we spent at Villiers-le-Bel, close to the great artist of the place; in the pure air, vocal with swallows, larks, and nightingales, and surrounded by the quaint old town and its rustic inhabitants. No sound nor sign suggested that Paris was near: but the chil dren, in their little white caps, wandered in the streets; old women, with their donkeys and vegetable-wagons, trundled about; while not even a steam-whistle told that Villiers-le-Bel was within sight from its hilly elevations of the great metropolis of France. BY CELIA'S ARBOR: R AUTHORS OF A NOVEL. BY WALTER BESANT AND JAMES RICE, READY-MONEY MORTIBOY," 46 THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY," ETC. CHAPTER IV. THIRTY YEARS AGO. ECOLLECTIONS of childhood are vague as a whole, but vivid in episodes. The days pass away, and leave no footprints on the sands, one being like another. And then one comes, bringing with it a trivial incident, which somehow catches hold of the childish imagination, and so lives forever. There are two or three of these in my memory. It is a sunshiny day, and, as the rooks are cawing all day in the elms, it must be spring. Sitting on the door-step of Mrs. Jeram's, I am only conscious of the harmonious blending of sounds from the dockyard. Victory Row is quiet, save for the consumptive parrot, who walks in the shade of the wall coughing heavily, as if it was one of his worst days, and he had got a bronchial asthma on the top of his other complaints. With me is Leonard, dancing on the pavement to no music at all but the beating of his pulse, enough for him. Jem and Moses are always on the beach. I suppose, but I am not certain, that it is afternoon. And the reason why I suppose so is that the Row is quiet. The morning was more noisy on account of the multifarious house-duties which had to be got through. We hear a step which we know well, a heavy and limping step, which comes slowly along the pavement, and presently bears round the corner its owner, Wassielewski. Leonard stops dancing. Wassielewski pats his curly head. I hold up my arms; he catches me up and kisses me, while I bury my face in his big beard. Then he puts me down again, lays aside the violin which he carries in one hand (it is by this instrument that Wassielewski earns a handsome addition to the daily tenpence, and, in fact, pays half my weekly allowance), and seeks in his coat-pocket for an orange. He does all this very gravely without smiling, only looking depths of care and love almost paternal out of his deep-set eyes. While Leonard holds the orange he places the violin in my hands. Ah! what joy even to draw the bow across the strings, though my arms are not long enough yet to hold the instrument properly. Somehow this rugged old soldier taught me to feel music, and the rapture of producing music, before my fingers could handle notes or my hand could hold a bow. He leaves the orange for Leonard and my self, and disappears. Moses returns unexpectedly I have a distinct recollection once of his eyes wandering in the direction of our boots, which were certainly going, if not altogether gone, both soles and heels. And I remember that he shook his head. Also that in the evening new boots came for both of And that Mrs. Jeram said, nodding her head, that he-meaning, perhaps, the captain-was a good man. us. Another recollection. I am, somehow or other, in the street by myself. How I got there, what I proposed to myself when I set out on my journey, I cannot tell. But I was lost in the streets of the old seaport town. I was walking along the pavement feeling a good deal frightened, and wondering how I was to get back to Victory Row, or even to the Poles' Barrack, when I became aware of a procession. It was a long procession, consisting of sailors marching, every man with a lady on his arm, two-and-two, along the middle of the street, singing as they went. They wore long curls, these jolly tars, shining with grease, hanging down on either side below, or rather in front of, their hats. Curls were the fashion in those days. There were about thirty men in this rollicking train. At their head, limping along very fast, marched my poor old friend Wassielewski, his grave face and melancholy eyes a contrast to the careless and jovial crew who followed him. He was fiddling as he went one of those lively tunes that sailors love-a tune which puts their legs a-dancing and pours quicksilver into their feet. Some of them, indeed, were capering along the line, unable to wait till the "crib" was reached. Also, down the street I saw another exactly similar procession. How was I to know that the Royal Frederick had been paid off that morning, and that a thousand Jack Tars were all together chucking away the money in a few days which it had taken them three years to earn? The old Pole would get some share of it, however, for that was the way in which he earned the money which mostly came to me. He spied me presently standing alone on the curbstone, and, handing the fiddle to one of the men, hurried across the road, and took me in his arms. "It is the son of my old master and lord," began Wassielewski, holding me in his arms helplessly. Bring along his lordship, then," said the man. "I'll carry the noble hearl." The Pole resumed the fiddle with a sigh, and took up his place as band and band-master in one. "Uncommon light in the arms is the noble duke. Many a fo'c's'le kid 'u'd weigh more.