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.’