“MOTHER.”
It was close upon Easter. The long, dark days of Lent, with their melancholy ceremonials, were nearly over, and, as if in recognition of the event, the sun was shining brightly in the heavens. The hawthorn bushes had broken into bloom, and the wild birds were bursting their little throats in gratitude. The boys were almost as wild and joyous as the birds, as they rushed about the playground, knocking each other over in the exuberance of their glee, and forgetting to be angry in the remembrance that the next day would be Holy Thursday, when they should all go home to their fathers and mothers to spend the Easter holidays. I alone of the merry throng sat apart under the quick-set hedge, joining in neither game nor gaiety, as I wondered, with the dull, unreasoning perception of childhood, why I had been the one selected, out of all that crowd of boys, to have no part in their anticipation or their joy. Even poor, lame Jemmy, who had no remembrance of his father or his mother, and who had been, in a way, adopted by our schoolmaster, and lived all the year round, from January to December, in the same dull house and rooms, looked more cheerful than I did. He was incapacitated by his infirmity from taking part in any one of the noisy games that were going on around us, yet he smiled pleasantly as he came limping up towards me on his crutches, and told me that Mrs. Murray (who bestowed on him all the mother’s care he would ever know) had promised, if he were good, to give him a donkey ride during Easter week, and some seeds to plant in his strip of garden.
“What’s the matter with you, Charlie?” he asked presently; “aren’t you glad to be going home?”
“Oh! I don’t care,” I answered, listlessly.
“Don’t care about seeing your father and mother again?”
“I haven’t got a mother,” I rejoined, quickly.
“Is your mother dead, like mine? Oh, I am sorry! But your father loves you for them both, perhaps.”
“No, he doesn’t! He doesn’t care a bit about me. He never asks to see me when I do go home; and he frightens me. I wish I might stay all the holidays with Mrs. Murray, like you do.”
“That is bad,” quoth the lame child. “Well, maybe they’ll forget to send for you, Charlie, and then we’ll have fine times together, you and I.”
I had not the same hope, however. I knew that if by any oversight my father forgot to send the servant for me, that my schoolmaster would take the initiative and despatch me home himself.
How I dreaded it. The gloomy, half-closed house, the garden paths, green with damp and thick with weeds, the servants acting entirely upon their own authority, and the master querulous, impatient, and unjust, either shut up in his own room brooding over the past and present, or freely distributing oaths, complaints, and sometimes even blows, amongst the unfortunate inmates of his household. As for myself, I seldom came within the range of his arm without being terrified away, and it had been a great relief to me when I returned home for the previous Christmas holidays to find that he was absent, and the term of my penance passed peacefully, if nothing else. But now he was at home again, so my master informed me, my father had never dreamt of writing to me, and I looked forward to the coming visit with dread. A strange, unnatural state of things for a child of eight years old, who had never known a mother’s love nor care, had never even heard her name mentioned by any one with whom he was connected.
“What was your mother like?” continued Jemmy, after a few minutes’ pause, during which we two unfortunates had been ruminating upon our lot. “Had she light-coloured hair, like Mrs. Murray, or dark, like the cook?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, sadly. “I never saw her, that I remember.”
“Haven’t you got a likeness of her at home?” he demanded with surprise. “Wait till I show you mine.”
He fumbled about in his waistcoat, and produced a much faded daguerreotype of an ordinary-looking young woman in old-fashioned habiliments.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” he exclaimed, with weak enthusiasm as he pressed the miniature to his lips.
“Oh, how I wish she hadn’t died! I know I should have loved her so much!”
I made no reply. Poor Jemmy’s imagination did not run so fast as mine. If my mother had lived to side with my father, where should I have been between them? I turned my face away, and sighed.
