Mary Russell Mitford
(1787-1855)
Part I
This pretty Berkshire of ours, renowned for its pastoral villages, and its picturesque interchange of common and woodland, and small enclosures divided by deep lanes, to which thick borders of hedgerow timber give a character of deep and forest-like richness, seldom seen in counties of more ambitious pretension;—this beautiful Berkshire is for nothing more distinguished than for the number and variety of its rivers. I do not mean, in this catalogue, to include the large proportion of bright, shallow, trouting streams, for the most part unchristened and unregistered even by a parish historian, or the compiler of a county map, and known only as “the brook” by the very people whose meadows they dance through. To confine myself to rivers of state and name, we have, first of all, the rapid, changeful, beautiful Loddon, a frisky, tricksy water-sprite, much addicted to wandering out of bounds, and as different from the timid, fearful, nymph Lodona, whom Pope, in a metamorphosing strain, was pleased to assign as the source of those clear waters, as anything well can be. Next we have the Kennet—“the Kennet swift, for silver eels renowned,” according to the same author, and which, in our part at least, has, generally speaking, a fine pastoral character, now sweeping along through broad valleys of meadow-land, rich and green, and finely dappled by trees, chiefly oak and elm, in park-like groups; now confined within a narrower channel, and spanned by some lofty bridge as it passes the quiet village or small country town, enlivening every scene which it approaches by the pleasant flow of its clear waters, cool and glittering as a moonbeam. Lastly and chiefly, we possess, for the whole length of the county, and for the most part forming its sinuous boundary, the deep majestic Thames, gliding in tranquil grandeur, with a motion so slow as to be almost imperceptible; reflecting as a mirror, in unbroken shadow, every tree and shrub that fringes its banks, and exhibiting, during all its meanders, a lake-like character of stillness and repose—a silent fullness—a calm and gentle dignity, which is, perhaps, in all things, from the human mind to the mighty river, the surest and highest symbol of power. It is singular, that even the small streamlet near Cirencester, where, under the almost equally celebrated name of Isis, the Thames takes its rise, is distinguished by the same unruffled serenity (the calmness of the infant Hercules) for which its subsequent course is so remarkable. And what a course it is! The classic domes of Oxford; the sunny plains of Berkshire; the Buckinghamshire beechwoods; Windsor, with its royal towers; Richmond, and its world of gardens; then London—mighty London; and then the sea—its only rival in riches and in fame. Half the bards of England have sung of their great river; but never, I think, has it been more finely praised than in two sonnets, which I will venture to transcribe from the manuscript which is open before me. They have a local propriety, since the writer, Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, of whose birthplace Berkshire may well be proud, passed his early youth in this neighbourhood, and it is in remembrance of those days that they are written.
To the Thames at Westminster, in Recollection of the same river below Caversham
To the same river
Our business, however, is not with the mighty Thames—the “wealthiest of rivers”—but with the pleasant and pastoral Kennet.
One of the most romantic spots that it touches in its progress is a fisherman’s cottage, on the estate of my friend Colonel Talbot, who, amongst his large manorial property, possesses a right of fishery for some mile or two up the river—a right which, like other manorial possessions, combines a good deal of trouble with its pleasure and its dignity, and obliges the colonel to keep up a sort of river police for the defence of his watery demesnes. This police consists of Adam Stokes the fisherman, of his follower Gilbert, and his boy Ned Gilbert, who is, after all, but semi-aquatic, and belongs in “division tripartite” to the park-keeper, the gamekeeper, and the fisherman, waging fierce war with the poachers in each of his vocations, one night in defence of the deer, the next of the pheasants, and the third of the pike. Gilbert, who in right of his terrene avocations wears a green livery and a gold-laced hat, is by no means a regular inhabitant of the cottage by the Kennet side, but may be found quite as frequently up at the park, sometimes at the dog-kennel, sometimes in the servants’ hall, leaving the river to the efficient watchfulness of its amphibious guardians, Adam Stokes, the boy Ned, and their dog Neptune, who, excepting when Adam was attracted by the charms of a stronger liquid to the tap-room of the Four Horseshoes, were seldom seen half a furlong from their proper element.
