want to keep her, and fancy she can't be happy without you!" I can fancy the
general grimly replying to the partner of his existence. Hanging down her
withered head, with a tear mayhap trickling down her cheek, I can fancy the old
woman silently departing to do the bidding of her lord. She selects a trunk out
of the store of Baynes's baggage. A young lady's trunk was a trunk in those
days. Now it is a two or three storied edifice of wood, in which two or three
full-grown bodies of young ladies (without crinoline) might be packed. I saw a
little old countrywoman at the Folkestone station last year with her travelling
baggage contained in a band-box tied up in an old cotton handkerchief hanging on
her arm; and she surveyed Lady Knightsbridge's twenty-three black trunks, each
well nigh as large as her ladyship's opera-box. Before these great edifices that
old woman stood wondering dumbly. That old lady and I had lived in a time when
crinoline was not; and yet, I think, women looked even prettier in that time
than they do now. Well, a trunk and a band-box were fetched out of the baggage
heap for little Charlotte, and I daresay her little brothers jumped and danced
on the box with much energy to make the lid shut, and the general brought out
his hammer and nails, and nailed a card on the box with "Mademoiselle Baynes"
thereon printed. And mamma had to look on and witness those preparations. And
Hely Walsingham had called; and he wouldn't call again, she knew; and that fair
chance for the establishment of her child was lost by the obstinacy of her
self-willed, reckless husband. That woman had to water her soup with her furtive
tears, to sit of nights behind hearts and spades, and brood over her crushed
hopes. If I contemplate that wretched old Niobe much longer, I shall begin to
pity her. Away softness! Take out thy arrows, the poisoned, the barbed, the
rankling, and prod me the old creature well, god of the silver bow! Eliza Baynes
had to look on, then, and see the trunks packed; to see her own authority over
her own daughter wrested away from her; to see the undutiful girl prepare with
perfect delight and alacrity to go away, without feeling a pang at leaving a
mother who had nursed her through adverse illnesses, who had scolded her for
seventeen years.
The general accompanied the party to the diligence office. Little Char was very
pale and melancholy indeed when she took her place in the coup?. "She should
have a corner: she had been ill, and ought to have a corner," uncle Mac said,
and cheerfully consented to be bodkin. Our three special friends are seated. The
other passengers clamber into their places. Away goes the clattering team, as
the general waves an adieu to his friends. "Monstrous fine horses those grey
Normans; famous breed, indeed," he remarks to his wife on his return.
"Indeed," she echoes. "Pray, in what part of the carriage was Mr. Firmin," she
presently asks.
"In no part of the carriage at all!" Baynes answers fiercely, turning beet-root
red. And thus, though she had been silent, obedient, hanging her head, the woman
showed that she was aware of her master's schemes, and why her girl had been
taken away. She knew; but she was beaten. It remained for her but to be silent
and bow her head. I daresay she did not sleep one wink that night. She followed
the diligence in its journey. "Char is gone," she thought. "Yes; in due time he
will take from me the obedience of my other children, and tear them out of my
lap." He?? that is, the general??was sleeping meanwhile. He had had in the last
few days four awful battles??with his child, with his friends, with his wife??in
which latter combat he had been conqueror. No wonder Baynes was tired, and
needed rest. Any one of those engagements was enough to weary the veteran.
If we take the liberty of looking into double-bedded rooms, and peering into the
thoughts which are passing under private nightcaps, may we not examine the coup?
of a jingling diligence with an open window, in which a young lady sits wide
awake by the side of her uncle and aunt! These perhaps are asleep; but she is
not. Ah! she is thinking of another journey! that blissful one from Boulogne,
when he was there yonder in the imperial, by the side of the conductor. When the
MacWhirter party had come to the diligence office, how her little heart had
beat! How she had looked under the lamps at all the people lounging about the
court! How she had listened when the clerk called out the names of the
passengers; and, mercy, what a fright she had been in, lest he should be there
after all, while she stood yet leaning on her father's arm! But there was
no??well, names, I think, need scarcely be mentioned. There was no sign of the
individual in question. Papa kissed her, and sadly said good-by. Good Madame
Smolensk came with an adieu and an embrace for her dear Miss, and whispered,
"Courage, mon enfant," and then said, "Hold, I have brought you some bonbons."
