The Flood-Tide

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Of course you shall, my love. I shall come every Saturday, and take you riding in the Bois de Boulogne, and every Sunday to Mass in the Church of the English Benedictines, and after Mass we shall go and walk in the Jardins du Luxembourg where I first fell in love with your mother.'

  ‘I shall miss going with you to your work, Papa,' she said. Sometimes when Henri had a commission to work upon a chateau away from Paris he had taken Héloïse with him, and those trips had been amongst their happiest times together.

  ‘Well, child, if I am to go anywhere interesting, I shall come and ask the Mother Superior to release you, and you shall come with me - how would that be?'

  ‘Then I am content, Papa. Will there be other girls at the convent?'

  ‘Girls and ladies, the daughters of rich men, and Dames Pensionnaires. You will make lots of friends from amongst the nobility, and that will be good, for you have been too much alone.'

  ‘I never felt alone, Papa.'

  ‘But you should have friends of your own age. I'm sure you will like it. Ah, and here we are.' Héloïse looked out of the carriage window with interest, and saw only a wall pierced with heavy closed doors, and a few small windows above.

  ‘Where is it?' she asked in disappointment. 'I thought it would be a grand house.'

  ‘It does not front the road - the courtyard is behind. You'll see.’

  The carriage door was opened and they stepped down, and Henri took her hand and opened the heavy, nail studded door of 171 Rue St Jacques, and it creaked and gave onto a dark, narrow passage. Héloïse shivered a little, and thought that it was like a convent in a story after all, and that she didn't like it a bit. She held her father's hand very tightly, and he smiled down at her reassuringly. The passage was like a tunnel under the gatehouse, and at the other end it gave onto a square, sunny courtyard, with many-windowed buildings on either side, and before them was the frontage of the Convent of the Visitation itself.

  It was a pleasant, handsome house, square and well-proportioned, with a curved flight of steps leading up to the great door which was open, and square, stone-silled windows, and, to Héloïse's pleasure, an oeuil-de-boeuf window at the top under the peak of the roof.

  ‘There, isn't that better?' Henri asked.

  She smiled and said, 'Much better, Papa. It's a very pretty house.'

  ‘And there's another courtyard behind, with flowers in tubs, and a little green space, and a beautiful old tree full of birds.’

  A nun came hurrying out to meet them on the steps. ‘Ah, welcome, welcome! Monsieur le Comte - and this is your daughter?'

  ‘Lady Henriette-Louise Stuart,' Henri said.

  ‘I am Sister Matthew,' the nun smiled down at Héloïse. ‘Why, goodness me, I should have known her at once for a Stuart - do you know, sir, she looks the very image of Princess Henrietta Anne of England - I have seen her portrait. We have many connections with the House of Stuart, you know, and only a few years ago we had the Lady Charlotte Stuart staying here - daughter of Prince Charles Edward, the Prince of Wales I believe his title is. She lived here for many years, and was always very comfortable. I'm sure you will be happy here too, my dear.’

  Héloïse curtseyed, and gave the nun the benefit of her smile, which made the good sister blink for a moment.

  ‘Thank you, madame,' Henri said. 'Perhaps if we could see my daughter's apartment?'

  ‘Yes, of course, please follow me. I have put her in the rooms overlooking the rear courtyard, as you requested.' An emphasis on the words and a sidelong glance indicated to Henri that a request of that nature would cost him dearly on the bill. Inside the great door, Héloïse saw a passage leading right through the house to the sunshine of the rear courtyard, and she looked towards it longingly. But they were climbing the steep, handsome, curved staircase to the left, and from there traversed long corridors of shining floorboards, smelling of quietness and beeswax, a smell she always afterwards associated with convents. Then the sister opened a door and ushered them into what would be Héloïse's rooms.

  They were very small, as one would expect by the size and age of the building, and unexpectedly bare after the house on the Rue St Anne. There was a sittng room and a bedroom beyond; the floors were polished boards, but there was a good Turkey carpet in the middle of each room; the furniture was sparse, but elegant. Best of all, each had a window looking over the court, and the tree grew up right beside the bedroom window, so that Héloïse could look out straight into the branches. The windows were open, and the warm, scented air streamed in from the sunny courtyard, and a collar-dove was cooing throatily somewhere in the branches of the tree.

