Maris Stella

Front matter

BY MARIE CLOTHILDE BALFOUR LONDON : JOHN LANE, VIGO ST BOSTON: ROBERTS BROS., 1896 RW/ Copyrighted in the United States All rights reserved Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty TO Joseph Jacobs and Alfred Nutt. My dear Sirs : If I venture to set your names in front of this little book, it is not because I put upon it an exaggerated value, but that I am glad to take the opportunity of expressing something of the gratitude I feel for the much that I owe to you. I could wish, in all modesty, that this little volume might give you pleasure j that I could thus make some inadequate return for the kindness and encouragement which, believe me, I have known how to appreciate. Yours very faithfully, CLOTHILDE BALFOUR. Dinard, France.

Chapter I There

were many places where one could wait and watch for the sight of a sail coming over the curl of the sea to the southward ; but none was better than the ramparts. Out at the Tete Blanche, where at night the beacon shone like a star, one was too much within the curve of the bay ; down on the sands, below Our Lady's Gate, there were too many people ; there were children playing, and women knitting and gossiping, whenever the sun shone and the air was calm and mild. And when one had been born, and lived amongst them, and knew them all, one had to stop and talk ; there was always some one to ask after, some story to hear ; and meanwhile a sail, or a thin grey tuft of smoke, A might steal up unawares out of the silver mist that veiled the going down of the sea. Upon the ramparts this could not happen ; there were fewer who came here, and they were apt to keep aloof from each other.

These were the young wives, new to the difficult time of waiting ; and the widows, who turned this way out of long habit, and to remember ; and presently, as the days grew shorter and less serene, those who came and looked, and went away to kneel before the side altar in the church, where the little boats hung, and the many tapers glittered and flickered as if they were blown this way and that by a cold breath coming from the further seas. And then back, with a more confident trustfulness, back again to the ramparts, to look out on the broad, shining, smiling water that held so many secrets within it. 'Poldine turned her face aside when such an one passed near her. It was late in the season, and most of the boats were in ; there were some, she supposed, who' had good reason to be anxious, But not she ; she knew already that her husband was likely to be one of the last comers ; the fishing had been good, and they had been delayed in getting away.

He had sent her word by a comrade not to expect him before the beginning of the month, and she had barely a right yet even to look for a sail coming up out of the southward sea. But the Dieu-Prottge was a good boat and a fast one, and the weather did not turn to storms ; it was one thing to tell herself that he could not possibly come yet, and quite another to sit at home seeming as if nothing in the world were going to happen to her presently ; as if Laumec were not already on his way homewards, and as if every nerve in her body were not tingling with expectation and excitement under her serene, smiling tranquillity. 'Poldine put her hand to her throat sometimes, and wondered whether it were tears or laughter that lay there, so big that she could hardly breathe. It was pleasant upon the ramparts, these long, still autumn afternoons — pleasant, save for the glimpse one could not but catch of those white, wan faces, with all their life centred in their straining eyes ; or of those others, who had known it all themselves — the wrench of parting, the joy of home-coming, the long, weary summer, and the winter that flew by so quickly ; and had known, too, the weary time of waiting, of wait ing, at last, for one who never came. 'Poldine knitted her brows with a singular impatience when these thoughts came to her.

She knew very well that such things were ; had known it all her life, had remembered it season after season when the boats set out for the fishings, and had thought of it when first Laumec and she met on the quai or in the streets, and she smiled upon him interestedly, because he was a Terreneuvas, and she had known none. But it had never stung her with such a sharp truthful ness as when she stood before Monsieur le Cure" with Laumec, and had seen his eyes wander to the great ship that hung overhead, the quaint, ghostly thing that dangled from the roof, quivering and dipping in the draught of the open doors as if she still felt the lap of water lifting and rippling beneath her. There were long, grey spiders' webs draped about her masts, and dust lay thick and white on her from bow to stern ; she had been hung there long ago, very long ago it seemed from her build, by one who, perhaps, had waited on the ramparts out yonder, or prayed in the Lady-Chapel here, in vain.

