The customers, tradesmen, and labourers, for it was a holiday, were shouting, calling, laughing, and the master himself was waiting on them, running from table to table, carrying away empty glasses and returning them crowned with froth.
When Pierre had found a seat not far from the desk he waited, hoping that the girl would see him and recognise him.
But she passed him again and again as she went to and fro, pattering her feet under her skirts with a smart little strut.
At last he rapped a coin on the table, and she hurried up.
“What will you take, sir?”
She did not look at him; her mind was absorbed in calculations of the liquor she had served.
“Well,” said he, “this is a pretty way of greeting a friend.”
She fixed her eyes on his face. “Ah!” said she hurriedly. “Is it you?
You are pretty well?
But I have not a minute to-day.
A bock did you wish for?”
“Yes, a bock!”
When she brought it he said:
“I have come to say good-bye.
I am going away.”
And she replied indifferently:
“Indeed.
Where are you going?”
“To America.”
“A very fine country, they say.”
And that was all!
Really, he was very ill-advised to address her on such a busy day; there were too many people in the cafe.
Pierre went down to the sea.
As he reached the jetty he descried the Pearl; his father and Beausire were coming in.
Papagris was pulling, and the two men, seated in the stern, smoked their pipes with a look of perfect happiness.
As they went past the doctor said to himself:
“Blessed are the simple-minded!”
And he sat down on one of the benches on the breakwater, to try to lull himself in animal drowsiness.
When he went home in the evening his mother said, without daring to lift her eyes to his face:
“You will want a heap of things to take with you.
I have ordered your under-linen, and I went into the tailor’s shop about cloth clothes; but is there nothing else you need—things which I, perhaps, know nothing about?”
His lips parted to say,
“No, nothing.”
But he reflected that he must accept the means of getting a decent outfit, and he replied in a very calm voice:
“I hardly know myself, yet. I will make inquiries at the office.”
He inquired, and they gave him a list of indispensable necessaries.
His mother, as she took it from his hand, looked up at him for the first time for very long, and in the depths of her eyes there was the humble expression, gentle, sad, and beseeching, of a dog that has been beaten and begs forgiveness.
On the 1st of October the Lorraine from Saint-Nazaire, came into the harbour of Havre to sail on the 7th, bound for New York, and Pierre Roland was to take possession of the little floating cabin in which henceforth his life was to be confined.
Next day as he was going out, he met his mother on the stairs waiting for him, to murmur in an almost inaudible voice:
“You would not like me to help you to put things to rights on board?”
“No, thank you. Everything is done.”
Then she said:
“I should have liked to see your cabin.”
“There is nothing to see.
It is very small and very ugly.”
And he went downstairs, leaving her stricken, leaning against the wall with a wan face.
Now Roland, who had gone over the Lorraine that very day, could talk of nothing all dinnertime but this splendid vessel, and wondered that his wife should not care to see it as their son was to sail on board.
Pierre had scarcely any intercourse with his family during the days which followed.
He was nervous, irritable, hard, and his rough speech seemed to lash every one indiscriminately.
But the day before he left he was suddenly quite changed, and much softened.