LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1235, 18 February 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

MY HEROINE.

. Argosy,

( Continued ,) This last letter disquieted me the least. It was the last of a long series of similar warnings. I had not forgiven, and did not intend to forgive. I had fought against my fancy—it was but a fancy, thoguh I thought it perpetual adoration at the time. I had thought of her money with savage resentment, and then, having scarcely spoken to her of anything more serious than croquet and waltzes, I had gone to her father frankly, like the romantic idiot I was, and talked about asking him nothing, living on what I could make at the bar ; and he turned on me with stupid blundering brutality, called me a heiress-hunter, and an idle scamp waiting for dead men’s shoes. No, I would not forgive him the burning shame of that moment. I gave him up from that day. Not all Silas’s sage exhortations—Silas is the local doctor, and was my father’s friend—would make me feel a whit leas fierce and unforgiving when I thought of the blind old squire s insult. My father was the younger brother, all but penniless, and penniless I would remain if my own labour could nofenrich me. The other letters were not so easily disposed of. The failure of the “ Argus” meant the stoppage of my unique bank. I had saved a modest sum, sufficient to help me over my mortc saison, but these peremptory missives entirely altered the aspect of my affairs financially considered. I could pay both tradesmen, but what would become of me afterwards? Sage middle-aged fathers of families would advise with a few moral admonitions; but if I paid these creditors, I must make others. Shylock for Shylock, I prefer the one you know, whose temper you are familiar with, whose hand on your bell is recognisable, whose step on your staircase betrays him. So I resolved to keep my name on the books of Messrs Jones, Brown, and Robinson, only I sent them each a certain sum on account, and resolved to winter at Dieppe. Dieppe, I reflected, is sufficiently civilised to receive an English newspaper now and then. It is comfortable, for it is an English summer haunt. In the winter no one has probably tried it. Then it must be cheap, and open new perspectives to the literary observer. Every fashionable bathing place presents certain curious features when the machines are drawn up high on the beach ; when the etahlissnnent is closed, when the hotels dismiss their supernumerary waiters, and life has as it were donned chintz coverings and shut its shutters, awaiting the summer. Such towns must furnish studies of moral stagnation, of intellectual coma, worth reproducing. And Dieppe, without being peculiarly adapted for my purpose, would do as well as any other seaport of France ; for French I had resolved my novel should be, French and idyllic, if the two terms can be made to meet.

The season was definitively over, I was glad to see. on issuing from the Custom House. I was the only voyageur pour Dieppe. The rambling old town looked desolate and half asleep. The puggarees of my compatriots lloated nowhere. The pique costumes of my countrywomen had departed in enormous trunks; the gommenx were reintegrated in Paris ; the Eussians had joined those multitudinous embassies all travelling Muscovites seem to belong to ; the Americana had dispersed everywhere. I was gloriously alone; so alone, so exceptional, that a pensive lieutenant of Chasseurs (the 9th Chasseurs formed the garrison) saluted me with a ‘ Bonjour, monsieur,’ as he might have done to a solitary European met by chance in the desert. Here was the background I wanted to my idyl—the old town dead and moss-grown yonder ; the castle, with its traces of English bullets ; the green ramparts, with humble kitchen gardens at their base ; and then, above all, the Pollet, that quaint antiquated fish quarter, with its pavement of sharp shingles, its overhanging eaves, its dark cupboards of saharets, its population in red nightcaps and attenuated kirtles.

Here I felt were the scenes and actors I wanted. I did not need the guide-book to ascertain that the Pollet had a peculiar population of its own inhabitants that never mixed with those of the flight Faubourg, that benefited in no way by the incursions of summer visitors, that prayed in their own chapels, bought at their own shops, earned their living in their own primitive way, and looked askance like Normans who remembered Jean Bart on AngloSaxons in tweed. I resolved to conquer the Pellet. I crept into it # gradually, dressed in rough serge, never exhibiting more than one ten-sous piece at a time, smoking caporal dc coniine in an uu obtrusive Gatnbier pipe. I democratised myself, and in a few days I had exchanged

friendly words with several wrinkled old net-menders and hideous witches knitting on their doorsteps.