Adam was a man fit to encounter poachers by land or by water—a giant of a man, with more than a giant’s strength, and without the gentleness which so often accompanies conscious power: he knew his full force, and delighted in its exhibition. The unwieldy boat was in his brawny hands a child’s toy, and the heavy oar a bulrush. Bold was the poacher that dared to encounter Adam Stokes! His very voice, loud as that of a boatswain, was sufficient to awe any common ruffian, and the bold, bluff, weather-beaten visage, keen eye, and fearless bearing, were in excellent keeping with tones that seemed at their quietest as if issuing from a speaking-trumpet. His dress beseemed his person and his occupation—boots that might bid defiance to mud or water, a blue jacket that had borne many a storm, and an old sealskin cap, surmounting his shaggy black hair, formed his general equipment. Add a quid of tobacco rolling from side to side of a capacious mouth, a beard of a fortnight’s growth, a knowing wink, and an uncouth but good-humoured grin, and you will have a tolerable notion of the outer man of Master Adam.
His inward qualities were pretty much what might be expected from such an exterior—rude, rough, and coarse, but faithful, bold and honest, and not without a certain touch of fun and good fellowship, and blunt kindness, that rendered him no small favourite with his cronies of the “Four Horse-shoes,” amongst whom his waterman’s songs and sailor’s stories (yarns, as he called them) were deservedly popular. His early history was rather a puzzle in the good village of Aberleigh. He had been brought by Colonel Talbot to his present situation about ten years back, a stranger in the neighbourhood; and little as in general Adam affected concealment, he appeared to have some amusement in mystifying his neighbours on this point. Never were opinions more various. Some held that he had been a London waterman, and quoted his songs, his dexterity at the oar, and his familiarity with the slang peculiar to the great river, as irrefragable proofs that such had been his vocation. Others asserted that he was an old man-of-war’s man, citing his long yarns, his proficiency in making and drinking grog, his boldness in battle, and his hatred of the Monsieurs, as convincing testimony in their favour. Others again (but they were his maligners) hinted that well as he liked grog, a drop of neat Cognac was still more welcome, and insinuated that some of the yarns had about them a great air of smuggling;—w hilst another party, more malevolent still, asserted that boldness might belong to other trades as well as to a sailor, and that his skill as a fisherman, and such a subtlety in detecting nets and lines, as had never before been met with in these parts, savoured strongly of his having at some time or other followed the poaching business himself. This last, in particular, was the observation of his next neighbour, Nanny Sims, a washerwoman and gossip of high repute, who, being a thriving widow of some forty, or belike forty-five, had on his first arrival set her cap, as the phrase is, at Adam, and, in affront at his neglect of her charms, was in a small way as comfortably his enemy as heart could desire.
Little recked he of her love or her enmity. On he lived, a bold, bluff, burly bachelor, with his boy Ned and his dog Neptune, each, after his several way, as burly and shaggy as himself, the terror of water-thieves, and the prime favourite of his master, who, a thorough sportsman, and altogether one of the most complete and admirable specimens that I have ever known of an English country gentleman, refined by education and travel, set the highest value on his skill as a fisher, and his good management in preserving the fishery. A first-rate favourite was Adam Stokes.
His habitation was, as I have said, beautifully situated at a point of the Kennet where, winding suddenly round an abrupt hill, it flowed beneath a bank so high and precipitous, that but for its verdure it might have passed for a cliff, leaving just room on the bank for a small white cottage, the chimneys of which were greatly over-topped by the woody ridge behind them, while the garden on one side sloped in natural terraces from the hill to the river, and a narrow orchard on the other was planted ledge above ledge, like a vineyard on the Rhine. Fishing-nets drying on the fine smooth turf, and the boat fastened to a post and swaying in the water, completed the picture.
