ACROSS THE CHANNEL.
Dawn had given place to day, and day was well advanced toward noon,
before the stout little steamer gained her port. It was hours after
the usual time for arrival; the train for Paris must long since have
started, and Katy felt dejected and forlorn as, making her way out of
the terrible ladies'-cabin, she crept on deck for her first glimpse
of France.
The sun was struggling through the fog with a watery smile, and his
faint beams shone on a confusion of stone piers, higher than the
vessel's deck, intersected with canal-like waterways, through whose
intricate windings the steamer was slowly threading her course to the
landing-place. Looking up, Katy could see crowds of people assembled to
watch the boat come in,--workmen, peasants, women, children, soldiers,
custom-house officers, moving to and fro,--and all this crowd were
talking all at once and all were talking French!
I don't know why this should have startled her as it did. She knew, of
course, that people of different countries were liable to be found
speaking their own languages; but somehow the spectacle of the
chattering multitude, all seeming so perfectly at ease with their
preterits and subjunctives and never once having to refer to Ollendorf
or a dictionary, filled her with a sense of dismayed surprise.
"Good gracious!" she said to herself, "even the babies understand it!"
She racked her brains to recall what she had once known of French, but
very little seemed to have survived the horrors of the night!
"Oh dear! what is the word for trunk-key?" she asked herself. "They will
all begin to ask questions, and I shall not have a word to say; and Mrs.
Ashe will be even worse off, I know." She saw the red-trousered
custom-house officers pounce upon the passengers as they landed one by
one, and she felt her heart sink within her.
But after all, when the time came it did not prove so very bad. Katy's
pleasant looks and courteous manner stood her in good stead. She did not
trust herself to say much; but the officials seemed to understand
without saying. They bowed and gestured, whisked the keys in and out,
and in a surprisingly short time all was pronounced right, the baggage
had "passed," and it and its owners were free to proceed to the
railway-station, which fortunately was close at hand.
Inquiry revealed the fact that no train for Paris left till four in the
afternoon.
"I am rather glad," declared poor Mrs. Ashe, "for I feel too used up to
move. I will lie here on this sofa; and, Katy dear, please see if there
is an eating-place, and get some breakfast for yourself and Amy, and
send me a cup of tea."
"I don't like to leave you alone," Katy was beginning; but at that
moment a nice old woman who seemed to be in charge of the waiting-room
appeared, and with a flood of French which none of them could follow,
but which was evidently sympathetic in its nature, flew at Mrs. Ashe and
began to make her comfortable. From a cupboard in the wall she produced
a pillow, from another cupboard a blanket; in a trice she had one under
Mrs. Ashe's head and the other wrapped round her feet.
"Pauvre madame," she said, "si pâle! si souffrante! Il faut avoir
quelque chose à boire et à manger tout de suite." She trotted across the
room and into the restaurant which opened out of it, while Mrs. Ashe
smiled at Katy and said, "You see you can leave me quite safely; I am to
be taken care of." And Katy and Amy passed through the same door into
the _buffet_, and sat down at a little table.
It was a particularly pleasant-looking place to breakfast in. There were
many windows with bright polished panes and very clean short muslin
curtains, and on the window-sills stood rows of thrifty potted plants in
full bloom,--marigolds, balsams, nasturtiums, and many colored
geraniums. Two birds in cages were singing loudly; the floor was waxed
to a glass-like polish; nothing could have been whiter than the marble
of the tables except the napkins laid over them. And such a good
breakfast as was presently brought to them,--delicious coffee in
bowl-like cups, crisp rolls and rusks, an omelette with a delicate
flavor of fine herbs, stewed chicken, little pats of freshly churned
butter without salt, shaped like shells and tasting like solidified
cream, and a pot of some sort of nice preserve. Amy made great delighted
eyes at Katy, and remarking, "I think France is heaps nicer than that
old England," began to eat with a will; and Katy herself felt that if
this railroad meal was a specimen of what they had to expect in the
future, they had indeed come to a land of plenty.
