A CHAPTER OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
BY SIR WALTER BESANT.
Portsmouth, as I remember the place in the days of my early youth—say, somewhere about the years 1844 to 1850—was surely the liveliest place, the most full of action, movement, and life, of any in her Majesty's dominions, which were then half as wide as they are at present. Not as a place of industry; there was never, if you please, any industry at all carried on in that town outside the Dock-yard, except of course the industry of fleecing the sailor. This was a merry and an exhilarating sport, because the sailor himself enjoyed being fleeced, entered thoroughly into the spirit of the game, and neither resented nor regretted what he knew would be the end of it—viz., the loss of all his money. Nor, again, could the town be considered picturesque. Somehow, Portsmouth always escaped any beauty of buildings and streets. There was, it is true, a late eighteenth-century look about most of the streets; there was one old church within the Walls; there was a square low tower at the end of High Street which looked well; there were Gates in the Walls; and there was the Domus Dei, the ancient garrison chapel, then not yet "discovered" or restored. There must have been, I suppose, a time when the High Street and St. Thomas's Street and St. Mary's Street were built with gabled houses and with timbered fronts, but they had all disappeared long before my time.
The real centre of the town was, of course, the Common Hard—which is one of the streets of the world like the Cannebière of Marseilles, the King's Road of Brighton, or the High Street of Oxford. Portsmouth cannot be conceived as existing without the Common Hard. It is a broad street facing the harbor; at one end are the gates of the Dock-yard; at the other, a police station, in front of which at one time stood a pair of stocks. The magistrates, in their wisdom, revived this time-honored punishment for a while, but I believe it did not answer. Certainly I myself once saw a man in the stocks. I must have been a child of six or eight at the time, but I remember him well, because I was immensely impressed with the shamefulness of it, and I expected to see the prisoner hanging his head and weeping. Not a bit, if you please. The hardened villain sat up, faced the foot-lights, and grinned merrily all the time.
The street contained shops of all sorts—shops of curios brought home by the sailors and sold to their merchants; jewellers' shops; shops offering telescopes, sextants, and all kinds of naval things; taverns and hotels—then called inns. These shops, however, were not designed for able-bodied Jack, I believe, but for his officer.
It was a fine lookout from the Hard upon the harbor, which was crammed full of ships—ships fitting, ships just come home, harbor-ships, hulks, store-ships, tugs, tenders, and small steamers. As yet the man-o'-war was a wooden ship. She carried 120 guns and a thousand men; mostly she sailed, and in the art of sailing she had no equal. As a boy I thought, and still think, that there is no work of man's craft and ingenuity more wonderful, more beautiful, than a great three-decker in full sail.
Those who wished to cross the harbor or to visit a ship, started from the "Beach" or from the "Logs." The Beach was a narrow spit of sand and shingle running out into the water; it was the "stairs" for the watermen, who all day long kept up a perpetual bawling. "Going over? One more. Just going over. Only one more!" When they had a boat-load, say six or eight passengers at a penny apiece, they put off, and rowed across the harbor to Gosport, on the other side.
