Kitabı oku: «The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886», sayfa 4
VARIETIES
The "Woman of Stenay."
"And so you have not heard the story of the 'Woman of Stenay'?" said a Lorraine peasant. "It was in war-time, and she offered a barrel of wine to a detachment of Austrians, saying—
"'You are thirsty, friends. Drink. You are welcome to all my store.' And as she spoke she drank a cupful in their honour.
"The soldiers accepted with pleasure, and in a few minutes four hundred men were writhing on the ground in agony.
"Then the 'Woman of Stenay' rose, and with her dying breath shrieked out—
"'You are all poisoned! Vive la France!'
"She then fell back a corpse."
This is the legend of Lorraine, and the memory of its heroine is revered by the peasantry as highly as that of Charlotte Corday.
Singing Servants
Tusser, in his "Points of Huswifry united to the Comforts of Husbandry," published in 1570, recommends the country housewife to select servants who sing at their work as being usually the most painstaking and the best. He says—
"Such servants are oftenest painful and good
That sing in their labour, as birds in the wood."
A Hint for Workers.—St. Bernard has said that the more he prayed and read his Bible the better he did his ordinary work and the more clearly and regularly did he conduct his correspondence. An increase of private devotion will be found not to lessen one's power of work or one's efficiency in ordinary duties.
Our Own Selves.—How can you learn self-knowledge? Never by meditation, but best by action. Try to do your duty, and you will soon find what you are worth. What is your duty? The exigency of the day.—Goethe.
Useless Anxiety.—I shall add to my list as the eighth deadly sin that of anxiety of mind, and resolve not to be pining and miserable when I ought to be grateful and happy.—Sir Thomas Barnard.
The Moonlight Sonata.—The "Moonlight Sonata" is an absurd title which has for years been attached, both in Germany and England, to one of Beethoven's sonatas. It is said to have been derived from the expression of a German critic comparing the first movement to a boat wandering by moonlight on the Lake of Lucerne.
THE SHEPHERD'S FAIRY
A PASTORALE
By DARLEY DALE, Author of "Fair Katherine," etc
CHAPTER I.
THE FAIRY'S ORIGIN
"Die Eifersucht ist eine Leidenschaft der mit Eifer sucht muss Leiden schaffen."—German Proverb.
Very many years ago, in a valley a few miles from the coast, there stood a French château, beautifully situated in a handsome park near the Norman village of Carolles. The rich woodland scenery, the green pastures with their large wild fences now laden with wild roses; the shady lanes, whose banks will soon be covered with the long, bright green fronds of the hartstongue, and the delicate drooping trichomanes; the fine timber, and the picturesque farmhouses with their thatched roofs nestling in the valleys—all tend to give a home-like English air to the scenery of Normandy. And the district in which the Château de Thorens stands possesses all these attractions for an English eye. Not that any English people lived in the château; the De Thorens were French, or rather Norman, to the backbone, descended from the great duke, and proud as Lucifer of their birth. Pride and poverty are generally supposed to go together; and though poor is perhaps hardly the word to apply to people who could afford to live in the ease and luxury which prevailed at Château de Thorens, yet for their rank the De Thorens were not rich, and, consequently, after the fashion of many French families, there were three generations of them now all living under the ancestral roof.
First there was the old baroness, a picturesque old lady with very white hair and piercing black eyes, with whom we have very little to do; then there was her eldest son, the present baron, for his father had been dead some years, and his beautiful young wife, whom he was so passionately fond of that he was jealous—dreadfully jealous—of her love for her baby, a little girl a few months old; and, lastly, there were the baron's three younger brothers, who with Père Yvon, the chaplain, made up the family party. The two younger brothers were mere boys, still under Père Yvon's charge, for he acted as tutor to them as well as chaplain; but Léon de Thorens was a young man of five-and-twenty, only a year or two younger than the baron. He was a fine, handsome man, tall and thin, with his mother's fine black eyes and small well-cut nose and mouth. He was of a bold, reckless nature, full of animal spirits, the very life of the house when he was at home, which was seldom, as he owned a yacht, in which he spent a great deal of his time. He was his mother's favourite son, and both he and she had often privately regretted that he was not the eldest.
The baron was smaller and fairer than Léon, and not so handsome, though there was a strong family likeness between the brothers. He was of a quieter disposition, and his restlessness took an intellectual rather than a physical form, his wanderings being confined to the shelves of the valuable library which the château boasted, instead of extending over the seas on which Léon spent so much of his time. The baron's studious nature had endeared him very much to Père Yvon, with whom he was a prime favourite, and who had never shown him any of the severity of which the other brothers often complained, but, on the contrary, had erred on the opposite side with the baron, whose wishes had never been crossed in any way, and who had grown up to think himself the one important person in the world to whom the convenience of everyone else must be sacrificed.