There they were in a little packet. Little Charlotte put the packet into her
little basket. Away goes the diligence, but the individual had made no sign.
Away goes the diligence; and every now and then Charlotte feels the little
packet in her little basket. What does it contain??oh, what? If Charlotte could
but read with her heart, she would see in that little packet??the sweetest
bonbon of all perhaps it might be, or, ah me! the bitterest almond! Through the
night goes the diligence, passing relay after relay. Uncle Mac sleeps. I think I
have said he snored. Aunt Mac is quite silent, and Char sits plaintively with
her lonely thoughts and her bonbons, as miles, hours, relays pass.
"These ladies, will they descend and take a cup of coffee, a cup of bouillon?"
at last cries a waiter at the coup? door, as the carriage stops in Orleans. "By
all means a cup of coffee," says Aunt Mac. "The little Orleans wine is good,"
cries Uncle Mac. "Descendons!" "This way, madame," says the waiter. "Charlotte,
my love, some coffee?"
"I will??I will stay in the carriage. I don't want anything, thank you," says
Miss Charlotte. And the instant her relations are gone, entering the gate of the
Lion Noir, where, you know, are the Bureaux des Messageries, Lafitte, Caillard
et Cie??I say, on the very instant when her relations have disappeared, what do
you think Miss Charlotte does?
She opens that packet of bonbons with fingers that tremble??tremble so, I wonder
how she could undo the knot of the string (or do you think she had untied that
knot under her shawl in the dark? I can't say. We never shall know). Well; she
opens the packet. She does not care one fig for the lollipops, almonds, and so
forth. She pounces on a little scrap of paper, and is going to read it by the
lights of the steaming stable lanterns, when??oh, what made her start so???
In those old days there used to be two diligences which travelled nightly to
Tours, setting out at the same hour, and stopping at almost the same relays. The
diligence of Lafitte and Caillard supped at the Lion Noir at Orleans??the
diligence of the Messageries Royales stopped at the Ecu de France, hard by.
Wel
l, as the Messageries Royales are supping at the Ecu de France, a passenger
strolls over from that coach, and strolls and strolls until he comes to the
coach of Lafitte, Caillard, and Company, and to the coup? window where Miss
Baynes is trying to decipher her bonbon.
He comes up??and as the night-lamps fall on his face and beard??his rosy face,
his yellow beard??oh! ??What means that scream of the young lady in the coup? of
Lafitte, Caillard et Compagnie! I declare she has dropped the letter which she
was about to read. It has dropped into a pool of mud under the diligence off
fore-wheel. And he with the yellow beard, and a sweet happy laugh, and a tremble
in his deep voice, says, "You need not read it. It was only to tell you what you
know."
Then the coup? window says, "Oh, Philip! Oh, my??"
My what? You cannot hear the words, because the grey Norman horses come
squealing and clattering up to their coach-pole with such accompanying cries and
imprecations from the horsekeepers and postilions, that no wonder the little
warble is lost. It was not intended for you and me to hear; but perhaps you can
guess the purport of the words. Perhaps in quite old, old days, you may remember
having heard such little whispers, in a time when the song-birds in your grove
carolled that kind of song very pleasantly and freely. But this, my good madam,
is written in February. The birds are gone: the branches are bare: the gardener
has actually swept the leaves off the walks: and the whole affair is an affair
of a past year, you understand. Well! carpe diem, fugit hora, There, for one
minute, for two minutes, stands Philip over the diligence off fore-wheel,
talking to Charlotte at the window, and their heads are quite close??quite
close. What are those two pairs of lips warbling, whispering? "Hi! Gare! Oh?!"
The horsekeepers, I say, quite prevent you from hearing; and here come the
passengers out of the Lion Noir, aunt Mac still munching a great slice of
bread-and-butter. Charlotte is quite comfortable, and does not want anything,
dear aunt, thank you. I hope she nestles in her corner, and has a sweet slumber.