Saw one ever a more animated sight than the harbor on a fine summer morning in the forties? Boats manned by Royal Navy men working their way here and there, yachts letting out their sails for a cruise in the Solent, wherries plying backwards and forwards, ships in the grip of the tide. We pass on our way the Victory, Nelson's last ship; she is moored off the Beach, and swings round with every tide. If you went on board you would see the place where Nelson fell, and the place where Nelson died—a dark and noisome hole on the orlop-deck down below. Yonder black hulk without masts is a ship whose exploits would fill a volume. Her name is the Billy Ruffian—mealy mouths call her the Bellerephon. Beside her, another dismasted hulk, now a coal-ship, is the Asia, from which was fired the shot which blew up the Turkish Admiral at Navarino. Beside her is the Arethusa, another historic ship. Beyond, in line, the old worn-out ships are laid up one after the other up the harbor; they are all historic ships; to hear their names is to be reminded of Copenhagen, the Nile, Trafalgar; they are store-ships, coal-ships, training-ships now, and those painted yellow are the convict-hulks. How much misery, how much brutality, how much despair had their permanent home on those terrible yellow ships called convict-hulks? The men were taken ashore every day to work—their work, the heaviest and the most disagreeable, lay chiefly in the Dock-yard; they worked under warders armed with guns, shotted and bayonetted. Many a time have I gone into the yard, a penny quid or screw of tobacco secreted in my pocket. One would get as near as one dared to one of the gang without raising suspicions. There one waited, pretending idle curiosity, till the warder's eyes were turned in the opposite direction, then out with the quid, and down with it at the nearest convict's foot. He made no sign; he never moved or looked up; he just covered the packet with his foot, and went on with his work. The donor retired a space, yet kept an eye upon him. Presently the man straightened himself out; he looked at his tool; he picked up a stone as if to knock off something; he hammered it, and looked at it again critically; the warder, who had watched his movement, turned his head, as satisfied that it was harmless; the convict put down the stone; then, if you had good eyes, you would see the quid transferred in a moment to the man's mouth. Oh! the rapture of that quid! He could not express his gratitude in words, but with a glance of his eye he could, and did. What would have been done to the boy had he been discovered is too terrible to be considered. However, that boy escaped. The sight of convicts working in a gang has always fascinated and terrified me. The submission and obedience, the awful silence, the evident determination to do as little as possible, the profound misery of the life, the cruel crushing down of manhood—these things I felt as a boy of twelve as much as I feel them now. And always with it that feeling of John Bunyan, "But for Grace, John, thou too hadst been here."
A little up the harbor there rose a few inches out of the water an islet called Rat Island. This was the burying-ground of those poor wretches who died on the hulks. I have rowed round this island in the twilight of a summer evening, wondering whether the ghosts of the convicts still haunted this dreary spot and exchanged stories of crime and the cat-o'-nine-tails and irons with each other. I now understand that the ghost which could choose to remain on so desolate a spot must have been indeed a fool.
The Logs were a narrow and rude pier constructed of square trunks laid side by side, with upright posts here and there to keep them in place. They were chiefly used by the Royal Navy boats which were coming and going all day long. I recall the picture of one. At sight of the boat and the officer in command the boy on the Logs runs a little farther out where the Logs are covered with water—he would not willingly stand in the way of that officer, whom he envies with a yearning inconceivable to be in his place. Nobody remembers how boys yearn and long for the impossible. The boat is manned by eight stout, well-set-up fellows; they wear spotless white ducks, jerseys, and straw hats. The officer stands up in the stern, strings in hand. He commands these splendid fellows—He!!!—and he is no older than the envious boy who looks on. He wears a jacket, white ducks, and a cap with the enviable crown and anchor on it. His voice is clear and loud. Timid? Afraid? Not a bit of it. This midshipmite is already Captain and First Lieutenant and all. He jumps on the Logs and marches off, head erect, conscious that all other boys regard him with envy unspeakable. Do the sailors put tongue in cheek and mock him when he is gone? Not a bit of it. The child is their officer; he represents authority. It is not the boy who commands men—it is the Captain. The faces of the men, if you look at them, are not quite like the faces of their grandsons who at present man the navy. Our man of '96 is sober, quiet, thoughtful, as becomes one whose long training has almost made him belong to a learned profession. He is a total abstainer too. When he goes ashore it is to the Sailors' Home and not to the old quarters. The men of '48 are sturdy and bluff and resolute; but they have a certain look that means rum when they can get it, and other indulgences such as can be afforded.
