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Front matter

A NOVEL

FRANK DANBY

Author of Piss in Clover

Chapter I

" HAVE it your own way," said John Courtney to his wife. " They are young yet, and I should have thought they spoke French pretty well for their ages. But if you've set your heart on a French seaside holiday instead of an English one, why, we must see about finding the right place."

It was an unusually long speech for John, but there was nothing unusual in his saying " yes" to all his wife's requests, nothing unusual in the light that came into his eyes when he looked upon her.

" We ought to go where there are no English families, where they will hear nothing but French from morning until night, where they will play with French children, and get the accent," she went on, from that vantage coign of the stool at his feet, whence it was so easy to lay a caressing head against his knee. " Is that not so, my John?"

The possessive pronoun came often to her lips when they were alone. It had never ceased to seem wonderful to her that these six solid feet of English manhood, so big and gruff and grey, should belong to her exclusively; how exclu sively, it was hardly within her to divine.

But, of course, except to Julie, there was noth ing very wonderful about John Courtney. He was just a level-headed provincial lawyer, who had gradually established himself in the confidence of his fellow townsmen from the time when he had been a lanky orphan, and Aunt Sophia had been able to boast:

" There's one thing about my nephew John, you can rely upon him; he always keeps his word."

This had been a simple thing to him as a boy; up to now, it had hardly seemed less simple to him as a man.

" Stick to your contract, never mind if you wrote or spoke it; stick to it."

That was the advice you got at John's office; it had come to be a byword in the town, almost a jest. Yet the public probity benefited by it. Young as he was, for his hair was not grey with the weight of years, he had an influence. Men spoke well of him, and deservedly.

Marriage had been a contract with John Courtney. It will be seen how he kept, not only to the letter, but to the unvowed spirit of it.

He and Julie had been married nearly nine years, yet she was still well under thirty, and, although she had borne him two children, her figure, svelte and curved and graceful, was almost a girl's figure; her face, with its low brow and dark lashes, its sparkling eyes, and scarlet lips, its piquant dimpling and mobility, was but a girl's face. All these years she had been in John's safe keeping, and she was still fresh and sweet as the day she gave herself to him.

" Oh ! Oui, it is time I saw my terre natale again. Almost I have forgotten it. Picture to yourself, my John, if you had left England eight, nine, ten years, and all suddenly it came upon you, that desire, nostalgia, what you call it, for the ' white cliffs of Albion.' ' She mocked his tone, and he smiled down upon her.

"Eh? Did I say that?"

" You don't make speeches, you silent John, you John who never talk. But I have heard that pretty prose, every English one say it. When I saw them first, your white cliffs, I was triste, and sick. Ah ! but you were waiting. Do you re member?"

"Oh! yes, I remember."

She was never tired of hearing that he remem bered.

" And then, at once, you say to yourself; is it not so ? — ' there is she who must be my wife, that little girl on the deck, so forlorn, whose father, I must tell her, is dead, that girl out of the convent

who knows nothing, and is worth nothing ' '

But he put his hand over her mouth : " That's enough. Now, about this holiday ?" She kissed the hand that touched her lips, and went on chattering gaily, exhausting the capacity of a three or four weeks' summer holiday, ranging over all the Normandy and Brittany sea coasts, flirting with the idea, now of this, now of the other, impossible journey.

The house was to be done up whilst they were away. They had been married nine years, and nothing had been done to it. It was small and unpretentious, but they had, each in his or her own way, been very proud of its possession. It is not every man of five- or six-and-twenty, in a pro fession, too, who can start married life in a dou ble-fronted villa in the Mayo Road, Southampton, with a garden at the back, and a garden in front, and a rental of sixty pounds a year. It was true John had had to get the furniture on the hire system. But within three years it was all his own! The iron bedsteads and the Brussels car pets, the walnut suite in the dining-room, and the ebonised and gilt in the drawing-room, it all be longed to him, to him and Julie, within those three years. He was not satisfied until he was free from debt; it had been a struggle, he knew it now, when he was safe, more than safe, begin ning to accumulate, even invest, make provision for all eventualities. But it was the struggle and anxiety of those first few years that had turned his hair grey. John Courtney was a big, loose- jointed fellow, rather awkward, with feet and hands too prominent, but the grey hair gave him a touch of distinction. He looked ten years older than his age.

