Caught in a Trap

by John C. Hutcheson

Down in the town, Havre proper, it is all trade and bustle as befits a great commercial port; up amidst the heights of Ingouville, it is fashionable and fantastic, with its trim white terraces and green, gay Venetian blinds, and its lovely view of the bay beyond. Havre is really not considered half as much as it ought to be, and forms a much more enjoyable spot for a holiday than many of these fearfully uneventful and racketty fashionable resorts, which are generally patronised by English tourists on the Continent.

Liverpool it is like, with its muddy Seine—like the other river that runs between Birkenhead and its sister city—and its bustling streets and quays. Liverpool, with a touch of Ratcliffe Highway, on account of the parrots and foreign birds, mostly South American, that you see troops of sailors marching about with, besides the strong touch of the military element which one more frequently observes by the side of Tower Hill, than in the parallel city of trade in Lancashire. A French Liverpool, very Frenchified, and jovial and gay, with that foreign dash of sprightliness and insouciance which is never seen in England.

Here Markworth hired lodgings, in the Rue Montmartre, of a stout, middle-aged Frenchwoman and her little husband: the latter being a marchand of something or the other; and by no means the “better half” of the two.

Susan was as pleased as a child with the novelty of everything around her; and if she had been changed for the better at The Poplars, the change was twice as noticeable now that she had shut out from her all the past with its associations.

Every little item in her new life tended to increase the improvement in her mental organisation; besides which Markworth was kind and attentive to her, even more so than he had been before.

Instead of the dingy old melancholy house in Sussex, she was in a bright little French cottage. The old dark rooms were exchanged for a simple apartement bien garni, with its tiled floor, and those wonderfully simple accessories which complete the mobilier of our friends on the other side; the half dozen extraordinary-looking straight backed chairs, the round table with its matting beneath, the elaborate fire-place with its porcelain belongings, and the mantel-piece with inevitable gilt clock and china shepherdesses.

The fat landlady was very kind, although she did not speak a word of English; still her husband prided himself on his knowledge of our language, a knowledge nearly limited to that of the Frenchman’s of poor Albert Smith’s acquaintance, who saying “Ah, Ya-as! I spik Englise—portair—bier—rosbif—God dam!” there wound up the catalogue of his accomplishments.

But Mère Cliquelle was kind in her way. She understood from Markworth that “Madame” was very delicate; and as she had a separate room and looked very pale, Mère Cliquelle tried to make her very comfortable by always nodding to her, and smiling whenever she came into the room, which she was constantly doing to bring Madame sundry little pet-dishes or plats of her own cuisine and bonbons ad infinitum.

Susan was soon very happy, and as gay as a bird in her new home. She had been sensible enough before; but she was now light-hearted as well.

Markworth devoted himself to her. He would take her out constantly for walks along the bustling quays, where Susan liked to watch the gaily dressed sailors, and the ships and tiny craft in the harbour. Every sailor on landing seemed to bring home half a dozen parrots or crimson birds of the tropics. You never can see such a lot of “imported” birds, as the Americans say, anywhere else, as at Havre.