Summer came very early that year, and the narrow streets of
Bourg-Cailloux were full of the glare and heat of the season. The
pavements of white stones, always rough and painful to the feet, were
burning hot in the middle of the day, and outside the walls, especially
towards the sea, the light coloured, sandy roads were more scorching
still. The Hôtel des Bains, just waking up after its winter repose, had
proved but a comfortless dwelling. After two or three days, therefore,
Mrs. Costello had left it, and she and Lucia were now settled in a
lodging in the city itself. Their windows looked out on the "Place,"
where a brave sea-captain, the hero of Bourg-Cailloux, stood in effigy,
and still seemed to keep watch over the place he had once defended, and
where, twice a week, the market-women came in their long black cloaks
and dazzling caps, and brought heaps of fragrant flowers and early
fruit. In the very early morning, the shadow of a quaint old tower fell
transversely upon the pavement of the square, and reached almost to
their door; and in the evening Lucia grew fond of watching for the fire
which was nightly lighted on the same tower that it might be a guide to
sailors far out at sea. The town was quiet and dull--there was no
theatre, no concerts, at present even no balls--the only public
amusement of the population seemed to be listening in the still evenings
to the band which played in front of the guard-house in the Place. There
they came in throngs, and promenaded slowly over the sharp-edged stones,
with a keen and visible enjoyment of the fresh air, the music, and each
other's company, which was in itself a pleasant thing to see.
The journey, the discomforts of the first few days, and the second
moving, had tried Mrs. Costello extremely. She spent most of her time on
the sofa now, and had as yet only been able once or twice to go down and
sit for a while on the sunny beach, where children were playing and
building sand castles, and where the sea breeze was sweet and reviving.
There was a small colony of English people settled in the town, mostly
people with small incomes and many children, or widows of poor
gentlemen; but there was also a large floating population of English
sailors, and for their benefit an English consul and chaplain, who
supplied a temporal and spiritual leader to the community. But the
mother and daughter kept much apart from their country people, who were
inclined to be sociable and friendly towards them. Mrs. Costello's
illness, and Lucia's preoccupation, made them receive with indifference
the visits of those who, after seeing them at the little English church,
and by the sea, thought it "only neighbourly to call."
Their home arrangements were different to those they had made in Paris.
Here they were really lodgers, and their landlady, Madame Everaert,
waited on them. She was a fat, good natured, half Dutch widow, who took
from the first a lively interest in the invalid mother, and in the
daughter who would have been so handsome if she had been stouter and
more rosy; and in a very little while she found that her new lodgers
had one quality, which above all others gave them a claim on her good
will, they were excellent listeners. Almost every evening in the
twilight she would come herself to their sitting-room, with the lamp, or
with some other errand for an excuse, and would stay chattering in her
droll Flemish French for at least half an hour. This came to be one of
the features of the day. Another was a daily walk, which Lucia had most
frequently to take alone, but which always gave her either from the
shore, or from the ramparts, a long sorrowful look over the sea towards
England--towards Canada perhaps--or instead of either, to some far-away
fairy country where there were no mistakes and no misunderstandings.
Between these two--between morning and evening--time was almost a blank.
Lucia had completely given up her habits of study. She did not even read
novels, except aloud; and when she was not in some way occupied in
caring for her mother, she sat hour after hour by the window, with a
piece of crochet, which seemed a second Penelope's web, for it never was
visibly larger one day than it had been the day before. Mrs. Costello
gradually grew anxious as she perceived how dull and inanimate her
daughter remained. She would almost have been glad of an excuse for
giving her a gentle scolding, but Lucia's entire submission and
sweetness of temper made it impossible. There seemed nothing to be done,
but to try to force her into cheerful occupation, and to hope that time
and her own good sense would do the rest. Hitherto they had had no
piano; they got one, and for a day or two Lucia made a languid pretence
of practising. But one day she was turning over her music, among which
were a number of quaint old English songs and madrigals, which she and
Maurice had jointly owned long ago at Cacouna, when she came upon one
the words of which she had been used to laugh at, much to the annoyance
of her fellow-singers. She had a half remembrance of them, and turned
the pages to look if they were really so absurd. The music she knew
well, and how the voices blended in the quaint pathetic harmony.
"Out alas! my faith is ever true,
Yet will she never rue,
Nor grant me any grace.
I sit and sigh, I weep, I faint, I die,
While she alone refuseth sympathy."
She shut the music up, and would have said, if anybody had asked her,
that she had no patience with such foolish laments, even in poetry; but,
nevertheless, the verse stayed in her memory, haunted her fancy
perpetually, and seemed like a living voice in her ears--
"Out alas! my faith is ever true."