At the back of the Hard was Jack's own pleasure-ground—half a dozen streets belonging to him, to the watermen, and to those who made it their business to look after Jack. These streets were full of strange things. There were shops where they sold old clos', with many queer things that came home on board. There were birds—parrots, parraquits, avvadavats, love-birds, monkeys, lemurs, flying-fish dried, rotting bananas, Venus's fingers from the Philippines, cocos de mer from the Seychelles, carved wooden boxes from China, queer little nameless things from Japan, curved swords from Malay, groups of figures from India—all these things are common now; they were not common then. I would gaze at them displayed behind the small windows illuminated at night by a single candle, with a sick yearning because I could not buy them all. Meantime—oh, heavenly sound!—the fiddle at the public-house next door strikes up. It is an ancient tavern; the floor was lower than the street; the windows were decorated with transparencies showing the valor of the British tar when engaged with the Chinese. Heavens! How those Chinamen ran! And with what a rapturous sense of duty did Jack seize a pigtail with the left hand, and with the right decapitate poor John Chinaman! It was after the war of 1842, or thereabouts—a war now wellnigh forgotten. Within—I would look in and even step in unregarded—the fiddler sat on a stool at the end of the long low room. He was a Pole. He had but one leg, and he fiddled marvellously, so as to make even a man with a gouty toe stand up and shake that limb. Jack danced hornpipes chiefly; he liked best to dance by himself because the cavalier seul enjoyed more scope for figure-dancing and for flourishes; also because the undivided applause and attention of the house were bestowed upon him. In the reel, in which the fair sex took a share, beauty more than skill—looks, rather than merit—provoked admiration. Poor Jack! Poor fair sex! Was it possible for any human creatures to look more deliriously happy?
I have said that the watermen also lived in those back streets; I believe, however, that the watermen lived apart from the sailors; the most of them had been sailors—they were all full of yarns—they were all heroes of the old war; their sons were sailors; but they themselves were married men with families. It was not considered the thing for a sturdy old waterman to frequent the same tavern as Jack ashore; his time for the hornpipe and the fiddle was over.
I have said that Jack's face and appearance have not been transmitted to his grandsons. There was one peculiarity about Jack of '48 that has been somewhat forgotten. He of 1800 wore a pigtail—that pigtail was cut off. I do not know, exactly, in what year. It was succeeded, however, by ringlets. The Jack of '48 wore ringlets very carefully curled, glossy, and artistic. If you passed Jack to leeward you perceived—what? Rowland's Macassar? Tallow? My friends, let us never inquire into the machinery by which those ringlets were made to curl so gracefully, and to assume an appearance so beautifully, so wonderfully glossy.
Of the Dock-yard I must say little, though the part it plays in Portsmouth is like the part played in Winchester by the cathedral, or in Cambridge by the university. There were the huge skeletons of the wooden ships, one after the other, in various stages; there were the dry docks, with the workmen hurrying round the sides on narrow boards, calking and painting; there was the pond, where they laid up the timber to "season"; there was the Rope-house, a quarter of a mile long, where the men "who made their living backwards" so walked all day long twisting the yarn; there was the place where they steamed the beams so that they could be bent; there was the carver of figure-heads; there were the manufacturing of blocks and the making of spars. And every day and all day long the sound of multitudinous hammers, the creaking of cranes, the grinding of saws, went on without stopping. A lovely workshop, and now, I believe, more wonderful still!
The town, I said, had little beauty in its streets. There was a George the Second church, which had a spaciousness and a dignity of its own. There was another which had neither dignity nor space. There were no public buildings to speak of. But there were the Walls. The Walls! Oh, the Walls! These are all levelled and pulled down now. Nobody knows why they were levelled, but they were; and with them disappeared the beauty and the glory of the town. They were not ancient stone Walls, but earthworks in the style approved about the year 1780. I append a section of the Wall as I remember it. An open space, A B, separated it from the building of the town. A slope, B C, brought one to a broad road, C D, for the carriage and passage of cannon, ammunition, etc. At D, another low slope, about three feet high, to a narrow standing-place, D E, in front of which ran E F, a breast-work. The defenders were to fire, thus protected, across F F. F G was the slope to a level lower than that of A B on the other side. At H H was a narrow moat, but the intention of the builders of the Wall was to let in the water so as to cover up the whole of the valley G H; at H the ground sloped up; at many places the ground beyond H was also protected by an earth-work. The Wall ran in lengths protected by bastions; these bastions were mounted with cannon. At intervals there were stone gates with stone lookout-places, most mysterious. The town was divided into two parts, a Wall ran round each. No one would believe what a lovely place for a boy was the Wall—either Wall—to walk upon, or sit upon, or linger, and look, and listen, and dream upon. If you wanted a quiet place for reading you could sit protected from cold wind on a cannon-wheel; if you wanted to dream you could lean over a certain angle on the Queen's Bastion—was it the Queen's?—and there below stretched out the whole extent of the harbor, a broad lagoon at high tide, four miles from north to south and six from west to east; at the head of the harbor, Porchester Castle stood out, gray and frowning over the clear water that lapped her water-gate. This was a Roman fort; the outer Walls—the Roman work—still stand, and will continue to stand for many centuries; within there are the ruins of a Norman castle, the lofty design still uninjured; in another corner is a long and narrow Saxon church—a fine thing, this, for a boy to gaze upon. But that was not all. The space in front of the Wall was laid out in grass; in spring these meadows were full of buttercups; in the summer the grass all over the Walls, the parapet, the slopes, the sloping up of the Wall, the spaces on the bastions between the cannons, were filled with clover, daisies, buttercups, wild convolvulus, colored grasses—everything. There were also trees—"to catch the shells," we used to say; they were planted all along the Walls, and made a sweet and delightful walk in summer-time. And it was so quiet all day long upon the Walls; nobody but a few children ever came there; we had our own favorite bastion, our own view across the harbor; we carried home handfuls of the wild flowers.
