The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 2
BUISSAC lay along the banks of the great river, hardly more than a thin scattering of houses; the inn, with its cheerful garlanding of vines, at one end, a villa or two at the other. Halfway up the cliff a monstrous modern Mairie, with pompous wings and preposterous cupola, all but obliterated the Romanesque church, ancient, patient, tranquil, its dark carved porch whispering legends terrible or gentle, a mushroom-like clustering of chapels about its apse. The Mairie, Graham thought, as he descended into the village at sunset, looked like a blustering bully pushing an old nun into the gutter, and a sardonic smile curled his lip as he glanced up at the Liberté—Egalité—Fraternité, carved in challenging golden letters above its portals. He and Jill had already come into disdainful contact with some of the furtive officials who lurked within its airless chambers.
Higher still, on the wooded summits, a ruined medizval castle was poised like a falcon against the sky. Predatory falcon or hypocritical bully, which, he wondered, was the more malevolent presence. Though indeed the turbulent history of France, symbolized by castle and Mairie, had, he imagined, affected the remote, self-sufficing life of the little community rather as the seasons affected it; as much and as little. The level of the demand on life in such a place had always been so low that existence crept on, tranquilly, laboriously, throughout the centuries, unchanged by changing dynasties. That was the secret of happy living Graham reflected; to keep the level of demand low. On the level of Buissac life might be said to justify itself.
In front of the Ecu d'Or, on the wall that ran above the river, a young woman, dressed in mushroom-coloured silk, was lounging, a young woman with her hands in her pockets, a cigarette between her lips, an air of infinite if indolent good-humour, and Graham, as he saw her, felt her to be a further exemplification of happy living; for Jill's demand on life was certainly low in the sense that it was very simple. Yet the mystery of Jill was that anyone so rudimentary should seem to possess so much. Sitting there on her background of golden river and golden sky, unaware of appraisals, unconscious of æsthetic significances, the splendid evening permeated her, and she was a part of it all in a sense that the passionate yet impersonal attitude of the artist could never sink to—or attain. It seemed to belong to her as much as she to it.
She sat, as he approached her, not moving, and keeping her oddly smiling eyes upon him. Jill's very eyebrows partook of her smile; they drooped from their broad, quizzical lift over the bridge of her nose and the corners of her eyes drooped with them, while the corners of her mouth curled up. This gaiety of demeanour had in it no touch of coquetry or challenge; it was, rather, that of a school-boy, and of an English school-boy; for Jill was as English as a hawthorn hedge in May.
Her sunburned skin was almost as dark in tone as her tawny hair; but by nature it was fresh and pale. She had been motoring all day and her small, prominent nose was slightly blistered by the hot wind, and her small lips parched, so that she looked more than ever like a hardy boy. But it was so he liked best to see her.
He sat down on the wall beside her and felt, again, his old pleasure in her looks. It never failed him; just as her pleasure in his, he imagined, never failed her. It was with each other's looks that they had fallen in love five years ago, towards the end of the war, and he liked Jill's as well now as when he had first seen her, sitting above him, against a war-ravaged sky, in her ambulance lorry. Poor old Jill could hardly have foreseen that in the gallant, blood-stained young officer who had won her heart, almost without asking for it, she was to find nothing but a moody, incomprehensible artist. She was a girl to marry a soldier; not a girl to marry an artist; whereas he was as content with Jill now as he had been then; and asked nothing more from her.
Loyal, kind, unselfish, there was something endlessly dependable about her, something that made him think of her, in their relation, as riding a restive, cherished horse and saying: 'Steady, old boy; steady.' She had never had to say it explicitly; had perhaps never been aware of a need for holding him up; yet he knew that but for Jill's imperturbable confidence he might have fallen more than once into the disorders of his morose and rebellious youth.
'Any luck?' she asked him now, and it was characteristic of her to put his artistic activities in the category of sport. She would feel towards his canvas as towards a good basket of trout.
'Yes. Excellent. This country surpasses everything. Where have you been?'
'Oh, for miles; over the mountains. There are tablelands up there with endless birch-woods on them. And I found a great blue lake. But nothing's better than this. Nothing could be better than that river.'
From the river wall they gazed down the golden flood to where, beyond a beetling, wooded promontory, dark against the sunset, it turned in a vast curve and seemed to brood across the golden plains. Opposite Buissac the shores were less steep and russet vineyards climbed, from ledge to ledge of quiet hillside, above another hamlet, its evening cries faintly wafted.
