain Popple
shouted something. I asked you what it was, and you said that the shaft
had broken, and we should be dashed against the rocks in ten minutes or
less. Then, I suppose, I fainted."

"I had not seen the reef. Even Captain Popple thought we should clear
it. As a matter of fact, we struck within a minute."

"And you were thrown over then? I must have fallen earlier."

"Yes. My recollection is hazy as to what actually occurred."

"The marvel is that either of us is living," she said lightly. "I gather
from Captain Popple that you have taken charge of affairs since we were
brought ashore. Will you kindly tell me what you have done?"

"In the first instance I telegraphed to Mr. Carmac's nephew Mr. Rupert
Fosdyke, his lawyer Mr. Bennett, his office, and his bankers. The text
of each message was practically identical. It ran, 'Yacht wrecked and
total loss off Finistère. Mr. Carmac unfortunately killed, but all
others rescued. Mrs. Carmac seriously ill, but may recover.' I'm sorry I
took an exaggerated view of your state; but the circumstances seemed to
warrant it. Then I sent to Paris for an embalmer. Did I do right?"

At that instant her daughter's parting words rang in her ears. "Don't
make an unnecessary enemy." Good advice! She must tread warily, or her
sky might fall and crush her.

"Yes. As I shall receive Mr. Fosdyke and Mr. Bennett when they arrive, I
think I shall rest now," she said faintly. "I am greatly beholden to
you, Mr. Raymond. You are so intimately acquainted with my husband's
affairs that I should be lost without your help."

She had meant to dismiss him forthwith, with a year's salary, and
Raymond himself was prepared for some such action on her part; otherwise
he would never have hinted at his possession of a secret so fraught with
possibilities as the existence of a grown-up daughter, a daughter too
whose father was living, and actually resident in Pont Aven. He was
taken aback now, and bowed as courteously as his bandaged arm would
permit.

"I shall be only too happy and proud to give you my best services, Mrs.
Carmac," he said.




                              CHAPTER VII

                                MISCHIEF


Raymond felt that he had taken the step that counts, and resolved to
make certain inquiries without delay. Already a cautious experiment with
Tollemache had failed. Lorry had said that he knew nothing of
Ingersoll's history before the last five years, and had shown some
surprise at the question.

Captain Popple, however, had mentioned Peridot; so Raymond climbed the
steep Toulifot, and within five minutes of his departure from Mrs.
Carmac's quarters was at the Breton's house.

As it happened, Peridot was at home, it being the hour of _déjeuner_,
and a grateful incense of grilled haddock and fried potatoes greeted the
visitor. He was recognized instantly of course, and invited to enter,
and Peridot broke into a voluble expression of his pleasure at finding
Monsieur so far recovered that he was able to take a little promenade.
Raymond gathered the drift of this speech, as he understood French
better than he spoke it.

"I have taken the liberty to call and thank you personally for the aid
you rendered on Thursday evening," he said laboriously. "You and the
others did a wonderful thing. The captain of the yacht has explained it
to me. I was injured when the vessel struck, and knew little of what
took place afterward."

"It was lucky for you, Monsieur, that we happened to be out that day. If
we hadn't been passing at that very moment, nothing could have saved
you. The people at Brigneau tell me that the yacht broke in two and fell
into deep water before we were well clear of the reef."

Neither Peridot nor Raymond had any inkling of Mrs. Carmac's projected
salvage work by a diver, or the Breton would have added his conviction
that the fierce tides racing along the Finistère coast would render the
success of any such undertaking doubtful in the extreme.

"The gentleman who owns the Hirondelle is an artist, I believe?" went on
Raymond.

"One of the most renowned," said Peridot.

"His daughter was with him?"

"The prettiest girl in Pont Aven, Monsieur."

"Is there a Madame Ingersoll?"

Now, Peridot was sober as a judge that day, and his Breton wits worked
quickly. He did not fail to recall his friend's distress on hearing the
name of the Stella's owner, nor his avowed desire to escape recognition.
True, Monsieur Ingersoll had not gone to Paris; but Barbe had told him
of the journey to Concarneau, and everyone in Pont Aven knew of Yvonne's
close attendance on Madame Carmac. Moreover, did not Monsieur Ingersoll
show terrible anger because of an unhappy reference to the likeness
between his daughter and the American lady, and had not Peridot himself
promised to lie like a gendarme if any questions were asked? Now was his
chance to serve a generous patron. This little fox of a man, with beady
eyes and cruel mouth, had come there to pry! Very well--he should go
away stuffed with information!

