[Illustration]
It happened to one of us--no matter which--in early youth to have a
governess who hailed from the parts about Bordeaux. She was a small
rigid lady, with a cast-iron black silk skirt, and an environing squint
that extended her jurisdiction round illimitable corners, and up and
down stairs at the same time. So, at least, her pupils felt, as they
trembled in the glare of that erratic green-brown eye, and quavered the
regulation early French to one another, even in the fastnesses of their
own rooms. Mademoiselle still holds sway among certain outlying members
of our family, and on the eve of our departure for France there came a
note in the well-known hand, suggestive of nothing so much as a paper of
pins, in which she begged us, if our travels took us near St. B., to
present the enclosed introduction at the country-house of Monsieur de
Q., whose little daughters had been among ‘_les plus gentilles de ses
élèves_.’
We were not near St. B., unless an hour by train can be called near, and
our last afternoon in varied French society had not persuaded us that we
were likely to shine in that sphere, but the habit of early years of
subjection was too strong for us. We posted the letter of introduction,
and when the answer came that Madame de Q. would hope to meet us at the
station of St. B. at three o’clock on the day following our visit to St.
Emilion, we said ‘Kismet,’ and tried to shake the Château Lafite dust
from our Sunday hats. The journey to St. B. was hot and uneventful, and
we spent the time it occupied mainly in the futile amusement of finding
out in Bellows’ Dictionary words that fate was never destined to bring
us into contact with.
Outside the St. B. station we were accosted by one of those nondescript,
smug, red-faced servants who are met with only in France, and were
conducted by him towards a green alley of plane trees, in whose shade
was standing a landau with one somnolent black horse in the shafts. A
tall lady advanced to meet us, hook-nosed and handsome, dressed with
awe-inspiring smartness, and with a chill perfection of manner that
awoke in us a simultaneous longing to run away. She neither spoke nor
understood English, so she gave us to understand at once; and another
point about which she did not long leave us in doubt was that she would
have ‘scorned the haction.’ Moreover, the monstrous hearse-horse had not
shambled more than a mile or so, at a trot that
[Illustration: THE COCHER.]
was with difficulty maintained by adjurations and whip-crackings from
the coachman, before we began to make the further discovery that we had
already bored our hostess almost to tears. We cannot be surprised at it;
the penetrating regret that we had ever started on the expedition would
have paralysed our powers even of English conversation, and Ollendorff’s
earliest exercise is a thrilling romance when compared with the remarks
that we churned arduously forth for Madame de Q.’s benefit.
It is true that she gave us no assistance. She leaned back and answered
our questions without an effort either to appear less _ennuyée_ than she
was, or to amplify her replies, while her eyes strayed from time to time
to the novel that lay on the seat beside her--‘Les Confessions de some
one or other. Par la Comtesse Dash,’ or some very similar title. She
would not even discuss Mademoiselle, whom we played as our trump-card
early in the game; in fact, she had never even seen her. Mademoiselle
had been the governess of her stepdaughters, and had left before
Madame’s marriage with Monsieur de Q. The old landau rumbled slowly on,
up and down hill, with the interminable vineyards on either hand, and
occasional hamlets with houses crowded close to the white dusty road. At
one of these, brightly-coloured electioneering posters of some local
hero seemed to offer something to talk about.
‘_Nous avons à Londres_,’ said my cousin very slowly and distinctly,
breaking what had been a long and nerve-trying silence, ‘_tant de
ces--a--postiches_.’
‘_Pardon?_’ said Madame, with a certain languid interest; ‘_je ne vous
ai pas compris, mademoiselle._’
‘_Oh, sur des murs, vous savez_,’ said my cousin, wavering a little;
‘_des postiches, comme cela_,’--she indicated another orange-coloured
placard.
‘_Ah!_’ Madame smiled very faintly. ‘_Des affiches, peut-être?_’
Then it occurred to us that a _postiche_ was a name for a small pad for
the hair, and humiliation almost overbore our usual feeble necessity of
laughter.
[Illustration: ‘NOUS AVONS A LONDRES TANT DE CES--A--POSTICHES.’]
After this reverse we relinquished the unequal contest, and fell into a
silence, dappled only by occasional topographical inquiries, until, as
we turned in at a gateway, Madame de Q. roused herself sufficiently to
tell us that we had arrived at her husband’s house. We drove through the
wide old-fashioned yard, surrounded by ivy-covered brick buildings, and
round a gravel sweep to the front of an imposing white stone house. The
coachman ceased from his admonishments at a flight of stone steps, the
black horse discontinued his advance, and we dismounted with the feeling
that whatever might be before us, it could not be worse than what we had
just gone through. The steps led up to a long stone-paved verandah, with
handsome white columns supporting it, giving it a certain air of classic
distinction; pots of bright scarlet geraniums were ranged along the
balustrade, and there was a group of chairs and a small table at one end
of the verandah. From these, as we ascended the steps, two gentlemen
rose and came forward to meet us. One, a short stout man, unexpectedly
attired in a Norfolk jacket and leather gaiters, with a blind eye, and a
strong resemblance to the late John Bright, was introduced to us by
Madame de Q. as ‘_Mon mari_;’ and the other, a spotty young man in a
high-crowned straw hat, clicked his heels together, and made a low bow,
while we were informed that he was Madame’s cousin, M. le Vicomte de R.
