An American Girl Abroad Part 5

We were shown into a small _salon_, where presently there entered to us a brisk, sharp-featured little French woman,--a teacher in the establishment,--who smiled a courteous welcome from out her black eyes as we apologized for the intrusion, and made known our wishes.

"We are a party of American girls," we said, "who, having learned to know and love Charlotte Bronte through her books, desire to see the garden of which she wrote in _Villette_."

"O, certainly, certainly," was the gracious response. "Americans often come to visit the school and the garden."

"Then this _is_ the school where she was for so long a time?" we burst out simultaneously, forgetting our little prepared speeches.

"Yes, _mesdemoiselles_; I also was a pupil at that time," was the reply. We viewed the dark little woman with sudden awe.

"But tell us," we said, crowding around her, "was she like--like--" We could think of no comparison that would do justice to the subject.

The reply was a shrug of the shoulders, and, "She was just a quiet little thing, in no way remarkable. I am sure," she added, "we did not think her a genius; and indeed, though I have read her books, I can see nothing in them to admire or praise so highly!"

"But they are _so_ wonderful!" ventured one of our number, gus.h.i.+ngly.

"They are very untrue," she replied, while something like a spark shot from the dark eyes.

O, shades of departed story-tellers, is it thus ye are to be judged?

"Madame Heger," she went on, "who still has charge of the school, is a most excellent lady, and not at all the person described as 'Madame Beck.'"

"And M. Paul Emmanuel,--Lucy Snow's teacher-lover,"--we ventured to suggest with some timidity.

"Is Madame Heger's husband, and was at that time," she replied, with a little angry toss of the head. After this terrible revelation there was nothing more to be said.

She led the way through a narrow pa.s.sage, and opening a door at the end, we stepped into the garden. We had pa.s.sed the cla.s.s-rooms on our right--where, "on the last row, in the quietest corner," Charlotte and Emily used to sit. We could almost see the pale faces, the shy figures bending over the desk in the gathering dusk.

The garden is less s.p.a.cious than it was in Charlotte's time, new cla.s.s-rooms having been added, which cut off something from its length.

But the whole place was strangely familiar and pleasant to our eyes.

Shut in by surrounding houses, more than one window overlooks its narrow s.p.a.ce. Down its length upon one side extends the shaded walk, the "_allee defendue_," which Charlotte paced alone so many weary hours, when Emily had returned to England. Parallel to this is the row of giant pear trees,--huge, misshapen, gnarled,--that bore no fruit to us but a.s.sociations vivid as memories. From behind these, in the summer twilight, the ghost of _Villette_ was wont to steal, and buried at the foot of "Methuselah," the oldest, we knew poor Lucy's love-letters were hidden to-day. A seat here and there, a few scattered shrubs, evergreen, laurel, and yew, scant blossoms, paths damp, green-crusted--that was all. Not a cheerful place at its brightest; not a sunny spot a.s.sociated in one's mind with summer and girlish voices. It was very still that day; the pupils were off for the long vacation, and yet how full the place was to us! The very leaves overhead, the stones in the walls around us, whispered a story, as we walked to and fro where little feet, that tired even then of life's rough way, had gone long years before.

"May we take one leaf--only one?" we asked, as we turned away.

"As many as you please;" and the little French woman grasped at the leaves growing thick and dark above her head. We plucked them with our own hands, tenderly, almost reverently; then, with many thanks, and our adieus, we came away.

"We have found it!" we exclaimed, when we had returned to the hotel and our friends. They only smiled their unbelief.

"Do you not know--can you not see--O, do you not feel?" we cried, displaying our glistening trophies, "that these could have grown nowhere but upon the pear trees in the old garden where Charlotte Bronte used to walk and dream?"

And our words carried conviction to their hearts.

CHAPTER X.

WATERLOO AND THROUGH BELGIUM.

To Waterloo.--Beggars and guides.--The Mound.--Chateau Hougomont.--Victor Hugo's "sunken road."--Antwerp.--A visit to the cathedral.--A drive about the city.--An excursion to Ghent.--The funeral services in the cathedral.--"Poisoned? Ah, poor man!"--The watch-tower.--The Friday-market square.--The nunnery.--Longfellow's pilgrims to "the belfry of Bruges."

WE could not leave the city without driving out to the battle-field of Waterloo. It is about a dozen miles to The Mound, and you may take the public coach if you choose--it runs daily. Our party being large, we preferred to engage a carriage.

