by Ellen Wood
The whole town, we have said, was full of little old-world bits of architecture. Gabled houses with dormer windows and latticed panes, with red roofs beautiful with that rich tone that only age can give. Conspicuous in its beauty, rising splendidly above the quaint clusters of roofs, was the church of St. Wolfram, gaining so much by its unrestored condition — a church never finished, and destined to much greater magnificence by that Cardinal d’Amboise, who, three centuries ago, had something to do with many of the churches of France. Whatever may be thought or said of him, much of his work is a dream of beauty — and what more can be desired? Had the original designs been carried out, Abbeville would almost have rivalled Amiens — would indeed have surpassed it: and as Wren wept over his rejected St. Paul’s, so it is said the architect wept over St. Wolfram’s.
There is still much that is lovely about it, and much on which Mrs. Wood gazed with true appreciation. The magnificent flamboyant facade; the beautiful Renaissance doors, three splendid portals richly decorated; the fine towers, conspicuous for many a mile round in the flat but fertile country; all the flowing tracery; the niches, still rich in old statues that survived the days of revolution and bloodshed; and the refined light buttresses which formed the charm of the otherwise disappointing interior.
By ten o’clock all had to be ended, for at ten the diligence started for Eu. The de Marseines accompanied Mrs. Wood to the starting-point. It was an extremely hot day, bright and sunny. There were no other passengers. According to French fashion, Madame de Marseine kissed Mrs. Wood on both cheeks — a process to which she patiently submitted. They had been great friends in the past, but even with her greatest friends Mrs. Wood was not demonstrative.
“You will lunch at Eu, chere enfant,” said Madame de Marseine: “a quiet little place, with nothing to see. But at least there is the famous chateau. Go to it; ask for the head gardien; tell him that Madame de Marseine confides you to his care. The name will be a talisman. He will conduct you through it, and give you the history of every picture — every room in the place. Ay di me! I stayed there with my dear husband in 1843, as the guest of poor Louis Philippe. It was just after your Queen Victoria had visited him, and I remember his telling me how frank and charming and simple he had thought the young Queen of England, how handsome and noble and good her husband. Poor King! he enjoyed many a happy year in the Chateau d’Eu, which he restored so magnificently after his mother’s death; but in 1843 his own time was approaching; a few more years, and he was an exile. When I think of the beauty and grace of Marie Antoinette, in that first revolution of’93, — that wonderful head submitting to the scaffold; when I remember the last time I was with Marie Amalie, at Versailles, and the happy moments we spent in what had been Marie Antoinette’s favourite Trianon — how it has all passed, how it all passes — we may well say that everything is vanity and vexation of spirit. It does not do to recall those times. I only wonder that we — friends of the King and Queen — Royalists — were spared a similar destiny. Revolutions are the horrors of history — institutions for the savage tribes of earth, but for none else. Chere enfant, the diligence grows impatient. We must part. Au revoir a Dieppe!”
“Et sans adieu,” laughed young de Marseine — head of the family since his father had died seven years ago.
“A quinze jours d’ici,” added his mother; “we shall meet again in a fortnight. I will write to-day to the hotel. You can even speak to the proprietor for me; one salon, five bedrooms — as near your own apartments as possible.”
The “impatient diligence” waited to hear no more. With infinite cracking of whip and distressful rattling over the stones of Abbeville, the conveyance started on its way; the de Marseines watching and waving a final good-bye as it went out of sight.
The little incident was over, but had been singularly pleasant to Mrs. Wood, and she afterwards often alluded to it as one of those chances of travel to which we have referred. “You tried to persuade me to cross by way of Newhaven,” she laughed, as the diligence rattled through the quaint old town. “What a pleasure we should have lost if you had succeeded. But for meeting them here, the de Marseines would never have come to Dieppe.”
“One must never try to persuade you again,” was the reply; “with you ‘whatever is, is right’ It is always so.”
And in everything excepting time and trouble the present route was infinitely more agreeable, giving a variety of changes in a very short time, and taking the travellers through scenes that were then full of primitive interest and quiet charm.
CHAPTER XV
“So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be,
How know I what had need of thee,
For thou wert strong as thou wert true?”
THE surrounding country, as we have said, was flat, but rich and fertile. The diligence passed through long, straight roads, such as France loves; but the stiff poplars so often found by the wayside were absent. In place there were green hedgerows, which made, and still make, the scenery of Picardy and Normandy very English: smiling and luxuriant. Field after field, league after league, a succession of pastures, cultivated lands, and orchards laden with the small cider-apple.
At last the small, sleepy town of Eu loomed in the distance, and soon the diligence came to a stand stillin the centre of its irregular market-place, with little to recommend it beyond its primitive life. The diligence was the event of the day. No one ever came to remain here, but people arrived on their way to Tréport, the small neighbouring seaside resort Here at Eu occurred another singular coincidence, of which life is so full. No sooner had the diligence stopped than a small group of people, unmistakably English, wended their way across the small square, came up to it, and accosted the conducteur and the travellers.
“We have come to meet Mrs. Wood,” said the senior lady of the party—” Mrs. Wood and her son. I do not see them here.”
