Chateau and Country Life in France | Page 7

forest, generally near a carrefour where several roads met. There was always a small clearing--garden and kennels, and a perfectly comfortable house, but it must be a lonely life for the women when their husbands are off all day on their rounds. I asked one of them once, a pretty, smiling young woman who always came out when the carriage passed, with three or four children hanging to her skirts, if she was never afraid, being alone with small children and no possibility of help, if any drunkards or evilly disposed men came along. She said no--that tramps and vagabonds never came into the heart of the forest, and always kept clear of the keeper's house, as they never knew where he and his gun might be. She said she had had one awful night with a sick child. She was alone in the house with two other small children, almost babies, while her husband had to walk several miles to get a doctor. The long wait was terrible. I got to know all the keepers' wives on our side of the forest quite well, and it was always a great interest to them when we passed on horseback, so few women rode in that part of France in those days.
Sometimes, when we were in the heart of the forest, a stag with wide-spreading antlers would bound across the road; sometimes a pretty roebuck would come to the edge of the wood and gallop quickly back as we got near.
We had a nice couple at the lodge, an old cavalry soldier who had been for years coachman at the chateau and who had married a Scotchwoman, nurse of one of the children. It was curious to see the tall, gaunt figure of the Scotchwoman, always dressed in a short linsey skirt, loose jacket, and white cap, in the midst of the chattering, excitable women of the village. She looked so unlike them. Our peasant women wear, too, a short; thick skirt, loose jacket, and worsted or knit stockings, but they all wear sabots and on their heads a turban made of bright-coloured cotton; the older women, of course--the girls wear nothing on their heads. They become bent and wrinkled very soon--old women before their time--having worked always in the fields and carried heavy burdens on their backs. The Scotchwoman kept much to herself and rarely left the park. But all the women came to her with their troubles. Nearly always the same story--the men spending their earnings on drink and the poor mothers toiling and striving from dawn till dark to give the little ones enough to eat. She was a strict Protestant, very taciturn and reserved, quite the type of the old Calvinist race who fought so hard against the "Scarlet Woman" when the beautiful and unhappy Mary Stuart was reigning in Scotland and trying to rule her wild subjects. I often went to see her and she would tell me of her first days at the chateau, where everything was so different from what she was accustomed to.
She didn't tell me what Mme. A. did--that she was a very handsome girl and all the men of the establishment fell in love with her. There were dramas of jealousy when she finally decided to marry the coachman. Our chef had learned how to make various English cakes in London, and whenever he made buns or a plum-pudding we used to take some to her. She was a great reader, and we always kept the Times for her, and she and I sympathised with each other--two Anglo-Saxons married in France.
Some of the traditions of the chateau were quite charming. I was sitting in the lodge one day talking to Mme. Antoine, when the baker appeared with what seemed to me an extraordinary provision of bread. I said, "Does he leave the bread for the whole village with you?" "It is not for me, madame, it is for the tra?nards (tramps) who pass on the road," and she explained that all the chateaux gave a piece of bread and two sous to any wayfarer who asked for food. She cut the bread into good thick slices, and showed me a wooden bowl on the chimney, filled with two-sous pieces. While I was there two men appeared at the big gates, which were always open in the day. They were strong young fellows carrying their bundles, and a sort of pitchfork slung over their shoulders. They looked weary and footsore, their shoes worn in holes. They asked for something to drink and some tobacco, didn't care very much for the water, which was all that Mme. Antoine had to give them, but thanked her civilly enough for the bread and sous.
The park wall was a good vantage-ground to see all (and that