Works of Ellen Wood, page 1314
If the time were summer and not spring, her dessert-table would be adorned with magnificent peaches, plucked by le cousin Pascal from his own trees as a delicate attention — and nothing could be more delicately offered.
Pascal is a great man in his humble way: lives in a house better, larger, more important than most in the village. His comely wife divides her attention between keeping it in order and looking after two fine children, their hope and happiness. His garden is full of choice flowers and fruit-trees; his peaches are ambrosia and invariably take the first prize at a neighbouring annual show. Pascal farms his own land and is his own master; and though he follows the plough and works as hard as any labourer, he might if he chose take life very easily. His broad forehead and large intelligent blue eyes show thought above his class. During the few years he went to school he carried everything before him.
“I don’t know how I did it,” he will tell you. “Certainly not by industry, for I was idle, and often only looked at my lessons on the way to school. If any mischief was going on, I was always at the bottom of it Perhaps it is a pity I left school so soon. I think so now. But, the mother wanted me at home: I was an only child, and she said she could not manage without me. On my part, I was glad enough to throw up books and live a free country life. So here I am, neither one thing nor the other, knowing just enough to wish I knew more — or less.”
But Pascal is better than he thinks. He is well up in the questions of the day, and talks with sense and judgment. He is not a bad musician, and once sketched a plan of the roads and turnings of the village that would not have disgraced an engineer. When Joachine is disinclined for writing he is her secretary, and the result is an excellent letter, partly dictated, partly original, in which sometimes her domestic details are comically mixed up with his own sowing and reaping interests, and the letter reads like a series of parentheses. He bought her house, in order that she should have no troublesome landlord to deal with; she makes him an excellent tenant, and he knows he is sure of his rent. Of a younger generation than herself, he gives her the attention of a son.
All this is disinterested goodness, for what little Joachine has saved out of her small income will go to her niece Malvina, who has devoted her later years to her aunt.
Perhaps we cannot give a better specimen of her still indomitable will than the following incident, which happened a few months ago.
Joachine, a martyr to rheumatism, had not left the boundary of her premises for many years. But in 1892 the brother Louis died, and before he passed away he exacted a promise that she would visit his grave. The cemetery is about a mile from her house. But to Joachine, who had not taken ten yards in as many years, a mile was an unknown quantity. She might as well have attempted to cross the Channel.
Still she had promised, and she would perform.
“You will wait until you can have the voiture of le cousin Pascal?” said Malvina, trembling with emotion.
“I will go on foot and in no other way,” returned Joachine with all her wonted decision.
“You will never get there,” cried Malvina, aghast. “You might as well try to walk to Carcassonne.”
“With the help of your arm I shall do it,” replied Joachine. “Let nothing more be said.”
One morning she rose as usual. “This is the day,” she announced firmly—” I shall go to-day to the cemetery. Make no objection.”
“Very well,” said Malvina, in despair. “Make your toilette, and I will accompany you. But I shall take a chair with me for you to repose yourself on the road.”
“No chair,” cried Joachine. “If you think I am going to make myself a spectacle and a byword for the village, you are mistaken. I will have no chair.”
“As you please,” returned Malvina, courageous from desperation. “If the chair doesn’t go, I don’t go. That is as true as that I stand here.”
And so at eleven o’clock the house was locked up and the trio started: Joachine, Malvina, and the chair. They had not gone forty yards before Joachine said, “I think I could take a few moments’ repose.” And Malvina triumphed — the chair was accepted.
So it went on. After infinite labour and time, and much laughter on the part of Malvina, in spite of her terror as to the consequences of the expedition, the cemetery was reached, and the grave duly visited. Joachine was happy: she had kept her word; and before leaving she pointed out where she herself desired to be laid when her time came. But the return journey! Malvina thought it would never end. Every few yards the chair had to be brought into requisition. Once or twice she had to go up to a neighbouring cottage and beg wine for her aunt — only too cheerfully bestowed upon the village oracle. And so they gradually made way. They had left home at eleven in the morning, they reached it again at eight at night: nine hours occupied in doing two miles; the whole time spent upon the road, with the exception of one hour in the churchyard. Joachine was assisted to bed, where she remained for a week.
“But I kept my word,” she quietly remarks. “I said I would go — and I went.”
“And nearly lost your life in consequence,” Malvina as quietly returns. “Was it worth the risk? We call it the great excursion of our life,” she laughs, “a veritable journey; and it has since been the talk and wonder of the village. Le voyage de Madame Joachine, — it sounds like the title of a book or a play.”
Landry is the type and perfection of a French village. It is celebrated for its cleanliness, and its simple inhabitants pride themselves on that virtue above all others. In spring and summer a more charming picture cannot be seen than these spotless, white-washed cottages with their black casements, green shutters, and well - thatched roofs; reposing in gardens where the limes throw out their shadows and their perfume, and the trees are laden with blossom or fruit, each in its season.