If one of the two Walls looked out over the harbor, the other looked out over the Solent and Spithead. The second Wall was not so beautiful in my eyes as the first. It began at a place which even a boy would not but recognize as squalid and horrible. Very near there stood a church of great interest, though of repellent appearance—I know not why it was repellent to look at, but it was. Between the church and the Wall lay a broad piece of consecrated ground. More than once have I been reminded what this ground was used for. More than once have I stood upon the Wall and looked down upon a funeral; the coffin, borne by six soldiers, was covered with the union-jack for a pall—could one have a better? behind, marched, with guns reversed, a small company of soldiers; in front went the muffled drums and the fifes. 'Twas the burial-place, you see, of the private soldier. When the service was over, the soldiers stood over the grave and fired their last farewell to their poor dead comrade; then the drummers took off their muffling and they fell in, and the fifes struck up a merry tune and so away back to barracks. Poor lad! Who was he? No one knew; no one cared. In those days no one, I believe, ever sent a message to his people that he was dead.
On the outside, where the moat and slopes afforded a fine place for practice, the young drummers and the young buglers were practising all day long. I never hear a bugle-call, to this day, without being reminded of morning upon Portsmouth Walls. At the other end of this Wall were two or three very fine bastions, armed with larger cannon and with bombs which looked out on Spithead, where the fleets assembled before they put to sea. From Spithead sailed those great fleets, the Baltic and the Black Sea fleets, at the beginning of the Crimean war. A very splendid sight it was. The Queen led the way in her yacht. Then followed the Admiral, old Charley Napier; then came the gallant line-of-battle ships, each in place. To look at a ship of the modern type and to think of that magnificent fleet reminds one of the Israelites when they wept at the opening of the second Temple, to think of the perished glories of the first!
It was in the harbor, from the Dock-yard, that the troops used to embark. There is a picture, I forget by whom, representing the embarkation of a regiment for the Crimea. I can testify that the picture is faithful, for I saw, I believe, that very embarkation. There are the girls crying—I saw them; the young fellows full of spirit and courage—I saw them with envy and admiration; the sailors quietly carrying out their orders—I saw them too. As one recalls the scene, one thinks of what these poor fellows were going to endure—the cold of a Crimean winter; boots made of brown paper; coats of shoddy; green coffee-berries with which to make their coffee; oh! the blind rage! the helpless rage! the bitter tears of rage! of the whole country! and nothing done—no—nothing. Alas for the wickedness of it! Yet nobody hanged—and these poor brave fellows done to death—not by the enemy, but by their own people!
Besides the embarkation, I remember seeing the return of one of these regiments. It had been terribly cut up at Inkermann or at some other engagement; once, too, a shell burst in the middle of their band. They marched, what was left of them, up the street, colors flying, band playing. And all the way along the women wailed aloud and the men choked. For of all the band there remained but five; of all the gallant boys who marched out playing the fife and beating the drum there were but two; of all the men who played the cornet and the clarion and the serpent and the rest of the wonderful instruments there were but three.