I had returned from one of these visits, and was climbing the ramparts for a brisk walk before dinner. The trees were almost bare. I walked on a thick carpet of russet leaves, and a strong salt breeze filled my nostrils with that faint odour of see-weeds, of things far off and inaccessible, that sets one longing for change, that breathes the spirit of a small Columbus into one. I stood in the semicircle of one of the bastions and looked seawards, and felt my trifling newspaper wit, my papier-mache idols of Fleet street and Paternoster Bow, to be very small indeed. Then behind me, behind the grassgrown battery at my back, I heard a quiet voice—a woman’s voice, fresh, and with the slow Norman nasal twang in it: ‘Bonsoir. A demaiu.’ i|There was no answer. I liked the voice I was lonely'and not very rich, nor univer sally famous. Scattered remnants of lachrymose sentimentality collected in me. I was in one of those moods when a man wants a guardian angel, and forgets that guardian angels bear children who require perambulators and decent schooling. I turned and met her as she issued from the shadow of the earthwork. She belonged to well-to-do fisher-folk, I divined immediately, and the fisher-folk were lucky progenitors, I added presently. A cotton fichu crossed her breast, a short black skirt, blue-worsted stockings, and clumsy shoes with buckles—the costume is not seductive’ on -paper, and yet I can find nothing amiss in it even now. The face had a bonny; air ,of candour and quietude, not meek nor saintlike, very womanly, lather coquettish at times, but still very youthful—that vague air of having just awoke that country lasses have in France more than in England, where the country is becoming more suburban every day, and where lasses are young ladies and play Madame Angot on the pianoforte. She had brown eyes, which she screwed up at you inquiringly j tawny hair that was neve smooth, albeit I have reason to suspect she used some primitive species of bandoline manufactured by local authorities on the cosmetic arts. Her face was a little freckled, her hands brown and plump, her feet small and agile despite the clumsy shoes. A Parisian milliner and hairdresser would have made her a very ordinary soubrette of a sober ladylike kind; but as she was in her own domain, she would have outshone the soubrette’s mistress.

She glanced at me as I stood aside to let her pass. There was not much in the glance ; it was fearless and slightly critical, that was all. But it told me that she was accustomed to be abroad alone, that she knew how to protect herself, and would not faint or fly if a stranger in masculine garb ventured to keep her in sight. She descended the Grande Rue, and turned aside at the Market place and entered Saint Pierre. I followed her. It was dusk, and the little side chapels, filled with miniature ships and nets and figure-heads, were quite dark. She stopped in one, and knelt for a few moments. Aa we returned, in the nave a young fishermen met her, spoke to her, and they went their way together. But again she glanced at mo aa the red-baize door swung behind us, and I fancied the glance was more curious than before; not more indignant. The next day I went to the Pollet, and halted before No, 13 Rue de la Poissonnerie, It was an old house lit by small windows with leaden frames. I studied it attentively, for in that house I intended to live for the next four months, to write my novel and lay the foundation of my fortune. Thera were dimity curtains at all the windows, and flowers at all but one I passed and repassed several times ; then I entered a small wine-shop opposite, and seated myself at the rough wooden table of the common room. In an hour I had remarked that nobody had appeared at the flowerless windows, while the other rooms were apparently inhabited. My mind was made up. 1 crossed the narrow street and lifted the latch of No. 13. An old woman in the kitchen and sitting-room raised her head from the saucepan wherein a sonpe of chovx was simmering. I raised my hat and invented an excuse.

* I am told, madame, that you have a room to let.’

‘We have a room, true!; but—but—l don’t know. My daughter will tell you. Annette, Annette, descend; a monsieur wants to know—’ The rest was lost in the clatter of wooden shoes on the staircase. Annette presented herself, and Annette I had met on the ramparts yesterday. She appeared not to recognise me, and turned composedly to her mother, inquiring what was my errand. I explained. ‘My father has thought of letting the room ; you are right, monsieur. Indeed he did let it about a year ago to an English artist. Monsieur is English ?' I assented. My accent is flagrantly insular.

She continued calmly, * I daresay my father would let it—for some time, {monsieur comprehends? Not for a week or two. Does monsieur stay long here V

• During the winter ; four months or so.’ * Eh bien, on pour r a s'arranger. Here is my father.’

v 7h be t'Qniinved.')