He was a proud man now, as well as a happy one, holding his grey head upright.' For the house belonged to him, and the furniture of it, and he had earned it all for her. Julie had helped him loyally. All his friends who had shaken their heads over his marriage with a girl of seventeen, straight out of a convent, had had to admit that, although she was French, and a papist, John had made no mistake. Julie developed a genius for housewifery. She learnt how to cook ; her needle work was a marvel to behold, she could make a blouse or a baby's frock, she found the prettiest way to deck her babies. And always she sang and laughed amid her work, talking gaily of all her little economies, running down to meet John daily at the garden gate, recounting to him, before he had time to get into the house, all the wondrous things she had done or planned, or begun. She was very proud of her home and of her big hus band. It isn't every girl of eighteen, without a dot, who is mistress of a house, and a big hus band.

John did not seem the type of man to whom his wife would chatter such frivolities. He him self had not the gift of flowing language. He was not demonstrative, nor given over-much to speech at all. But she must have known him sympathetic, and divined that he liked to listen, for all these years she had gone on talking.

Gradually they had added, and added, always to the hired furniture. They had felt justified in ordering reckless loads of gravel for the pathway to the gate, and grass for the plots on either side of it. The gate was re-painted yearly. Julie's window curtains, flower boxes, and doorsteps were models for suburban Southampton.

A man can afford to indulge his wife's taste for such things when her weekly bills for house keeping are under three pounds, and every meal is set before him with the surprise of some new dainty dish. John's pride in his house was eclipsed by John's pride in his wife : but his love for her made both insignificant in comparison.

Julie had learnt English from her mother ; and they had taught it to her too in the convent. They had taught her little else; she read rarely, she knew England was an island, she could count — with the aid of her fingers. John added up her housekeeping books for her, and dived into the mystery of the weekly washing, with its half pennies and ninepence a-dozens, and other such intricacies. He praised her frugalities, and thus made her ambitious about them; he laughed at her arithmetic, but liked her dependence on him.

There had scarcely been a shadow between them in all those nine years. Her gaiety and irrespon sible chatter were a constant wonder to John, who was so differently constituted.

Julie talked French sometimes with the chil dren, she had also a French nurse for them ; but still they did not acquire much facility with the language. She had the unstudied, unconscious tact of a gentle heart. She knew her John was wholly English, and, in striving to perfect herself in his language, to make it hers, she was apt to forget she should talk French in the nursery or the school-room.

" That is why we must take them abroad. I forget; I sing, I talk, to them in English."

" And do you think it matters ?"

" But Jack must go to school next year, and it will make him more forward in his class. And I have the nostalgia, moi "

She made a little moue, she laid her hand upon her heart, and John laughed, and the matter was practically decided. When August came, instead of Broadstairs or Margate, Birchington of the

Bungalows, or Westgate of the seaweed smell, they were to go abroad.

But first, there were endless important matters to be decided; the house was to be renewed in their absence, new paper and white paint were to be employed in its beautification. Julie took a whole week, and at least ten journeys to the va rious shops, to select her chintz covers for the drawing-room. John would buy engravings for the dining-room walls, and oilcloth for the hall. The necessity for strict economy was over; but, it had made its impress. And, of course, it had been the education of a lifetime with Julie.

All the time they were planning for the house they were discussing the merits or demerits of the various French watering-places. Their friends were called into council; throughout June and part of July, Julie could talk of nothing but where they should go. Boulogne and Dieppe, Wimereux, and Paris Plage were among the first to be rejected. They were too much frequented by English people. Jack and the petite Eugenie would hear only English.

Why they should have selected Dives-Cabourg, nobody ever knew, least of all Julie and John. It was one of those accidents, eventful, inex plicable, that are nevertheless of daily occurrence. Trouville had been negatived on account of its expense; Dinard, because it was too aristocratic; Etretat had a stony beach ; at Parame the bathing was dangerous. Who first mentioned Cabourg, John always forgot. But after the name had be come familiar, first this one, and then the other, remembered, or had heard, that the bathing was exquisite and wonderful, the hotel comfortable, and not too dear. Cabourg was near enough to Trouville for gaiety, far enough from it for quiet. The journey was a little too complicated to tempt English people with their families, not sufficiently so, apparently, to make it prohibitive to the Courtneys.

