The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 10
WHEN she left the Manoir a little later, having promised the old lady that she would soon come again, Jill took the rocky hillside path and descended to the highroad. Standing there to lean on the wall and look down at the view, she felt that even without the promise of a new friendship one could hardly repine at a way of life that kept one in such places.
As she leaned there, her hand idly playing with the lichen-stained stones that crumbled on the parapet, Jill felt herself lifted and enfranchised by a sense of mysterious significance that came to her as much from the splendid scene before her as from the story of love and suffering she had just listened to. Life was like that, she mused, half consciously, while her gaze followed the grave, deliberate curve of the great river; it might break one's heart; but it was beautiful.
Her eyes, returning from the blue immensities of the horizon, rested on the island, and after that sweep round the universe it had a nested loveliness. It was a place for tranquil thought and compassed pacing, and Jill passed on through the gap in the parapet and down the rocky ledges of the little path till the bridge was reached and she found herself once more on the rich meadow-lands. She would explore the meadow first, she thought, and she followed it to where, among rough bushes, saplings, and spits of sand, it ran out into the river. A little hut stood here with one tall tree growing beside it. A tethered goat was cropping at the thickets and Jill was enchanted by the sight of a family of grey wagtails—pale grey above, daffodil yellow beneath—disporting themselves with aerial flittings and jocund balancings in the shallows of the sandy shore. Then she walked back along the stream that divided her from the island, seeking a bridge over that. But there was none. To reach the island one had to round the projection of the promontory and return to the causeway, from where she could see Buissac, only half a mile away, lying tranquilly in the sunlight. Once reached, the island was a lovely spot indeed. It was lifted high above the meadow-land; high above the river. All the ground was covered with dense, bright grass that was soft under one's feet and among the straightly planted poplar groves one saw on every side the blue glimmer of water. The three white cows were picketed there, moving mildly forward, side by side. Jill went to the shore to look across the broad, swift current to the opposite bank of the Dordogne. Two waggons, drawn by cream-coloured oxen, were moving slowly along the road, piled with faggots, and a motor-car, small, vivid, glittering, looked like a dragon-fly skimming along the surface of the water. A row of motionless men, legs dangling, fished from a low wharf, and the voices of women kneeling at the water's edge to beat and knead their hnen came to her ears, sweetened by distance to a bell-like cadence. One felt, rather than saw, how broad the river was from hearing their faint voices find over all shone the pale spring sunshine.
'No,' thought Jill, standing there, her hands behind her back, 'this is good enough.' To make up for anything, was the context in her mind. And it came to her that in loving it all like this, stupid, inartistic as she might be, she was sharing something of his deepest life with Dick.
As she turned from the river at last and entered one of the narrow aisles, she saw a tall black figure approaching her from the furthest end of the island.
For one moment she was seized by Dick's superstitious fear. The picture of the mad-woman the old lady had set before her returned to her mind and a presage of fate, inescapable, overwhelming, like Dick's tidal wave, curving its vast bulk above her. But in another moment the sense of loveliness that had been growing in her, ever since the old lady told her tale, dispelled dark visions. This was Mademoiselle Ludérac herself, and all the sights and sounds of the island had been the happy omens of their meeting. Jill stood and watched her as, all unaware, she came down the poplar grove. She was looking down at the grass; her head was bare, and she had a large white-and-grey cat in her arms. It was not until they were close upon one another that Jill went forward and Mademoiselle Ludérac then raised her head and saw her.
For a moment she stopped short. It came to Jill that if she had frightened them the other day it was possible that they had frightened her; but as she continued to smile blithely upon her, Mademoiselle Ludérac smiled back, and they met in the middle of the island, as if by an appointed plan; as if they had meant to meet and had sought each other at the trysting place. Without words, smiling, their eyes upon each other, they turned and walked back, side by side, towards the causeway. Introductions and explanations seemed quite unnecessary. 'It was meant to be like this,' Jill was thinking. And she felt that her sense of security was deep enough to sustain them both. Indeed, if Mademoiselle Ludérac were bewildered she did not show it.
