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A short story by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
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The Mont-Bazillac |
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Title: The Mont-Bazillac Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch [More Titles by Quiller-Couch] I have a sincere respect and liking for the Vicar of Gantick--"th' old Parson Kendall," as we call him--but have somewhat avoided his hospitality since Mrs. Kendall took up with the teetotal craze. I say nothing against the lady's renouncing, an she choose, the light dinner claret, the cider, the port (pale with long maturing in the wood) which her table afforded of yore: nor do I believe that the Vicar, excellent man, repines deeply--though I once caught the faint sound of a sigh as we stood together and conned his cider-apple trees, un-garnered, shedding their fruit at random in the long grasses. For his glebe contains a lordly orchard, and it used to be a treat to watch him, his greenish third-best coat stuck all over with apple-pips and shreds of pomace, as he helped to work the press at the great annual cider-making. But I agree with their son, Master Dick, that "it's rough on the guests." Master Dick is now in his second year at Oxford; and it was probably for his sake, to remove temptation from the growing lad, that Mrs. Kendall first discovered the wickedness of all alcoholic drink. Were he not an ordinary, good-natured boy--had he, as they say, an ounce of vice in him--I doubt the good lady's method might go some way towards defeating her purpose. As things are, it will probably take no worse revenge upon her solicitude than by weaning him insensibly away from home, to use his vacation-times in learning to be a man. Last Long Vacation, in company with a friend he calls Jinks, Master Dick took a Canadian canoe out to Bordeaux by steamer, and spent six adventurous weeks in descending the Dordogne and exploring the Garonne with its tributaries. On his return he walked over to find me smoking in my garden after dinner, and gave me a gleeful account of his itinerary. ". . . And the next place we came to was Bergerac," said he, after ten minutes of it. "Ah!" I murmured. "Bergerac!" "You know it?" "Passably well," said I. "It lies toward the edge of the claret country; but it grows astonishing claret. When I was about your age it grew a wine yet more astonishing." "Hallo!" Master Dick paused in the act of lighting his pipe and dropped the match hurriedly as the flame scorched his fingers. "It was grown on a hill just outside the town--the Mont-Bazillac. I once drank a bottle of it." "Lord! You too? . . . _Do_ tell me what happened!" "Never," I responded firmly. "The Mont-Bazillac is extinct, swept out of existence by the phylloxera when you were a babe in arms. _Infandum jubes renovare--_ no one any longer can tell you what that wine was. They made it of the ripe grape. It had the raisin flavour with something--no more than a hint--of Madeira in it: the leathery tang--how to describe it?" "You need not try, when I have two bottles of it at home, at this moment!" "When I tell you--" I began. "Oh, but wait till you've heard the story!" he interrupted. "As I was saying, we came to Bergerac and put up for the night at the _Couronne d'Or_--first-class cooking. Besides ourselves there were three French bagmen at the _table d'hote_. The usual sort. Jinks, who talks worse French than I do (if that's possible), and doesn't mind, got on terms with them at once. . . . For my part I can always hit it off with a commercial--it's the sort of mind that appeals to me--and these French bagmen _do_ know something about eating and drinking. That's how it happened. One of them started chaffing us about the _ordinaire_ we were drinking--quite a respectable tap, by the way. He had heard that Englishmen drank only the strongest wine, and drank it in any quantities. Then another said: 'Ah, messieurs, if you would drink for the honour of England, _justement_ you should match yourselves here in this town against the famous Mont-Bazillac.' 'What is this Mont-Bazillac?' we asked: and they told us--well, pretty much what you told me just now--adding, however, that the landlord kept a few precious bottles of it. They were quite fair in their warnings." "Which, of course, you disregarded." "For the honour of England. We rang for the landlord--a decent fellow, Sebillot by name--and at first, I may tell you, he wasn't at all keen on producing the stuff; kept protesting that he had but a small half-dozen left, that his daughter was to be married in the autumn, and he had meant to keep it for the wedding banquet. However, the bagmen helping, we persuaded him to bring up two bottles. A frantic price it was, too--frantic for _us_. Seven francs a bottle." "It was four francs fifty even in my time." "The two bottles were opened. Jinks took his, and I took mine. We had each _arrosed_ the dinner with about a pint of Bordeaux; nothing to count. We looked at each other straight. I said, 'Be a man, Jinks! _A votre sante messieurs!