A NEW HOME.
It was an exquisite scene; one of the very prettiest in Normandie. The
old town, with its aged and irregular buildings rising one over the
other like hanging gardens; the large expanse of water, clear as a
sheet of glass, bright with the early sun, stretching out underneath
as far as the eye could see; the hills on the right, with their
clustering trees and their winding road, leading to the nestling
houses in the village of St. Sauveur; Harfleur opposite, standing as a
background to the plain of crystal, with its old castle (or what looks
like one) conspicuous, and its gentle mounts green and picturesque;
Havre lying next it almost side by side, with its immensity of
buildings and its long harbour;--these were what may be called the
prominent parts of the canvas, but were you looking at it you might
find the minuter points of the filling-in even more interesting. The
whole made a magnificent tableau, which, once seen, must rest upon the
charmed mind for ever.
The Hôtel du Cheval Blanc, situated at one end of the town,
was perhaps the best spot in all Honfleur for admiring this
panorama--unless, indeed, you mounted the heights above. Standing in
one of the end rooms of this hotel on the second floor, whose windows
commanded two sides of view, the town and the water, was a gentleman
whom you have met before. You could not have mistaken it for anything
but a French room, with its bare floor, its tasty curtains, and its
white-covered chairs. The tables had marble tops, hard and ugly, but
the piano opposite to the fireplace was of tolerable tone.
It was the best of the two sitting-rooms in the hotel; better than the
one on the first floor underneath, because these windows were low and
cheerful, and those were high and grim. This room and a chamber into
which it opened (whose intervening door could never be got to shut,
and if shut couldn't be got to open) looked right over to Harfleur.
For the matter of that the room opened into two chambers, but the one
was closed up just now, and we have nothing to do with it. Like most
French rooms, it seemed made up of doors and windows.
The gentleman standing at the window was Mark Cray. Resident at
Honfleur more than a month now, this was the first time he had been
called in to see a patient. A traveller had been taken ill at the
Cheval Blanc in the middle of the night, had asked if there was an
English doctor in the place, and Mark was summoned.
It was rather a serious case, and Mark had not left him yet. The door
between the rooms was open, but Mark kept as still as a mouse; for the
patient, he hoped, was dropping into a doze. Mark had occupation
enough, looking out on the busy scene. It was high tide, and the
harbour, close on which the hotel was built, was alive with bustle.
Fishing-boats were making ready to go out; fishing-boats were tiding
in, bearing their night's haul. The short pier underneath had quite a
crowd on it for that early hour; women with shrill tongues, men with
gruff ones, who were waiting to tow in a merchant vessel drawing near;
idlers only looking on,--their babel of voices came right up to Mark,
and had he been rather more familiar with the Norman tongue he might
have known what all the gabbling was about. A quiet wedding-party,
three men and three women, were taking a walk on the pier, two and
two, after the performance of the early ceremony; or perhaps it had
been performed the previous day, and this one was the continuance
of the holiday,--one never knows; the gala caps on the women's
heads--such caps as we may see in pictures--flapped out their
extraordinary wings: a sober, middle-aged, well-conducted
wedding-party of humble life. They probably came, Mark thought, from
some few miles inland, where the water and the boats were not everyday
objects, as at Honfleur, for their interest in these seemed intense.
Every minute there was something new, as is sure to be the case with a
full tide at early morning: now, an entanglement of boats at the
entrance of the harbour; now, the snapping of a cord and deafening
noise in consequence; and now a flat barge, heavily laden, went
rounding off to the Seine, to toil up between its green banks as far
as Rouen.
Suddenly a noise as of the waters being cut through arose, and Mark,
who was watching the toiling barge and wondering what she was laden
with, turned his head to the left. The steamer plying from Havre was
coming in--had almost reached the port. She had made a fine passage
that morning: not twenty-five minutes yet had passed since she steamed
out of Havre. The coming in, and the going out again of these
steamers, twice each way in the summer days, is the great event in
Honfleur life.
In she came to the harbour, swiftly and steadily, rounded the point
under the hotel windows, and moored herself in her place opposite the
hotel entrance. Mark Cray changed his window now.
Quitting that at which he had been standing, he quietly opened the one
which faced the town and inner harbour, and leaned out to watch the
disembarking of the steamer's live freight.
"I wonder how many of them will be coming into the hotel to
breakfast," he murmured. "I wish----"
What he was about to wish was never known. A voice from the inner room
interrupted him. And it was not by any means a feeble voice, but
rather a loud one.
"Mr. Cray!"