All this required but a fraction of a second to flash across a lively
French brain.

"Monsieur Ingersoll is a widower, Monsieur." Peridot was merely stepping
back in order to jump farther.

"Ah, yes. I have heard that. His wife died before he came to Pont Aven,
I suppose?"

"Oh, no, Monsieur. Poor lady! I knew her well! Her last words to me
were, 'Peridot, you were born with a caul, and will never be drowned; so
promise me that when my husband and little Yvonne go to sea you will
always be with them.' You see, she went off in a consumption, and----"

"Pardon!" interrupted Raymond, sorely chagrined by the immense
significance of the fisherman's words, supposing he had followed their
meaning correctly. "Will you be good enough to speak more slowly? What
were you born with?"

"_Une coiffe d'enfant, Monsieur._"

Raymond knew neither the word nor the curious superstition attached to
it; but he caught the one thing of vital interest. "So Madame Ingersoll
lived in Pont Aven?" he went on, and his rancorous tone betrayed venom
and disappointment.

Peridot, convinced now that he was doing the artist a good turn, gave
full play to his imagination.

"Certainly, Monsieur," he said. "Never was there a more devoted couple.
Quite a romance, their courting! She was a fine lady, as anyone can see
with half an eye by squinting at her daughter, and he a poor artist. Her
people used to come in the summer to a château nearby, and one day when
they met he gave her a beautiful pink rose. Her mother was angry, and
made her throw the flower away; but an artist was not to be bested by
any nose-tilted mama. He knew that they went to the church at Nizon; so
he made a paper rose, and borrowed a ladder, and stuck the token between
the topmost stones of an arch in the church right above their heads, so
that pretty Mademoiselle Adrienne must see it when she lifted her eyes
to Heaven. There was a lot of talk about that rose, and no one except
the girl guessed who put it there. If you care to walk out to Nizon,
Monsieur, you'll see the faded leaves stuck in the arch to this day. Of
course I can't vouch for the tale; but the fact that it is told of those
two shows what devoted lovers they were."

"Is Madame Ingersoll buried at Nizon?"

That was Raymond's last despairing effort. The fisherman's story tallied
accurately with Mrs. Carmac's version of a sister's marriage and a
family quarrel.

Peridot thought he had gone far enough: his next effort showed less
exuberance. "No, Monsieur," he said, with a solemn wagging of his head,
"when she died she was taken back to her own people, somewhere near
Paris."

"Was she a Frenchwoman, then?"

"French and American, I believe, Monsieur. Spoke both languages like a
native."

Utterly disheartened, Raymond made off. The fortune he had seen within
his grasp had melted into thin air.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Peridot gazed after him, and pursed his lips. "Now I wonder what
mischief that fellow is up to?" he mused.

"Jean," said his mother, "come and eat; but first ask the good Lord to
save you from choking."

"Why, Mother?"

"Because of the lies you told that gentleman. And that yarn about the
rose at Nizon!"

"What business is it of his who Mademoiselle Yvonne's mother was, or
where she lived, or when she died?"

"But everyone in Pont Aven knows that Monsieur Ingersoll came here from
Paris with the little one. And we women have often said to one another
it was strange that never a word was uttered about his wife, whether she
was alive or dead."

"Then it is high time someone spoke of the lady, and I gave her an
excellent character today. All I hope is that it suffices."

It did nearly suffice. But for the tongue of a garrulous woman, Harvey
Raymond would have given his close attention to matters that he might
rightly deem of more pressing and immediate interest; the salving of the
Stella's belongings, for instance, which came to his knowledge almost
accidentally.

The more he reflected on Peridot's scraps of history the more he was
convinced that he had found a mare's nest, despite Mrs. Carmac's
extraordinary outburst in the Hirondelle's cabin. Exhausted and
pain-tortured though he had been, he could still distinguish between the
raving of dementia and the ungoverned cry of a soul just snatched from
death and startled beyond measure by the apparition of a long-forgotten
daughter.