Life is a haven of peace and repose. The village is well-to-do in its way. Some of the women work in the fields; others earn a living by cutting and trimming tulle for the manufacturers of a neighbouring town. The men beat out the flax; and at certain times of the year you may hear from the outhouse or barn of almost every cottage the swish-swish of the machine at its work. When the flax fails, it is hard times with them; the wolf howls at many a door.
The village extends over a wide area, and is of some importance. Away from the houses there are wide marshes where you may punt about and be completely hidden by the tall reeds that grow in great profusion and magnificence. The swish and rustle as you move along is a sound never to be forgotten. Many a peat-stack meets the eye, that presently will warm the cottage hearths and send its delicious odour through open doorways. As you stir the rushes, many a snipe springs up and takes its zigzag flight, but fears no gun from the simple villagers. The tone spread over the marshes on days when the skies are gray is deep and beautiful.
Landry owns a mayor, who keeps his office year after year, is lord of the neighbourhood, and has the largest farm for miles round: a magnificent house, which looks exactly like one of the cottages twenty times magnified, excepting that it has an imposing upper floor and a gray-tiled roof. It also has endless barns for cattle and hay, and an immense farmyard, kept as much in order as a garden. The buildings form three sides of a quadrangle, and the whole is enclosed in great green gates which seem encumbered with their own magnificence. The walls from beginning to end are white as driven snow: the mayor sets his people a good example. He is supposed to be fabulously rich, and when the villagers speak of him they change their tones as they do when talking of kings, or of their patron saint.
He and Pascal are good friends, though the mayor is much the greater man of the two, and would scorn to follow the plough or wear a blouse. But his intelligent neighbours are few and far between, and, being a man who loves company, he cannot be too exclusive. Pascal makes an excellent companion. Once, years ago, he prophesied the fate of Europe; put chapter and verse together with strange accuracy; foretold troubles in Egypt, complications with Russia, humiliation to England. “Pascal, you are a wizard,” we said, when all these things had come to pass. “You live here from one year’s end to another, out of the world, with few to share your thoughts and opinions, and you know more of the fate of Europe than many of her statesmen.”
“That is the very reason,” replied Pascal, in his calm way, his great blue eyes, with so much width between them, full of dreamy intelligence. “I have no one to argue with, no opinions to hear on the other side; so I form my own views — such as they are — and keep to them. They are only founded upon a little common-sense. When I follow the plough or sow the seed, thoughts come into my head unbidden; I seem to see what people will do, how things will turn. I don’t know chess, monsieur, and never saw it played; but I have heard that they who look on see more of the game than the players themselves.”
Pascal is a philosopher out of place, intended for greater things; a village Hampden or mute inglorious Milton. Would he have been the happier in the higher state? Does he know anything of the “vague unsatisfied longings” which come to those who have missed their mark — or, not having missed it, have still found life a disappointment and delusion? Probably not. What he was years ago he is to-day, the embodiment of calm contentment.
The conclusion of such a visit to Joachine was the trying moment. Farewells were taken in the porch, and dimmed eyes followed the little procession down the long garden path to the outer gate. Looking back from the end of the lane, one saw in the middle of the deserted road a venerable figure, sad and solitary, leaning both hands upon her stick, her satellites watching from the porch. A turn to the left and all passed out of sight; and Joachine would go back to her chimney-corner to realise the happy dream and indulge for many a long day and night in the luxury of melancholy.
And Mrs. Henry Wood, never herself present on these occasions, would take special pleasure in hearing all the details and circumstances surrounding the life of her old and faithful servant. She still lives, but the grasshopper has become a burden and the silver cord is loosening.
CHAPTER VII
“And is it that the haze of grief
Makes former gladness loom so great?
The lowness of the present state,
That sets the past in this relief?”
WHEN Ellen Wood left her early home for a foreign land not all her affection for her husband could prevent her from being very unhappy. She was still a young girl, and was suddenly transplanted amongst unfamiliar scenes and people, and heard a tongue she as yet only indifferently understood and spoke with difficulty. It is true that she very soon acquired fluency, but the first months had to be lived through, with all their strange surroundings.
She possessed a delightful home, and became acquainted with many charming people who did all in their power to make her happy, but whose society she could only in part enjoy whilst still unfamiliar with their language. Even the very Alpine mountains, which towered about her neighbourhood with their almost eternal snows, and which she soon grew to love, at first oppressed her with a feeling of estrangement. Their very vastness made them cold and unfriendly, like the distant sky, the far-off stars. She had never lived in a mountainous country, never seen anything higher than the Malvern Hills, which always filled her with such solitude and depression that to remain in Malvern had often been impossible to her.
The mal du pays which attacks the Savoyard, the yearning for his beloved mountains, was as yet a sealed book. The time arrived when she grew to understand and sympathise with it, but that was still in the future. There came a day when a little Savoyard wandering about England, with his dark skin, pathetic eyes, and little marmoset — an experience now of the past — filled her with strange compassion, and, had she possessed the magic carpet, he would quickly have been transported to his mountains and valleys, wild streams and placid lakes. For Savoie was one of Mrs. Henry Wood’s favourite countries, and possessed some of her happiest memories.
