In and out of Three Normandy Inns Part 21

Miles back we had left the sea; even the hills had stopped a full hour ago, as if they had no taste for the rivalry of cathedral spires.

Behold the river now, coursing as sedately as the high-road, between two interminable lines of poplars. Far as the eye could reach stretched a wide, great plain. It was flat as an old woman's palm; it was also as fertile as the city sitting in the midst of its luxuriance has been rich in history.

"_Ce pays est tres beau, et Caen la plus jolie ville, la plus avenante, la plus gaie, la mieux situee, les plus belles rues, les plus beaux batiments, les plus belles eglises_--"

There was no doubt, Charm added, as she repeated the lady's verdict, of the opinion Madame de Sevigne had formed of the town. As we drove, some two hundred years later, through the Caen streets, the charm we found had been perpetuated, but alas! not all of the beauty. At first we were entirely certain that Caen had retained its old loveliness; the outskirts were tricked out with the bloom of gardens and with old houses brave in their armor of vines. The meadows and the great trees of the plain were partly to blame for this illusion; they yielded their place grudgingly to the cobble-stoned streets and the height of dormer windows.

To come back to the world, even to a provincial world, after having lived for a time in a corner, is certain to evoke a pleasurable feeling of elation. The streets of Caen were by no means the liveliest we had driven into; nor did the inhabitants, as at Villerville, turn out _en ma.s.se_ to welcome us. The streets, to be quite truthful, were as sedately quiet as any thoroughfares could well be, and proudly call themselves boulevards. The stony-faced gray houses presented a singularly chill front, considering their nationality. But neither the pallor of the streets nor their aspect of provincial calm had power to dampen the sense of our having returned to the world of cities. A girl issuing from a doorway with a netted veil drawn tightly over her rosy cheeks, and the curve of a Parisian bodice, immediately invested Caen with a metropolitan importance.

The most courteous of innkeepers was bending over our carriage-door. He was desolated, but his inn was already full; it was crowded to repletion with people; surely these ladies knew it was the week of the races? Caen was as crowded as the inn; at night many made of the open street their bed; his own court-yard was as filled with men as with farm-wagons. It was altogether hopeless as a situation; as a welcome into a strange city, I have experienced none more arctic. I had, however, forgotten that I was travelling with a conqueror; that when Charm smiled she did as she pleased with her world. The innkeeper was only a man; and since Adam, when has any member of that s.e.x been known to say "No" to a pretty woman? This French Adam, when Charm parted her lips, showing the snow of her teeth, found himself suddenly, miraculously, endowed with a fragment of memory. _Tiens_, he had forgotten! that very morning a corner of the attic--_un bout du toit_--had been vacated. If these ladies did not mind mounting to a _grenier_--an attic, comfortable, although still only an attic!

The one dormer window was on a level with the roof-tops. We had a whole company of "belles voisines," a trick of neighborliness in windows the quick French wit, years ago, was swift to name. These "neighbors" were of every order and pattern. All the world and his mother-in-law were gone to the races;--and yet every window was playing a different scene in the comedy of this life in the sky. Who does not know and love a French window, the higher up in the world of air the better? There are certain to be plants, rows of them in pots, along the wide sill; one can count on a bullfinch or a parrot, as one can on the bebes that appear to be born on purpose to poke their fingers in the cages; there is certain also to be another cage hanging above the flowers--one filled with a fresh lettuce or a cabbage leaf. There is usually a snowy curtain, fringed; just at the parting of the draperies an old woman is always seated, with chin and nose-tip meeting, her bent figure rounding over the square of her knitting-needles.

It was such a window as this that made us feel, before our bonnets were laid aside, that Caen was glad to see us. The window directly opposite was wide open. Instead of one there were half a dozen songsters aloft; we were so near their cages that the cat-bird whistled, to call his master and mistress to witness the intrusion of these strangers. The master brought a hot iron along--he was a tailor and was just in the act of pressing a seam. His wife was sc.r.a.ping carrots, and she tucked her bowl between her knees as she came to stand and gaze across. A cry rose up within the low room. Some one else wished to see the newcomers.

The tailor laid aside his iron to lift proudly, far out beyond the cages, the fattest, rosiest offspring that ever was born in an attic.

The babe smote its hands for pure joy. We were better than a broken doll--we were alive. The family as a family accepted us as one among them. The man smiled, and so did his wife. Presently both nodded graciously, as if, understanding the cause of our intrusion on their aerial privacy, they wished to present us with the compliment of their welcome. The manners among these garret-windows, we murmured, were really uncommonly good.

