Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/296



ROM Lannion I went on to Ploumanac'h in a very old landau drawn by a very old white horse. Both had seen all of their better days and were come to their worst. The old horse nibbled into the seven miles which lay before him with a slow patience that had in it a touch of pathos—the more marked because on the previous evening his fond owner (being at the time somewhat the better for liquor) had said to me with an utterly unjustifiable enthusiasm: "Monsieur, he is a brave beast. He will make the journey in a single bound!" As for the landau, age had so withered it that a gentle jerk—let alone the promised bounding—would have strewn its fragments over the rocky road. Even at the rate of our going—a snail would have disdained to keep company with us—I had my turns of nervous dread as we bumped up the long hillsides, with all the loose bolts making jangling protests and with minor moans of protest coming from the worn old springs. So lingeringly moved the wheels of my chariot that I had the feeling of being involved in a softly timeless dream.

Now and then, when the old horse fairly stopped short and settled himself comfortably for a breathing-spell, my driver half turned in his seat to see how I was taking it all; and with an anxious look which implied that he expected from me something in the way of recriminative remonstrance. Had we been better acquainted he would have spared himself his anxieties. Haste is a quantity that has no place in my composition. I am for making the little tour of Life slowly and easily; and for stopping—so far as stopping is possible—to see matters of interest by the way. Others are free—they themselves are the losers by it—to bustle along the short course, and off into its infinite ending, with little of what they have scurried past packed away in their memories. But for my part, I want to look well about me when I happen upon places which suit my fancy, and to pause for a dish of talk with every chance-met wayfarer: and so come to the resting-place at the end of my journey with something laid by to think about through the long Eternity afternoons. Wherefore I was content—I had no appointment with the Saint whom I was about to visit, and it was a day of days in Saint Martin's summer, and the broken country through which I was passing was altogether beautiful—that the old white horse, suiting himself in the matter, should dawdle onward in his own lumbering way.

Drowsily the miles fell away behind us in the brightness of Saint Martin's sunshine. On its level stretches the road was sunk deep below the surface of the bordering fields—a sure sign that it was a very old road—between dense hedges. At every cross-way stood a weather-worn and lichen-grown stone crucifix. Well-to-do roomy farmhouses and comfortable-looking cottages rose on the horizon ahead and slowly drifted down upon us, and slowly fell away astern—cleaner and wholesomer than buildings of a like class over in Normandy, but holding to the Norman custom of having dooryards filled with stable mire. Little shops for the sale of strong cider and of strong drink in general were almost as numerous as were the roadside crucifixes. The old horse, from force of habit no doubt, was for stopping at every one of them; and my driver cast wistful looks at them, and let me know by the expression of his back that he mourned over the hardness of my heart. They are grand drinkers, the Bretons. Only through force of adverse circumstances are their gullets ever dry. It was a week-day and wayfarers were few. My most pleasing encounter was with a nice old woman, nicely dressed, who came clacking along in a pair of shabby sabots, carrying carefully a pair of well-blacked