It was five o'clock when we reached New Haven, having dropped our fellow-passengers along the way, the blissful couple among them. Through some error in calculation we had taken an earlier train than we need have, and found hours of doleful leisure awaiting us in this sleepy little town, lying upon an arm of the sea. Its outer appearance was not inviting. Here were the first and last houses of wood we saw in England,—high, ugly things, that might have been built of old boats or drift wood, with an economy that precluded all thought of grace in architecture. The train, in a gracious spirit of accommodation, instead of plunging into the sea, as it might have done, paused before the door of a hotel upon the wharf. There, in a little parlor, we improvised a home for a time. Our friend went off to explore the town. We took possession of the faded red arm-chairs by the wide windows. Down below, beyond the wet platform, rose the well-colored meerschaum of the little French steamer, whose long-boats hung just above the edge of the wharf. Through the closed window stole the breath of the salt sea, that, only a hand-breadth here, widened out below into boundlessness, bringing visions of the ocean and a thrill of remembered delight. The rain had ceased. The breeze rolled the clouds into snow-balls, pure white against the blue of the sky. Over the narrow stream came the twitter of birds, hidden in the hawthorn hedge all abloom. Everything smiled, and beamed, and glistened without, though far out to sea the white caps crowned the dancing waves. When night fell, and the lights glimmered all through the town, we drew the heavy curtains, lighted the candles in the shining candlesticks, whose light cast a delusive glow over the dingy dustiness of the room, bringing out cheerfully the little round tea-table in the centre, with its bright silver and steaming urn, over which we lingered a long hour, measuring and weighing our comfort, telling tales, seeing visions, and dreaming dreams of home.
The clock struck nine as we crossed the plank to the Alexandra, trying in vain to find in its toy appointments some likeness to our ocean steamer of delightful memory. The train whizzed in from London, bringing our fellow-voyagers. The sheep were separated from the goats by the officer at the foot of the plank, who asked each one descending, "First or second cabin?"—sending one to the right, the other to the left. The wind swept in from the sea raw and cold. The foot-square deck was cheerless and wet. Even a diagonal promenade proved short and unsatisfactory, and in despair we descended the slippery, perpendicular stairs between boxes and bales, and down still another flight, to the cabin. A narrow, cushioned seat clung to its four sides, divided into lengths for berths. "Will it be a rough night?" we carelessly asked the young stewardess. "O, no!" was the stereotyped reply, though all the while the wicked waves were dancing beneath the white caps just outside. We divested ourselves of hats, and wraps, and useless ornaments, reserving only that of a meek and quiet spirit, which, under a nameless fear, grew every moment meeker and more quiet. We undid the interminable buttons of our American boots, and prepared for a comfortable rest, with an ignorance that at the time approximated bliss. There was leisure for the working out of elaborate schemes. Something possessed the tide. Whether it was high or low, narrow or wide, I do not know; but there at the wharf we were to await the working of its own will, regardless of time. Accordingly we selected our places with a deliberation that bore no proportion to the time we were to fill them, advising with the stewardess, who had settled herself comfortably to sleep. We tried our heads to England and our feet to the foe, and then reversed the order, finally compromising by taking a position across the Channel. But the loading of the steamer overhead, with the chattering of our fellow-passengers below,—two English girls, a pretty brunette and her sister,—banished sleep. At three o'clock our voyage began—the succession of quivering leaps, plunges, and somersaults which miraculously landed us upon the French coast. I can think of no words to describe it. The first night upon the ocean was paradise and the perfection of peace in comparison. To this day the thought of the swashing water, beaten white against the port-hole before my eyes, is sickening. A calm—to me, of utter prostration—fell upon us long after the day dawned, only to be broken by the stewardess, when sleep had brought partial forgetfulness, with, "It's nine o'clock; we're at Dieppe, and the officers want to come in here." We tried to raise our heads. Officers! What officers? Had we crossed the Styx? Were they of light or darkness? We sank back. O, what were officers to us!