On the journey the twin diligences pass and repass each other. Perhaps Charlotte
looks out of her window sometimes and towards the other carriage. I don't know.
It is a long time ago. What used you to do in old days, ere railroads were, and
when diligences ran? They were slow enough: but they have got to their journey's
end somehow. They were tight, hot, dusty, dear, stuffy, and uncomfortable; but,
for all that, travelling was good sport sometimes. And if the world would have
the kindness to go back for five-and-twenty or thirty years, some of us who have
travelled on the Tours and Orleans Railway very comfortably would like to take
the diligence journey now.
Having myself seen the city of Tours only last year, of course I don't remember
much about it. A man remembers boyhood, and the first sight of Calais, and so
forth. But after much travel or converse with the world, to see a new town is to
be introduced to Jones. He is like Brown: he is not unlike Smith: in a little
while you hash him up with Thompson. I dare not be particular, then, regarding
Mr. Firmin's life at Tours, lest I should make topographical errors, for which
the critical schoolmaster would justly inflict chastisement. In the last novel I
read about Tours, there were blunders from the effect of which you know the
wretched author never recovered. It was by one Scott, and had young Quentin
Durward for a hero, and Isabel de Croye for a heroine; and she sate in her
hostel, and sang, "Ah, County Guy, the hour is nigh." A pretty ballad enough:
but what ignorance, my dear sir! What descriptions of Tours, of Liege, are in
that fallacious story! Yes, so fallacious and misleading, that I remember I was
sorry, not because the description was unlike Tours, but because Tours was
unlike the description.
So Quentin Firmin went and put up at the snug little hostel of the Faisan; and
Isabel de Baynes took up her abode with her uncle the Sire de MacWhirter; and I
believe Master Firmin had no more money in his pocket than the Master Durward
whose story the Scottish novelist told some forty years since. And I cannot
promise you that our young English adventurer shall marry a noble heiress of
vast property, and engage the Boar of Ardennes in a hand-to-hand combat; that
sort of Boar, madam, does not appear in our modern drawing-room histories. Of
others, not wild, there be plenty. They gore you in clubs. They seize you by the
doublet, and pin you against posts in public streets. They run at you in parks.
I have seen them sit at bay after dinner, ripping, gashing, tossing a whole
company. These our young adventurer had in good sooth to encounter, as is the
case with most knights. Who escapes them? I remember an eminent person talking
to me about bores for two hours once. O you stupid eminent person! You never
knew that you yourself had tusks, little eyes in your hure; a bristly mane to
cut into tooth-brushes; and a curly-tail! I have a notion that the multitude of
bores is enormous in the world. If a man is a bore himself, when he is
bored??and you can't deny this statement?? then what am I, what are you, what
your father, grandfather, son??all your amiable acquaintance, in a word? Of this
I am sure, Major and Mrs. MacWhirter were not brilliant in conversation. What
would you and I do, or say, if we listen to the tittle-tattle of Tours. How the
clergyman was certainly too fond of cards and going to the caf?; how the dinners
those Popjoys gave were too absurdly ostentatious; and Popjoy, we know, in the
Bench last year; how Mrs. Flights, going on with that Major of French
Carabiniers, was really too "How could I endure those people?" Philip would ask
himself, when talking of that personage in after days, as he loved, and loves to
do. "How could I endure them, I say? Mac was a good man; but I knew secretly in
my heart, sir, that he was a bore. Well: I loved him. I liked his old stories. I
liked his bad old dinners: there is a very comfortable Touraine wine, by the
way??a very warming little wine, sir. Mrs. Mac you never saw, my good Mrs.
Pendennis. Be sure of this, you never would have liked her. Well, I did. I liked
her house, though it was damp, in a damp garden, frequented by dull people. I
should like to go and see that old house now. I am perfectly happy with my wife,
but I sometimes go away from her to enjoy the luxury of living over our old days
again. With nothing in the world but an allowance which was precarious, and had
been spent in advance; with no particular plans for the future, and a few
five-franc pieces for the present,??by Jove, sir, how did I dare to be so happy?
