The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 12

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

Chapter XII

The Evening Party

GRAHAM and Jill were having their petit déjeuner next morning, each in their little bed and each—a special favour of Madame Michon's—with their own tray, when Amélie brought in a letter from the Manoir and told them that Monsieur Trumier waited below for an answer.

'At this hour! What time can they get up!' Jill exclaimed. Graham said that the old lady had probably written from her bed.

The letter was very ceremonious. It asked if they would give Madame de Lamouderie the great pleasure of spending the evening with her. It was, as they would know, a poor hospitality she had to offer, but their kindness would overlook deficiencies and Mademoiselle Ludérac had promised a performance on the harp. Mademoiselle Ludérac, she reminded them, was a professional, and they could not fail to be pleased by her proficiency. It was signed in full panoply: 'Veuillez agréer, Madame, l'expression de mes sentiments les plus distingués. Comtesse de Lamouderie.'

It was difficult to believe, Graham reflected, that it was written by the old lady who talked about biting into peaches.

'Isn't it grand!' laughed Jill. 'And why not have asked you when you went up to-day?'

'She isn't sure I am going up to-day, and I'm not, as it happens. It's not raining.'

'Oh, poor old dear; that's two days without you. She'll think you've given her up. You must be specially sweet to her to-night, then.—For of course we'll go, won't we? I long to hear Mademoiselle Ludérac play the harp.'

Jill spoke in English, but Amélie, who waited at the door, volunteered at this that Mademoiselle Ludérac was très forte on the harp; one could hardly go past the Manoir without hearing her.

Jill said that they must wear their best bibs and tuckers; and though the evening brought a sudden fall of rain, she still insisted on this tribute to the old lady's hospitality. 'Nothing would please her so much. I'll manage to get the car up the road,' she said.

So, watched with great interest by the personnel of the Ecu d'Or, they crept under the raised hood at eight-fifteen, Graham with the collar of his coat turned up about his ears, Jill wrapped in her furs. The rain rattled on the hood as they sped along the highroad and in the chestnut forest the long, adventurous beam they cast before them brought happy fancies to Jill's mind. What spells of loneliness and melancholy could withstand the gaiety and enterprise of a modern car? 'I'm much more like a car,' she thought, 'than like a skylark;—and a car can do something for Marthe Ludérac;—take her away, perhaps, who knows?—while a skylark can do nothing.'

In the narrow, upper road, the stones were loosened by the rain and torrents poured down the ditches on either side. It required all Jill's skill and hardihood to drive without mishap; but the car purred softly on, pausing, meditating, tacking carefully from side to side, and soon the Manoir lights showed orange-coloured squares among the sycamores; for to-night the Manoir had opened its eyes to look at them.

Joseph was at the door as they drew up. There was a lamp in the hall and a lamp on the high turn of the stair. One saw for the first time the acanthus-leaf moulding of the cornice and the flat, dry greens and fawns and umbers of the battle-piece hung on the wall. Joseph still wore his checked trousers, but had on, over them, a correct, if moth-eaten, tail coat, and his white tie was starched and immaculate. In his eye, as he helped them off with their coats, Jill thought that she detected a glint of melancholy pride. For Joseph, too, this was a great occasion.

The pale green drawing-room, all enclosed and luminous, gave Jill the strangest feeling. To step into it was like entering the tank of an aquarium, like sinking away from life and change into timelessness. Though lighted, it was dense—the tall lamp near the alcove, the three pairs of candles, on piano, bookcase, and mantelpiece, only lending, as it were, transparency to the aqueous medium. The daffodils, in their symmetrically placed vases, looked like submerged flowers, and so dim and dazzling was the scene that, for a moment, one hardly saw the figure of Madame de Lamouderie standing among the flowers and candleflames.

She was alone. The harp, unveiled, glimmered in a corner, but Mademoiselle Ludérac was not there; and, like a stately, furbelowed old fish, their hostess glided forward, her manner majestically attuned to the significance of the occasion. How many years was it since she had given an evening party? How many years, Jill wondered, since she had worn that looped and flounced silk skirt, that tightly fitted bodice trimmed with jet? Bravely décolleté in its original state, friendly fingers had adjusted the black net sleeves and black lace tucker and tied the velvet bow under the old lady's ear. She held a fan with broken, gilded sticks, her festive head was draped with the lace mantilla, and, in the monotonous room, her painted lips were like a brilliant flower.

