The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories 7 – Marryat · Verses Across
Literature · Short Stories
The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories 7The Secret of Economy (part 2)
18
Literature · Short Stories
The ghost of Charlotte Cray, and other stories 7
The Secret of Economy (part 2)
MarryatEnglish
“Go away!” she whispered hurriedly; “go upstairs; hide yourself somewhere, and do not come down until I call you!”
Her eyes were bright as though with fever, and a scarlet spot burned on either cheek. I saw she was labouring under the influence of some strong excitement, and I became intensely curious to learn the reason.
“Whom have you in there?” I demanded, for I had caught sight of another figure in the drawing-room.
“Oh! you wish to know who I am, young man, do you?” exclaimed a coarse, uncertain voice from the other side the half-opened door. “Well, I’m not ashamed of myself, as some people ought to be, and you’re quite welcome to a sight of me if it’ll give you any pleasure.”
The door was simultaneously pulled open, and a woman stood before me.
How shall I describe her.
She may have been beautiful, perhaps, in the days long past, but all trace of beauty was lost in the red, blotchy, inflamed countenance she presented to my gaze. Her eyes were bloodshot; her hair dishevelled; her dress tawdry and untidy, and if she had even been a gentlewoman, which I doubted, she had parted with every sign of her breeding. As she pushed her way up behind my mother--looking so sad and sweet and ladylike beside her--she inspired me with nothing but abhorrence.
“Who is this person?” I repeated, with an intimation of disgust that apparently offended the stranger, for in a shrill voice she commenced some explanation which my mother was evidently most anxious I should not hear.
“Oh, Charlie! do you love me?” she whispered.
“Mother! yes!”
“Then go up to your room, now, at once, and wait there till I come to you! I will speak to you afterwards--I will tell you all--only go now!”
She spoke so earnestly that I could not refuse her request, but did as she desired me at once, the woman I had seen, screaming some unintelligible sentence after me as I ascended the stairs. But when I found myself alone, the scene I had witnessed recurred rather unpleasantly to my memory. It was an extraordinary circumstance to see a stranger at all within our walls; still more so a woman, and one who dared to address my mother in loud and reproachful tones. And I was now sixteen, able and willing to defend her against insult, why, therefore, had she not claimed my services to turn this woman from the house, instead of sending me upstairs, as she might have done little Violet, until she had settled the matter for herself? But then I remembered the trouble my mother had taken to get my father and me away from Lilyfields that morning, and could not believe but that she had foreseen this visitation and prepared against it. It was then as I had often supposed. She had relations of whom she was ashamed, with whom she did not wish my father to come in contact. Poor mother! If this was one of them, I pitied her! I believed the story I had created myself so much, that I accepted it without further proof, and when my mother entered the room, and laying her head against my shoulder, sobbed as if her heart would break, I soothed her as well as I was able, without another inquiry as to the identity of the person with whom I had found her.
“Don’t tell your father, Charlie!” she said, in parting. “Don’t mention a word to anyone of what you have seen to-day. Promise me, darling! I shall not be happy till I have your word for it!”
And I gave her my word, and thought none the less of her for the secrecy, although I regretted it need be.
Not long after this my father articled me, at my own request, to an architect in London, and my visits to the happy home at Lilyfields became few and far between. But I had the consolation of knowing that all went well there, and that I was taking my place in the world as a man should do.
I had worked steadily at my profession for two years, and was just considering whether I had not earned the right to take a real good long holiday at Lilyfields (where Violet, now a fine girl of seven years old, was still my favourite plaything), when I received a letter from the doctor of the village--desiring me to come home at once as my father was ill, beyond hope of recovery. I knew what that meant--that he was already gone; and when I arrived at Lilyfields I found it to be true; he had died of an attack of the heart after a couple of hours’ illness. The shock to me was very great. I had never loved my father as I did my mother; the old childish recollections had been too strong for that, but the last few years he had permitted me to be very happy, and I knew that to her his loss must be irreparable. Not that she exhibited any violent demonstration of grief. When I first saw her, I was surprised at her calmness. She sat beside my father’s body, day and night, without shedding a tear; and she spoke of his departure as quietly as though he had only gone on a journey from which she fully expected him to return. But though her eyes were dry, they never closed in sleep, and every morsel of colour seemed to have been blanched out of her face and hands. So the first day passed, and when the second dawned, I, having attained the dignity of eighteen years, thought it behoved me to speak of my late father’s affairs and my mother’s future.
