FROM AN INN WINDOW.
One travels a long distance, sometimes, to make the astonishing
discovery that pleasure comes with the doing of very simple things. We
had come from over the seas to find the act of leaning on a window
casement as exciting as it was satisfying. It is true that from our two
inn windows there was a delightful variety of nature and of human
nature to look out upon. From the windows overlooking the garden there
was only the horizon to bound infinity. The Atlantic, beginning with
the beach at our feet, stopped at nothing till it met the sky. The sea,
literally, was at our door; it and the Seine were next-door neighbors.
Each hour of the day these neighbors presented a different face, were
arrayed in totally different raiment, were grave or gay, glowing with
color or shrouded in mists, according to the mood and temper of the
sun, the winds, and the tides.
[Illustration: ON THE BEACH--VILLERVILLE]
The width of the sky overhanging this space was immense; not a scrap,
apparently, was left over to cover, decently, the rest of the earth's
surface--of that one was quite certain in looking at this vast inverted
cup overflowing with ether. What there was of land was a very sketchy
performance. Opposite ran the red line of the Havre headlands.
Following the river, inland, there was a pretence of shore, just
sufficiently outlined, like a youth's beard, to give substance to one's
belief in its future growth and development. Beneath these windows the
water, hemmed in by this edge of shore, panted, like a child at play;
its sighs, liquid, lisping, were irresistible; one found oneself
listening for the sound of them as if they had issued from a human
throat. The humming of the bees in the garden, the cry of a fisherman
calling across the water, the shout of the children below on the beach,
or, at twilight, the chorusing birds, carolling at full concert pitch;
this, at most, was all the sound and fury the sea beach yielded.
The windows opening on the village street let in a noise as tumultuous
as the sea was silent. The hubbub of a perpetual babble, all the louder
for being compressed within narrow space, was always to be heard; it
ceased only when the village slept. There was an incessant clicking
accompaniment to this noisy street life; a music played from early dawn
to dusk over the pavement's rough cobbles--the click clack, click clack
of the countless wooden sabots.
Part of this clamor in the streets was due to the fact that the
village, as a village, appeared to be doing a tremendous business with
the sea.
Men and women were perpetually going to and coming from the beach.
Fishermen, sailors, women bearing nets, oars, masts, and sails,
children bending beneath the weight of baskets filled with kicking
fish; wheelbarrows stocked high with sea-food and warm clothing; all
this commerce with the sea made the life in these streets a more
animated performance than is commonly seen in French villages.
In time, the provincial mania began to work in our veins.
To watch our neighbors, to keep an eye on this life--this became, after
a few days, the chief occupation of our waking hours.
The windows of our rooms fronting on the street were peculiarly well
adapted for this unmannerly occupation. By merely opening the blinds,
we could keep an eye on the entire village. Not a cat could cross the
street without undergoing inspection. Augustine, for example, who, once
having turned her back on the inn windows, believed herself entirely
cut off from observation, was perilously exposed to our mercy. We knew
all the secrets of her thieving habits; we could count, to a second,
the time she stole from the Mere, her employer, to squander in smiles
and dimples at the corner creamery. There a tall Norman rained
admiration upon her through wide blue eyes, as he patted, caressingly,
the pots of blond butter, just the color of her hair, before laying
them, later, tenderly in her open palm. Soon, as our acquaintance with
our neighbors deepened into something like intimacy, we came to know
their habits of mind as we did their facial peculiarities; certain of
their actions made an event in our day. It became a serious matter of
conjecture as to whether Madame de Tours, the social swell of the town,
would or would not offer up her prayer to Deity, accompanied by
Friponne, her black poodle. If Friponne issued forth from the narrow
door, in company with her austere mistress, the shining black silk
gown, we knew, would not decorate the angular frame of this
aristocratic provincial; a sober beige was best fitted to resist the
dashes made by Friponne's sharply-trimmed nails. It was for this, to
don a silk gown in full sight of her neighbors; to set up as companion
a dog of the highest fashion, the very purest of _caniches_, that
twenty years of patient nursing a paralytic husband--who died all too
slowly--had been counted as nothing!
Once we were summoned to our outlook by the vigorous beating of a drum.