Fortified with the satisfactory breakfast, she felt equal to a walk; and
after they had made sure that Mrs. Ashe had all she needed, she and Amy
(and Mabel) set off by themselves to see the sights of Dieppe. I don't
know that travellers generally have considered Dieppe an interesting
place, but Katy found it so. There was a really old church and some
quaint buildings of the style of two centuries back, and even the more
modern streets had a novel look to her unaccustomed eyes. At first they
only ventured a timid turn or two, marking each corner, and going back
now and then to reassure themselves by a look at the station; but after
a while, growing bolder, Katy ventured to ask a question or two in
French, and was surprised and charmed to find herself understood. After
that she grew adventurous, and, no longer fearful of being lost, led Amy
straight down a long street lined with shops, almost all of which were
for the sale of articles in ivory.
Ivory wares are one of the chief industries of Dieppe. There were cases
full, windows full, counters full, of the most exquisite combs and
brushes, some with elaborate monograms in silver and colors, others
plain; there were boxes and caskets of every size and shape, ornaments,
fans, parasol handles, looking-glasses, frames for pictures large and
small, napkin-rings.
Katy was particularly smitten with a paper-knife in the form of an angel
with long slender wings raised over its head and meeting to form a
point. Its price was twenty francs, and she was strongly tempted to buy
it for Clover or Rose Red. But she said to herself sensibly, "This is
the first shop I have been into and the first thing I have really wanted
to buy, and very likely as we go on I shall see things I like better and
want more, so it would be foolish to do it. No, I won't." And she
resolutely turned her back on the ivory angel, and walked away.
The next turn brought them to a gay-looking little market-place, where
old women in white caps were sitting on the ground beside baskets and
panniers full of apples, pears, and various queer and curly vegetables,
none of which Katy recognized as familiar; fish of all shapes and colors
were flapping in shallow tubs of sea-water; there were piles of
stockings, muffetees, and comforters in vivid blue and red worsted, and
coarse pottery glazed in bright patterns. The faces of the women were
brown and wrinkled; there were no pretty ones among them, but their
black eyes were full of life and quickness, and their fingers one and
all clicked with knitting-needles, as their tongues flew equally fast in
the chatter and the chaffer, which went on without stop or stay, though
customers did not seem to be many and sales were few.
Returning to the station they found that Mrs. Ashe had been asleep
during their absence, and seemed so much better that it was with greatly
amended spirits that they took their places in the late afternoon train
which was to set them down at Rouen. Katy said they were like the Wise
Men of the East, "following a star," in their choice of a hotel; for,
having no better advice, they had decided upon one of those thus
distinguished in Baedeker's Guide-book.
The star did not betray their confidence; for the Hôtel de la Cloche, to
which it led them, proved to be quaint and old, and very pleasant of
aspect. The lofty chambers, with their dimly frescoed ceilings, and beds
curtained with faded patch, might to all appearances have been furnished
about the time when "Columbus crossed the ocean blue;" but everything
was clean, and had an air of old-time respectability. The dining-room,
which was evidently of more modern build, opened into a square courtyard
where oleanders and lemon trees in boxes stood round the basin of a
little fountain, whose tinkle and plash blended agreeably with the
rattle of the knives and forks. In one corner of the room was a raised
and railed platform, where behind a desk sat the mistress of the house,
busy with her account-books, but keeping an eye the while on all that
went forward.
Mrs. Ashe walked past this personage without taking any notice of her,
as Americans are wont to do under such circumstances; but presently the
observant Katy noticed that every one else, as they went in or out of
the room, addressed a bow or a civil remark to this lady. She quite
blushed at the recollection afterward, as she made ready for bed.
"How rude we must have seemed!" she thought. "I am afraid the people
here think that Americans have _awful_ manners, everybody is so polite.
They said 'Bon soir' and 'Merci' and 'Voulez-vous avoir la bonté,' to
the waiters even! Well, there is one thing,--I am going to reform.
To-morrow I will be as polite as anybody. They will think that I am
miraculously improved by one night on French soil; but, never mind! I am
going to do it."
She kept her resolution, and astonished Mrs. Ashe next morning, by
bowing to the dame on the platform in the most winning manner, and
saying, "Bon jour, madame," as they went by.
"But, Katy, who is that person? Why do you speak to her?"
"Don't you see that they all do? She is the landlady, I think; at all
events, everybody bows to her. And just notice how prettily these ladies
at the next table speak to the waiter. They do not order him to do
things as we do at home. I noticed it last night, and I liked it so much
that I made a resolution to get up and be as polite as the French
themselves this morning."