“Where is father’s will, mother?”
“He never made one, dear!”
“Never made a will! That was awfully careless.”
“Hush, Charlie!”
She would not brook the slightest censure cast on her dead love.
“But there must be a will, mother.”
“Darling, there is none! It was the one thought that disturbed his last moments. But I am content to let things be settled as they may.”
“Lilyfields will be yours of course, and everything in it,” I answered decidedly. “No one has a better right to them than you have. And you and Violet will live here to your lives’ end, won’t you?”
“Don’t ask me, dear Charlie, don’t think of it--not just yet at least! Let us wait until--until--it is all over, and then decide what is best to be done!”
Before it was all over; matters were decided for us.
It was the day before the funeral. I had just gone through the mournful ceremony of seeing my father’s coffin soldered down, and, sad and dispirited, had retired to my own room for a little rest, when I heard the sound of carriage wheels up on the gravel drive. I peered over the window blind curiously, for I had never heard of my father’s relations, and had been unable in consequence to communicate with any of them. A lumbering hired fly, laden with luggage, stopped before the door, and from it descended, to my astonishment, the same woman with the fiery red face whom I had discovered in my mother’s company two years before. I decided at once that, whatever the claims of this stranger might be, she could not be suffered to disturb the widow in the first agony of her crushing grief, and, quick, as thought, I ran down into the hall and confronted her before she had entered the house.
“I beg your pardon, madam,” I commenced, “but Mrs. Vere is unable to see anyone at present. There has been a great calamity in the family, and--”
“I know all about your calamity,” she interrupted me rudely, “if it were not for that I shouldn’t be here.”
“But you cannot see Mrs. Vere!” I repeated.
“And pray who is Mrs. Vere?” said the woman.
“My mother,” I replied proudly, “and I will not allow her to be annoyed or disturbed.”
“Oh! indeed, young man. It strikes me you take a great deal of authority upon yourself; but as I mean to be mistress in my own house, the sooner you stop that sort of thing the better! Here! some of you women!” she continued, addressing the servants who had come up from the kitchen to learn the cause of the unusual disturbance. “Just help the flyman up with my boxes, will you--and look sharp about it.”
I was thunderstruck at her audacity.
For a moment I did not know what to answer. But when this atrocious woman walked past me into the parlour, and threw herself into my dead father’s chair, I followed her, and felt compelled to speak.
“I do not understand what you mean by talking in this way,” I said. “Mrs. Vere is the only mistress in this house, and--”
“Well, young man, and suppose I am Mrs. Vere!”
“I can suppose no such thing. You cannot know what you are talking about. My mother--”
“Your mother! And pray, what may your name be and your age?”
“Charles Vere; and I was eighteen last birthday,” I said, feeling compelled, I knew not by what secret agency, to reply.
“Just so! I thought as much! Well, I am Mrs. Vere, and I am your mother!”
“My mother! You must be mad, or drunk! How dare you insult the dead man in his coffin upstairs. My mother! Why, she died years ago, before I can remember.”
“Did she? That’s the fine tale madam, who’s been taking my place here all this time has told you, I suppose. But I’ll be even with her yet. I’m your father’s widow, and all he’s left behind him belongs to me, and she’ll be out of this house before another hour’s over her head, or my name’s not Jane Vere!”
“You lie!” I exclaimed passionately. This tipsy, dissipated, coarse-looking creature, the woman who bore me, and whom I had believed to be lying in her grave for sixteen years and more. Was it wonderful that at the first blush my mind utterly refused to credit it? The angry accusation I have recorded had barely left my lips, when I looked up and saw my mother--the woman who had come as an angel of light into my father’s darkened home, and watched over me with the tenderest affection since--standing on the threshold, pale and peaceful in her mourning garb, as the Spirit of Death itself.
“Mother! say it is not true,” I cried as I turned towards her.
“Oh, Charlie, my darling boy! my brave, good son! Be quiet! bear it like a man; but it is true!”
“This--this woman was my father’s wife!”
“She was!”
“And you, mother!” I exclaimed in agony.
“I was only the woman that he loved, Charlie,” she answered, with downcast eyes. “You must think no higher of me than that!”
“I think the very highest of you that I can. You were my father’s loving companion and friend for years: you saved his life and his reason! You were his true, true wife, and my mother. I shall never think of you in any lower light.”
My emotion had found vent in tears by that time. It was all so new and so horrible to believe, and my mother’s hand rested fondly on my bowed head.
