THE ADVENTURES OF M. D'HARICOT
By J. Storer Clouston
Illustrated By Albert Levering
Harper And Brothers
New York
1902
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THE ADVENTURES OF M. D'HARICOT
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Chapter I
“Adieu, the land of my birth!
Henceforth strange faces!”
--Boulevarde
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N my window-sill lies a faded rose, a rose plucked from an English
lane. As I write, my eyes fall upon the gardens, the forests, around
my ancestral chateau, but the faint scent is an English perfume. To the
land of that rose, the land that sheltered, befriended, amused me, I
dedicate these memoirs of my sojourn there.
They are a record of incidents and impressions that sometimes have
little connection one with another beyond the possession of one
character in common-myself. I am that individual who with unsteady feet
will tread the tight-rope, dance among the eggs, leap through the
paper tambourine--in a word, play clown and hero to the melody of the
castanets. I hold out my hat that you may drop in a sou should
you chance to be amused. To the serious I herewith bid adieu, for
instruction, I fear, will be conspicuously absent, unless, indeed, my
follies serve as a warning.
And now without further prologue I raise the curtain.
The first scene is a railway carriage swiftly travelling farther and
farther from the sea that washes the dear shores of France. Look out of
the window and behold the green fields, the heavy hedge-rows enclosing
them so tightly, the trees, not in woods, but scattered everywhere as
by a restless forester, the brick farms, the hop-fields, the moist,
vaporous atmosphere of England.
Cast your eyes within and you will see, wrapped in an ulster of a
British pattern concealing all that is not British in his appearance,
an exile from his native land. Not to make a mystery of this individual,
you will see, indeed, myself. And I--why did I travel thus enshrouded,
why did my eye look with melancholy upon this fertile landscape, why
did I sit sad and sombre as I travelled through this strange land? There
were many things fresh and novel to stir the mind of an adventurer. The
name, the platform, the look of every station we sped past, was a little
piece of England, curious in its way. Many memories of the people and
the places I had known in fiction should surely have been aroused and
lit my heart with some enthusiasm. What reason, then, for sadness?
I shall tell you, since the affair is now no secret, and as it hereafter
touches my narrative. I was a Royalist, an adherent of the rightful king
of France.
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I am still; I boast it openly. But at that time a demonstration had been
premature, a government was alarmed, and I had fled.
Hereafter I shall tell you more of the secret and formidable society
of which I was then a young, enthusiastic member--the Une, Deux, Trois
League, or U. D. T's, as we styled ourselves in brief, the forlorn hope
of royalty in France. At present it is sufficient to say that we had
failed.
Baffled hopes, doubt as to the future, fear for the present, were my
companions; and they are not gay, these friends.
I felt--I confess it now mirthfully enough--suspicious of the porter of
the train, of the guard, of the people who eyed me.
I was young, and “political offender” had a terrible sound. The Bastile,
Siberia, St. Helena; were not these places built, created, discovered,
for the sole purpose of returning white-haired, enfeebled unfortunates
to their native land, only to find their homes dissolved, their families
deceased, themselves forgotten? The truth is that I was already in
mourning for myself. The prospect of entering history by the martyr's
postern had seemed noble in the heat of action and the excitement of
intrigue. Now I only desired my liberty and as little public attention
as possible. I commend this personal experience to all conspirators.
Such a frame of mind begets suspicions fast, and when I found myself in
the same compartment with a young man who had already glanced at me
in the Gare du Nord, and taken a longer look on board the steamboat,
I felt, I admit, decidedly uncomfortable. From beneath the shade of my
travelling-cap I eyed him for the first half-hour with a deep distrust.
Yet since he regarded me with that total lack of interest an Englishman
bestows upon the unintroduced, and had, besides, an appearance of
honesty written on his countenance, I began to feel somewhat ashamed of
my suspicions, until at last I even came to consider him with interest
as one type of that strange people among whom for a longer or a shorter
time I was doomed to dwell, He differed, it is true, both from the
busts of Shakespeare and the statues of Wellington, yet he was far
from unpleasing. An athletic form, good features, a steady, blue eye, a
complexion rosy as a girl's, fair hair brushed flat across his forehead,
thirty years of truth-telling, cricket-playing, and the practice of
three or four elementary ethical principles, not to mention an excellent
tailor, all went to make this young man a refreshing and an encouraging
spectacle.
“Bah!” I said to myself. “My friend may not be the poet-laureate or the
philanthropic M. Carnegie, but at least he is no spy.”
By nature I am neither bashful nor immoderately timid, and it struck me
that some talk with a native might be of service. My spirits, too, were
rising fast. The train had not yet been stopped and searched; we were
nearing the great London, where he who seeks concealment is as one pin
in a trayful; the hour was early in the day, and the sun breaking out
made the wet grass glisten.
Yes, it was hard to remain silent on that glorious September morning,
even though dark thoughts sat upon the same cushion.
“Monsieur,” I said, “the sun is bright.”
With this remark he seemed to show his agreement by a slight smile and
a murmured phrase. The smile was pleasant, and I felt encouraged to
continue.
“Yet it does not always follow that the heart is gay. Indeed, monsieur,
how often we see tears on a June morning, and hear laughter in March!
It must have struck you often, this want of harmony in the world. Has it
not?”
I had been so carried away my thoughts that I had failed to observe the
lack of sympathy in my fellow-traveller's countenance.