So all the time that they went about the sumptuous old city, rich in
carvings and sculptures and traditions, while they were looking at the
Cathedral and the wonderful church of St. Ouen, and the Palace of
Justice, and the "Place of the Maid," where poor Jeanne d'Arc was burned
and her ashes scattered to the winds, Katy remembered her manners, and
smiled and bowed, and used courteous prefixes in a soft pleasant voice;
and as Mrs. Ashe and Amy fell in with her example more or less, I think
the guides and coachmen and the old women who showed them over the
buildings felt that the air of France was very civilizing indeed, and
that these strangers from savage countries over the sea were in a fair
way to be as well bred as if they had been born in a more favored part
of the world!
Paris looked very modern after the peculiar quaint richness and air of
the Middle Ages which distinguish Rouen. Rooms had been engaged for
Mrs. Ashe's party in a _pension_ near the Arc d'Étoile, and there they
drove immediately on arriving. The rooms were not in the _pension_
itself, but in a house close by,--a sitting-room with six mirrors,
three clocks, and a pinched little grate about a foot wide, a
dining-room just large enough for a table and four chairs, and two
bedrooms. A maid called Amandine had been detailed to take charge of
these rooms and serve their meals.
Dampness, as Katy afterward wrote to Clover, was the first impression
they received of "gay Paris." The tiny fire in the tiny grate had only
just been lighted, and the walls and the sheets and even the blankets
felt chilly and moist to the touch. They spent their first evening in
hanging the bedclothes round the grate and piling on fuel; they even set
the mattresses up on edge to warm and dry! It was not very enlivening,
it must be confessed. Amy had taken a cold, Mrs. Ashe looked worried,
and Katy thought of Burnet and the safety and comfort of home with a
throb of longing.
The days that ensued were not brilliant enough to remove this
impression. The November fogs seemed to have followed them across the
Channel, and Paris remained enveloped in a wet blanket which dimmed and
hid its usually brilliant features. Going about in cabs with the windows
drawn up, and now and then making a rush through the drip into shops,
was not exactly delightful, but it seemed pretty much all that they
could do. It was worse for Amy, whose cold kept her indoors and denied
her even the relaxation of the cab. Mrs. Ashe had engaged a
well-recommended elderly English maid to come every morning and take
care of Amy while they were out; and with this respectable functionary,
whose ideas were of a rigidly British type and who did not speak a word
of any language but her own, poor Amy was compelled to spend most of her
time. Her only consolation was in persuading this serene attendant to
take a part in the French lessons which she made a daily point of giving
to Mabel out of her own little phrase-book.
"Wilkins is getting on, I think," she told Katy one night. "She says
'Biscuit glacé' quite nicely now. But I never will let her look at the
book, though she always wants to; for if once she saw how the words are
spelled, she would never in the world pronounce them right again. They
look so very different, you know."
Katy looked at Amy's pale little face and eager eyes with a real
heartache. Her rapture when at the end of the long dull afternoons her
mother returned to her was touching. Paris was very _triste_ to poor
Amy, with all her happy facility for amusing herself; and Katy felt that
the sooner they got away from it the better it would be. So, in spite of
the delight which her brief glimpses at the Louvre gave her, and the fun
it was to go about with Mrs. Ashe and see her buy pretty things, and the
real satisfaction she took in the one perfectly made walking-suit to
which she had treated herself, she was glad when the final day came,
when the belated dressmakers and artistes in jackets and wraps had sent
home their last wares, and the trunks were packed. It had been rather
the fault of circumstances than of Paris; but Katy had not learned to
love the beautiful capital as most Americans do, and did not feel at all
as if she wanted that her "reward of virtue" should be to go there when
she died! There must be more interesting places for live people, and
ghosts too, to be found on the map of Europe, she was sure.
Next morning as they drove slowly down the Champs Élysées, and
looked back for a last glimpse of the famous Arch, a bright object
met their eyes, moving vaguely against the mist. It was the gay red
wagon of the Bon Marché, carrying bundles home to the dwellers of
some up-town street.
Katy burst out laughing. "It is an emblem of Paris," she said,--"of our
Paris, I mean. It has been all Bon Marché and fog!"
"Miss Katy," interrupted Amy, "_do_ you like Europe? For my part, I was
never so disgusted with any place in my life!"