Nevertheless he must have been mistaken. Mrs. Carmac had given way to a
delusion. He knew that the absence of children had provided the only
sorrow in the lives of a most devoted couple, and the thought had
evidently taken a subconscious form in the mind of a woman whose
faculties were bemused by cold and fear. Reviewing matters in the new
light vouchsafed by the garrulous Breton, he saw that nearly every
circumstance bore out the theory that Mrs. Carmac and the late Mrs.
Ingersoll were sisters. Ingersoll's thoughtfulness in sending Tollemache
with a message concerning the peculiarities of French law (the legal
procedure with regard to the dead man had been intrusted to a local
notary), the fact that the niece visited her aunt, and now the crushing
discovery that the girl's mother was actually remembered in the village,
seemed to put completely out of court any wild theory of an invalid
marriage following an American divorce.

Of course if such a thing could be proved, if Carmac's English will
could be upset in favor of Rupert Fosdyke, above all if Harvey Raymond
alone knew the whole truth, and could wring stiff terms from Fosdyke
before the latter so much as guessed at the grounds for a successful
claim, then indeed a new era would open up before the eyes of one who
hungered for wealth without having a spark of the genius that might
create it honestly.

He was of that large and increasing class which is in many respects the
worst product of modern social conditions. He had little to do, was well
paid, and traveled far and wide, because Mr. and Mrs. Carmac were
restless beings, and seldom lived more than three months of each year on
the delightful estate they owned in Surrey. Nevertheless a canker of
discontent had eaten into his moral fiber. He was a disappointed man,
unscrupulous, greedy, a potential blackmailer.

Mrs. Carmac disliked him, he knew; yet she was retaining his services.
That was a puzzle. He must be wary and alert. If not a prior marriage,
there was _something_. He must probe and delve into the past. Somehow,
somewhere, he would unearth a guarded secret.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Luck would have it that he met Captain Popple, standing on the
"terrace," with his hands in his pockets and a pipe clenched between his
teeth, gazing up at the sky.

"Good day, Sir," said the sailor. "Glad to see yer movin' around. Now if
I could on'y figure out the lingo they talk in Pont Aven, I'd swap idees
on the weather with any old charac-ter I saw at anchor."

"What is it you want to know, Captain?" said Raymond, hailing the
other's presence as a relief from somber thoughts.

"Well, to my thinkin', the weather's goin' to clear. The wind's a trifle
steadier, and gone round a point to east'ard. At this time o' year that
means a risin' glass an' frost."

"A frost would be more cheerful, certainly, than a gale howling about
the chimneys."

"The sea will fall too. A couple of tides should iron it out, an' I'll
have a peep at that reef."

"But why?"

"Mrs. Carmac's orders, Sir. I'm to spare no expense in searchin' for
some boxes an' other oddments."

Raymond turned abruptly, and walked to a garden seat beneath the window
of the hotel dining room. He moved with a curious swing of the legs, as
though his knees were unequal to the task of supporting his body.

Popple followed hastily. "W'at's up?" he cried. "Are ye feelin' bad?
Been doin' too much, I s'pose."

"No. It's nothing. Could you--call a maid? If I have a sip of
brandy--and rest awhile--the weakness will pass."

The skipper bustled into the hotel and found a waitress.
"Cognac--queek!" he said.

The girl smiled. She understood fully.

"_Oui, Monsieur_," she said.

But Popple deemed the matter urgent. "Gentleman eel--vare seek," he
insisted.

"Yes, Sir," said the maid, to her hearer's profound surprise. "I've got
you. I'll be along before you can say 'knife.'"

"Sink me!" roared Popple. "Here have I been spittin' French all this
time, an' you can sling the right stuff at me in that style!"

He received another broad smile, and the linguist vanished. Thenceforth
the two held long conversations when they met; but some days elapsed
before Popple realized that the chat was rather one-sided. The girl had
been taught a few slang phrases by an American artist, which, together
with a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the average tourist's
requirements, completed her vocabulary.

                  *       *       *       *       *

"Lord love a duck, but it's a treat to hear honest English once more!"
he said, returning to Raymond, whose pinched face was a ghastly yellow.
"How are ye now, Sir? Gettin' over it?"

"Yes. I'm not what you would regard as robust, Captain, and Thursday
afternoon's experiences placed a severe strain on my powers of
resistance. Did you say you expected a frost? The weather is quite mild
today, don't you think? Sit down, and join me in a drink when the brandy
comes."

"Don't mind if I do, Sir. But are you sure you oughtn't to be in bed?"

"Quite sure. I walked a little too far, and I find these hills
trying--that is all. Ah, here comes Marie with the medicine."

