The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 18
MARTHE LUDERAC had kept her promise. She was waiting for Jill in the hall. The garden door stood open behind her and the pale light of the fading afternoon was spread about her form. Her face still wore its look of radiancy, and Jill, as she saw her, realized that if the day to her had been strange and wonderful, to Marthe Ludérac it must have been even more so. There was a lovely freshness, as of resurrection, about her.
She raised one finger to her lips and whispered: 'You have worked the miracle. I heard that.'
'It almost needed a miracle,' Jill whispered back. Now that she looked at Marthe standing in her radiance, she felt suddenly as if she had escaped from darkness; as if darkness hung about her and was dispelled only by Marthe. The old lady had disturbed her, profoundly disturbed her. She was aware of this as she had not been while she was with her. It seemed to come to her from the sense of contrast. Marthe's radiance lifted her above the realms of darkness; but they were there, behind her, within her, even;—for did she not feel the deep, fang-like ache of an unseen wound? 'May I come with you into the garden for a moment?' she said.
'Yes. Let us walk there. It is so beautiful there now,' said Marthe Ludérac.
Time, embalmed time, was with them in the garden. The past walked with them, Marthe's past, her mother's long dead past. These were the very flowers, Jill thought as they went, that her mother's young eyes had looked at. Nothing in the garden had been changed since the young Marthe Jacquard had walked there. A mother-of-pearl sky was above their heads and along the paths the gnarled old apple-trees were full of thick, pale leaf-buds. A pear-tree was already in flower and on its topmost branch a thrush was singing. The sense of tears, and fear, and joy, were strangely mingled in Jill's mood. She walked along the mossy paths, her arm passed within Marthe's. She felt that Marthe was very happy. Her happiness was part of the joy and fear.
'Tell me,' said Jill, looking at her, and wondering at the beauty of her face, 'is Madame de Lamouderie often very cross with you? Horrid, I mean?'
'Horrid? Why should you think so? Has she been disagreeable to you?' Marthe smiled in asking it as though they must not take the old lady seriously.
'No; not exactly disagreeable. She can be so charming, can't she? I can't help being fond of her myself, sometimes. But she can be horrid, too. You must be very fond of her indeed to go on with her year after ear.'
'I think I am very fond of her,' said Marthe, after a moment, and more gravely.
'But not exactly for herself, Marthe, is it? Isn't it really because she needs you so? Isn't it more because you're sorry for her?—As if she were a wounded cat? A cat who had been chased by the boys?'
'Yes, perhaps it is really like that.' Marthe's thoughtful eyes dwelt on her. 'A poor, old, wounded cat. How could one not be fond of it?'
'And what if it were to bite your hand?' Jill pondered, looking down. Tiger or cat? The trivial, exasperated creature; or the dangerous beast, crouching there in darkness, ready to spring upon a scented weakness? Could one take Madame de Lamouderie quite lightly?—and put her in her place with a sharp cuff on the ear? 'What if it were to bite your hand?' she repeated. 'Just when you were stroking it and believing it was really loving you?'
Marthe Ludérac was grave now. Jill knew that, though she did not look up at her. And she was not surprised. She knew too well, no doubt, of what her cat was capable. 'One would not blame it,' she said.
'Wouldn't one? A cat that bites the hand that helps it? I should blame it—and feel like putting it out of the door!'
'I do not blame easily,' said Marthe Ludérac after a pause. 'I am myself often very irritable and ill-tempered. I have a hot temper, Jill;—did you guess that? I, too, can be disagreeable. Sometimes I fear for myself when I remember what I inherit.' She paused again. 'If you found her difficult just now, it was in part my fault. I was very harsh and short with her to-day.'
'She deserved harshness and shortness;—I'll answer for it!'
'Perhaps she did. One need not apportion blame. We will not pick my old friend to pieces, Jill. Do you know'—she looked round into Jill's face—'I often feel that to speak ill of people is to take some of their life from them. You know what I mean?—To recognize, with another, a person's faults, is as if one took some of his life away.'
'Yes.' Jill was doubtful. 'But there are faults.'
'What is a fault? What are her faults? Are we not all the same? Do we not all crave love?—To be loved most? It seems to me that we are all one in that;—all life one torrent of longing, rushing in the same bed; and what we call faults in one another are the rocks and impediments against which we dash ourselves. Do you not think of it like that? I think so much alone that I do not know whether I seem eccentric in what I say.'
