Part 12

All spoke of decay and abandonment; and when, through my daughter, M. Zola began to make inquiries about the place, he was told a fantastic tragic story. A murder, it was said, had been committed there many years previously; a poor little girl had been killed by her stepmother, and her remains had been buried beneath a scullery floor.

There was also talk of the child's father, who at night drove up to the house in a phantom carriage drawn by ghostly horses, and hammered at the door of the mansion and shouted aloud for his dead child!

The story was alleged to be well known, and it was said that not a girl from Chertsey to Esher, from Walton to Byfleet, would have dared to pass that house after nightfall, when harrowing voices rang out through the trees, and the shadowy horses of the ghostly carriage trotted swiftly and silently over the gravel.

The story not only impressed my daughter Violette, but it greatly interested M. Zola, on whose behalf I made various inquiries. For instance, I closely questioned an old gardener who had known the district for long years. All he could tell me, however, was that there were certainly some strange rumours abroad among the womenfolk, but that for his own part he had never heard of any crime and had never seen any ghost.

And at last others told me quite a different story of the house's abandonment, and this I here venture to give, though I certainly cannot vouch for its accuracy. The place had been built, it seemed, some forty years previously by a retired and wealthy London pawnbroker, a gaunt, shrivelled old man, who, mounted on a white mare, had in his declining years been a familiar figure on the roads of the district.

Extremely eccentric, he had largely furnished and decorated the house with unredeemed articles that had been pledged with him. There was nothing en suite. Old chairs of divers patterns were mingled with odd tables and sideboards and sofas; there were also innumerable daubs 'ascribed' to old masters, and a wonderful display of Wardour-street bric-a-brac. But, indeed, one has only to look at an average pawnbroker's shop to picture what kind of articles the house must have contained.

It seems that the old fellow in question had three daughters, whom he kept more or less imprisoned on his recently-acquired property, though they were charming girls well worthy of being sought in marriage; and the story I heard was that three officers sojourning in the district had one day espied the three forlorn damsels over the garden hedge, and had forthwith begun to court them, much to the ire of the misanthropic, retired pawnbroker. That stern old gentleman ordered his daughters into the house, and then kept them in stricter confinement than ever.

But love laughs at locksmiths, and the amorous officers eventually carried the place by storm, and beat down all parental resistance. Three weddings followed on the same day, and all ended for a time as in a fairy tale. But the old pawnbroker subsequently married again to relieve his solitude, and after his death his will was attacked, and an interminable lawsuit ensued, with the result that the property was left unoccupied. Now, it appeared, it was for sale, and before long would probably be cut up into building plots.

Whatever romantic element there might be in the story of the pawnbroker and his daughters, M. Zola much preferred the popular and gruesome legend of the little girl murdered in the scullery; and, some time later, when he consented to write a short story for 'The Star,' it was this legend which he took as his basis, building thereon the pathetic sketch of 'Angeline,' the scene of which he transferred to France.

He has stated in his article 'Justice,' published in Paris on his return from exile, that during most of the time he spent in England he was virtually in a desert. There were people about him of course; but he retired into himself as it were, communing with his own thoughts, and seeking no intercourse with strangers. This is true of the period to which I am now referring. Still he did not complain of solitude. In fact he knew that quiet was essential for his work. Only once or twice did anything happen of a nature to cause any anxiety. Neither Wareham nor myself was much troubled at this period; there was a lull even in the periodical visits which gentlemen of the Press kindly favoured me.

Still we had taken our precautions by admitting a mutual friend, Mr. A. W. Pamplin, into our confidence. If M. Zola's communications with Paris, through Wareham and myself, should be threatened, Mr. Pamplin was to take upon himself the duty of re-establishing them.

At M. Zola's house there was, so far as I am aware, but one brief alerte. This occurred one afternoon, when a servant came to my daughter with the tidings that there was a French hunchback at the door. Violette impulsively rushed off to tell M. Zola of it; but when in her turn she went to the door to see who the person might be, she found that he was an Englishman, a traveller for some county directory, who had merely performed his legitimate work in requesting to know the name of the occupier of the house. Of course the only name given was that of the owner, then absent at the seaside.

Thus the hot days sped by peacefully enough. M. Zola had at least found occupation and quietude, though it was naturally impossible that he should feel content with his lot. Each day brought more and more home to him the consciousness that he was in exile, and that contumely had been his reward for seeking to save France from the shame of a great crime.

I have previously mentioned that during the first week or so of his sojourn in England he had refused to look at newspapers and--at least so it seemed to me--had sought to banish the Dreyfus affair and his own troubles from his mind, much as one might seek to drive away a hateful nightmare. But before long he again fell under the spell and followed the course of events with the keenest interest. And again and again, reading of the great battle being waged in France, he longed to return home, and grew restless and impatient.