"Is that your name--Marie?" inquired Popple, eying the girl admiringly.

"Yes, Sir," and a pair of fine Breton brown eyes sparkled.

"An' very nice too!" said he. "Mighty fetchin' rig the gals have in this
part," he went on, pouring out some brandy for Raymond, which the latter
drank neat. "They look like so many dandy housemaids got up for a fancy
ball. Now, if my old woman could see me makin' googoo eyes at a tasty
bit like Marie--well, there'd be a double entry in the family log."

"What's this nonsense that Mrs. Carmac has got into her head about
salving certain articles from the Stella?" said Raymond, whose voice had
regained its normal harshness of tone. Small men usually have strong
voices. Your giant of a fellow will pipe in a childish treble.

"Why do you say it's nonsense, Sir?" demanded Popple sharply.

"What else can it be? Salvage, in relation to a yacht pounded to pieces
on an exposed reef two days ago! I don't think 'nonsense' too strong a
term."

"It wouldn't be if every mortal thing had been bangin' on those rocks
ever since. But the Stella was partin' amidships afore we were clear of
her. She'd slip over into deep water within a few minutes, an' lie there
quiet enough. Anyhow, them's my orders."

Raymond might be cantankerous because of his disablement; but Popple had
suddenly remembered that Mrs. Carmac had resented the secretary's
earlier interference. Raymond, however, helped to smooth over the
difficulty.

"Of course I am only expressing an opinion," he said. "I admit it is not
worth much. A little while ago I was speaking to Larraidou, the
fisherman whom people here call Peridot, you know, and had I known then
of your project I should have asked him what he thought of it."

"The sea is one big mystery, an' that's a fact," said Popple, refilling
his pipe, and nodding his head to emphasize a bit of sententious
philosophy born of experience. "It'll gobble up a ship, an' you'll never
find a scrap of timber or a life belt to tell you what's become of her,
an' in the next breath it'll show a thing as plain as though it was writ
in a book. A friend of mine, skipper of a Hull trawler, missed a
deckhand one day, and no one knew what had become of him. That night
they shot the trawl in sixty fathom o' water, an' brought up the man's
body. That's w'at the sea can do, Sir. Talk of women bein' fickle--they
ain't in it with the most changeable thing on this earth."

Raymond poured out a second glass of brandy. "At any rate, you'll not
recover a dead body from the Stella's wreckage," he said, with a ghastly
grin.

"You never can tell," said Popple.

"But surely, Captain, you don't pretend that the finding of a drowned
sailor in a trawl net was other than an accident?"

"That's as may be. S'pose some poor wastrel had been charged with
knockin' a matey on the head an' chuckin' him overboard. The doctor's
evidence would clear him. Then it 'ud ha been providential."

"I shall refuse to believe that you will retrieve any of the Stella's
contents until I see them. Of course I know why Mrs. Carmac is so
anxious that the effort should be made. There were thousands of pounds'
worth of pearls and diamonds in her jewelcase. One pearl necklace alone
cost ten thousand pounds many years ago, and would fetch far more
today."

"Queer you should mention that, Sir," commented Popple.

"Why?" The question came with strange eagerness. The prospect of salvage
was either fascinating or highly distasteful to Raymond.

"Because that's the one thing I shouldn't expect to come across."

"You are speaking in riddles, Man. What have you in your mind?"

Popple turned a mildly inquiring eye on this testy companion. He
thought, "That drop o' spirit has gone the wrong way, my friend." But
what he said was, "I was thinkin' of the sea's whims. It'll hide a
six-decked liner an' give up a corpse. If Mrs. Carmac was keen set on
pickin' up a pair o' scissors, I'd back them to turn up as ag'in' your
ten-thousand-pound necklace. Mebbe that's a silly thing to say in this
case. Her jew'ls are in a locked box, an' a strong one at that, because
I twigged her baggage when it kem aboard, an' the lot was built for hard
wear. But there you are! I'll take care she has a look at the stuff we
find, an' that ends my job."

"You can count on me, Captain, for all the assistance I can render,"
said Raymond, and the subject dropped.

                  *       *       *       *       *

"By the way," he went on, adopting the most nonchalant tone he could
command, "have you met Mrs. Carmac's niece since we came ashore?"

"Me, Sir? No. Didn't know there was any such young woman."