Madame Mouchard and Augustine were already at their own post of
observation--the open inn door. The rest of the village was in full
attendance, for it was not every day in the week that the "tambour,"
the town-crier, had business enough to render his appearance, in his
official capacity, necessary; as a mere townsman he was to be seen any
hour of the day, as drunk as a lord, at the sign of "L'Ami Fidèle." His
voice, as it rolled out the words of his cry, was as _staccato_ in
pitch as any organ can be whose practice is largely confined to
unceasing calls for potations. To the listening crowd, the thick voice
was shouting:
"_Madame Tricot--à la messe--dimanche--a--perdu une broche--or et
perles--avec cheveux--Madame Merle a perdu--sur la plage--un panier
avec--un chat noir--_"
We ourselves, to our astonishment, were drummed the very next morning.
Augustine had made the discovery of a missing shoulder-cape; she had
taken it upon herself to call in the drummer. So great was the
attendance of villagers, even the abstractors of the lost garment must,
we were certain, be among the crowd assembled to hear our names shouted
out on the still air. We were greatly affected by the publicity of the
occasion; but the village heard the announcement, both of our names and
of our loss, with the phlegm of indifference. "Vingt francs pour avoir
tambouriné mademoiselle!" This was an item which a week later, in
madame's little bill, was not confronted with indifference.
"It gives one the feeling of having had relations with a wandering
circus," remarked the young philosopher at my side.
"But it is really a great convenience, that system," she continued;
"I'm always mislaying things--and through the drummer there's a whole
village as aid to find a lost article. I shall, doubtless, always have
that, now, in my bills!" And Charm, with an air of serene confidence in
the village, adjusted her restored shoulder-cape.
Down below, in our neighbor's garden--the one adjoining our own and
facing the sea--a new and old world of fashion in capes and other
garments were a-flutter in the breeze, morning after morning. Who and
what was this neighbor, that he should have so curious and eccentric a
taste in clothes? No woman was to be seen in the garden-paths; a man,
in a butler's apron and a silk skullcap, came and went, his arms piled
high with gowns and scarves, and all manner of strange odds and ends.
Each morning some new assortment of garments met our wondering eyes.
Sometimes it was a collection of Empire embroidered costumes that were
hung out on the line; faded fleur-de-lis, sprigs of dainty lilies and
roses, gold-embossed Empire coats, strewn thick with seed-pearls on
satins softened by time into melting shades. When next we looked the
court of Napoleon had vanished, and the Bourbon period was, literally,
in full swing. A frou-frou of laces, coats with deep skirts, and
beribboned trousers would be fluttering airily in the soft May air.
Once, in fine contrast to these courtly splendors, was a wondrous
assortment of flannel petticoats. They were of every hue--red, yellow,
brown, pink, patched, darned, wide-skirted, plaited, ruffled--they
appeared to represent the taste and requirement of every climate and
country, if one could judge by the thickness of some and the gossamer
tissues of others; but even the smartest were obviously, unmistakably,
effrontedly, flannel petticoats.
It was a mystery that greatly intrigued us. One morning the mystery was
solved. A whiff of tobacco from an upper window came along with a puff
of wind. It was a heated whiff, in spite of the cooling breeze. It was
from a pipe, a short, black pipe, owned by some one in the Mansard
window next door. There was the round disk of a dark-blue beret
drooping over the pipe. "Good--" I said to myself--"I shall see now--at
last--this maniac with a taste for darned petticoats!"
The pipe smoked peacefully, steadily on. The beret was motionless.
Between the pipe and the cap was a man's profile; it was too much in
shadow to be clearly defined.
The next instant the man's face was in full sunlight. The face turned
toward me--with the quick instinct of knowing itself watched--and then--
"Pas--possible!"
"You--here!"
"Been here a year--but you, when did you arrive? What luck! What luck!"
It was John Renard, the artist; after the first salutations question
followed question.
"Are you alone?--"
"No."
"Is she--young?"
"Yes."
"Pretty?"
"Judge for yourself--that is she--in the garden yonder."
The beret dipped itself perilously out into the sky--to take a full
view.
"Hem--I'll come in at once."
It was as a trio that the conversation was continued later, in the
garden. But Renard was still chief questioner.
"Have you been out on the mussel-beds?"
"Not yet."
"We'll go this afternoon--Have you been to Honfleur? Not yet?--We'll go
to-morrow. The tide will be in to-day about four--I'll call for
you--wear heavy boots and old clothes. It's jolly dirty. Where do you
breakfast?"