Then that other woman, whose existence I can never recall without a shudder, seized her hateful opportunity, and levelled the most virulent abuse at my poor martyr mother’s head. Words, such as I had never heard from a female before, rained thickly from her lips, until I lost sight of my own grief in my indignation at the shower of inuendoes which were being hurled at the person dearest to me of all the world.
“Be silent,” I said in a loud authoritative voice. “Were you twenty times my mother I would not permit you to speak as you are speaking now. If it is true that you were my father’s wife, why were you not in your proper place, instead of leaving your lawful duties to another?”
“Oh! madam here can answer that question better than myself. She knows well enough there was no room left for me where she was.”
“Untrue!” murmured my mother, but without any anger. “I would have shielded your character from your boy’s censure, as I have done for so long, but justice to the dead compels me to speak. You left this home desolate for many miserable years before I entered it. You deserted your child in his infancy, but your husband had so good and forgiving a heart that, when you cried to him for pardon, he took you back again and condoned your great offence, and therefore, when you left him a second time, the law contained no remedy for his wrong. He was compelled to live on--alone--dishonoured and comfortless, whilst you--you can best tell your son what your life has been since.”
“Anyway I am Mrs. Vere,” retorted the other, “and my husband has died intestate, and his property belongs to me, so I’ll thank you to take your brat, and clear out of my house before the sun goes down.”
“Oh! mother, this is infamous! It can never be!”
“It must be, Charlie! It is the law. I knew all this when I consented to come here as your father’s wife. He never deceived me for a single moment; and if I have any regret that he put off providing against this contingency until it was too late, it is only for fear lest he should be regretting it also. But, my dear, dear love!” she added in a lower tone, “I acquit you of this as of all things. I know your great love for me never failed, and I am content!”
“I will not believe it without further proof!” I exclaimed. “I will send Ellen at once for the solicitor. I cannot leave you alone with this horrid woman!”
“Hush, Charlie! she is your mother.”
“I will not acknowledge it. You are the only mother I have ever had--the only mother I ever will have to my life’s end.”
Mr. Chorberry, the solicitor, came without delay, but he could give me no comfort. My poor father, by that strange indifference which has been the curse of so many, had put off making his will until it was too late, by reason of which he had left the one to whom he owed most in the world, the woman who had sacrificed friends and reputation to spend her life in a dull country home, administering to his pleasures, entirely dependant on her own resources for support--whilst the faithless, drunken creature he had the misfortune to be still chained to, walked in as the lawful wife, and claimed her share of the property. There was only one drop of balm in his decision. I, as my father’s son, shared what he had left behind him, but my angel mother and dear baby-sister were cast upon the world to shift for themselves.
And this was the law.
Oh, father! did your spirit look down from whichever sphere it had been translated to, and witness this?
“But, surely,” I said to Chorberry, “there can be no necessity for my mother leaving Lilyfields before the funeral?”
“Of course there is no necessity; but do you think it advisable, under the circumstances, that she should remain? Mrs. Vere has the legal power to enforce her departure, and I am afraid will not be slow to use it.”
My mother evidently was of one mind with him, for in an incredibly short space of time she had packed her belongings. Mrs. Vere, standing over her meanwhile to see she did not purloin anything from the house, and was waiting in the hall with little Violet, ready to go to the house of the clergyman’s wife, who, to her honour, having heard how matters stood at Lilyfields, had promptly sent my mother an invitation to the vicarage for the night.
“Are you ready, dear mother?” I said sadly, as I joined her in the hall, and drew her arm within my own.
“Well, Mr. Charles, I suppose I shall see you back again here before long?” screamed the shrill voice of Mrs. Vere down the staircase.
I started.
See me back! Was it possible that this woman believed I intended to make friends with her?
“We’ve been parted long enough, it strikes me,” she continued; “and now your father’s gone, and left no one behind him but yourself I suppose you’ll be looking out for my share of the property at my death, so we may as well let bye-gones be bye-gones, eh?”
“I wish for none of your property, madam,” I answered haughtily, “since the law gives it to you you are welcome to keep it.”
“Charlie, dear, think what you may be resigning,” urged my mother in my ear.
“I think of nothing but you, mother!”
“Hoity, toity! here’s manners,” cried the other woman. “You seem to forget, Master Charlie, that I’m your mother!”
Still holding my mother’s hand, I turned and confronted her.
