Part 18 (1/2)

”It holds fifteen little wooden dolls,” said I, ”jointed at the knees and elbows; and they cost two sols apiece.”

”My little dolls--you clever boy! O you clever little boy!” She kissed me twice again. ”Come, and you shall sleep, and then, when you wake, you shall see.”

She took me by the hand and hurried me into the house, and upstairs to a great bedroom with a large oaken four-post bed in it, and a narrow wooden bed beside, and a fire lit, and an arm-chair by the hearth.

The four-post bed had curtains of green damask, all closely pinned around it, and a green valance. But she went to the little bed, which was hung with pink dimity, and pulled the white sheets out of it and replaced them with others from a great wardrobe sunk in the wall.

And while I sat in the chair by the fire, munching a crust of bread and feeling half inclined to cry and more than half inclined to sleep, she left me, and returned with a can of hot water and a vast night-s.h.i.+rt of the farmer's, and bade me good-night.

”Be quick and undress, little one.” She turned at the door. ”The tubs are all in hiding by this time. Good-night, Yann.”

I believe I slept as soon as my head touched the sweet-smelling pillow; and I must have slept the round of the clock before I opened my eyes, for the room was now bright with candles, and in the arm-chair by the fire sat the Breton lady sewing as if for dear life.

But the wonder of her was that she now wore a short plain dress such as girls wear in the convent schools in Brittany, and her grey hair was tied just like a girl's. One little foot rested on the bra.s.s fender, and the firelight played on its silver shoe-buckle.

I coughed, to let her know that I was awake, and she looked across and nodded.

”Almost ten o'clock, Yann, and time for you to rise and have supper.

And after supper--are you sorry?--another journey for you. At midnight you start in the gig with Farmer Ellory, who will drive you to the coast, to a town called Fowey, where some friends of his 'in the trade'

are starting for Roscoff. In six hours you will be aboard s.h.i.+p again; and in another twenty, perhaps, you will see your mother--and your father too, if he escaped clear away. In little more than a day you will be back in Brittany. But first you must lie quite still, and I will show you something.”

”To be sure I will, madame.”

”You must not call me that. I am the Demoiselle Heloise Keranguin.

You know St. Pol de Leon, Yann?”

”Almost as well as my own town, mademoiselle.”

”And the Convent of the Grey Nuns, on the road to Morlaix, a little beyond the town?”

It was on my tongue to tell her that fire and soldiery had wiped it even with the ground, during the ”Terror.” But she interrupted me.

Setting down her work-basket, which was heaped high with reels and parti-coloured rags of silk, she pushed a small table over to the big bed and loaded it with candlesticks. There were three candles already alight in the room, but she lit others and set them in line--bra.s.s candlesticks, plated candlesticks, candlesticks of chinaware--fourteen candlesticks in all, and fresh candles in each. Laying a finger on her lip, she stepped to the big bed and unfastened the corking-pins which held the green curtains together. As she pushed the curtains back I lifted myself on an elbow.

It was into a real theatre that I looked. She had transformed the whole level of the bed into a miniature stage, with buildings of cardboard, cleverly painted, and gardens cut out of silk and velvet and laid down, and rose-trees gummed on little sticks, and a fish-pond and brook of looking-gla.s.s, with embroidered flowers stuck along their edges, and along the paths (of real sand) a score of little dolls walking, all dressed in the uniform of the Grey Nuns. I declare it was so real, you could almost hear the fountain playing, with its _jet d'eau_ of transparent beads strung on an invisible wire.

”But how pretty, mademoiselle!” I cried.

She clasped her hands nervously. ”But is it _like_, Yann? It is so long ago that I may have forgotten. Tell me if it is like; or if there is anything wrong. I promise not to be offended.”

”It is exactly like, mademoiselle.”

”See, here is the Mother Superior; and this is Soeur Gabrielle. I have to make the dresses full and stiff, or they wouldn't stand up.

And that, with the blue eyes, is Soeur Hyacinthe. She walks with me-- this is I--as she always did. And what do you think? With the fifteen dolls that you have brought I am going to have a real Pardon, and townspeople and fisher people to stand and wors.h.i.+p at the altar of the Virgin, there in the corner. I made it of wax, and stamped the face with a seal that Charles gave me. He was to have been my husband when I left the school.”

”Indeed, mademoiselle?”

”Yes, but the soldiers burnt his house. It was but a week after I left the school, and the Chateau Sant-Ervoan lay but a mile from my mother's house. He fled to us, wounded; and we carried him to the coast--there was a price on his head, and we, too, had to flee--and escaped over to England. He died on this bed, Yann. Look--”

She lifted a candle, and there on the bed's ledge I read, in gilt lettering, some words I have never forgotten, though it was not until years after that I got a priest to explain them to me. They were ”C. DE. R. COMES ET ECSUL. MDCCXCIII.”