Chapter XVI. In France.

The shades of evening were gathering over the quaint little Breton seaport of St. Malo, when the packet from Southampton slowly steamed up to the quay. The passage had been a stormy one, as it usually is in the early spring, in crossing the chops of the Channel, and the white salt crystallised on the funnels of the steamer, as well as the muffled, wearied, page 40 woe-begone appearance of the passengers leaning over the bulwarks, told how the steamer had been battling with the confused seas rolling in from the Atlantic; and the stillness and silence as the vessel came round under the walls of the town gave a pleasant change to the wild blustering of winds and waves from which they had so suddenly emerged.

A crowd of loungers lined the quay; and the gangways being laid, a long line of passengers were speedily winding their way within an enclosure to the Custom House a little further up the quay, whither presently the luggage was conveyed by waggon, and officers and passengers were engaged in active and noisy search for anything included in the all-comprehensive tariff of France.

Outside the surging throng, in a corner of the waiting-room, was a little group, consisting of a lady with three children. Her luggage was not much of an encumbrance to her, consisting of a single carpet-bag, on which the magic letters of the douannier had already been chalked. Beckoning to a lad among the touters who were waiting around the doors of the Custom-house, she handed him her little luggage, and with her infant in her arms, and her two little children by her side, Mrs Dillon emerged from the doors of the Custom-house and proceeded in the direction of the gate of the town.

Passing a long line of booths, where the humbler class of traders ply their calling, outside the walls of the town, and coffee and roasted chestnut stalls minister to the wants of the passing workmen, the little party entered the gate, and slowly made their way through one narrow street after another, with houses seven and eight stories high on either side, almost shutting out the light. At last, under the guidance of the garcon bearing her luggage, they reached the hotel to which she had been recommended by the steward on board, us a place where English was spoken; and worn out and weary Mrs Dillon found herself and her little ones in the apartment where they were to spend their first night on a foreign shore.

It was the first time in her life she had been among absolute strangers. She had parted from Mr Manson and her faithful old servant, Tom O'Shea, in London, as it was considered advisable that they should not travel further together in order to evade observation, and Manson was anxious to return to the colony now as rapidly as he could, having prolonged his stay much beyond what he had originally intended. Tom had agreed to accompany him, and having been persuaded by Manson that no good could arise from his endeavouring to trace the actual murderer of Captain Lewis, and that he might get into trouble himself as an accessory to Mr Dillon's escape, Tom had resolved to leave his country for ever and accept service under Mr Manson in Australia.

Manson had given Mrs Dillon his address in Australia, with a request that she would keep him advised of everything she heard of her husband and his whereabouts; and what was more to the point in her present circumstances he had given her a draft for a very substantial amount, payable at the ‘Banque Roberts’ in Dinan, and had accompanied it by a promise of a yearly remittance of a similar amount so long as she required it, and at least until she should be able to rejoin her husband in a distant land.

So far, therefore, as pecuniary matters were concerned, she had no cause for anxiety, but with the exhaustion of the voyage, the loneliness of her position, and the uncertainty still attaching to the fate of her husband, she felt completely prostrate. The refreshment of a night's sleep, however, served to dissipate the despondency, and the following morning brought the cheering thought that she was within a few hours' distance only of the place where she was to receive the dearly longed-for letter from her husband.

The little steamer running up the Rance to Dinan did not leave till noon, owing to the state of the tide, so that it was well on in the afternoon when turning a point in the river the steamer entersd the narrow gorge, on the heights overhanging which the quaint little city which was to be her home for a time was perched. The villas embosomed in trees looking down on the placid waters of the Rance, the grim old towers and walls that once made the place one of the strongest in the Cotes du Nord, and more conspicuous still the graceful Viaduct, spanning the glen in midheavens, presented a picture, the fairest that had ever met her eyes. Landing on the quay they entered a cab and were driven up the declivity to the Hotel du Commerce.

After she had taken her children to a room and left Elsie in charge of her little brothers she hastened to the Post Office. Writing her name on a card she handed it to the clerk, and with what little French she could command, asked if there was a letter, After some delay she was handed one and to her delight recognised the handwriting of her husband. She hastened to the square across the way and seating herself ou a bench beneath the trees, she tore the letter open. It was written from Bourdeaux, and the first few words told her of the safety of her husband. It read: ‘My darling wife.—Thanks for ever, thanks to God, I have escaped and I am on a foreign shore, and before thisreaches you I hope I shall be again on the ocean on ray way to a distant land. When I last wrote to you by Tom, I was endeavouring to make my way to Waterford in the hope of finding a vessel to take me anywhere from the land where I was branded as a murderer. I was fortunate beyond what I could have expected. I found a vessel leaving the very evening of my arrival. And though the police were page 41 watching the docks I was enabled to evade them and got on board. I think the crew suspected that I was flying the country, but they were very good to me and asked me no questions, and after two days at sea we landed here. I had first intended staying in France, but finding that my being a foreigner directed attention to me, and so might lead to my being suspected, perhaps watched by the gens d'armes, I have not tried to get into employment, but have been looking for an opportunity of getting away to some place where I might mingle with the crowd and not be recognised as a stranger. Fortunately I have found a vessel leaving for the colonies, and was enabled to make arrangements for working my passage; there being no one on board who could speak English, I am to act as interpreter. We hope to get away in a few days, the destination being Sydney; but I will keep this letter open till the last, that I may add to it if anything occurs. And now, my dear wife, I am so anxious about you and our dear children. I am assuming that you have gone to Dinan, as I requested you in my letter by Tom. You will have to stay there until I can write to you, and, if possible, have you to join me. As I said, the destination of the vessel is Sydney, and you must write to me there, but under an assumed name. I mean to pass under the name of William Melville, and if you write to me the letter will probably be there before I arrive.’