An unfrequented country road on the other side of the river was my nearest way to Talbot Park, and one day last March, driving thither in my little pony-phaeton, I stopped to observe Adam, who had just caught an enormous pike, weighing, as we afterwards found, above twenty pounds, and, after landing it on one side of the water, was busied in repairing a part of his tackle which the struggles of the creature had broken. It was still full of life as it lay on the grass, and appeared to me such a load, that, after complimenting Adam (who was of my acquaintance) on the luck that had sent, and the skill that had caught, such a fish, I offered to take it for him to the Park.
“Lord bless you, ma’am!” responded Master Stokes, eyeing my slight equipage and pretty pony, as well as the small lad who was driving me, with some slyness, “Lord help you, ma’am, you’ve no notion how obstropulous these great fishes be. He’d splash your silk gown all over, and mayhap overset you into the bargain. No, no—I’ve catched him, and I must manage him—besides, I want to speak to madam. Here, lad,” added he, calling to his boy, who, with Neptune, was standing on the opposite side of the river, watching our colloquy, “gather them violets on the bank; they’re always the first in the country; and bring the basket over in the boat to take this fellow to the great house—mind how you pick the flowers, you lubber, I want ’em for madam.”
Somewhat amused by seeing how my fair friend’s passion for flowers was understood and humoured, even by the roughest of her dependents, I pursued my way to the house, passed the pretty lodge and the magnificent garden, with its hothouses, greenhouses, and conservatories, its fountains and its basins, its broad walks and shady alleys; drove through the noble park, with its grand masses of old forest-trees—oak, and beech, and elm, and tree-like thorns, the growth of centuries; thridded the scattered clumps, about which the dappled deer were lying; skirted the clear lakelet, where water-fowl of all sorts were mingled with stately swans; and finally gained the house, a superb mansion, worthy of its grounds, at the door of which I met the colonel, who, pheasant-shooting and hunting and coursing being fairly over, intended to solace himself with shooting rabbits, and was sallying forth with his gun in his hand, and a train of long-bodied, crooked-legged, very outlandish-looking dogs at his heels, of a sort called the rabbit-beagle, reckoned very handsome, I find, in their way, but in my mind pre-eminently ugly. I did not, however, affront my kind host, a person whom everybody likes, in right of his frank, open, amiable character, and his delightful manners; I did not insult him by abusing his dogs, but, passing with a gracious salutation, we parted—he to his sport, and I to my visit.
If Colonel Talbot be a delightful man, Mrs. Talbot is a thrice delightful woman. To say nothing of the higher qualities for which she is deservedly eminent, I have seldom met with any one who contrives to be at the same time so charming and so witty. She is very handsome, too, and, combining her own full-blown and magnificent beauty with her love of that full-blown and beautiful flower, I call her the Queen of the Dahlias,—a nickname which she submits to the more readily, as her collection of that superb plant is nearly unrivalled. In March, however, even she, great forcer though she be, can hardly force a dahlia, so that I found her in her drawing-room without her favourite flower, but surrounded by stands of rhododendrons, azaleas, daphnes, pinks, lilies of the valley, and roses without end; and after first admiring and then deprecating her display of forced plants, as forestalling their natural blossoming, and deadening the summer pleasure, quoting to the same effect Shakespeare’s fine lines in the Love’s Labour Lost:
After a little battle on this, an old subject of dispute between us, we fell into talk on other topics, and I soon perceived that my charming hostess was not in her usual spirits.
“But what’s the matter, my dear Mrs. Talbot? You say that all friends are well; and I see that the flowers are prosperous in spite of my lecture; and the pets,—pussy purring on the sofa, the swans sailing on the water, and the pied peacock tapping the window at this very moment;—the pets are flourishing like the flowers. What can have happened to vex you?”
“Enough to have disturbed the patience of Grisildis herself, if Grisildis had ever known the comfort of a favourite waiting-maid. Laurette has given me warning.”