Or, perhaps, it had been in memory of a storm out ridden, of a home-coming when hope had almost gone, of prayers that had found a tardy answer. It seemed to 'Poldine, on her marriage-day, that the old ship was wrapped, not in a white shroud of dust, but in the grey fogs of the Banks, where Laumec must spend the best of his life, the cold, cruel fog that was half the danger, and more than half the terror, of those long hard months of toil and peril, when here at home the sun shone, and one was happy only to feel one's self alive. She shivered a little ; the fog — the grey fogs of the Banks — crept up to her and touched her, with a sudden icy chill of dread and fear. . . At that moment it seemed to her that already Laumec lay deep in the green water, and there was no one — nothing — but she and the fog that knew, that understood.

And then the ' Ave, Man's Stella ' rose up about her, the old familiar cantique that was woven in with all her memories, with all her life ; and a warm sense of safety and accustomedness came with it, that brought the colour back into her face. She looked down from the ramparts on the little crowd of women and children scattered on the sand below, and listened absently to the sound of their laughter. They were so gay, ces bonnes gens — these very good folk ; so gay, so noisy, so easily amused, so quick to anger : they were always either laughing, or quarrelling, or crying — but certainly most often they were laughing. 'Poldine looked down on them now with a smiling contempt, for it seemed to her very foolish to make such a noise and fuss about everything, when it was so easy to be quiet and calm, and cheerfully reasonable, as she herself was ; and then she let her thoughts wander back again to her marriage day — such a little time ago, and she so young and unaccustomed in wifehood, yet distant by all the long dividing length of summer. 'Poldine lived with her mother in the Clos a la Dame, a tiny court in the oldest corner of the old town, hidden behind the jutting turret of an ancient house, and set in the midst of a tangle of narrow lanes and alleys.

The stately old house had carved stonework and a coat of arms above its doorway : there had been, it was said, a princess who once was wont to sit at the great centre window, spinning her thread with a golden spindle, and sighing, sighing, as even princesses must sometimes do. And there was a certain white horse that clattered past beneath her window every day when the church bells rang the Angelus : a white horse, whose rider spoke always to the good princess, and begged her to marry him, for her land's sake. But the princess, spinning with the golden spindle and sighing, sighing, made no other answer. . . . That is all very long ago, to be sure, and yet there are those who live in the Clos a la Dame, who say that even now when the Angelus rings, one may hear the white horse clattering up the street, the tiny stair-like street that bears its name ; the street that leads nowhere else but to the old stone house with the tower, where the princess sat spinning her thread with a golden spindle — and to the tiny court that hides behind.

The Clos a la Dame is small, as to ground plan ; so small, that the sun only touches the worn pavement at a high summer noon. But then, in the old times, when these houses were built, one practised a narrow neighbourliness ; and in the Allege des Nonnettes, or the Rue de la Fosse Ouverte, or in the Rue du Cheval Blanc itself — and every one knows that it is much the widest — one would not need to have long arms to reach across from window to opposite window. And after all, high up in these old houses, where 'Poldine lived, there was certainly no lack of sun and sweet air, and the sight of wide blue water, that in winter was lashed by the Noroiia into a torment of purple and green ; for they stood well a-tip-toe on the shelving rock, and looked out cheerfully over the high encircling ramparts.

It was a big room, when one got up to it, this, that was 'Poldine's home. The house had been of consequence in its day, and there had lived in it perhaps some of those proud seamen who sailed, and fought, and looted, for their own hand, and whose daughters, it is said, slapped the face of princes. Here, where the sea air came in straight to the windows, was no ill abiding-place for a corsair's women-kind ; and when one looked at the bleached oak panelling of the walls, and the huge low beams of the ceiling, and the great hearth that yawned blackly at the further side, — one seemed to hear still the rustle of silks brought from over seas, and the tapping of high heels, and to catch the quaint mysterious scents that creep back to one from the past. . . . And even in its decay, and in its infinite change, it was still strangely beautiful and quaint.

In one corner of the huge empty hearth, a few bricks had been built together, which supported a little broken coal and a handful of petit bois, and over which hung a pot from a rusty iron tripod. There were no logs to fill the great hearth now, with a glorious roaring sheet of flame ; but since the tiny fire did its work as well, — at least, as much work as 'Poldine asked from it — what need was there to complain ? They were not rich, she and her mother; but there was always enough soup and bread for dinner, enough coffee for the morning, enough fruit when the summer came round, or cider when one was thirsty — and when one had enough, when one had all that one wanted, one was certainly not poor. ... It was true that they wanted very little, 'Poldine and her mother ; some bread, the good grey bread that all the world must eat, when one wants to be strong and to work well ; a basket of vegetables at the market, a jug of cider — not the poor thin wine that makes the Parisians so white-faced, not the piquette that one drinks in bad seasons, with grapes and what not in it to eke it out ; but the good strong cider of the Marais, the cider of the ' Doux Auveque,' the best cider made of the best apples in the world (as they say — ) ; what more was needed for two women, even when one was young and lusty and wholesomely hungry ?