John wrote for the tariff to the Grand Hotel de Cabourg. Generally, they had taken apartments when they went away. Once, indeed, they had gone to a boarding-house, but this was in their very early days, when three guineas and a-half a week, with everything found, had tempted them to discomfort. But to an hotel they had never before aspired. Julie went blithely about the house until the answer came. She told the chil dren wonderful and endless stories of the joys in store for them; she was much more excited than they were. Already she was devising cos tumes for herself and for Genie; her only lament or trouble was that Jack must perforce be undecorated ; he was past the age for pretty clothes, he must wear knickerbockers, and, alas! there was no place for embroidery on knickerbockers. John suggested that she might " do" an anchor on his sailor collar, and so that grief, too, was assuaged. John always found a way out for her when she was in trouble.

The answer came in due course, it came two whole posts before she would have despaired of it ever coming at all. Yes, they had the rooms — the price seemed reasonable, even to the Courtneys. Quand Madame arrivera-t-ellef

There was enclosed in the letter a book with pictures of the town, with a list of unexampled gaieties, from competitions in sand castles to pigeon-shooting. It appeared there would be dancing for the children, also there were fancy dress balls, concerts, and musical entertainments.

" But of course, we will do nothing on Sun day; we will keep your Sunday just the same," said the little papist demurely.

" Oh ! yes ! I see you doing it, when there is any fun on."

John was almost as pleased as Julie. Not be cause he felt the need for holiday, or the nostalgia of which she spoke, but because her pleasure was infectious, and he caught it easily.

The rooms were booked for the 2pth of July. Julie's new dresses were all put briskly in hand. They had a dressmaker working in the house for a whole fortnight ; Julie helped, so it was possible John's cuisine suffered a little during these four teen days. But the effect of every dress was re hearsed for his benefit, and he found them all " ripping," or " splendid," or " rather smart," according to his limited vocabulary. In reality, he thought she looked beautiful, whatever she wore.

And indeed she was a pretty creature, with her brown eyes and hair, her riante face, and soft skin. English fare and English air had dowered her with a rose-leaf flush.

White drill suits for Jack, blue serge, brown serge, and white muslins for Genie, were bought with a comparatively lavish hand. To hear them all talk ! They were like three children together, and Marie was no better. One would have thought there was only one paradise, and that was Dives-Cabourg ; only one holiday, and that was the one they were going to enjoy.

Chapter II

THE final step was to book two sleeping cabins for the steamer. When that was done, there were only the hours to be counted, the days to be ticked off. Already it was the 25th. Two days, three days more, and they would start.

On the 27th, John came home unusually early. Julie, sewing at the window, dropped her work and rushed to meet him. His steps had lagged as he walked up the gravel path. Running into the hall, to relieve him of hat and stick, she began at once; there was room for only one subject at a time in Julie's mind.

" What is it ? you have heard something, I can see it in your face. Is it that Cabourg is un healthy for the children? The cabins, they have been taken? the steamer, she will not go? Oh! don't keep me waiting ; speak, talk, tell me, I can not bear it else."

She was always foreign in her expressions, in her caressing ways, in her impulsiveness and want of calm. John liked all her ways, all her expres sions, everything she said and did. Perhaps it was this rare marital attitude of his that had made their lives so happy together.

" Cabourg is all right, and nothing has hap pened to the steamer or the cabins. But Tom Jarvis is coming home on the Kariboo, and she is due in Liverpool on the ist."

The words were curt, the announcement abrupt. But he had hated the news, and the possibility of disappointment for her. It was, however, essen tial that he should be at hand to meet his first, his best client. Julie would see this for herself. Tom Jarvis, who had prospered in America beyond ex pectation or belief, would have no one but his old school friend to look after his English interests. John Courtney was his agent and representative; his appointment to these offices, six years ago, had marked the commencement of the era of pros perity in Mayo Road. Now Tom was coming over, and John must be at his post to explain details, deliver up documents, and take fresh instructions. It was " hard lines," perhaps, that Tom should just choose this week for his arrival, but it wasn't John's way to grumble over the inevitable, and it was clear he must not be away from Southampton.

" Oh ! John, do not say we cannot go. It is too sad, it cannot be ; I have so well arranged. Oh ! John! and the little ones, they have so much looked forward to it!"

Of course, she was nothing but a child herself ; tears were near the surface of her pretty eyes, and in her excited voice she cried :

" You cannot say we shall not go. Oh ! we must, we must; it would be too bad, it is im possible, I cannot bear it."

