CHAPTER VII
OFF FOR LONGWOOD
NEW Year's Day was approaching, the day which French people love to celebrate by making gifts to their friends and paying compliments.
On this first New Year's morning of Napoleon's exile on St. Helena, Betsy, looking from her window, saw young Tristram Montholon and Henri Bertrand approaching.
"Look, Jane," she cried excitedly, "they are carrying something; do you suppose—"
But without finishing her question or waiting for Jane to answer, Betsy had taken the shortest way to gratify her curiosity by running to greet the boys. Immediately the two little fellows saluted her with New Year wishes and before she could ask a question had presented each sister—for Jane had followed her—with a beautiful crystal basket.
"Something Piron made for you," the boys explained; and the fingers of the two girls trembled with excitement as they began to uncover the contents of the baskets. Piron, Napoleon's confiseur, could do the most remarkable things. There was nothing he could not reproduce in sugar—palaces, triumphal arches, all kinds of curious structures—all looking too good to eat. Already Betsy and Jane had received presents from the Emperor, products of Piron's skill, accompanied usually by some pleasant message. But this New Year's gift surpassed their expectations, for when they tore off the white satin napkin, inside the baskets they saw that delicious bonbons were heaped within them on Sèvres plates, a plate for each girl.
"Cupidons for the Graces," was Napoleon's message accompanying the kindly gift.
The first of the new year brought a certain regret to the family at The Briars and to Napoleon as well. His new home at Longwood was nearly ready for him, and this meant that he should see much less of the charming family to which he had become attached. Longwood was several miles away, and the chance was that there he would be guarded more closely and that it might be harder for the girls to see him.
For the two months before New Year's, Longwood was as busy a place as a dock-yard in war. The Admiral was often there, hurrying lazy workmen. Every day two or three hundred seamen carried timber and other building materials and furniture to Longwood. Although Napoleon was in no hurry to go there—indeed, he did not wish to go there at all—he watched the workmen with great interest, as he observed them climbing up the heights between Longwood and The Briars. He would really have preferred to make The Briars his home, and he tried to get the Government to buy it for him, but for reasons, perhaps political, this could not be accomplished. Longwood, in situation, was bleak and unshaded, and so exposed that it was not likely he could ever have a garden such as that at The Briars. Water had to be brought from a distance of three miles, and the houses that were to be remodelled for the French were known to be damp and unhealthy. The farmhouses which Napoleon was to occupy were very plain and have even been called a collection of huts. The expenditure of much money could not make the place really comfortable.
Napoleon had now been on the island nearly three months. No longer was he regarded by any one with dread, at least by any one who had come under his immediate influence. By the Balcombe family he was esteemed an amiable friend. They had had the chance to see him under all kinds of conditions, and if they did not regard him as exactly perfect, their feeling for him was one not only of great sympathy but respect.
As the time for his departure approached he came more often to the drawing-room at The Briars.
"Ah," he said, half sadly, to the family, "I would rather stay here than go to Longwood. I could never have imagined it possible to be happy on such a horrible rock as St. Helena."
One day General Bertrand, coming over from Longwood, told Napoleon the house smelled so of paint that it was not fit for him at present. All Napoleon's friends knew his great dislike for unpleasant odors, and that paint was especially disagreeable to him.
When the Emperor heard this report of the condition of Longwood, his rage almost choked him. He walked up and down the lawn, gesticulating wildly.
"I will not live in a house that smells of paint. It is most horrible. I will send to the Admiral and refuse to go."
Betsy had hardly ever seen him display such temper as he now showed, declaiming against the lack of consideration shown by the Governor. This excitement was a result probably of his general dislike for his new home. Although first interested in the workmen, toward the end he began to complain of the fifes and drums with which the soldier workmen urged themselves on as they wound their way up the hill. He had disliked Longwood from the day when he had first seen it, just after his arrival on the island, and what he heard about it had not changed his opinion. No family, it was said, had ever lived there longer than a few months, so unwholesome was its climate. This came from the situation of the place—a plain on the top of a mountain, eighteen hundred feet high. It was on the windward side of the island, and only for a month or six weeks in the year was the weather pleasant. For three or four weeks it had the sun directly overhead; the rest of the year was wet and disagreeable. In the course of a single day there could be extreme changes of heat and cold.
At last the day of departure came. Sir George Cockburn and all the Emperor's suite, some of whom lived at a distance from The Briars, came over to escort him. The younger members of the family stood around the house, showing their sadness very plainly.