Marthe's face, turned so gently, so ardently upon her, against the pearly sky, was as lovely as the pear-blossoms.
'I've never thought about anything of that sort at all,' Jill said, meditating. 'A torrent? That makes us quite helpless, doesn't it? Isn't there another side to us? The side that chooses which way it will go?'
'Yes; yes'—with her ardour, her gentleness, Marthe Ludérac nodded—'but that other side we can only find when we have seen that we are one. It is a mystery. Until we can see that we are one, we remain mere torrent, conditioned by the bed and by the impediments. We are only selves, only free selves, when we have seen that we are one. Then we cannot blame. We can only try to take the rock away.'
'I suppose you are very religious. It all sounds like religion,' Jill murmured, rather helplessly. 'I'm afraid I'm not a bit religious. Though I've been confirmed, of course, and go to church when I'm at home, and all that sort of thing.'
'Religious? No, I am not religious. My family have never been pratiquants. My father was a free-thinker and her church meant little to my mother,' said Marthe Ludérac. 'Perhaps if I had been taught more of religion in my childhood, I should not have had to think for myself things that are quite familiar to religious people.—But I am keeping you, Jill. It is so strange to have someone to whom I can speak my thoughts that I am forgetting. You must go back to Buissac.'
'Yes, I'm afraid I must. Can we meet somewhere to-morrow? I want you to go on telling me about the torrent.—Would it make one feel kinder to oneself, as well as to other people, if one thought of oneself as a torrent? Aren't we inclined to be too kind already?'
'Not more kind,' Marthe smiled, shaking her head. 'More tolerant, perhaps; less frightened. And it is all to the good not to be frightened, do you not think so, Jill?—One looks quietly at some black thought or feeling that comes to one, and one can say:—Do not be disturbed; this is the torrent. While you can look at it and recognize it for what it is, it will not carry you away.—But you have no black thoughts, Jill.'
'Oh, haven't I, just! Little do you know me! I feel a perfect worm sometimes! Nicer to be a torrent than a worm! Where shall I see you to-morrow, Marthe?'
'Shall we meet on the island?' Marthe looked fondly at her, holding her by the hand. That poor woman, of whom I told you, is in bed with rheumatism, and I take her goat and kid down to the meadow every afternoon for her and bring them up again. The thickets of hawthorn and alder are what the mother goat loves.'
'Oh, that would be heavenly! I love that island. I shall always see you as I first did there, walking under the poplars with your cat in your arms—a much safer sort of cat, Marthe; though it isn't nearly so charming and amusing as the other one, I admit!—No;—I won't be uncharitable! Are you fond of watching birds? There were some lovely wagtails, the grey and yellow sort, when I was there that day. I never saw so many together before.'
'The bergeronnettes? Yes, I often see them. They have a note like the sound of water lapping on the stones. I am very fond of them; but there are many birds I know by sight and by their song, whose names I do not know.'
'I know all our English birds, but some of your French warblers are new to me. The chiff-chaff is singing already; that makes me feel so at home. In England he seems to belong to us.'
'They are little rain-coloured birds, the fauvettes, are they not? My mother loved them best of all and said that some of their notes were like the harp. You will have to teach me their names, Jill.'
As they talked they had come round the corner of the house and before them the grove of tall sycamores made a roof of breaking green on a golden sky.
'There's a chiff-chaff singing now—silly little darling,' said Jill;—'and, oh, there's a willow-warbler;—listen, Marthe. Isn't he lovely? Yes; it is just like a harp, a far-away harp, rippling down like that!'
Jill had stopped to listen, and Marthe Ludérac scanned her uplifted face.
'You, too, love birds so much?' she said, when the willow-warbler had sung his wistful, joyful, lonely, descending scale.
'Oh—I care more for them—looking at them, listening to them—than for anything!' cried Jill.
'Even more than for hunting the fox?' Mademoiselle Ludérac questioned, smiling gently.
'Oh—what a shame!' Jill exclaimed. 'Oh, that's too bad, Marthe!—No; I feel you'll never really forgive me!'
But Marthe Ludérac took her hand, as she had done while she told her story that afternoon, and put it against her cheek for a moment, saying, 'In time, I know, this dear heart will be kind to everything.'
