CORRESPONDENCE.
A LAZY JOURNEY.—VII.
(coNcLusioN.) Wnxig we reached Ville-en-Mer, our journeying was over. We had made it our end and object to settle down for a time some- where by the sea, where Mrs. Balbus and I might swim about together clothed and in our right minds, after the sensible Terrefollese familia, instead of presenting studies of anatomy to the beach in two classes, with eases labelled, "Gentlemen's Machines," "Ladies' Machines," as is in favour in Grumble Island, which votes it improper for the sexes to swim together in full costume, but the reverse for them to look at each other ;vithout any to speak of. There is no pleasure that I know of to be got out of our bathing, and Mrs. Balbus and I hope to make Ville-en-Mer a yearly institution. It has been for years a favourite city of mine, as water-logged as the Queen of the Adriatic herself, all island when the waves are up, and dashing upon the strong walls ; all sands and rocks when they are down, where we wandered for hours among an archipelago of tiny pools, or dawdled among the grasses by the great poet's solitary grave,—" without the book," as Fox said, so pithily. The hostess of our comfortable inn—which we chose because it looked nice, and wasn't in the guide-books; and we were pension ed there at a cheap rate in a very land Of plenty—told us the poet's story in a picturesque way, as she was sadly watching the pulling-down of the corner house, next to the hotel where be is fabled to have been born,—the house in which she had herself been brought up, now to be turned into a new and pretentious caf6. How the ship which carried the young mother, with her yet unborn child, to join the husband, was cast upon the rock, and in the middle of the storm and wreck the poet was born, on the spot which is now his grave ; how he and the mother were carried to the nunnery hard by, now part of the hotel which claims, with suffi- cient approach to truth, to contain the room where he was born, and charges you double for sleeping in it, as it did me, twenty years ago; how next to the nunnery stood a hospital, and next to that a chapel, on the site now to be tenanted by a eaf6 :- these and other things did the landlady discourse to us.
I did not sleep in the poet's room this time, and the afflatus fell not on me. But it did not matter, for I was too lazy for any poetry but such as I might find in the rocks and. waves, which played the poet for us all day long. Mrs. Balms and I were thankful to find a bathing-place which is condemned to unfashion, because it is a busy, commercial town, with no time or room for bores and boredom. Fashion plants colonies as near as it can, and as stupid as it can. We stayed for a while at one of them, ten minutes over the river, and were bored—for the only time on our journey—being driven to tea-drinking and bezique in our own room, as a refuge from humanity. It was at this place that the Miss Mincing episode happened ; here that I was able to note the mingled curiosity and disgust with which she studied Mrs. Balbus's slight, but frequent, modifications of dress ; nothing but a fresh flower newly set, or some sudden and quaint arrangement of caressing lace, Mrs. Balbus's favourite vanity. It was here that when the sun, his first appearance for some days, burst in his glory upon our dreary table d'h6te, Mrs. Mincing, who had been quarrelling with Providence about the rain with righteous bitterness, incontinently called on the waiter to draw the blind, and shut him out, with much nervous sensibility, and "Oh dear, oh dear 1" Does anybody remember the saying of a dead Lord Chancellor, one of the biggest and angriest brains of our time, when some remonstrant suggested to him not to be "so harden people." "My dear Sir," answered he, with a curious softness, " ' people ' are such fools 1" No fashionable person would, on any account, have been seen at our hotel, to which we hope to return next year. The table was crowded with an ever-changing succession of active faces, full of work, while the big caravansaries opposite were as empty as that of Trouvilain. Mrs. Mincing would have been shocked into fits by the Terrefollese, for there were none else, and their open enjoyment of their meals. The landlady regarded us for a day or two with a suspicion of fashionable tourism, but be- came fast friends with Mrs. Balbus in a short time, with some assistance of interpretation, and looks forward to our next visit, I think, with genuine pleasure.