“I forget nothing, madam! I wish I could; but I remember that here stands the woman who laboured where you refused to work; who loved, where you had insulted and betrayed; who was faithful where you were faithless and undeserving; and, I say, that here stands my dead father’s true wife; and here stands, in God’s sight, my mother! The blessing of man may not have sanctified her union, but the blessing of heaven shall be upon it and upon her--upon the creatures she rescued from a living death and upon the gracious hand with which she did it, until time itself shall be no more.”
So saying, I passed with my mother beyond the gates of Lilyfields, to make a new life for her in some quiet spot where she might outlive her grief, and to repay, if possible, by the protection and support of my manhood, the love she had given me as a little child.
IN THE HEART OF THE
ARDENNES.
Fever is raging in Brussels, and we are advised to quit the town as soon as possible. The question is, where to go. I suggest Rochefort in the Ardennes, having ascertained previously that the place is healthy; but my friends laugh at me. “Rochefort in February! We shall all be frozen to death.” “At least,” I argue, “there is pure air to breathe.” “But you can have no idea of the dulness,” is all the reply I receive; “Rochefort, with its one street and its one resident is bad enough in the summer, but at this season it will be unendurable.” Yet I am not to be turned from my purpose. I consider it is better to be frozen outwardly than burned inwardly; and that when one is flying from a pestilence, there is no time to regret the numerous pleasures left behind, or the few that loom in the future. And so we settle finally that, notwithstanding its promised disadvantages, we will thankfully accept the refuge Rochefort can afford us; and having made up our minds to go, we start twenty-four hours afterwards.
Being pent-up in a railway carriage with half-a-dozen manikins and womanikins, who suck oranges half the time, and obtrude their little persons between your view and the window the other half, is not perhaps the most favourable situation from which to contemplate the beauties of nature; for which reason, perhaps, it is as well that for the first part of our journey nature presents no beauties for our contemplation, and thereby our naturally mild tempers are prevented from boiling over. But when we have accomplished about fifty miles (Rochefort being distant from Brussels seventy miles) the country begins to assume a different and far more engaging aspect. The flat table-land, much of it marshy and undrained, which has scarcely been varied hitherto, gives place to swelling hills, half rock, half heather, and charming copses of fir, some of which are very extensive. The scenery becomes altogether more wooded and naturally fertile-looking; and houses and farmsteads lose all trace of British contiguity, and become proportionately interesting to curious English eyes. The train is an express, and as it dashes past the fragile, roughly-built little stations with which the road is bordered, it is amusing, or rather I should say it would be amusing, did it not suggest the idea of accidents, to see the signal-flags displayed by peasant-women in every variety of attitude and costume.
Here stands a stolid, solid Belgian girl, of eighteen years of age probably, and stout enough for forty, with a waist like a tar-barrel, and legs to match, who nurses her flag as if it were a baby, and gazes at the flying train with a countenance which could not be more impassive were it carved in wood. We have hardly finished laughing at her, when the train rushes past another station, at which appears a withered old crone, her head tied up in a coloured handkerchief, and her petticoats, cut up to her knees, looking cruelly short for such a wintry day, and displaying a pair of attenuated legs and feet for which the huge wooden sabots look miles too large. She waves about the signal-flag in a nervous, agitated manner, which suggests the idea that she is not quite sure whether she has caught up the right one or not; but before we have time to be made uncomfortable by the fact, we are passing another of these Belgic “shanties,” at the door of which appears for a moment a middle-aged woman, who waves the signal at us in a menacing manner, and rushes back immediately to her children or her cooking.
Remembering our own signalmen, and the importance attached to their capabilities and education for the important office assigned them, it ceases to be a matter of amusement to see the lives of hundreds daily intrusted to the direction of such ignorant creatures as these. I suppose that “Monsieur,” smoking at his ease by the fireside in the little wooden station-house, directs the actions of his mother, wife, or daughter; but what are the authorities about not to insist on his performing his duty himself?