_' and we started. . . . As you said just now, it's a most innocent-tasting wine." "As a matter of fact, I didn't say so. Still, you are right." "The fourth and fifth glasses, too, seemed to have no more kick in them than the first. . . . Nothing much seemed to be happening, except that Sebillot had brought in an extra lamp--at any rate, the room was brighter, and I could see the bagmen's faces more distinctly as they smiled and congratulated us. I drank off the last glass 'to the honour of England,' and suggested to Jinks--who had kept pace with me, glass for glass--that we should take a stroll and view the town. There was a fair (as I had heard) across the bridge. . . . We stood up together. I had been feeling nervous about Jinks, and it came as a relief to find that he was every bit as steady on his legs as I was. We said good evening to the bagmen and walked out into the street. 'Up the hill or down?' asked Jinks, and I explained to him very clearly that, since rivers followed the bottoms of their valleys, we should be safe in going downhill if we wanted to find the bridge. And I'd scarcely said the words before it flashed across me that I was drunk as Chloe. "Here's another thing.--I'd never been drunk before, and I haven't been drunk since: but all the same I knew that this wasn't the least like ordinary drunkenness: it was too--what shall I say?--too brilliant. The whole town of Bergerac belonged to me: and, what was better, it was lit so that I could steer my way perfectly, although the street seemed to be quite amazingly full of people, jostling and chattering. I turned to call Jinks's attention to this, and was saying something about a French crowd--how much cheerfuller it was than your average English one--when all of a sudden Jinks wasn't there! No, nor the crowd! I was alone on Bergerac bridge, and I leaned with both elbows on the parapet and gazed at the Dordogne flowing beneath the moon. "It was not an ordinary river, for it ran straight up into the sky: and the moon, unlike ordinary moons, kept whizzing on an axis like a Catherine-wheel, and swelled every now and then and burst into showers of the most dazzling fireworks. I leaned there and stared at the performance, feeling just like a king--proud, you understand, but with a sort of noble melancholy. I knew all the time that I was drunk; but that didn't seem to matter. The bagmen had told me--" I nodded again. "That's one of the extraordinary things about the Mont-Bazillac," I corroborated. "It's all over in about an hour, and there's not (as the saying goes) a headache in a hogshead." "I wouldn't quite say that," said Dick reflectively. "But you're partly right. All of a sudden the moon stopped whizzing, the river lay down in its bed, and my head became clear as a bell. 'The trouble will be,' I told myself, 'to find the hotel again.' But I had no trouble at all. My brain picked up bearing after bearing. I worked back up the street like a prize Baden-Powell scout, found the portico, remembered the stairway to the left, leading to the lounge, went up it, and recognising the familiar furniture, dropped into an armchair with a happy sigh. My only worry, as I picked up a copy of the _Gil Blas_ and began to study it, was about Jinks. But, you see, there wasn't much call to go searching after him when my own experience told me it would be all right. "There were, maybe, half a dozen men in the lounge, scattered about in the armchairs and smoking. By and by, glancing up from my newspaper, I noticed that two or three had their eyes fixed on me pretty curiously. One of them--an old boy with a grizzled moustache--set down his paper, and came slowly across the room. 'Pardon, monsieur,' he said in the politest way, 'but have we the honour of numbering you amongst our members?' 'Good Lord!' cried I, sitting up, 'isn't this the _Couronne d'Or?_' 'Pray let monsieur not discommode himself,' said he, with a quick no-offence sort of smile, 'but he has made a little mistake. This is the _Cercle Militaire_.' "I must say those French officers were jolly decent about it: especially when I explained about the Mont-Bazillac. They saw me back to the hotel in a body; and as we turned in at the porchway, who should come down the street but Jinks, striding elbows to side, like a man in a London-to-Brighton walking competition! . . . He told me, as we found our bedrooms, that '_of course_, he had gone up the hill, and that the view had been magnificent.' I did not argue about it, luckily: for--here comes in another queer fact--_there was no moon at all that night_. Next morning I wheedled two more bottles of the stuff out of old Sebillot--which leaves him two for the wedding. I thought that you and I might have some fun with them. . . . Now tell me _your_ experience." "That," said I, "must wait until you unlock my tongue; if indeed you have brought home the genuine Mont-Bazillac."