Mark hastened in. To his surprise he saw his patient, whom he had left
in hope of sleep, out of bed and dressing himself. Mark, as medical
attendant, made a strong remonstrance.
"I feel a great deal better," was the answer. "I can't lie any longer.
Is not that the boat come in?"
"Yes," said Mark. "But----"
"Well, I told you I must go back by her to Havre, if I possibly could.
Necessity has no choice."
Mark could only look his amazement. The boat would go out again almost
directly, and the patient stood little chance of having time for
breakfast. "You cannot go by this boat," he said. "There'll be another
later in the day."
"I can't wait for that. I must be away from Havre by an early train."
"But I--I don't know that I can pronounce you out of danger,"
remonstrated Mark, hardly able yet to realise the fact that a
gentleman, thought to be dying in the night, was dressing himself to
go off by a steamer in the morning.
"I know these attacks of mine are bad--dangerous, I suppose, while
they last; but once over, I am well, except for weakness. And the long
and the short of it is, I must go to Havre by the return boat."
Mark Cray saw that further objection would be useless. The chamber-man
(I can't help it if you object to the appellation; the hotel had no
women servants) came in with warm water, and the traveller ordered a
cup of coffee to be ready by the time he got down. Mark went back to
the sitting-room. He would stay and see him on board.
The steamer's first bell had rung when the traveller came forth. Mark
caught up his hat and gloves. "I hardly know what I am indebted to
you," said the stranger, placing a thin piece of paper in his hand.
"Perhaps that will cover it."
It was a hundred-franc note. Mark would have given it tack, badly
though he wanted money. It was too much; altogether too much, he
exclaimed.
"No," said the stranger. "I don't know what I should have done without
you; and you have stayed with me the night. That's being attentive. I
was taken ill once before in the night at an hotel in France, where
there happened to be an English doctor in the town, and they got him
to me. But he was gone again in an hour, and in fact seemed to, resent
having been disturbed at all. I didn't pay _him_ more than I was
obliged."
"Ah, he had plenty of practice, perhaps," cried Mark, rather too
impulsively. "But indeed this is paying me a great deal too much. I
don't like to take it."
"Indeed it is not, and I hope you will accept my thanks with it," was
the conclusive answer.
Mark Cray saw the traveller on board the boat, watched it move off,
turn, and go steaming down the port And then he made the best of his
way home, the hundred-franc note in his pocket seeming to be a very
fairy of good fortune.
They had come to Honfleur the latter end of April; this was the
beginning of June; and poor Mark had not found a single patient yet.
Mr. Barker had been there to receive them on their arrival. How Barker
contrived to live, or whence his funds came, Mark did not know, but he
always seemed flourishing. There are some men who always do seem
flourishing, whatever may be their ups and downs. Barker was in Paris
now, apparently in high feather, his letters to Mark boasting that he
was getting into "something good."
Mark ran all the way home; his lodgings were not far, near the ascent
of the Mont Joli. Could scenery have supplied the place of meat and
drink, then Mark Cray and his wife might have lived as epicures, for
nothing could well be more grandly beautiful than the prospect seen
from their windows. But, alas! something besides the eyes requires to
be ministered to in this world of wants.
It was a small house with a garden before the door, and was tenanted
by a widow lady and her servant. Mark and his wife occupied a small
sitting-room in it and a bedchamber above; opening from the
sitting-room was a little place about four feet square, which served
for kitchen, and was let to them with the rooms. They waited on
themselves; it is rare indeed that attendance is furnished with
lodgings in France. But madame's servant was complaisant, and lighted
their fire and did many other little things.
Caroline was in the bedroom, dressing, when Mark returned;--dressing
in that listless, spiritless manner which argues badly for the hope
and heart. It was a pity their expectations in regard to Honfleur had
been so inordinately raised, for the disappointment was keen, and
Caroline perhaps had not strength to do battle with it. She had
pictured Honfleur (taking the impression from Barker's letters and
Mark's sanguine assumptions) as a very haven of refuge; a panacea for
their past woes, a place where the English patients, if not quite as
plentiful as blackberries, would at least be sufficient to furnish
them with funds to live in comfort. But it had altogether proved a
fallacy. The English patients held aloof. In fact, there were no
English patients, so far as they could make out. Nobody got ill; or,
if they did get ill, they did not come to Mark Cray to be cured.
Tribulation in the shape of petty embarrassment was coming upon them,
and Caroline began to hate the place. She was weary, sick, sad; half
dead with disappointment and _ennui_.
Unfortunately, there was becoming a reason to suspect that something
was radically wrong with Caroline. Not that she thought it yet; still
less Mark. Dr. Davenal had surmised that her constitution was unsound.
