Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/497

24, 1863.] than commonly deep in business details; the young man had a good head for accounts and considerable abilities, and he was desirous of proving to his father that he was not ungrateful for the latter’s compliance with his wishes as related to the marriage itself. Therefore it had been arranged that after a brief tour among the Pyrenees, the newly-married pair were to proceed to Bordeaux, and that Harry was to make up for lost time by redoubled assiduity in serving the interests of the firm of Hilton and Vaillant.

The wedding was fixed for Wednesday, and my place was bespoken in the malle-poste for the evening of that very day, an arrangement which gave me time to sleep a night in Paris, and to see a few of the wonders of the French capital before I scampered back to Portsmouth. And on the Saturday preceding it, we planned an excursion to Kervaen, a small town on the Breton side of the river Couësnon, and formerly a frontier post belonging to the old Celtic duchy.

Our party was rather a large one. Mrs. Pearson had many friends in Avranches, and as soon as it was mentioned that we designed an excursion to the Breton borders, several of the English residents had expressed a wish to accompany us. There were, therefore, four or five carriages, besides two or three boys, who were home for their holidays, and were wild with excitement as they galloped on their shaggy and sure-footed ponies. Hilton rode a fine English horse, a new purchase which he had made in Paris, and which he intended to take down with them to the south. And I drove Emma in a queer little jangling pony-chaise of native construction, while Aunt Pearson shared a voiture de louage with three friends.

The day was a beautiful one. We spent some hours pleasantly enough at Kervaen, and dined among the ruins of the fort. The beauty of the day had faded, though very gradually. Clouds, like huge skeins of unravelled wool, that covered the violet sky, were not unwelcome as screening off the sun. We had started early, for, though the evening was fine, the road was a long one, winding among the curves and undulations of the bay.

“Are those Norman fellows never coming back with the carriages?” said Hilton, looking at his watch, impatiently. “I have letters to write that must go to England by to-night’s post.”

But nobody else was in any particular hurry to start, and we continued to lounge about the ruins. Even Emma did not seem, for once, to sympathise with Hilton’s wish to be moving, and she scolded him playfully for his impatience.

But Hilton was seriously bent on getting back to the town. He had received, that morning, two letters, bearing the London postmark, and it was absolutely necessary that the young merchant should write by return to his correspondents.

A bare-legged boy was induced, by the promise of a ten-sous piece, to run to the other end of the village and summon the lagging charioteers, who had put up their horses at an auberge of tolerable size, rejoicing under the title of the Soleil Levant. But this messenger did not return, and when Hilton and I went together to the road-side inn, we heard the sounds of the rustic music, which are the invariable accompaniments of a Breton festival, and found that a christening-feast was in progress. This sufficiently accounted for the truancy of our coachmen, who were in the thick of the merry-making, having recognised old friends among the company.

But there was something contagious in Harry’s uneasiness at the delay which this inopportune banquet had helped to occasion, and I saw, with some annoyance, that our Jehus had not failed to do justice to the contents of the huge pitchers of cider that were passed incessantly from hand to hand, and that their faces were red and their eyes dull from the effects of their potations. With a good deal of trouble we succeeded in half coaxing, half compelling the drivers to leave their hospitable friends, and impressing as many of the hangers-on of the auberge into our service as possible, we contrived to get the horses harnessed and the men upon their coach-boxes. Fortunately Norman heads are too strong to be utterly overflooded by even immoderate draughts of apple-juice, and no sooner were the laggards on their driving-seats, and in possession of whip and reins, than their instinctive knowledge of horses resumed its sway, and they prepared to conduct the vehicles homewards, with all proper gravity and steadiness.

Much time had, however, been wasted, and the sun was going down while we had many a kilometre of road to travel. The members of the party took their places in their different carriages, the schoolboys remounted their ponies, and it was pretty plain that the drivers were quite sober enough to pioneer their living freight to Avranches in safety. All was ready for a start when Harry, who had been chafing terribly at the delay, and who was apprehensive that we should reach the town long after the departure of the mail, proposed to strike across the sands, which were hard and firm, and thus to curtail the distance by nearly one-half. Indeed, to an impatient traveller, there was something provoking in the idea of crawling round the shores of the bay, when it was possible to make a short cut from point to point, a course doubly tempting when time was of such value.

Indeed, when I looked at the wide stretch of smooth sand, gleaming wet in places that lay far out to seaward, but in general as dry and flat as a billiard-table, I felt disposed to comply with Harry’s desire. We had but to ford the shallow stream of Couësnon, a little river only note-worthy as the old barrier between France and Bretagne, and our way lay clear before us. So at least I, in my innocence, opined; but I was startled at the vehemence with which the old residents combated the project. The sands, they said, were notoriously treacherous and insecure; they were full of shifting quicksands of fabulous depth and tenacity; the tide, at certain states of wind and sea, ran in over those flats with a speed that even well-mounted horsemen could not evade; fifty persons, on an average, perished yearly on that fatal coast, through some imprudent confidence in their own judgment or activity, &c. In short, even with a guide, the Grêve de St. Michel was best avoided, and without a guide it was madness to venture upon it. I did not exactly believe all this chorus of evil; but I put sufficient faith in the popular opinion to consider that the tempting sands had