I have gone on too long. One more picture, and I have done. On the Hard, along the railings which ran in the front, only ceasing with the beach and the Logs, extended a long bench, on which every morning all the year round, except in rain and snow, there sat a row of grizzled veterans. They were mostly one-legged; some were no-legged. The bench presented a very remarkable spectacle of "timber toes," i.e., wooden legs sticking out in a horizontal row. The owners of the "timber toes" were affable; they would graciously accept a quid, or the price of one, or the equivalent of a quartern of rum, and in return they would cheerfully tip you a yarn—but, for choice, beyond the hearing of the other old boys. Now the really remarkable thing about these heroes was that every man among them had been on board the Victory at Trafalgar; every man among them had been the first man to observe when Nelson fell, the first man to pick him up, the chief hand in carrying him to the cockpit, the trusted man kept down by the surgeon to perform the last offices for the dying Admiral. Nay, so often had every man told this story that he had at last come to believe it; and the genuine tears would crowd into his eyes when he arrived at the last scene in the mournful history: "'Kiss me, 'Ardy,' was the last words of the Dyinero." They had of course other memories which were, I believe, more authentic. There were memories of the American war in 1814, of French prisons, of actions long since forgotten, of admirals whose fame has been eclipsed by that of Nelson. I remember one man who was in the Mutiny at the Nore, which was in 1796; and one ancient mariner I remember who said he was a cabin-boy with Captain Cook in his last voyage—he saw him speared. Well, it was quite possible; the man looked a mere monument of antiquity; it was quite possible if he was eighty-eight—he looked ninety-eight. It was quite possible, on the other hand—but let me believe that I have myself conversed and shaken hands with one of Captain Cook's crew.
[THE SAILING OF JEAN-PAUL.]
(In Two Instalments.)
BY M. L. VAN VORST.
I.
he grandmother of Jean-Paul was proud of the boy. She said he was as "brave as a lion, as brown as a berry, as straight as a birch." Indeed she talked so much about him, and repeated this so many times, that her companions the washer-women grew tired of hearing about Jean-Paul, and after awhile she found that she talked to deaf ears. "Are there not other boys in the village besides Jean-Paul?" they said. "There are Joseph and Victor and Charles. And what has Jean-Paul done, after all? Nothing." So the old woman held her peace, and ceased to say aloud the things she thought about her big brown grandson.
Jean-Paul lived with his grandmother, Mère Vatinel, in a tiny house made of pieces of flint stuck together with white cement. It had a bright red roof, and looked like a house in a fairy-tale.
It was one of many fisher dwellings standing in rows on either side the narrow village street that ran straight down to the sea. From the great expanse of water washing the pebbly beach and curling up about the high cliff-side all the town gained its living.
Jean-Paul knew little of danger, and cared still less. He only knew that he was strong and fifteen years old, that his father had gone to sea at his age; his friends had left the dull little town, and he too longed to board one of the straight-masted vessels that stood so proudly in the harbors of Fécamp and Havre, and put far out and away to follow his fortune and to know the sea.
Jean-Paul sat before the rough pine table in the room that served as kitchen, bedroom, and all rooms in one; he was eating his supper of lentil soup and a piece of coarse bread. Opposite him sat his grandmother, in her white peasant cap and her short blue skirt; she was knitting, and Jean-Paul watched the candle-light flicker on her needles. "Grandmother," he said, trying to speak at his ease, "I am fifteen years old now."
"Yes," nodded the old woman.
"And I am strong too. See?" and he rolled up his blue sleeve and showed her a stout brown arm of which he might well have been proud. "And yesterday with Père Guillaume, whom thou knowest is a weak old man, I dragged in the boat—our boat. In truth, grandmother, it was I, and not Père Guillaume, who made her slide up on the beach."
"Yes," she said, "thou art strong. Praise God keep thy strength; it is mine as well; I need thee, my son."
The bright face of Jean-Paul fell; he ate on in silence for a little, then said, with an effort, "Grandmother, the Belle Hélène sails to-morrow week."
