IN NORMANDY.

It was a December morning, though soft and bright, as Peter’s mother crossed over the mouth of the Seine from Havre to Honfleur. The high cliffs behind the town were clothed with trees still in leaf, and glowing with the rich crimson and amber of autumn. High among them stood the Cross, beneath which she had so often sat to watch the sea, upon which her husband was sailing. Low down on the shore, so near the water that its tides beat against the thick stone walls, lay the grey hospital, with its little belfry, under which swung the deep-toned old bell, whose tolling had often sounded in her ears, as she returned in her father’s fishing-boat from the low-lying, tide-swept sands, stretching out into the open sea. The little fleet of fishing-boats was sailing homewards with the tide, and she could hear the merry singing of the girls and women in them, as the steamer passed by them. Was it possible that she had once been light-hearted and gay like them, before she had met with her English seaman!

The jetty was all alive with the townsfolk, crowding down to meet the steamer. Besides these were the old fishermen and the fishwomen from the market, waiting to see what the boats would bring in. She knew nearly every face there. There was Michel, whom her father had chosen for her husband, and who had been wise enough to draw back when he found that her love had been given to Peter Blake. He was the first to see her, but in a few minutes she was surrounded by a crowd of old friends and neighbors. Most of the women had envied her in former times, and wished that they, too, could find English husbands, to carry them away to that paradise for wives which lay across the stormy Channel. But the old men still remembered the blame that had fallen on Henri Baudin for giving his pretty daughter to an English heretic.

They formed a group about her, on the jetty, with her old wooden cradle beside her, all that she had brought back from that rich England whither she had gone. Where was her husband?--He was dead. Where were her sons?--They, too, were dead. They had all been lost at sea.

“My husband went out in a worn-out ship,” she said, her voice tremulous and low, “and he was drowned; and my sons, both of them, went out in a ship overladen, and they were drowned. There were not enough men in the ship, for two of them made themselves deserters at the last minute even; they were sent to jail, and they are in jail now. If my sons had gone to jail they would have been saved.”

“But how!” asked Michel, who had been listening eagerly, “did their Capitaine Expert let the ships go to sea worn-out and overladen? Did he not see that they were not good vessels, sound and safe? What sort of certificate could he give to them that the cargo was well laden and the provisions good?”

“They have no Capitaine Expert in England,” she answered.

“No Capitaine Expert!” echoed half-a-dozen voices.

“But do they not insure their vessels in England?” inquired Michel; “how can they do it without a Capitaine Expert to give them certificates? Who surveys the vessels for them? The coast of England is dangerous above everything. My father, he went out with our General Hoche, when we took our fleet right into Bantry Bay; and lo! the English never showed their faces, or dared to send out a single vessel; but the winds and storms and tempests drove our ships back again to Brest, and we did not set a foot on their soil. The storms round England are like tigers. How can they do without a Capitaine Expert to inspect their ships?”

“In England,” she said, “they get rich by losing their ships. They can insure their ships for so much money that it is good for the owners when they sink. It was not so in former times, when they could not insure their ships; then the owners took care they were good and strong.”

“What then!” cried Michel’s wife, a sunburnt, brisk-looking woman, whose long gold earrings glistened in the sunlight under her snow-white cap; “do the English women not love their husbands, that they permit them to go away to sea in rotten old ships, without enough food? Here, in France, we would see if our men abandoned us like that! We would go up to Paris, every one of us, and make them change their laws. Bah, madame! Your fine Englishwomen do not care a straw for their husbands!”

“My Peter’s wife loved him with all her heart,” she replied, sobbing.

“Why, then,” replied Michel’s wife--“why does she not go to the grand Lord Mayor of London, and cry, and pray for help! Why do not all the sailors’ wives go up together, in a great troop, to the Lord Mayor’s palace! Oh! if it were so here, in France, would we sit still and hold our tongues think you?”

“Everybody is free in England,” answered Peter Blake’s mother; “they all do as they choose.”

“A fine liberty!” said Michel, thoughtfully--“liberty to throw away men’s lives! But it is not possible. Do you mean to tell us that in London itself a ship can be overladen and sent away down the river, where many other captains and crews can see that she is overladen, and sails out to sea, and is lost there; and nobody in England asks where the ship is gone, and what has happened to the poor men? It is not possible!”

“My two sons sailed out to sea, and were lost,” she answered; “that is all I know. Nobody will ask about them, nobody will care, except me and Bessie.”

“But it is incredible!” said Michel; “England is so great a nation for ships. If they lose their sailors what can they do? It will become a nation quite small, of quite little importance. They are not wise these Englishmen.”

“The Englishwomen are too cold, too tranquil,” added his wife; “they have no blood in their veins; they do not love their husbands. If they loved them, would they let them be taken away to be drowned in worn-out old ships? No, no, no.”

“I loved my husband well,” she said, with quivering lips. How often they had stood together on this jetty, watching the boats come in, just as Michel and his wife were doing now! It seemed almost as if the last few years had been only a painful dream, and that in a moment or two she might awake to see him at her side again, and her son Peter, a boy of twelve, coming back in the boats. Was it true that they would never feel the sunshine again, nor see the river glittering in the light, nor hear the hundred cheery sounds of life mingling together all about them?

“Good day, my friends,” she said, looking up, and trying to smile. “I am very tired. I must go on.”

“But where are you going, madame!” asked Michel; “we will carry your baggage for you. Ah! it is the old cradle, I see; thy mother’s cradle, Nannette.”

No one had called her Nannette since her husband’s death, and the tears started to her eyes. How could she tell Michel and his wife that she had no refuge but the hospital. Yet they were waiting for her answer, and she could not keep her bitter lot a secret. She had gone away happy and prosperous; she had come home again penniless and childless.

“I must go,” she answered, with a faltering utterance. “I must go to the hospital.”

There was a dead silence for a minute among all the group that surrounded her, and Michel was the first to break it.

“Madame,” he said, respectfully, “we will do ourselves the honor of accompanying you. You will be very welcome there.”

In another minute a little procession was formed of old neighbors and friends, who pressed about her, speaking to her in tones of sympathy. The streets along which they passed were narrow and roughly paved; but she knew every house in them, and the faces that looked through the windows at the sound of so many footsteps, and the hum of so many voices passing by, were many of them familiar to her. Was it more or less bitter to be treading these well-known streets on her way to the last poor shelter where she could lay her head? She could not tell. There was no chilling indifference, such as would have been her lot if she had gone into some English workhouse; but in England there would have been no sad memories awakened into life at every step she took.

At the great heavy door of the hospital she bade farewell to her escort. The old cradle was carried into the inner court, and she had to tell her mournful story again to the pitying Sisters, who gathered about her. But she was worn out and exhausted; the strain upon her feeble strength had been too long and too great. A sudden dimness fell upon her, and she stretched out her hands to them as if groping for help. She forgot the words she was saying to them, and they heard her mutter, in broken sentences, “He has not lost--not lost them--not lost me--out of the hollow of his hand.”