"But you must get up!"—and she began an awkward attempt at the buttons of those horrible boots. That recalled to life. American boots are of this world, and we made a feeble attempt to don some of its vanities. O, how senseless did the cuffs appear that went on upside down!—the collar which was fastened under one ear!—the ribbons that were consigned to our pockets! Making blind stabs at our ears, "Good heavens!" we ejaculated, "who ever invented earrings? Relics of barbarism!" We made hasty thrusts at the hair-pins, standing out from our heads in every direction like enraged porcupine quills; being pulled, and twisted, and scolded by the stewardess all the while; hearing the thump, thump, upon our door as one pair of knuckles after another awoke the echoes, as one strange voice after another shouted, "Why don't those ladies come out?" O the trembling fingers that refused to hold the pins!—the trembling feet that staggered up the ladder-like stairs as we were thrust out of the cabin—out of the cruel little steamer to take refuge in one of the waiting cabs! O the blessedness of our thick veils and charitable wraps!
I recall, as though it were a dream, the narrow, roughly-paved street of Dieppe; a latticed window filled with flowers, and a dark-eyed maiden peeping through the leaves; the fish-wives in short petticoats and with high white caps, clattering over the stones in their wooden sabots, wheeling barrows of fish to the market near the station, where they bartered, and bargained, and gossiped. Evidently it is a woman's right in Normandy to work—to grow as withered, and hard, and old before the time as she chooses, or as she has need; for to put away year after year, as do these poor women, every grace and charm of womanhood, cannot be of choice.
At the long table in the refreshment-room of the station we drank the tasteless tea, and ate a slice from the roll four feet in length. The English-speaking girl who attended us found a place—rough enough, to be sure—where in the few moments of waiting we could complete our hasty toilets. Beside us at the table, our fellow-voyagers, were two professors from a Connecticut college of familiar name, whom we had met in London. They joined us in the comfortable railway carriage, and added not a little to the pleasant chat that shortened the long day and the weary journey to Paris. Our number—for the compartment held eight—was completed by a young American gentleman, and a Frenchman of evil countenance, who drank wine and made love to his pretty Lizette in an unblushing manner, strange, and by no means pleasing, to us, demonstrating the annoyance, if nothing worse, to which one is often subjected in these compartment cars. It needed but one glance from the window to convince us that we were no longer in England. To be sure, the sky is blue, the grass green, in all lands; but in place of the level sweep of meadow through which we had passed across the Channel, the land swelled here into hills on every side. Long rows of stiff poplars divided the fields, or stretched away in straight avenues as far as the eye could reach. The English remember the beauty of a curved line; the French, with a painful rectitude, describe only right angles. Scarlet poppies blushed among the purple, yellow, and white wild flowers along the way. The plastered cottages with their high, thatched roofs, the tortuous River Seine with its green islands, as we neared Paris, the neat little stations along the way—like gingerbread houses—made for us a new and charming panorama. Hanging over a gate at one of these stations was an old man, white-haired, blind; his guide, an old woman, who waited, with a kind of wondering awe stealing over her withered face, while he played some simple air upon a little pipe—thus asking alms. So simple was the air, the very shadow of a melody, that the scene might have been amusing, had it not been so pitiful.
At noon we lunched in the comfortless waiting-room at Rouen, while the professors made a hasty visit to the cathedral during our stay of half an hour. We still suffered from the tossing of the sea, and cathedrals possessed no charms in our eyes. It was almost night when we reached Paris, and joined the hurrying crowd descending from the train. It was a descent into Pandemonium. There was a confusion of unintelligible sounds in our ears like the roll of a watchman's rattle, bringing no suggestion of meaning. The calmness of despair fell upon our crushed spirits, with a sense of powerlessness such as we never experienced before or since. A dim recollection of school-days—of Ollendorff—rose above the chaos in our minds. "Has the physician of the shoemaker the canary of the carpenter?" we repeated mechanically; and with that our minds became a blank.
Deliverance awaited us; and when, just outside the closed gates, first in the expectant crowd, we espied the face of a friend, peace enveloped us like a garment. Our troubles were over.