  ‘When you have a few of your own things about you, and some of your furniture sent over, I think you will find it comfortable enough,' Henri was saying, almost apologetically, but Héloïse was gazing out of the window, and turned to them with an expression of delight.

  ‘Oh, but it's lovely, Papa! The tree and the windows and - I like it very much! Thank you so much for putting me here, sister. You are very kind.’

  Sister Matthew blinked nervously. 'I'm glad you like it, my child. I hope you will be happy with us.'

  ‘I'm sure I will - don't you think so, Papa?’

  She was so small, and so burning with life, that it filled him with a great pang almost like grief, and he couldn't speak for a moment; only felt in that moment that he would die to preserve her like this, innocent and happy.

  *

  Allen stood on the south side of Bachelor Hill and looked with content at the field before him. This had always been corn land, and over the years it had yielded less and less as the soil grew poorer. Now, thanks to the enclosure, he hoped to change things. The field was still hedged with hurdles, for the mixture of thorn and hazel and beech which he had had planted was still in its infancy, but within the fence was a fine sight, row upon row of sturdy young potato plants, of his own crossbreed, Morland. He had written a paper about them, and sent it to the Royal Society, and depending on the success of this crop, he might write and have published a pamphlet.

  Two men and a woman were working their way along the rows, cleaning the crop, and as the nearest came within earshot he straightened up and called a greeting, to which Allen replied genially, 'It's a fine sight, isn't it, Tom?'

  ‘Well, master, that's according,' Tom said cautiously. Resistance to Allen's 'new-fangled' ideas was strongest amongst the labourers, and he had yet to convince his tenants that there was any point in planting corn in rows, but in his own fields they had to follow his ideas.

  ‘Now admit, Tom, that this was a poor field, and that these plants are doing better than the wheat did last year. And when the crop is gathered, I shall turn the young stirks in to graze on the green parts, and that will manure the field, and then you shall see next year what the soil will produce!'

  ‘Well, I dare say,' Tom said, humouring Allen, and then added with a sly smile, 'but why take up the crop, Master Morland? Why not let the stirks eat it in the field?'

  ‘Now you know perfectly well these potatoes are not cattle food,' Allen rose to the bait as always. 'They are quite delicious, if you dress them properly. You must parboil them, then slice 'em up with butter and sugar and mace and nutmeg, and bake 'em in a pastry case with a covering of thick custard, and that's a dish fit for the King himself.'

  ‘God bless him,' Tom added fervently - the King's illness last winter, the winter of 1788/9, had revealed his great popularity with the ordinary people. 'Well, master, if you say so, it must be so. But I have heard that in Lancashire, where they have these new cotton factories, that they keep their Irish workers in great sheds like cattle, and feed 'em on potatoes.'

  ‘Even if that were true,' Allen replied, 'it would only go to show how good and wholesome a food potatoes are.' Tom murmured agreement, but Allen could see that he thought it only proved that potatoes were fit for nothing but cattle and Irish peasants. He changed the subject. ‘How is your wife, Tom? Better, I hope.'

  ‘Main better, th
ank you, sir. Her La'ship was so kind as to send and inquire after her yesterday, and that cheered my missus so much that she's up and about again today.'

  ‘Good, good. Then I hope to see you both at Church on Sunday,' Allen said, and turned away to complete his walk and return to the house. He was coming up for seventy-four, but he still kept remarkably fit and healthy, and he enjoyed a good long walk every day, though he didn't ride much any more, never having been a great horseman, and finding now that the hard saddle and the jolting hurt his bones. When he reached the house, the steward, Godman, came out of the barbican, which Allen and Jemima had had converted into a cottage for him, and said that there was a man waiting at the house to see him, with a complaint about a troublesome neighbour. Allen was no longer Justice of the Peace - he had asked permission to resign when he retired from actively running the estate four years ago -but the people had got so used to coming to him with their problems and requests that they still automatically came up to the house instead of going to the new man.

