CALAIS.

It was upon a lovely evening in autumn, as the Dover steam-boat rounded the wooden pier at Calais, amid a fleet of small boats filled with eager and anxious faces, soliciting, in every species of bad English and “patois” [vulgar] French, the attention and patronage of the passengers.

“Hotel de Bain, mi lor’.”

“Hotel d’Angleterre,” said another, in a voice of the most imposing superiority. “C’est superbe—pretty well.”

“Hotel du Nord, votre Excellence—remise de poste and ‘delays’ (quere relays) at all hours.”

“Commissionaire, mi ladi,” sung out a small shrill treble from the midst of a crowded cock-boat, nearly swamped beneath our paddle-wheel.

What a scene of bustle, confusion, and excitement does the deck of a steamer present upon such an occasion. Every one is running hither or thither. “Sauve qui peut” is now the watch-word; and friendships, that promised a life-long endurance only half an hour ago, find here a speedy dissolution. The lady who slept all night upon deck, enveloped in the folds of your Astracan cloak, scarcely deigns an acknowledgment of you, as she adjusts her ringlets before the looking-glass over the stove in the cabin. The polite gentleman, that would have flown for a reticule or a smelling-bottle upon the high seas, won’t leave his luggage in the harbour; and the gallantry and devotion that stood the test of half a gale of wind and a wet jacket, is not proof when the safety of a carpet-bag or the security of a “Mackintosh” is concerned.

And thus here, as elsewhere, is prosperity the touchstone of good feeling. All the various disguises which have been assumed, per viaggio, are here immediately abandoned, and, stripped of the travelling costume of urbanity and courtesy, which they put on for the voyage, they stand forth in all the unblushing front of selfishness and self-interest.

Some tender scenes yet find their place amid the debris of this chaotic state. Here may be seen a careful mother adjusting innumerable shawls and handkerchiefs round the throat of a sea-green young lady with a cough; her maid is at the same instant taking a tender farewell of the steward in the after-cabin.

Here is a very red-faced and hot individual, with punch-coloured breeches and gaiters, disputing “one brandy too much” in his bill, and vowing that the company shall hear of it when he returns to England. There, a tall, elderly woman, with a Scotch-grey eye, and a sharp cheek-bone, is depositing within her muff various seizable articles, that, until now, had been lying quietly in her trunk. Yonder, that raw-looking young gentleman, with the crumpled frock-coat, and loose cravat, and sea-sick visage, is asking every one “if they think he may land without a passport.” You scarcely recognise him for the cigar-smoking dandy of yesterday, that talked as if he had lived half his life on the continent. While there, a rather pretty girl is looking intently at some object in the blue water, beside the rudder post. You are surprised you cannot make it out; but then, she has the advantage of you, for the tall, well-looking man, with the knowing whiskers, is evidently whispering something in her ear.

“Steward, this is not my trunk—mine was a leather—”

“All the ‘leathers’ are gone in the first boat, sir.”

“Most scandalous way of doing business.”

“Trouble you for two-and-sixpence, sir.”

“There’s Matilda coughing again,” says a thin, shrewish woman, with a kind of triumphant scowl at her better half; “but you would have her wear that thin shawl!”

“Whatever may be the fault of the shawl, I fancy no one will reproach her ancles for thinness,” murmurs a young Guard’s man, as he peeps up the companion-ladder.

Amid all the Babel of tongues, and uproar of voices, the thorough bass of the escape steam keeps up its infernal thunders, till the very brain reels, and, sick as you have been of the voyage, you half wish yourself once more at sea, if only to have a moment of peace and tranquillity.

Numbers now throng the deck who have never made their appearance before. Pale, jaundiced, and crumpled, they have all the sea-sick look and haggard cheek of the real martyr—all except one, a stout, swarthy, brown-visaged man, of about forty, with a frame of iron, and a voice like the fourth string of a violincello. You wonder why he should have taken to his bed: learn, then, that he is his Majesty’s courier from the foreign office, going with despatches to Constantinople, and that as he is not destined to lie down in a bed for the next fourteen days, he is glad even of the narrow resemblance to one, he finds in the berth of a steam-boat. At length you are on shore, and marched off in a long string, like a gang of convicts to the Bureau de l’octroi, and here is begun an examination of the luggage, which promises, from its minuteness, to last for the three months you destined to spend in Switzerland. At the end of an hour you discover that the soi disant commissionaire will transact all this affair for a few francs; and, after a tiresome wait in a filthy room, jostled, elbowed, and trampled upon, by boors with sabots, you adjourn to your inn, and begin to feel that you are not in England.