During the time of their sojourn at Chelsea, where Mr. Dick Davenal
came so suddenly upon them, and Mark was accustomed to go out to take
the air adorned with blue spectacles and a moustache, Caroline, in
undressing herself one night, found--or fancied that she found--a
small lump in her side, below the ribs. She thought nothing whatever
about it, it was so very small; in fact, it slipped from her memory.
Some time afterwards, however, she accidentally touched her side and
felt the same lump there again. This was of course sufficient to
assure her that it was not fancy, but still she attached no importance
to it, and said nothing. But the lump did not go away; it seemed like
a little kernel that could be moved bout with the finger; and in the
week following their arrival at Honfleur she first spoke of it to
Mark. Mark did not pay much attention to it; that is, he did not think
there was any cause to pay attention to it; it might proceed from
cold, he said, or perhaps she had given herself a knock; he supposed
it would go away again. But the lump did not go away, and Caroline had
been complaining of it lately.
On this past night--or rather morning--when Mark was at the hotel with
the patient to whom he was called, Caroline had been recreating her
imagination with speculations upon what the lump was, and what it was
likely to come to. Whether this caused her to be more sensitive to the
lump than she had been before, or whether the lump was really
beginning to make itself more troublesome, certain it was that her
fears in regard to it were at length aroused, and she waited
impatiently for the return of her husband.
"Mark, this lump gets larger and larger. I am certain of it."
It was her greeting to Mark when he entered and came up to the
chamber. She turned her spiritless eyes upon him, and Mark might have
noted the sad listlessness of the tone, but that it had become
habitual. He made no reply. He was beginning himself to think that the
lump got larger.
"And it pains me now,--a sort of dull aching. I wonder if it's coming
to anything. Just feel it, Mark."
Mark Cray drew her light cotton dressing-gown tight across the place,
and passed his fingers gently over and over it. He was not so utter a
tyro in his profession as to be ignorant that the lump might mean
mischief. Caroline, with most rapid quickness of apprehension, noted
and did not like his silence.
"Mark! what is it? What's going to be the matter with me?"
"Nothing, I hope," replied Mark, speaking readily enough now. "It will
go away, I daresay. Perhaps you have been fidgeting with it this
morning."
"No, I have not done that. And if the lump meant to go away, why
should it get larger? It _does_ get larger, Mark. It seems to me that
it has nearly doubled its size in the last week."
"I think it is a little larger," acknowledged Mark, feeling perhaps
that he could not get out of the confession. "How long has it pained
you?"
"I can't remember. The pain came on so imperceptibly that I hardly
know when it first began. What _is_ the lump, Mark?"
"I can't tell."
"You can't tell?"
"I can't tell yet. Sometimes lumps appear and go away again, and never
come to anything."
"And if they do come to anything, what is it that they come to?"
"Oh, sometimes one thing and sometimes another," answered Mark
lightly.
"Can't you tell me what the things are?" she rejoined, in a peevishly
anxious tone.
"Well--boils for one thing; and tumours."
"And what becomes of these tumours?" she quickly rejoined, catching at
the word.
"They have to be taken out.
"Is it very painful?"
"Law, no. The pain's a mere nothing."
"And cancers? How do they come?" proceeded Caroline after pause. "With
a little lump at first, like this?"
"Cancers don't come there. You need not fear that it's a cancer.
Carine, my dear, you must be nervous this morning."
She passed by the remark, hardly hearing it. "But Mark--you say you
can't tell yet what it is."
"Neither can I. But I can tell what it is _not._ I'll get you a little
ointment to rub on it, and I make no doubt it will go away."
Caroline was doing her hair at the moment. She had the brush in one
hand, the hair in the other; and she paused just as she was, looking
fixedly at her husband.
"Mark, if you don't know what it is, perhaps somebody else would know.
I wish you'd let me show it to a doctor."
Mark laughed. He really believed she must be getting nervous about it,
and perhaps deemed it would be the best plan to treat it lightly. "A
French doctor Why, Carine, they are not worth a rush."
"I have heard Uncle Richard say the contrary," she persisted. "That
the French, as surgeons, are clever men."
"He meant with the knife, I suppose. Well, Caroline, you can let a
Frenchman see the lump if it will afford you any satisfaction. You
don't ask me what has kept me out all these hours!" rejoined Mark,
changing the topic. "I have had a patient at last."
"Yes, I suppose that. He was very ill, perhaps, and you had to remain
with him."