Notwithstanding all which, however, our train reaches Jemelle (the nearest station to Rochefort) in safety, and in the midst of a wind sufficient, if not to take our heads, to take our hats off, we and our belongings come to the ground. It takes some minutes to get our nine packages together; and when we present ourselves at the door of the diligence, it is nearly full. I look despairingly at the nurse and all the children, and decide that the younger members of the family must go by diligence, and the elder shall walk with me to Rochefort. But the Rochefortians are too polite to permit such a thing. Two of them insist upon getting out and giving up their places to the children. I protest against such a proceeding, of course, as in duty bound, but they will hear of no excuse, and start off walking at such a pace that they are out of sight before the diligence is set in motion. At last the luggage is all packed away on the top, and we are all packed away inside, in company with two gentlemen, who open the conversation pleasantly by asking us where we come from, and telling us that we must not expect to find Rochefort as large as Brussels, which, to say truth, we had scarcely anticipated. The talk becomes fragmentary, for the diligence rattles and jolts over the stony, hilly road, and the bells on the horses’ collars jangle in unison; and the baby is so enchanted with the noise, that he shouts till no one can be heard but himself. But twenty minutes’ purgatory brings us into a long, steep, narrow street, paved with stones, and bordered with grey-and-white houses; and I have hardly time to ask, “Is this Rochefort?” when the diligence draws up before a whitewashed house with a sign swinging before the door, and I am asked if we are for the Hôtel Biron. No, we are for the Hôtel de la Cloche d’Or; and as no one seems to be for the Hôtel Biron, the diligence continues to climb the stony street until it reaches the summit, and halts before the Hôtel de la Cloche d’Or.
Here we all unpack ourselves; and a buxom German landlady, with a kind, motherly face, comes down the steps to greet us. She has received my letter; the beds are all ready for us; the dinner will be on the table in half-an-hour; we are to be pleased to enter, and make ourselves at home. We are very pleased; for we are dreadfully tired (not cold, for the weather is unnaturally mild), and have not had anything substantial to eat all the day. We climb up the steps of the hotel, which looks just like a farmhouse abutting on the main street, and find ourselves in a sanded room, containing a long wooden table, with benches either side of it, and bearing evident reminiscences of smoking and drinking--in fact, “not to put too fine a point on it,” the public tap-room--but where we are met by the landlady’s two eldest daughters, Thérèse and Josephine, who are beaming in their welcome. They usher us into a second room, where the children scream at the sight of a table laid for dinner, and the four corners of which bear bowls of whipped cream and custard, and rosy Ardennes apples, and biscuits just out of the oven. The little people want to begin at once, and cannot be brought to see the necessity of washing their faces and hands first or waiting till the meat and potatoes shall be placed upon the table. Would Madame like to see the chambres à coucher at once? Madame saying yes, Thérèse catches up the youngest child but one, and, preceded by Josephine, we enter first a scullery, next a bricked passage, thence mount a most perilous set of dark narrow stairs, and stumble into a long whitewashed corridor, which terminates in a glass-door opening on to a garden. Here three doors successively thrown open introduce us to our bedrooms; and the trunks having been brought up the breakneck stairs, we take possession at once. The little white-curtained beds are small, but beautifully clean, and each one is surmounted by its eider-down quilt in a coloured cotton case. Two little islands of carpet in a sea of painted boards represent the coverings of the floors; and the washing-stands are only deal-tables, and there are no chests of drawers; but we inhale the fresh, vigorous breeze which is pouring through the windows (open even at that season), and think of fever-infected Brussels, and are content. But though it is all very nice and clean, we cannot possibly wash without water, nor dry our hands without towels.
An imbecile shout from the door for anybody or anything brings a broad-featured, rosy, grinning German girl to our aid, who, when she is asked her name, says it is Katrine, but we can call her by any name we please. The pronunciation of “Katrine” not presenting those difficulties to our foreign tongues which the owner of it seems to anticipate, we prefer to adhere to her baptismal cognomen, instead of naming her afresh, and desire Katrine to bring us some hot water and towels; on which she disappears, still on the broad grin, and returns with a pail of warm water, which she sets down in the middle of the room. We manage well enough with that, however, but are at our wits’ end when, on being asked for more of the same fluid with which to mix the baby’s bottle, she presents it to us in a washing-basin. But as, a few minutes after, I encounter her in the corridor carrying a coffee-pot full to E----’s room, I conclude that in Rochefort it is the fashion to use vessels indiscriminately, and resolve thenceforth to take the goods the gods provide, without questioning.
On descending to the dining-room, we find that the gods have been very munificent in their gifts. After the soup appears roast beef; and as we are very hungry, we cause it to look foolish, and are just congratulating each other on having made an excellent dinner, when in trots Thérèse, pops our dirty knives and forks upon the table-cloth, whips away our plates, with that which contains the remainder of the beef, and puts down a dish of mutton-chops in its stead. We look at one another in despair; we feel it to be perfectly impossible to begin again upon mutton-chops, and I am obliged to hint the same to Thérèse in the most delicate manner in the world. She expostulates; but to no purpose, and leaves the room, mutton-chops in hand. But only to give place to her mother, who enters with a countenance of dismay to inquire what is wrong with the cooking that we cannot eat.