'Do you often come here?' Jill asked.
'Yes; very often,' Mademoiselle Ludérac replied.
'I suppose the cows are Buissac cows. They couldn't get them down the path,' said Jill.
'No; they come from Buissac; by the road. But have you found your way here down the cliff?' Mademoiselle Ludérac questioned.
'Yes. And I've been up the cliff, too. We came by that way the other day.'
'Did you, indeed? It is known to very few strangers. It is a rough climb,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, who kept her eyes upon Jill with a sort of gentle wonder.
Jill listened to her voice rather than to her words. It was as beautiful as her face, she thought. The depth and tranquillity of the river was in it; and the bell-like cadence of far distances. It was a voice, Jill felt, that could only have grown under such a sky and beside such a river. 'Let us sit down for a little,' she suggested when they reached the dyke. And they sat down on the warm, sunny stones and Jill contemplated her companion for some moments of silence.
In her demeanour, her gestures, her tones—as Jill was later on to hear them—of abrupt command, her impetuous, un-self-conscious speech, Marthe Ludérac gave an impression of noble breeding, while something in her aspect recalled Madame de Lamouderie's allusions to peasant origins. There was an archaic simplicity in the straight lines of her body, the contour of her braided head; a directness almost primitive in her gaze. Her eyebrows lay far apart, set high above the clearly drawn dark eyes, and this spacious setting gave to these a striking potency and candour. She had the small straight nose of the Latin race, the small firm chin, the classic oval of brow and cheek. Her mouth in repose was austere and beautiful, but her smile revealed small white teeth and a space of gum above them, and had in it a sudden helplessness like that of a very young child. Her smile, Jill felt, from the view of beauty, was her defect; yet she would not have had it otherwise. It brought her near as nothing else in her appearance did; and contemplating her with absorbed attention, she felt her to be like a strange bird whose life is passed in high thick forests but that may, through one small, confiding habit, be tamed into one's hand. She looked back at Jill while Jill thus looked at her, and her hand caressed the head of her cat.
'Does he go with you on all your walks?' Jill asked, glancing down at the massive, tranquil visage of the animal. 'He must be very heavy to carry.'
'No; he is only with me because he is a bad beast,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, smiling. 'He knows that I do not want him and hides until I am well started and then I look down to find him there. He is not really heavy. I carry him easily. They are very like babies, animals, are they not?—and love to be dandled like this.—You are fond of them too?'
'I adore them!' said Jill, reaching out to scratch the head of the cat, which turned in sharp appreciation under her hand. 'What a battered warrior! You've been to the wars, poor old man, haven't you?'
'Yes; he is badly battered. His leg is broken, you see.' Mademoiselle Ludérac drew back her hand to show the distorted limb.
'What a shame! Was it a trap?'
'No; not a trap. He was chased by boys. They tied a saucepan to his tail and chased him with a dog. I was only just in time to save him.—One leg was broken by a stone, and the dog had bitten through the other.'
'Horrible little brutes!' cried Jill. 'Were you able to give them a hiding?'
'No; I was not able. I was occupied in running away with the cat,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac calmly. 'I do not know that it would have done any good to have beaten them.'
Jill allowed herself a smile. 'Yet you struck the curé!'
Mademoiselle Ludérac gazed, then flushed. 'I lost my temper on that day. You have heard of it?'
'I thought it splendid!'
'No; not splendid—stupid. If I had let her go at once she might have been saved.'
'You know—you won't mind my saying so—because I'm so fond of France,' said Jill, stroking the cat which had broken suddenly into thick, clotted purring—'it seems to me that your people are not as kind to animals as ours are. I was Scout Mistress in our village—you've heard of Boy Scouts—before the war, and one of the things we teach them is kindness to animals. There are cases of cruelty, of course; but people, on the whole, do hate it and try to help against it. Whereas here in France, they may be devoted to their own Tou-tou or Minet, but they don't seem to have any sense of responsibility towards other animals. The streets of Buissac are full of starving cats and dogs. And they net the birds to eat, and I'm told that in France chained dogs pay no tax—only dogs at large; and that's why one sees and hears all those miserable animals. In England it's against the law to keep a dog chained up all the time. And I don't believe any English boys nowadays would chase a cat with a dog.'