"Poor little bird, her views of 'Europe' are rather dark just now, and
no wonder," said her mother. "Never mind, darling, you shall have
something pleasanter by and by if I can find it for you."
"Burnet is a great deal pleasanter than Paris," pronounced Amy,
decidedly. "It doesn't keep always raining there, and I can take walks,
and I understand everything that people say."
All that day they sped southward, and with every hour came a change in
the aspect of their surroundings. Now they made brief stops in large
busy towns which seemed humming with industry. Now they whirled through
grape countries with miles of vineyards, where the brown leaves still
hung on the vines. Then again came glimpses of old Roman ruins,
amphitheatres, viaducts, fragments of wall or arch; or a sudden chill
betokened their approach to mountains, where snowy peaks could be seen
on the far horizon. And when the long night ended and day roused them
from broken slumbers, behold, the world was made over! Autumn had
vanished, and the summer, which they thought fled for good, had taken
his place. Green woods waved about them, fresh leaves were blowing in
the wind, roses and hollyhocks beckoned from white-walled gardens; and
before they had done with exclaiming and rejoicing, the Mediterranean
shot into view, intensely blue, with white fringes of foam, white sails
blowing across, white gulls flying above it, and over all a sky of the
same exquisite blue, whose clouds were white as the drifting sails on
the water below, and they were at Marseilles.
It was like a glimpse of Paradise to eyes fresh from autumnal grays and
glooms, as they sped along the lovely coast, every curve and turn
showing new combinations of sea and shore, olive-crowned cliff and
shining mountain-peak. With every mile the blue became bluer, the wind
softer, the feathery verdure more dense and summer-like. Hyères and
Cannes and Antibes were passed, and then, as they rounded a long point,
came the view of a sunshiny city lying on a sunlit shore; the train
slackened its speed, and they knew that their journey's end was come and
they were in Nice.
The place seemed to laugh with gayety as they drove down the Promenade
des Anglais and past the English garden, where the band was playing
beneath the acacias and palm-trees. On one side was a line of
bright-windowed hotels and _pensions_, with balconies and striped
awnings; on the other, the long reach of yellow sand-beach, where ladies
were grouped on shawls and rugs, and children ran up and down in the
sun, while beyond stretched the waveless sea. The December sun felt as
warm as on a late June day at home, and had the same soft caressing
touch. The pavements were thronged with groups of leisurely-looking
people, all wearing an unmistakable holiday aspect; pretty girls in
correct Parisian costumes walked demurely beside their mothers, with
cavaliers in attendance; and among these young men appeared now and
again the well-known uniform of the United States Navy.
"I wonder," said Mrs. Ashe, struck by a sudden thought, "if by any
chance our squadron is here." She asked the question the moment they
entered the hotel; and the porter, who prided himself on understanding
"zose Eenglesh," replied,--
"Mais oui, Madame, ze Americaine fleet it is here; zat is, not here,
but at Villefranche, just a leetle four mile away,--it is ze same
zing exactly."
"Katy, do you hear that?" cried Mrs. Ashe. "The frigates _are_ here, and
the 'Natchitoches' among them of course; and we shall have Ned to go
about with us everywhere. It is a real piece of good luck for us. Ladies
are at such a loss in a place like this with nobody to escort them. I am
perfectly delighted."
"So am I," said Katy. "I never saw a frigate, and I always wanted to see
one. Do you suppose they will let us go on board of them?"
"Why, of course they will." Then to the porter, "Give me a sheet
of paper and an envelope, please.--I must let Ned know that I am
here at once."
Mrs. Ashe wrote her note and despatched it before they went upstairs to
take off their bonnets. She seemed to have a half-hope that some bird of
the air might carry the news of her arrival to her brother, for she kept
running to the window as if in expectation of seeing him. She was too
restless to lie down or sleep, and after she and Katy had lunched,
proposed that they should go out on the beach for a while.
"Perhaps we may come across Ned," she remarked.
They did not come across Ned, but there was no lack of other
delightful objects to engage their attention. The sands were smooth
and hard as a floor. Soft pink lights were beginning to tinge the
western sky. To the north shone the peaks of the maritime Alps, and
the same rosy glow caught them here and there, and warmed their grays
and whites into color.
"I wonder what that can be?" said Katy, indicating the rocky point which
bounded the beach to the east, where stood a picturesque building of
stone, with massive towers and steep pitches of roof. "It looks half
like a house and half like a castle, but it is quite fascinating, I
think. Do you suppose that people live there?"