-Poll, our'n 'u'd weigh twice as much.-Come up, yer r'yal highness." I suppose I must have been a very small boy, even for a five-years-old child. But the man carried me tenderly, as sailors always do. We came to a public-house, that one with the picture outside it of the Chinese War. There was a long, low sort of hall "The oddest thing about this line of veterans was that they all seemed to have wooden legs."-Page 356. within it, at the end of which Wassielewski took his place, and began to fiddle again. Dancing then set in, though it was still early in the morning, with great severity. With dancing, drink. With both, songs. With all three, Wassielewski's fiddle. I suppose it was the commencement of a drunken orgy, and that the whole thing was disgraceful. Remember, however, that it was more than thirty years ago, when the navy still retained its old traditions. Foremost among these was the tradition that being ashore meant drink as long as the money lasted. It sometimes lasted a week, or even a fortnight, and was sometimes got through in a day or two. There were harpies and pirates in every house which was open to Jack. Jack, indeed, was cheated wherever he went. Afloat he was robbed by the purser; he was ill fed and found, the government paying for good food and good stores; contractors and purveyors combined with the purser to defraud him. Ashore, he was horribly, shamefully cheated and robbed, when he was paid off by a navy-bill, and fell into the hands of the pay-agents. He was a rough-hided ruffian who could fight, had seen plenty of fighting, was tolerably inured to every kind of climate, and ready to laugh at any kind of danger, except, perhaps, Yellow Jack. He was also tender-hearted and sentimental. Sometimes he was away for five years at a stretch, and, if his captain chose to make it so, his life was a dog's life. Floggings were frequent; rum was the reward of good conduct; there were no sailors' homes, none of the many humanizing influ- | ences which have made the British sailor the quiet, decorous creature, generally a teetotaler, and often inclined to a Methodist way of thinking in religion, half-soldier, half-sailor, that he is at present. It was an orgy, I suppose, at which no child should have been present. Fortunately, at half-past twelve, the landlord piped all hands for dinner, and Wassielewski carried me away. He would return after dinner to play on and on till night fell, and there was no one left to stand upon his legs. Then Wassielewski would put the fiddle away in its case, and go back to the barrack, where he sat in silence and brooded. The other Poles smoked and talked, but this one held himself apart. He was an irreconcilable, and he refused to accept defeat. One more scene. The Common Hard, which is still, after all the modern changes, a street with a distinct character of its own. The houses still look out upon the bright and busy harbor, though there is now a railway terminus and an ugly pier; though steamlaunches run across the water; and though there are telegraph - posts, cabs, and omnibuses, all the outward signs of advanced civilization. But thirty years ago it was a place which seemed to belong to the previous century. There were no great houses and handsome shops, but in their place a picturesque row of irregular cottages, no two of which were exactly alike, but which resembled each other in certain particulars. They were two-storied houses; the upper story was very low, the ground-floor was below the level of the street. I do not know why, but the fact remains that in my town the groundfloors of all the old houses were below the level of the pavement. You had to stoop, if you were tall, to get into the doorway, and then, unless you were experienced, you generally fell headlong down a step of a foot or so. Unless the houses were shops they had only one window below and one above, because the tax on windows obliged people to economize their light. The roofs were of red tiles, high-pitched, and generally broken-backed; stonecrop and houseleek grew upon them. The Hard existed then only for the sailors. There were one or two jewelers who bought as well as sold; many public-houses; and a plentiful supply of rascally pay-agents. That side had little interest for boys. In old times the high tide had washed right up to the foot of these houses, which then stood upon the beach itself. But they built a stone-wall, which kept back the water, and allowed a road to be made, protected by an iron railing. An open space gave access to what was called the "beach," being a narrow spit of land, along which were ranged on either side the wherries of the boatmen. A wooden bench was placed along the iron railing near the beach, on which sat every day, and all day long, old sailors in a row. It was their club, their daily rendezvous, the place where they discussed old battles, smoked pipes, and lamented by-gone days. They never seemed to walk about or to care much where they sat. They sat still, and sat steadily, in hot weather and in cold. The oddest thing about this line of veterans was that they all seemed to have wooden legs.. There was, or there exists in my memory, which is the same thing, a row of wooden pegs which did duty for the lost legs, sticking out straight in