“Laurette! Is it possible? The paragon of filles de chambre! the princess of milliners! the very queen of the toilet! Laurette, so dexterous, so handy, she that could do not only all that was possible to waiting-women, but all that was impossible! and so attached, too! what can be the cause? who can have stolen her from you?”
“She’s going to be married!”
“To whom?”
“Heaven knows! she would not tell me his name, but described him as ‘un brave garçon.’ Somebody in the village, I fancy! some lout of a farmer, or bumpkin of a carpenter. She that cannot speak three words of English, and is as unfit for a farmer’s wife as I am. To think of my losing Laurette!”
At this point of our dialogue, Master Adam Stokes was announced, and we adjourned into the hall to admire the fish and talk to the fisherman. There stood Adam, cap in hand, more shaggy and ragged than ever, exulting over his enormous fish, and backed by his adherents, Ned and Neptune; whilst the airy Frenchwoman, tricked out as usual in her silk gown, her embroidered apron, her high comb, and her large ear-rings, stood against a marble table, arranging the violets which Ned had brought in a small china cup. I must go to her own language for words to describe the favourite French maid—gentille et jolie seem expressly made for her, and as she stood with an air of consciousness quite unusual to her manner, placing the violets topsy-turvy in her confusion, I thought that I had never seen Laurette half so attractive. Her lady took no notice of her, but remained in gracious colloquy with the fisherman. At last she turned towards the drawing-room.
“If you please, ma’am,” said Adam, “I’d be greatly obliged to you, if you’d speak a good word for me to his honour.” And there he stopped.
“What about, Adam?” inquired Mrs. Talbot, returning to the middle of the hall.
“About my marrying, ma’am; if so be the colonel has no objection”; continued Adam, twirling his cap.
“Marrying!” rejoined Mrs. Talbot; “all the world seems thinking of marrying! who is the fair lady, Adam,—Nanny Sims?”
“Nanny Sims! not she, indeed, ma’am,” resumed Master Stokes. “I don’t know who would trouble their heads about such an old hulk, when they might be master of such a tight-made vessel as this!” quoth the fisherman, grinning and jerking his head, and clutching the gown of the pretty Frenchwoman, whilst his faithful adherents, Ned and Neptune, grinned, and jerked, and wagged head and tail in unison.
“Laurette! do you mean Laurette?—you who hate the French, and she who can’t speak English!”
“A fig for her lingo, ma’am. Look what a tight little frigate ’tis! A fig for her lingo!”
“Et toi, Laurette! es-tu folle?”
“Ah de grace, madame! c’est un si brave garçon!” And outrageous as the union seemed, as incongruous as a match between Caliban and Ariel, the lovers persevered, and the lady, half provoked and half amused, consented; and at the month’s end they were married, with as fair a prospect of happiness as any couple in the parish.
Part II
Adam stokes in his married state
When last I had seen Master Stokes the fisherman, in his bachelor condition, it was in the week when February ends and March begins, when the weather was as bluff and boisterous as his own bluff and boisterous self; when the velvet buds were just sprouting on the sallow, the tufted tassels hanging from the hazel, and the early violet and “rathe primrose” peeping timidly forth from sunny banks and sheltered crevices, as if still half afraid to brave the stormy sky.
The next time that I passed by the banks of the Kennet was in the lovely season which just precedes the merry month of May. The weather was soft and balmy, the sky bright above, the earth fair below; the turf by the roadside was powdered with daisies, the budding hedgerows gay with the white ochil, the pansy, and the wild geranium; the orchards hung with their own garlands of fruit-blossoms, waving over seas of golden daffodils; the coppice tapestried with pansies, ground-ivy, and wood-anemone, whilst patches of the delicate wood-sorrel were springing under the holly brake and from the roots of old beech-trees; and the meadows were literally painted with cowslips, orchises, the brilliant flowers of the water-ranunculus, the chequered fritillary, and the enamelled wild hyacinth. The river went dancing and sparkling along, giving back in all its freshness the tender green of the landscape, and the bright and sunny sky; birds were singing in every bush; bees and butterflies were on the wing, and myriads of water-insects added their pleasant sound to all the general harmony of nature. It was spring in all its loveliness, and never is spring more lovely than in our Kennet meadows.