"Bonjour, mesdames!" It was the third time the woman had pa.s.sed, and we were still at the window. Her husband left his seam to join her.

"Ces dames are not accustomed to such heights--_a ces hauteurs peut-etre?_"

The ladies in truth were not, unhappily, always so well lodged; from this height at least one could hope to see a city.

"_Ah! ha! c'est gai par ici, n'est-ce pas?_ One has the sun all to one's self, and air! Ah! for freshness one must climb to an attic in these days, it appears."

It was impossible to be more contented on a height than was this family of tailors; for when not cooking, or washing, or tossing the "bebe" to the birds, the wife st.i.tched and st.i.tched all her husband cut, besides taking a turn at the family socks. Part of this contentment came, no doubt, from the variety of shows and amus.e.m.e.nts with which the family, as a family, were perpetually supplied. For workers, there were really too many social distractions abroad in the streets; it was almost impossible for the two to meet all the demands on their time. Now it was the jingle of a horse's bell-collar; the tailor, between two snips at a collar, must see who was stopping at the hotel door. Later a horn sounded; this was only the fish vender, the wife merely bent her head over the flowers to be quite sure. Next a trumpet, clear and strong, rang its notes up into the roof eaves; this was something _bebe_ must see and hear--all three were bending at the first throbbing touch of that music on the still air, to see whence it came. Thus you see, even in the provinces, in a French street, something is quite certain to happen; it all depends on the choice one makes in life of a window--of being rightly placed--whether or not one finds life dull or amusing.

This tailor had the talent of knowing where to stand, at life's corner--for him there was a ceaseless procession of excitements.

It may be that our neighbor's talent for seeing was catching. It is certain that no city we had ever before looked out upon had seemed as crowded with sights. The whole history of Caen was writ in stone against the blue of the sky. Here, below us, sat the lovely old town, seated in the gra.s.ses of her plain. Yonder was her ca.n.a.l, as an artery to keep her pulse bounding in response to the sea; the ship-masts and the drooping sails seemed strange companions for the great trees and the old garden walls. Those other walls William built to cincture the city, Froissart found three centuries later so amazingly "strong, full of drapery and merchandise, rich citizens, n.o.ble dames, damsels, and fine churches," for this girdle of the Conqueror's great bastions the eye looks in vain. But William's vow still proclaims its fulfilment; the spire of l'Abbaye aux Hommes, and the Romanesque towers of its twin, l'Abbaye aux Dames, face each other, as did William and Mathilde at the altar--that union that had to be expiated by the penance of building these stones in the air.

Commend me to an attic window to put one in sympathetic relations with cathedral spires! At this height we and they, for a part of their flight upward, at least, were on a common level--and we all know what confidences come about from the accident of propinquity. They seemed to a.s.sure us as never before when sitting at their feet, the difficulties they had overcome in climbing heavenward. Every stone that looked down upon the city wore this look of triumph.

In the end it was this Caen in the air--it was this aerial city of finials, of towers, of peaked spires, of carved chimneys, of tree-tops over which the clouds rode; of a plain, melting--like a sea--into the mists of the horizon; this high, bright region peopled with birds and pigeons; of a sky tender, translucent, and as variable as human emotions; of an air that was rapture to breathe, and of nights in which the stars were so close they might almost be handled; it was this free, hilly city of the roofs that is still the Caen I remember best.

There were other features of Caen that were good to see, I also remember. Her street expression, on the whole, was very pleasing. It was singularly calm and composed, even for a city in a plain. But the quiet came, doubtless, from its population being away at the races. The few townspeople who, for obvious reasons, were stay-at-homes, were uncommonly civil; Caen had evidently preserved the tradition of good manners. An army of cripples was in waiting to point the way to the church doors; a regiment of beggars was within them, with nets cast already for the catching of the small fry of our pennies. In the gay, geranium-lit garden circling the side walls of St. Pierre there were many legless soldiers; the old houses we went to see later on in the high street seemed, by contrast, to have survived other wars, those of the Directory and the Mountain, with a really scandalous degree of good fortune. On our way to a still greater church than St. Pierre, to the Abbaye aux Dames, that, like the queen who built her, sits on the throne of a hill--on our way thither we pa.s.sed innumerable other ancient mansions. None of these were down in the guide books; they were, therefore, invested with the deeper charm of personal discovery.