  When he had dealt with the man and sent him away, Oxhey brought him a letter which had arrived in his absence, and he sat down on the windowseat of the drawing room to read it. It was from Mary, who in common with much of London society had gone to Weymouth in the wake of the Court. After the King's terrible illness during the winter - the doctors had called it 'flying gout', as they supposed the gouty humours in his feet had flown up and settled in his head, causing the madness - his recovery had been celebrated by a thanksgiving service in St Paul's Cathedral on St George's Day, after which the King and Queen and the Court had gone on the first extensive Royal Tour of the century. The King's popularity had been amply proved by the warm reception he received everywhere, and in Weymouth, a small fishing-town on the coast of Dorset, which was blessed with a wide bay of firm sand, he had settled down to bathe for his health, and, incidentally, to make Weymouth's fortune.

  The rich and fashionable naturally followed the King's example, and Weymouth was the place to be that summer. Lord and Lady Chelmsford went there, taking Mary and Lord Chelmsford's half-sister, fourteen-year-old Amelia, with them: Allen's friend Charles, the fifth Earl, had died in 1788 at the age of sixty, and Flora was now Countess of Chelmsford. Mary's letter told of the delights of sea bathing, and how when the King went into the sea he was followed by a second bathing-machine containing a band playing 'God Save the King'.

  ‘I imagine His Majesty must get very tired of that tune, for it is all we hear all day when the King is on the sands,' Mary said. 'There have been one or two little awkwardnesses, as one would expect from a remote and unsophisticated town. The Mayor of this place failed to kneel before the King, and when the equerry spoke sharply to him, he said that he could not kneel on account of having a wooden leg. The King passed it off very graciously. There is nothing much here in the way of a promenade, and no public rooms, but one or two country nobles have largehouses of decent sort which do very well instead, and since the Court was known to be coming, all sorts of new traders have moved in, so one can get what one wants in the shops. The worst inconvenience is the smell of paint everywhere, since every inn and ship is in a state of hasty redecoration.

  ‘We are staying in the house of Lord John Courteney, which has a fine view over the bay and is very conveniently situated for the sands. Lady Chelmsford is much admired, and I must say I have never seen her in better looks. We have had some hunting over very pretty country, though rather too steep for good runs, and Colonel Mauleverer, a friend of Lord John's who is in the party, paid me a handsome compliment on my riding, and said that he had heard Yorkshire ladies combined grace with skill in the saddle, but was sure I must be outstanding even amongst them. It was all great nonsense, of course, but said in a very pleasant, gentlemanly manner, and so I did not object.

  ‘We had a ball at Exeter House last night, at which the gentlemen of the militia were much in evidence, which was pleasant for the young ladies, as it meant there was no lack of partners. I danced a great deal, sometimes with Lord Chelmsford and with Lord John, but also with Colonel Mauleverer and some other gentlemen. We did not go to our beds until three o'clock this morning.

  ‘After Weymouth, the Court is to go on to Exeter, and then to Plymouth for a naval review. I wonder if William will be there? Lady Chelmsford's naval friends tell me that Albemarle came in to Tor Bay last week, and that Tor Bay is not far from Plymouth. We do not go with the Court, being bound for Bath to meet up with the Dowager Countess, Lord Meldon, and Lord and Lady Carlton. Colonel Mauleverer says he will also be in Bath at the end of the week, so perhaps I may see him at the Lower Rooms on Friday.’

  Allen read the letter through with amusement at the frequent mention of the Colonel's name. So he was the new beau, was he? Mary's letters - and Flora's too - gave a pretty clear view of the progress of Mary's affairs. There was always someone, sometimes several at once, for Mary never lacked admirers, but they never lasted more than a few weeks. It would be all 'Captain So-and-so says' and ‘Captain So-and-so thinks' for a month, and then his name would drop into oblivion, and the letters would be full of Sir What-you-may-call-him's opinions. But for all her enthusiasm, Mary was never touched by any deep emotion, and flitted, heart-whole and cheerful, like a butterfly from one flower to the next.

  Sometimes, when she had nothing better to worry about, Jemima worried about Mary's having got to the age of twenty-five and being still unmarried, but Allen had a shrewd suspicion that Mary was simply enjoying herself too much to want to change her condition. She also had before her the example of what had happened to Flora when she married too young and too hastily, and perhaps she had taken that example too much to heart. And then there was the possibility, which Allen did not entirely discount, that she was really in love with John Anstey, though she would not marry him. Certainly there seemed to be something guarding her heart, for how ever many devoted beaux she had around her, she never seemed in any danger of falling in love with them.

