‘It seems we need not have sent for our washing-gear,’ observed my cousin. ‘I wish we were well out of this.’
‘It is a pretty bed, hein?’ said the amiable Suzanne, thumping the awful brown swaddlings of our couch. ‘And you need fear nothing; my husband and I and la petite sleep in there.’ She pointed to another door. ‘If you are ill, anything, you have but to knock’—
‘And mademoiselle, votre fille aînée?’ we faltered.
Ouf! We need not trouble ourselves about her. It was but last week that she had had a fever in that very bed—a fever scarcely worth mentioning; but she was now in Bordeaux for change of air: ‘et maintenant, mes demoiselles, descendons!’
We did not dare to inquire further as to Mademoiselle Marcault’s fever, but we felt that it gave the finishing touch of horror to those dusky draperies. It was too late now, however, to draw back, and, expressing a lying satisfaction in all that we had seen, we followed our hostess’s devious course to the kitchen. M. Marcault was there with another man, who, it was explained, was a friend who had come to dine. Both were dressed in blue linen blouses, and were of the sharp-nosed, long-moustached type common in Médoc and both rose and bowed solemnly as Madame Suzanne introduced us.
‘Deux demoiselles Irlandaises,’ she explained, with an up-and-down flourish of the lamp, in order that no details of the appearance of the maniacs might be lost, ‘who are anxious to become acquainted with an intérieur paysan.’ At this juncture we were far more anxious that la nourriture paysanne should become acquainted with our interior, but we made reply in fitting terms, and beguiled the remaining interval before dinner with political conversation. We always found it advisable in France to announce our true nationality as soon as convenient. We found ourselves at once on a different and more friendly footing, and talk had a pleasant tendency to drift into confidential calumny of our mutual neighbour, perfidious Albion, and all things ran smoother and more gaily. Dinner was ready at last, and we all sat down very close to each other round the narrow table. Suzanne fetched the soup and the ragoût off the stove, and helped us all out of the pot. Our glasses were filled with excellent ordinaire, and we began to think it was a charming party. The two men were most agreeable and instructive, talking with astonishing ease and well-bred self-possession on any subject that was started, and giving us much useful information on the subject of vines and vine-growing.
We were most careful to copy our hosts in all things. We put salt in our soup with the blades of our knives; we absorbed the rich sauce of our delicious ragoût with pieces of bread, being indeed pressed to do so by M. Marcault; we cleaned our knives on rinds of leathery crust; in fact, we conformed, as we thought, admirably. Everything was going on velvet, when, after the ragoût, the smell of fried oil became apparent, and from a covered-in pan Suzanne helped us each to a large piece of something that resembled sweet-bread, and cut rather like a tough custard pudding. It was fried bright brown, but the inside was yellowish white, and the whole thing was swimming in hot oil. We asked nervously what it was.
‘Mais, mangez le donc,’ responded Suzanne, as she reversed the frying-pan to let the last drops of oil run on to our plates. ‘C’est biang bong! C’est du cépe—du champignong, vous savez,’ seeing that we did not seem much enlightened. Here was local colour with a vengeance! There rose before us in a moment the brown, contorted visages of La Famille Empoisonnée among the mummies of St. Michel, and the dusty bits of fungus that they still retained in their jaws. The situation, however, did not admit of retreat. And we attempted none. The mushroom, or fungus, whatever it was, had a dreadful taste, as though rotten leaves and a rusty knife had been fried together in fat. Moreover, it was patent to the meanest intelligence that, whatever its taste might be, no digestion save that of a native or an ostrich could hope to compete with it. We each swallowed two lumps of it whole, and then my cousin looked wanly at me and said, ‘One more, and I shall be sick.’
It was hard and humiliating to explain that we both disliked and feared this crowning treat of a Médoc repast, but we did it; and though we sank in Suzanne’s estimation, it was more in pity than in anger that she removed the horror from before us, and replaced it with a delicious compôte of pears of her own making. We spent an agreeable evening, in conversation so instructive that we fear to reproduce it here, mingled with confidences as to Suzanne’s winter clothes, and criticisms of the sketch I was making of la petite. Ten o’clock struck, and Madame Suzanne gave a final tidying-up to her kitchen, and then, opening the great chestnut wood wardrobe that stood near the door, she selected from its layers of coarse brownish linen a pair of sheets, clammy with damp and cleanliness, and led the way once more to our barn.
It was a curious feeling when, after we had helped our hostess to make our bed, and said our good-nights, we found ourselves alone in the depths of peasant France without so much as a toothbrush to remind us of our connection with British effeteness, while the huge empty cuves in the barn beneath us roared and sang like organ-pipes in the rising wind. Under ordinary circumstances I do not think we should have survived the dampness of those sheets, but they were not given a fair chance. That night in the Widow Joyce’s cabin in Connemara was recalled to us by many things,—things that, though small in themselves, recurred with a persistence quite disproportioned to their bulk,—and often, while the mosquitoes piped their drinking-songs beneath the canopy, and the fleas came steeplechasing from the boards to the bed, and the candle burnt lower and lower, and the slaughter waxed grimmer and greater, we said to each