For the first year of their married life the pretty baroness had contributed as much as Père Yvon to spoil her husband, whose every whim she had humoured until her baby was born, and then, much to his astonishment, the baron found that his beautiful, gentle wife had a will of her own, and, what was still worse in his eyes, a large place in her heart for someone else besides himself, and although that someone else was only his infant daughter, the baron was jealous.
In vain had he urged that the baby should be sent away to some peasant to nurse until it was a year or two old, as he and all his brothers had been, after a very common custom in French families. No, the baroness would not hear of such a thing; she could not live without her baby, and every moment she could spare she spent by its cradle. Indeed, so infatuated was she with her new possession, whose every movement was a delight to her, that she did not notice the baron became daily more and more morose, and that an ominous frown had settled on his fine forehead, while his mouth was closed with a determination that boded ill for his wife and daughter. But the baroness lived so much in her child that she did not observe the change in her husband; and as he never allowed the baby to be brought into his presence, the baroness saw but little of him except at meals, when all the others were present, and Léon's wild spirits covered his brother's depression and silence.
At last, one fine June morning, matters reached a climax, when the family sat down to their one o'clock déjeuner. The baroness was late; the first course was finished, and still she did not appear.
"Where is Mathilde, Arnaut?" asked the old baroness.
"I don't know," said the baron, sulkily.
"I do," said Léon; "she is worshipping at the shrine of that precious baby of yours, Arnaut. Why on earth don't you send it away till it is old enough to amuse us?"
"Go and tell Madame la Baronne the soup is already finished," said the baron to a servant at his elbow; but he vouchsafed no further answer.
"I think Arnaut has suggested that the baby should be sent away, but Mathilde objects," remarked the old baroness.
"Send it away without asking her, then. Give her a pug instead; it will be much more amusing, and not half the trouble the baby is," said Léon.
Here the servant returned to say madame would take her déjeuner in the nursery, as the nurse was out and she could not leave the baby.
"Really, Mathilde is too absurd, when there are at least three or four other servants in the house who could look after the baby as well as the nurse," said the old baroness, helping herself to some omelette.
"She is mad," muttered the baron, angrily.
"Quite, all women are; there can be no doubt about that. Look here, Arnaut, it is quite clear if you don't send that infant away, you might just as well live en garçon, like me, as I foresee you won't have much of Mathilde's society now," said Léon.
"It does not require much foresight to predict that," said the baron, bitterly.
"Well, if Mathilde won't send it away, just hand it over to me the next time I take a cruise, which will be as soon as ever there is wind enough to fill my sails, and I'll place the child somewhere where there is no fear of Mathilde getting it again till it is of a reasonable age," said Léon.
The idea of handing the baby over to the tender mercies of Léon struck them all as so comic that a general laugh, in which all but the baron joined, greeted this speech, which was forgotten as soon as it was uttered by the speaker.
A few days after Léon announced that he was going on board his yacht that evening; a south wind was blowing, and he should take a cruise up the Channel. Would the baron go with him? They were sure to have fine weather, and it would be delightful at sea in this heat. The baron declined the invitation, as he was a wretched sailor; but that evening, when he and Léon were smoking after dinner, he said, suddenly, "Where are you going, Léon?"
"I don't know; it depends on the wind. I may run over to England, or I may only go to the Channel Isles. I shall see."
"Shall you touch anywhere?"
"Oh, yes, I shall go ashore; I shan't take provisions for more than a week. Why?"
The baron looked round the verandah in which they were sitting to make sure that they were alone, and having satisfied himself of this he leant forward and said, in a half-whisper, "Tiens, Léon! Will you help me? I am determined to stand it no longer; it is wearing my life out; I have not a moment's peace. If I don't get rid of it I believe I shall go mad."
"What is it you are talking of? I'll help you if I can, but what is wearing your life out?" said Léon.
"The baby, of course," said the baron.
"The baby! Well, but what do you want me to do with that! I can't kill it, you know."
"Of course not, but you said in joke the other day you would take it with you on one of your trips, and put it out to nurse. I wish to heaven, Léon, you'd do it in reality. It is no use my sending it to anyone near here; Mathilde would go after it the next day. My only chance is to send it somewhere where it will be safe, of course, and well looked after, but where Mathilde can't go after it, and as she would go to the end of the world for it if she knew where it was, it must go where she can't find it; she must not know where it is. No one, indeed, need know but you, for as far as I am concerned the less I know about it at present the better; it has spoilt all my happiness. Mathilde is so wrapped up in that child she does not care a fig for me now; in fact, I rarely see her. If you can only put that infant safely out of our way for a year or two, I'll never forget it, Léon."
