An Inland Voyage Section 9 - At Landrecies

Robert Louis Stevenson (0:02)

Section 9 At Laundressy At Laundressy the rain still fell, and the wind still blew, but we found a double-bedded room with plenty of furniture, real water jugs with real water in them, and dinner, a real dinner, not innocent of real wine. After having been a peddler for one night and a butt for the elements during the whole of the next day, these comfortable circumstances fell on my heart like sunshine. There was an English fruiterer at dinner travelling with a Belgian fruiterer. In the evening at the cafe, we watched our compatriot drop a good deal of money at courts, and I don't know why, but this pleased us.

It turned out we were to see more of Laundressies than we expected, for the weather next day was simply bedlamite. It is not the place one would have chosen for a day's rest, for it consists almost entirely of fortifications. Within the ramparts a few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks and a church figure, with what countenance they may, as the town. There seems to be no trade, and a shopkeeper from whom I bought a six-penny flint and steel, was so much affected that he filled my pockets with spare flints into the bargain. The only public buildings that had any interest for us were the hotel and the cafe. But we visited the church. There lies Marshall Clark. But as neither of us had ever heard of that military hero, we bore the associations of the spot with fortitude.

In all garrison towns, guard calls and reveles and suchlike make a fine romantic interlude in civic business. Bugles and drums and fives are of themselves most excellent things in nature. But when they carry the mind to marching armies and the picturesque vicissitudes of war, they stir up something proud in the heart. But in a shadow of a town like Laundrosy's, with little else moving, these points of warmth made a proportionate commotion. Indeed, they were the only things to remember. It was just the place to hear the round going by at night in the darkness, with the solid tramp of men marching, and the startling reverberations of the drum. It reminded you that even this place was a point in the great war-faring system of Europe, and might on some future day be ringed about with cannon-smoke and thunder, and make itself a name among strong towns. The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable physiological effect—nay, even from its cumbrous and comical shape—stands alone among the instruments of noise.

And if it be true, as I have heard it said, that drums are covered with asses-skin, what a picturesque irony is there in that! As if this long-suffering animal's hide had not been sufficiently belaboured during life, now by Leoness Costamongers, now by presumptuous Hebrew prophets, it must be stripped from his poor hinder-quarters after death, stretched upon a drum, and beaten night after night round the streets of every garrison-town in Europe. And up the heights of Alma and Spikarin, and wherever death has his red flag flying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, there also must the drummer-boy, harrying with white face over fallen comrades, batter and bemoor this slip of skin from the loins of peaceable donkeys.

Generally, a man is never more uselessly employed than when he is at this trick of bastiner doing as his hide. We know what effect it has in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating. But in this state of mummy and melancholy survival of itself, when the hollow skin reverberates to the drummer's wrists, and each dub-a-dub goes directly to a man's heart and puts madness there, and that disposition of the pulses which we in our big way of talking nick-name heroism, is there not something in the nature of a revenge upon the donkey's persecutors? Of old he might say, You dropped me uphill and down dale, and I must endure. But now that I am dead, those dull thwacks that were scarcely audible in country lanes have become stirring music in front of the brigade, and for every blow that you lay on my old great coat you will see a comrade stumble and fall.

Not long after the drums had passed the cafe, the cigarette and the arathusa began to grow sleepy and set out for the hotel, which was only a door or two away. But although we had been somewhat indifferent to lingerie, lingeries had not been indifferent to us. All day we learned people had been running out between the schools to visit our two boats. Hundreds of persons, so said report, although it fitted ill with our idea of the town, hundreds of persons had inspected them where they lay in a coal shed. We were becoming lions in lingerie, who had been only peddlers the night before in Pomp. And now, when we left the cafe, we were pursued and overtaken at the hotel door by no letter person than the juge de paix, a functionary as far as I can make out, of the character of a Scots sheriff's substitute. He gave us his card, and invited us to sup with him on the spot, very neatly, very gracefully, as Frenchmen can do these things. It was for the credit of lingerie, said he. And although we knew very well how little credit we could do the place, we must have been churlish fellows to refuse an invitation so politely introduced. The house of the judge was close by. It was a well-appointed bachelor's establishment, with a curious collection of old brass warming pans upon the walls. Some of these were most elaborately carved. It seems a picturesque idea for a collector.