Our little party had but few of the miseries here recounted to contend with. My “savoir faire,” with all modesty be it spoken, has been long schooled in the art and practice of travelling; and while our less experienced fellow-travellers were deep in the novel mysteries of cotton stockings and petticoats, most ostentatiously displayed upon every table of the Bureau, we were comfortably seated in the handsome saloon of the Hotel du Nord, looking out upon a pretty grass plot, surrounded with orange trees, and displaying in the middle a jet d’eau about the size of a walking stick.

“Now, Mr. Lorrequer,” said Mrs. Bingham, as she seated herself by the open window, “never forget how totally dependent we are upon your kind offices. Isabella has discovered already that the French of Mountjoy-square, however intelligible in that neighbourhood, and even as far as Mount-street, is Coptic and Sanscrit here; and as for myself, I intend to affect deaf and dumbness till I reach Paris, where I hear every one can speak English a little.”

“Now, then, to begin my functions,” said I, as I rung for the waiter, and ran over in my mind rapidly how many invaluable hints for my new position my present trip might afford me, “always provided” (as the lawyers say,) that Lady Jane Callonby might feel herself tempted to become my travelling companion, in which case—But, confound it, how I am castle-building again. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bingham is looking as hungry and famished as though she would eat the waiter. Ha! this is the “carte.”

“Allons faire petit souper.”

“Cotelettes d’Agneau.”

“Maionnaise d’homard.”

“Perdreaux rouges aux truffes—mark that, aux truffes.”

“Gelee au maraschin.”

“And the wine, sir,” said the waiter, with a look of approval at my selection, “Champagne—no other wine, sir?”

“No,” said I, “Champagne only. Frappe de glace, of course,” I added, and the waiter departed with a bow that would have graced St. James’s.

As long as our immaterial and better part shall be doomed to keep company with its fleshy tabernacle, with all its attendant miseries of gout and indigestion, how much of our enjoyment in this world is dependent upon the mere accessory circumstances by which the business of life is carried on and maintained, and to despise which is neither good policy nor sound philosophy. In this conclusion a somewhat long experience of the life of a traveller has fully established me. And no where does it press more forcibly upon the mind than when first arrived in a continental inn, after leaving the best hotels of England still fresh in your memory. I do not for a moment dispute the very great superiority in comfort of the latter, by which I would be understood to mean all those resemblances to one’s own home which an English hotel so eminently possesses, and every other one so markedly wants; but I mean that in contrivances to elevate the spirit, cheer the jaded and tired wayfarer by objects which, however they may appeal to the mere senses, seem, at least, but little sensual, give me a foreign inn; let me have a large spacious saloon, with its lofty walls and its airy, large-paned windows, (I shall not object if the cornices and mouldings be gilded, because such is usually the case,)—let the sun and heat of a summer’s day come tempered through the deep lattices of a well-fitting “jalousie,” bearing upon them the rich incense of a fragrant orange tree in blossom—and the sparkling drops of a neighbouring fountain, the gentle plash of which is faintly audible amid the hum of the drone-bee—let such be the “agremens” without—while within, let the more substantial joys of the table await, in such guise as only a French cuisine can present them—give me these, I say, and I shall never sigh for the far-famed and long-deplored comforts of a box in a coffee-room, like a pew in a parish church, though certainly not so well cushioned, and fully as dull, with a hot waiter and a cold beefsteak—the only thing higher than your game being your bill, and the only thing less drinkable than your port being the porter.

With such exotic notions, figures vous, my dear reader, whether or not I felt happy as I found myself seated between my two fair friends doing the honours of a little supper, and assisting the exhilaration of our champagne by such efforts of wit as, under favourable circumstances like these, are ever successful—and which, being like the foaming liquid which washes them down, to be swallowed without waiting, are ever esteemed good, from the excitement that results, and never seriously canvassed for any more sterling merit. Nothing ever makes a man so agreeable as the belief that he is so: and certainly my fair companions appeared to have the most excellent idea of my powers in that respect; and I fancy, that I made more bon mots, hit off more epigrams, and invented more choice incidents on that happy evening, than, if now remembered, would suffice to pay my tailor’s bill, when collated for Bentley’s Miscellany, and illustrated by Cruikshank—alas! that, like the good liquor that seasoned them, both are gone by, and I am left but to chronicle their memory of the fun, in dulness, and counterfeit the effervescence of the grape juice, by soda water. One thing, however, is certain—we formed a most agreeable party; and if a feeling of gloom ever momentarily shot through my mind, it was, that evenings like these came so rarely in this work-a-day world—that each such should be looked on, as our last.