Nothing is wrong; we have eaten remarkably well. It is our capabilities of stowage which are at fault. Will we not have the hare, which is just ready to be served up?
Sorry as we are to do it, we must decline the hare; and as we affirm that we are ready for the pudding, and nothing else, we feel we have sunk in Madame’s estimation.
The pudding, a compote of apples and preserves, with the whipped cream and custard, is delicious; and as soon as we have discussed it, we are very thankful to stretch ourselves under the eider-down quilts, and know the day to be over. We have done work enough that day to entitle us to twelve hours’ repose; yet we are all wide-awake with the first beams of the morning sun.
We dress ourselves with the pleasurable anticipation of seeing new things, however simple, and come down-stairs to a breakfast-table, in its way as plentifully spread as the dinner-table of the night before. We have an abundance of milk,--so fresh from the cow that it is covered with froth, and the jug which contains it is quite warm,--eggs, cold meat, home-made bread in huge brown loaves, good butter, and strong clear coffee. In fact, we come to the conclusion that our landlady knows how to live, and we no longer marvel at the rosy cheeks and full forms of Thérèse and Josephine, nor that Madame herself fills out her dresses in such a magnificent manner.
E---- has been for a stroll before breakfast, and brings back a report of ruins on the high ground; he has already unpacked his sketch-books and sharpened his pencils. We, not being walking encyclopædias, seize our Continental Bradshaw, and find that the ruins are those of a castle in which Lafayette was made prisoner by the Austrians in 1792.
As soon as breakfast is concluded, we rush off to see the ruined castle, which stands on an eminence just above the hotel, and which our landlady (who walks into our sitting-room and takes a chair in the most confiding manner possible whenever she feels so inclined) informs us, although not open to the public, belongs to a lady whose house is built on the same ground, and who will doubtless allow us to look over it. We can see the remains of the castle before we reach them, and decide that it must have been uglier and less interesting when whole than now, having been evidently designed with a view to strength rather than beauty. The little winding acclivitous path which leads to it, bounded by a low wall fringed with ferns and mosses, is perhaps the prettiest part of the whole concern; but just as we have scaled it, and come upon the private dwelling-house, our poetic meditations are interrupted by the onslaught of half-a-dozen dogs (one of which is loose, and makes fierce snaps at our unprotected legs), which rush out of their kennels at chains’ length, and bark so vociferously, that we feel we have no need to make our presence known by knocking at the door. A child appears at it; and we inquire politely if we may see the ruins, at which she shakes her head, and we imagine she doesn’t understand our Parisian French.
But in another moment we are undeceived, for the shrill, vixenish voice of a woman (may dogs dance upon her grave!) exclaims sharply from the open door, “Fermez, fermez; on ne peut pas entrer.” The child obediently claps it to in our faces, and we retrace our steps, with a conviction that the lady is like her castle--more strong than beautiful. E--is so disgusted that he will not even sketch the ruins from the opposite side of the road, up which another precipitous path leads us to a long walk, which in summer must be a perfect bower, from the interlacing of the branches of the trees with which it is bordered; and from which we have a far better view of the ruins than the utmost politeness of their owner could have afforded us. But no; judgment has gone out against them; we decide they are heavy and unpicturesque, and not worth the trouble; and we walk on in hopes of finding something better: and are rewarded. At the close of the long overshadowed walk, a quaint little chapel, beside which stands a painted wooden crucifix nearly the size of life, excites our curiosity, and, walking round it, we come upon one of the loveliest scenes, even in the month of February, that Nature ever produced.
