Father Roland, always goaded on by his seafaring craze, would question their new friend about the departed captain; and she would talk of him, and his voyages, and his old-world tales, without hesitation, like a resigned and reasonable woman who loves life and respects death.
The two sons on their return, finding the pretty widow quite at home in the house, forthwith began to court her, less from any wish to charm her than from the desire to cut each other out.
Their mother, being practical and prudent, sincerely hoped that one of them might win the young widow, for she was rich; but then she would have liked that the other should not be grieved.
Mme. Rosemilly was fair, with blue eyes, a mass of light waving hair, fluttering at the least breath of wind, and an alert, daring, pugnacious little way with her, which did not in the least answer to the sober method of her mind.
She already seemed to like Jean best, attracted, no doubt, by an affinity of nature.
This preference, however, she betrayed only by an almost imperceptible difference of voice and look and also by occasionally asking his opinion.
She seemed to guess that Jean’s views would support her own, while those of Pierre must inevitably be different.
When she spoke of the doctor’s ideas on politics, art, philosophy, or morals, she would sometimes say:
“Your crotchets.”
Then he would look at her with the cold gleam of an accuser drawing up an indictment against women—all women, poor weak things.
Never till his sons came home had M. Roland invited her to join his fishing expeditions, nor had he ever taken his wife; for he liked to put off before daybreak, with his ally, Captain Beausire, a master mariner retired, whom he had first met on the quay at high tides and with whom he had struck up an intimacy, and the old sailor Papagris, known as Jean Bart, in whose charge the boat was left.
But one evening of the week before, Mme. Rosemilly, who had been dining with them, remarked,
“It must be great fun to go out fishing.” The jeweller, flattered by her interest and suddenly fired with the wish to share his favourite sport with her, and to make a convert after the manner of priests, exclaimed:
“Would you like to come?”
“To be sure I should.”
“Next Tuesday?”
“Yes, next Tuesday.”
“Are you the woman to be ready to start at five in the morning?”
She exclaimed in horror:
“No, indeed: that is too much.”
He was disappointed and chilled, suddenly doubting her true vocation.
However, he said:
“At what hour can you be ready?”
“Well—at nine?”
“Not before?”
“No, not before. Even that is very early.”
The old fellow hesitated; he certainly would catch nothing, for when the sun has warmed the sea the fish bite no more; but the two brothers had eagerly pressed the scheme, and organized and arranged everything there and then.
So on the following Tuesday the Pearl had dropped anchor under the white rocks of Cape la Heve; they had fished till midday, then they had slept awhile, and then fished again without catching anything; and then it was that father Roland, perceiving, rather late, that all that Mme. Rosemilly really enjoyed and cared for was the sail on the sea, and seeing that his lines hung motionless, had uttered in a spirit of unreasonable annoyance, that vehement “Tschah!” which applied as much to the pathetic widow as to the creatures he could not catch.
Now he contemplated the spoil—his fish—with the joyful thrill of a miser; seeing as he looked up at the sky that the sun was getting low:
“Well, boys,” said he, “suppose we turn homeward.”
The young men hauled in their lines, coiled them up, cleaned the hooks and stuck them into corks, and sat waiting.
Roland stood up to look out like a captain.
“No wind,” said he. “You will have to pull, young ‘uns.”
And suddenly extending one arm to the northward, he exclaimed:
“Here comes the packet from Southampton.”
Away over the level sea, spread out like a blue sheet, vast and sheeny and shot with flame and gold, an inky cloud was visible against the rosy sky in the quarter to which he pointed, and below it they could make out the hull of the steamer, which looked tiny at such a distance.
And to southward other wreaths of smoke, numbers of them, could be seen, all converging towards the Havre pier, now scarcely visible as a white streak with the lighthouse, upright, like a horn, at the end of it.
Roland asked:
“Is not the Normandie due to-day?”
And Jean replied:
“Yes, to-day.”
“Give me my glass. I fancy I see her out there.”
The father pulled out the copper tube, adjusted it to his eye, sought the speck, and then, delighted to have seen it, exclaimed:
“Yes, yes, there she is.
I know her two funnels.
Would you like to look, Mme. Rosemilly?”
She took the telescope and directed it towards the Atlantic horizon, without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she could distinguish nothing—nothing but blue, with a coloured halo round it, a circular rainbow—and then all manner of queer things, winking eclipses which made her feel sick.
She said as she returned the glass:
“I never could see with that thing.
It used to put my husband in quite a rage; he would stand for hours at the windows watching the ships pass.”