We left the house after breakfast, and pa.s.sed through the wide, delightful avenues of the Foret de Soignes,--the Bois de Boulogne of Brussels,--then across the peaceful country which seemed never to have known anything so disturbing as war. Beyond the park lies the village which gave its name to the battle-field though the thickest of the fight was not there. In an old brick church, surmounted by a dome, lie intombed many minor heroes of the conflict. But heroes soon pall upon the taste, and nothing less than Wellington or Napoleon himself could have awakened a spark of interest in us by this time. Then, too, the vivid present blinded us to the past. The air was sweet with summer scents. Mowers were busy in the hayfields. A swarm of little barefooted beggars importuned us, turning dizzy somersaults until we could see only a maze of flying, dusty feet on either side. One troop, satisfied or despairing, gave way to another, and the guides were almost as annoying as the beggars. They walk for miles out of their villages to forestall each other, and meet the carriages that are sure to come from Brussels on pleasant days. They drive sharp bargains. As you near the centre of interest, compet.i.tion is greater, and their demands proportionately less. We refused the extortionate overtures of two or three, and finally picked up a shrewd-faced young fellow in a blue blouse, who hung upon the step of the carriage, or ran beside it for the last mile or two of the distance. The village of Mont St. Jean follows that of Waterloo. It is only a scant collection of whitewashed farm buildings of brick. We rolled through it without stopping, and out again between the quiet, smiling fields, our minds utterly refusing to grasp the idea that they had swarmed once with an army; that in this little village we had just left--dull, half asleep in the suns.h.i.+ne--dreadful slaughter had held high carnival one July day, not many years before. Even when the guide, clinging to the door of the carriage, rattled over the story of the struggle in a _patois_ all his own, hardly a shadow of the scene was presented to us.

As our horses slackened their pace, he stepped down from his perch to gather a nosegay of the flowers by the road-side, making no pause in his mechanical narrative--of how the Anglo-Belgian army were gathered upon this road and the fields back to the wood, on the last day of the fight; how many of the officers had been called at a moment's notice from the gayeties at Brussels, and more than one was found dead upon the field the next day, under the soaking rain, dressed as for a ball. He pushed back his visorless cap, uttering an exclamation over the heat, and adding, in the same breath, that just here, about Mont St. Jean, the battle waged fiercely in the afternoon, when Ney, with his brave cuira.s.siers, tried in vain to carry the position; and all the time, the summer sounds of twittering birds and hum of locusts were in our ears; the barefooted children still turned upon their axles beside the carriage wheels as we rolled along, and that other day seemed so far away, that we could neither bring it near nor realize it. One grim reminder of the past rose in the distance, and, as we drew near, swelled and grew before our eyes. It was the huge mound of earth raised two hundred feet, to commemorate the victory of the allies. Hills were cut down, the very face of nature changed for miles around, to rear this monument to pride and vain-glory. Upon its summit crouches the Belgian lion.

We turn from the paved road, when we have reached what seems to be a ma.s.s of unsightly ruins, with only a tumbling outbuilding left here and there. The whole is enclosed by a wall, which skirts also an orchard, neglected, grown to weeds. The carriage stops before the great gates. It is very cool and quiet in the shaded angle of the battered wall as we step down. It has been broken and chipped as if by pick-axes. Ah! the shot struck hardest here. The top of the low wall is irregular; the bricks have been knocked out; the dust has sifted down; the mosses have gathered, and a fringe of gra.s.s follows all its length. Even sweet wild flowers blossom where the muskets rested in those dreadful days. At intervals, half way up its height, a brick is missing. Accident? Ah, no; hastily constructed loopholes, through which the English fired at first, before the horrible time when they beat each other down with the b.u.t.ts of their guns while they fought hand to hand here, like wild beasts.

We enter the court-yard. Only a roughly plastered room or two remain, where the greed that gloats even over the field of blood offers _souvenirs_ of the place importunately. In the centre of this court-yard may still be seen the well that was filled with corpses. It must have given out blood for many a day. Upon one side are the remains of the building used for a hospital in the beginning of the fight, but where the wounded and dying perished in torment, when the French succeeded in firing the chateau; for this is _Hougomont_.

We came out at the gateway where we had entered; crossed the slope under the shadow of the branches from the apple trees, and followed the road winding through wheat-fields to The Mound. Breast-high on either side rose the nodding crests; and among them wild flowers, purple, scarlet, and blue, fairly dazzled our eyes, as they waved with the golden grain in the suns.h.i.+ne. "O, smiling harvest-fields," we said, "you have been sown with heroes; you have been enriched with blood!"

It was a long, dizzy climb up the face of The Mound to the narrow foothold beside the platform where rests that grim, gigantic lion. Once there, we held to every possible support in the hurricane of wind that seized us, while the guide gave a name to each historic farm and village spread out before our eyes. Only a couple of miles cover all the battle-field--the smallest where grand armies ever met; but the slaughter was the more terrible.