'Charmée—charmée de vous voir,' she murmured, in the odd, mincing tones that Graham had heard from her before; but the artifice broke down; the currents of her delight swept all ceremony from her voice. 'Vous êtes bons! Vous êtes charmants!' she exclaimed. 'Et Dieu!—que vous êtes beaux.'

They had each taken her by a hand and, thus held, she looked at them, and over them, with lustrous eyes. 'Que vous êtes beaux,' she repeated.

'Et que vous êtes belle,' said Jill.—'Isn't she marvellous, Dick?'

Graham bent his high, dark head, and kissed the old lady's hand.

'Ah, infidèle!' she said, and her voice trembled; 'here are two whole days that you leave me disconsolate! Two days, empty; desolate; but for the charity of this adorable creature.'

'But it's when it rains that I come to you,' said Graham.

'And it never rains in Buissac!' cried the old lady. 'Never! never! I see that I shall come to curse the sunlight!'

'It's raining now,' said Graham. 'And have you forgotten your great floods?'

'You make me forget everything! You turn my head!' Madame de Lamouderie retorted. 'Sit here; sit beside me,' she went on. 'No; I jest. I do not expect you. I have too little to offer you; I know it well. In my old happy days I could have entertained you differently. Princes, diplomats, poets, all that Europe had to give, would have bowed in my salon over your little hand, ma chère petite; and all the most beautiful women of the court of the third Napoleon would have been mad with love of this wicked husband of yours.—Yes, he is wicked!' She threatened him with her fan. 'Does one not see it in his eyes?'

'I'm thankful we didn't know you then!' laughed Jill. 'I don't want beautiful women to be in love with him!'

'Ah; you need have feared nothing from them; nothing,' Madame de Lamouderie declared while her eye travelled ravenously over Jill's dress. 'Their despair would have been a further tribute laid at your feet.—This is the first time I have seen you with your head uncovered.—Oh, the thick russet hair cut short! It is terrible to see; yet it becomes you. It gives you a provocative, a boyish aspect. And the beautiful bare arms;—and the breast so white under the sunburned throat. Your eyes are blue, are they not?—Though now, in this light, they seem so dark.'

'Bluish grey. Quite ordinary eyes'—laughed Jill, a little embarrassed by this inventory. 'I see the harp is ready. When does the concert begin?'

'Oh, the concert does not begin until we ask for it.—Not until we have talked; and had our coffee.—Marthe prepares the coffee now.'

'Did she tell you that we met, at last, yesterday?' asked Jill, seeing that the old lady's joyous mood to-night included her protégée. 'I was so glad. I liked her so much.'

'Yes. She told me. She told me that you had been charming to her; and to her cat. You must not turn my poor Marthe's head, chère amie. A humble little teacher of music; a simple little bourgeoise. It would not be kind to give her hopes you could not fulfill.'

'But it's she who's turned my head!' cried Jill, and she forgot discretion. 'I don't think she's a bit humble. I think she's wonderful. She's the most wonderful person I've ever met.'

At this large statement, Madame de Lamouderie sat for a moment silent. 'Wonderful?' she then repeated in a small, low voice.

'Yes.' Jill was now resolved to rub it in. 'Wonderful and beautiful. Dick thinks so too, don't you, Dick?—You might as well talk of turning the moon's head.'

The old lady turned grave eyes on Graham. 'You think her beautiful?'

'I don't know about beautiful; but she's like a Saint Cecilia,' said Graham, and Jill looked at him gratefully.

'A Saint Cecilia?'

'Yes. With her harp, you know. A saint and a Roman lady. That's what she made me think of the other day.'

'But Marthe is not a lady. She is a teacher of music,' said poor Madame de Lamouderie.

'Well, I only said she looked like one, you know,' Graham observed, and Jill, troubled, saw that he was more intent on tormenting his old friend than on praising Mademoiselle Ludérac. 'Just as I look like a gentleman, though I'm only a painter.'

'Only a painter! You are of an incomparable distinction!—You are a genius; a great genius!' cried the old lady, deeply perturbed, 'and genius ennobles. It is not the same as a poor, small métier, like giving lessons on the harp for hire. And Marthe is bourgeoise in birth; almost peasant. I feel the peasant too much at times.'

'Well, saints have been peasants,' Graham continued, with a cruel blitheness, to corner her.

'But Marthe is not a saint! You are idealists, dreamers, to think so! She has a very violent temper! As I have found to my cost!'

'All real saints have bad tempers,' said Graham, 'especially when they are faced with such sinners as you and me. How else are they to deal with us?'