At this Mère Vatinel let her knitting fall, and clasped her hands on the table and faced her grandson. "Jean-Paul," she said, "I am nearly ninety years old; I have but you; the sea has taken all the rest—my two big sons and thy mother's husband, and thou knowest well that when the news came that thy father's ship would never cast anchor again, thy mother fell as one dead, and thus the sea cursed my last child. I hate the sea," she said, raising her old hand as if in turn to curse it; "it is our tomb."
If Jean-Paul heard this it did not make him waver. "One must live, grandmother," he said, stanchly. "It is our friend too. All sailors are not lost. There is Joseph, who comes here every year with his pockets full of louis; and we are poor; I will come home rich, and some day I may even own my bark, grandmother; and it is so cowardly to stay at home with only the old men and the children."
"And thy grandmother, Jean-Paul?"
He did not reply. Then she burst into tears, and rocked to and fro. "Never, never, while I live!" she wept. "All have been taken from me. Jean-Paul, Jean-Paul, thou wilt break my heart!"
"Listen!" he said. "We will speak of this no more. I will not go unless thou art quite content."
It was surprising how quickly the old woman dried her tears. "Thou art a brave gars, a good gars," she said, nodding her head. "Thou shalt perhaps find service at the château. Who knows?"
Jean-Paul did not reply, but Mère Vatinel took it as a sacred promise, for did she not know she would never be content?
Jean-Paul bought his rabbit at the Gingerbread Fair. On certain fête days in the little square before the Mayory all the world goes to buy gingerbread. They are fascinating, those long pieces of brown cake with colored candies on the top. And the extraordinary men! And the animals whose like is seen in few zoological gardens! I should say all the world went to see, and those who had a few sous bought, and the others stood and looked on in admiration and envy. Jean-Paul sauntered along, his blue cap pushed back on his head, his hands in his pockets; he tinkled the ten sous of his savings noisily, for he was the proud owner of ten whole sous. He could buy a good deal of gingerbread with this, but not too much. He thought, however, that he would spend five sous at throwing the rings, and with the rest collect a gingerbread menagerie. To throw the rings is a delightful sport; one can never have too many jack-knives. The knives are stuck by the blades in rows on an inclined board. Then you buy five rings for five sous. You take aim, try to encircle a knife with a ring, and if you succeed the prize is yours. Jean-Paul was an expert, and had his eyes on three "rippers," as he called them in his French slang. The little man who kept the booth knew him, and nodded to him, and held out the rings, when a loud burst of laughter from a group of boys at his right hand made Jean-Paul look toward them. They were gathered in a circle, and intensely watching something in their midst. The lad walked toward them, and looked too. A little brown rabbit, trembling with fright, its eyes wild and startled, cowered in the centre of a chalk circle which the boys had drawn around him.
"Look, Jean-Paul!" said a little boy, plucking his sleeve. "They are laying wagers as to how far the rabbit will jump when Pierre pokes him with his stick. It is my rabbit, Jean-Paul, and they are to give me a sou for the sport."
Jean-Paul said nothing. He looked at Pierre, who was a big brutal fellow with a coarse face. He was cabin-boy on one of the ships that sail between Havre and New York, and he had come home for a holiday. Leaning forward, he gave the rabbit a sharp poke with the pointed stick. The poor thing leaped clear out of the line, and was greeted with shouts of applause.
"She's better than a gingerbread bunny," laughed Pierre, "and just the color. Jump! Jump, ma belle!"
Jean-Paul adored animals, and having a heart in proportion as big as his strong body, he hated cowardly abuse. His first impulse was to strike Pierre a ringing blow, seize the rabbit, and rush off with it. He chose another course. "Is it really yours, the rabbit?" he said, very fast and in a low tone, to the little boy who stood by his side watching the fun with big eyes.
"Yes, really mine. I am to have a sou."
"Will you sell him for ten?"
The boy gasped. Ten sous! He had never in his ragged existence owned ten sous.
"Quick," said Jean-Paul, rattling the money before his eyes.
