As this excursion is a matter of some length, and, moreover, we go in
force, we have set aside our usual vehicle, the pony-cart, and ordered a
large wagonette from Lejosne’s. It has been waiting for near an hour,
while one went to pack a knapsack, and t’other hurried over his toilette
and coffee; but now it is filled from end to end with merry folk in
summer attire, the coachman cracks his whip, and amid much applause from
round the inn door off we rattle at a spanking trot. The way lies
through the forest, up hill and down dale, and by beech and pine wood, in
the cheerful morning sunshine. The English get down at all the ascents
and walk on ahead for exercise; the French are mightily entertained at
this, and keep coyly underneath the tilt. As we go we carry with us a
pleasant noise of laughter and light speech, and some one will be always
breaking out into a bar or two of opera bouffe. Before we get to the
Route Ronde here comes Desprez, the colourman from Fontainebleau,
trudging across on his weekly peddle with a case of merchandise; and it
is ‘Desprez, leave me some malachite green’; ‘Desprez, leave me so much
canvas’; ‘Desprez, leave me this, or leave me that’; M. Desprez standing
the while in the sunlight with grave face and many salutations. The next
interruption is more important. For some time back we have had the sound
of cannon in our ears; and now, a little past Franchard, we find a
mounted trooper holding a led horse, who brings the wagonette to a stand.
The artillery is practising in the Quadrilateral, it appears; passage
along the Route Ronde formally interdicted for the moment. There is
nothing for it but to draw up at the glaring cross-roads and get down to
make fun with the notorious Cocardon, the most ungainly and ill-bred dog
of all the ungainly and ill-bred dogs of Barbizon, or clamber about the
sandy banks. And meanwhile the doctor, with sun umbrella, wide Panama,
and patriarchal beard, is busy wheedling and (for aught the rest of us
know) bribing the too facile sentry. His speech is smooth and dulcet,
his manner dignified and insinuating. It is not for nothing that the
Doctor has voyaged all the world over, and speaks all languages from
French to Patagonian. He has not come borne from perilous journeys to be
thwarted by a corporal of horse. And so we soon see the soldier’s mouth
relax, and his shoulders imitate a relenting heart. ‘_En voiture_,
_Messieurs_, _Mesdames_,’ sings the Doctor; and on we go again at a good
round pace, for black care follows hard after us, and discretion prevails
not a little over valour in some timorous spirits of the party. At any
moment we may meet the sergeant, who will send us back. At any moment we
may encounter a flying shell, which will send us somewhere farther off
than Grez.
Grez—for that is our destination—has been highly recommended for its
beauty. ‘_Il y a de l’eau_,’ people have said, with an emphasis, as if
that settled the question, which, for a French mind, I am rather led to
think it does. And Grez, when we get there, is indeed a place worthy of
some praise. It lies out of the forest, a cluster of houses, with an old
bridge, an old castle in ruin, and a quaint old church. The inn garden
descends in terraces to the river; stable-yard, kailyard, orchard, and a
space of lawn, fringed with rushes and embellished with a green arbour.
On the opposite bank there is a reach of English-looking plain, set
thickly with willows and poplars. And between the two lies the river,
clear and deep, and full of reeds and floating lilies. Water-plants
cluster about the starlings of the long low bridge, and stand half-way up
upon the piers in green luxuriance. They catch the dipped oar with long
antennæ, and chequer the slimy bottom with the shadow of their leaves.
And the river wanders and thither hither among the islets, and is
smothered and broken up by the reeds, like an old building in the lithe,
hardy arms of the climbing ivy. You may watch the box where the good man
of the inn keeps fish alive for his kitchen, one oily ripple following
another over the top of the yellow deal. And you can hear a splashing
and a prattle of voices from the shed under the old kirk, where the
village women wash and wash all day among the fish and water-lilies. It
seems as if linen washed there should be specially cool and sweet.
We have come here for the river. And no sooner have we all bathed than
we board the two shallops and push off gaily, and go gliding under the
trees and gathering a great treasure of water-lilies. Some one sings;
some trail their hands in the cool water; some lean over the gunwale to
see the image of the tall poplars far below, and the shadow of the boat,
with the balanced oars and their own head protruded, glide smoothly over
the yellow floor of the stream. At last, the day declining—all silent
and happy, and up to the knees in the wet lilies—we punt slowly back
again to the landing-place beside the bridge. There is a wish for
solitude on all. One hides himself in the arbour with a cigarette;
another goes a walk in the country with Cocardon; a third inspects the
church. And it is not till dinner is on the table, and the inn’s best
wine goes round from glass to glass, that we begin to throw off the
restraint and fuse once more into a jolly fellowship.