She spoke in the wearied, inert tone that seems to betray an entire
absence of interest. When the spirit has been borne down with
long-continued disappointment, this weariness becomes a sort of
disease. It was very prejudicial now, in a physical point of view, to
Caroline Cray.
Mark took out the note. "See how well he paid me!" he cried, holding
it to her. "I wish such patients would come to the Cheval Blanc every
day!"
The sight aroused her from her apathy. "A hundred-franc note!" she
exclaimed with dilating eyes. "O Mark! it is quite a godsend. I shall
believe next in Sara Davenal's maxim: that help is sure to turn up in
the time of need."
In the time of need! It was a time that had certainly come for them.
The surplus of Oswald Cray's twenty pounds, remaining after the
expenses of removal were paid, had come to an end, and neither Mark
nor his wife had seen their way clear to go on for another week. It
was in truth a godsend; more strictly so than Caroline, in her
lightness, deemed.
But the money, welcome as it was, did not take the paramount place in
her mind today that it might else have done. _That_ was occupied by
the lump. Caroline's fears in regard to it could not be allayed, and
she insisted upon being taken to a doctor for his opinion, without any
delay. Mark made inquiries, and found a Monsieur Le Bleu was
considered to be a clever man. He proposed to ask him to call, but
Caroline preferred to go to him, her reason being a somewhat whimsical
one, as expressed to Mark: "If he has to come to me I shall think I am
really ill." Accordingly they went that same afternoon, and the
interview, what with Mark Cray's French and the doctor's English, was
productive of some temporary difficulty.
They started after their early dinner. M. Le Bleu lived not very far
from them, but in the heart of the town, and Mark began by calling him
Mr. Blue, _sans cérémonie_. Mark had learned French at school, and
therefore considered himself a French scholar. On the door was a brass
plate--"M. Le Bleu, Médecin;" and a young woman in a red petticoat,
grey stockings, and sabots, came to the door in answer to the ring.
"Is Mr. Blue at home?" demanded Mark. "Mossier Blue, chez elle?"
continued he, tying to be more explanatory, in answer to the girl's
puzzled stare.
"O Mark," whispered Caroline, her cheeks flaming at this specimen of
French. "Monsieur Le Bleu, est-il chez lui?" she hastily said, turning
to the servant.
Monsieur Le Bleu was "chez lui," the girl said to them, and they were
admitted. A little middle-aged gentleman in spectacles with no beard
or whiskers or moustache, or any other hair to speak of, for that on
his head was as closely cut as it could be, short of being shaved,
came forward. He asked what he could have the honour of doing for
them.
"Speak English, Messeu?" began Mark. "Parle Anglishe?"
"Yas, sare," was the amiable response, as the doctor handed Caroline a
seat. "I spack the Anglishe, moi."
"Oh then we shall get on," cried Mark. "Madame here, ma femme, it's
for her. I don't think it's much, but she would come. That's my
name"--handing in his card.
The Frenchman was a little puzzled by so much English all at once, and
relieved himself by looking at the card.
"Ah, c'est ça, Meestare Cr--Cr--Craw," pronounced the doctor, arriving
with satisfaction at the name after some stammering. "And Madame what
has she?"
"Malade," briefly responded Mark. "Elle a une--une--lump--come in
the--the (what's French for side, I wonder?) in the côté. Ici,
Messeu," touching himself; "mais il est très petite encore; no larger
than a--a--petite pois."
Clearly the gentleman did not understand. Mark had drawn him aside, so
that they were speaking apart from Caroline.
"A-t'elle d'enfants, Madame?"
"Oh, oui, oui," responded Mark, at a venture, not catching a syllable
of the question, the Frenchman seemed to speak so rapidly.
"Et combien? I ask, sare, how many; and the age of them; the age!"
"Three-and-twenty. Vingt-trois."
"Vingt-trois!" echoed the doctor, pushing up his glasses. "Mais,
n'est pas possible. I say it not possible, sare, that Madame have
twenty-three children."
"_Children!_" shouted Mark, "I thought you said _age_. She has not any
children; pas d'enfants, Messeu. She found of it before we quitted
England--avant nous partons d'Angleterre."
Monsieur Le Bleu tried hard to understand. "Where you say it is, sare,
the mal? Est-ce que c'est une blessure?"
"It's here," said Mark, touching _him_ now. "It came of itself--venait
tout seule, grande at first comme the tête of an épingle, not much
more; à présent larger than a big pea--a petite pois."
The doctor's ear was strained, and a faint light broke upon it. He had
enjoyed the pleasure of conversing with English patients before; in
fact it was mostly from them that he was enabled to shine in the
language.