front of the bench when they were on it. The effect of this was very remarkable. Some, of course, had lost other outlying bits of the human frame: a hand, the place supplied by a hook, like that of Cap'en Cuttle, whose acquaintance I formed later on; a whole arm, its absence marked by the empty sleeve sewed to the front of the jersey; and there were scars in plenty. Like my friends the Poles, these heroes had gained their scars and lost their limbs in action. Thirty years ago we were only a quarter of a century or so from the long and mighty struggle which lasted for a whole generation, and filled this seaport town with prosperity, selfsatisfaction, and happiness. Oh, for the brave old days when week after week French, American, Spanish, and Dutch prizes were towed into harbor by their victors, or sailed in, the Union Jack flying at the peak, the original crew safe under hatches, in command of a middy and half a dozen British sailors told off to take her home! They talked, these old grizzle-heads, of fights and convoys, and perilous times afloat. I sat among them, or stood in front of them, and listened. Child as I was, my little heart glowed to hear how, yard-arm to yard-arm, they lay alongside the Frenchman; how a dozen times over the plucky little French beggars tried to board them; how she sheered off at last, and they followed, raking her fore and aft; how she sudden ly broke out into flame, and, before you could say 'Jack Robinson," blew up with all that was left of a thousand men aboard; with merry yarns of Chinese pigtails, made to be pulled by the British sailor, and niggers of Jamaica, and Dutchmen at the Cape. Also, what storiesof slavers; of catching American skippers in the very act of chucking the niggers overboard; of cutting out Arab dhows; of sailing in picturesque waters where the natives swim about in the deep like porpoises; of boat-expeditions up silent rivers in search of piratical Malays; of lying frozen for months in arctic regions, long before they thought of calling men heroes for passing a single winter on the ice with every modern appliance for making things comfortable! Among these old salts was one-of course he had a wooden leg-with a queer, twisted-up sort of face. One eye was an independent revolving light, but the other obeyed his will, and once you knew which eye that was you were pretty safe with him. He had a very profound and melodious bass voice. When I passed he used to growl a greeting which I was like the thunder of a distant salute. He never went further than the greeting, on account of certain family differences, which made us shy of becoming too intimate. I learned the fact from a curious ceremonial which happened regularly every Saturday night. At eight o'clock, or in summer at nine, Mrs. Jeram drew down her white blind, if it was not already drawn, placed one candle on the table, and herself between the candle and the window. The natural effect of this was to exhibit to the world a portrait in profile of herself. She sat bolt upright, and being a thin woman with plenty of bone-though the most kind-hearted of all creatures -the portrait thus presented was angular, stiff, and uncompromising. Meanwhile, in the street outside sat my friend "timber-toed" Jack-the ancient mariner with the deep voice and the revolving eye. He was perched comfortably on a three-legged stool lent by a friend, his remaining limb tucked away snug and ship-shape among the legs of the tripod, and the peg sticking out as usual at right angles to his body. There he sat and smoked a pipe. From time to time he raised his voice, and in an utterance which shook the windows of every house in the row, he growled "Rachel! Come out and make it up." There was no answer. Then the neighbors, who always congregated on this occasion, and took an intense interest in the progress of the family jar, murmured a soft chorus of persuasive and honeyed words, meant for Rachel too-who was Mrs. Jeram. But she never moved. "Rachel ! 'Twarn't my fault. 'Twas her as dragged me along in tow. Took prisoner, I was." “Ah! the artful thing"-this was the chorus"which well we know them; and they'll take in tow the best, at times; and a little in drink as well." No answer again this time, but an angry toss of the head, which conveyed to the silhouette on the blind an expression of incredulity. old sailor would noisily beat out the ashes. Then we inside the house would hear him once more : "Then, Rachel, God bless you, and good-night; and bless the boys. And, please the Lord, I'll be here again next Saturday. And hoping to find you in a forgivin' mood." When he was gone, Mrs. Jeram would leave her seat and come to her own chair by the fireplace. But her hands always trembled, and sometimes her eyes were wet. For it was her husband, and she could not make up her mind to forgive him the old offense. That was why, on the Hard, the wooden-legged sailor and I had little or no conversation together. One day I was between eight and nine at the time-we were all four on the logs. The logs were, to begin with, a forbidden place, and, if only on that account, delightful. But also on other accounts. There was a floating pier there, consisting of two or three square-hewed timbers laid alongside of each other, between posts stuck at intervals in the mud. They had a tendency to turn round beneath