At this Madame de Lamouderie gazed at him in an uncertainty half painful, half delicious. Pain predominated. 'But she has not dealt with you? You have not met her? You were not with her on the island?'

'No; I've not met her. I've given her, as yet, no grounds for dealing with me,' said Graham, slowly laughing. 'That you often have, I'm sure you'll own if you search your conscience!'

Gazing fixedly at him, the old lady was as suddenly reassured as she had been dismayed. 'Ah, you play with me! You love to mock and play! Was I not right to say that you were wicked? I too, let me warn you, have my malice! Perhaps you will feel it one day!'

'I've felt it already. We are well matched,' said Graham.

The door now opened and Mademoiselle Ludérac herself appeared. She was carrying a tray of cakes and Joseph followed her with the coffee, set out with much state-liness in tall white-and-gold china.

Graham rose and went to help her. 'Merci; je vous remercie,' she said. But she kept the tray and placed it herself on the table beside the stereopticon. She wore a thin black dress of a bygone fashion, the long skirt giving to her figure a Byzantine elongation; and her face and throat and arms showed as pale as silver in the unearthly light.

She stood then, at the table, handing Joseph the cups to pass as she poured them out and Graham, again asking permission to make himself useful, followed with the cakes. Jill fancied that she saw in Dick's demeanour a touch of ironic formality; but if Mademoiselle Ludérac saw it, too, she gave no sign of discomfiture. She remained calm, punctilious, aloof.

When Graham had returned to his chair beside Madame de Lamouderie, Mademoiselle Ludérac came with her cup and sat down by Jill on one of the little satin sofas. Despite the rigours of the day before, Jill felt that their relationship had, insensibly, advanced in intimacy. Mademoiselle Ludérac looked at her very gently, and as Jill's frank eyes met hers her lips suddenly parted in their helpless, childlike smile. She could not conceal, since Jill was so glad to see her, that she, too, was very glad to see Jill.

'It pleases you to come to our little entertainment?' she asked, casting a glance towards the old lady, who eagerly conversed.

'It's perfectly enchanting.—Was it your idea?' asked Jill.

'Mine? Oh, no; I am not a hostess. It is Madame de Lamouderie's. And how much pleasure you and your husband have given her, you can perceive.'

'Yes,' Jill glanced at Graham and his old friend; 'isn't it wonderful, at her age, to be able to care so much? With most old people one feels that one can do nothing for them, except try to make them comfortable; whereas with her what one can do is to treat her as if she were young.'

'It is true; comfort, with her, counts for very little compared to life,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac.

Her eyes were travelling over Jill's face and dress as she spoke, not ravenously, as the old lady's had done, but as a child might gaze, in spring, at a bank of primroses.

'Do you like my dress?' Jill asked, interpreting the soft, surprised pleasure; 'I got it in Cannes this winter. I didn't expect to need it again till I was back in England.'

'It is beautiful, most beautiful!' said Mademoiselle Ludérac. 'Like the petals of arose. And all complete; the rose-coloured stockings and the little silver shoes. No; Buissac has never indeed seen such a picture.'

'How would you like to wear a pink dress and silver shoes?' asked Jill. 'They would become you.'

'Me? Oh, no!' Mademoiselle Ludérac was amused by the incongruous idea. 'Not for me, such toilettes. Even if I were not too old.'

'Too old? I am older than you are!'

'Impossible, Madame!'

'How old do you guess me to be?'

'You look not over twenty-one.'

'I'm twenty-nine,' Jill informed her. 'And I guess you to be twenty-five.'

'But it is extraordinary. You have the face of twenty-one.' Mademoiselle Ludérac gazed at her. 'So fresh, so untouched. Yes; I am twenty-five, and a little over; twenty-six, to be exact. So you are my senior.'

'Very much your senior. I am an old married woman! I have been married for years and years!'

'Have you indeed?' Mademoiselle Ludérac glanced at Graham.

'Five whole years. And I think when one's happily married it seems to have been for ever. One can't remember oneself not married, as it were.'

'That would bear out the pretty belief that happy marriages are made in heaven,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac with her smile.

It came to Jill, then, how unlikely it was that Mademoiselle Ludérac would ever be happily married; it was as unlikely as that she would ever wear a pink dress and silver shoes. Poor French girls, who had no friends, did not get married. Yet how redeemed from its desolation would the Manoir not have been could Marthe Ludérac have married and had a young family about her.

'Did you live here always when you were a child?' asked Jill, carrying on her thought. 'Were you a country girl like me?'

'We always came here for the summers,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, and, though her gaze remained as gentle and as steady as before, Jill saw that it was altered. 'But I lived, too, in Angoulême.'