This laid an obligation upon me to walk over to Gantick and inquire about my old friend's health: which I did that same afternoon. Mrs. Kendall received me with the information that her husband was quite well again, and out-and-about; that in fact he had started, immediately after luncheon, to pay a round of visits on the outskirts of the parish. On the nature of his late indisposition she showed herself reticent, not to say "short" in her answers; nor, though the hour was four o'clock, did she invite me to stay and drink tea with her. On my way back, and just within the entrance-gate of the vicarage drive, I happened on old Trewoon, who works at odd jobs under the gardener, and was just now busy with a besom, sweeping up the first fall of autumn leaves. Old Trewoon, I should tell you, is a Wesleyan, and a Radical of the sardonic sort; and, as a jobbing man, holds himself free to criticise his employers. "Good afternoon!" said I. "This is excellent news that I hear about the Vicar. I was afraid, when I first heard of his illness, that it might be something serious--at his age--" "Serious?" Old Trewoon rested his hands on the besom-handle and eyed me, with a twist of his features. "Missus didn' tell you the natur' of the complaint, I reckon?" "As a matter of fact she did not." "I bet she didn'. Mind you, _I_ don't know, nuther." He up-ended his besom and plucked a leaf or two from between the twigs before adding, "And what, makin' so bold, did she tell about the Churchwardens?" "The Churchwardens?" I echoed. "Aye, the Churchwardens: Matthey Hancock an' th' old Farmer Truslove. They was took ill right about the same time. Aw, my dear"--Mr. Trewoon addresses all mankind impartially as "my dear"--"th' hull parish knaws about _they_. Though there warn't no concealment, for that matter." "What about the Churchwardens?" I asked innocently, and of a sudden became aware that he was rocking to and fro in short spasms of inward laughter. "--It started wi' the Bishop's motor breakin' down; whereby he and his man spent the better part of two hours in a God-forsaken lane somewhere t'other side of Hen's Beacon, tryin' to make her go. He'd timed hisself to reach here punctual for the lunchin' the Missus always has ready on Confirmation Day: nobody to meet his Lordship but theirselves and the two Churchwardens; an' you may guess that Hancock and Truslove had turned up early in their best broadcloth, lookin' to have the time o' their lives. "They were pretty keen-set, too, by one o'clock, bein' used to eat their dinners at noon sharp. One o'clock comes--no Bishop: two o'clock and still no Bishop. 'There's been a naccydent,' says the Missus: 'but thank the Lord the vittles is cold!' 'Maybe he've forgot the day,' says the Vicar; 'but any way, we'll give en another ha'f-hour's grace an' then set-to,' says he, takin' pity on the noises old Truslove was makin' inside his weskit. . . . So said, so done. At two-thirty--service bein' fixed for ha'f-after-three--they all fell to work. "You d'know, I dare say, what a craze the Missus have a-took o' late against the drinkin' habit. Sally, the parlourmaid, told me as how, first along, th' old lady set out by hintin' that the Bishop, bein' a respecter o' conscience, wouldn' look for anything stronger on the table than home-brewed lemonade. But there the Vicar struck; and findin' no way to shake him, she made terms by outin' with two bottles o' wine that, to her scandal, she'd rummaged out from a cupboard o' young Master Dick's since he went back to Oxford College. She decanted 'em [chuckle], an' th' old Vicar allowed, havin' tasted the stuff, that--though he had lost the run o' wine lately, an' didn' reckernise whether 'twas port or what-not--seemin' to him 'twas a sound wine and fit for any gentleman's table. 'Well, at any rate,' says the Missus, 'my boy shall be spared the temptation: an' I hope 'tis no sign he's betaken hisself to secret drinkin'!' "Well, then, it was decanted: an' Hancock and Truslove, nothin' doubtful, begun to lap it up like so much milk--the Vicar helpin', and the Missus rather encouragin' than not, to the extent o' the first decanter; thinkin' that 'twas good riddance to the stuff and that if the Bishop turned up, he wouldn't look, as a holy man, for more than ha'f a bottle. I'm tellin' it you as Sally told it to me. She says that everything went on as easy as eggs in a nest until she started to hand round the sweets, and all of a sudden she didn' know what was happenin' at table, nor whether she was on her head or her heels. . . . All I can tell you, sir, is that me and Battershall"-- Battershall is the vicarage gardener, stableman, and factotum--"was waitin' in the stables, wonderin' when in the deuce the Bishop would turn up, when we heard the whistle blown from the kitchen: which was the signal. Out we ran; an' there to be sure was the Bishop comin' down the drive in a hired trap. But between him and the house-- slap-bang, as you might say, in the middle of the lawn--was our two Churchwardens, stripped mother-naked to the waist, and sparring: and from the window just over the porch th' old Missus screaming out to us to separate 'em. No, nor that wasn't the worst: for, as his Lordship's trap drove up, the two tom-fools stopped their boxin' to stand 'pon their toes and blow kisses at him! "I must say that Battershall showed great presence o' mind. He shouted to me to tackle Truslove, while he ran up to Matthey Hancock an' butted him in the stomach; an' together we'd heaved the two tom-fools into the shrubbery almost afore his Lordship could believe his eyes. I won't say what had happened to the Vicar, for I don't rightways know. All I can get out o' Sally--she's a modest wench--is that--that--_he wanted to be a Statoo!_ . . ." "Quite so," I interrupted, edging towards the gate and signifying with a gesture of the hand that I had heard enough. Old Trewoon's voice followed me. "I reckon, sir, we best agree, for the sake o' the dear old fella, that such a sight as them two Churchwardens was enough to make any gentleman take to his bed. But"--as the gate rang on its hasp and rang again--"I've been thinkin' powerful _what might ha' happened if his Lordship had turned up in due time to partake_."
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