Jessie of Boulogne; or, the history of a few minutes

Front matter

JESSIE OF BOULOGNE; OR THE HISTORY OF A FEW MINUTES. BT THE REV. C. GILLMOR, M.A. "They sin who tell us Love can die."— Southey. IN THREE VOLUMES, Vol II. "g a n t o n : SAMUEL TINSLBY, 10, SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND. 1877. [Att Rights ATteserrcd.~] CONTENTS OF VOL. II. CHAP. PAGE I. SEARCH 1 II.

LETTER 22 III.

CABANAS 50 IV. ENCELADE 73 V. MRS. FITZHERBERT 96 VI. DESPAIR 118 VII. GEORGE 144 VIII. AMARANTH 167 IX. FERROL 188 X. AFRICA 209 XI. TYNE 231 XII. EPINEVILLE

Chapter I. Search

" Ah me ! for aught that ever I could read , Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smcoth ; But, either it was different in blood, Or else misgraffed, in respect of years : Or else it stood upon the choice of friends : Or. if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it ; Making it momentary as a sound. Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say, Behold I The jaws of darkness do devour it up : So quick bright things come to confusion." Shakespeare's " Midsummer Night's Dream." How curious and unfortunate, it seemed to Cyril, that here were two houses, in both of which Jessie had been ; and yet in neither of them could he learn anything whatsoever concerning her.

As for the hotel in which the fire had been, he VOL. II. ielt he had exhausted all that was discoverable there. As regards the other house, from which the ladies had moved into the packet, there was some thing perhaps still to be gleaned from the touter hereafter. And then ! the packet in which they had gone ; might there not be some trace there ? Cyril at once went to ascertain the name of the steamer which had just gone out, and which was called and styled after some regal darne. Must not the circumstance of the ladies having gone in the night, and staying thus longer than others, have drawn specific attention to them ? And then, he recollected the Electric Telegraph ; might he not thereby catch the packet, before the passengers disembarked ? But, what with the search already, and the thought involved, it happened that by the time Cyril could put the telegraph in motion, more than two hours had elapsed ; and the operation itself took more time than it is popularly supposed to do: whereas the Folkestone steamer constantly crosses in an hour and three-quarters, and even in the present storm it might not exceed two hours or so.

The message Cyril sent was, "Two ladies, with their man and maid, in the packet now crossing; one lady wears an aigrette. Ask their address ; no expense spared." This was sent to Folkestone ; and though it is here out of chronological order, I may mention that it was very long in getting to Search. 3 Folkestone, and quite as long was the reply in coming back : and when it came, it was, " Steamer had already arrived, and most of the passengers landed: cannot follow up such enquiries." Thus here again all trace expired. It was (accidentally) a considerable while after he sent the message, before tlie reply reached Cyril's hands ; and then his remark was, " How ill-natured of the fellow : I would have given him one hundred pounds." Pro bably the promise, " no expense spared," only raised the idea of an extra shilling or two ; had it been known that a hundred pounds might be gained, the scurvy clerk would have exerted himself, or employed someone to do it for him.

And from this I would deduce the moral, that it is best to be obliging, whether a hundred pounds are known to be forthcoming or not. Cyril resolved he would try what an advertisement might accomplish. He thought it might be in the following touching vein : — " The gentle man at Boulogne, who met two ladies, and rescued one from a fire, would be grateful to learn where one line might be addressed, before his departure for the East." He would put his romantic appeal in the English papers ; and he would give his direction, " Grantley Court " (his estate in Sussex), as if it was a name, adding his London bankers. Cyril was wont to draw his cheques for charities thus, whence his bankers would keep any com munication for him, as a matter of course. It will be seen that in all this, Cyril is acting as if in contradiction to his own fears and presumed convictions ; for, if the ladies had designedly fled from him, what would be the good of following them with telegrams or advertisements, to which they would be still more obdurate?

But, Cyril had a sort of sensation, that the act of their leaving him thus was so grievous a mode of rejection ; it might be bettered, and could not be made worse. An idea thrilled through him, that perhaps Jessie, when she got home, would relent ; and if of course she would still reject him, nevertheless, perhaps, she would indirectly send him some missive, which, if final and blighting to his hopes, would be less excruciating than leaving him as now to gather his repulse from the blank aspect of things. It was a comfort to Cyril to go on acting as if it was to be presumed that surely such gentle ladies would not treat him with such unnecessary severity; it was something also for Cyril to be doing anything : what could be so bad as for him to sit and brood over his sorrow ? Action, of any sort, was itself a relief.