The breakfast was eaten, as a trio, at our inn, an hour later. It was
so warm a day, it was served under one of the arbors. Augustine was
feeding and caressing the doves as we entered the inn garden. At sight
of Renard she dropped a quiet courtesy, smiles and roses struggling for
a supremacy on her round peasant face. She let the doves loose at once,
saying: "Allez, allez," as if they quite understood that with Monsieur
Renard's advent their hour of success was at an end.
Why does a man's presence always seem to communicate such surprising
animation to a woman--to any woman? Why does his appearance, for
instance, suddenly, miraculously stiffen the sauces, lure from the
cellar bottles incrusted with the gray of thick cobwebs, give an added
drop of the lemon to the mayonnaise, and make an omelette to swim in a
sea of butter? All these added touches to our commonly admirable
breakfast were conspicuous that day--it was a breakfast for a prince
and a gourmet.
"The Mère can cook--when she gives her mind to it," was Renard's meagre
masculine comment, as the last morsel of the golden omelette
disappeared behind his mustache.
It was a gay little breakfast, with the circling above of the birds and
the doves. There are duller forms of pleasure than to eat a repast in
the company of an artist. I know not why it is, but it has always
seemed to me that the man who lives only to copy life appears to get
far more out of it than those who make a point of seeing nothing in it
save themselves.
Renard, meanwhile, was taking pains to assure us that in less than a
month the Villerville beaches would be crowded; only the artists of the
brushes were here now; the artists of high life would scarcely be found
deserting the Avenue des Acacias before June.
"French people are always coming to the seashore, you know--or trying
to come. It's a part of their emotional religion to worship the sea.
'La mer! la mer!' they cry, with eyes all whites; then they go into
little swoons of rapture--I can see them now, attitudinizing in salons
and at tables-d'hôte!" To which comment we could find no more original
rejoinder than our laughter.
It was a day when laughter was good; it put one in closer relations
with the universal smiling. There are certain days when nature seems to
laugh aloud; in this hour of noon the entire universe, all we could see
of it, was on a broad grin. Everything moved, or danced, or sang; the
leaves were each alive, trembling, quivering, shaking; the insect hum
was like a Wagnerian chorus, deafening to the ear; there was a brisk,
light breeze stirring--a breeze that moved the higher branches of the
trees as if it had been an arm; that rippled the grass; that tossed the
wavelets of the sea into such foam that they seemed over-running with
laughter; and such was still its unspent energy that it sent the Seine
with a bound up through its shores, its waters clanging like a sheet of
mail armor worn by some lusty warrior. We were walking in the narrow
lane that edged the cliff; it was a lane that was guarded with a
sentinel row of osiers, syringas, and laburnums. This was the guard of
the cliffs. On the other side was the high garden wall, over which we
caught dissolving views of dormer-windows, of gabled roofs, vine-clad
walls, and a maze of peach and pear blossoms. This was not precisely
the kind of lane through which one hurried. One needed neither to be
sixteen nor even in love to find it a delectable path, very agreeable
to the eye, very suggestive to the imaginative faculty, exceedingly
satisfactory to the most fastidious of all the senses, to that
aristocrat of all the five, the sense of smell. Like all entirely
perfect experiences in life, the lane ended almost as soon as it began;
it ended in a steep pair of steps that dropped, precipitously, on the
pebbles of the beach.
For some reason best known to the day and the view, we all, with one
accord, proceeded to seat ourselves on the topmost step of this
stairway. We were waiting for the tide to fall, to go out to the
mussel-bed. Meanwhile the prospect to be seen from this improvised seat
was one made to be looked at. There is a certain innate compelling
quality in all great beauty. When nature or woman presents a really
grandiose appearance, they are singularly reposeful, if you notice;
they have the calm which comes with a consciousness of splendor. It is
only prettiness which is tormented with the itching for display; and
therefore this prospect, which rolled itself out beneath our feet,
curling in a half-moon of beach, broadening into meadows that dropped
to the river edge, lifting its beauty upward till the hills met the
sky. and the river was lost in the clasp of the shore--this aspect of
nature, in this moment of beauty, was as untroubled as if Chateaubriand
had not found her a lover, and had flattered man by persuading him that,
"La voix de l'univers, c'est mon intelligence."