John Bright apologised for the temporary absence of his daughters, and
then we sat down and began to talk seriously with him about vines and
their culture, while Madame and her cousin discussed in rapid
undertones, and with suppressed amusement, some topic that our
self-consciousness told us was not unconnected with ourselves.
A little apart, and turned away from the table, there stood a thing that
looked like a cross between a sentry-box and a sedan-chair; it was made
of basket-work, and as we prosed sapiently with Monsieur de Q. of the
rival merits of the Malbec, Merlot, and Cabernet-Sauvignan grapes, we
were aware of a curious agitation on its part. It was a little behind
us, and the creaking of the wicker-work made us look round quickly--just
in time to see, to our amazement, a small round female spring out of the
chair and run nimbly through a long glass door into the drawing-room,
followed by a waddling, wheezing ball of yellow fur which had been
lurking with her in the recesses of the sentry-box.
Monsieur de Q. betrayed no surprise. ‘My sister,’ he said explanatorily,
and then he added in English, ‘She is vair shy.’
Madame and her Vicomte took no notice of the episode, and we were
addressing ourselves again to our discourse on grapes--the only subject
on which Monsieur de Q. seemed to care to talk--when a jingling of
glasses was heard, and the red-faced servant appeared, bearing a large
tray, which he put down on the table. At the same moment a sort of
dog-cart drove up, and two young ladies jumped out of it, without
waiting for the servant, who hurried down to proffer his help. Madame’s
brow had contracted beneath her admirably curled and netted fringe, and
we at once knew that we were about to meet _les plus gentilles_ of the
pupils of Mademoiselle.
It is superfluous to give our preconceived ideas of these young ladies,
unless, indeed, for the sake of saying that they reversed them all. They
were dressed in shirts and short skirts and jackets, and wore thick
boots and sailor hats, and their manner had a cheerful unconcern and
want of stiffness that was as reassuring to us as it was evidently
detestable to their stepmother. One of them addressed herself promptly
to the table, whereon was the tray with tumblers, two carafes of cold
water, a sugar-basin, and a tall bottle of what we afterwards found to
be rum. The other sat down in the chair vacated by her father, and began
to talk to us in broken English, that was so immeasurably bad that my
cousin, partly from politeness, partly from some theory of making
herself understood, began to answer her in as near an imitation of the
same lingo as she could arrive at, speaking loudly and very slowly, and
using, as far as possible, words of no more than three letters. In the
meantime I watched the movements of the other sister with a fascinated
horror. She first put two lumps of sugar in each glass, then about two
teaspoonfuls of rum, and then the tumblers were filled with water, and
were handed round, along with biscuits, to the company. Through the
glass doors into the drawing-room I could see the aunt, waiting,
apparently, in hopes that her share would be brought to her; but as this
did not occur, she presently crept back, and, with a flying bow to the
party, immured herself again in her sedan-chair, with a heavily-sugared
tumbler of the same dreadful _eau sucrée au rhum_ with which my cousin
and I were toying. The sugar rose through the pale liquid in oily curls;
the sickly smell of the rum ‘curdled under our noses,’ as a Cork carman
said, in affected reprobation of a glass of whisky. It was as
disagreeable a drink as I have ever had to undertake for convivial
purposes, not even excepting _moût_ or ‘fresh’ poteen; and as we slowly
sipped our way towards the two half-melted lumps in the bottom of the
tumbler, not even the vanille biscuits could reconcile us to this
too-concentrated nectar. But release from the necessity of drinking came
unexpectedly. The yellow dog had returned with his mistress, and,
finding the seclusion of the sentry-box unremunerative, he went round
from chair to chair, staring at the biscuits of the revellers with
filmy, greedy eyes, and when he came to me, rearing up on his hind legs
and clawing importunately at my dress. I fed him, being weak-minded in
such matters, and then I tried to pat his head. He immediately gave a
shrill yelp and snapped at my hand, and, in the uncontrollable jump with
which I saved my fingers, the remainder of the rum and water was spilled
over my last clean skirt.
A chorus of horror arose. The pallid face and weak saucer eyes of the
timid aunt appeared furtively round the straw rim of the chair, and she
murmured, ‘Mees! Mees!’ in tones of faint reproof. (I had forgotten to
say that as the dog was supposed to be an English terrier, he was
called ‘Miss,’ a generic term in France for the British dog,
irrespective of size or sex.) Madame de Q. and the spotty cousin offered
polite condolences; Monsieur de Q. aimed some opprobrious epithets at
the offender instead of the kick that he so richly deserved; and Mdlle.