  Having finished the letter, Allen was about to turn to the newspapers when the door opened and Edward's dog preceded him in, and ran smiling up to Allen to press a cold nose into his hand. Edward said, 'Oh, Father, I'm glad you're back from your walk. There's something I wanted to talk to you about.' In his leather boots, stout breeches, and plain brown coat, with his hair tied behind with a bit of riband, Edward was the essence of a country squire, and made Allen, who sported a striped silk waistcoat and a wig, feel positively like a Macaroni by contrast. Edward dressed the same way for three-fourths of the year, and didn't seem to care what anyone thought of him, changing his style only when his friend Chetwyn came to stay. Edward was twenty-seven, and showed no signs of wanting to marry, and though Allen had suggested several possible matches for him recently, he had refused all of them. Twenty-seven was not so very old for a man, but Allen would have been happier if the next generation had been made a start upon, for he was over his three-score-and-ten, and none of his children had produced an heir yet.

  Edward sat down on the windowseat next to him. 'It's about one of the farmers - the man Grimes. He's going deeper into debt all the time, and it can't go on any longer. You know he didn't plant the bottom field this year?'

  ‘I know. What's to be done?'

  ‘He's come to me offering to sell his land to us. If we buy it, we'll have the land almost clear to Acomb Wood, apart from those two ings at Otterwood Bank. The problem is that Mother isn't going to like it because Grimes says it's all on account of the enclosure that he's failed, and she worries so about that sort of thing.’

  Allen sighed. 'I know, and there have been problems—' He thought of old Gaffer Truman; and there had been others. 'But I know Grimes. He's a diehard of the old school, and he won't improve, and you can't go on and on taking out of the land without putting back.'

  ‘He says he couldn't afford to drain and fence—'

  ‘He wouldn't grow the new crops, that's the long and short of it. He slaughters his cattle in the autumn because he can't feed them
through the winter, so he has no winter manure - and they're a poor, scabby, sway-backed sort of kine in any case. He and his wife are thriftless and shortsighted - but still—'

  ‘Yes - but still,' Edward gave a grim smile. 'Mother will say they are our responsibility.'

  ‘We shall have to think something out. If we buy the land, we shall have to do something for Grimes and his family, or they'll spend the money and end up at the poorhouse - and then they'll be our responsibility in any case. Let me think about it, Ned, and we'll see what we can come up with.'

  ‘Right. I thought I'd better see you alone first.' He nodded towards the papers. 'Anything of interest in there? Anything more about this French business?'

  ‘I haven't had time to read them yet. But the French business is most extraordinary, you know, Ned. For a monarchy so absolute to have ended so suddenly, completely, and bloodlessly is almost beyond belief.'

  ‘We had to have years of civil war before our revolution was done,' Edward said. 'I suppose their King must be more reasonable than ours was.’

  Allen shook his head doubtfully. What he knew of Louis XVI suggested that he was indifferent rather than reasonable, and yet could any King have laid down his power so easily? In the January of that year, after growing discontent amongst the French middle classes with the years of mismanagement, bungling and debt, there had been a call for an Estates-General, a meeting of all the representatives of the three estates, the first such to be held for nearly two hundred years. The three estates were the Lords, the Clergy, and the Commons, the latter being recruited from the class of wealthy merchants and lawyers, who had a great deal of the wealth of the country but none of the power. It was generally understood that a serious programme of reform, social, financial, and political, would be demanded by the third estate, while the fact that the King had consented to an Estates-General at all suggested that the reforms would be granted.

  The Estates-General met in May, and there had been trouble at once over the voting procedure, for normally one vote was taken from each estate, and since the clergy always voted with the nobles, the vote of the third estate would be useless. Then there was a demand for all the estates to meet together, for normally certain matters were discussed only by the two upper estates, in conference with the King. The third estate claimed to be the only true representative of the people - or 'nation' as they called them - and awarded itself the title of National Assembly. In this it was supported by a number of liberal nobles and clergy who were also eager for reform: the tide of reformist zeal had reached its flood, Allen thought, and the Philosophes, such as he had met in France over the years, had sufficiently influenced general opinion that there could be no turning it back.