What idiots we were, my love, to be happy at all! We were mad to marry. Don't
tell me! With a purse which didn't contain three months' consumption, would we
dare to marry now? We should be put into the mad ward of the workhouse: that
would be the only place for us. Talk about trusting in heaven. Stuff and
nonsense, ma'am! I have as good a right to go and buy a house in Belgrave
Squ
are, and trust to heaven for the payment, as I had to marry when I did. We
were paupers, Mrs. Char, and you know that very well!"
"Oh, yes. We were very wrong: very!" says Mrs. Charlotte, looking up to her
chandelier (which, by the way, is of very handsome Venetian old glass). "We were
very wrong, were not we, my dearest?" And herewith she will begin to kiss and
fondle two or more babies that disport in her room??as if two or more babies had
anything to do with Philip's argument, that a man has no right to marry who has
no pretty well-assured means of keeping a wife.
Here, then, by the banks of the Loire, although Philip had but a very few francs
in his pocket, and was obliged to keep a sharp look-out on his expenses at the
Hotel of the Golden Pheasant, he passed a fortnight of such happiness as I, for
my part, wish to all young folks who read his veracious history. Though he was
so poor, and ate and drank so modestly in the house, the maids, waiters, the
landlady of the Pheasant, were as civil to him??yes, as civil as they were to
the gouty old Marchioness of Carabas herself, who stayed here on her way to the
south, occupied the grand apartments, quarrelled with her lodging, dinner,
breakfast, bread- and-butter in general, insulted the landlady in bad French,
and only paid her bill under compulsion. Philip's was a little bill, but he paid
it cheerfully. He gave only a small gratuity to the servants, but he was kind
and hearty, and they knew he was poor. He was kind and hearty, I suppose,
because he was so happy. I have known the gentleman to be by no means civil; and
have heard him storm, and hector, and browbeat landlord and waiters, as fiercely
as the Marquis of Carabas himself. But now Philip the Bear was the most gentle
of bears, because his little Charlotte was leading him.
Away with trouble and doubt, with squeamish pride and gloomy care! Philip had
enough money for a fortnight, during which Tom Glazier, of the Monitor, promised
to supply Philip's letters for the Pall Mall Gazette. All the designs of France,
Spain, Russia, gave that idle "own correspondent" not the slightest anxiety. In
the morning it was Miss Baynes; in the afternoon it was Miss Baynes. At six it
was dinner and Charlotte; at nine it was Charlotte and tea. "Anyhow, love-making
does not spoil his appetite," Major MacWhirter correctly remarked. Indeed,
Philip had a glorious appetite; and health bloomed in Miss Charlotte's cheek,
and beamed in her happy little heart. Dr. Firmin, in the height of his practice,
never completed a cure more skilfully than that which was performed by Dr.
Firmin, Junior.
"I ran the thing so close, sir," I remember Philip bawling out, in his usual
energetic way, whilst describing this period of his life's greatest happiness to
his biographer, "that I came back to Paris outside the diligence, and had not
money enough to dine on the road. But I bought a sausage, sir, and a bit of
bread??and a brutal sausage it was, sir??and I reached my lodgings with exactly
two sous in my pocket." Roger Bontemps himself was not more content than our
easy philosopher.
So Philip and Charlotte ratified and sealed a treaty of Tours, which they
determined should never be broken by either party. Marry without papa's consent?
Oh, never! Marry anybody but Philip? Oh, never?? never! Not if she lived to be a
hundred, when Philip would in consequence be in his hundred and ninth or tenth
year, would this young Joan have any but her present Darby. Aunt Mac, though she
may not have been the most accomplished or highly-bred of ladies, was a
warm-hearted and affectionate aunt Mac. She caught in a mild form the fever from
these young people. She had not much to leave, and Mac's relations would want
all he could spare when he was gone. But Charlotte should have her garnets, and
her teapot, and her India shawl??that she should. [Note: I am sorry to say that