Connected with an inn at the foot of The Mound is a museum of curiosities. Here are queer old helmets worn by the cuira.s.siers, hacked and rust-stained; broken swords, and old-fas.h.i.+oned muskets; b.u.t.tons, and bullets even--everything that could be garnered after such a sowing of the earth.

In unquestioning faith we bought b.u.t.tons stained with mildew, and bearing upon them, in raised letters, the number of a regiment. Alas!

reason told us, later, that the b.u.t.tons disposed of annually here would supply an ordinary army. And rumor added, that they are buried now in quant.i.ties, to be exhumed as often as the supply fails.

I remembered Victor Hugo to have said in _Les Miserables_ something in regard to a sunken road here, which proved a pitfall to the French, and helped, in his judgment, to turn the fortunes of the day. But we had seen no sunken road. I mentioned it to the guide, who said that Victor Hugo spent a fortnight examining the ground before writing that description of the battle. "He lodged at our house," he added. "My father was his guide. What he wrote was all quite true. There is now no road such as he described; that was all changed when the earth was sc.r.a.ped together to form The Mound."

We lunched at the inn, surrounded by mementos and trophies, and served by an elderly woman, whose father had been a sergeant in the Belgian army, then late in the afternoon drove back to town.

The pleasant days at Brussels soon slipped by, and then we were off to Antwerp--only an hour's ride. I will tell you nothing about the former wealth and commercial activity of the city--that in the sixteenth century it was the wealthiest city in Europe, &c, &c. For all these interesting particulars, see Murray's Handbook of Northern Germany. As soon as we had secured rooms at the hotel, dropped our satchels and umbrellas, we followed the chimes to the cathedral. The houses of the people have crept close to it, until many of them, old and gray, have fairly grown to it, like barnacles to a s.h.i.+p; or it seemed as though they had built their nests, like the rooks, under the moss-grown eaves.

The interior of the cathedral was singularly grand and open. As we threw our shawls about us--a precaution never omitted--an old man shuffled out from a dark corner to show the church, take our _francs_, and pull aside the curtains from before the princ.i.p.al pictures, if so dignified a name as curtain can be applied to the dusty, brown cambric that obstructed our vision. Rubens's finest pictures are here, and indeed the city abounds in all that is best of Flemish art,--most justly, since it was the birthplace of its master. Rubens in the flesh we had seen at the Louvre; the spiritual manifestation was reserved for Antwerp; and to recall the city is to recall a series of visions of which one may not speak lightly.

Across, from the cathedral, upon a wide wooden bench in the market-place we sat a moment to consider our ways--the signal for the immediate swooping down upon us of guides and carriages, and the result of which was, our departure in a couple of dingy open vehicles to finish the city. We crawled about the town like a diminutive funeral procession, dismounting at the Church of St. Jacques to see the pictures, with which it is filled. In one of the chapels was a young American artist, copying Rubens's picture of "A Holy Family"--the one in which his two wives and others of his family enact the part of Mary, Martha, St. Jerome, &c.

Behind the high altar is the tomb of Rubens, with an inscription of sufficient length to extinguish an ordinary man. There was a museum, too, in the city, rich in the works of Rubens and Vandyck, and the fine park in the new part of the town, as well as the ma.s.sive docks built by the first Napoleon, were yet to be seen. The older members of the party were in the first carriage, and received any amount of valuable information, which was transmitted to us who followed in a succession of shouts sounding as much like "fire!" as anything else, with all manner of beckoning, and pointing, and wild throwing up of arms, that undoubtedly gave vent to their feelings, but brought only confusion and distraction to our minds. Not to be outdone, our driver began a series of utterly unintelligible explanations, the only part of which we understood in the least was, when pointing to the docks, he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "Napoleon!" At that we nodded our heads frantically, which only encouraged him to go on. Pausing before a low, black house, exactly like all the others, he pointed to it with his whip. It said "Hydraulics"

upon a rickety sign over the door. There were old casks, and anchors, and ropes, and rotting wood all around, for it was down upon the wharves. We tried to look enlightened, gratified even, and succeeded so well that he entered upon an elaborate dissertation in an unknown tongue. What do you suppose it was all about? Can it be that he was explaining the principles of hydraulics?