The letter then proceeded to give his wife directions as to what she should do in order to maintain herself, and after many endear-ments to herself and the children, it closed— with a later date, stating that the vessel was to leave in a few hours.

After reading the letter from her husband, Mrs Dillon sat for some time musing on the contents of it, and following in her thoughts her husband, now on his voyage to the uttermost ends of the earth.

The dreariness of the close of winter in the west of Ireland had given place to the spring of sunny France, and everything around seemed in sympathy with the joyous gladness that filled her heart with the lifting of the dark pall that seemed to her to have shrouded the wretched past.

The trees that fill the Place du Guesclin were clothed in their summer foliage, and the birds that twittered in the branches and darted in and out among the leaves were not more blithe than the children that ran and romped and chased each other around the trees; while the merry chatter of the bonnes, and the troops of workmen in their blouses passing in the street below and singing in chorus as they wended their way homeward from their work, all seemed so in keeping with the happy turn events had taken that Mrs Dillon could hardly repress the feeling that a new existence had dawned on her.

She was recalled from her reverie by the thought that Elsie was all this time anxiously waiting to hear tidings of her father. She hastened over to the hotel, and found that already Elsie had put her two little brothers to sleep, exhausted as they were by the excitement of the day. Mrs Dillon read the whole of the letter to her little daughter, charging her to secreoy as to anything contained in it, as well as everything in the sorrowful past; and mother and daughter spent the remainder of the evening in fondly talking and dreaming of the absent one around whom their affections were so tenderly twined.

In a few days Mrs Dillon had secured a pretty little cottage in the suburbs, in the neighbourhood of the old Abbey of Lebon, about half a mile outside the walls of the town, and having simply furnished it and removed to it, she felt that at last she bad found rest for a time.

In his letter, Mr Dillon had told her to write to him to Sydney. In the notices in the post-office she found the date of the departure of the mails for Australia, and having been so liberally provided for by Manson's generosity, she determined that she would share with her husband, and so enable him to make a start in the new sphere. In fear, however, lest a draft might be the means of discovering him if there was any attempt on the part of the police to renew the pursuit, she obtained through her banker, M. Robert, Bank of England notes to the amount required, and, writing to her husband a long letter detailing all that had passed since he left, she enclosed the notes in the letter, which, in order to make security doubly sure, she posted not in Dinan, but at Dinard in the neighbourhood of St. Malo, to which place she also requested her husband in future to address his letters to her.

Many weeks had not passed till she had reason to congratulate herself on the prudence of the course she had taken. She had been to the town shopping, and was returning by the way of St. Sauveur's, intending to follow the river bank to Lehon. She was accompanied by Elsie and on reaching that magnificent terrace overlooking the glen, known as the ‘English Garden,’ so favourite a promenade both with town folk and tourists, they sat down on one of the benches to enjoy the charming scene—the valley of the Rance at their feet, with the wooded undulating plains beyond, doted over with pleasant villas and farmhouses as far as the eye could reach, till shut in by the lofty forest-covered ranges in the distance.

Dinan was full of English visitors and tourists, and they formed a considerable proportion of the promenaders in the ‘Place de la Duchesse Anne.’ Directly behind Mrs Dillon and Elsie two gentlemen had sat down, being engaged in animated conversation. The presence of the French lady and her page 42 little girl, as Mrs Dillon and Elsie appeared to be, did not disturb their conversation, the first few words of which were sufficient to arrest Mrs Dillon's attention.

‘But I tell you if you had been in the place and seen the sights that I have seen you would not wonder at an occasional outrage.’

‘But it is not merely occasional, for outrage seems to rule in Ireland, and a peaceable life's the exception.’

‘But that is an exaggeration. There is not more crime there than in England; what there is is more startling sometimes, and as it is nearly all referable to the one great cause of conflict, the most is made of it.’

‘Well, I don't know what you would mean by making the most of murder. It is about as bad as well can be; that you must admit.’

‘Well, yes; but there are extenuating circumstances sometimes.’

‘What! extenuating circumstances for murder?’

‘Yes, even for murder. Nothing, of course, excuses any man for taking the life of another—unless it may be that the other has taken life.’

