LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1236, 19 February 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

MY HEROINE. Argosy.

( Continued ,) Tim father wore a very stiff costume of what looked like sailcloth, lie had been a sailor I cmld see, but had Jong smee retired from active fservice Ho had a pen behind his ear, and appeared to have been perspiring copiously ovor some spscies of boo > keeping, and to feel immensely relieved at having an excuse for laying down the pen, with which he had been tattooing Limseif from his finger tips to his elbows.

Mademoiselle Aunettc explained that I was English • when hor father looked at mo more in pity than in anger; and that I wanted a room whereat he smiled and rubbed his ink stained hands.

‘ My nephew Herve used to occupy it ’ he said slowly and evasively, like a true Nor man, ‘ lint he grew up ; the young birds leave the. nest directly they can lly, »Ti, monsieur? and he lodges on the port when he’s not at sea. We arc not lodging-house keepers, y u see, monsieur. I did Jet the room to an English artist, but that was only to oblige him, just as i might do for you, monsieur.’

I did not inquire what special reasons the old man had for obliging me, but passed rapidly on to the more practic d part of the negotiat’ons ; that is to say, I named a rattier high sum as the value I placed upon the vacant room, and tendered the denier a Dion. Thereupon my landlord told mo that his name was Le Hour, and that I could instal myself when I chose. Mademoiselle Anm tte showed me up to my room. It was a small low chamber, dark, immaculately clean, and pervaded by a 'aint odour of tarpaulin and mackerel. Nothing here at all suggestive of the gaily-papered unsympathet’c little hotel bedroom, orna meuted with pictorial supplements of ‘ LTI- - ation’ and the usual ‘Napoleon at Arcoli ’ A puritanic apartment, a place to dream in, to work in steadily, intently—the very study I was seekmv. Annette was looping up the dimity curtain, saying that when tie sun shone the room was quite iay. I did not look at her—she seemed sueh a slight and simple little body, a glance might ruffle or intimidate her. Bub as she turned away from 'he window I saw that she was perfectly composed, provokingly ignorant of the fact that I was not an ordinary lodger, to be satisfied with clean sheets and punctuality in the matter of shaving-water. ‘ Do you often walk on the ramparts, mademoiselle ?

She did not'jcolor, but she eyed me at tentively for a moment, and then answered quietly, ‘That depends. I take aunt her coffee and snuff—aunt lives near Arques—now and theu, and I generally turn aside at the Chateau coming home.’ ‘ I think I saw you there yesterday. You are right, the ramparts are the best place for a qoiet solitary walk. We men who write becks or paint pic urea like the sea as much as your father c m 'ike it.’

‘ Monsieur writes—writes things that are printed ?’ she said ; and I guessed that she had no very great reverence for men who write things that are printed. * That is my metier— not a wonderfully profitable one ’ ‘ Ah, I don’t know. I once saw some writers from Paris. They wore velvet coats. They bad such be mtiful ladies with them. But they made too much noise. And then the ladies knocked them with their parasols. I didn’t like them at all.’

I guessed that my Parisian confreres were not accompanied by patterns of the domestic virtues, a >d hastened to disclaim any connection with them. Annette appeared satisfied, but not greatly impressed, I heard her down stairs answer her mother’s inquiries with a curt ‘He writes hooka in English. It must be horri blem ent dij/iv He,

Chapter II

I met Le Houx frequently. He was delighted to have the slight st excuse for leaving hi a little office, and sauntering up the pier, chatting with the boatmen and sailors, calling tho bare legged old fishfags by their names as they tugged a smack into port, and acting as umpire in the disputes that invariibly occurred when the ladies were pAd and retired with their five sous. I was soon familiar with him. 1 did not object to hear my countrymen abused, and learned with wonderful promptitude the names and numbers of every smack in which he was interested Regularly every evening as the clock struck seveu the cousiu Hervc appeared, uttered solemnly ‘Bon soir, la compagnie,’ he departed. I was generally part of la compagnie ; but I doubt whether his salutation included me. I was not long in perceiving that Annette .and Herve w T ere destined to marry, according to M. and Madame le Houx, But there was not much courtship. Toe young sailor brought a few flowers now and then ; and occasionally, when he had been fishing in the port, presented a string of red mullet to his aunt, with the laconic observation that ‘ Annette liked them.’ Annette talked to him gaily, in familiar si-terly fashion. I never saw her move or colour when he ent red, or heard her siy more concerning his offering than, * Oh, the pretty flowers ! ’ and ‘ Let’s have these mullet marines.’ And yet she would take his arm and go to M ss ; she would sit beside him at supper on Sunday, and listen without impatien e to her father’s time-honoured pleasautri s on the subject of youth and love and marriage. 1 he rd them with less complacency. 1 had sketched the plan of my novel; t had written the intro ductory chapter ; but the plan would not lit my persi nages ; Ann Ate would not pair off W'ith Herve after the vicissitudes I had imagined. I could make nothing of him ; and it irritated me to try. It was not an idyl 1 had before me; it was a low-life mesalliance the worst possible mesalliance - that of mind and character. The young fisher was brave aud comely enough on the deck of his lugger La Vigie ; but Annette beside him—Annette with her little hard on his horny palm, answering his surly clownish utterances with her low and quiet voice—it was a monstrous fic'ion. I was not going to rewrite ‘ Beauty and the Beast.’ ‘Annette,’ I said one day—a dull December day, when the mother was busy at her fortnightly savonnoge in the yard - ‘ Annette, will you be married before I go ? * She coloured, and all the staid little airs of self-possession seemed to fall away from her like a garment Mie came aid stood by me at the high w indow shelf. ‘dicing! you are going. Monsieur Vallance ? "But why do you ask me that — about marrying? ’ Why did I speak of it ? why, indeed, un less it was under the promptings of that pe veisi mood that makes a man tear the bandage from his wound, spell out deliberately the sentence that condemns him ? ‘Why, my child, you are fiancee, _ You must marry soon. Herve must be impa tieut.’

