THÉRÈSE

I was sitting on a log at the crest of the splendidly high La Bouille ridge gloating over the Seine Valley. Here, from the grounds of La Maison BrÛlÉe (now raucous with revellers in the late afternoon) you have a generous sweep of the basin and of its flanking forest slopes. A Frenchman and his wife sauntered past with their daughter and took a seat beyond. The daughter was beautiful, with an air of breeding that sorted well with the distinguished bearing of the old man and the well-sustained good looks of her mother. They sat for half an hour, and as they re-passed on the return mademoiselle said: "How do you like the view?" in excellent English. This was justification enough for inviting them to share my log. We talked a long time, mademoiselle and I; the old people hadn't a word of English. She had had a two years' sojourn in Birmingham about the age of sixteen, and had acquired good English ineradicably. She had got caught into Joseph Chamberlain's circle; he used to call her Sunny Jim. The name sat well upon her: the facetious aptness of it was striking. She was of the "fire and dew" that make up the admirable French feminine lightness of spirit-vivacity, frankness, sunniness, whimsicality, good looks, and litheness of body.

The end of it all was that I was to come down to Sahurs (over the river) the next Sunday and see their home and get taught some French in an incidental fashion. There was no manner of doubt of every need of that.

And there was no manner of hesitancy in accepting such an invitation. She flashed a smile behind as they left, and I resumed the log, wishing to-morrow were Sunday, as distinct from Monday. This was a damnable interval of waiting. As I was repeating this indictment over and over, watching them disappear into the forest, she waved. I lapsed into a profane silence, and brooded on the flight of time, and reviewed in turn all the false allegations of its swiftness I could call to mind.

It was obviously wise to leave the margin of this darkling wood and get down to the boat. It would never do to miss it, and be driven to crossing to Sahurs to tell them so. No! that wouldn't do: better catch the thing and be done with it. So I did; and had a journey of easy contemplation up to Rouen.

Next Sunday I got a "bike": it can be made to leave earlier than the boat. And the river-bank is more interesting than the middle-stream.

From Rouen to Sahurs the right bank of the Seine is bulwarked by a traversing limestone ridge, clothed with forest. But the river-side is escarped and precipitous, thrusting out its whiteness beneath the forest crest and, as a foil, casting up the chÂteaux and splendid maisons on the river level, with their embracing gardens and orchards.

This rich accumulation of colour—deep forest, gleaming cliff-side, red roof, grey mellow wall, and blooming garden and orchard, and white river road—is unforgettable, and perhaps unexcelled. Nothing finer you'll see in the whole RhÔne Valley; and that is a bold saying.

The especial charm of a cycle is that you can stop and look. You can gaze as long as you like (as long as is consistent with the fact that Sunny Jim is at the other end of the journey) at this quaint half-timbered, gable-crowded maison standing in its graceful poplar-grove; at the sweet provincial youngsters playing on the road. You can lay up your machine and enter the rambling Normandy cafÉ squatting on the river-bank, with its groups of blue-clad soldiers en permission making the most of things with the bloused and pantalooned civilians and with their cider (cidre is the national drink of Normandy, as wine is of most other provinces) and you are greeted, in such a house, with the delicious open French friendliness which is so entrancing (by contrast) to most Englishmen. After their own national reticence, this is pleasant beyond description. Of some it is the undoing. The soldiers greet you, and you are adamantine if you don't sit at their table rather than alone. The girl who serves welcomes you like a brother. Quite sorry you are, at rising, you never came here before.... You push on with your wheel. On the slopes of the other bank they are getting in the harvest on the edge of the wood—some old men and many women and a handful of soldiers on leave who have forgotten the trenches.

There are soldiers with their families fishing on the bank beside you at intervals. You stop to talk to these. You can't resist sitting with them for a spell and kissing the little girls who nestle up. The basket that contains other things than bait and the catch is opened; you're a villain if you don't sip from that yellow bottle and take some bread and a handful of cherries....

Halfway to Sahurs, opposite the timbered island, you pass the German prisoners' camp, patrolled, beneath the barbed wire topping the wall, by those quaint, informal French sentries. They're in red-and-blue cap, red-and-blue tunic, red-and-blue breeches. They lounge and chat and dawdle, with their rifles slung across their backs, and their prodigiously long bayonets poking into the upper air. They appear casual enough, but they detest the generic German sufficiently to leave you confident that, however casual they may seem, he will not escape.

Farther down, you'll meet a gang of Boches road-making—fine, brawny, light-haired, blue-eyed, cheerful beggars they are. Obviously they don't aspire above their present lot so long as wars endure.

Four kilometres above Sahurs is the Napoleonic column marking the spot where the ashes of Bonaparte were landed between their transfer from the boat which brought them up the river to that which bore them to Paris. As I approached this column from above, Sunny Jim, on her wheel, approached it from Sahurs. Her friend Yvonne was with her (wonderful, in this land, is the celerity with which the barriers surrounding Christian names are thrown down!), and the dog.

The ride on to Sahurs is on a road that deflects from the river. It is over-arched with elms continuously. ThÉrÈse (that's her name) calls it la CathÉdrale: and the roof of branches aloft is like the groined roof of a cathedral.

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.

Pappa wanders ahead at an unreasonable pace with Mme. la Comtesse. ThÉrÈse and I set about gathering daisies and poppies, with which the green is starred. The dogs come out from the neighbouring farmhouse; and ThÉrÈse, who fears dogs horribly, has to be adequately protected.

We come up with pappa on the river-bank. We all set off dawdling single-file along the brush-hemmed river-path.... The Normandy twilight has settled down; but it will last till ten. La Bouille lies on the other shore under the cliffs that gleam through their foliage. The river gleams beneath them. There is a long track of light leading to the ridge at the bend where the tottering battlements of the castle of Robert le Diable stand against the sky-line. A hospital ship, now faintly luminous, lies under the shadow of the la Bouille ridge. The village lights have begun to twinkle on the other shore. The soft cries of playing children creep over the water. The cry of the ferryman ready to leave is thrown back from the cliffs with startling clearness. The groves that fringe the cliff are cut out branch by branch against the ruddy sky.

We don't want to talk much after coming on the river: neither do we....

It has darkened palpably when we turn to enter the village, an hour after. The hedged lanes are dark under the poplar-groves. The latticed windows of the cottages are brilliant patchwork of light. The glow-worms are in the road-side grass and in the hedges. We pluck them to put them in our hats. ThÉrÈse weaves all manner of wistful fancies about them. We pass under the Henry VIII. Église to the house, and enter quietly.

ThÉrÈse sits at the piano without stupid invitation, and sings some of the lovely French folk-songs, and (by a special dispensation) some German, that are almost as haunting. The old man watches his daughter with a sort of fearful adoration, as though this creature, whose spirit gleams through the fair flesh of her, were too fine a thing for him to be father of.

Between the songs we talk. There is cake and wine—that and the common-sensed sallies of Mme. la Comtesse to restrain the romance and the sensuousness of the warm June Normandy night.

I left at midnight. We said an au revoir under the porch; and far down the road came floating after the dawdling wheel a faint "Au 'voir ... À Dimanche"—full of a sweet and friendly re-invitation to all this. I registered an acceptance with gratitude for the blessings of Heaven, and wandered on along the white night road for Rouen. Why hasten through such a night? Rouen would have been pardoned for being twice ten miles distant. The silent river, the gleaming road, the faintly rustling trees, and the warm night filled with the scents of the ForÊt de Roumare, forbade fatigue and all reckoning of hours.... And that was the blessed conclusion of most Sabbath evenings for three months.