Mademoiselle Ludérac was looking at her with deep, sad interest. She meditated a moment before she said: 'We are more backward than you in those ways.'
'But why don't people get together and do something about it?'
Mademoiselle Ludérac smiled dimly. 'People when they get together in France only do so to quarrel,' she suggested, and she went on, giving Jill a new sense of her maturity: 'There is little margin in a place like Buissac for kindness to animals to grow up. That is what I tell myself. I feel with you;—I feel all you say;—but it is what I tell myself, for I think of it all, perhaps too much. Life is so hard for our people. And they have so little guidance. The Church teaches them that the beasts have no souls and are placed here for our convenience. What I tell myself is that, as conditions become easier and thought more free, it must improve. Men have improved in their treatment of each other. In the past, not long ago, they were as cruel to each other as they now are to the animals,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, and as her eyes fixed themselves on Jill with a look of suffering Jill remembered the old lady's story and the stoning of the mad mother with her child. 'To read history is to feel one's blood freeze, one's heart stop beating. They broke each other on the wheel; they burned each other at the stake. When people were mad, they were flogged and bound and often thrown to rot in horrible dungeons. When they had committed crimes, they were tormented and tortured before they were allowed to die,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, a strange light in her eyes. 'I do not speak of times long past; not of the Romans who made a pastime of men's suffering, as many now do of the sufferings of animals—but of quite recent days; of days within the memory of our grandparents.'
Jill was regretting her unguarded words. They had opened vistas that must have terrible associations for Mademoiselle Ludérac. 'Yes. That's all true,' she murmured. 'I'm sure what you say is true. It must all get better bit by bit.' She felt suddenly as if Mademoiselle Luderae were far older than herself, and at the same time her yearning to shelter and protect her was almost maternal in its tenderness and comprehension.
Mademoiselle Ludérac sat silent for a time, slowly stroking the cat from which Jill, in listening to her, had unconsciously withdrawn her hand. She said presently: 'You are kinder, I know, than we are, in England. But even with you the change is not complete. I have read of cruelty in England, too. Little rabbits let out of boxes and torn to pieces by dogs. Stags and hinds—creatures framed for fear—such gentle, such lovely creatures—hunted until they take refuge, sometimes, in the sea; and even then not allowed to escape, but followed and dragged back and slaughtered. And foxes;—foxes who are almost like our dear dogs; so clever; so gay and charming;—there are many in our mountains here and I have seen them play with their cubs; it is the prettiest sight. Yet it is the great national sport of the English to hunt them with hounds and horses until they are so exhausted that they can drag themselves no further, and then the dogs fall upon them and tear them limb from limb. Oh, no; we are cruel in those ways—as in all else; but you cannot say while such things are done in England that the English, too, are not cruel.'
Insensibly, in speaking, her voice had lost its tranquillity and, listening with a bewildered and sinking heart, Jill knew that tranquillity with Mademoiselle Ludérac was an achievement rather than a characteristic. Her words came now impetuously, rapidly, heaping themselves up, as her breath gave way at the end of each sentence, as though, Jill felt, she were about to break into tears. And her own distress, her own discomfiture was so deep, that, trying to gain time, trying to think out a way of escape, she began again to stroke the cat, so that her hand touched Mademoiselle Ludérac's and, looking up with those potent, those dwelling eyes, Mademoiselle Ludérac smiled faintly at her, asking pardon, it was evident, for so much intemperateness.
Jill found her voice at last. 'I've got something to tell you,' she said. She hardly knew how to bring out her confession. The context in which her beloved sport had been presented to her so bewildered her that she had difficulty in grasping the exculpations. 'You'll think I'm like all the others. I am, I suppose.—I hunt foxes,' said Jill. 'I've hunted them all my life.'