Another advertisement, which he resolved to hazard, was to the absconding master of the hotel. Cyril felt sure the man had escaped, no doubt, to England, so it would be useless to accost him through the French papers, which probably he would not see ; it would also be a ticklish thing for Cyril in France to seek to confer with a French levanting felon. Cyril drew up the appeal to him, by name, and as well as the case admitted of; Starch. 5 giving his own direction also, as before, " Grantley Court," and his bankers. The application to the man was, for him to consult his register, and give the name required ; and Cyril would send him any amount of money he specified, in any form and to any place he wished, and no questions asked. These two advertisements Cyril brought to a civil and sensible young bookseller (Mr. Merridew) near the port, who would get them inserted for him ; but it seems some little time must probably elapse before they could be before the public.

In order to clear our way, it may here be men tioned, that neither of the advertisements was of any avail. As regards the ladies, the paper actually was on the table where Jessie was ; and when some thing was said which she considered good news, the merry maiden actually took the paper ami waved it round her head like a flag : and in so doing, her Augers touched the advertisement : that was all. Nor did Jessie even look at the " Mar riages," which she sometimes did for fun's sake ; and thence her eye might have strayed to the agony column. The aunt did not look at that side of the paper at all, as she seldom turned to any part but the "Court Circular." Nor did any friend, who might be likely to have glanced at the right place, chance to see, or direct attention to, the pathetic para graph ; no one, in fact, in their circle, noticed it at all.

Indeed, it is wonderful how many persons never see the very advertisements, at least at the right time, which are specially meant for themselves. As regards the French master of the hotel, he did see the appeal to him, while he (under a false name) was sitting over bis " dry " wine, in a tavern for foreigners in Leicester Square ; but, what Cyril said and meant in all honesty and truth, was inter preted by him as a very flimsy cover for an attempt to catch him : he quite laughed at the folly of imagining he could be lured by so weak a tale : it was a dodge of the French police to snap him up : but, the idea ! that he should be entrapped by so transparent an artifice! ha, ha! Yes, there are many sages like this man, who are, in their own conceit so intensely clever, that they ever are only injuring their own interests; that is all! and thus they exemplify the homely legend that a pig thinks he can swim, and so he can, but in doing so he only cuts his own windpipe with his own acute and pit-a-patted pettitoes.

Cyril was quite a new hand at conducting such a scrutiny as be had now entered on ; and he wanted all the little keenness of a detective, in default of which, he simply fell back on commonsense and mother-wit and noble truth. He now felt that if he had devoted yesterday afternoon to going about among the Boulogne cabmen, who (we saw) are not very numerous, he should no doubt have been enabled to light on the man who drove the ladies from the bridge, and thus he should have discovered their abode, and might have called on them yesterday evening. Floss' intelligent bark would have been a great help in finding the driver; thus he Search. 7 should have known their residence in good time (whereas it was only the fire which guided him to it). Perhaps, however, then he should not have saved Jessie?

Might not all be for the best ? At least he must now bestir himself, and exert every thought, so as not to let himself be deploring in the future that such or such researches were begun too late. Cyril's next procedure was to call on the Brit ish consul, who is a gentleman of the name of Hamilton, a naval captain, of clear Scotch instincts, very sincere and conscientious, and therefore quite ready to tell a person a bit of his mind. Cyril indeed thought him rather too unsympathizing. But^then this may have been Cyril's own fault, in not imparting to him more than a portion of the case, nor did Cyril say enough to describe who he himself was. Certainly, Cyril's appearance was an extraordinary letter of recommendation in his favor; still the consul looked fearlessly at the imperfect tale, and as much as told Cyril in plain words that he was a silly young man, who wanted to find out some nonsense or other about some wan dering women, of whom he knew nothing, and about whom, therefore, he doubtless had no right to enquire : the ladies being assumed to be quite ordinary people, and nobody of the least note.

Cyril felt that he was rated as at best a very small country squire, with even more acres than sense ; and as for the ladies, they were some of the usual continental female adventurers. Cyril was all but told that he was a big booby, indulging a mere idle curiosity, and taking up the valuable time of the consulate with frivolous perquisitions about runaway females, of whom neither he nor anybody else need want to know anything. Cyril left the office in considerable dudgeon, and tried to console himself for his wigging, by thinking that he got it in Jessie's service. Nor could he deny the fact to himself, that the view which the worthy consul avowed was natural for any cold spectator to adopt ; because we know how very rare a thing is sympathy. Nothing daunted, Cyril felt he could not do better than follow up his previous intention, to see whether he could find what " other house " the ladies had moved from to the hotel where the fire was.