The fisherman’s hut did not disgrace the beauty of the picture. The white cottage, nested in the green bank, with its hanging garden full of stocks and wall-flowers, its blooming orchard, and its thin wreath of grey smoke sailing up the precipitous hill, and lost amid the overhanging trees, looked like the very emblem of peace and comfort. Adam and his dog Neptune were standing in the boat, which Master Stokes’s stout arm was pushing from shore with a long pole, nodding a farewell to his wife, and roaring at the top of his stentorian voice his favourite stave of “Rule Britannia”; Laurette, on her part, was seated at the open door of the cottage, trim as a bride, with her silk gown, her large ear-rings, her high comb and her pretty apron, her dress contrasting strangely with her employment, which was no other than darning her husband’s ponderous and unwieldy hose, but with a face radiant with happiness and gaiety, as her light and airy voice sung the light and airy burden of a song in high favour among the soubrettes of Paris.
“C’est l’amour, l’amour, l’amour,” came ringing across the water in every pause of her husband’s mighty and patriotic chant, mingled with the shrill notes of Ned, who was birds’-nesting on the hillside, peeping into every furze bush for the five speckled eggs of the grey linnet and whistling, “Oh no, we never mention her,” with all his might.
It was a curious combination, certainly, and yet one that seemed to me to give token of much happiness; and on questioning my friend Mrs. Talbot, the charming Queen of the Dahlias frankly admitted, that however it might turn out eventually, Laurette’s match did at present appear to have produced more comfort to both parties than could have been anticipated from so preposterous a union. “Adam adores her,” pursued Mrs. Talbot, “spends all the money he can come by in sailor-like finery, red ribbons, and yellow gowns, which Laurette has too good a wardrobe to need, and too much taste to wear; can’t pass within a yard of her without a loving pinch of her pretty round cheek; and swears by every seaman’s oath that ever was invented, that she’s the neatest-built vessel, with the comeliest figure-head, that ever was launched. And, incredible as it seems, Laurette loves him: delights in his rough kindness, his boldness, and his honesty: calls him still ‘un brave garçon’; enters into his humour; studies his comfort; has learnt more English during her six weeks’ marriage than in six years that she lived with me; and has even advanced so far as to approach, as nearly as a French tongue may do, to the pronunciation of her own name, Stokes—a terrible trial to Gallic organs. In short,” continued Mrs. Talbot, “of a very foolish thing, it has turned out better than might have been expected; Adam’s adherents, Ned and Neptune, fairly idolise their new mistress; poor thing, her kindness, and good-nature, and gaiety, were always most delightful; and Ned is, she assures me, a very handy boy in the house, does all the dirty work, dusts and scrubs, and washes and cooks, and trots about in a pair of high pattens and a checked apron, just exactly like a maid-of-all-work. I send Gilbert to her almost every day with one trifle or another, sometimes a basket of provisions, sometimes my reversionary flowers (for Laurette can’t live without flowers), and, on the whole, I really think she will do very well.”
This account was most satisfactory; but, happening again to pass Laurette’s cottage in the bowery month of June, I saw cause to fear that a change had passed over the pretty French-woman’s prospects. Outwardly the picture was as bright, or brighter, than ever. It was summer—gay, smiling summer. The hawthorn-buds in the hedgerows were exchanged for the full-blown blossoms of the wayfaring-tree, whose double circle of white stars, regular as if cut with a stamp, forms so beautiful a cluster of flowerets, and contrasts so gaily with the deep pink of the wild rose, and the pale, but graceful garlands of the woodbine; the meadows had, indeed, lost their flowery glory, and were covered partly with rich swathes of new-cut grass, and partly with large haycocks, dappling the foreground with such depth and variety of light and shadow; but the river’s edge was gay as a garden with flags and water-lilies, and the pendent bunches of the delicate snowflake, the most elegant of aquatic plants; and Laurette’s garden itself, one bright bed of pinks, and roses, and honeysuckles, and berry-bushes, with their rich transparent fruit, might almost have vied in colour and fragrance with that of her mistress. The change was not in the place, but in the inhabitants.