"You must not cry, Mdlle. Betsee," said Napoleon kindly. "You must come to see me next week, and very often."
"Oh, yes, I want to, but that will depend on my father."
Then Napoleon turned to Mr. Balcombe. "Balcombe, you must bring Misses Jane and Betsee next week to see me, eh? When will you ride up to Longwood?"
"Indeed, I will bring them soon," responded Mr. Balcombe.
"But where is your mother?" added the Emperor, casting his eye over the group that had gathered to bid him good-bye.
"She sent her kind regards to you," replied Betsy, "but is sorry that she is not well enough to come down."
"Then I will go up to her;" and Napoleon impulsively ran upstairs before word could be given of his approach.
When Napoleon entered her room, Mrs. Balcombe was lying down. The girls, who had followed him, saw him sit down on the edge of her bed as he thanked her very warmly for all her attention to him.
"I should have preferred to stay at The Briars. I am sorry to go to Longwood," he said; and then he handed a little package to her, saying, "Now please give this to your husband as a mark of my friendship." "This" proved to be a beautiful gold snuffbox.
As he turned to leave the room, Napoleon saw the red-eyed Betsy standing near the door.
"Here, my dear," he said, putting something in her hand, "you can give this as a gage d'amour to petit Las Cases."
Betsy had no heart now to reply to a jest that ordinarily would have brought out a spirited reply. But with the beautiful bonbonnière in her hand, she ran out of the room and took a post at a window where she could see Napoleon. Her tears continued to flow and she found that she could not bear to look longer at the departing Emperor. At last she had to run to her own room, where, throwing herself on a bed, she wept bitterly for a long time.
It was true, as Betsy knew, that Longwood was not so very far from The Briars, and that it was not likely that she would be restrained from going there sometimes. Yet in spite of this knowledge the little girl realized that she had lost a great deal by the departure of the Emperor from her father's house.
Friends, and enemies too, of Napoleon in Europe would have been amazed at that moment to know that the man who so short a time before had been dreaded as the commander of one of the world's greatest armies, was now bewailed by a little girl as a lost playmate, for as playmate and friend Betsy had certainly come to regard him, and she regretted his removal to Longwood, not only because it was farther away, but because he was likely to be hedged in with a greater ceremony that might prevent her from seeing much of him.
Mr. Balcombe went with Napoleon to Longwood, and when he returned the girls asked eagerly how the Emperor liked the new residence.
"He seemed out of spirits. He went soon to his own room and shut himself in;" and at this report they sympathized with his loneliness.
Betsy and Jane, fortunately, were not to be shut off altogether from their friend. Their father was purveyor to the Emperor, and this meant that he had a general order to visit Longwood and could take his daughters with him. Thus it happened that hardly a week passed without their going there to call, to their own great delight as well as to the satisfaction of Napoleon, who never tired of them.
Usually their visits were so timed that they could breakfast with the Emperor at one, and for the most part they found him much the same as he had been at The Briars. After a while, however, they could not help noticing that he was less cheerful than formerly.
About a week after his departure, Betsy and her mother and sister made their first visit to Longwood to call on the Emperor.
"Ah, there he is," Betsy cried; and looking ahead, they saw him seated on the steps of the billiard-room, talking to little Tristram Montholon. The moment Napoleon caught sight of them, he hastened toward them. Saluting them pleasantly, he kissed Mrs. Balcombe and Jane on each cheek, while he pinched Betsy's ear, as he said: "Ah, Mdlle. Betsee, etes-vous sage, eh, eh?"
Then, with the eagerness of a boy anxious to display a new toy, he added, "What do you think of the place? I must show you over it. Come, follow me!"
So the Emperor walked ahead of Mrs. Balcombe and her daughters, leading them first to his bedroom. Betsy thought this room small and cheerless, though she did not say so to Napoleon.
As she looked about she observed that the walls were covered with fluted nankeen, that on the wall were many family pictures that she recognized, while the bed was the well-known camp bed with the green silk hangings, the bed Napoleon had used in his Marengo and Austerlitz campaigns. There, on one side, was the silver wash-hand basin and ewer, and on the mantelpiece over the bed was a portrait of Maria Louisa, so placed as to be the first thing to meet Napoleon's eye when he awoke in the morning. Off the bedroom was a small chamber with a bath that he showed to them. A dressing-room, dining-room, billiard and drawing room made up the Emperor's own special suite. The billiard-room, which had been built according to Sir George Cockburn's orders, was large and well proportioned. It was the best apartment in the house, and the girls expressed their admiration for it, although Betsy, when her eye fell on the billiard table and balls, thought the game a foolish one for men to play.