"You have not been told, then, that Mrs. Carmac found a long-lost niece
in Miss Yvonne Ingersoll?"

Popple slapped a stout thigh, and his eyes rounded in surprise. "Sink
me! but that explains it!" he cried.

"Explains what?"

"I wondered where I had seen the girl in bib an' tucker afore."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, these here caps an' streamers an' tickle-me aprons do make a heap
of difference! Now what in the world will she think of me? I've passed
her a dozen times without ever a 'Thank you, Miss,' or a touch of me
hat. Dash my buttons! I thought my eyes were sharper'n that! Of course
she was wrapped in a sou'wester an' oilskin the other day, an' so was
Mrs. Carmac; so I piped the likeness then, an' even spoke of it to Mr.
Ingersoll. But I must ha been rattled when I was in Mrs. Carmac's room a
bit since. Of course I remember now. That was her, right enough."

"Would you mind telling me what you are rambling about, Captain Popple?"

Popple grinned. "There's a pair of us, Mr. Raymond," he cried. "You
don't seem to know much about the lady, either. You met her on the
stairs when you went to see Mrs. Carmac, because I happened to notice
that she kem down as you went up."

"A girl in Breton costume?"

"That's it. She's lived here since she was a baby, an' I s'pose she took
to the village ways."

Raymond was so astounded by a fact that, after all, was not of vital
importance, that he put the next question literally to gain time for the
readjustment of his ideas. "You have heard something of her history,
then?"

"Oh, ay. She an' her father are well thought of in Pont Aven. A lady
who's stayin' in there," and he jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward
the hotel, "tole me all about the pair of 'em. Mr. Ingersoll is by way
of bein' a great hand at paintin'; but he settled down in this little
spot nearly nineteen years ago, and has never left it. Miss Yvonne would
be a baby then; but she's grown into a damn fine young woman since--an'
she ain't the on'y one in the parish, if I'm any judge."

"Mr. Ingersoll lost his wife here. That probably accounts for his wish
to remain."

Popple's face creased in a frown of perplexity. "That isn't w'at the
lady said," he explained. "Her story was that Mrs. Ingersoll died in
Paris, probably when the baby was born. Anyhow, no one in Pont Aven had
ever seen her, as she axed particular. Not that it could ha been any
business of hers, but a woman likes to ferret out every atom of gossip,
an' there's bound to be a lot of talk about any girl as good lookin' as
Miss Ingersoll."

Popple little guessed--he never knew--what a tornado he let loose by
those words. "Dear me! Dear me! How very curious!" gasped Raymond.

                  *       *       *       *       *

And at that moment Yvonne herself came across the Place from Le
Sellin's, having undergone a process of "fitting" to which her mother
was unequal. The two were alike even in height and figure. If anything,
Mrs. Carmac was rather more slender than her daughter, because the
girl's muscles were well developed by long walks and plenty of exercise
in an outrigger, whereas the older woman had been self-indulgent and
frail all her life.

Both men stood up. She noticed their action, and protested smilingly.

"Please don't rise, Mr. Raymond," she said. "I hope you don't think I
have neglected you, but I have inquired from Dr. Garnier several times
as to your well-being, and I knew you were in good hands here, while my
own time has been occupied in looking after Mrs. Carmac, who was really
very ill until this morning. As for you, Captain Popple, I didn't need
to glance twice at you to see that a small thing like a shipwreck hadn't
disturbed you in the least."

"Miss," said Popple, "you'll believe me, I know, when I say I didn't
reckernize you upstairs. Sink me! I couldn't imagine that any young lady
could look so pretty in two different ways."

She laughed delightedly, for the first time since the doleful twin
sisters, Sorrow and Suffering, had discovered her. "Now I understand why
a sailor has a lass in every port," she said. "You cannot fail to be a
success with the girls if you talk to them in that fashion."

Popple had never before been accused of being a ladykiller. He grinned,
and his red face grew purple. "Me, Miss?" he cried. "Bless your little
heart! I was on'y tellin' the solemn truth. You looked like a seafarin'
angel when I saw you through the scud an' spray dashin' over that reef.
An' now--well, if the folk hereabout want to advertise Pont Aven, they
ought to put you on a poster."

"Captain, I must not have my head turned by such compliments. Wait till
Tuesday, our market day, and you will meet dozens of girls who put me in
the shade. Is your arm fairly comfortable, Mr. Raymond?"

The secretary, whose eye

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