If I had not already shown myself up to my reader as a garcon volage of the first water, perhaps I should now hesitate about confessing that I half regretted the short space during which it should be my privilege to act as the guide and mentor of my two friends. The impetuous haste which I before felt necessary to exercise in reaching Paris immediately, was not tempered by prudent thoughts about travelling at night, and reflections about sun-stroke by day; and even moments most devoted to the object of my heart’s aspirations were fettered by the very philosophic idea, that it could never detract from the pleasure of the happiness that awaited me, if I travelled on the primrose path to its attainment. I argued thus: if Lady Jane be true—if—if, in a word, I am destined to have any success in the Callonby family, then will a day or two more not risk it. My present friends I shall, of course, take leave of at Paris, where their own acquaintances await them; and, on the other hand, should I be doomed once more to disappointment, I am equally certain I should feel no disposition to form a new attachment. Thus did I reason, and thus I believed; and though I was a kind of consultation opinion among my friends in “suits of love,” I was really then unaware that at no time is a man so prone to fall in love as immediately after his being jilted. If common sense will teach us not to dance a bolero upon a sprained ancle, so might it also convey the equally important lesson, not to expose our more vital and inflammatory organ to the fire the day after its being singed.

Reflections like these did not occur to me at this moment; besides that I was “going the pace” with a forty-horse power of agreeability that left me little time for thought—least of all, if serious. So stood matters. I had just filled our tall slender glasses with the creaming and “petillan” source of wit and inspiration, when the loud crack, crack, crack of a postillion’s whip, accompanied by the shaking trot of a heavy team, and the roll of wheels, announced a new arrival. “Here they come,” said I, “only look at them—four horses and one postillion, all apparently straggling and straying after their own fancy, but yet going surprisingly straight notwithstanding. See how they come through that narrow archway—it might puzzle the best four-in-hand in England to do it better.”

“What a handsome young man, if he had not those odious moustaches. Why, Mr. Lorrequer, he knows you: see, he is bowing to you.”

“Me! Oh! no. Why, surely, it must be—the devil—it is Kilkee, Lady Jane’s brother. I know his temper well. One five minutes’ observation of my present intimacy with my fair friends, and adieu to all hopes for me of calling Lord Callonby my father-in-law. There is not therefore, a moment to lose.”

As these thoughts revolved through my mind, the confusion I felt had covered my face with scarlet; and, with a species of blundering apology for abruptly leaving them for a moment, I ran down stairs only in time sufficient to anticipate Kilkee’s questions as to the number of my apartments, to which he was desirous of proceeding at once. Our first greetings over, Kilkee questioned me as to my route—adding, that his now was necessarily an undecided one, for if his family happened not to be at Paris, he should be obliged to seek after them among the German watering-places. “In any case, Mr. Lorrequer,” said he, “we shall hunt them in couples. I must insist upon your coming along with me.”

“Oh! that,” said I, “you must not think of. Your carriage is a coupe, and I cannot think of crowding you.”

“Why, you don’t seriously want to affront me, I hope, for I flatter myself that a more perfect carriage for two people cannot be built. Hobson made it on a plan of my own, and I am excessively proud of it, I assure you. Come, that matter is decided—now for supper. Are there many English here just now?—By-the-by, those new ‘natives’ I think I saw you standing with on the balcony—who are they?”

“Oh! the ladies—oh! Yes, people I came over with—”

“One was pretty, I fancied. Have you supped? Just order something, will you—meanwhile, I shall write a few lines before the post leaves.”—Saying which, he dashed up stairs after the waiter, and left me to my meditations.

“This begins to be pleasant,” thought I, as the door closed, leaving me alone in the “salon.” In circumstances of such moment, I had never felt so nonplussed as now, how to decline Kilkee’s invitation, without discovering my intimacy with the Binghams—and yet I could not, by any possibility, desert them thus abruptly. Such was the dilemma. “I see but one thing for it,” said I, gloomily, as I strode through the coffee-room, with my head sunk and my hands behind my back—“I see but one thing left—I must be taken ill to-night, and not be able to leave my bed in the morning—a fever—a contagious fever—blue and red spots all over me—and be raving wildly before breakfast time; and if ever any discovery takes place of my intimacy above stairs, I must only establish it as a premonitory symptom of insanity, which seized me in the packet. And now for a doctor that will understand my case, and listen to reason, as they would call it in Ireland.” With this idea uppermost, I walked out into the court-yard to look for a commissionaire to guide me in my search. Around on every side of me stood the various carriages and voitures of the hotel and its inmates, to the full as distinctive and peculiar in character as their owners. “Ah! there is Kilkee’s,” said I, as my eye lighted upon the well-balanced and elegant little carriage which he had been only with justice encomiumizing. “It is certainly perfect, and yet I’d give a handful of louis-d’ors it was like that venerable cabriolet yonder, with the one wheel and no shafts. But, alas! these springs give little hope of a break down, and that confounded axle will outlive the patentee. But still, can nothing be done?—eh? Come, the thought is a good one—I say, garcon, who greases the wheels of the carriage here?”