"Now to the kitchen!" Napoleon exclaimed, at last. "M. Piron will be so pleased. Aha, Piron, here is Mees Betsee; you know how she loves creams. Send her some and some bonbons. See, regardez, mademoiselle, voilà un mouton pour mon diner, dont on fait une lanterne," pointing to the lean carcass of a sheep hanging up in the kitchen, in which the French servants had placed a candle which shone through. "But I know," he continued, "you are dying to see the baby;" and the sisters went with him to Madame Montholon's apartment to see her six-weeks-old girl.
Napoleon took his little god-daughter in his arms.
"Oh, you will let it fall!" cried Betsy as he dandled it clumsily.
"No, no! See, it will let me do anything with it;" and he pinched little Lili's nose and chin until she cried.
"You do not know how to hold a baby," protested Betsy.
"But I ought to know," responded Napoleon with a twinkle of amusement in his eye. "Often and often I have nursed the King of Rome when he was younger than Lili."
After leaving the baby and Madame Montholon, the little girls went with Napoleon to the garden outside.
"It is not like The Briars," the Emperor said, shaking his head sadly.
"I should say not;" and Betsy looked from the bare surroundings of the house to the rugged mountain near by with its scraggly vegetation of wild samphire, prickly pears and aloes, its iron-covered rocks, with sharp cliffs and mysterious caves overshadowing the house.
Napoleon's momentary sadness may have come from his casual allusion to his son, the little King of Rome, the child whom he was never to see again. Those who observed him when any allusion was made to his child were always sure that Napoleon's heart held great fatherly affection. Once when he had been a trifle downcast, Dr. O'Meara told him an anecdote he had heard about the child. Immediately Napoleon smiled with great animation and his face brightened. At other times when the conversation turned on the child, he grew perceptibly sadder.
His love for his own child made Napoleon undoubtedly more interested in all children, and he was never ashamed, as some men are, to show this interest in the children of his friends.
This first visit to Longwood was in every way delightful to the sisters, not only because there was much to see that was new to them in the arrangement of the house and grounds, but because they found the Emperor in one of his most boyish moods.
"Now, ladies," he said, as the time for their return approached, "send your horses off. They can meet you at Hutsgate, and I will take a drive with you, if you will honor my jaunting car."
Hutsgate was the residence of Madame Bertrand, where Mrs. Balcombe and her daughters intended to call before returning to The Briars.
"Yes," answered Betsy after a moment's hesitation, "we will drive with you." She was not fond of driving, but did not dare to expose her timidity to the ridicule of the Emperor.
Hardly, however, had they started off when she felt that her fears were justified. The daring Archambaud was their charioteer, and he drove three unbroken Cape horses abreast.
"This is the most dangerous road for driving on the island. No wonder they call it the Devil's Punchbowl," cried poor Betsy. As she spoke, the carriage seemed to be tipping over the edge of the declivity. Those nearer the edge were in mortal terror, and the others looked as if they would be crushed against the huge rock.
"You are not frightened, are you, Mees Betsee?" asked Napoleon mischievously. "Of course it is a narrow road; I only hope the horses are not running away. They seem rather wild."
Thankful enough was Betsy to arrive at Madame Bertrand's without accident, and when she started for home she was more than eager to mount her own quiet pony, Tom. She was not fond of driving over the dangerous roads, and for a jaunting car she had a special dislike. Napoleon, knowing this, could not resist the opportunity to tease her. Betsy, indeed, was not the only one whom he liked to terrify by getting Archambaud to display his reckless driving. It seemed, indeed, as if his guest, as well as the Emperor, always took his life in his hands when driving in the jaunting car.
On a second visit not long after the first, when Betsy and Jane arrived at Longwood, they found the Emperor firing at a target. He put the pistol in Betsy's hands, saying. "Ah, la Petite Tirailleuse, I will form a company of sharpshooters and you shall be captain."
A little later he took her to the billiard-room and showed her the billiard table.
"It is a silly game for men," she said in her positive way, "too much like marbles. I wouldn't play it."