Day after day, in that far-off unfamiliar scene, she would weep in secret for the home she had left behind; the father she tenderly loved, whose daily companion she had been; the intellectual life she had lived with him, which had become necessary as daily food; her beloved Cathedral, with all its ties, social, ecclesiastical, and religious; the associations, romantic and real, within its precincts, from which she had never been separated; all the friends of her girlhood, the constant intercourse and companionship which so interested her. She had never realised how complete the wrench would prove, but it must in truth have been great and bitter; to such a nature as hers almost as the rending of life. A new life it was in every possible way, a changing of the old order. But time heals all wounds and reconciles us to most changes.
One of her great trials was that she could no longer attend divine service. In those far-off days — sixty years ago — things were not as they are now. Railways had not annihilated time and space and made the impossible easy. The world was still ringing with the unfortunate death of Huskisson, and prejudice had yet to be overcome. All reforms fight their way through transition, and in the process some one must suffer.
In France travelling was still a very slow affair, only possible to people of leisure. There were lumbering diligences for ordinary folk, but all who were able to do so posted. Mr. Henry Wood, then wealthy, generally posted in his own carriage with four horses, according to the custom of the time in mountainous countries, changing horses at the usual stations.
The young bride, on her way to the South, wrapped in furs and surrounded by foot-warmers, found every wish fulfilled almost before it was expressed. But it took many days to reach her new home, and little wonder if she felt that a world of time and distance divided her from the past.
They had halted at Lyons for the night, reaching the old town as the evening shadows were falling, but it was still light enough to see and appreciate its picturesque situation. Then, as now, the two broad ‘rivers flowed side by side on their way to the sea; one turbid and troubled, the other clear and transparent, reflecting the blue sky above. To Mrs. Wood they seemed a type of two lives flowing to the ocean of eternity: the one dark and clouded, the other pure and steadfast. In rivers and seas she ever delighted.
They rose early the next morning and breakfasted; a hotel carriage was in waiting, and they were driven off to the heights of Fourviere, that famous hill outside the old town. The sun had risen; the sky was flushed with the splendours of morning. Mr. Wood handed his wife from the carriage, and led her to the brow of the hill when the view was suddenly disclosed.
In the first moment she almost thought she had left this world for another and a fairer, for she looked upon a vision of glory. It was a very clear day; small crimson and golden cloud-flakes reposed in the sky; there was not even a suspicion of mist upon the earth. Rising before her was the magnificent and matchless chain of the Alps, stretching far down into Italy, ending with Monte Rosa. They were still covered with snow, and the sun had changed its white, cold purity to the softest rose-colour. In the far distance they seemed to melt into the heavens. At their feet lay the old town, the pale smoke of early wood-fires curling above the roofs of the houses. Side by side the two rivers flowed on, gracefully winding in their courses, passing onward through matchless scenery, little known in those days, but now world-famed.
No wonder that Mrs. Wood gazed with silent amazement. It was a revelation, this wonderful panorama of snow-covered, sun-flushed mountains; a new world, altogether beyond anything she had ever imagined. It is certain that earth possesses no more marvellous view than this from Mont Perrache on a clear day. The scene stirred within her everything that was deep and earnest, her most religious impressions, all her extreme love of the beautiful and the sublime. For one of the few times in her life she was moved to tears in presence of another, but many causes may have given rise to the moment’s emotion. The scene suddenly opened up was in every sense a new world to her. Then she had undergone many days’ travelling — fatiguing under all circumstances. They had also had a tiring week in Paris: a round of gaieties, introduction to many friends, balls and dinner-parties. It is also possible that she was beginning to realise how completely her old life had passed away, and a new life amongst strange scenes was to be hers. But she quickly recovered her composure, and presently they turned away from this earthly paradise.
The whole of that morning was spent in Lyons, and as they walked through some of the smaller streets the whir of the looms and the sound of the weaver’s shuttle issuing from doors and windows delighted Mrs. Wood. Ever interested in humanity, she could not tire of watching the weavers bending over their looms, many of them pale, consumptivelooking, almost refined, whilst her husband exchanged pleasant remarks with them. A very different type of workman from the English — a people more interesting and more picturesque; everything about them clean and orderly; their homes bright and pleasant, with the advantage of light though relaxing air, and brilliant sunshine.
For the first time she made acquaintance with the silk factories of Lyons, visiting and inspecting one or two of the most important: sights and sounds and industries that must vividly have recalled her old home; though the silk factories of Lyons were so essentially different from the glove factories of Worcester. It was a visit ever afterwards remembered. Who, indeed, could forget the first vision of that glorious Alpine chain, stretching like an enchanted dream far down to the sunny skies of Italy?