Adam was employed in landing a net full of fish, perch, roach, and dace, such a haul as ought to have put any fisherman into good humour, but which certainly had had no such effect on the present occasion. He looked as black as a thunder-cloud, swore at the poor fish as he tossed them on the bank, called Ned a lubber; and when, in a fit of absence, he from mere habit resumed his patriotic ditty, shouted, “Britons never will be slaves,” with such a scowl at his poor foreign wife, that it could only be interpreted into a note of defiance. She, on her side, was still working at her cottage door, or rather sitting there listlessly with her work (a checked shirt of her churlish husband’s) in her lap, her head drooping, and the gay air of “C’est l’amour” exchanged for a plaintive romance, which ran, as well as I could catch it, something in this fashion:
And when the romance was done, which might have touched Adam’s heart, if he could but have understood it, poor Laurette sighed amain, took up the checked shirt, and seemed likely to cry; Neptune looked doleful, as one who comprehended that something was the matter, but could not rightly understand what; and Ned was in the dumps. A dreary change had come over the whole family, of which the cause was not known to me for some time afterwards:—Adam was jealous.
The cause of this jealousy was no other than the quondam candidate for the fisherman’s favour, his prime aversion, Nanny Sims.
This Nanny Sims was, as I have said, a washerwoman and Adam’s next neighbour, she tenanting a cottage and orchard on the same side of the river, but concealed from observation by the romantic and precipitous bank which formed so picturesque a background to Laurette’s pretty dwelling. In person, Nanny was as strong a contrast to the light and graceful Frenchwoman as could well be imagined; she being short and stout, and blowsy and frowsy, realising exactly, as to form, Lord Byron’s expression, “a dumpy woman,” and accompanying it with all the dowdiness and slovenliness proper to her station. Never was even washerwoman more untidy. A cap all rags, from which the hair came straggling in elf-locks over a face which generally looked red-hot, surmounted by an old bonnet, originally black, now rusty, and so twisted into crooks and bends that its pristine shape was unguessable; a coloured cotton handkerchief pinned over a short-sleeved, open, stuff gown, and three or four aprons, each wet through, tied one above another, black stockings, men’s shoes, and pattens higher and noisier than ever pattens were, completed her apparel.
Her habits were such as suited her attire and her condition. An industrious woman, it must be confessed, was Nanny Sims. Give her green tea, and strong beer, and gin at discretion, and she would wash the four-and-twenty hours round, only abstracting an hour apiece for her two breakfasts, ditto ditto for her two luncheons, two hours for her dinner, one for her afternoon’s tea, and another for supper. And then she would begin again, and dry, and starch, and mangle, and iron, without let or pause, save those demanded by the above-mentioned refections. Give her gin enough, and she never seemed to require the gentle refreshment called sleep. Sancho’s fine ejaculation, “Blessed is the man that invented sleep!” with which most mortals have so entire a sympathy, would have been thrown away upon Nanny Sims. The discoverer of the still would have been the fitter object of her benediction. Gin, sheer gin, was to her what ale was to Boniface; and she throve upon it. Never was woman so invulnerable to disease. Hot water was her element, and she would go seething and steaming from the wash-tub, reeking and dripping from top to toe, into the keenest north-east wind, without taking more harm than the wet sheets and tablecloths which went through her hands. They dried, and so did she; and to all feeling of inconvenience that parboiled and soddened flesh seemed as inaccessible as the linen.