Mademoiselle Ludérac gazed at her with no change of countenance.
'I've always tried not to think about the foxes, because I'm not really cruel; at least I think not. I leve animals; I love those cubs, of course—and the foxes too, poor dears. But it is all so different. How can I explain it to you? There's nothing I've ever cared about as much as hunting. It's quite true. We all love it. We're born with the love of it in our blood.'
Mademoiselle Ludérac continued to gaze at her. She had faintly flushed; but she said nothing.
Poor Jill stumbled on. 'I suppose it's just a remnant of barbarism; but isn't that perhaps the excuse for it? Everything is so shut down and boxed in and built up nowadays and the old instincts in us need to be stretched out sometimes or they'll do us a mischief. Isn't it partly that? It isn't, I'm sure, the love of cruelty, or anything horrible; it's the love of the chase, and the risk and the excitement, and the darling hounds and horses, and being in the country all together;—sharing something splendid, all together.'
Mademoiselle Ludérac, gently, if automatically, stroking her cat, continued to give her, Jill felt, the benefit of complete attention. 'But is it not, in the end, the same as with the boys?' she said, after a silence had followed and grown long.
'The boys?'
'The boys who chase the cat.'
Jill stared. Then, under her sunburn, her colour mounted. 'Those hateful little brutes! Tying a saucepan to a poor cat's tail! Hunting it for the fun of seeing it run! That's not sport!'
'They hunt cats without the saucepan,' said Mademoiselle Ludesac, 'and is it not for love of the chase, the excitement, and being all together? A boy alone will rarely hunt a cat. Ali I mean to say,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, her impetuosity folded to the considering calm, 'is that I do not know why you feel them cruel if you do not feel yourself so. The hunted cat and fox have the same feelings, whatever the sentiments of those who hunt them.'
Deeply disturbed, deeply disconcerted and even humiliated, Jill sat gazing on the ground. Her companion did nothing to make the situation easier for her; but neither did she do anything to make it worse. She merely sat there in her meditative silence, looking before her at the river and stroking the cat. Jill was never to forget the face of that white-and-grey cat, its tranquil eyes and its security from harm.
'Well, I suppose you are done with me now,' she said at last, speaking in a tone so childlike in its ruefulness that Mademoiselle Ludérac looked round at her in surprise. 'You don't care to have anything to do with a person like me;—a person you think cruel; a person you would really like to beat, as I want to beat the boys.'
A smile flickered over Mademoiselle Ludérac's face. 'But I do not want to beat you.'
'You would if it would do any good.'
'Ah, yes; if it would make you wish to stop hunting foxes, yes,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac with her smile; 'I should certainly want to beat you then. But it would not. It is the same as with the boys. Beating does not help.'
Jill brooded. 'I do wish I could promise you I'd never hunt again. But I can't. It would be like promising one would never look at another sunset, or never smell apple-blossoms again. When the time came the temptation would be too strong. One would simply have to creep out and have a peep, or put one's face into the branch of apple-blossom as one ran past it in the orchard.—You see, you can't really understand if you've never done it; never been brought up to it. I'd sooner be hanged than see a fox vivisected. I'd fight for it!—You'll think me mad. But it's like that. All topsy-turvy.'
Mademoiselle Ludérac's smile, while she listened to this singular confession, had melted, insensibly, to its helpless, startled sweetness. Hers was the very look of one who bends his face to the branch of apple-blossom, breathing in the dewy intoxication of its innocent young fragrance. And something of the apple-blossom was in Jill's being, to be recognized by discerning eyes. She was wild and sweet, civilized and primitive at once.
'You do not persuade me, not at all,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac. 'But you seem to me very charming.' And as she said this she blushed suddenly. It was strange to her, disconcerting, that was evident, to find herself allured to such familiarities.
'Do I really!' cried Jill. Her deep sense of security in regard to her relation with Mademoiselle Ludérac flowered again. Then you aren't going to turn me down?'