Hortense in an instant whirled me out of my chair, through the
drawing-room, and into a bedroom, there to take off my own skirt and
endue one of hers, while mine was sent to the kitchen to be washed and
dried. It took a fair amount of philosophic calm to walk back to the
verandah in a full white calico skirt some four inches too short for me,
and it was a relief to find that a number of fresh visitors had arrived,
and that my entrance was consequently unobserved. Almost immediately
afterwards, it was suggested that we should be taken to see the park,
and I crouched down the verandah behind the crowd, trying to decrease my
height by those uncompromising four inches, and painfully conscious that
all the gentlemen of the party had remained behind, and were watching
our exit with some interest. ‘Now _ces messieurs_ are content,’ said
Mdlle. Rosalie, dropping behind to talk to me. ‘They will be able to
talk of nothing but the vintage till we return--_ça m’agace!_’
We crossed the yard, and went on past the inevitable _cuvier_, through a
garden full of all-coloured dahlias and wall-fruit, and under the arch
of a gateway into a wide shrubbery with elm and chestnut trees shading
close-shorn expanses of grass, and a serpentine piece of water, on the
farther side of which the largest meadow that we had seen in the
much-cultivated Médoc stretched away to a pine wood.
‘In winter they chase the woodcock there,’ remarked Mdlle. Rosalie.
‘We chase him also in Ireland,’ we said, ‘but he is a difficult bird to
catch.’
It then transpired that our hostesses were sportswomen, and had shot
almost every bird that there was to be shot in their district, from
sparrows to quails. ‘_Nous chassons de race_,’ they said; ‘our
grandmother was a noted shot in her day.’
We felt an incongruity about a French grandmother being _bon tireur_
that was probably derived from a confused belief that the period of
grandmothers in France was coincident with the costumes on a Watteau
fan; but the descendants of this sporting lady assured us that it had
been, and was, quite _comme il faut_ in the Médoc for ladies to shoot,
and they further imparted to us in confidence that their stepmother
disapproved deeply of their sporting proclivities--a fact that did not
take us by surprise. They were altogether a revelation, these Mdlles. de
Q., with English manners and tastes, and even clothes, while Great
Britain’s language and literature were a sealed book to them, except for
a few absurd phrases they had picked up at their convent school at Lyons
from a ‘_demoiselle écossaise, je crois, qui s’appelait Haut-Brion_.’ We
wondered why a Scotch young lady should have been named after one of the
classified clarets, and it was only in subsequent conversation that it
transpired that the demoiselle lived in Dublin and was called O’Brien.
As we wandered back through the beautifully laid-out grounds, with such
tropical plants as are usually associated with Kew Gardens meeting us on
every hand, we heard how our hostesses loved riding, and hoped to get an
_amazone_ made by an English tailor, and inquiry elucidated the fact
that the _amazones_ in which they rode at present were made with long
full skirts, and were generally as absurd as their name.
The party of men whom we had left in the verandah were still seated
there when we returned, Monsieur de Q. looking more than ever like John
Bright as he held forth in eloquent periods on the treatment of
influenza, which, it appeared, was raging among his vintagers. Madame de
Q. had not accompanied the walking expedition, and had retired, so her
husband informed us, with a bad headache, the result of driving in the
sun. We guiltily murmured condolences, but as a few minutes later we all
sat down round the polished oak table in the dining-room, it appeared
to us that the party seemed in no way to suffer from the absence of its
hostess. Tea was served in a rather peculiar manner. Empty teacups were
placed in front of the guests; one sister went round with the teapot,
and the other followed with liqueurs and cold boiled milk, while a
variety of little cakes and piled-up dishes of fruit circulated in her
wake. The tea was hot and bitter with strength; the certain prospect of
indigestion depressed us, and unfitted us to cope with the not
unreasonable curiosity of the other visitors as to us and our, to them,
astonishing mission in the Médoc. We felt that our vocabulary was being
tried rather too high, and on the whole we were glad that we had to
catch a train back to Libourne at six, and had to decline the hospitable
invitation of the daughters of the house to stay to dinner.
While the carriage was coming round, I made haste to change into my own
skirt. I have no bump of locality for the interior of strange houses,
and when I had left the room in which the change was effected, I found
myself confronted by three doors all equally likely to lead into the
hall. I selected the most likely one, and rashly advanced. It was the
boudoir of Madame,--Madame who had retired with a bad headache, and was
now seated over a bright wood fire, with her yellow-covered book of
‘Confessions’ in her hand, and a cigarette between her lips. Sympathy
for her, thus cornered in her last stronghold, was my first emotion as I
fled, but sympathy for myself has been a more lasting feeling as I think
how I have established myself in the mind of Madame de Q. as a crowning
example of the _gaucherie_ and stupidity of _Les Anglais pour rire_.