the tread of a heavy man, and when that happened, and the heavy man's feet fell in between two logs, it was apt to be bad for those feet. Men-of-war's boats used to land their officers and crew at the end of the logs; there was a constant running to and fro of sailors, officers, and harbor boatmen. Also, on the left-hand side as you went down this rough pile, there was a space of water some acres in extent, in which lay in orderly rows, one beside the other, a whole forest of timbers, waiting for time, the sun, and salt-water together, to season them. And if the logs were apt to turn under the tread of a heavy man, these timbers would turn under the foot of a light boy. Judge, therefore, of the joy of running backward and forward over their yielding and uncertain ground. Leonard, who rejoiced beyond measure to run over the logs himself, would seldom let me come with him even down the pier, and never over the timbers. On this day, however, we had all four gone down to the very end of the logs; half a dozen ships' boats had touched, landed their men, and gone back again. Jem, the simple and foolish Jem, was gazing in admiration at the sailors, who looked picturesque in their blue shirts, straw-hats, and shiny curls. I even caught Jem in the act of feeling whether his own hair behind the ear would not curl if twisted between finger and thumb. Moses was sitting straddle-legged on a projecting log, his boots in his hands, and his bare feet and legs lapped by the water. Leonard and I stood on the pier, watching. Presently there came along a man-o'-war's gig, manned by twelve sailors sitting side by side, rowing their short, deep stroke, without any feathering, but in perfect time. In the stern sat a middy, the very smallest middy I ever saw, no bigger than Leonard, dressed in the most becoming uniform in the world, and calmly conscious of his importance. He landed, gave a brief order, and strode as manfully as his years would allow down the logs. As he passed on, his eye rested on Leonard, and I saw the latter After half an hour's enjoyment of the pipe, the flush. ing while they rejoice in the strength and beauty of their youth; to hear their talk of girls and sweet looks, and love, while all girls look down upon him, he foolishly thinks, with contempt. I did not feel the whole misery at once. I only realized, all of a sudden, that I was disgracé, that the grandeurs which I envied were not for me, that I was to be despised for my misfortune-and I sat down in this sudden misery and cried aloud. A moment afterward there was a fight. Leonard and Moses. They fought on the narrow logs. Leonard was the pluckier, but Moses was the stronger. The sailors in the gig looked on and laughed, and clapped their hands. Through my shameful tears I only saw half the duel. It was terminated by the fall of both into the water, one on either side of a log. The water was only two or three feet deep, and they came up face to face, and driving fists at each other across the eighteen-inch plank. It was Jem who stopped the battle, stepping in between the combatants, and ordering in his rough way that both should get out of the water and fight it out on dry land. "Leonard and I stood on the pier, watching."-Page 357. "He called me Hunchback, Leonard," I gasped, holding his hand as he ran, wet and dripping, through the streets. "Yes, Laddy," he replied-" yes, Laddy, he's a cub, and a cur, and a thick-headed fool. But I'll let him know to-morrow." 'And you won't let him call me Hunchey, Leonard?" "Not if have to fight him all day long, Laddy. So there!" But next day's fight, if it was begun, was never finished, because in the afternoon we both, Leonard and I, walked away with the captain, each holding one hand of his, Leonard carrying his stick. "What are you laughing at?" cried Leonard, in | And when we got to the captain's it was explained to us that we were to stay there. a rage. " "Ah! yah! he repeated. "Hunchback! Hunchey in a uniform, with a sword at his side!" I declare that, up to that moment, I had no more consciousness of being deformed than I had of Hebrew. I suppose that in some dim way I knew that I was differently shaped-smaller than Leonard, that my clothes were not such as he could wear, but not a thought, not a rough suspicion that I was, by reason of this peculiarity, separated from my fellows. Then all of a sudden it burst upon me. Not in its full misery. A hunchback has to grow to manhood before he has drunk the whole of the bitter cup; he has to pass through the years of school-life when he cannot play like other boys, nor run, nor jump, nor fight, like them, when he is either tolerated or pitied. He has to become a young man among young men, to realize that he is not as they are; to look on envy CHAPTER V. THE YOUNG PRINCE. TEN years of boyhood followed. In taking us both away from Mrs. Jeram the captain promised her on behalf of Leonard, and Wassielewski on behalf of myself, that we should be brought up, in his old-fashioned way of putting it, in the fear of God and the desire to do our duty. It was an uneventful time, which has left few recollections. that kind of time-it has been always mine-is the happiest which leaves the fewest memories. Yet its happiness, for the want of contrast, is not felt. Perhaps it is better not to be happy, and to lead the life I suppose |