In the vine country

by E. Oe. Somerville; Martin Ross

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.

CHAPTER XI.

AMILIAR ground, but with what a difference! While the early train from Libourne neared the Bastide Station at Bordeaux, we sat serene and languid in our carriage, reading London papers, and talking English politics to Monsieur A. with an assurance which, we hope, concealed our ignorance; luggage, cabmen, and porters were remote appendages of travel, interesting only to Monsieur A’s. servant, a few carriages off. The dog from whose tail the tin kettle has been newly removed could hardly feel a more pleasing sense of undress than did we when we drove out of the yard of the station and saw our portmanteaus squatting sullenly side by side on the pavement, and knew that we should see their detested faces no more till our journey’s end.

Bordeaux itself became a different town under this chaperonage. In the restaurant at which we lunched we were treated as old and distinguished friends, not merely of Monsieur A., but of the proprietor, and shops where we should have been ignored became gushing in their attentions. In the full glow of this borrowed radiance we travelled that afternoon along the sluggish railway line that traverses the Médoc, and saw at intervals, with a sense of old acquaintance, the sails of the ships and the smoke of the steamers on the Gironde appear above the vineyards on our right. We passed Pauillac with almost a pang of recognition. There was the church where we had seen acolytes with short cassocks and long boots with tassels; there was the road along which the inexorable Blossier had driven us,—Blossier, who now would lick the dust before us could our cortége but meet him; there—most painful thought of all—was my largest sponge, that had been blown out of my bedroom window by the vent d’Afrique and never reappeared.

It was half-past three before, at the station of St. Yzans, we clambered down the steep side of the carriage, and up the still steeper side of a smart English omnibus that was waiting for us. Two strong horses took us fast along the level roads, and the soft breeze cooled us as we sat on high and admired the perfect propriety with which Madame A.’s poodle sat erect beside the coachman and looked down with a sovereign severity upon the cur-dogs at the cottage doors. We had driven for seven miles, and the Gironde, from which the railway had strayed to meet the village of St. Yzans, was in sight again, when the horses were pulled up at a neat new gate-lodge; we drove in over a bridge, and bowled up an avenue with vines spreading far on each side, then through a wood, and finally under a high arched gateway up to the door of a long pink château with pointed towers at either end. We were shown into a large drawing-room, with windows opening on to an old stone terrace, beyond which were brilliant flower-beds, and, in the distance, a blue strip of river; afternoon tea of the English kind stood ready, with a pile of letters and papers waiting beside it; a billiard-room opened on one side, a library on the other, all empty, and luxuriously expectant of our occupation. It was our good fortune to be the guests of Mr. Gilbey at Château Loudenne, and though by a fortune less kind we had been deprived of the presence of our host, he had provided for us the pleasantest of deputies to dispense his hospitalities.