We made, one clay, an excursion from Antwerp to Ghent and Bruges. We left the train at Ghent to walk up through the narrow streets, that have no sidewalks, to the cathedral. There was a funeral within. The driver of the hea.r.s.e profusely decorated with inverted feather dusters, was comfortably smoking his pipe outside. A little hunchbacked guide, with great, gla.s.sy eyes, and teeth like yellow fangs, led us up the aisle to the screen beside the high altar, where we looked between the tombs and the monuments, upon the long procession of men circling around the coffin in the choir, each with a lighted candle in hand. As there were only about a dozen candles in all, and each must hold one while he pa.s.sed the coffin, it was a piece of dexterity, at least, to manage them, which so engrossed our attention, that we caught but an occasional sentence from our guide's whispered story of the seventh bishop of Ghent, who donated the pulpit to the cathedral, and around whose marble feet we were trying to peep; of the ninth, who was poisoned as he went upon some mission ("Poisoned? Ah, poor man!" we e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, absently, our eyes anxiously fixed upon one man to whom had been given no candle as yet); of the tall bra.s.s candlesticks, supposed to have been brought from England in the time of Cromwell, and a host more of fragmentary information, forgotten now. The whole interior of the church is rich in decoration, black and white marble predominating, with pictures of the early Flemish school filling every available s.p.a.ce. Once out of the church, we climbed into an ark of a carriage, and drove about the city, our little guide standing beside the driver, back to the horses most of the time, to pour out a torrent of history and romance. A most edifying spectacle it would have been anywhere else. Do read Henry Taylor's "Philip von Artevelde" before going to Ghent: the mingled romance and history throw a charm about the place and people which bare history can never give. Veritable Yankees these old Flemish weavers seem to have been, with a touch of the Irish in their composition--always up in arms for their rights, and striking out wherever they saw a head. There is a new part to the city, with a grand opera-house, shaded promenades and palatial dwellings, but one cares only for the narrow, dingy streets, and the old market squares, in which every stone could tell a story.

We saw the tall, brick watch-tower, where still hangs the bell that tolled,--

"I am Roland, I am Roland! There is victory in the land,"

and the old Hotel de Ville, of conglomerate architecture, one side of which, in the loveliest flamboyant Gothic imaginable, seems crumbling away from its very richness. In the Friday-market square--it chancing to be Friday--was a score of bustling busybodies, swarming like bees.

Here, in the old, quarrelsome times, battles were fought between the different guilds. I say battles, because at one time fifteen hundred were slain in this very square. Such a peaceful old square as it seemed to be the day of our visit! the old gray houses, that have echoed to the sound of strife, fairly smiling in the suns.h.i.+ne, and the market women kneeling upon the stones which have run with blood. At one corner rose a tower, and half way up its height may still be seen the iron rod, over which was hung imperfect linen, to shame the weaver who had dared to offer it in the market.

There is a great nunnery here in Ghent--a town of itself, surrounded by a moat and a wall, where are six hundred or more sisters, from families high and low, who tend the sick, weave lace, and mortify the flesh in black robes and white veils. When they become weary of it, they may return to the world, the flesh, and--their homes: no vows bind them. We drove along the streets past the cell-like houses where they dwell. Over the door of each was the name of her patron saint. It seemed a quiet retreat, a noiseless city, notwithstanding the six hundred women! But by far the most interesting sight, because the most ancient in the quaint old city, was the archway and turret of the old royal castle, erected a thousand years ago; only this gateway remains. Here John o' Gaunt was born. Built all round, and joined to it, are houses of more recent date, themselves old and tottering, and the arch beneath which kings and queens rode once, is now the entrance to a cotton factory.

We had only a few hours at Bruges--the city once more powerful than Antwerp even, but where not a house has been raised for a hundred years, and where nearly a third of its inhabitants are paupers. But decay and dilapidation are strong elements of the picturesque, and nothing seen that day was more charming than a piece of wall, still standing, belonging to the old Charles V.'s palace--honey-combed, black, of florid Gothic architecture, rising from the quiet waters of the ca.n.a.l. At one end it threw an arch over the street, with a latticed window above it, beneath which we pa.s.sed, after crossing the bridge. More than one picture of Bruges rests within my memory--its ca.n.a.ls spanned by the picturesque bridges, and overhung with willows that dipped their long branches into the water, and the quaint old houses with many-stepped gables, rising sheer from the stream.

But with all its past grandeur, the old city is best known to us Americans through the chimes from its belfry tower, and we were some of Longfellow's pilgrims. We drove into the great paved Place under the shadow of the belfry tower when its shadows were growing long, and watched the stragglers across the square--women in queer black-hooded cloaks; chubby little blue-eyed maidens with school-books in hand; a party of tourists; and last, but by no means least, the ubiquitous American girl, with an immense bow on the back of her dress, and her eye fixed steadily upon the milliner's shop just visible around the corner.

Almost three hundred feet the dingy brick tower rose above us, with low wings on either side, where were once the halls of some guilds, in the days when the tower was a lookout to warn of coming foes,--when the square was planned for defence. In a little court-yard, gained by pa.s.sing under its arch, we watched and listened, until at last the sweet tinkle of the silver-toned bells broke the hush of waiting--so far away, so heavenly, we held our breath, lest we should lose the sound that fell

"Like the psalms from some old cloister when the nuns sing in the choir, And the great bell tolled among them like the chanting of a friar."