It had been the loveliest ending to the day, yet Jill, as she sped down the stony road in the twilight of the forest, felt the tears rising again and again to her eyes. This dazed, heavy, submerged sensation had oppressed her when Dick had come to her, and all the afternoon she had been aware of an almost feverish susceptibility. But even if she had caught cold, even if she were feverish, Dick, Marthe, and the old lady had all been too much for her. She wanted to lie down and cry, not so much for the tragedy and grimness of which she had partaken as for the memory of the gentle, lovely things: the song of the willow-warbler; Marthe's face of resurrection as she had held her hand against her cheek. It almost frightened her to know how completely her longing was now fulfilled; to know that Marthe Ludérac was so completely her friend. It laid a responsibility upon her for which, at the moment, she seemed to feel herself too weak. And under everything was the ache of the fang-like, unseen wound.
On the lower road the river, flooded over its grassy margins and risen high against its wall, made a deep roar beside her as she went. The sky behind her was golden, but before her a roof of dark cloud was lifted over a band of cold, intense rose colour. How long it seemed since she had seen Dick! And what was she to say to him? It seemed to her, as she climbed the stair at the Ecu d'Or that she could not find the strength or control to tell him of all that had happened to her since they had met. But when she saw him there, sitting in the gloomy evening light of their little room, and saw that his eyes were large with fatigue and anxiety, she knew that she could not rest until she had shared all with Dick. She had always wanted to share Marthe Ludérac with him; had always wanted him to see her as she saw her; but that he should share and see was now part of that new sense of responsibility that had come to her:—Dick and Marthe must see each other. She owed it to them both that they should see each other. What basis could there be for her friendship with Marthe unless Dick shared it?
'My darling child—where have you been!' said Graham. He came to her and put his arms around her and she sank on the sofa beside him, and laid her head on his shoulder and suddenly began to cry. And such a strange foolish little thing came first. 'Oh, Dick—I'm so afraid you'll be displeased with me!—If we stay—if you've decided to stay—please say you won't go up in the mornings, when Marthe reads!'
'What do you mean, my dearest?—Displeased with you? Why should I be?' Poor Dick was really frightened by her plight.
But she could not stop herself from sobbing on. 'She's unhappy about it;—because you made the old lady so miserable.—And I promised her, too, that I'd meet her on the island to-morrow.—Only, if we have to go—'
Dick was perfectly still—for one moment; only one. Then he said, very firmly, very rationally: 'But, Jill, what's the matter? You're ill, my dear. Your hand is hot. Of course we will stay as long as you want to.—All that nonsense is over,' said Dick, with a strange, hard note in his voice.
'May we really? Really, Dick?—I'm upset, that is the truth of it.—No; I'm not ill; I may have caught a little cold, but I'm not ill. But I've been through a lot. And I'm awfully afraid I shall go on crying when I tell you about Marthe and her mother.—We are friends, now, Dick. She has told me everything. She cares for me as much, I think, as I care for her. And she's never had a friend before.'
'But not now. Don't tell me anything now. Let me put you to bed first, and have a good night's rest. Let's forget all about Mademoiselle Ludérac until to-morrow morning.'
But Jill could not bear that. She knew that she could not sleep until she had told Dick. And she drew herself up a little, though she still leaned on his shoulder, and dried her eyes to show him that she was calm, and then it all came; incoherently enough, yet clearly, too, to Graham sitting there, holding her; clearly, sharply, even dryly, so it seemed to him, in his great fatigue; like a series of etchings that Jill placed before him: Marthe Ludérac watching her father and his mistress; Marthe Ludérac coming into the room where her father lay dead; Marthe Ludérac holding her distraught mother through the nights and singing old songs to her so that she should sleep. It was with a remote sense of pain that he listened; detached and dispassionate he felt himself to be. It was, so he told himself, of Jill that he was thinking; his dear Jill, involved in the darkness that Marthe Ludérac cast about her; the perplexity; the strain. Jill, afraid she had displeased him; Jill upset like this; her soft hair against his cheek; her hot hand in his. Was it not true, all the same, that they had better go to-morrow? If it could be for Jill's sake, not his own, that they were to go, what relief, what balm, would there not be in such an evasion! So his thought accompanied her story, cold, dry, yet agitated. And all the time the sense of strain was there; as if he were pressing against a shut door, a door insecurely shut, for which he found no lock; and from within which he felt the strength of an answering, hostile pressure. But he could count on his own strength.