It was strange that I had no idea of what my mother had been like. I have never even formed one, neither had I any relation to whose memory I might have appealed on the subject. My father lived a solitary, aimless life in the old neglected house I have alluded to, seldom leaving his own apartments, except at meal times, and certainly never asking any friend to enter them to bear him company. The servants had their parents, or lovers, or brothers, to visit them by stealth in the kitchen, but the master sat by himself, gloomy and preoccupied, and irritable almost to frenzy when provoked. No wonder I wished that I could have spent the Easter holidays with Mrs. Murray. But a great surprise was in store for me. The boys had hardly concluded the game of football they had been carrying on during my colloquy with Jemmy, when Mrs. Murray came smiling down the playground in search of me.
“I’ve a piece of news for you, Master Vere,” she exclaimed. “Some one is waiting to see you in the parlour.”
“Not papa!” I said, quickly.
“No; not your papa,” replied Mrs. Murray, laying her hand compassionately on my shoulder, “but a new friend—a lady whom you will like very much indeed.”
“A lady!” I repeated, in utter bewilderment, whilst my schoolmates crowded round Mrs. Murray, with the question, “Is she come to take Vere home?”
“Perhaps! most probably,” was her answer, whilst exclamations of, “Oh, I say, that’s a jolly shame. It isn’t fair. School doesn’t break up till to-morrow. We sha’n’t get off to-day, try as hard as we may,” greeted her supposition from every side, and I, trembling like a culprit, affirmed that I would much rather not be introduced to the pleasures of home one hour earlier than was needful.
“Come into the parlour, dear, and see the lady,” Mrs. Murray replied, “and we will decide what to do afterwards.”
So my face and hair were hurriedly washed and arranged, and I sheepishly followed my master’s wife to the formal little apartment dedicated to the reception of visitors, where we found the lady she had alluded to.
Shall I ever forget her face as she rose to greet me, and drew me into her arms! Such a fair, sweet, fresh face as it was, but with an amount of sorrowful thought pictured in the serious eyes.
“And so this is Charlie Vere,” she said, as she gazed into my features. “I should have known you anywhere, my darling, from your likeness to your father! And now do you guess who I am?”
“No!” I answered, shyly; for Mrs. Murray had slipped away and left me all alone with the stranger.
“I am your mother, dear; your new mother who means to love you very dearly, and I have come to take you home!”
Mother and Home! How sweet the dear familiar words sounded in my ears; familiar, alas! to everyone but me. The hawthorn blossoms in the playground seemed to smell sweeter than they had done before, as she pronounced them, and the birds’ chorus rang out harmoniously.
“Will papa be there?” I asked, nervously.
“Papa! of course! What would home be without your father?”
I had found it much pleasanter without him than with him hitherto, but some instinct made me hold my tongue.
“Don’t you love papa, dear?” the lady went on softly. “Don’t you think that he loves you?”
“I don’t know,” I said, picking my fingers.
“Poor child! Perhaps you have thought not, but that will all be altered now. But you have not yet told me if you will like to have me for a mother!”
“I think I shall like you very much!”
“That’s right, so we will go home together and try to make each other happy. You want a mother to look after you, dear child, and I want a little boy to love. We will not part again, Charlie, now I have found you, not for the present, at all events. You have been too long away from home as it is. That is why I came to-day. I could not wait till to-morrow, even: I was so impatient to see you and to take you home.”
How she dwelt and lingered on the word and repeated it, as though it gave her as much happiness to listen to as it did me.
“Will you be there?” I asked, presently.
“Of course, I shall—always! What would be the use of a mother, Charlie, if she didn’t live in the house close to you, always ready to heal your troubles and supply your wants to the utmost of her power?”
“Oh! let us go at once!” I exclaimed, slipping my hand into hers. All dread of my father seemed to have deserted me. The new mother was a guardian angel, under whose protection I felt no fear. She was delighted with my readiness.
“So we will, Charlie! We need not even wait for your box to be packed. Mrs. Murray can send on everything to-morrow. And papa will be anxious until he sees us home again!”