" Tush ; don't cry out before you are hurt ; I never said you were not to go," he said abruptly.

She followed him upstairs, hung about him whilst he changed his clothes, and was full of en dearments and fondlings. These never palled upon him ; John was provincial and stiff, and un demonstrative, and Julie was everything that was different. Perhaps it was the difference between them that had attracted him, and still held him; but everything she did was right in his eyes, and to deny her, or fail to indulge her whims or wishes, had always been impossible to him. And, in justice to Julie, it must be admitted that hitherto they had generally been very mild little whims and wishes, concerning themselves with new lamp shades, or a crepe de Chine shawl with fringes, a fan, style Louis XVI., or such feminine desires.

Now she had set her heart on the Cabourg trip, and Tom Jarvis was coming over from America !

John hated to see Julie cry, or to have to dis appoint her. But it was his duty to be at his place to meet Tom. And, when he saw his duty, he did it, simply. There was not much compromise about John Courtney; right was right with him, and wrong was wrong, always. He wanted to gratify his wife, but Tom Jarvis had the right to his representative's attention and personal service.

"Jarvis does not arrive until the ist. I could run over with you, stay a couple of days to see that you were comfortable, and be back in time to meet him," he said, hesitatingly, when he had finished his dressing to the sound of lament and the sight of tears, and the heart, that was so much larger and so much tenderer than one would have suspected, was unable to bear any longer the spec tacle of her grief, without an attempt at so lacing it.

" The question is, do you think you will be all right there, without me, say for a week, or per haps two ? I can't get through my business with him under that time ; it might take even more."

" Without you !" she echoed in dismay.

" You'll have the children, and Marie."

"But when — how long ? Oh! John, it

will be half spoiled."

" I could run over with you ; he won't be here until the ist." He was still undecided. She was all smiles again.

" Oh ! that will be good. You will come over with us — you will come back to us; it will be only for a few days you will leave us. Oh ! John, how good you are. I could not bear to think that we should not go; my things are all ready.

Jane is to have her holiday, everything was so well arranged."

" I don't know about a few days — but I should think there is no doubt I should be free to fetch you at the end of August, or the beginning of September. What do you say to that?"

What he had expected her to say, perhaps, was that she could not be happy without him; that they had never been separated, and she did not want them to be now, and that, if he could not stay with them, she would wait until next year to perfect Jack's French. But what she did say was to call him " cheri," and her " own dear John," and to protest that she would be quite happy with the children, and he was not to mind about them, and it was good and sweet and adorable of him to let them go, and she longed to see her own dear land once again. The dinner was interrupted by her caresses and exuberant gratitude.

Julie Courvoisier had not seen her terre natale, since she left the convent, where she had been brought up, to join her father, when he lay at the point of death at Southampton.

The Baron de Courvoisier, who boasted that he was an Englishman on the maternal side of his family, and connected with the Cavendishes, and that on the male side he was the last of his great race, had been a well-known character at every gambling centre in Europe. John had met him at Boulogne when John was little more than a boy, and had been impressed at once by his mag nificence and by his condescension. He took a great fancy to John, and he was not above bor rowing a few pounds from his new acquaintance, even in those early days. But he was an aristo cratic-looking gentleman withal. His long grey moustachios, the red ribbon in his button-hole, his easy loquacity, impressed the young provincial lawyer, callow, and only just out of his articles.

So long as the Baron de Courvoisier had any thing left of the estate he had inherited, he went with his wife from one foreign gambling centre to another. That was his occupation, the serious business of his life! The Baron and Baroness corresponded with their new English friend, and when he appeared in his holiday times at Spa or Monte Carlo, Ostend, or Biarritz, they were mutually advantageous to each other. John would always lend a few pounds, although, of course, as he grew older he understood better the people with whom he had to deal; and, of course, the Courvoisiers helped to make his holi days enjoyable and varied. Madame la Baronne found him sympathique. She had still the re mains of beauty, the gayest spirit in good for tune, the bravest in adversity. John admired her always, and was on the brink of a passion for her, when she was nearing the fifties and he still twenty-two. But he recovered himself in time, and remained her admirer only. Once he went with her to the convent school at Liege, where her daughter was being educated, but on this occasion he had not seen Julie. Only he heard endlessly about her, and was shown her various photographs.