“Possibly,” he remarked, dryly.
“Ah,” I said, with a smile, “you do not appreciate. You are English.”
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“I am,” he replied. “And you are French, I suppose?”
At his words, suspicion woke in my heart. It was only as a Frenchman
that I ran the risk of arrest.
“No; I am an American.”
This was my first attempt to disclaim my nationality, and each time I
denied my country I, like St. Peter, suffered for it. Fair France, your
lovers should be true! That is the lesson.
“Indeed,” was all he said; but I now began to enjoy my first experience
of that disconcerting phenomenon, the English stare. Later on I
discovered that this generally means nothing, and is, in fact, merely
an inherited relic of the days when each Englishman carried his
“knuckle-duster” (a weapon used in boxing), and struck the instant his
neighbor's attention was diverted. It is thanks to this peculiarity
that they now find themselves in possession of so large a portion of the
globe, but the surviving stare is not a reassuring spectacle.
Yet I must not let him see that I was in the slightest inconvenienced by
his attitude. The antidote to suspicion is candor. I was candid.
“Yes,” I said. “I am told that I do not resemble an American, but my
name, at least, is good Anglo-Saxon.”
And I handed him a card prepared for such an emergency. On it I had
written, “Nelson Bunyan, Esq.” If that sounded French, then I had
studied philology in vain.
“I am a traveller in search of curios,” I added. “And you?”
“I am not,” he replied, with a trace of a smile and a humorous look in
his blue eyes.
He was quite friendly, perfectly polite, but that was all the
information about himself I could extract--“I am not,” followed by
a commonplace concerning the weather. A singular type! Repressed,
self-restrained, reticent, good-humoredly condescending--in a word,
British.
We talked of various matters, and I did my best to pick him, like his
native winkle, from the shell. Of my success here is a sample. We had
(or I had) been talking of the things that were best worth a young man's
study.
“And there is love,” I said. “What a field for inquiry, what variety of
aspects, what practical lessons to be learned!”
He smiled at my ardor.
“Have you ever been in love?” I asked.
“Possibly,” he replied, carelessly.
“But devotedly, hopelessly, as a man who would sacrifice heaven for his
mistress?”
“Haven't blown my brains out yet,” he answered.
“Ah, you have been successful; you have invariably brought your little
affairs to a fortunate issue?”
“I don't know that I should call myself a great ladies' man.”
“Possibly you are engaged?” I suggested, remembering that I had heard
that this operation has a singularly sedative effect upon the English.
“No,” he said, with an air of ending the discussion, “I am not.”
Again this “I am not,” followed by a compression of the lips and a cold
glance into vacancy.
“Ah, he is a dolt; a lump of lead!” I said to myself, and I sighed to
think of the people I was leaving, the people of spirit, the people of
wit. Little did I think how my opinion of my fellow-traveller would one
day alter, how my heart would expand.
But now I had something else to catch my attention. I looked out of the
window, and, behold, there was nothing to be seen but houses. Below the
level of the railway line was spread a sea of dingy brick dwellings,
all, save here and there a church-tower, of one uniform height and of
one uniform ugliness. Against the houses nearest to the railway were
plastered or propped, by way of decoration, vast colored testimonials
to the soaps and meat extracts of the country. In lines through this
prosaic landscape rose telegraph posts and signals, and trains bustled
in every direction.
“Pardon me,” I said to my companion, “but I am new to this country. What
city is this?”
“London,” said he.
London, the far-famed! So this was London. Much need to “paint it red,”
as the English say of a frolic.
“Is it all like this?” I asked.
“Not quite,” he replied, in his good-humored tone.
“Thank God!” I exclaimed, devoutly. “I do not like to speak
disrespectfully of any British institution, but this--my faith!”
We crossed the Thames, gray and gleaming in the sunshine, and now I
am at Charing Cross. Just as the train was slowing down I turned to my
fellow-traveller.
“Have you been vaccinated?” I asked.
“I have,” said he, in surprise.
You see even reticence has its limits.
“I thank you for the confidence,” I replied, gravely.
As he stood up to take his umbrella from the rack he handed me back my
card.
“I say,” he abruptly remarked, in a tone, I thought, of mingled severity
and innuendo, “I should have this legend altered, if I were you.
Good-morning.”
And with that he was gone, and my doubts had returned. He suspected
something! Well, there was nothing to be done but maintain a stout heart
and trust to fortune. And it takes much to drive gayety from my spirits
for long. I was a fugitive, a stranger, a foreigner, but I hummed a tune
cheerfully as I waited my turn for the ordeal of the custom-house. And
here came one good omen. My appearance was so deceptively respectable,
and my air so easy, that not a question was asked me. One brief glance
at my dress-shirts and I was free to drive into the streets and lose
myself in the life of London.
Lose myself, do I say? Yes, indeed, and more than myself, too. My
friends, my interests, my language, my home; all these were lost as
utterly as though I had dropped them overboard In the Channel. I had not
time to obtain even one single introduction before I left, or further
counsel than I remembered from reading English books. And I assure you
it is not so easy to benefit by the experiences of Mr. Pickwick and Miss
Sharp as it may seem. Stories may be true to life, but, alas! life is
not so true to stories.
Fortunately, I could talk and read English well--even, I may say,
fluently; also I had the spirit of my race; and finally--and, perhaps,
most fortunately--I was not too old to learn.
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