In and Out of Three Normandy Inns | Page 6

the sole inhabitant
who did not blink at us, bovinely, with dulled vision.
Half an hour later we were speeding along the roadway. Half an
hour--and Trouville might have been a thousand miles away. Inland,
the eye plunged over nests of clover, across the tops of the apple and
peach trees, frosted now with blossoms, to some farm interiors. The
familiar Normandy features could be quickly spelled out, one by one.
It was the milking-hour.
The fields were crowded with cattle and women; some of the cows

were standing immovable, and still others were slowly defiling, in
processional dignity, toward their homes. Broad-hipped, lean-busted
figures, in coarse gowns and worsted kerchiefs, toiled through the
fields, carrying full milk-jugs; brass amphorae these latter might have
been, from their classical elegance of shape. Ploughmen appeared and
disappeared, they and their teams rising and sinking with the varying
heights and depressions of the more distant undulations. In the nearer
cottages the voices of children would occasionally fill the air with a
loud clamor of speech; then our steed's bell-collar would jingle, and for
the children's cries, a bird-throat, high above, from the heights of a tall
pine would pour forth, as if in uncontrollable ecstasy, its rapture into
the stillness of this radiant Normandy garden. The song appeared to be
heard by other ears than ours. We were certain the dull-brained sheep
were greatly affected by the strains of that generous-organed
songster--they were so very still under the pink apple boughs. The cows
are always good listeners; and now, relieved of their milk, they lifted
eyes swimming with appreciative content above the grasses of their
pasture. Two old peasants heard the very last of the crisp trills, before
the concert ended; they were leaning forth from the narrow
window-ledges of a straw-roofed cottage; the music gave to their
blinking old eyes the same dreamy look we had read in the ruminating
cattle orbs. For an aeronaut on his way to bed, I should have felt, had I
been in that blackbird's plumed corselet, that I had had a gratifyingly
full house.
Meanwhile, toward the west, a vast marine picture, like a panorama on
wheels, was accompanying us all the way. Sometimes at our feet,
beneath the seamy fissures of a hillside, or far removed by sweep of
meadow, lay the fluctuant mass we call the sea. It was all a glassy
yellow surface now; into the liquid mirror the polychrome sails sent
down long lines of color. The sun had sunk beyond the Havre hills, but
the flame of his mantle still swept the sky. And into this twilight there
crept up from the earth a subtle, delicious scent and smell--the smell
and perfume of spring--of the ardent, vigorous, unspent Normandy
spring.
[Illustration: A VILLAGE STREET--VILLERVILLE]

Suddenly a belfry grew out of the grain-fields.
"_Nous voici_--here's Villerville!" cried lustily into the twilight our
coachman's thick peasant voice. With the butt-end of his whip he
pointed toward the hill that the belfry crowned. Below the little hamlet
church lay the village. A high, steep street plunged recklessly
downward toward the cliff; we as recklessly were following it. The
snapping of our driver's whip had brought every inhabitant of the street
upon the narrow sidewalks. A few old women and babies hung forth
from the windows, but the houses were so low, that even this portion of
the population, hampered somewhat by distance and comparative
isolation, had been enabled to join in the chorus of voices that filled the
street. Our progress down the steep, crowded street was marked by a
pomp and circumstance which commonly attend only a royal entrance
into a town; all of the inhabitants, to the last man and infant, apparently,
were assembled to assist at the ceremonial of our entry.
A chorus of comments arose from the shadowy groups filling the low
doorways and the window casements.
"_Tiens_--it begins to arrive--the season!"
"Two ladies--alone--like that!"
"_Dame! Anglaises, Américaines_--they go round the world thus, _à
deux_!"
"And why not, if they are young and can pay?"
"Bah! old or poor, it's all one--they're never still, those English!" A
chorus of croaking laughter rattled down the street along with the
rolling of our carriage-wheels.
Above, the great arch of sky had shrunk, all at once, into a narrow
scallop; with the fields and meadows the glow of twilight had been left
behind. We seemed to be pressing our way against a great curtain, the
curtain made by the rich dusk that filled the narrow thoroughfare.
Through the darkness the sinuous street and rickety houses wavered in

outline, as the bent shapes of the aged totter across dimly-lit interiors.
A fisherman's bare legs, lit by some dimly illumined interior; a line of
nets in the little yards; here and there a white kerchief or cotton cap,