‘Even that does not excuse him.’

‘Well no, perhaps not; still one feels lees pity for one that has brought it on himself as a good many of these agents and bailiffs in Ireland have done. I tell you what, Foster, some of those fellows deserve sticking.’

‘I have no doubt there has been a good deal of provocation sometimes; but they've got a devilish hard lot to do with.’

‘Yes, perhaps so, when they are driven to distraction, but oppression drives a wise man mad. Now put yourself in a position like this. There was an eviction in one of the districts which I visited, and at which it was my fortune to be present. The whole family had been turned out of the house except the old man, and he was said to be very ill, in fact dying. There was a consultation among the party as to what they would do with with him, and it would go to your heart to hear the poor people pleading for the love of God to not turn him out in the snow. It was no use. He was carried out in his wretched bed and laid on the ground, and while the unhappy family, and among them a couple of big stalwart sons, gathered around the sick man, and erected a sort of shelter over him, the crowbar brigade levelled the walls of the house. I afterwards heard that the old man was dead in the morning.’

‘Good heavens! they don't do such thing as that!’

‘I tell you it is done every winter, and I do not care, Foster, what may be the rights of property, a man that orders the doing of such a thing as that is guilty of murder in the sight of Heaven. You would say that gives no right to a man to take a life. That may be, but place yourself in the position of one of those sons, impulsive, hot-headed but warm hearted and full of the warmest domestic affections as the Irish are, and what would you do? I know what I would be tempted to do, and I fear I could not resist the temptation.’

‘But there are not many evictions such as that, or attended by such results?

‘I tell you there are scores of them every winter attended with fatal results from exposure and fever and destitution. Young children and weak women fall the most frequent victims, but strong men have been stricken and died of the fever caused by the hardships of these heartless evictions; and, tell me, can you wonder that a warm-hearted and impulsive people, taught by experience to regard the law as their enemy, and seeing a father or a mother or a child slain in this way as surely as if they were shot down, are tempted and driven to take revenge? Fancy yourself in the place of a son whose mother has been killed by eviction in the dead of winter! What would you do? Could you forgive the death?’

‘I cannot say what I might do in the circumstances; but the rights of property—’

‘Foster, I do not question the rights of property, but the rights of human life are greater; and the man that deliberately kills in so maintaining the rights of property is a criminal. There was that man Lewis, Errington's agent—’

‘Yes, that was a very bad case.’

‘A bad case! I do not know which was worse—the agent who caused the death of hundreds, or Dillon who shot him for it.’

Elsie turned up her little white face to her mother. There was a look of horror in her eyes, and of speechless agony. Mrs Dillon laid her finger on her lips in token of silence.

‘That was an extraordinary case. The man was not regarded as being is sympathy with the turbulent classes at all.’

‘No, but no doubt he sympathised with them in their dreadful sufferings, and he was himself about to be evicted.’

‘What an extraordinary thing he should have escaped, though.’

‘Very. They say the police have got a clue, however. It seems they have traced him as far as Waterford, and it is supposed he escaped to France. I was over there a few weeks ago.’

‘But he must have been concealed by the country people.’

‘Of course; they would all sympathise with him, and it seems the police have traced the boat in which he must have gone down the river, and which turned up somewhere about Limerick. I believe they have reason to believe he got away from the country, and since that his wife suddenly disappeared from the district, and it is thought, of course, that she intends to join her husband, so the police page 43 are on the look out for traces of her, in the expectation that through her they may trap her husband.’

‘I believe the Government are determined to hunt the fugitive down.’

‘So I hear; they have now offered a reward of £1000, and have advised the Continental authorities, and especially the French police. They are sure to catch him through the wife.’

The two gentlemen who had been carrying on this conversation now rose and descended the steps towards the viaduct. The two listeners who were so deeply interested sat stupified by what they had heard.

‘Oh, mamma, it is dreadful!’ whispered Elsie. ‘They believe father killed the man!’

‘Hash, Elsie dear! We may be watched. We shall talk when we get home.’

They rose from the seat and proceeded past the church to the town on their way home. It was the market-day, and the great market square, the Place du Champ, was crowded with country people and their stalls, with their carts of vegetables and grain, their pigs and their bullocks and their horses, their games and their etrolling musicians. Among the medley of sounds Elsie's ear caught the sounds of an English song. Coming nearer, they found a little company of strolling minstrels from England, and to the accompaniment of a harp or violin, a woman was singing in a singularly soft and plaintive strain, a song the refrain of which at once arrested their attention. “And where, oh where is father now?” The appropriateness of the spirit of the song to the present circumstances, and the sweetness and tenderness of the music as well as the voice of the singer acted like a spell, and long they lingered drinking in the melody. For a few sous Mrs Dillon obtained a repetition of the song as well as a copy of the words, which the strolling minstrels had for sale, and many a time as they took their rambles along the banks of the Rance thinking and speaking of their loved one far away, the sweet childish voice of Elsie might be heard humming the refrain, ‘And where, oh where is father now?’