He would first overhaul the hotels. Here he was met by precisely the reverse diffi culty to the consul's attitude ; here everybody was too warm and too grandiose. "How many carriages had they?" Cyril did not know whether they had one ; but, perhaps they had. " How many footmen had their ladyships in their suite ?" Cyril only knew of one ; but they might have had ever so many more servants with them for all he knew. In fact, Cyril had all his life, till now, been so accustomed to have no end of butlers and valets and men in waiting about himself, he was ready to think the ladies in whom he was interested were fully furnished in that respect. Cyril was now alone, without any valet, except Floss, as Teddy Search. 9 would say ; and this was the first time in all Cyril's life that he had ever been without a " body servant :" however, this was now owing to the exceptional cause of his purposed trip to the East: hence his own singlehandedness did not so natur ally lead him to think that the ladies might now be roving about with less than their usual escort.

The next question was, "Had they a courier with them ?" Possibly ; and yet most probably not. If, then, Cyril feared all this was getting too much upon the high horse ; and if, when he was told that no ladies with carriage and servants and courier had left this establishment within two days, he ventured to suggest that perhaps there was no carriage, nor any menial magnificence of the sort, he found a predisposition to cut the queries short, as if to bow him out with the reflux assurance, "No people, oi that kind, here, sir!" Still, on and on, Cyril went; till, at one hotel his heart was made to jump as it were into his mouth, by his apparently coming on the trace of the very people he sought. He had not told the headwaiter to whom he addressed himself that the ladies had gone; he merely described those whom he wished to find.

" 0 yes," said the man, " I recognize them at once : it is Madame Constantino and her beautiful niece. Shall I take your card, sir, upstairs to them ?" Cyril turned awaj7, and went off, in mute annoyance and disgust ; and the man of course thought he was demented. It was so tantalizing to find he was after the wrong people; and to be asked to step up and see Jessie, when she was across the water, somewhere in England. Is he always to be thus tortured and disappointed ? Notwithstanding, Cyril persisted in his investi gations till he had got pretty well through ah the hotels, numerous as they are ; and as the people were almost too civil, rather than the reverse (with which benignity of theirs his open-handed distribu tion of two-franc and five-franc pieces had some thing to do), he at length managed to convince himself that the " other house " at which the ladies had been, was, as Antoine had justly suspected, not some hotel.

He now had only to examine the lodging-houses. But, this was " only" to undertake a superhuman feat. The number of these houses is prodigious ; and some private families let apartments, without sticking up any " signals of distress " or placards in the windows, gaining their customers by more " genteel " channels : how was he to get at these ? he might never light on the right house the ladies had been at ! it might be any mansion he passed. And then again, he was conscious of what he had felt before, that as the ladies had parted from wherever it was, in anger, the spiteful or perhaps alarmed landlady would take care to tell him nothing; how could she know whether he was not on the look-out, to prosecute her ? In general, he found these people very civil and communicative ; he was not now, as at the hotels, Search. 11 questioned about carnages and couriers : the whole stress was on the servants.

And here he found a difficulty which he had not anticipated; for, it appeared, that, when the town (as now) was full, some most respectable people would have perhaps only two rooms, and be glad to get them : and they might still have several servants, who might have bedrooms elsewhere, wherever they could find an attic empty, and be glad to submit to the arrange ment, so as to get a location anyhow, even in a house where everything was cracked, both crockery and people. Some of these servants had a rare time of it, living quite apart, and with nothing to do; not even waiting on their masters or mis tresses, who took up with the "attendance" of the people of their rooms. Here, then, was a division of families for Cyril to deal with. This state of things would therefore require him to search absolutely through every house in the town, and to know the particulars about everybody !

In other words, the enterprise which he had begun was one that was literally impracticable. And there was even another, and that also a fatal impediment. This was, that whereas he could ostensibly call only at such houses as had up notices of lodgings to let; still, though the ladies left so lately, it did not follow that the house they had been in was still vacant : perhaps it had been filled since ? indeed, from all appearances, nothing would be more likely to have taken place, with the town so full, than that when they moved out, some one else at once moved in! This blocked up all attempt. In short, after considerable enquiry, he felt it was an utterly futile experiment, to go on cross-questioning the lodging-house keepers. The incident which put the finish to Cyril's investigations among the landlady mammalia, was the following.