'Turn you down?'
'Give me up?—Refuse to know me;—because of the foxes?'
'Mais—chère Madame'—Mademoiselle Ludérac faltered, but less now in confusion than uncertainty, 'you do not know me at all.'
'There's your mistake. I do. It doesn't take long to know some people—if one's got eyes in one's head. I know you better than you can possibly imagine,' Jill declared. 'And as a matter of fact, I was your friend before I ever saw you.'
'Mais—chère Madame'—Mademoiselle Ludérac repeated. And now it was indeed with confusion. All her French standards of decorum, rationality, measure, were, it was evident, disordered by the unprecedented situation in which she found herself. 'We have never spoken together before to-day.—I do not even know your name.'
'My name is Jill;—Gillian Graham,' Jill informed her, rising to her feet and standing before her, her eyes narrowed to their happiest smile. 'And yours is Marthe Ludérac. And though I can't promise to give up hunting—if I ever have another chance to hunt—I can promise that I'd do a great deal to please you. There. How's that for an offer of friendship?' And Jill stretched out her hand.
But Mademoiselle Ludérac sat still on the wall, taking her cat to her side. Jill thought it was to free her other hand for a responsive gesture. Then she saw her fold her fingers together—as if really to control a first impulse, and then that she laid the hand, thus softly clenched, against her breast. 'But you do not know me,' she repeated.
'But if I don't, I want to,' said Jill, standing perplexed, with her outstretched hand.
'You are like a child, chère Madame. You grasp at something because it is new to you. My life,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, and her voice had found its way to a deep conviction, 'is not one in which you could please yourself. We do not belong to the same world.'
'Damn worlds! What on earth has that to do with it! Do you mean you won't be friends with me because you're French and I'm English?'
'Mais non! Mais non!'
'Then why not? Is it because you're poor? So am I. But it can't be anything so silly as that.'
'You do not know what you are saying when you say that you are poor. But it is not that,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, almost with severity, as though to the charming but stubborn child. 'I have no friends. My life has been too hard for friends. I have nothing to give a friend. You are kind, but romantic, chère Madame, to imagine otherwise.'
'Do you really mean you don't want to see me any more? All it comes to is that you don't like me!' cried Jill, amazed herself to feel how deep was the wound inflicted by this refusal.
But rising to her feet Mademoiselle Ludérac said quickly, her eyes darkened in their look of suffering, 'No, no—you must not say that. That is not like you. That is not kind. It is not that I do not wish to see you—do not like you. But can you not recognize yourself that what you ask is impossible? I am rooted here, deep, deep in the soil. I shall stay here, always. It is my home. You are a stranger, passing by. I shall not forget you. I shall always remember you. But that is not friendship. A friend is something that one keeps;—that one keeps always. A friend is part of one's life.' She turned when she had said this, and went before Jill over the causeway to the road. Jill, following, felt like the child rebuked, though so gently rebuked. She felt, further, that it was perhaps just that she should be rebuked. How immature, headlong, even glib, her assurance must have seemed, Mademoiselle Ludérac's words revealed to her. And yet;—under it all, she went on believing that Mademoiselle Ludérac was to be her friend. She believed it more than ever.
On the highroad Mademoiselle Ludérac paused. 'Au revoir, chère Madame,' she said and she held out her hand. It might be in mere formality, yet some deep emotion strove with the schooled tranquillity of her regard.
'Au revoir,' said Jill, taking the hand and looking back at her quietly.
'I thank you,' Mademoiselle Ludérac then said in a low voice. 'I beg you to believe in my gratitude.' And she turned and walked quickly up the road.
Jill walked on towards Buissac. The central scene of this strange encounter held her thoughts—the moment when Mademoiselle Ludérac had not responded to her offer of friendship. In the light of her last words, of her last look, that refusal took on a new significance, and, remembering how the beautiful hand had been withheld, 'She wanted to give it to me—and wouldn't let herself,' thought Jill.