A hardworking woman was Nanny;—but the part of her that worked hardest was her tongue. Benedick’s speech to Beatrice, “I would my horse had the speed of your tongue, and so good a continuer,” gives but a faint notion of the activity of that member in the mouth of our laundress. If ever mechanical contrivance had approached half so nearly to the perpetual motion, the inventor would have considered the problem as solved, and would have proclaimed the discovery accordingly. It was one incessant wag. Of course, the tongue was a washer-woman’s tongue, and the clatter such as might suit the accompaniments of the wash-tub and the gin-bottle, not forgetting that important accessory to scandal in higher walks of life, the tea-table. The pendulum vibrated through every degree and point of gossiping, from the most innocent matter-of-fact to the most malicious slander, and was the more mischievous, as, being employed to assist the laundrymaid in several families, as well as taking in washing at home, her powers of collecting and diffusing false reports were by no means inconsiderable. She was the general tale-bearer of the parish, and scattered dissension as the wind scatters the thistle-down, sowing the evil seed in all directions. What added to the danger of her lies was, that they were generally interwoven with some slender and trivial thread of truth, which gave something like the colour of fact to her narrative, and that her legends were generally delivered in a careless undesigning style, as if she spoke from the pure love of talking, and did not care whether you believed her or not, which had a strong but unconscious effect on the credulity of her auditors. Perhaps, to a certain extent, she might be innocent of ill-intention, and might not, on common occasions, mean to do harm by her evil-speaking; but, in the case of Laurette, I can hardly acquit her of malice. She hated her for all manner of causes: as her next neighbour; as a French-woman; as pretty; as young; as fine; as the favourite of Mrs. Talbot; and last and worst, as the wife of Adam Stokes; and she omitted no opportunity of giving vent to her spite.
First, she said that she was idle; then, that she was proud; then, that she was sluttish; then, that she was extravagant; then, that she was vain; then, that she was rouged; then, that she wore a wig; then, that she was by no means so young as she wished to be thought; and then, that she was ugly. These shafts fell wide of the mark. People had only to look at the pretty, smiling Laurette, and at her neat cottage, and they were disproved at a glance. At last, Nancy, over the wash-tub at the Park, gave out that Laurette was coquettish; and that she would have Master Adam look about him; that honest English husbands who married French wives, and young wives, and pretty wives into the bargain, had need to look about them; that she, for her part, was very sorry for her worthy neighbour,—but that folks who lived near, saw more than other folks thought for;—and then Nanny sighed and held her tongue. Nanny’s holding her tongue produced a wonderful sensation in the Park laundry; such an event had never occurred there before; it was thought that the cause of her speechlessness must be something most portentous and strange, and questions were rained upon her from all quarters.
For an incredible space of time (at least two minutes) Nanny maintained a resolute silence, shook her head, and said nothing. At last, in pure confidence, she disclosed to five women, the laundrymaid, the dairymaid, two housemaids, and another charwoman, the important fact, that it was not for nothing that Gilbert carried a basket every day from Mrs. Talbot to Laurette; that her husband, poor man, had not found it out yet, but that, doubtless, his eyes would be opened some day or other; that she did not blame Gilbert so much, poor fellow, the chief advances being made by the foreign madam, who had said to her, in her jargon, that she should be dead if the basket did not come every day, meaning, no doubt, if he did not bring the basket; and that all the world would see what would come of it. Then, recommending secrecy, which all parties promised, Nanny put on her shawl, and her pattens, and trudged home; and before night the whole house knew of it, and before the next day, the whole parish—the only exception being, perhaps, Laurette herself, and Colonel and Mrs. Talbot, who were, as great people generally are, happily ignorant of the nonsense talked in their own kitchen.
