In the vine country

by E. Oe. Somerville; Martin Ross

As we wound up the meal with several bunches of green and purple grapes, grey with dewy bloom, M. Blossier, with his cigarette and his patronising smile, appeared at the doorway, and as he leaned there, with his hands in his pockets, and his straw hat set crooked on his Astrakhan curls, he informed us that a gentleman had called upon us at the hotel the preceding afternoon, and had left word that he would return this morning, so perhaps it would be well if we gave ourselves the trouble to hasten. We looked at each other, conscious of an effect of failure in the morning’s toilet; the tinfoil looking-glass had slurred over defects that we now saw with a quickened perception. This must be the first-fruit of those letters of introduction that had been written about us, and what untold discredit were we now about to heap on our trusting friends! We flung down the unfinished bunches of grapes, and in less than five minutes we had got through the delicate matter of paying our reckoning, and were saying good-bye to Suzanne. It was unexpected under the circumstances that she should have kissed us, but nevertheless she did so. ‘Tiens!’ she cried, as I held out a hand for her to shake, ‘il me faut vous donner une bise! Là! et là!’ She gave us each two resounding kisses that, as far as garlic was concerned, were not lacking in that local flavour of which we were amateurs, and for fervour and sincerity equalled those that the Irish nurse bestows upon the objects of her affections.

We drove away from Suzanne’s household with real regret. We had found in it an excellent cuisine and a perfect hostess—so I remarked to my cousin with the dogmatic solemnity of a tombstone. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and we found a perfect host too, but he was a noun of multitude, and we provided the cuisine.’ She fingered her mosquito bites as she spoke, and we fell to reminiscences of our feeble efforts to

M. BLOSSIER, WITH HIS CIGARETTE, APPEARED AT THE DOORWAY.

repulse the linked battalions of fleas and mosquitoes the night before.

Very soon, however, we could think of nothing but the extraordinary heat of the wind that was blowing clouds of red dust over us, setting the white sun-bonnets of the vendangeuses flapping, as we drove past them at the best speed to which we could incite M. Blossier, and after an hour of combat with it, we arrived at the hotel with our eyes full of sand, and our hair standing aureole-wise round our faces.

Madame herself came forth to meet us, with a note in her fat hand, and a manner in which some slight admixture of interest, almost of respect, was discernible. We read the note. It was even worse than we had expected; it was a request couched in admirable English that we would be ready to meet the writer at eleven, and he would then give himself the pleasure of conducting us round the vineyards of the neighbourhood, and would finally have the honour of escorting us to his own château, where, he hoped, we would dine. The large commercial face of the hall clock showed that we had just one quarter of an hour before this flight into French society in which to eliminate the traces of an experience that would probably have horrified our host beyond recovery, to cast out the accent that we had acquired with such fatal facility from Suzanne and M. Blossier, and to scour through the all-sufficing pages of Bellows’ Dictionary for phrases that should lubricate our efforts at high-class conversation.

It was not pleasant, either in prospect or accomplishment, but we did it. We were even sitting in the salon as ladies should, putting on tight gloves, when a landau and pair drove to the door, and we were told by the sympathetically excited Louis that a gentleman wished to see us. In another five minutes we were bowling through Pauillac, with parasols up, conversing in free, untrammelled English with the excessively kind and unselfish person who had given a large slice of valuable time to the toil of taking two ignoramuses to see the innermost secrets and perfections of wine-making. Our host told us, in his well-chosen English, that had here and there the pressure and the staccato that an Anglo-Saxon tongue may weary itself in striving to imitate, that we were to partake of déjeuner at a rival Pauillac hotel before going any farther. We did partake.

From oysters, served with hot sausages, to black coffee and fruit, we went hand in hand with the menu, and when we rose to go we felt serene and equal to the occasion.