My father anxious about me! That was a new thing to be wondered at. I was too much of a baby still to perceive that his anxiety would be for her—not for me! I had not yet been able to grasp the idea that she was his wife. I only regarded her as my new mother.
As we passed out of the house, I asked leave to say good-bye to my friend Jemmy.
“His mother is dead, like mine,” I said, in explanation. “He will be so pleased to hear that I have got a new one.”
“Poor boy!” she sighed; “we will ask him to spend the summer holidays with you, Charlie. A great happiness like ours should make us anxious to make others happier.”
And when Jemmy came forward on his crutches, and smiled his congratulations on the wonderful piece of news I had to give him, she stooped down and kissed his forehead. Then we passed out of the playground together, I clinging to her hand, and proud already to hear the flattering comments passed upon her appearance by the other boys, and to remember that from that time forward she was to be called my mother.
* * * * * * * * *
Lilyfields, as my father’s house was designated, was not more than ten or twelve miles from the school; but we had to make a little railway journey to reach it, and I thought I had never travelled so pleasantly before. My new mother laughed so often and chatted so continuously to me, that I caught the infection of her mirthful loquacity, and, long before we got home, had revealed so much of my past life and feelings, that more than once I brought a shadow over her sunny face, and closed her smiling lips with a sigh. But as we left the train and commenced to walk towards Lilyfields, my old fears showed symptoms of returning, and my sudden silence, with the tightening clasp of my hand, did not pass unobserved by my companion.
“What is the matter, Charlie? Of what are you afraid?”
“Won’t papa be angry with me for coming back before the holidays begin?” I whispered.
Her clear laugh rang over the peaceful meadows we were traversing.
“If he is angry with any one, he must be so with me, as I fetched you home, Charlie.”
“And you are not afraid of him?”
“Afraid!” The sweet serious eyes she turned upon me as she ejaculated the word were just about to deprecate so monstrous an idea, when they caught sight of an approaching figure, and danced with a thousand little joys instead.
“There he is!” she exclaimed excitedly. She ran up to him, dragging me with her.
He took her in his arms (there was not another living soul within sight of us) and embraced her fervently, whilst I stood by, open-mouthed with astonishment.
“My angel,” he murmured, as she lay there, with her face pressed close to his; “life has been insupportable without you.”
“Ah, Harold! it does me good to hear you say so; and I am so glad to get back to you again. See! here is Charlie waiting for his father to welcome him home.”
She lifted me up in her arms—big boy as I was—and held me towards him for a kiss. How strange it was to feel my father kiss me; but he did so, though I think his eyes never left her face the while. Then he took her hand, and held it close against his heart, and they walked through the silent, balmy-breathed fields together. As I entered the house I could hardly help exclaiming aloud at the marvellous changes that had taken place there. Not an article of furniture had been changed, not a picture moved from its place, yet everything looked bright as the glorious spring. The rooms had been thoroughly cleaned, and lace curtains, snowy table-cloths, and vases of flowers, with here and there a bright bit of colour in the shape of a rug, or a piece of china, had transformed the house—not into a paradise—but into a home. Even my father was changed like his surroundings. He looked ten years younger, as with nicely kept hair, and a becoming velveteen lounging coat, he sunk down into an easy-chair, and deprecated, whilst he viewed with delight, the alacrity with which my new mother insisted upon removing his boots and fetching his slippers. It was such a novelty to both of us to be attended to in any way, that I was as much surprised as he to find that the next thing she did was to take me upstairs, and tidy me for tea herself, showering kisses and love words upon me all the while. Oh! the happy meal that followed. How unlike any we had taken in that house before! I, sitting up at table, with my plate well provided; my father in his arm-chair, looking up with loving eyes at each fresh proof of her solicitude for him, and my new mother seated at the tea-tray, full of smiles and innocent jests, watching us both with the utmost affection; but apparently too excited to eat much herself. Once my father noticed her want of appetite and reproached her with it.