The words stuck in ray throat. I rose impatiently and looked out of the window. He was there, at the wine-shop opposite, smoking over his demi-litre. She spuke ; I would not look at her. * Monsieur, Monsieur Ste—phen’- shyly and hesitatingly she pronounced the English name—‘don’t think wrong of me. 1 am fiancee —what they call fiancee , I suppose ; but- but —oh, I can’t marry him —I can’t can’t I ’

I turned. She was crying—not with sobs or gases, but crying as though some cold must of pride were melting away, as though her poor child’s heart was breaking too The struggle was over. 1 could not help it. I look her hands and drew her to me.

‘ Migiioune, mignonne, tu dois m’aimes un pen ; je t’aimo moi a en dovinir fou.’

Not even now would 1 have that moment otherwise. Her class does nut cultivate the art of appearing ‘ so surprised’ at a declaration like that 1 had just made. There is a primitive frankness in its welcome and rebuff. She gave herself up entirely—forgot tho mother in the courtyard, the cousin over toe way —and returned my kiss without shame or shrinking. It was I who lirst awoke to a perception of tho dangers of the situation, I raised my eyes from her face to

meet Hcrve's gaze turned interrogatively in our direction.

‘lt’s only the cousin,' she said, smiling. The cousin crossed the road, entered the room, and uttered his usual ‘Ron soir, la compaguie,’ -with an air of suriy suspicion. That suspicion, I saw, became certainty—certainty of his defeat—after he had scanned our faces ; and the handsome features of U cousin Herve, wore an unpleasant look as he retired with a muttered excuse.

‘ The cousin is not pleased,’ I said : ‘he guesses everything. He will watch us Where can we meet, che.rie?— on the ramparts, where I saw you first ?’ She shook her head decisively. ‘ Not there ! It is too cold—too far. On tho road to Pnys.’

Then she added seriously, ‘But why should Herve watch us? He will know eve’ything shortly. Why should we hide ? Lc pern must know.’

Ay, why should we hide? I did not answer her question then, for madame appe ued with an armful of damp linen; and upstairs I f-und it difficult to frame a satisfactory response even t r myself. The pere must know Of course he must; and so must H enry Vallance, of Vailance Place, Hants J.P , and my club friends, and the major part of those irresponsible directors of public opinion whom I chatted with in the stalls on first nights. I began to realise 'ho practical meaning of the scene just enacted. I did not regret one word of my part in it; I did not hesitate ; I had no doubt of her or of myself for one instant. Of that I am convinced. Bat I was em-bar.-asssed with my happiness. 1 knew not how to fit it into my life, to give it breath-ing-room in the moving, modern, artificial existence that 1 must, sooner or later, resume. I could not picture myself presenting Annette in a bonnet to ( aunt of the Thunderer, escorting her to the Academy, following her train between the stalls at the Opera, What would the half dozen supremely sclf-sathfied country families with which the Vallanccsa e connect d think of Mrs Stephen Vallance? Mrs St. phea Vallance ! Could the little Normancm. in frilled cap and worsted stockings, everjpresmt a piece of pasteboard bearing those syllables? And the financial side of the question was quite as distracting. I was to all appearance Ja parti for the Pollet Bat in truth I could not determine how the parti wss to describe his means of existence to i he beavpere; and I winced as I bestowed that august title on M, le Hour.

J/h he continued.''-