He lighted upon one great motherly dame, who quite enjoyed the mystery about the lost ladies. The aigrette particularly caught her fancy, and she knew all about it, in her own opinion ; the gold plate in her head made the lady be quite recognizable at once. Cyril was told all about their names ; the ladies were mother and daughter, and they had two servants, and they left yesterday, complaining a good deal because the funny French kitchen grates for braise [or wood-cinders, whence conies our word brazier] would not admit of proper toast being made. They were Mrs. Marmaduke and Mrs. Edgecumbe. How was that ? O, the first lady, Mrs. Marmaduke (the lady, you know, with the gold plate or false palate, which went with her set of false teeth, and that), was the mamma ; and the other, the pretty one, was such a lovely young widow, with such a nicely crimped cap, and she had such a sweet little boy !

Off rushed Cyril, " like a shot ; " the " sweet little boy " told him he might as well now give up such enquiries " for good." Nor could all such continuous inquisitions be conducted by so remarkable looking a younoman as Cyril, in the very heart and focus of gossipdom, Search. 13 without provoking much remark : — " O, have you heard? so odd; such a fine young man, very rich, and quite mad : such a pity ! he is quite nice to speak to, nor does he look at all cracked, like Mr. Windham : but, what do you think ? he has been hunting all over London, and Berlin, and Paris, and now he is searching all through Boulogne, with his big dog, looking for two ladies in every house> though he says all the time they are not here ! Isn't it sad ? They say, he has registered a vow in chancery to go next to America, and search every house and every room there ; and so he will go on all his life, till he gets locked up, or till his money gives out.

No doubt the wicked young woman treated him very badly, and made him lose his head ; for he is so plaguy handsome, you know, you cannot help taking his part: and, one has no patience with those chits of girls who amuse them selves by breaking nice young men's hearts. Some people indeed say he wants to marry both the aunt and niece, and they ran away from him, because one would marry him, whichever he likes, but not both, of course. But others say, he means to murder the young one, in order that he may marry the older one, and have all her money ; and the vow he has made, is, to have his hand tied up till he can do it. Others again say, there is no such person as either aunt or niece, and it's only a Mrs. Harris. Whichever way it may be, all I can say is, it is a great pity that the mad people should have all the money, when there are others, like you and me, Mrs. Grundy, who would know so well how to make a good use of it."

Cyril did not know such things were said about him ; for, as Juvenal pithily remarks, " A man is usually the last to hear about his own disgrace." Like a drowning man grasping at a straw, he got a small placard or hand-bill drawn up, to be printed, and posted up ; this publication of it was not accomplished till next day, and nothing came of it till some further time afterwards: still we may describe it here, so as not to leave any hiatus in the actual course of this authentic history. The placard [play-card ?] was in French and English, and ran much as follows: — "To porters, jobbing men, and others; the luggage of two ladies was moved on Tuesday, the 2nd of September, from some house in the town, to the hotel where the fire was : any man who assisted at the removal, will receive a munificent reward, by applying to the gentleman of No. 3, at the Hotel d'AndanteA' Many who saw it, only laughed, or shook their heads, and said, " Ah, that's the poor mad youno gentleman."

The fault of the placard was, that the ladies' servants were not specified; also both the aigrette, and the comparative ages of the ladies and even Jessie's miraculous beauty, oucht to have been adverted to. But Cyril, with the true devotion of a lover, shrank from parading such personal points before the common throng. Only two men called on Cyril, in consequence of the placard. One told a circumstantial tale, which Search. 15 however, Cyril was able to test as absolutely untrue; it was plainly a false narrative got up, to "worm some money out of a fool." The fellow, however, got nothing for his pains. One other man appeared, and was very perti nacious that he was right, especially in insisting that besides the two ladies and two servants, there was a gentleman, "a brother or lover." Cyril winced a little at this ; and finding the man, who had only one eye, did not know any names, only where the ladies who employed him had moved from, Cyril paid him, and dismissed him, feeling assured the man was talking about somebody else, and not about the same ladies as those he was in quest of: since Cyril had never seen any gentle man with the ladies of his love, either at the con cert, or walking about, or at the time of the fire, or in the packet, or anywhere.

