Flower of the Gorse

"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.