In and Out of Three Normandy Inns | Page 4

their
boat; it was dancing on the water, at anchor. They were standing
immovable as pillars of stone, close to the gunwales of our craft. They
were holding out their arms to us.
Charm suddenly stood upright. She held out her hands like a child, to
the least impressionable boatman. In an instant she was clasping his
bronze throat.
"All my life I've prayed for adventure. And at last it has come!" This
she cried, as she was carried high above the waves.
"That's right, have no fear," answered her carrier as he plunged onward,
ploughing his way through the waters to the beach.
Beneath my own feet there was a sudden swish and a swirl of restless,
tumbling waters. The motion, as my carrier buried his bared legs in the
waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams,
through some unknown medium. The surging waters seemed struggling
to submerge us both; the two thin, tanned legs of the fisherman about
whose neck I was clinging, appeared ridiculously inadequate to cleave
a successful path through a sea of such strength as was running
shoreward.
"Madame does not appear to be used to this kind of travelling," puffed
out my carrier, his conversational instinct, apparently, not in the least
dampened by his strenuous plunging through the spirited sea. "It
happens every day--all the aristocrats land this way, when they come
over by the little boats. It distracts and amuses them, they say. It helps
to kill the ennui."
"I should think it might, my feet are soaking; sometimes wet feet--"

"Ah, that's a pity, you must get a better hold," sympathetically
interrupted my fisherman, as he proceeded to hoist me higher up on his
shoulder. I, or a sack of corn, or a basket of fish, they were all one to
this strong back and to these toughened sinews. When he had adjusted
his present load at a secure height, above the dashing of the spray, he
went on talking. "Yes, when the rich suffer a little it is not such a bad
thing, it makes a pleasant change--cela leur distrait. For instance, there
is the Princess de L----, there's her villa, close by, with green blinds.
She makes little excuses to go over to Havre, just for this--to be carried
in the arms like an infant. You should hear her, she shouts and claps her
hands! All the beach assembles to see her land. When she is wet she
cries for joy. It is so difficult to amuse one's self, it appears, in the great
world."
"But, tiens, here we are, I feel the dry sands." I was dropped as lightly
on them as if it had been indeed a bunch of feathers my fisherman had
been carrying.
And meanwhile, out yonder, across the billows, with airy gesture
dramatically executed, our treacherous captain was waving us a
theatrical salute. The infant mate was grinning like a gargoyle. They
were both delightfully unconscious, apparently, of any event having
transpired, during the afternoon's pleasuring, which could possibly
tinge the moment of parting with the hues of regret.
"_Pour les bagages, mesdames_--"
Two dripping, outstretched hands, two berets doffed, two picturesque
giants bowing low, with a Frenchman's grace--this, on the Trouville
sands, was the last act of this little comedy of our landing on the coast
of France.

CHAPTER II.
A SPRING DRIVE.

The Trouville beach was as empty as a desert. No other footfall, save
our own, echoed along the broad board walks; this Boulevard des
Italiens of the Normandy coast, under the sun of May was a shining
pavement that boasted only a company of jelly-fishes as loungers.
Down below was a village, a white cluster of little wooden houses; this
was the village of the bath houses. The hotels might have been
monasteries deserted and abandoned, in obedience to a nod from Rome
or from the home government. Not even a fisherman's net was spread
a-drying, to stay the appetite with a sense of past favors done by the sea
to mortals more fortunate than we. The whole face of nature was as
indifferent as a rich relation grown callous to the voice of entreaty.
There was no more hope of man apparently, than of nature, being
moved by our necessity; for man, to be moved, must primarily exist,
and he was as conspicuously absent on this occasion as Genesis proves
him to have been on the fourth day of creation.
Meanwhile we sat still, and took counsel together. The chief of the
council suddenly presented himself. It was a man in miniature. The
masculine shape, as it loomed up in the distance, gradually separating
itself from the background of villa roofs and casino terraces, resolved
itself into a figure stolid and sturdy, very brown of leg, and insolent