Two persons, at all events, heard the story, with as many circumstantial additions as the tale of the three black crows,—and those two were Adam Stokes, whom it made as jealous as Othello, upon somewhat the same course of reasoning, and Gilbert himself, who, something of a rural coxcomb, although no practised seducer, began at last to believe that what everybody said must be partly true, that though he himself were perfectly guiltless of love, the fair lady might have had the misfortune to be smitten with his personal good gifts (for Gilbert was a well-looking, ruddy swain, of some nineteen or twenty, the very age when young lads confide in the power of their own attractions), and to make up his mind to fall in love with her out of gratitude.
Accordingly, he began to court Laurette at every opportunity; and Laurette, who, in spite of her French education, had no notion that an Englishman’s wife could be courted by anybody but her husband, and whose comprehension of the language was still too vague to enable her to understand him thoroughly, continued to treat him with her usual friendly kindness, the less inclined to make any observation on his conduct, since she was altogether engrossed by the moodiness of her husband, who had suddenly changed from the most loving to the most surly of mortals. Laurette tried to soothe and pacify him, but the more she strove against his ill-humour, the worse it grew, and the poor young Frenchwoman at last took to singing melancholy songs, and sighing, and drooping, and hanging her head like a bereaved turtle-dove. It was in this state that I saw her.
Matters were now advancing towards a crisis. Gilbert saw Laurette’s dejection, and, imputing it to a hopeless passion for himself, ventured to send her a billet-doux, written by Colonel Talbot’s valet (for although he had learned to write at a national school, he had already contrived to forget his unpractised lesson), which, in terms fine enough for a valet himself, requested her to honour him with a private interview at the stile, by the towing-path, at nine in the evening, when Adam would be away.
This English, which was too fine to be good—that is to say, to be idiomatic, proved more intelligible to Laurette than his previous declarations, although aided by all the eloquence of eyes. She, however, resolved to take further advice on the occasion, and showed the epistle to Ned.
“What is this writing here?” said Laurette. “What will it say?”
“It is a love-letter, Mrs. Stokes,” answered Ned.
“What does it want?” questioned Mrs. Stokes; “me to give a rendezvous at de stile?”
“Yes,” rejoined Ned; “you to go to the stile.”
“De people is mad!” exclaimed poor Laurette. “Dere’s your masterre”—
“Master’s jealous!” cried Ned.
“And dis wicked man?”
“He’s in love!”
“De people is fools!” exclaimed poor Laurette. “De people is mad! But I’ll go to de stile—and Nède, you and Nèpe shall go too.” And so it was settled.
Nine o’clock came, and the party set off. And about five minutes past nine Nanny Sims met Adam near the towing-path.
“Do you want your wife, Master Stokes?” quoth the crone. “Are you looking for Gilbert? I saw them both but now, one a little way on this side of the stile, the other a little beyond. They’ll have met by this time.” And without pausing for an answer, on she went.
Adam pursued his walk with furious strides, and paused as he came within sight of the place, considering in which way he had best announce his presence. The supposed lovers had not yet met; but in an instant Gilbert jumped over the stile, and caught hold of Laurette; and in another instant the active Frenchwoman escaped from his arms, gave him a box on the ear that almost upset him, called to “Nède” and “Nèpe,” both which trusty adherents lay in ambush by the wayside, and poured forth such a flood of scolding in French and broken English, mingled with occasional cuffs, the dog barking and Ned laughing the whilst, that the discomfited gallant fairly took to his heels, and fled. In his way, however, he encountered Adam, who, without wasting a word upon the matter, took him up in one hand and flung him into the Kennet.
“A ducking ’ill do him no harm,” quoth Adam: “he can swim like a fish; and if I catch Nanny Sims, I’ll give her a taste of cold water, too,” added the fisherman, hugging his pretty wife, who was now sobbing on his bosom; “and I deserve to be ducked myself for mistrusting of thee, like a land-lubber; but if ever I sarve thee so again,” continued he, straining her to his honest bosom—“if ever I sarve thee so again, may I have a round dozen the next minute, and be spliced to Nanny Sims into the bargain.”