“I am too happy to eat, Harold!” was her reply.
“Too happy,” he repeated in a low voice, “really too happy! No regrets, my Mary, no fears! Your future does not terrify you. You would not undo the past if it were in your power!”
“Not one moment of it, Harold! If I ever think of it, with even a semblance of regret, it is that it did not begin ten years sooner.”
“God bless you!” was all he answered.
If I had not been such a child I should have echoed the words; for before many days were over my head, the whole of my joyous young life was an unuttered blessing upon her. The darkness of fear and despondency—the most unnatural feelings a young child can entertain—had all passed away. I no longer dreaded my father’s presence; on the contrary, it was my greatest treat to bear him company as he worked in the garden, or whistled over his carpentering, or accompanied my mother in strolls about the country.
He never shut himself up in his room now, unless she was shut in too; and although his new-born love was for her, and not for me, the glory of it was reflected in his treatment of me.
So I was very happy, and so was he, and so most people would have thought my mother to be. But though she never appeared before my father without a bright face, she was not always so careful in my presence, thinking me, perhaps, too young to observe the changes in her countenance; and sometimes when she and I were alone together, I marked the same look steal over her which I had observed on the occasion of our first meeting—an undercurrent of thoughtful sadness—the look of one who had suffered, who still suffered, from a pain which she kept to herself.
Once I surprised her in tears—a violent storm of tears, which she was powerless for some time to control; and I eagerly inquired the reason of them.
“Mamma, mamma, what is it, mamma? Have you hurt your foot? Did Prince bite you? Have you got a pain anywhere?”
My childish mind could not comprehend that her tears should flow for any other than a physical reason. Did not papa and I love her dearly? and she was afraid of no one, and she never went to school. What possible cause could she have for tears?
My mother composed herself as soon as she was able, and laid her burning face against my cheek.
“Will my little boy love me always?” she asked—“always—always—whatever happens?”
“Always, dear mamma. Papa and I would die if we hadn’t you. Oh, you don’t know what it was like before you came here!”
“Then mamma will never again be so silly as to cry,” said my mother, as she busied herself over some occupation to divert her thoughts.
But although this was the only time she betrayed herself so openly before me, I often detected the trace of weeping on her face, which she would try to disguise by excessive mirth.
So the years went on, until one bright summer’s day a little sister was born in our house. I hailed the advent of this infant with the greatest possible delight. It was such a new wonderful experience to have a playmate so dependant on me, and yet so entirely my own. I positively worshipped my little sister, although her birth was the signal for my being sent back to school, but this time only as a weekly boarder.
Hitherto my mother had taught me herself, and very sorry I was to give up those delightful lessons, which were rendered so easy by the trouble she took to explain them to me; but her time was too much taken up with her baby to allow her to devote sufficient to me. Besides, I was now eleven years old, growing a great lad, and able to take every advantage of the education afforded me at Mr. Murray’s school.
My old friend, Lame Jemmy, who had spent many a pleasant week at Lilyfields meanwhile, was still there to welcome me back and make me feel less of a stranger; and my father took away the last sting of the new arrangement by buying me a sturdy pony on which to ride backwards and forwards every week to see my mother and him.
But the greatest pang which I experienced was parting, even for a few days, with baby Violet. I cried over her so much, indeed, that I made my mother cry too, as she asked God to bless the boy who had been a true son to her. I was very glad to think she loved me so much, for I loved her dearly in return; but as I galloped back to Lilyfields every Saturday afternoon, my thoughts were all for the dimpled baby sister whom I would carry about in my arms, or roll with amongst the newly-mown grass, rather than with those who had proved themselves to be real parents to me,—she from the commencement of her knowledge of me, and he from the date of his knowing her. It was my mother alone I had to bless for it all. But I had grown accustomed to happiness by this time, and took it as my due.