Once away from the little city of the shops, the real Caen came out to greet us. It was now a gray, sad, walled town; behind the walls, level-browed Francis I. windows looked gravely over the tufts of verdure; here was an old gateway; there what might once have been a portcullis, now only an arched wreath of vines; still beyond, a group of severe-looking mansions with great iron bound windows presented the front of miniature fortresses. And everywhere gardens and gardens.

Turn where you would, you would only turn to face verdure, foliage, and ma.s.ses of flowers. The high walls could neither keep back the odors nor hide the luxuriance of these Caen gardens. These must have been the streets that bewitched Madame de Sevigne. Through just such a maze of foliage Charlotte Corday has also walked, again and again, with her wonderful face aflame with her great purpose, before the purpose ripened into the dagger thrust at Marat's bared breast--that avenging Angel of Beauty stabbing the Beast in his bath. Auber, with his Anacreontic ballads in his young head, would seem more fittingly framed in this old Caen that runs up a hill-side. But women as beautiful as Marie Stuart and the Corday can deal safely in the business of a.s.sa.s.sination, the world will always continue to aureole their pictures with a garland of roses.

The Abbaye on its hill was reached at last. All Caen lay below us; from the hillside it flowed as a sea rolls away from a great ship's sides.

Down below, far below, as if b.u.t.tressing the town that seemed rushing away recklessly to the waste of the plains, stands the Abbaye's twin-brother, the Aux Hommes. Plains, houses, roof-tops, spires, all were swimming in a sea of golden light; nothing seemed quite real or solid, so vast was the prospect and so ethereal was the medium through which we saw it. Perhaps it was the great contrast between that shimmering, unstable city below, that reeked and balanced itself like some human creature whose dazzled vision had made its footing insecure--it may be that it was this note of contrast which invested this vast structure bestriding the hill, with such astonishing grandeur. I have known few, if any, other churches produce so instantaneous an effect of a beauty that was one with austerity. This great Norman is more Puritan than French: it is Norman Gothic with a Puritan severity.

The sound of a deep sonorous music took us quickly within. It was as mysterious a music as ever haunted a church aisle. The vast and snowy interior was as deserted as a Presbyterian church on a week-day. Yet the sound of the rich, strong voices filled all the place. There was no sound of tingling accompaniment: there was no organ pipe, even, to add its sensuous note of color. There was only the sound of the voices, as they swelled, and broke, and began afresh.

The singing went on.

It was a slow "plain chant." Into the great arches the sonorous chanting beat upon the ear with a rhythmic perfection that, even without the lovely flavor of its sweetness, would have made a beauty of its own. In this still and holy place, with the company of the stately Norman arches soaring aloft--beneath the sombre glory of the giant aisle--the austere simplicity of this chant made the heart beat, one knew not why, and the eyes moisten, one also knew not why.

We had followed the voices. They came, we found, from within the choir.

A pattering of steps proclaimed we were to go no farther.

"Not there, my ladies--step this way, one only enters the choir by going into the hospital."

The voice was low and sweet; the smile, a spark of divinity set in a woman's face; and the whole was clothed in a nun's garb.

We followed the fluttering robes; we pa.s.sed out once more into the sunlit parvis. We spoke to the smile and it answered: yes, the choir was reserved for the Sisters--they must be able to approach it from the convent and the hospital; it had always, since the time of Mathilde, been reserved for the nuns; would we pa.s.s this way? The way took us into an open vaulted pa.s.sage, past a grating where sat a white-capped Sister, past a group of girls and boys carrying wreaths and garlands--they were making ready for the _Fete-Dieu_, our nun explained--past, at the last, a series of corridors through which, faintly at first, and then sweeter and fuller, there struck once more upon our ears the sounds of the deep and resonant chanting.

The black gown stopped all at once. The nun was standing in front of a green curtain. She lifted it. This was what we saw. The semicircle of a wide apse. Behind, rows upon rows of round arches. Below the arches, in the choir stalls, a long half-circle of stately figures. The figures were draped from head to foot. When they bent their heads not an inch of flesh was visible, except a few hands here and there that had escaped the long, wide sleeves. All these figures were motionless; they were as immobile as statues; occasionally, at the end of a "Gloria,"

all turned to face the high altar. At the end of the "Amen" a cloud of black veils swept the ground. Then for several measures of the chant the figures were again as marble. In each of the low, round arches, a stately woman, tall and n.o.bly planned, draped like a G.o.ddess turned saint, stood and chanted to her Lord. Had the Norman builders carved these women, ages ago, standing about Mathilde's tomb, those ancient sculptures could not have embodied, in more ideal image, the type of womanly renunciation and of a saint's fervor of exaltation.