At the turn of the river the promontory ran a long foot out into the stream, a green peninsula, its poplars shimmering against the sky. They could see that cattle grazed there, three cream-coloured cows, half dissolved in light, moving among the poplar groves.
'It's all so gentle; yet it's almost dreadful, too,' Jill murmured.
'Dreadful? How do you mean?'
'That great, dark cliff, hanging over everything like that; and everything being so vast; so much more than one can possibly need,' Jill said vaguely. 'Dreadful in a splendid way, of course. Terrible is a better word, perhaps.'
'Everything beautiful is more than one needs, my funny Jill. That's a definition of beauty, perhaps. Except that it's what one needs more than anything.'
'Yes. That's true,' Jill nodded. And her young face, its jocund lines wrested to gravity, took on a sudden strangeness.
An old peasant woman, wearing the austere black dress of the locality, passed along the dusty road, knitting as she led her flock of gaunt, disconsolate sheep.
'The only trouble with the place is the animals,' said Jill, following the sheep with her eyes. 'They all look half starved.'
'That old creature looks half starved herself,' said Graham. 'And by the way, I'm going to take you to tea with another old woman, and I shouldn't be surprised if she were half starved, too. I feel as if we ought to bring our bread and butter with us.'
'How did you pick up anyone in these parts who has tea?—There'll be boiled milk with it, I wager you.'
'She's an old countess, and she lives just beyond that promontory, I gather, for I think I make out chestnut forests on it. She appeared while I was painting and only asked to stay and talk all day. Rather beautiful; rather direful. I never saw anything like her. I only got rid of her at last by telling her I'd come to tea and bring you with me. If you ask me, I think she fell in love with me at first sight. It was a coup de foudre.'
'Poor old girl! I don't blame her. I did, too,' laughed Jill, perhaps a trifle ruefully.
So they sat on till it was time to get ready for dinner, watched from the open windows of the Ecu d'Or by Monsieur and Madame Michon, by Camille the garçon, and by Amélie the maid-of-all-work, who was, Jill remarked, when she appeared once or twice at the door to wring out a torchon or sweep a heap of dust into the road, as gaunt as the sheep, and as unbeautiful.
Jill and Graham fulfilled the French tradition of the charming and eccentric English couple travelling unaccountably, light-heartedly, erratically through a country not their own. It was felt by Monsieur and Madame, by Camille and by Amélie, that there was no telling how long they would stay or how soon depart; it depended on nothing predictable, though in hopes of the happier possibility, Madame was roasting a fine fat duck for their dinner and Amélie saw to it that the English insatiability in regard to hot water was met by a steaming broc carried up to their rooms. They had come in a small, open car, yet Madame last night at dinner had worn pearls and Monsieur had an impressive set of toilet articles. They would, everybody felt it, be generous with tips and not critical of bills; and that they knew what they were eating, quite as well as if they had been French and not English, Monsieur Michon had observed when he himself waited on them.
That night when they sat, with coffee and cigarettes, on the balcony that overlooked the river, Monsieur Michon ventured to ask them if they were pleased with Buissac, and they said that they were very pleased.
'Is it over there that the comtesse de Lamouderie lives?' Graham asked, pointing towards the promontory.
'Madame la comtesse? Mais oui, Monsieur.' Monsieur Michon could not conceal his surprise. 'Monsieur knows Madame la comtesse?'
'I met her this afternoon. She lives at the Manoir, she told me, in chestnut woods.'
'Yes, but it is a rough road. Monsieur will not get the car to go up it.'
'So she said. One follows the highroad and turns off.'
'You cannot miss it, Monsieur. One turns off at the cemetery à mi-route. And one has a fine view of the river on the way. We seldom see Madame la comtesse here in Buissac; but once a year she appears at High Mass; so I am told,' Monsieur Michon added with discretion, proving himself to be with the Mairie against the Church. 'She is an eccentric old lady.'
'And do you have great floods here at Buissac?' Graham asked, idly interested in verifying his old friend's histories.
'Ah, not now, Monsieur. This is not the season.' Monsieur Michon was evidently alarmed lest a reputation for floods should make Buissac less attractive.
'No; not now. But in the spring. Are people often drowned?'
'Drowned, Monsieur?' Monsieur Michon spoke with repudiation. 'No one has been drowned at Buissac;—except a cow here and there. We have great floods; in the spring-time, in some years. But we know how to deal with them and no life is in danger.'
'No corpses, eh?' smiled Graham. 'They don't go floating down the current?'
'Mais non; mais non.' Monsieur Michon smiled indulgently now, perceiving his guest's humour. 'We do not deal in corpses here.'