At Ville-en-31er, we made friends with dear little Madame Mignonne and her sister,—friends, I hope, for life. We ate with them, walked with them, travelled up the river by boat with them, to look at the favourite Ciderland haunt of the expatriated Grumble Islander, and on that lovely voyage enjoyed in worthy company one of the most delicious bits of scenery in the world. To my mind, the mind of a dweller by Father Silverstreak, there is none like river-scenery, whose soft lights and shades and ex- quisite surprises of bank and water dwell lovingly in the memory where the hard majesty of mountains cannot make a home. Madame Mignonne's perpetual bubble of quiet talk, her " Voyez- vous, Madame Balbus," or, "M. Bal-bus," with the last syllable prolonged, and the index-finger just under the merry, bright eyes, her womanly Terrefollese ways, and her amusing fashion of driving good, but fair bargains with the powerless sex, live with me for ever. While she was winning down a hard old doctor, whose locatary she was to be and now is, into a reduction of rent, which he had, to start with, a fixed and evident purpose of not giving, Mrs. Balbus and I sat by and noted them with infinite delight. As good a fellow in his way was her husband, a travelling genius, who cherished her with a pleasant pride, and was such a breathing likeness in build and face of the great Vendetta, that I believe he has nothing to do but to step forward and claim the vacant heritage. Best of all was the true hero of our lazy journey, their pretty five-year-old, the "petit Paul." God bless the children, how nice they can be, when they are not spoiled ;—how passing odious when they are. The little Paul is the dearest mite whom I have the honour to number among my mite- acquaintance. He made friends with me over my Malacca cane, and to make friends with a child is a pleasant, but not always an easy, process. This cane was his " cheval," riding being his favourite dream ; and he rode it with pride everywhere, though, being a favourite possession of mine, I rescued it in the end. The tassel supplied him with reins, which gave it an advantage over untasseled sticks. I am not of a mind, as to my malacca, with the gentleman who walked into the shop holding his straight before him, and being of fashionable mould, with his eyes half-shut, and addressing nobody in particular, simply said, in the fewest words that could be mustered, "Take off that damned strap." The strap was Paul's delight, and I believe he had a full belief in the living reality of his steed, which when he was sent to bed, at all hours of the night, was always committed. to me, with the solemn injunction, "A l'ecurie !" Paul dined late, with the rest of us, like a little gentleman, and was allowed to eat whatever Nature suggested, with an artistic appreciation of the carte which never blotted the small picture of health at all. It was all very shocking, of course, but it didn't hurt him. I wonder if the young Minciugs were brought up in the same dreadful way, with something of a confidence in them and nature,—whether they would have less or more to unlearn in years of discretion P One day Paul entirely declined to occupy any longer the high chair which the attentive waiters—who loved him like everybody else—kept for his throne. He was too old, he said, and for the rest of the time his head. disappeared under the table-cloth. The pride of age, in children, is magnifi- cent. The other day, another five-year-old, a girl, came to visit us, leaving her younger, of three, behind, under the smaller one's protest. " Ah !" she said, as the elder started, in all the pomp and circumstance of a new outfit, "you wait till I am five !"
How Thackeray would have loved the "petit Paul." After dinner he sipped his favourite liqueur with unaffected manni- ness—a very harmless fruit-syrup, his amused father explained to me—and gave his opinion on things in general. " Es-tu de Belle-EtoileP" somebody asked him, at the café where he was seated in his glory, at his favourite table. "Non 1" said he " je suis de la R-r6publique." His father is of that way of thinking ; and the youngster has but a sorry opinion of kings and Munchausens, and, indeed, of humbug in general. Some- times the child flashed out the prettiest sayings. He began suddenly to sing in his happiness, and very sweetly, one evening at dinner, and was gently rebuked. " Pourquoi pas P" he said " j'ai le bon Dieu dans le occur, et il me fait chanter." The words fell on me like a charm. Where on earth, 0 ye Impeyites do these poetic notions spring in a baby's mind ? From what parent ape, or cod-fish, or towel-horse, are such ideas evolved Or is there, may be, something more than a. meaning in the older lesson, that Faith and Heaven mean a simple humility in things too high for us, and our wisest teacher is a little child? May health and happiness be with the little Paul 1 I hope to write to his mother to-morrow.
I have little more to say or tell, but linger with a lazy love over the close of my lazy journey. Our happy holiday was over, when we had said our last regretful good-bye to the ldignonnes. Having return-tickets from L.S.W.R., we made our homeward way from All Saints' Isle, after a brief halt there, and steamed in the West Ciderland.' "The best boat on the line," said a traveller to us, at table d'hôte the night before, one of those hearty fellows who seem to know every boat on every line ; "you are fortunate." The weather, this time, was faultless ; and the sea had. scarcely a wrinkle on the salt face which but a night or two before had. looked anger-lined and wind-worn, and had been raving and storming over the ramparts of Ville-en-lier,—scarcely a motion about us but the "innumerable smile." Yet our eleven hours' passage extended itself to sonic thirteen. We sat clown to dinner a large and hungry party,' but landed starving, from coarseness and meagreness of fare, the staff being anxious on one point alone. At an odd hour of the day, Mrs. Balbus had petitioned for a piece of bread- and-butter, I cut her a corner of crust, and anointed it with an end of butter. The steward's boy followed me on deck. "You have not paid for your bread,"'he murmured. "True,"
said ; "how much P" " Twopence." " No," I answered, "a penny." And he took it. With this same steward I remon- strated about the dinner. "I have generally found," 1 explained, "that my friends the sea-captains provide so liberally." "They do," said he, "but L.S.W.R. has taken the refreshments into his own hands." "Al! quite so. And the profits P" "And the profits." "I understand," I said. "And why is our passage so long P" Well, you shouldn't have sailed in the 'West Ciderland.' It's the worst ship on the line, and you see, we had so many passongers." "Doubtless," I said; "but you often must have." "Well,—we have." Was it not a character in " Boz " who always so much wished to become a " Co." I, on my part, shall die wishing to have hit one. And the one whom I most wish to hit is the L.S.W.It.