We left them, with the rich chant still full upon their lips, with heads bent low, calm as graven images. It was only the bloom on a cheek, here and there, that made one certain of the youth entombed within these nuns' garb.

"Happy, _mesdames? Oh, mais tres heureuses, toutes_--there are no women so happy as we. See how they come to us, from all the country around.

_En voila une_--did you remark the pretty one, with the book, seated, all in white? She is to be a full Sister in a month. She comes from a n.o.ble family in the south. She was here one day, she saw the life of the Sisters, of us all working here, among the poor soldiers--_elle a vu ca, et pour tout de bon, s'est donnee a Dieu!_"

The smile of our nun was rapturous. She was proving its source. Once more we saw the young countess who had given herself to her G.o.d. An hour later, when we had reached the hospital wards, her novice's robes were trailing the ground. She was on her knees in the very middle of the great bare room. She was repeating the office of the hour, aloud, with clasped hands and uplifted head. On her lovely young face there was the glow of a divine ecstasy. All the white faces from the long rows of the white beds were bending toward her; to one even in all fulness of strength and health that girlish figure, praying beside the great vase of the snowy daisies, with the glow that irradiated the sweet, pure face, might easily enough have seemed an angel's.

As companions for our tour of the grounds we had two young Englishmen.

Both eyed the nuns in the distance of the corridors and the gardens with the sharpened glances all men level at the women who have renounced them. It is a mystery no man ever satisfactorily fathoms.

"Queer notion, this, a lot of women shutting themselves up," remarked the younger of the two. "In England, now, they'd all go in for being old maids, drinking tea and coddling cats, you know."

"I wonder which are the happier, your countrywomen or these Sisters, who, in renouncing the world devote their lives to serving it. See, over yonder" and I nodded to a scene beneath the wide avenue of the limes. Two tall Augustines were supporting a crippled old man; they were showing him some fresh garden-beds. Beyond was a gayer group. Some of the lay sisters were tugging at a huge basket of clothes, fresh from the laundry. Running across the gra.s.s, with flying draperies, two nuns, laughing as they ran, each striving to outfoot the other, were hastening to their rescue.

"They keep their bloom, running about like that; only healthy nuns I ever saw."

"That's because they have something better than cats to coddle."

"Ah, ha! that's not bad. It's a slow suicide, all the same. But here we are, at the top; it's a fine outlook, is it not?"

The young man panted as he reached the top of the Maze, one of the chief glories of the old Abbaye grounds. He had a fair and sensitive face; a weak product on the whole, he seemed, compared with the n.o.bly-built, vigorous-bodied nuns crowding the choir-stalls yonder.

Instead of that long, slow suicide, surely these women should be doing their greater work of reproducing a race. Even an open-air cell seems to me out of place in our century. It will be entirely out of fashion in time, doubtless, as the mediaeval cell has gone along with the old castle life, whose princely mode of doing things made a nunnery the only respectable hiding-place for the undowered daughters.

As we crept down into Caen, it was to find it thick with the dust of twilight. The streets were dense with other things besides the thickened light. The Caen world was crowding homeward; all the boulevards and side streets were alive with a moving throng of dusty, noisy, weary holidaymakers. The town was abroad in the streets to hear the news of the horses, and to learn the history of the betting.

Although we had gone to church instead of doing the races, many of those who had peopled the gay race-track came back to us. The table d'hote, at our inn that night, was as noisy as a Parisian cafe. It was scarcely as discreet, I should say. On our way to our attic that night, the little corridors made us a really amazing number of confidences.

It was strange, but all the shoes appeared to have come in pairs of twos. Never was there such a collection of boots in couples. Strange it was, also, to see how many little secrets these rows of candid shoe-leather disclosed. Here a pert, coquettish pair of ties were having as little in common as possible with the stout, somewhat clumsy walking-boots next them. In the two just beyond, at the next door, how the delicate, slender b.u.t.toned kids leaned over, floppingly, to rest on the coa.r.s.e, yet strong, hobnailed clumpers!

Shabbier and shabbier grew the shoes, as we climbed upward. With each pair of stairs we seemed to have left a rung in the ladder of fortune behind. But even the very poorest in pocket had brought his little extravagance with him to the races.

The only genuine family party had taken refuge, like ourselves, in the attic.

At the very next door to our own, Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe proclaimed, by the casting of their dusty shoes, that they also, like the rest of the world, had come to Caen to see the horses run.

CHAPTER XXIV.