"Ah, je vois. Pardon, sare, it not a blessure, it a--a--clou--a
bouton? I ask, sare, is it a button?"
"It's a _lump_," returned Mark, staring very much. "A sort of a
kernel, you know. Comprends, Messeu?" he questioned, in no hurry,
perhaps, to make any worse suggestion.
The doctor gravely nodded; not caring to confess his ignorance. "When
did he arrive, sare?"
"When did who arrive?"
"Him--the mal, sare."
"Oh, the lump. Several weeks back--quelques semaines, Messeu. Pas
beaucoup de trouble avec; de pain! mais trouve nervous this morning,
and--and--thought she'd like a doctor's opinion," concluded Mark, his
French completely breaking down.
"Bon," said the surgeon, wishing Mark did not talk English quite so
fast. "Madame has not consultayed a docteur donc, encore?"
"Only me," replied Mark. "I'm a doctor myself--docteur moi-même,
Messeu."
"Ah, Monsieur est médecin lui-même," cried the doctor, making a
succession of bows in his politeness. "That will facilitate our
understandings, sare. Has Madame the good--the bonne santé de
l'ordinaire?" he continued, coming to a breakdown himself.
"Santé de l'ordinaire!--I wonder what that is," debated Mark within
himself. "Vin ordinaire means thin claret, I know. I no comprendre,
Messeu," he confessed aloud. "Ma femme eats and drinks everything."
"Is Madame--je ne trouve pas le mot, moi--is she _saine_, I would
ask?"
"San?" repeated the puzzled Mark. "Why, you never mean _sane_, surely!"
he exclaimed in astonishment. "She's as sane as you or I. What on
earth put that in your head, Messeu? she doesn't look mad, I hope!"
"I no say mad," disclaimed Messeu. "I ask if she--ah, voilà le mot,
quel bonheur!--if she healthy?--if she partake of the good
constitution?"
A recollection flashed across Mark Cray's memory of a doubt he had
once heard drop from Dr. Davenal as to whether Caroline's constitution
was a healthy one. "Elle a porté très bien," was his answer to
Monsieur, plunging into his French again. "This mayn't be anything,
you know, Messeu."
"I not like these boutons though, sare."
"Which buttons," demanded Mark.
"The buttons you do me the honour to consult for. Je ne les aime pas,
soit clou, soit tumeur--n'importe pour l'espèce. In the place you
indicate to me it is like to be a tumeur, and she is obstinate."
"Who is, Messeu?" asked Mark, in doubt whether the incomprehensible
Frenchman did not allude to his wife's temper.
"She herself," lucidly explained Messeu. "I have held cases that would
not terminate themselves at all by anyway, no not for the years."
"Oh, but this is not a case of that sort," said Mark, half
resentfully. "A few simple remedies may disperse it."
"Yes, I hope," agreed the doctor. "I would demand of Monsieur if he
has tried the sangsues?
"The what?" cried Mark, who had not the remotest idea what sort of a
thing "sangsues" could be. "No, I have not tried it."
"J'aime assez la sangsue, moi. She is a useful beast, sare."
Mark nearly groaned, Whatever had "useful beasts" to do with this lump
of Caroline's? Useful beasts? "Is it a camel you are talking of?" he
asked.
"A camel!" repeated the doctor, staring at Mark. "Pardon, I no
understand."
Mark was sure he didn't. "You spoke of useful beasts, Messeu?"
"Yas, they have moche virtue, the sangsues. They do good to Madame;
they bite her well."
Mark was never more at sea in his life. Roaming away in search of
camels, his home perceptions were perhaps a little obscured in that
moment. Bite Madame? What on earth was "sonsues?"
"I speak of the little black beast that long when she full--" pointing
to his finger. "You call them litch--litch--"
"Leeches!" interrupted Mark, with a laugh. "I could not understand,
moi; Je pensé, Messeu, que vous--vous--speak of wild beasts."
"Yas," said the doctor complacently, "I thought you understand, sare."
"Bon pour Madame, vous dit, Messeu, the sonsues?"
"Je pense que oui. Mais--but I no say trop before the examen of
Madame. I would see the hurt, me. I go to your house, sare, and meet
Madame without her robe. I go tomorrow at four of the clock after
twelve, if that will arrange you."
"So be it," returned Mark, when he had puzzled out the words "Je dis à
ma femme que--que--it was of no use for her to call here, herself;
you'd want to see her dishabillayed. Je vous merci, Messeu."
And when they were walking home Mark said to his wife how very glad he
was to find he had kept up his French.