THE BRIDAL
It was six days before the sailing for Iceland. Their wedding procession was returning from Ploubazlanec Church, driven before a furious wind, under a sombre, rain-laden sky.
They looked very handsome, nevertheless, as they walked along as in a dream, arm-in-arm, like king and queen leading a long cortege. Calm, reserved, and grave, they seemed to see nothing about them; as if they were above ordinary life and everybody else. The very wind seemed to respect them, while behind them their "train" was a jolly medley of laughing couples, tumbled and buffeted by the angry western gale.
Many people were present, overflowing with young life; others turning gray, but these still smiled as they thought of /their/ wedding-day and younger years. Granny Yvonne was there and following, too, panting a little, but something like happy, hanging on the arm of an old uncle of Yann's, who was paying her old-fashioned compliments. She wore a grand new cap, bought for the occasion, and her tiny shawl, which had been dyed a third time, and black, because of Sylvestre.
The wind worried everybody; dresses and skirts, bonnets and /coiffes/, were similarly tossed about mercilessly.
At the church door, the newly married couple, pursuant to custom, had bought two nosegays of artificial flowers, to complete their bridal attire. Yann had fastened his on anyhow upon his broad chest, but he was one of those men whom anything becomes. As for Gaud, there was still something of the lady about the manner in which she had placed the rude flowers in her bodice, as of old very close fitting to her unrivalled form.
The violin player, who led the whole band, bewildered by the wind, played at random; his tunes were heard by fits and starts betwixt the noisy gusts, and rose as shrill as the screaming of a sea-gull. All Ploubazlanec had turned out to look at them. This marriage seemed to excite people's sympathy, and many had come from far around; at each turn of the road there were groups stationed to see them pass. Nearly all Yann's mates, the Icelanders of Paimpol, were there. They cheered the bride and bridegroom as they passed; Gaud returned their greeting, bowing slightly like a town lady, with serious grace; and all along the way she was greatly admired.
The darkest and most secluded hamlets around, even those in the woods, had been emptied of all their beggars, cripples, wastrels, poor, and idiots on crutches; these wretches scattered along the road, with accordions and hurdy-gurdies; they held out their hands and hats to receive the alms that Yann threw to them with his own noble look and Gaud with her beautiful queenly smile. Some of these poor waifs were very old and wore gray locks on heads that had never held much;crouching in the hollows of the roadside, they were of the same colour as the earth from which they seemed to have sprung, but so unformed as soon to be returned without ever having had any human thoughts. Their wandering glances were as indecipherable as the mystery of their abortive and useless existences. Without comprehending, they looked at the merrymakers' line pass by. It went on beyond Pors-Even and the Gaoses' home. They meant to follow the ancient bridal tradition of Ploubazlanec and go to the chapel of La Trinite, which is situated at the very end of the Breton country.
At the foot of the outermost cliff, it rests on a threshold of low-lying rocks close to the water, and seems almost to belong to the sea already. A narrow goat's path leads down to it through masses of granite.
The wedding party spread over the incline of the forsaken cape head;and among the rocks and stones, happy words were lost in the roar of the wind and the surf.
It was useless to try and reach the chapel; in this boisterous weather the path was not safe, the sea came too close with its high rollers.
Its white-crested spouts sprang up in the air, so as to break over everything in a ceaseless shower.
Yann, who had advanced the farthest with Gaud on his arm, was the first to retreat before the spray. Behind, his wedding party had remained strewn about the rocks, in a semicircle; it seemed as if he had come to present his wife to the sea, which received her with scowling, ill-boding aspect.
Turning round, he caught sight of the violinist perched on a gray rock, trying vainly to play his dance tunes between gusts of wind.
"Put up your music, my lad," said Yann; "old Neptune is playing us a livelier tune than yours."A heavily beating shower, which had threatened since morning, began to fall. There was a mad rush then, accompanied by outcries and laughter, to climb up the bluff and take refuge at the Gaoses'.