To be master of ten sous, and to have at the same time a gingerbread fair at his very side was too great a stroke of fortune for the little peasant to grasp. "I should think so!" he said.
"There, then." Jean-Paul crowded the pennies into the boy's hand, leaned forward, and picked up the little rabbit by the ears, and lifted it over the heads of the group.
"See here!" exclaimed Pierre, angrily, "you are a little too fresh, my fine fellow!" and he sprang to his feet and confronted Jean-Paul.
"It is my rabbit, Pierre Fouget," replied the other, whose eyes, though calm, were dangerous. "I have just bought him for ten sous."
"Yes," nodded his former owner, "that is so; and give me my sou for the sport, Pierre."
Pierre measured the straight figure of Jean-Paul. He looked at his broad chest, and at the big hand that held the panting beast tenderly. Jean-Paul stood quite still and looked back at him. Then Pierre laughed sneeringly, and shrugging his shoulders, "My word, if the monsieur has a fancy to collect animals, and can pay for them, it is his own affair," he said, and turned away.
The little boy of the ten sous, his hands full of cakes, was swinging in the merry-go-round. He waved his hand to Jean-Paul as he passed. "I shall ride twice more, Jean-Paul," he said.
This is how Jean-Paul bought his rabbit at the Gingerbread Fair.
Monsieur le Maire was a very important person. I shall not tell about his duties, or all that he did in the little white Mayory over the post-office. Dear me, that would be dry reading! After one had climbed the steep cliff straight up from the village, and walked three kilometres or more, all the fertile farm-lands, and those forests with the green-trunked trees, and the white château with its high gables belonged to M. le Maire. His ancestors had been royalists, and fought for and served many kings and princes. But M. le Maire of Freport was a good republican, and he used to say he belonged to the people, which, of course, pleased them very much indeed; and those of the town who loved the days of the Emperor loved M. le Maire for his ancestry, and the rest honored him as a good servant of the republic.
Jean-Paul saw him go in and out of the Mairie, and drive home every afternoon in his red dog-cart. He thought the Maire was a great man, and admired him, and stood in awe of him a little, perhaps. He would have told you, that he knew the Mayor very well, but the Mayor did not know Jean-Paul—less than he knew Philip or Joseph or the other fisher-lads—for his grandmother had enough to keep them far from want, and never applied for charity to the government. And then the knitting that she did—well, that was an important item, for she turned off an astounding number of thick stockings, and every six weeks Jean-Paul carried the little package to a village by the cross-roads, where another old woman bought the stockings, and sold them to a dealer at Havre.
The brown rabbit had become Jean-Paul's constant companion. She ate sitting close to the boy's elbow, slept at night huddled in a brown heap at the foot of his bed. He called her La Belle Hélène; it brought him a little nearer to the beloved ship he was never to board to say the name over and over, for although he made no sign, and spoke not at all of his great desire, still his heart was on the sea, and the thought that he must spend his youth and strength fishing a little with Père Guillaume, loitering about the town with a few young fellows, that he was never to see the great ice-fields or know the wild joy of catching the mighty fish, that the fisher-seaman's life was forbidden him, it was hard, bitter hard to bear.
He stood with Père Guillaume on the beach; a fierce October storm was coming thick and fast from the west, and the fishermen stood talking together in little groups; and watching the ink-black clouds.
"How ugly it is," said the old fisherman. "From now on we have the black weather. I shall not venture out to-day, Jean-Paul."
"I should like nothing better," said the boy, eagerly. "It is fine out there. One can hear the waves crash. That is real sea. I will do all the work, Père Guillaume," he added. "The fish fairly leap into the boat to-day."
The old man could not be moved. "It is well enough for you," he said; "you are a strong swimmer, Jean-Paul, but for me, to capsize is death. When one is old one hugs the fireside."
"Oh, it must be dreadful to be old," thought the boy; "one fears everything!" Then he remembered that it was the day for his trip to St. Julian with the parcel of stockings that his grandmother had knitted for sale, and he hurried back to the cabin, while the storm gathered faster and the wind swept along the hard flint roads.
"It is bad weather," said the grandmother, as he stuffed the parcel in the pocket of his jacket.