There were two beds in the corners, draped with white curtains and covered with gay pink counterpanes of printed cotton ; and on the wall beside them, each had its own little gaudy gracious Virgin, and the sprig of green that had been blessed at church on the last Palm- Sunday. And there was a big double cupboard — the armaine — of old cherry-wood, black and polished with age, and catching the sun shine on its ponderous brass hinges and locks ; and a chest, fine with ancient carving that would have made 'Poldine rich if she had sold it. 'Mais, pour siir, on ne vend pas ca comme on jette des guerchots' — she said invariably, with an instinct of possession that was not to be overcome ; and the chest, like the armaine, and the quaint oaken chairs, kept its place against the bleached, worm-eaten panellings, that had once been dark and smooth and shining too.

It was a pity, perhaps, that the pale oak walls were not left in their own stately simplicity, but 'Poldine had a cheerful taste in colour; so they bloomed, like a flower garden, though less beautifully, in every shade of red and green and blue. There were innumerable tiny pictures of saints and angels bought at the fairs for a sou a piece. There were simpering heads of women taken from the tops of cardboard boxes, and coloured figures of soldiers and sailors cut out of the illustrated papers. And there were bunches of gaudy paper flowers and skins of oranges, carefully sewn up and dangling at the ends of threads, and all sorts of grotesque chenille monkeys and tinselled plush butterflies that 'Poldine had brought home from the fairs. Also there were shells and tufts of dried seaweed, and even some black, four-horned ' purses ' : — the purses that were lost long ago, when the sea swept inland over the great forest, and over the villages and towns that now lie deep at the bottom of the water, and whence one may hear, as all the world knows, the sound of their church bells.

And these purses that were so well-filled then, with the devil's money, paid for wicked heathen souls, were cast away upon the shore ; so that one may find them here and there, when the spring tides creep out to their farthest. And on the high, narrow mantel-shelf, there was another Virgin and crucifix, and a scrap of green or blossom, set in a tiny vase, with a pair of tapers that were even lit, upon the great festivals ; and on either side, rows of photographs faded to a sickly drab, and some faire-parts and memorial cards, framed in cut out black paper. ... It was all very proper, very orthodox, very bourgeois, and very like a great many other such rooms ; only it was distinguished from them all, as 'Poldine herself differed from other women, in its exquisite orderliness, its infinitely careful arrangement and keeping, in contrast with the foolish triviality of its adornment.

Yet not even the spotlessness of her floor, nor the black shining polish of the armaine, nor even the big copper pan which was her greatest pride, made 'Poldine feel so richly and especially superior, as those neat marshallings of pictures, of faded photographs and faire-parts. ' Tiens, maman ! ' she said, contentedly, every time that she dusted them ; ' any one can see we come of good people, of people who knew how to do things becomingly.' They were not rich, but no one dreamt of calling 'Poldine poor. She paid her rent regularly and owed no one a sou ; she had always as much sewing as she could undertake, for in that, as in everything else, she did her work with a neat perfection. And she was always able to spare an hour or two when there was anything going on, always dressed with an admirable simplicity, always wore a coiffe that was coquettish in its absolute whiteness ; and wherever she went, she always contrived to keep about her, her placid serenity, her little comfortable air of bourgeoise respectability.

It was at the spring assemblee, — the Sainte Ouine, — that she had first met Laumec, or at least that she had come to know him : in this tiny walled-in town, one rubbed shoulders some time or another with most of those who came about it. He was a Terreneuvas, — and 'Poldine surveyed him with a considerable interest. Autumn and spring, during the whole of her life, she had been used to the coming and going of the boats from and to the Banks ; as surely as Christmas was followed by Easter, as certainly as the grande Sainte Ouine itself, the fishermen went away in the first days of spring, and returned, — most of them, — in the late autumn. But to her it had only been a thing to look on at, a thing outside of her life ; a matter which she accepted with a certain condescension, as being below and beyond her.