She cared no more for singing, for every song she liked was associated
with Maurice, and each one seemed now to have the same burden; and when
she played, it was no longer gay airs, or even the wonderful 'Morceaux
de Salon,' of incredible noise and difficulty, which had been required
of her as musical exhibitions, but always some melancholy andante or
reverie which seemed to come to her fingers without choice or intention.
One day when she had gone for her solitary walk, and Mrs. Costello all
alone was lying on the sofa, trying to read, but really considering with
some uneasiness the condition of their affairs, Madame Everaert knocked
at the door.
She brought with her a fresh bunch of flowers just bought in the market,
but she was as usual overflowing with talk.
"It is extremely hot," she said, fanning herself with her pocket
handkerchief, "and I met mademoiselle going out. It is excessively hot."
Mrs. Costello looked uneasy.
"Do you think it is too hot to be out?" she asked.
"No. Perhaps not. Certainly, mademoiselle has gone to the ramparts, and
the walk there is not nearly so hot and fatiguing as down to the beach.
Mademoiselle is very fond of the sea."
"Yes, she enjoys it greatly. It is new to her."
"One day, not long ago, I was coming along the top of the
ramparts,--madame has not been there?"
"No."
"There is a broad space on the top, and it is covered with soft green
turf quite pleasant to sit down upon. Very few people pass, and you can
see a long way out to sea. Well, one day I came along there, because
upon the grass it was pleasanter walking than on the stones in the
street, and I saw Mademoiselle Lucia who was sitting quite quiet,
looking out far away. I came very near, but she never saw me. I thought
I would speak to her just to say how beautiful the day was, and the air
so sweet, when I saw just in time madame, that she was crying. Great
big tears were falling down on her hands, and she never seemed to feel
them even. Mon Dieu, madame! I could hardly keep from crying myself, she
looked so sad; but I went by softly, and she never saw me. Mademoiselle
regrets England very much."
"She has never been in England. She was born in Canada, and that, you
know, is very far away."
"In Canada! Is it possible? Does madame come from Canada?"
"Yes."
"And it is in Canada our good father Paul has suffered so much! Oh, the
terrible country!"
"Why should it be terrible? I have seen Father Paul, and he does not
look as if he had suffered much."
"Not now, Dieu merci. But long ago. Madame, he went to convert the
savages--the Indians."
Mrs. Costello started. Father Paul was a Jesuit priest--an old venerable
man--old enough, as it flashed into her mind, to have been one of the
Moose Island missionaries. Yet such an idea was improbable--there had no
doubt been many other Jesuit missions besides the one where Christian
had been trained.
"Do you know where it was that he went?" she asked, after a moment's
pause.
"It was in Canada," Madame Everaert repeated, "and he lived among the
savages; if madame is from Canada, she would know where the savages
live."
"There are very few savages now," Mrs. Costello answered with a smile.
"I know where there used to be some--possibly that was the very place."
"No doubt. I shall tell the good father that madame knows it."
"Stay. Don't be quite sure that it is the place. Canada is a very large
country."
"Still it is so singular that madame should come from there. Father Paul
will be delighted."
Mrs. Costello thought a minute. She was greatly tempted to wish to see
this priest who might have known her husband. She need not betray
herself to him. For the rest, she had noticed him often, and thought
what a good, pleasant face he had--a little too round and rosy perhaps,
but very honest and not vulgar. He might be an agreeable visitor, even
if he had no other claim on her.
"Do you think," she said, "that he would mind coming to see me? I should
be very glad to receive him."
"I am sure he would be charmed. He likes so much to talk of Canada."
"Will you say to him then, please, that I have lived there many years
and should be very pleased to have a chat with him about it. I might be
able to give him news."
Madame Everaert was delighted. She went away quite satisfied to find
Father Paul at the very earliest opportunity, and to deliver to him with
_empressement_ Mrs. Costello's invitation.
Lucia, meanwhile, took her usual walk. She went quickly along the stony
streets and climbed up the grassy side of the rampart. It was all still
and solitary, and she sat down where there lay before her a wide stretch
of perfectly level country, only broken by the lines of the old
fortifications, and bordered by the sea. In the clear morning sunshine,
she could distinguish the white foam where the waves broke against the
wooden pier, and out on the blue waters there were white shining specks
of sails. Ships coming and going, and on the beach moving groups of
people--everywhere something that had life and motion and looked on to a
future, an object beyond this present moment--everywhere but here with
her.
"Oh," she said to herself, "how wearisome life is! What good to myself
or to anybody else is this existence of mine? Am I never either to be
good or happy again? Happy, I suppose that does not so much matter--but
good? If people are wrong once, can they never get right again? I used
to think I should like to be a Sister of Mercy--and now that is all that
is left for me, I do not feel any inclination for it. I don't think I
have a vocation even for that."
And at this point she fell into a lower depth of melancholy--one of
those sad moods which, at eighteen, have even a kind of charm in their
exaggeration.