A green valley, creeping in sinuous folds between two ranges of high hills; one rocky and coated with heather, the other clothed with wood. Beneath the rocky range there winds a road bordered by trees,--along which we can see the red diligence which brought us from the station taking its jangling way,--and beside it runs a stream, terminating in a cascade and a bridge, and the commencement of the lower part of Rochefort. All the fields are cut upon the sides of hills, and are diversified by clumps of rock covered with ferns, and usually the groundwork of a well, protected by a few rough planks, or the fountain-head of a mountain-stream which trickles down until it joins the river. This is the valley of Jemelle, to see which in the proper season would alone be worth a journey to Rochefort. We look and admire, and lament the impossibility of ever transferring such a scene to canvas as it should be done; and then we turn back whence we came, and find we are standing at the entrance of an artificial cave, situated at the back of the crucifix before alluded to, and which forms perhaps as great a contrast to the natural loveliness we have just looked upon, as could well be. Apparently it is the tomb of some woman, by the framed requests which hang on either side that prayers may be offered for the repose of her soul; but had her friends turned out upon her grave all the maimed and motley rubbish to be found in a nursery playbox of some years’ standing, they could scarcely have decorated it in a less seemly manner. At the end of the cave is a wooden grating, behind which is exhibited one of those tawdry assemblages of horrors which tend more perhaps than all else to bring ridicule on the Roman Catholic religion, so utterly opposed are they to our conceived ideas of what is sacred. Two or three rudely-carved and coarsely-painted, almost grotesque, wooden groups of the dead Christ, the Holy Family, and the Crucifixion, form the groundwork of this exhibition: the interstices being filled up with gold-and-white jars of dirty artificial flowers; framed prints of saints with lace borders, reminding one of the worst description of valentines; and composite figures, supposed to represent the same individuals, and which may have cost fifty centimes apiece. The collection is such as to make the spectator shudder to see holy things so unholily treated; and it is difficult to conceive how, in this century, when art has been carried to such a pitch that even our commonest jugs and basons have assumed forms consistent with it, anyone, even the lowest, can be satisfied with such designs and colouring as these things display.
Returning homeward by the lower part of the town, we pass a maison religieuse dedicated to St. Joseph, and in the garden see the good little sisters joining their pupils, to the number of forty or fifty, in a merry game of “Here we go round the mulberry-bush,” and apparently taking as much pleasure in the exercise as the youngest there. The church and churchyard stand at this end of Rochefort. There is nothing in the building to attract one’s notice, except that we agree that it is the ugliest we have ever seen; but we walk round the little churchyard, the paucity of graves in which speaks well for the climate of the place. The crosses and railings, made of the commonest wood and in the most fragile manner, are all rotting as they stand or lie (several having assumed the recumbent position); and we are leaving the spot with the conviction that we have wasted five minutes, when we come against a crucifix fastened by heavy iron clamps against the wall of the church. A common iron cross, rusty and red from damp and age, with a figure nailed on it of the most perfect bronze, old and hard, and dark and bright, and as unchanged by weather and exposure as on the day (perhaps hundreds of years ago) it was first placed there.
Toiling up the street again, and examining the shops as we go, I say that, much as I like Rochefort, I do not advise any one to come here in order to purchase their wedding trousseau, or lay in a stock of winter clothing. We look in vain for something to buy in remembrance of the place; but can see nothing out of the way, except it is a yellow teapot, holding at the least four quarts, and with a curled spout to prevent the tea coming out too fast, which must be almost necessary with such a load of liquid. The teapot is delicious, and quite unique; but scarcely worth, we think, the trouble of transportation. We have but just decided this matter to our satisfaction when we come upon a “miscellaneous warehouse,” upon whose front is painted “Cartes pour les grottes de Rochefort,” and remember that we must see the famous grotto, and turn in to ask the price of admission. Five francs a-head; children half-price. We think the charge is high; but Monsieur C-- (to whom the grotto belongs) takes us into his house and shows us prints of the different views of its interior, which fire our imagination to that degree, that we decide at once to see it the next morning. We look over a book also in which visitors to the grotto have written down their first impressions; and these testimonials excite our curiosity still further. A Persian describes himself as having been suddenly transported into fairyland; and can liken the vast caverns to nothing but the palace of his great master the Sultan, and the various forms assumed by the stalactites to those of lovely houris grouped about him. A French poet, in rapturous verse, compares the grotto to the enchanted halls of the Arabian Nights, and the stalactites to “frozen tears.” Every traveller declares the sight to have been more wonderful and beautiful than anything he has ever seen before, until we become quite sorry to think we must put off seeing it until the morning; and our expectations are heightened by the rapid assurance of Monsieur C-- (who always keeps his hands moving, and never stops to consider his commas), that it is “trèsbeautrèsbeautrèsbeau!” However, we agree to return the next day at eleven o’clock, when he promises the guides shall be in readiness for us; and we go home to another excellent dinner, the pleasure of which is only marred by the fact that Thérèse will make us use the same knives and forks for every course; and we haven’t the strength of mind to resist.