The "brother or lover " was proof positive that it was a different "party." And yet, long afterward, when Cyril looked back on this very incident, he felt that possibly he had been too hasty in rejecting this man's evidence. The fact was, Cyril had become so tired and morti fied by discovering nothing, he now at the time had as if made up his mind that nothing could be elicited ; he was prepared to find that all news was only false and disappointing : and thus the slightest semblance of discrepancy made him discard the whole thing at once. Thus often do we make the troubles of one time be as if nest-eggs to help to breed future cares; and we hoard up our grievances, with miserly zest, as if every fresh event was of no other use but to be added to the pile of sorrows. The man who was Cyril's informant in the pre sent case, was rather dull and stupid ; might he not even with his one eye have seen Cyril with the ladies at the bridge ? again, might he not have been employed about the concert-room, moving seats, or seeing to the lights, and might he not have noticed Cyril talking to Jessie ? again, might he not have even observed him going with the ladies from the fire, to the drunken Englishman's house ? it would be no wonder, then, if he thought a gentleman was of the party.

And the man, being obtuse, would not recognize that the gentleman he was speaking to in the room of his hotel was the same gentleman whom he had seen with the ladies ; since Cyril did not now wear indoors the same costume which he had on, either at the concert, or when walking about the streets. So here (and it is a great and memorable lesson to you and to me), yes, here was he, repudiating the very information he had sought so much for ; and all, because (O what a shocking little sinner is Cupid !) our hero was in love, and was therefore flurried at the mention of a "brother or lover," who was all the while none other than the dim shadow of Mr. Cyril himself. This, as we say, occurred afterwards ; but now we have to proceed to record, that after Cyril had o-iven the order for the placard to be issued, he came home desperately disconsolate, and he was rather sur prised to be told that an English gentleman had Search. 17 wished to see him.

Who could this be ? Did he not leave his name ? " No, sir; but he said he would call again." Did he not say when ? "No, sir." "Well, then," says Cyril, "I will take an early dinner; and perhaps he may come, before I go out again." Sitting down mechanically to his repast, Cyril wondered, Could it be George ? By no means. George would have announced himself. Besides, the ' Amaranth ' could not have arrived, since Cyril had left special instructions at the port, for the first appearance of the yacht to be notified to him. Could it be somebody whom the ladies had com missioned to find him out ? But then, they knew nothing of him, his abode, his name, or anything. Cyril would not have been surprised at the " gentle man " not leaving his " name," had he known that the individual in question was the only person in the world who had no proper name, he being " Teddy," which nondescript appellation was his Christian name and surname and nickname and all.

As the nameless gentleman did not make bis appearance in time for our hero's impatience, Cyril sallied out again, in order to try to hght on the evaporated touter. Cyril went down towards the house to which he had borne Jessie ; because, though the place was now stripped and empty, and all the furniture sold and scattered, still he judged that the man, as an old purveyor and jackal, belonging to the premises like a cat, would hang about, through mere habituation, and haunt the vicinity, hke an unclean ghost, eyeing the outside of the happy vol. ii. ingle-nook where he had sometimes been privileged to discuss strong waters. Such creatures eat very little, except some greasy maccaroni, or bread with an apple rubbed on it; they do not drink ale or wine : brandy or rum is their diet, and rum is what they prefer.

Cyril was afraid the day would pass without his catching the fellow ; and by the evening he would be sure to be dead (drunk), or hired somewhere else, perhaps at Amiens or Paris, if not engaged as driver of a bathing-machine. So Cyril looked out sharply for him. And there is some thing in a man's looking out, which seems to attract the other person who is looked out for. The two lookers have a crossfire of keen glances, and so they get entangled in each other's eyelashes, and they come together through the electricity of eyes. What else can be the cause, that, if for in stance there is a new governess engaged to educate your olive-branches, Mr. Paterfamilias, and if she is coming to Euston terminus by rail, and you think it kind, and humane, to go and meet the poor young thing (she is pretty, mind) and fetch her in your brougham, you always light on her at once ?

There may be plenty of young ladies waiting for friends, or masters, or lovers, on the platform ; yet you go up to one, whom you never saw before, but whom you identify by instinct, and you say, with parental benignity, "Miss Mum, I believe?" to which she nervously responds, " Mr. Budget ? " and there you are, all right : and you have only to drive home, while the pretty girl cries silently in the corner of Search. 19 your carriage, trying to persuade herself that she is very happy. It must have been some such magnetic influence which made Cyril and the touter descry each other ; so the hang-dog fellow came up and said to Cyril, — " Please, sir, are you looking for miserable me ? " " Perhaps I am ; who are you ? " " My name is Encelade, at your service " (a pro found bow) ; and I beg to enquire (tragic grimace), are you the same most noble chevalier who con veyed the fire-'scaped lady from the heavens' down the aerial ladder, to the earth ?