'In Angoulême! That wonderful old city, with the cathedral on the hill and the terrace looking over the plain!'

'You know it? Yes.' Mademoiselle Ludérac continued to gaze, but her look was now definitely troubled. 'That was my winter home. But I did not love it as I did Buissac.'

'Have you always studied the harp?' Jill changed the subject, seeing that it had been inapt. 'Did you study in Angoulême?'

'No; I was too young then. My mother taught me when we came back to live here,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac.

Jill again turned aside; Mademoiselle Ludérac could not wish to dwell on that tragic figure. 'I've never heard the harp played as a solo instrument. I suppose you love playing?'

'Yes, indeed.'

'And giving lessons?'

'That depends on the pupil. What I enjoy most,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac with an air of relief, 'is playing with other instruments; with an orchestra. It is then that the harp can speak with its own voice; for there is little music written for it as a solo; only arrangements; such as I will play you to-night;—if you care to hear.'

'But it's what we've come for; to hear you.—You play at concerts, then? You must be frightfully good.'

'I am not so very good. But I have engagements sometimes, in the winter. It is my greatest joy—to play with the orchestra,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, and she added, her relief in having left the theme of her past carrying her into a girlish spontaneity—'Last winter I played in César Franck's 'Psyché.' Do you know it?'

'I've never heard of it even. Is it lovely?'

'It is celestial music,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, and in the little pause that followed these words, her eyes, with their wide setting, resting upon Jill, made her think not so much of the dawn as of the hour before the dawn; remote, windswept, starry.

Graham, though he talked so briskly with his old lady, had evidently been lending an ear to their conversation, for he now looked round at them to say: 'When does the concert begin?'

'Ah, he is wicked, wicked, this husband of yours!' Madame de Lamouderie addressed Jill. 'He delights in turning all my best sentiments against me.'

'Le diable dans votre bénitier, am I not?' said Graham. 'Come; you must let me hear a little César Franck; that will exorcise me.' He rose and strolled over to the sofa where Jill and Mademoiselle Ludérac sat.

Jill always liked Dick best of all in his tweeds; perhaps because, oddly enough, he looked less like an artist in them than in his evening clothes. His significance was exaggerated rather than effaced by evening dress, and with his rough hair and dark, compelling face, he was arresting and even overwhelming. So, evidently, the old lady had found him; he had gone like wine to her head; and Jill wondered, glancing at Mademoiselle Ludérac as he stood there above them, whether she did not find him overwhelming too. Her expression, in seeing him approach, had changed; but it did not seem to be in any admiration. It was rather, Jill felt, as though there were a kind of instinctive hostility between them. That might simply be because, to a French girl, unused to social life, the presence of any man was intimidating. But she did not look at all intimidated. And Dick most certainly was not black magic to her. Nor was she so to him. That was all Dick's nonsense, thought Jill, glancing up at him and seeing how cold and firm was the gaze he fixed on the young woman.

'Shall I begin, Madame?' Mademoiselle Ludérac inquired, looking over at her patroness.

'Ah—if our guests wish you to;—by all means, begin; begin, I beg of you!' cried the old lady. 'She plays divinely!—I asked her to play to-night knowing that it was the only offering I could make to you.—Great critics have lauded her;—you cannot deny it, Marthe!—With time she will be famous, and you will be glad to think that you heard her on the threshold of her career.—She is a marvel! a marvel!' cried the old lady, while Mademoiselle Ludérac, who had risen and gone to her harp, stood making no comment on these extravagances.

'Here; come and sit beside your bénitier,' Madame de Lamouderie continued, motioning Graham back to his chair. 'It is not well to be too near the harp. Ours is the best place. It is a very penetrating instrument.—My mother played the harp when I was a child—and sang;—like Corinne. Madame de Staël, indeed, was a friend of my grandmother's;—a witty, but a very ugly woman; how she should have attracted so many lovers remains a mystery; and I have always suspected that they would have preferred the attachment to remain platonic! My mother had the most beautiful arm in Europe, and perhaps she chose the instrument for that reason. It displays the arm as no other does.—I saw a woman play the flute once! Bon Dieu! what a spectacle! Her mouth all twisted to one side and her eyes squinting down her nose as though she were endeavouring to perceive a smut upon it! She was already laide à faire peur, however—like Madame de Staël—so it was of little consequence. Begin, then, my child; begin! We are ready for you! But let it be something romantic, passionate.—Not any of your mournful religious elegiacs.'