The Baron talked often, somewhat grandilo quently, about the day when his affairs should be put in order, when he would show John the papers establishing his connection with the great

English family of the Cavendishes. He built word castles in the air. His daughter spoke English to perfection, one day she would stay at Chatsworth, the Duchess would present her at Court; they were cousins, of course John knew that? He traced the connection and dwelt upon the ramifications of the family tree. But in truth the end of most conversations between John and the Baron de Courvoisier was the request for a leger emprunt.

John had known them four or five years, in this desultory holiday-resort way, before the Baroness died, and the Baron succeeded in leaving at the tables the last remains of his fortune. He came to Southampton only to die; and it was John who saw that he wanted for nothing. The excuse that brought him was the claim to a share in the estate of the late Sir William Cavendish. Very soon John discovered that the Cavendish and Courvoisier connection had no marriage certifi cate attached to it. But he did not tell the old man what he knew.

The Baron had not long to live ; he telegraphed for his daughter to come to him, and awaited the event.

John had nearly had a grand passion for the mother, who was almost in the fifties. What effect would Julie produce upon him, with her marked brows and dancing eyes, her scarlet lips and the dimples that played around them, her demureness and pretty piquancy, the coquetry, so arch and childlike and obvious, that began to show itself so soon after she had recovered from the shock of the bad news with which she had been met.

It was within a few short weeks of her father's death, encouraged perhaps by this same coquetry, moved more certainly by the knowledge that she had no friend in the world but himself, that John somewhat haltingly and stiffly asked the young girl if she could make up her mind to marry him.

Before he had got out his proposal, before he had finished speaking, she was laughing and sob bing in his arms.

She had been so triste sometimes, and knew not what she should do! The Sister who had come over with her had said she must go back to the convent, and be a servant to them, or, at best, she might teach the little ones, for she had neither money nor home. She did not want to go back to the convent; she would like to stay here, and marry herself with him. She would love him, and be, oh! so good, and no trouble. For she was lonely, and if he had not asked her to marry him she must have gone back to the convent, perhaps to be a nun, she who was so young and wanted to be free. Oh ! he was good to keep her here.

The love, which was latent and awkward and shy, threw down great roots whilst she clung to him sobbing, grateful to him for helping her out of her difficulties. She was almost a child, younger even than her seventeen years. John made no vows. But, as he held her slender figure in his arms, as, shyly, reverentially almost, his lips touched her hair, he knew his life was hers henceforth. His soul was great enough for love, and Julie flooded it.

The love had not grown less with years. There was much of the perpetual child about Julie, although she had developed, under Aunt Sophia's tuition, such surprising housewifely qualities. Her deftness in needlework was an inheritance from her mother ; her thrift, and love of neatness and order, were from her convent education. Her gaiety never failed her, nor her lightness of spirit, and if, as his friends said, John spoiled her, he had this excuse, that he owed to her an ideal home, wherein children played and prattled, and the mother laughed and sang, and all was sweet and orderly, with love enough to smooth over inevitable frets or small petulances.

They had small means, and hired furniture, and the responsibilities and anxieties of his married life turned conscientious John's hair grey before he was thirty. But they had no real troubles in their married life until the much talked of Cabourg holiday had begun.

The bad journey with which it started was ominous. Many times in the days that came John thought of the omen of that stormy crossing.

Chapter III

THEY started on the very day that they had fixed. John found he could take them over, and even remain one day with them at Cabourg. But in July of that year there was exceptionally bad weather. The passage from Southampton to Havre was both rough and prolonged, and, al though the children slept peaceably through wind and storm, Julie proved the worst of travellers, sick, nervous, and easily exhausted. John spent the night in nursing her and scolding her alter nately, trying to chaff her out of her fears, then soothing them, rather distracted by his position than irritated. He had never known the mean ing of either nerves or sea-sickness, being used to the sea from childhood, and essentially phleg matic and unimaginative. But already he wished he had not yielded to her desire to come abroad. It was going to be a failure, this French holiday, he felt already. When they arrived at Havre,

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Julie was too ill to continue the voyage. A few hours later, when she had recovered, the storm had not abated, and the harbour authorities would not allow the boat for Trouville to start. So they slept that night, knowing no better, at the miserable, dirty Hotel de la Plage. And thus John lost the opportunity of remaining one day with them at Cabourg. He made light of it, of course, but it did not prove a trivial matter.