But the journeys to St. Julian were never postponed, for the Havre dealer only passed once in six weeks, and to succeed one must be punctual. Jean-Paul went in all weathers. In his other pocket he put the rabbit Belle Hélène, and the old grandmother watched him as he pulled his cap down hard and bent his head against the wind.
"How strong he is, how straight!" she murmured, and she thought of the rabbit in his pocket and smiled. "La Belle Hélène, La Belle Hélène, his heart is all with the ship. If I were not so old, and the sea has taken so much! It is not fair," she said, shaking her head. "One may at least keep one out of four brave gars." And then she went into her cabin, shut the door against the wind, and commenced a new pair of stockings.
Meanwhile Jean-Paul went sturdily up, up the hill. The road to St. Julian lay past the woods of the château. The young fellow loved these forests when the tree trunks were all green with a bright moss growth, and where the guests of the Mayor came and hunted during the fall weeks, and flashed through the trees in their bright scarlet coats.
THE GAMEKEEPER'S HAND FELL UPON JEAN-PAUL.
He had often watched the chase, and seen the brown hares jump in the underbrush and the deer fly by. But his thoughts on this day were elsewhere, and do as he would, it was nothing but La Belle Hélène, La Belle Hélène that kept constantly sailing into his thoughts and casting anchor in his brain. It was easy enough to slip off at night, follow the cliff path, and before you know it you are at Fécamp; and the harbor is bristling with barks at this season, and when one knows the mate of La Belle Hélène, and he has said, "Come, Jean-Paul, you will join us next year surely, mon vieux." (That makes one feel so grand to be called old chap by a man of position.) "Next year I will give you a good berth and recommend you to the Captain, and you will do the rest." And this was next year, and he was as far away as ever! Here Jean-Paul drew a big breath that meant a pain was at the other end of it, and went on thinking. When he reached the little knoll just at the end of the forest château, the hard struggle was at an end, but he felt about as beside himself as a healthy boy of fifteen can. The result was that he was more tired than though he had already gone the whole of the long way to St. Julian. Suddenly he remembered what his grandmother had given him just before he left the house—his luncheon; and he sat down on a big stone, and he drew out of his pocket a chunk of coarse bread and a stick of chocolate. He commenced slowly and meditatively to munch this repast and stare way down the long white road into the fast-deepening twilight, while the wind, which was against him, blew so hard that he could with difficulty keep his seat. Far away behind him lay a glimpse of the sea, which showed black and sullen. Jean-Paul felt La Belle Hélène move restlessly in the right pocket of his coat. "Poor little thing, she is hungry too! I will not eat alone," he said, and drew the rabbit out of his pocket, and put her on his knee, gently stroking her while she nibbled a few crumbs of bread. Just then who can say what strange spirit awoke in La Belle Hélène, or what familiar wood call may have reached her ear, for she gave a violent start, and sprang from the knee of Jean-Paul, made one swift bound, pushed her lithe body through the thick hedge, and was off into the dark woods of the château; but almost as quick in his movements was Jean-Paul, for he sprang to his feet, tore his way through the hedge, and started in hot pursuit. She kept ever just in front of him, maddeningly near, yet maddeningly far. He pushed his way through the bushes, and the two soon found themselves in the beautiful woods of the château. Jean-Paul thought of nothing save that La Belle Hélène had escaped and he must get her once more. He called in vain; freedom was sweet, and the leaves must have felt delightfully familiar; and ever pursuing the rabbit who had allured her away, the brown beast kept just beyond her master's reach. Perhaps, however, she lost for a moment the call of her kind, or the imploring tones of her little master touched her, for she stopped. At that moment Jean-Paul threw himself forward and caught La Belle Hélène. As his hand fell upon her, another hand, not half so gentle, fell upon the shoulder of Jean-Paul, and with the rabbit clasped in his hand, the startled lad turned and confronted the gamekeeper, who stood with his gun in his hand, rudely peering in the young fellow's face. "Ha! ha! my pretty fellow, caught in the act, in the very act," chuckled the gamekeeper, maliciously, and he put his hand over the little brown rabbit.