We had some odd companions, of course. At the theatre of All Saints' Isle, where we fell suddenly again into the tongue and ways of Grumble Island, and discovered in its chief city, the colour of its houses, and regularity of its streets, with other details, an absolute resemblance to the mother-country, instead of Terrefolle (I suppose that to one sailing from the other direction, the effect is the other way), we just escaped, by a. merciful dispensation, a performance of " H.M.S. Pap and Bottle," to which I know Mrs. Balbus, who loves a play paha name, would have made me go. "Don't you love the play P" said Thctckeray to a friend. "I am fond of a good one," the other said. "Bah !" was the answer, "you don't know what I mean." But I think that "Pap and Bottle" might have been too much for him, as the dramatic and musical fact of the insular day. We are an odd people, and keep a composer for all emergencies, like the commander now going to do something unexplained to the Boomerangs. In "Pap and Bottle" (opera) and " Zebedee's Children" (oratorio) the tunes seem, to my ignorance, catching enough, but precisely the same, being called hymns or comic songs aceorting to the form of the literature supplied. In .Terrefolle, the composer of Faust is not asked to write the music of a burlesque, or he of Grande-Duchess° fame to indite a mass for the dead. But we do these things in our own way ; and great is Versatility. Instead of "Pap and. Bottle," the amusement pro- vided in All Saints' Isle was the music of the Luke minstrels, which did not tempt even Mrs. Balbus. Alas ! they travelled with us, and made the boat a Purgatory. They had preter- naturally white faces, as a real negro might have after scraping off his complexion, and sang songs all the way, driving all quiet people, in turn, from saloon, and quarter-deck, and everywhere. They enjoyed this effect very much. They imitated a good many of the lower animals, and well. They even imitated the voice of a deaf man who was on board, very loud, for the benefit of his wife and daughter, who did not think the joke good. Nor did I. From long sitting under advertisements, I had believed that these artists never performed out of Babylon. I was dis- appointed. One other passenger there was worth noting, and a remarkable one. There had been a horse-race in All Saints' Isle, and this man was of the initiated, obviously. He lounged about the saloon asking for his "mate," and used. such abominable language and. showed manners so singular, that 1 was on the point of taking Mrs. Balbus out of the room ; but his utterances were, happily, as Greek to her. The man was but half-fledged, but fit company for none of us. I set him down as a" welcher," but learned from the captain, who mentioned the fact with reverence, tinged with wonder, that he was a lord. I knew he must be one or the other. These are the people who, in other of their condescensions, beset young actresses trying to work, and are allowed to do so by right of title. It is a great pity, and a reflection on the whole order, whose better members should combine to prevent such things from being. They could do it, if they did their duty, and tried. But it is easier to say that there is nothing to be done.
It is characteristic of my nation, I suppose, that I finish my story with a growl. But it was with a growl that the journey ended, and a feeling that there must be something wrong in the Grumble-Island. blood, when it produces and tolerates such
specimens as these. Just after the Mignoimes, they jarred signally. But such little spots on our feast of charity were small enough, and reach a vanishing-point in the retrospect. We are stowed comfortably away again, Dorothy Balbus and I, in our bright little home at North Bitten, with all its homelike surroundings; and we find endless matter for chat in that month of profitable laziness. We evoke pleasant spectres to sit with us at the table, retrace our travels step by step again, recall the faces and the ways which made things nice for us, and every now and then get a letter from one of our new friends to talk over. We made our little plan, and we carried, it placidly out, and are already sometimes discussing some new journey when the holiday-time shall come round again. I stoutly maintain that home is best, and Mrs. Balbus is not at present anxious to dispute it, being one that never wastes powder. I know exactly at what point she will assert herself, and with what effect. Meanwhile, in and through this story of ours, she has always been ready with a useful hint, or a timely jog to memory. She has them all at her fingers' ends,—the little Paul, the courteous doctor, and the wondrous twins, whom only to have seen apart is the essence of the adventure. Had we beheld. them in bodily brotherhood, instead of taking up the second just where we dropped the first, it would have broken the weird line of con- tinuity. Mrs. Balbus is by me, to congratulate me on my last sentence being written, though a little to condole over the loss of the phantoms we have been living with these few weeks past, and to tell me, in her own quite unanswerable way, "Tom, it is no use your spinning it out any longer. You have been playing tennis for two hours to-day, and must want dinner."
Ton BALMS.
Previous page
