第61章 ALICIA'S DIARY(36)

A COMMITTEE-MAN OF 'THE TERROR'

We had been talking of the Georgian glories of our old-fashioned watering-place,which now,with its substantial russet-red and dun brick buildings in the style of the year eighteen hundred,looks like one side of a Soho or Bloomsbury Street transported to the shore,and draws a smile from the modern tourist who has no eye for solidity of build.The writer,quite a youth,was present merely as a listener.

The conversation proceeded from general subjects to particular,until old Mrs.H--,whose memory was as perfect at eighty as it had ever been in her life,interested us all by the obvious fidelity with which she repeated a story many times related to her by her mother when our aged friend was a girl--a domestic drama much affecting the life of an acquaintance of her said parent,one Mademoiselle V--,a teacher of French.The incidents occurred in the town during the heyday of its fortunes,at the time of our brief peace with France in 1802-3.

'I wrote it down in the shape of a story some years ago,just after my mother's death,'said Mrs.H--.'It is locked up in my desk there now.'

'Read it!'said we.

'No,'said she;'the light is bad,and I can remember it well enough,word for word,flourishes and all.'We could not be choosers in the circumstances,and she began.

'There are two in it,of course,the man and the woman,and it was on an evening in September that she first got to know him.There had not been such a grand gathering on the Esplanade all the season.His Majesty King George the Third was present,with all the princesses and royal dukes,while upwards of three hundred of the general nobility and other persons of distinction were also in the town at the time.Carriages and other conveyances were arriving every minute from London and elsewhere;and when among the rest a shabby stage-coach came in by a by-route along the coast from Havenpool,and drew up at a second-rate tavern,it attracted comparatively little notice.

'From this dusty vehicle a man alighted,left his small quantity of luggage temporarily at the office,and walked along the street as if to look for lodgings.

'He was about forty-five--possibly fifty--and wore a long coat of faded superfine cloth,with a heavy collar,and a hunched-up neckcloth.He seemed to desire obscurity.

'But the display appeared presently to strike him,and he asked of a rustic he met in the street what was going on;his accent being that of one to whom English pronunciation was difficult.

'The countryman looked at him with a slight surprise,and said,"King Jarge is here and his royal Cwort."

'The stranger inquired if they were going to stay long.

'"Don't know,Sir.Same as they always do,I suppose."

'"How long is that?"

'"Till some time in October.They've come here every summer since eighty-nine."

'The stranger moved onward down St.Thomas Street,and approached the bridge over the harbour backwater,that then,as now,connected the old town with the more modern portion.The spot was swept with the rays of a low sun,which lit up the harbour lengthwise,and shone under the brim of the man's hat and into his eyes as he looked westward.Against the radiance figures were crossing in the opposite direction to his own;among them this lady of my mother's later acquaintance,Mademoiselle V--.She was the daughter of a good old French family,and at that date a pale woman,twenty-eight or thirty years of age,tall and elegant in figure,but plainly dressed and wearing that evening (she said)a small muslin shawl crossed over the bosom in the fashion of the time,and tied behind.

'At sight of his face,which,as she used to tell us,was unusually distinct in the peering sunlight,she could not help giving a little shriek of horror,for a terrible reason connected with her history,and after walking a few steps further,she sank down against the parapet of the bridge in a fainting fit.

'In his preoccupation the foreign gentleman had hardly noticed her,but her strange collapse immediately attracted his attention.He quickly crossed the carriageway,picked her up,and carried her into the first shop adjoining the bridge,explaining that she was a lady who had been taken ill outside.

'She soon revived;but,clearly much puzzled,her helper perceived that she still had a dread of him which was sufficient to hinder her complete recovery of self-command.She spoke in a quick and nervous way to the shopkeeper,asking him to call a coach.

'This the shopkeeper did,Mademoiselle V--and the stranger remaining in constrained silence while he was gone.The coach came up,and giving the man the address,she entered it and drove away.

'"Who is that lady?"said the newly arrived gentleman.

'"She's of your nation,as I should make bold to suppose,"said the shopkeeper.And he told the other that she was Mademoiselle V--,governess at General Newbold's,in the same town.

'"You have many foreigners here?"the stranger inquired.

'"Yes,though mostly Hanoverians.But since the peace they are learning French a good deal in genteel society,and French instructors are rather in demand."

'"Yes,I teach it,"said the visitor."I am looking for a tutorship in an academy."

'The information given by the burgess to the Frenchman seemed to explain to the latter nothing of his countrywoman's conduct--which,indeed,was the case--and he left the shop,taking his course again over the bridge and along the south quay to the Old Rooms Inn,where he engaged a bedchamber.

'Thoughts of the woman who had betrayed such agitation at sight of him lingered naturally enough with the newcomer.Though,as Istated,not much less than thirty years of age,Mademoiselle V--,one of his own nation,and of highly refined and delicate appearance,had kindled a singular interest in the middle-aged gentleman's breast,and her large dark eyes,as they had opened and shrunk from him,exhibited a pathetic beauty to which hardly any man could have been insensible.