"We might ask," suggested Mrs. Ashe.
Just then they came to a shallow river spanned by a bridge, beside whose
pebbly bed stood a number of women who seemed to be washing clothes by
the simple and primitive process of laying them in the water on top of
the stones, and pounding them with a flat wooden paddle till they were
white. Katy privately thought that the clothes stood a poor chance of
lasting through these cleansing operations; but she did not say so, and
made the inquiry which Mrs. Ashe had suggested, in her best French.
"Celle-là?" answered the old woman whom she had addressed. "Mais c'est
la Pension Suisse."
"A _pension_; why, that means a boarding-house," cried Katy. "What fun
it must be to board there!"
"Well, why shouldn't we board there!" said her friend. "You know we
meant to look for rooms as soon as we were rested and had found out a
little about the place. Let us walk on and see what the Pension Suisse
is like. If the inside is as pleasant as the outside, we could not do
better, I should think."
"Oh, I do hope all the rooms are not already taken," said Katy, who had
fallen in love at first sight with the Pension Suisse. She felt quite
oppressed with anxiety as they rang the bell.
The Pension Suisse proved to be quite as charming inside as out. The
thick stone walls made deep sills and embrasures for the casement
windows, which were furnished with red cushions to serve as seats and
lounging-places. Every window seemed to command a view, for those which
did not look toward the sea looked toward the mountains. The house was
by no means full, either. Several sets of rooms were to be had; and Katy
felt as if she had walked straight into the pages of a romance When Mrs.
Ashe engaged for a month a delightful suite of three, a sitting-room and
two sleeping-chambers, in a round tower, with a balcony overhanging the
water, and a side window, from which a flight of steps led down into a
little walled garden, nestled in among the masonry, where tall
laurestinus and lemon trees grew, and orange and brown wallflowers made
the air sweet. Her contentment knew no bounds.
"I am so glad that I came," she told Mrs. Ashe. "I never confessed it to
you before; but sometimes.--when we were sick at sea, you know, and when
it would rain all the time, and after Amy caught that cold in Paris--I
have almost wished, just for a minute or two at a time, that we hadn't.
But now I wouldn't not have come for the world! This is perfectly
delicious. I am glad, glad, glad we are here, and we are going to have a
lovely time, I know."
They were passing out of the rooms into the hall as she said these
words, and two ladies who were walking up a cross passage turned their
heads at the sound of her voice. To her great surprise Katy recognized
Mrs. Page and Lilly.
"Why, Cousin Olivia, is it you?" she cried, springing forward with
the cordiality one naturally feels in seeing a familiar face in a
foreign land.
Mrs. Page seemed rather puzzled than cordial. She put up her eyeglass
and did not seem to quite make out who Katy was.
"It is Katy Carr, mamma," explained Lilly. "Well, Katy, this _is_ a
surprise! Who would have thought of meeting you in Nice!"
There was a decided absence of rapture in Lilly's manner. She was
prettier than ever, as Katy saw in a moment, and beautifully dressed in
soft brown velvet, which exactly suited her complexion and her
pale-colored wavy hair.
"Katy Carr! why, so it is," admitted Mrs. Page. "It is a surprise
indeed. We had no idea that you were abroad. What has brought you so far
from Tunket,--Burnet, I mean? Who are you with?"
"With my friend Mrs. Ashe," explained Katy, rather chilled by this cool
reception.
"Let me introduce you. Mrs. Ashe, these are my cousins Mrs. Page and
Miss Page. Amy,--why where is Amy?"
Amy had walked back to the door of the garden staircase, and was
standing there looking down upon the flowers.
Cousin Olivia bowed rather distantly. Her quick eye took in the details
of Mrs. Ashe's travelling-dress and Katy's dark blue ulster.
"Some countrified friend from that dreadful Western town where they
live," she said to herself. "How foolish of Philip Carr to try to send
his girls to Europe! He can't afford it, I know." Her voice was rather
rigid as she inquired,--
"And what brings you here?--to this house, I mean?"
"Oh, we are coming to-morrow to stay; we have taken rooms for a month,"
explained Katy. "What a delicious-looking old place it is."
"Have you?" said Lilly, in a voice which did not express any particular
pleasure. "Why, we are staying here too."