"Oh, do try," urged the Emperor; but wilful Betsy replied only by aiming the ball at his fingers, as he rested his hand on the board.
Later, however, the sisters learned to play the game, and at the billiard table they passed many an hour.
Napoleon himself taught Betsy how to handle a cue, but, when tired of the lesson, she would often aim at his fingers, and she was always delighted when a well-directed shot made him cry out.
The visits of Betsy and her sisters gave pleasure to the fallen great man; still, as time went on, they could not help noticing that he was less and less buoyant. In their presence he tried to lay aside his troubles, and continued unfailingly kind.
He and the new Governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, were always at swords' points, and this wore on his spirits. Moreover, the health of Napoleon was impaired, and as he realized this he grew more and more gloomy.
Sir Hudson Lowe was very particular that the passes issued for visitors should be used only as they had been made out.
One day Betsy went to Longwood with a pass that prescribed a visit to General Bertrand. But when Betsy, wandering about, caught sight of Napoleon in the billiard-room, she could not resist the temptation of playing a game with him. Her father vainly tried to remonstrate with her. Far from listening to him, she bounded off.
Instead of playing billiards, however, Napoleon asked her to read to him from a book that he had lately received from England. It was by Dr. Warden, surgeon of the Northumberland, describing in English Napoleon's voyage to St. Helena. Napoleon had not made great headway in reading English, and Betsy went through several chapters with him, turning them into her French that he might better understand.
Napoleon listened attentively to her reading. "Dr. Warden's word is a very true one," he said.
Betsy finished her stay at Longwood this day by remaining awhile with Madame Bertrand.
The news of Betsy's visit to Napoleon without the requisite permission reached the Governor's ears; and Mr. Balcombe was severely reproved. In fact, he nearly lost his position. The Governor from the first insisted that Mr. Balcombe always acted in the interest of Napoleon, and hence, as he viewed it in his narrow-mindedness, against the interests of the English Government. Thus we can see that Napoleon's young neighbor was wrong in doing things that drew on her father the Governor's reproof.
"My dears," said Mr. Balcombe one morning, "I am going to Longwood to-morrow, and the Emperor has expressly asked me to bring you. He has something curious to show you."
"What can it be?" the girls asked each other. This special invitation, promising a special pleasure, made them eager to start when the next morning came.
When they reached Longwood with their father they found Napoleon examining a machine whose use they could guess.
"Come, come, young ladies," the great man cried, when he caught sight of them, "come see me make ice. You have not been here for a long time, Mees Betsy, what is the matter?"
"I have been ill,—a sunstroke."
"Oh, I am sorry! What foolish thing did you do?"
"Oh, Jane and I walked with Captain M. to call on Mrs. Wilks. We went over the mountain, two thousand feet, and also across Francis Plain, and down into the valley, up the mountain ridges.
Napoleon expressed his astonishment at the extent of their walk.
"Yes, we were nearly dead when we reached Plantation House, but the Lady Governess and her daughter there were so kind, and at noon we went to Fairyland."
When Betsy had told her story, Napoleon explained the air-pumps and the process of ice-making. He was evidently proud of his own proficiency.
"Now, Mr. Balcombe, get an elementary chemistry for Miss Betsy and make her study every day, and the good O'Meara shall be her examiner."
While he talked Napoleon was watching the machine.
"Do try my ice," he exclaimed at last, when he had a cupful.
"Here, Mees Betsee, take this!" and he put a large piece in her mouth.
"Oh, Mees Betsee, why make such faces?"
This was the first ice that had ever been seen on the island, and those who had never been off St. Helena were naturally amazed when it was shown to them.
"It can't be frozen water," exclaimed Miss de F., a young St. Helena lady who had accompanied the Balcombes on this visit to Longwood; and she had to hold a piece in her hand before she believed it. Then she gave a little scream. The glassy substance was so cold at first that she was ready to drop it. A moment later when it began to melt and the water streamed down her fingers, she realized that she had actually seen a very strange thing, the turning of water into ice by artificial means.
Betsy long remembered the day when she had first seen the wonderful ice machine, and perhaps her remembrance of it was intensified because on that same morning Napoleon permitted her to cut from his coat an embroidered bugle, and the coat was the one he had worn at Waterloo. Napoleon himself was as pleased as a child with the ice machine, and to more than one person expressed his regret that he had not had it in Egypt, where its use would have saved the lives of many suffering soldiers.