She did not come of a seafaring stock ; the ' people who knew how to do things ' had all been small — very small — shopkeepers ; she belonged to a different ' gens,' and she knew it and appreciated it. But like every one else in the town, she had watched the goelettes loading in the dock, and spreading their wings as soon as the winter storms were over ; she had turned out to see the starting of the big steamers that carried away a couple of thousand men with them ; she had bought nuts and cimereaux at the stalls that stood in rows upon the jetties ; she had enjoyed the noise and laughter of the crowd, with a kind and cheerful tolerance. And when the steamers drew slowly out from the quay, she had gone as every one else did, to the Tete Blanche, to see the last of them, and to listen to the men, who, clustered on the rigging, sang the ' Ave, Maris Stella.' And she had gone out, too, to see them come home again, and had noticed, here and there, a face that was white and weary, and eyes that sought anxiously for one that had not returned.

But to 'Poldine, who had nothing to do with it all, it was only amusing, — certainly amusing, though, of course, she was sorry for them : and when she met Laumec, she looked at him with a mingling of curiosity and a gentle condescension, and a sense as of old familiarity. ' Tiens, you are a Terreneuvas ? ' she said, very graciously. ' And you came home in the " Gallia " last autumn ? Yes, I was there. I think you may have seen me. Voyons — I was quite near the landing.' Laumec looked contrite. ' You see,' he explained, ' they were all there, my mother and my father and Fantic, — that is one of my brothers. Of course I ought to remember, — only when one's people are there, one sees no one else.' 'Poldine smiled upon him the more kindly that she felt annoyed : though what, after all, could it matter to her whether Laumec Le Braz had seen her or no, two — three — months before?

When she went home presently, a desire not to talk of him spurred her into loquacity, and she mentioned his name. Her mother, a tiny nervous old woman, who had a habit of standing about the dusky corners of the room, nodded her head wisely under her wide-winged coiffe. ' Le Braz ? I know,' — she said, timidly shrill. She always did know everything about everybody. 'Poldine had long ago discovered, when she B would speak ; but sometimes she was obstinately silent. To-night, she was garrulous. . . . ' I know. The boy may be well enough, — he has good blood in him. But his father, — they live in a cabin, a poor place, on the high road,' — and she pointed with her chin eastward, where the main land lay. 'A cabin,' — and the wide loops of her cap fluttered up and down as she nodded. ' No better than a baraque, — they are Bretons.

Yes, they came from Basse-Bretagne, and they had a good name in their own place, it was said ; I remember, they were called Le Braz de Kerminihi.' ' But how—? ' 'Poldine's mother fluttered her hands vaguely in front of her. ' What do I know, except that — it is so f ' she quavered. 'There were many children, some said there were even twelve, but I think they can not have been quite so wicked. Enfiu I the family took away the daughters — there were two — and put them into a convent. Yes, they were certainly quite rich people, the family, and it is a good name, Le Braz de Kerminihi.' 'Poldine looked out of the window at the sea with an unusual interest. ' And the sons ? ' she said, presently. The big wings of her mother's coiffe fluttered again. ' There is one who drives a cab,' she explained, ' and that is a very respectable thing to do.

And you tell me one is a Terreneuvas, and there are several that have gone away. Perhaps they may be — only soldiers ! ' she said, with a little disdain in her tremulous voice. 'Poldine still stared out of the window thoughtfully, and pictured to herself the little house on the high road, and the old people — Laumec's father and mother. She was quite sure she knew what they must be like. . . . There was a man calling for rubbish in the streets below, she could hear him quite distinctly — ' . . . des guerchots a vendre ? Par-r-r la Mesdames ! ' No, it didn't matter, they hadn't any rags to sell ; not to-day. And the crier was going round the town, she could hear the roll of his drum some where near the convent of the Dames de St Aaron. Laumec's father had come down in the world, evidently, but it was a great thing to know one came of good people, nevertheless.

And now that he was old, and probably white-haired, one need not be ashamed of him. As to his mother, she would certainly be one of those grave, long-faced Breton women, who smiled so rarely, and yet were doubtless very good to their own, and certainly religious. She had gone to meet Laumec, and therefore he had not noticed her, 'Poldine, as he might have done. ' . . . a vendre ? Par-r Id, mesdames ! ' She frowned a little, and then coloured suddenly. That she, so calm and sensible always, should care ! He was certainly — yes, certainly — nothing to her. ' The crier is going round the town,' she said, looking vaguely into the dim room behind her. ' I think it will be for the Veuve Herve's sale. . . . I hear him up by the chapelle. . . . And they say that one of the bonnes sæurs is dead, one of the Dames de St Aaron.