My parents were very proud of their little daughter, who grew into a lovely child, but she did not seem to afford them as much pleasure as pride. Sometimes I detected my mother looking at her as we romped together, with more pain in the expression of her face than anything else. Once she caught her suddenly to her bosom, and kissed her golden curls with passion, exclaiming,—
“Oh, my heart, if I were to go, what would become of you?—what would become of you?”
I was still too young to grasp the full meaning of her words, but I knew my mother meant that if she died, no one would take such good care of Violet as she had done. So I marched up to her confidently, with the assurance that I would take that responsibility upon my own shoulders.
“Don’t be afraid, mamma! As soon as I am a man, I mean to get a house all to myself, and the best rooms in it shall be for Violet.”
She looked at me with her sweet, earnest, searching gaze for a moment, and then folded me in one embrace with her own child.
“Father’s boy!” she murmured, caressingly over me—“father’s brave, loving boy! No, Charlie, I will not be afraid! If it be God’s will that I should go, I will trust Violet to father and to you.”
* * * * * * *
Meanwhile my father was a very contented man. He had undergone much the same change as myself, and forgotten, in the sunshine that now surrounded him, all the miserable years he had spent in that once desolate mansion.
I do not suppose a happier nor more peaceful family existed than we were. No jars nor bickering ever disturbed the quiet of the household; everything seemed to go as smoothly as though it had been oiled. We were like the crew of some ship, safely moored within a sunny harbour, never giving a thought to what tempests might be raging outside the bar.
Every Saturday when I rode home on my pony, I found my father either working out of doors if it were summer, or indoors if it were winter, but always with the same satisfied easy smile upon his countenance, as though he had no trouble in the world, as indeed he had not; for my mother warded off the most trifling annoyance from him as though he were a sick child, that must not be upset; whilst she threaded her quiet way through the kitchen and bedrooms, with little Violet clinging to her gown, regulating the household machinery by her own supervision, that no accident might occur to ruffle her husband’s temper.
I believed her in those days—I believe her still to be the noblest woman ever planned. One thing alone puzzled me—or rather, I should say, seemed strange to me, for I did not allow it to go the length of puzzlement—and that was why we had so few visitors at Lilyfields. True, my father had made himself so unsociable in the old days that strangers might well have been shy of intruding themselves upon him now; but my mother was so sweet and gentle, I felt it must be their loss rather than hers, that so few people knew her. When, as a lad of fifteen, I mentioned this circumstance to her, she put it aside as a matter of course.
“When I made up my mind, Charlie, to try as far as in me lay, to render the remainder of your father’s life happy, I was perfectly aware that I should have to depend for companionship upon him alone. We have each other, and we have you and Violet. We want no other society but yours.”
Still, I thought the clergyman and his wife might sometimes have come to see us, as they did the rest of their parishioners, and I should have liked an occasional game of play with the sons of Squire Roberts up at the Hall. But, with the exception of the doctor, who sometimes came in for a chat with my father, no one but ourselves ever took a meal at Lilyfields.
As I grew still older, and others remarked on the circumstance in my hearing, I came to the conclusion that my father must have offended his own friends by marrying my mother, whose connections might be inferior to his own. This idea was confirmed in my mind by observing that she occasionally received letters she was anxious to conceal, which, knowing the frankness of her disposition, and her great love for him, appeared very strange to me. One day, indeed, my suspicions became certainties. It so happened that my mother had appeared very fidgety and unlike herself at the breakfast-table, and more than once had spoken to Violet and me in a voice hardly to be recognised as her own. We felt instinctively that something was the matter, and were silent, but my father, who was not well, seemed irritated by the unusual annoyance. He wished to remain quietly at home that morning, but my mother found a dozen reasons why he should ride to the neighbouring town and take me with him. He combatted her wish for some time, till, finding that her arguments were revolving themselves into entreaty, his affection conquered his irresolution, and we set off together. It was not a genial day for a ride, and the trifling commissions my mother had given us to execute were not of sufficient consequence to turn the duty into a pleasure. I was rather pleased than otherwise, therefore, when we had left Lilyfields some miles behind us, to find that my pony had cast a shoe, and to be able, according to my father’s direction, to turn back and walk it gently home again, whilst he went forward to do my mother’s bidding.
