‘You are not losing courage altogether, then?’ she said smiling.
‘I shall never lose it altogether so long as you are beside me, although I may halt at times,’ he answered. ‘There; I am better now. Don’t let us talk any more to-night about disagreeable things—they don’t seem half so disagreeable to me as they did when I came in.’
So, as they were not to talk about disagreeable things, they talked about themselves. They did remember Caleb and Pansy, however; and Madge promised to see the latter soon, and endeavour to persuade her to be kind to her swain.
A NORMAN SEASCAPE.
It was on our way from Paris to the sea that we found out Dives; a little town, forgotten now, but once, long ago, holding for four short weeks an urgent place in the foreground of the world’s history. It is a day’s journey distant from Paris, a long summer day’s journey through fair France, fairest of all when one reaches green Normandy, rich in sober old farmhouses, quaint churches, orchards laden with russet fruit ripening to fill the cider-barrels.
The little station near Dives is set in a desert of sand; one white road leads this way, another that. Of the modest town itself you see nothing. Your eye is caught for a moment as you look round you by the gentle undulation of the hills that rise behind it. On these slopes, a nameless battle was once fought and won; but the story of that struggle belongs to the past, and it is the present you have to do with. At this moment your most urgent need is to secure a seat in omnibus or supplement; all the world is going seawards, and even French politeness yields a little before the pressure of necessity; for the crowd is great and the carriages are small. There is infection in the gaiety of our fellow holiday-seekers, whose costumes are devised to hint delicately or more broadly their destination. Their pleasure is expressed with all the naïveté of childhood; so we too, easily enough, catch something of their spirit, and watch eagerly for the first hint of blue on the horizon, for the first crisp, salt breath in the air. Dives, after its spasmodic revival, falls back into silence, and is forgotten. We forget it too, and for the next few days the problem of life at Beuzeval-Houlgate occupies us wholly.
He who first invented Beuzeval must have had a vivid imagination, a creative genius. What possibilities did he see in that sad reach of endless sand, in that sadder expanse of sea, as we first saw it under a gray summer sky? Yet here, almost with the wave of an Aladdin’s wand, a gay little town sprung into existence—fantastic houses, pseudo-Swiss châlets, very un-English ‘Cottages Anglais;’ ‘Beach’ hotels, ‘Sea’ hotels, ‘Beautiful Sojourn’ hotels lined the shore, and Paris came down and took possession. Houlgate and we are really one, though some barrier, undefinable and not to be grasped by us, divides us. But Houlgate holds itself proudly aloof from us; Houlgate leads the fashions; it is dominated by ‘that ogre, gentility;’ its houses are more fantastic, its costumes more magnificent, its ways more mysterious. At Beuzeval, one is not genteel, one is natural; it is a family-life of simplicity and tranquillity, as the guide-book sets forth in glowing terms. We live in a little house that faces, and is indeed set low upon the beach. There is a strip of garden which produces a gay crop of marigolds and sunflowers growing in a sandy waste—gold against gold. We belong to Mère Jeanne, an ancient lady, who wears a white cotton night-cap of the tasselled order, and who is oftenest seen drawing water at the well. Her vessel is of an antique shape; and she, too, is old. Tradition whispers that she has seen ninety winters come and go, yet her cheeks are rosy as one of her Normandy apples. One feels that life moves slowly and death comes tardily to this sea-village, where the outer world intrudes but once a year, and then but for one brief autumn month alone.
Bathing is the chief occupation of the day, and it is undertaken with a seriousness that is less French than British. Nothing can be funnier than to watch this matter of taking le bain. From early morning till noon, all the world is on the beach. Rows of chairs are brought down from the bath-house—all gay at this hour with wind-tossed flags—and are planted firmly in the soft loose sand; here those of us who are spectators sit and watch the show. A paternal government arranges everything for its children. Here one goes by rule. So many hours of the morning and so many hours of the evening must alone be devoted to the salt bath; such and such a space of the wide beach, carefully marked off with fluttering standards, must alone be occupied. Thus bathing is a very social affair; the strip of blue water is for the moment converted into a salon, where all the courtesies of life are duly observed. On the other side of the silver streak, business of the same nature is no doubt going on; but French imagination alone could evolve, French genius devise, the strange and wonderful costumes appropriate to the occasion.
Here is a lady habited in scarlet, dainty shoes and stockings to match, and a bewitching cap (none of your hideous oilskin) with falling lace and telling little bows of ribbon. Here another, clad in pale blue, with a becoming hat tied under her chin, and many bangles on her wrists. The shoes alone are a marvel. How do all these intricate knots and lacings, these glancing buckles, survive the rough and sportive usage of the waves? Who but our Gallic sisters could imagine those delicate blendings of dark blue and silver, crimson and brown, those strange stripes and æsthetic olives and drabs? The costume of the gentlemen is necessarily less varied, though here and there one notices an eccentric harlequin, easily distinguishable among the crowd; and again, what Englishman would dream of taking his morning dip with a ruff round his neck, a silken girdle, and a hat to save his complexion from the sun? Two amiable persons dressed in imitation of the British tar, obligingly spend the greater part of the day in the sea. Their business it is to conduct timid ladies from the beach and to assist them in their bath. The braver spirits allow themselves to be plunged under the brine, the more fearful are content to be sprinkled delicately from a tin basin. There is also a rower, whose little boat, furnished with life-saving appliances, plies up and down among the crowd, lest one more venturesome than his neighbours should pass beyond his depth; an almost impossible event, as one might say, seeing with what fondness even the boldest swimmer clings to the shore.
Danger on these summer waters seems a remote contingency. Here is neither ‘bar that thunders’ nor ‘shale that rings.’ It is for the most part a lazy sea, infinitely blue, that comes softly, almost caressingly, shorewards. At first, one is struck with the absence of life which it presents—the human element uncounted. There is no pier, and boating as a pastime is unknown. Occasionally, a fleet of brown-sheeted fishing-smacks rides out from the little port of Dives, each sail slowly unfurled, making a spot of warm colour when the sun shines on the canvas; now and then there is a gleam of white wings on the far horizon. But the glory of the place is its limitless, uninterrupted sea, shore, and sky—endless reaches of golden sand, endless plains of blue water. With so liberal a space of heaven and of ocean, you have naturally room for many subtle effects, countless shades and blendings of colour, most evanescent coming and going of light and shadow. To the left, gay little Cabourg, all big hotels and Parisian finery, runs out to meet the sea; farther still, Luc is outlined against the sky. To the right are the cliffs at Havre, pink at sunset; their position marked when dusk has fallen by the glow of the revolving light. Beyond, là bas—that ‘indifferent, supercilious’ French là bas—an ‘elsewhere’ of little importance, lies unseen England. When the sun has set, dipping its fireball in haste to cool itself in the waters, there comes sometimes an illusive effect as of land, dim, far off, indistinct; but it is cloud-land, not our sea-island.