Yesterday I spoke to madame on the necessity of engaging someone during the mornings to read French and German with the girls, as we shall most likely be here for a month; and it is too long a time for them to be idle. Madame did not think I should find a demoiselle in Rochefort who could instruct them; but there is a professeur here who has passed all his college examinations, and who, if he has the time, will doubtless be very glad of the employment. I asked her to send for the professeur that I might speak to him on the subject; and here, just as we have done dinner, he arrives; for madame throws open the door, and with a certain pride in her voice (pride that Rochefort should possess such an article), announces “Monsieur le Professeur.” I glance up, thinking of Charlotte Brontë and her professor, and hoping this one may not prove as dirty and seedy and snuffy, and, to my amazement, see standing on the threshold a lad of about seventeen or eighteen, dressed in green trousers and a blue blouse, and holding his cap in his hand. The two girls immediately choke, and bury their faces in their books, which renders my task of catechising rather a difficult one; and I glance at E-- for aid, but his countenance is almost level with the table as he pretends to draw. So I find there is nothing to be done but to beg the professeur to be seated,--a request which he steadily refuses to comply with; and as he stands there, twisting his cap in his hands, he looks so like a butcher-boy, that it is a mercy I do not ask him what meat he has to-day.
But the poor young man is so horribly nervous, as he tells me that, though qualified for a tutor, he has never taught before, that I have not the heart to refuse him on account of his youth; besides, is he not the sole professeur in Rochefort? So I give him leave to come the next morning, and try, at all events, what he can do with the girls; and he looks very happy for the permission. And we see him a minute afterwards, striding proudly down the street, whistling as he goes, and holding his head half an inch higher for having “got a situation.” Of course the children make merry over him for the rest of the evening, and cannot recall the appearance of their professeur without shrieks of laughter; but he comes the next morning, nevertheless, to commence his duties, and proves to be quite as particular as older teachers, and much more competent than some, and takes the youngest girl completely aback by telling her she shall be punished if she is not steady.
At eleven o’clock the next morning we are all ready to view the grottoes, and E-- and I, with the two eldest children, start off on our expedition. The way to their entrance lies through Monsieur C--’s park, which in summer must be a very charming resort. He has collected here all the wild animals indigenous to the Ardennes, and shows them to us as we walk to the mouth of the grottoes. Close to his house he has a splendid wolf and three foxes--the golden, silver, and common fox. I should have preferred to keep these interesting specimens a little further off from my own nose; but there is no accounting for tastes. In the aviary he has squirrels, guinea-pigs, doves, pigeons, and the most magnificent pair of horned owls I have ever seen. These birds, which are as fierce as possible, have eyes of jet and amber, as big as half-crowns, and when in their rage they spring at passers-by, they make a noise with their beaks just like castanets.
A little farther up the park we come upon the Ardennes deer, which are thicker built and less graceful than the English fallow-deer, with which they are consorting; and a wild boar, with fierce tusks and a savage grunt, wallowing in a parterre of clay, which, nevertheless, knows his master, and puts his ugly snout out to be scratched between the palisades of his domain. Monsieur C-- only conducts us as far as the entrance of the grotto, and there delivers us over to the care of the guides, two in number, who each carry a couple of petroleum lamps, and have “Grottes de Rochefort” written on their hatbands. They ask us if we will have costumes to enter the caves with, and we decline, not knowing the dirt we shall encounter; but we exchange our own hats for little, grey linen ones, trimmed with a cockade and bunch of small red feathers in front, made after the pattern of those adopted by the monkeys on the organs, and in which we appear very comical to each other’s eyes. Everything is ready, and down we go--down the first flight of steps, which is steep but easy, and which, Monsieur C-- shouts after us, will be the most difficult descent of all (I wonder if he impresses that fable on all his visitors) until the ivy and fern-covered entrance is passed, and we enter the very mouth of the cave, which is yet light enough to let us see that several such flights have still to be descended. We have hardly reached the middle of the second, and daylight is not yet left behind us, when E-- calls out that he cannot breathe, and must go up into the fresh air again. The guides insist that monsieur must be mistaken, and no one is ever taken ill there. I insist, on the other hand, that monsieur’s wishes must be complied with, and we must reaccompany him to the top, which we do. I would rather not go back again then, and make the dark pilgrimage alone with the children, but E-- begs we will, and the girls look disappointed; so we retrace our steps, leaving him in the park.
I confess that as I go down the second time I feel a little nervous, and my limbs shake. I don’t like this going down, down, down into the shades of eternal night, with no companions but two little children.