They bury them all in white, I've been told. . . . Yes, you were speaking of the Le Braz, to be sure. Well, this one — Laumec, they call him — is a well grown fellow enough, tall and dark, and — yes, one might say he's handsome. Very black, very serious — -one can see he comes of good blood,' she said. A sudden light flamed up from the small lamp, and the white cap bobbed nervously about it. ' Yes — good blood, I don't deny it ; but they're Bretons . . . c'sont des brets.' 'Poldine looked at her mother severely. ' One should not say these things,' she said. ' If they are Bretons, dame ! it isn't their fault, and one ought not to blame them. And besides, what has that got to do with it? It's much more important to come of . . . good blood.' She turned away from the window, and sat down to her work with a tranquil superiority. ' It makes a great difference,' she thought, ' all that . . . and Le Braz de Kerminihi sounds very well.

He certainly isn't the same as a common fisherman — a Terreneuvas like the others — a mere stupid paysan — ' She had a habit of leaving her sentences unfinished — even to herself. Perhaps they led her some times further than she was just then prepared to go, ... or, perhaps, it was merely her thoughts that wandered. At any rate, several times that evening, before she folded away her work for the night, she found her hands lying idle in her lap, and her mother watching her furtively, under the bobbing wings of her wide coiffe. But it was not that she was thinking of Laumec ; no, certainly not ! That had been the beginning of it ; once or twice more she had met him, and then the spring had come, and he had gone away ; he had asked her if she could not be there to see him off. This time 'Poldine did not buy nuts or oranges ; she did not even look at the Chevaux de-bois outside the Grand' Porte — she did not want to look, for only a few days ago she had ridden on one, and Laumec had held her in the saddle. . . .

All the town was out, and the quays were crowded ; one would have said it was a fair — a very gay fair — for every one was laughing. There would be all the summer to weep at home, if one wanted ; and besides, it was so easy to these people to be gay, and to make a noise. 'Poldine did not laugh — she did not understand why one should be foolish enough to do that ; but she was always very cheerful, very sensible, only to-day it was so grey, and so cold, and so . . . enfin ! if one tried very hard, one could keep on smiling. Presently the steamer, with its load of Terreneuvas, had drawn away from the quay, and she found herself carried along to the Tete Blanche with the crowd that sped that way to see the last of it. It passed close enough for one to distinguish them, the men swarming all over the deck and the rigging, and stretching out their hands in sign of fare well ; Laumec waved his cap to her. . . .

Yes, it was a detestable day, un temps affreux — or something. . . . They were singing the cantique, the ' Ave, Maris Stella,' and it seemed to 'Poldine that she could hear Laumec's voice, — his voice that was so strong and manly, and yet could be so soft. At least he had seen her this time ; he had even been sorry — a little — to say good-bye. ' Atque semper Virgo.' That had tangled itself already into many memories, that cantique, now she came to think of it. She had sung it at her first communion, for instance ; and she had really looked very nice, all in white ; and what a big candle she had carried ! And she had sung it down at the shore every year, when on All Souls' Day, the Fete des Trepasses, the priest had prayed for those that lay deep within the waters, here, and over seas, and at the Banks.

And again at the Assumption, at the Notre Dame d'Aout, when the seamen and the fishermen walked in the pro cession, singing, and carrying upon their shoulders the stately ancient ship that a great Corsair had given to the town ; and on the Fete of the Rosary, and in the warm sweet-scented dusk of the Month of Mary. . . . She had heard it chanted year after year, in church and out of church, so often that she had grown careless to it ; when the Terreneuvas came and went at either end of the summer, and when they walked barefoot in pilgrimage to the tiny tapestry-hung Chapel of Les Guerets, to give thanks for their safe return. (For the Virgin of Les Guerets was herself the Etoile de la Mer, the Stella Maris, and had a great gold star behind her head.) And besides, it was engraved on so many of the tall stone crosses that looked out over the sea into the very teeth of the terrible Noroiia, where the waves came churning to their feet in a furious turmoil of purple and green and white; the crosses where the women brought flowers some times, and sat watching for the boats, the great crosses that stand like sentinels all along the coast.