Half the party are to return to-night with the wagonette; and some of the
others, loath to break up company, will go with them a bit of the way and
drink a stirrup-cup at Marlotte. It is dark in the wagonette, and not so
merry as it might have been. The coachman loses the road. So-and-so
tries to light fireworks with the most indifferent success. Some sing,
but the rest are too weary to applaud; and it seems as if the festival
were fairly at an end—
‘Nous avons fait la noce,
Rentrons à nos foyers!’
And such is the burthen, even after we have come to Marlotte and taken
our places in the court at Mother Antonine’s. There is punch on the long
table out in the open air, where the guests dine in summer weather. The
candles flare in the night wind, and the faces round the punch are lit
up, with shifting emphasis, against a background of complete and solid
darkness. It is all picturesque enough; but the fact is, we are aweary.
We yawn; we are out of the vein; we have made the wedding, as the song
says, and now, for pleasure’s sake, let’s make an end on’t. When here
comes striding into the court, booted to mid-thigh, spurred and splashed,
in a jacket of green cord, the great, famous, and redoubtable Blank; and
in a moment the fire kindles again, and the night is witness of our
laughter as he imitates Spaniards, Germans, Englishmen, picture-dealers,
all eccentric ways of speaking and thinking, with a possession, a fury, a
strain of mind and voice, that would rather suggest a nervous crisis than
a desire to please. We are as merry as ever when the trap sets forth
again, and say farewell noisily to all the good folk going farther.
Then, as we are far enough from thoughts of sleep, we visit Blank in his
quaint house, and sit an hour or so in a great tapestried chamber, laid
with furs, littered with sleeping hounds, and lit up, in fantastic shadow
and shine, by a wood fire in a mediæval chimney. And then we plod back
through the darkness to the inn beside the river.
How quick bright things come to confusion! When we arise next morning,
the grey showers fall steadily, the trees hang limp, and the face of the
stream is spoiled with dimpling raindrops. Yesterday’s lilies encumber
the garden walk, or begin, dismally enough, their voyage towards the
Seine and the salt sea. A sickly shimmer lies upon the dripping
house-roofs, and all the colour is washed out of the green and golden
landscape of last night, as though an envious man had taken a
water-colour sketch and blotted it together with a sponge. We go out
a-walking in the wet roads. But the roads about Grez have a trick of
their own. They go on for a while among clumps of willows and patches of
vine, and then, suddenly and without any warning, cease and determine in
some miry hollow or upon some bald knowe; and you have a short period of
hope, then right-about face, and back the way you came! So we draw about
the kitchen fire and play a round game of cards for ha’pence, or go to
the billiard-room, for a match at corks and by one consent a messenger is
sent over for the wagonette—Grez shall be left to-morrow.
To-morrow dawns so fair that two of the party agree to walk back for
exercise, and let their kidnap-sacks follow by the trap. I need hardly
say they are neither of them French; for, of all English phrases, the
phrase ‘for exercise’ is the least comprehensible across the Straits of
Dover. All goes well for a while with the pedestrians. The wet woods
are full of scents in the noontide. At a certain cross, where there is a
guardhouse, they make a halt, for the forester’s wife is the daughter of
their good host at Barbizon. And so there they are hospitably received
by the comely woman, with one child in her arms and another prattling and
tottering at her gown, and drink some syrup of quince in the back
parlour, with a map of the forest on the wall, and some prints of
love-affairs and the great Napoleon hunting. As they draw near the
Quadrilateral, and hear once more the report of the big guns, they take a
by-road to avoid the sentries, and go on a while somewhat vaguely, with
the sound of the cannon in their ears and the rain beginning to fall.
The ways grow wider and sandier; here and there there are real
sand-hills, as though by the sea-shore; the fir-wood is open and grows in
clumps upon the hillocks, and the race of sign-posts is no more. One
begins to look at the other doubtfully. ‘I am sure we should keep more
to the right,’ says one; and the other is just as certain they should
hold to the left. And now, suddenly, the heavens open, and the rain
falls ‘sheer and strong and loud,’ as out of a shower-bath. In a moment
they are as wet as shipwrecked sailors. They cannot see out of their
eyes for the drift, and the water churns and gurgles in their boots.
They leave the track and try across country with a gambler’s desperation,
for it seems as if it were impossible to make the situation worse; and,
for the next hour, go scrambling from boulder to boulder, or plod along
paths that are now no more than rivulets, and across waste clearings
where the scattered shells and broken fir-trees tell all too plainly of
the cannon in the distance. And meantime the cannon grumble out
responses to the grumbling thunder. There is such a mixture of melodrama
and sheer discomfort about all this, it is at once so grey and so lurid,
that it is far more agreeable to read and write about by the
chimney-corner than to suffer in the person. At last they chance on the
right path, and make Franchard in the early evening, the sorriest pair of
wanderers that ever welcomed English ale. Thence, by the Bois d’Hyver,
the Ventes-Alexandre, and the Pins Brulés, to the clean hostelry, dry
clothes, and dinner.