Moreover a complaint from which he has suffered on and off for some years troubled him on more than one occasion. He always rallied, however, and returned to his work with renewed energy. 'Fecondite' was already taking shape in the leafy solitude in which he dwelt. And undoubtedly the steady task of creation, resumed morning by morning, greatly helped him to quiet the anguish of heart which the course of events in France would otherwise have rendered intolerable.

NOTE.--While this work was appearing serially in the 'Evening News' I received numerous letters from readers interested in various matters mentioned by me. With respect to the foregoing chapter, a lady living at Staines wrote saying that she was looking out for 'a cheap haunted house,' and asking for the address of the one I had mentioned. I was unable to comply with her request, as personally I do not believe the house was haunted at all. Moreover, to prevent the sale or letting of any particular house by asserting it to be haunted would be an offence under the libel laws. As I could not tell what course my lady-correspondent might take in the matter, I preferred not to answer her. May she forgive me my impoliteness!

'LE REVE': THE DREAM

When the owner of the house which M. Zola had rented desired to resume possession, it became necessary to find new quarters of a similar character for the master. And so he was transferred to another Surrey country house where the arrangements remained much the same as previously: work every morning, resting or bicycling in the afternoon, followed by newspaper reading and letter-writing in the evening.

The grounds of M. Zola's new retreat were very extensive, and in part very shady, which last circumstance proved extremely welcome to the novelist, who on coming to 'cold, damp, foggy England,' as the French put it, had never imagined that he would have to endure a temperature approaching that of the tropics.

The heat deprived him of appetite, and, moreover, he did not particularly relish some of the dishes provided for him by a new cook who had lately been engaged. We all know how great is the servant difficulty even under the best of circumstances; and when cooks and maids have to be secured in hot haste an entirely satisfactory result is hardly to be expected. Moreover, many servants refuse to live in country retirement, far away from their 'followers,' and thus one has at times to take such as one can find.

As for the cookery to which M. Zola was at certain periods treated, he beheld it with wonder and repulsion. His tastes are simple, but to him the plain, boiled, watery potato and the equally watery greens were abominations. Plum tart, though served hot (why not cold, like the French tarte?) might be more or less eatable; but, surely, apple pudding--the inveterate breeder of indigestion--was the invention of a savage race. And why, when a prime steak was grilled, should the cook water it in order to produce 'gravy,' instead of applying to it a little butter and chopped parsley? This, Dundreary-wise, was one of those things which nobody, not even M. Zola, could understand.

However, a visit to a fishmonger's shop had made him acquainted with the haddock, the kipper, and likewise the humble bloater; and occasionally, I believe, when his appetite needed a stimulant he turned to the smoked fish, which seemed so novel to his palate. The cook, of course, was mightily incensed thereat. For her part, she most certainly would not eat haddock or kippers for dinner; she had too much self-respect to do such a thing, so she boiled or roasted a leg of mutton for her own repast and the maids'. I do not say that she was wrong; and, indeed, M. Zola never forced people to eat what they did not care for.

But in the same way he wished for something that he himself could eat, and he was weary of the perpetual joint and the vegetables a l'eau. One day, when in a jocular spirit he was talking to me on this subject, I told him that we English had a saying to the effect that 'God sent us food, but the devil invented cooks.'

'You are quite right,' he replied, 'only as a Frenchman I should put it this way: "God sent us food, but the devil invented English cooks."'

Towards the end of August he again became very dispirited. The 'cause' did not at that time appear to be prospering in France, where so many people remained under the spell of the deceptive declarations and documents which had been made public in the Chamber of Deputies by War Minister Cavaignac early in July.

Of course the Revisionists were still hard at work, but in the face of M. Cavaignac's speech, placarded throughout the 36,000 townships of France, they seemed to have a very uphill task before them. The anti-Dreyfusites on their side were more arrogant than ever, and although M. Zola never once lost faith in the justice of his cause and its ultimate triumph, he did, on more than one occasion, question whether that triumph would come in a peaceful way.

Felix Faure was then still President of the Republic, and I am abusing, I think, no confidence in saying that M. Zola regarded that vain, showy man as one of the great obstacles to the victory of truth and justice. Faure, he said to me, had undoubtedly at one time enjoyed well-deserved popularity; he, Zola, had been received by him and in the most cordial manner. But the President's intercourse with crowned heads, and his intimacy with arrogant general officers, coupled with all the flummery of the Protocole, all the pomp and display observed whenever he stirred from the Palace of the Elysee, had virtually turned his head. He was in the hands of those military men who opposed revision, and he shielded them because their downfall would mean his own. He was bent on the hushing-up course lest his Presidency should become synonymous with a great judicial crime; he feared that he might be forced to resign even before his term of office was over, or, at all events, that he might have to abandon all hope of re-election.

And thus with the President and the more prominent generals opposed to revision, M. Zola, though confident in the final issue, more than once said to me that there might be serious trouble before all was over.