M. Duthois and madame come out to meet you. It's a welcome and a half they give—none of your English polite formulas and set courtesy. A warm, human, thoroughgoing sincerity sweeps you into the hall, and there you stand in a hubbub of greeting and interrogation (of which less than half is intelligible: but no matter!) for ten minutes, everyone too busy talking to move on, until Thérèse suggests we go round the garden and the orchard.
Everyone goes.
Thérèse gives us the French for every flower and shrub to be seen, and the old man makes valiant, clumsy attempts at English, and you make shamelessly clumsy attempts at French. One evidence of the thoroughgoing courtesy of the French is that they will never laugh at your attempts at their language. We smile at them: somehow their English is amusing. Possibly the reason they do not smile at us attempting French is that there is nothing at all amusing in our flounderings—more likely to irritate than amuse. The old man is accommodating in his choice of topics that will interest you and be intelligible—accommodating to the point of embarrassment. He talks quite fifteen minutes about the shape and coloration of your pipe, certain that this will interest the selfish brute. Madame doesn't say a word—carries on a sort of conversation with smiles and other pantomime.
Somehow, in the garden (I don't know how) Yvonne got named Mme. la Comtesse by M. Duthois. This for the time being embarrassed her into complete and blushing silence because we all took it up. All manner of difficulties were referred to the superior wisdom of la Comtesse. It was she who must decide as to the markings of the aeroplane humming up in the blue; the month when the red currants would be ripened; the relationship of the two crows croaking in the next field; the term of the War's duration.
But an authority on this last subject now emerged from the wicket-gate which opened from the neighbouring house. Madame —— had taken Thérèse to Alsace after her return from Birmingham, and had taught her to speak German there. Madame had lived in Alsace three years before, and spoke German very well indeed. She related in German her dream-message of the night before, that fixed the duration of the War unquestionably at three months more. This subconscious conviction was so conclusive for her that she would take bets all round. Thérèse staked all her ready cash. No doubt she will collect about Christmas-tide.
We all went on to tea spread in the orchard, and spread with an unerring French sense of fitness: such a meal, that is, as would be spread in the orchard but not in the house—French rolls and dairy butter, and confiture de groseille made from the red currants of the last season, fruit and cream, Normandy cake, cherries, wafers, and cidre sparkling like champagne, bearing no relationship whatever to the flat, insipid green-and-yellow fluid of the Rouennaise hotels.
There was no dulness at table. French conversation flows easily and unintermittently. There were tussles to decide whether Thérèse should or should not help herself first. The English custom of "ladies first" is looked on as rather stupid, with its implied inferiority of women: "But you will not beat me! Mais oui! but you are very obstinate!" And she would not be beaten; for she said she didn't like Normandy cake (though she adored it), and helped herself generously when it had been round, and proclaimed her victory over English convention with a little ripple of triumph. Après vous became a mirth-provoking password.
All the pets came round the table—the fowls (to whom I was introduced singly; they all have their names); Mistigri the cat, Henri the goose, the pigeons, the pug, the terrier. All these you are expected to make remarks to, on introduction, as to regular members of the family—which they are, in effect: "Bon jour, Henri! Comment allez-vous? Parlez-vous anglais? Voulez-vous vous asseoir?" When these introductions are over, M. Duthois brings forth his tiny bottle of 1875—the cognac he delights in.
Thérèse proposes a walk. Shall it be down by the river or through the village? "Both," you say. So we go by the river and return by the hamlet.
Setting out, Thérèse pledges me to the French tongue alone, all the way. If I don't undertake to speak no English, I cannot go walking, but must sit with her in the summer-house behind the orchard and learn French with a grammar. I at once decline so to undertake. She varies the alternative: she will not reply if I speak in English. Well, no matter: that's no hardship. She forgets the embargo when she squelches a frog in the grass. English is resumed at once. She is led on to a dissertation in English upon frogs as a table-dish. This leads to talk of other French table abnormalities—horse as preferred to ox, the boast of French superiority in salads and coffee, the outlandish French practice of serving your pommes de terre after meat; and such carnal topics.