“I am Mrs. Wood,” was the surprised answer, “and I am accompanied by my son; but it is impossible that any one could be here to meet us. No one knows of our being at Eu.”
“It is very strange,” returned the leader in aggrieved tones, looking at the travellers as though they had transformed themselves into other people, as they do in fairy tales. “I never knew anything so extraordinary. Not once in six months do any English arrive by the diligence — we are living over here and ought to know. Yesterday we received a letter from General Paling asking us to be sure to go to the diligence to-day and meet Mrs. Wood and her son; we do so; Mrs.
Wood and her son arrive, but it is not the Mrs. Wood and her son.”
“It cannot be,” laughed Mrs. Henry Wood, “I am not acquainted with General Paling, and therefore he could not have written to any one about us. It is certainly singular, but can only be a coincidence.”
Upon which the strangers bowed and withdrew with injured expressions. They evidently felt a great wrong had been done to them; it was clearly a subject for a grievance. Finally they disappeared across the Place in earnest conversation, every now and then looking back reproachfully at the innocent diligence.
At Eu the travellers had some hours to wait. In a small salon of the hotel, only a degree removed from a restaurant, a simple dejeuner was served. Pewter spoons were all that could be produced for the soup, and two-pronged forks for the modest bouilli. But the coffee was excellent — it always was so in those days; now it is rather the exception; you must go farther north for it, to the shores of Sweden and Norway. But if the pewter spoons at Eu were primitive, the coffee was served in pure white china, for once delicately thin. That which redeemed the hotel was the woman who waited in a picturesque Normandy costume — for she came from the neighbourhood of Rouen, and was proprietress of the establishment. She, too, was decked out with heavy gold ornaments, evidently hastily put on in honour of Madame.
A short walk after dejeuner, and the chiteau was reached. Those were the days of Napoleon III., to whom it then belonged. Later the French Republic, by a graceful
act of justice, restored it to the Comte de Paris. It stood in its well-kept park: a low building of red brick with slate roofs, bearing unmistakable traces of sixteenth-century architecture, contrasting well with the green of the magnificent timber. Here had once stood a castle in which the ill-fated Harold had visited William of Normandy, so long ago that only to think of it was like looking back upon another and a far-off world. The ground was sacred to history.
On asking for the gardien a venerable old man presented himself, who must long since have been added to his forefathers. The name of Madame de Marseine acted as a talisman, as she had foretold. With a low bow, worthy of the court of Louis Philippe, he placed himself at Madame’s disposal and was her humble servitor. He would do the honours of the chateau; it was too great a privilege to attend upon any friend of Madame la Comtesse.
Royally he did his duty. Here had sat Marie Amalie; there she had written her letters. Here, on this very floor, in the days of his great-uncle, Marie Antoinette had danced the minuet de la cour — most beautiful and graceful of assembled ladies. His uncle had told him how he had seen the King’s eyes light up with admiration as he watched the popularity of the Queen, though demonstrativeness was not a characteristic of Louis XVI. In that cabinet, Louis Philippe had transacted many of his state affairs, and passed many an anxious hour when the evil days were drawing near. For his part he thought that with more discretion and better counsel the Revolution of 1848 might have been avoided, and the King and Queen have ended their days comfortably in their own palace instead of in a foreign land. It was not for him to say, but the humblest man could not close his eyes if nature had given him a little intelligence. And he had been so great a favourite with the King and Queen, so much about their persons, that naturally what little was good and intelligent about him had come to the surface.
And so he went on, as he led the way through apartments resplendent with gilding, and corridors hung with portraits. Many a small anecdote of the King and Queen he narrated — trifling circumstances, which gained their interest from the delicate romance and sadness which must ever surround all exiled monarchs.
On leaving, the douceur he would not have been above accepting on ordinary occasions was modestly declined. “Monsieur,” he said, with deprecation, as if fearing to offend, “it is already too much honour to escort any friends of the Comtesse de Marseine, so great a friend of my King and Queen, and from whom I have received in days gone by many marks of favour. I beg Monsieur’s pardon, if he allows me to retain of this visit the only recollection that can gratify me: that of having once more rendered Madame de Marseine a small service, and of doing it for the love of the days that are gone. I shall not have many more occasions.”
Quite a graceful little speech, delivered in a manner worthy of a courtier — from the heart, too, for there were tears in the old man’s eyes as he escorted the travellers to the gates of the park and bowed them away with as much ceremony as if on either side he saw the melancholy shades of Louis Philippe and Marie Amalie smiling approval.
It had been a memorable little visit. The old gardien had contrived to bring into it quite a royal and historical interest. An unwritten page in the past had been recorded; the figures of Louis Philippe and Marie Amalie had stood out clearly; for a moment he had brought them back to life; one had almost heard their tones and footsteps in passing through the rooms once haunted by them: where, twenty years before, they might still have been found with the first shadows upon their faces of approaching evil.