"Are you in real sober earnest, Arnaut?" asked Léon, who, in his astonishment, had risen to his feet, and was puffing away vigorously at his cigar.
"Of course I am. I am willing to pay handsomely for it, and I shall depend upon you putting it where it will be well taken care of. As for all the rest, I leave it to you to take it where you like—Australia if you wish, only don't tell me where it is, or I might cut my own throat by telling Mathilde if she makes a great scene, as she will when it is gone. Will you do it, Léon?"
"Whew!" whistled Léon. "I don't care for the work, for if anything should happen to the child Mathilde would never forgive me nor you either. However, if you insist, I think I could manage it, but as I am going to start in two or three hours, there is not much time. I must go down to the yacht and speak to my men first. If I may tell them I am taking the child by your express wish I could manage it, I think. The next difficulty is where to take it, but I have an idea about that, so I'll be off now, and see what I can arrange. I shall ride, so I shall be back in an hour."
"Tell them anything you like, except not to let anyone know where you leave the child," replied the baron, as Léon started on an errand which, in spite of his protest to the contrary, was thoroughly after his own heart; indeed, any mad freak such as this was quite in his line.
Among his crew he had an English sailor who acted as carpenter, and, as Léon often said, was worth two or three French sailors in a gale or an emergency. He knew the Channel, too, as well as a pilot, and, indeed often acted in that capacity; he was an honest, trustworthy man—at least, so Léon thought; and as he rode over the hills to Carolles, he decided to take this man into his confidence, and see if he could help him; it was possible this Englishman knew of some of his own countrywomen who would undertake the charge of the child.
Accordingly, when he reached his yacht, Léon called for John Smith, and had a long conversation with him in English, which he spoke fairly well, the result of which was the carpenter, after a little thought, declared he knew of a shepherd and his wife in Sussex who, he felt sure, would undertake the charge of the child; his only fear was that they might have some scruples about keeping the matter a secret, and might want to know who the child was; but if Léon would leave this to him to arrange, he could, he thought, manage it so that the shepherd should have no idea to whom the child belonged, nor why it was put into his care.
"Where does this good man live?" asked Léon.
"About four or five miles from Brighton, sir. The wind is favourable; we might run across in twenty-four hours or less if it lasts, and I think it will; we shall have the tide with us going out if we start at ten to-night," said the carpenter.
"Well, that is settled. Now the next point is, who is to take care of it on board? It must be fed; who of our men understands babies best?"
"I can't undertake that, sir, but there's Pierre Legros, he has half a dozen of his own, and when he is at home looks after them all I believe; he ought to know all about it."
"Call Pierre, then."
Pierre Legros was accordingly called, and, on hearing what was required of him, professed with pride his ability to act as nurse during the voyage; and having commissioned him to lay in a stock of food for the baby, about which Léon's ideas were exceedingly vague, Léon rode back to the château.
The baron was on the lookout for him, and was delighted to hear all was arranged for the baby's removal.
"I have not been idle since you have been gone. Luckily Mathilde has a headache, so I have sent her to bed, and I sat with her till she was asleep. My next care was to get rid of the nurse, so I have packed her off to Brécy with one of the other servants for some medicine for Mathilde, and the coast is clear to the nursery now. There is only one of the housemaids with the baby, and when you are ready to start you must lose something and require her to find it while I secure the child. Lastly, I ordered the dogcart, and said I would drive you."
"But how about the child?" interrupted Léon.
"I am coming to that. Just as we are going to start, you must lose a stick or a coat. I'll offer to go back for it, and meet you at the side door; there is a staircase leading to the nursery close to it, down which I shall come with the baby after I have sent the housemaid who is guarding it to look for your stick. We shall be off and the baby on board before it is missed, for the girl is sure to stay gossiping with the other servants when we are off."
"Well, I hope you'll succeed, but I confess I think this is the most difficult part of the affair. However, there is no time to lose; you had better order the dogcart at once, while I go and say good-bye to mother and the boys. We must be off in twenty minutes," replied Léon.
Half an hour later the brothers were seated in the dogcart, while the old baroness, with a shawl thrown round her head, stood on the steps under the portico to catch the last glimpse of her handsome Léon, with her two younger boys by her side, and Père Yvon and some of the servants in the background. The groom had just let go of the horse's bridle when Léon exclaimed—
"Wait a minute! I have forgotten my Malacca cane. I lent it to you the other day, Arnaut. I must have it. Where shall I find it?"
"So you did. Here, one of you boys, run into my—but no, you'll wake Mathilde, I'll go myself. Here, Léon, take the reins, and drive round to the side door; I'll meet you there," said the baron, descending from the dogcart, and running into the house.