He did not question Jill once; he made no comment on what she told. When she had finished, he sat silent; for so long that Jill turned her face on his shoulder and looked up at him and he knew at once that she expected to see tears in his eyes so that he said, hastily: 'Do you know what I'm going to do with you? Put you to bed and give you some aspirin and send for the doctor. You are evidently ill.'
'I should like to go to bed,' said Jill absently. She leaned her head back again. 'I don't want a doctor.—But I haven't told you yet about the old lady. She was very strange.'
'I don't want to hear about her. I don't want to hear any more about either of them. We've had our fill of horrors.'
'Oh—but it wasn't horrors, Dick.—That's just what it wasn't. Because Marthe was there, shining through everything.'
Graham stood up and drew her to her feet. 'Come on. To bed with you. They've given you a fever, between them.'
'No; I remember now; I must have caught his cold from that disgusting boy who dined next us two nights ago.' Jill went obediently with Graham up the stair. 'Don't you remember him;—the dark boy with dirty nails, who sneezed and blew his nose—or didn't blow it—all through dinner?'
'Yes. Damn him! I remember,' said Dick.
Next morning it was evident that Jill had the influenza. The local doctor was called in after lunch and pronounced upon her case. Warmth, quiet, nourishing food. There must be no question of leaving Buissac for a fortnight and he would come in and see Madame every day. Monsieur, no doubt, would not regret the enforced stay, for he had observed him often with his easel. He himself was something of an amateur and always made a point of going to the Salon, if it was open, when he was in Paris. Monsieur and Madame knew Paris? Well? It went without saying. Paris was the capital of the world.
He chattered until Graham became impatient. It was rarely that he had a case so interesting. Jill was charming with her russet locks tossed and the rose-coloured bow on her breast. She was sorry for the poor man, and amused by him and looked at him very kindly. He was long-jointed, dry, apprehensive, like a cicada, with prominent pale eyes behind great glasses. He sat, a hand on each thin knee, and talked eagerly of politics to the charming English pair. He assured them that all over France the Royalists were plotting for a return of the Bourbons. It behoved every true son of the Republic to be on his guard. Unfortunately for the Republic one could trust not one of her politicians. Monsieur le docteur Magnolles had the lowest opinion of them all. When at last he took himself off, Jill said that she would go to sleep.
'I'll stay with you, quietly, reading here,' said Graham. The sun was streaming into the room and it was very pleasant to sit by the window and look out.
'But I don't need you a bit, Dick,' said Jill. 'Amélie will come directly if I want anything; and I shan't; for I shall sleep till tea-time. It would keep me from sleeping if you sat there. Besides'—and Jill hesitated for one moment—'there's poor Madame de Lamouderie longing for you.'
'Damn Madame de Lamouderie,' said Graham.
'But the portrait is sure to be so splendid, Dick. Don't give it up.';
'All right. I'll go up, then.'
'And Dick—couldn't you go round by the island? To tell Marthe, you know, that I'm not coming.'
'Oh, no, my dear,' said Dick cheerfully, as if he had foreseen this request; 'that's not necessary at all. And it would frighten the young lady out of her wits. You forget that there's no love lost between us.'
'But—I don't want it to stay like that, Dick.' Jill pressed her hand against her aching forehead. It was the responsibility—towards Marthe, towards Dick—and the memory, too, of a fang-like wound that made her head ache like this. Why not let them alone? But how unnatural not to tell Marthe when he would have to pass so near. The great thing was to keep everything quite natural;—was that not so? thought Jill. And why should Dick speak in that unfeeling tone after what she had told him yesterday? It hurt her to hear him. 'I mean, since she's my friend now, she must be yours, too, Dick. You must try for that. You can understand why she's afraid of people. I think you ought to go,' she murmured.
'All right. Just as you say,' said Graham. 'Only it will keep the old lady waiting, for it's nearly time now. And you know it won't induce a pleasant frame of mind in her if she hears I've had an assignation with Mademoiselle Ludérac on the island.'
Jill had not thought of this. She wondered. Her feverish mind fixed itself in its wonder. What was best to do? 'Would it upset her?' she again murmured.
'It would upset her most horribly,' said Graham with a laugh.
'Well, perhaps not, then.' What strange, deep relief was this? For herself? For Dick? For Marthe? Jill's mind drowsed with it. 'All right. I'll go to sleep now,' she said.