The scene changed to Tréport, with its broad expanse of sea quietly breaking upon a flat, shingly shore; the most quaint and curious and confined little place ever seen, and the most absolutely French. In those days it consisted of a few houses little better than bungalows, thrown, as it were, without plan or sequence upon a small, out-of-the-way corner of the earth, which might also be called the very ends of the world. It has now a harbour, a casino, fashionable hotels, and a town of some 4000 or 5000 inhabitants; but it can never be otherwise than contracted; crowded with gay and chattering Parisians, who come here, year after year, for seabathing and flirting, and le grand air.
Few English were ever seen there, and it was not surprising that Mrs. Wood should attract attention as she walked upon the Plage, charmed with the sea, in which she ever delighted, charmed with the movement and animation around her. Children were playing their seaside games; mothers, nurses, grown-up brothers — all were in evidence, and in the full tide of enjoyment. Remarks were freely offered and easily overheard, much to her quiet amusement.
Recognising her as English, they possibly took it for granted, as people will do, that French was not understood. Many years have passed since then, but not the smallest incident of this journey is forgotten.
“A new arrival!”
“And English too!”
“Is it possible that Treport is becoming known, and the English are going to invade us — coming over to criticise, with their superior airs of morality?”
“Ma chere, one swallow does not make a summer. Don’t be unnecessarily alarmed. These new arrivals may be only birds of passage — visitors of an hour, for all we know.”
“Who can she be?”
“Probably an English lady visiting in the neighbourhood. Perhaps the Chateau d’Eu. But no; no one is there at present. It is in possession of the gardiens and the spiders, and they have an easy time of it.”
“Her companion bears just sufficient resemblance to see that they are related — probably a younger brother.”
It was ever so; Mrs. Wood possessed the secret of perpetual youth. Some years before the above incident she was crossing over to England, when a lady sat down beside her on the deck and entered into conversation.
“I was speaking just now to your two brothers,” she remarked; “asking them—”
“My two brothers?” interrupted Mrs. Wood questioningly. “Yes, those two gentlemen standing at the other end there.”
“The one is my husband, the other my eldest son,” laughed Mrs. Wood. The son in question was then a lad of seventeen, her husband was forty years of age: in those days as young-looking as herself.
But years had rolled on since that crossing. The youthful-looking husband was no more, and Mrs. Wood had passed through much tribulation. At the time of her husband’s death she was writing “Oswald Cray.” Appearing in Good Words month by month, the monthly portion had to be sent in, in spite of all; work could not be laid aside, however great the strain. She bravely kept up to the last page, and then the overwrought nerves broke down.
“I can do nothing,” she said to her doctor in some alarm. “I cannot sleep. I cannot read. It seems too much even to look at a letter. What does it mean?”
“It means, my dear lady, that you have overtaxed your powers,” returned the doctor. “You have gone through a time of great emotion, which alone was sufficient mental strain. In addition to this you have worked, and now that your work is done and the strain is over, your nerves have given way.”
“Do you think I shall recover?” she asked, in some anxiety.
“Yes, if you follow my directions. The mischief is functional, not organic. You must take four months’ rest; neither look at a book nor read a paper, nor think of a plot or a novel. Leave your present surroundings. Go over to your beloved France, where I have heard you say you feel so much at home. The life and movement there is exactly what you require. You love the water; sit in front of it and watch it day after day. Nothing in the world is so soothing to nerves and brain as to watch that ever-changing sea. In short, for the next four months, as far as all intellectual pursuits are concerned, you must live the life of a vegetable.”
Mrs. Wood laughed. “It is a severe remedy,” she said, “and will be difficult to carry out. But if it is necessary, it shall be done and I feel that it is necessary.”
The result proved the wisdom of the advice. Mrs. Wood left home, and for four months England knew her no more. “The life of a vegetable” was adopted; books,
letters, papers, everything that could tax the brain put aside. At the end of that time she returned to England with health restored.
And now, on this day when Tréport was visited, she was once more on her way to Dieppe, which had become her favourite watering-place. The scraps of conversation had afforded much amusement as they were caught, and much more was said that need not be recorded. The English lady who had caused some temporary commotion in the little world of Treport quickly disappeared, and was seen no more. The Plage and its little crowd no doubt resumed their normal condition.
Meanwhile Mrs. Wood had returned to Eu, where the diligence, still in the shape of a two-horse omnibus, was preparing for the journey to Dieppe. Again they were the only travellers. Mrs. Wood, ever considerate to others, first entered the hotel to say “Bon jour” to Madame.
La Patrone, who combined the sincerity of the Norman with a dash of French fervour, was charmed at the little mark of attention.
“To the pleasure of seeing Madame again,” she cried.
“I would that my small hotel had the honour of receiving Madame for a longer séjour; I should have the distinction of waiting upon her myself. I regret that of all days in the year my husband is not at home to assure Madame that he would devote his energies to her comfort. He has gone to Lille upon a small matter of business. It may interest Madame to know that we have a propriete there; small and humble, it is true, but a family possession. We had let it to people apparently of integrity; but they have gone off and never paid their rent, and we hear that the place is in disorder. My husband has gone to see to it. He is good and easy with people, but this time he is furious, and the law will soon find out where these malfaiteurs have escaped to. Only, as Madame knows, you cannot draw water from a dry well, and I fear we shall do no good by going after them. Voila lomnibus!”