When I reached Lilyfields I left the animal in the stables, and, walking up to the house, gained the hall before anyone was sensible of my approach. What was my surprise to hear a loud altercation going on within the parlour. My first impulse was to open the door; but as my mother turned and saw me standing on the threshold, she came forward and pushed me back into the hall.
“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.
But at last we stand on level ground again. There is no light anywhere except from the guides’ lamps, the foremost one (who is always spokesman) waves his above his head, and introduces la grande salle. I look up and around me, but all is black as pitch. I feel that I am standing on broken flints and a great deal of mud; and as the guide’s lamp throws its faint gleam here and there, I see that the cavern we stand in is very vast and damp, and uncommonly like a huge cellar; but I can’t say I see anything more. In another minute the guide has turned, and leads us through a passage cut in the rock. We are not going up or downstairs now, but picking our way over slippery stones and between places sometimes so narrow and sometimes so low, that our shoulders get various bumps and bruises, and the guide’s warning of “Garde tête!” sounds continuously. Every now and then we come upon a larger excavation, which is called a salle, and given some name consequent on the likeness assumed by the stalactites contained in it. Thus one is called salle de Brahma, because it contains a large stalactite, somewhat resembling the idol of that name. Another salle du sacrifice, because its principal attraction is a large flat stone, at the foot of which is another, shaped sausage-wise, and entitled tombeau de la victime. We pace after the guides through these cavernous passages for what appears to me miles, my mind meanwhile being divided between fear that I should leave my boots behind me in the slushy clay, or that either of my children should tumble down or knock her head. Every cavern is like the other, and I look in vain for stalactites which shall remind me of “houris grouped about the sultan,” or “frozen tears.” The guides occasionally produce a fine effect by burning a little red fire, or letting-off a rocket, or climbing singly up the more perilous places, that we may watch the gradual ascent of their flickering lamps, and judge of the height of the larger salles. But I suppose the enthusiastic scribblers in the visitors’ book would consider me the possessor of a very darkened intellect if they heard me affirm that I have seen better effects on the stage, and climbed greater heights with much more convenience. Perhaps I have not a sufficiently appreciative soul for grottoes; but the greater part of the grotto of Rochefort comes up exactly to my idea of a mine, and nothing more.
The “glittering” stalactites are nowhere. The cave is lined with stalactites, but (with the exception of a few white ones) they are all of a uniform pale-brown colour, and have no idea of glittering or being prismatic. The greatest wonder of the grotto is its vastness, which may be estimated from the fact that we are two hours going over it, and then have not traversed the whole on account of fresh works being carried on in parts. We penetrate to its very depths to see the river and the waterfall, but the mud is so excessive that we are compelled to stop, and let the guide descend with his lamp and flash it over the water, which is really very pretty, and, strange to relate, contains good trout.
Then we plough our way upwards again; up fungus-covered ladders, and wet, slippery stairs, upon which it is most difficult to keep a footing, until we arrive at decidedly the finest sight there—the salle du sabbat. Here the guides send up a spirit-balloon, to show us the height and extent of the vast cavern, and we are rather awe-struck, particularly as, in order that we may see the full effect, the other guide plants us on three chairs and takes away both the lamps, leaving us seated in the darkness, on the edge of a precipice. The blackness is so thick about us that we can almost feel it; and the silence is that of death. My youngest girl slips her little hand in mine, and whispers, “Mamma, supposing he weren’t to come back again!” and I can’t say the prospect pleases. However, the balloon reaches the top of the cavern, and is hauled back again; and the guide does come back; and, whilst he is assisting his fellow to pack it away, I sing a verse of “God save the Queen,” for the children to hear the echo, which is stupendous.