“C’est moi, monsieur,” said a great oaf, in wooden shoes and a blouse.

“Well, then, do you understand these?” said I, touching the patent axle-boxes with my cane.

He shook his head.

“Then who does, here?”

“Ah! Michael understands them perfectly.”

“Then bring him here,” said I.

In a few minutes, a little shrewd old fellow, with a smith’s apron, made his appearance, and introduced himself as M. Michael. I had not much difficulty in making him master of my plan, which was, to detach one of the wheels as if for the purpose of oiling the axle, and afterwards render it incapable of being replaced—at least for twenty-four hours.

“This is my idea,” said I; “nevertheless, do not be influenced by me. All I ask is, disable the carriage from proceeding to-morrow, and here are three louis-d’ors at your service.”

“Soyez bien tranquille, monsieur, mi lor’ shall spend to-morrow in Calais, if I know any thing of my art”—saying which he set out in search of his tools, while I returned to the salon with my mind relieved, and fully prepared to press the urgency of my reaching Paris without any delay.

“Well, Mr. Lorrequer,” said Kilkee, as I entered, “here is supper waiting, and I am as hungry as a wolf.”

“Oh! I beg pardon—I’ve been getting every thing in readiness for our start to-morrow morning, for I have not told you how anxious I am to get to Paris before the 8th—some family business, which requires my looking after, compelling me to do so.”

“As to that, let your mind be at rest, for I shall travel to-morrow night if you prefer it. Now for the Volnay. Why you are not drinking your wine. What do you say to our paying our respects to the fair ladies above stairs? I am sure the petits soins you have practised coming over would permit the liberty.”

“Oh! hang it, no. There’s neither of them pretty, and I should rather avoid the risk of making a regular acquaintance with them” said I.

“As you like, then—only, as you’ll not take any wine, let us have a stroll through the town.”

After a short stroll through the town, in which Kilkee talked the entire time, but of what I know not, my thoughts being upon my own immediate concerns, we returned to the hotel. As we entered the porte-couchere, my friend Michael passed me, and as he took off his hat in salutation, gave me one rapid glance of his knowing eye that completely satisfied me that Hobson’s pride in my friend’s carriage had by that time received quite sufficient provocation to throw him into an apoplexy.

“By-the-by,” said I, “let us see your carriage. I am curious to look at it”—(and so I was.)

“Well, then come along, this way; they have placed it under some of these sheds, which they think coach-houses.”

I followed my friend through the court till we arrived near the fatal spot; but before reaching, he had caught a glimpse of the mischief, and shouted out a most awful imprecation upon the author of the deed which met his eye. The fore-wheel of the coupe had been taken from the axle, and in the difficulty of so doing, from the excellence of the workmanship, two of the spokes were broken—the patent box was a mass of rent metal, and the end of the axle turned downwards like a hoe.

I cannot convey any idea of poor Kilkee’s distraction; and, in reality, my own was little short of it; for the wretch had so far out-stripped my orders, that I became horrified at the cruel destruction before me. We both, therefore, stormed in the most imposing English and French, first separately and then together. We offered a reward for the apprehension of the culprit, whom no one appeared to know, although, as it happened, every one in a large household was aware of the transaction but the proprietor himself. We abused all—innkeeper, waiters, ostlers, and chambermaids, collectively and individually—condemned Calais as a den of iniquity, and branded all Frenchmen as rogues and vagabonds. This seemed to alleviate considerably my friend’s grief, and excite my thirst—fortunately, perhaps for us; for if our eloquence had held out much longer, I am afraid our auditory might have lost their patience; and, indeed, I am quite certain if our French had not been in nearly as disjointed a condition as the spokes of the caleche, such must have been the case.

“Well, Mr. Lorrequer, I suppose, then, we are not destined to be fellow-travellers—for if you must go to-morrow—”

“Alas! It is imperative,” said I.

“Then in any case, let us arrange where we shall meet, for I hope to be in Paris the day after you.”

“I’ll stop at Meurice.”

“Meurice, be it,” said he, “so now good night, till we meet in Paris.”