The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 24
JILL was walking up through the wet woods above the Manoir. It was still early and the air fresh with rain which had fallen heavily all night. The clouds had rolled away at dawn, leaving a vast immaculate sky. And now the sun streamed forth over the drenched and dripping world with almost summer sultriness.
Two days had passed since the evening when Marthe had come; two days and three nights; but Jill had not seen her again. She had spent the hours of daylight out of doors; but she had not gone to the Manoir. Every morning she got into the car and drove far, far away, seeing new country and all the springtide glory. On the first day it had been inland she had sped, up and over the tablelands, through the great birch woods where sheets of wood anemones grew in the dappled shade of swaying catkins; and yesterday she had followed, high up, the course of the swollen, passionate river and found a ruined castle standing at the bottom of a ravine with torrents wildly wreathing at its foot. She had spent the afternoon there in a strange solitude. An eagle had floated over her as she lay on the grassy ledges of masonry. She had watched a pair of tits building their nest in a hole near by and a flock of tiny mountain sheep, wandering down the valley, looked up at her with little mushroom-tinted faces. She had lain there and thought of Dick.
For these two days she and Dick had hardly spoken to each other. She did not know how he passed the hours; though he went away every morning with his canvases. He had not shown her his work, nor had she asked to see it; for she suspected that Dick's painting was to him what the ruined castle was to her; a place where he could be alone.
But though their days were thus solitary, the nights had brought them near; terribly near, to Jill's apprehension. Their beds stood side by side; by stretching out a hand they could touch each other. And in the middle of the night Dick would speak to her.—'Jill—I'm not sleeping. May I come to you?' A strange voice.
Then, like a little boy, afraid at night, creeping to his mother, he would come beside her and lay his head on her shoulder and she would hold him close. So they would lie, saying nothing, and she knew that she was a refuge to him. But he did not sleep; nor did she; and lying there, her arms around him, she would look over his head at the moonlit square of window and listen to the river roaring outside, and try to remember the days, the years, when they had been happy together. For now they were unhappy.
It was not lack she felt in Dick; it was a terrible, a suffocating sense of overflow rather than lack. He took refuge; and yet the longing in him was to give rather than to receive. He asked nothing of her, except refuge; he wanted nothing. All that he wanted was to hide in her and to make her feel his love. And nothing in her life had ever hurt like this love and its helpless pity.
She had come this morning to find Marthe. She was determined before they left Buissac to wrest some form of recantation from Madame de Lamouderie; but first she must see Marthe, and she went early to the Manoir to be sure of finding her.
And at the door Joseph told her that Mademoiselle had gone out.
'Gone out?' said Jill. Standing there, looking at Joseph, she knew that he shared her sense of something strange and wrong in this unaccustomed absence. It was in the morning that Marthe had her harp, and all her household tasks.
'Mademoiselle had a bad night,' he volunteered. 'She did not sleep. She has gone into the woods. Médor is with her; she said that a walk would be good for her and Médor. She will be back at eleven to read to Madame la comtesse.';
If she and Dick were unhappy, so was Marthe.
'I will try to find her,' said Jill.
Joseph led her to the gate in the wall and indicated the way that led upwards through the sycamores. When the sycamores were passed, there was a belt of chestnut forest and then the path ran through lighter woodlands of ash, beech, and hazel that climbed the side of a steep valley. The young green leaves sparkled in the sunlight, and Jill saw, down in the valley cleft, the wild, tawny tresses of a mountain rivulet. What wild, sweet beauty everywhere; and with what a heavy heart she saw and heard it! Marthe's heart was heavy, too.
Suddenly, at a turn, the path ran out into a narrow road where a stone bridge crossed the valley, and sitting on the low parapet, her arms laid out along her knees, her eyes fixed on the ground, was Marthe.
Something unspeakably strange came to Jill from her attitude. She was exhausted. Standing within the shadow of the woods to gaze at her, Jill seemed to feel the cold sweat on her brow, the thread-like beating of her sick heart. Or was she reading her own despair into Marthe's demeanour? Was Marthe only very tired after the sleepless night? Was she only listening, as she rested there with Médor beside her, to the wood-wren?
Jill's eyes were drawn up to the little bird. It was poised, high on the branch of a tall tree above Marthe's head, and its wings drooped and shivered in an ecstasy of pleading as it sang out, passionately, the last reiterated notes of its refrain. But Marthe was not listening. In the silence that followed the bird's last cadence, she lifted her eyes and saw who it was who stood there; and Jill felt a cold, dark, heavy gaze rest upon her. 'Then it is true,' she thought. 'Madame de Lamouderie has told her that we know; and the story is true.'—'But not true as Madame de Lamouderie, as Dick, would understand,' came the answering thought, once more, beneath the piercing grief of the acceptance. And she must know Marthe's truth. So she smiled at her. She went forward and sat down beside her. 'You have found the wood-wren by yourself,' she said, smiling on into Marthe's eyes. And now that she thus looked into those beautiful eyes the sense of something heavenly once more flooded her heart. She took Marthe's hand. 'It seems to me that I have not seen you for years and years.'
It was with difficulty that Marthe found her thoughts and her words. 'I imagined that you had left Buissac,' was what she said.
'Without saying good-bye? Oh—come now!' said Jill. She wanted to cry, for that Marthe should have thought this gave the full measure of their calamity; but she uttered her school-girl 'Come now!' and continued to smile into Marthe's eyes.
The bird, silenced for a moment by her approach, resumed its singing; the melodious little ditty, full of the plaintive sweetness of spring, followed by the piping of the strangely urgent, reiterated notes. They sat and listened, hand in hand, and Marthe looked up at him, with her.
When he had finished, she, too, smiled and murmured, 'Le petit ange.'
'Yes. That is it exactly. A little angel. And always so lonely; by himself; on tall trees,' said Jill, feeling a strange happiness come to her, from the bird's song, from Marthe's smile.
'But he sings to something,' said Marthe, still smiling into her eyes. 'He is solitary, but not alone; like an angel in that, too.'
'Yes; that's it. And I like it so much better than angels in choirs, don't you? Solitary angels—but all singing to something.—Why do I always have such lovely thoughts when I am with you, Marthe?'
'Because you are you, Jill.'
They were sitting hand in hand, looking at each other, and the warbler had again begun to sing over their heads. 'Tell me, Marthe,' said Jill, contemplating her friend, 'have you had lovers?'
Without start or blush, Marthe Ludérac looked back at her. 'Why do you ask?' she questioned.
Madame de Lamouderie had not told her. 'I heard something—in Buissac,' Jill found.
Marthe continued to look at her. 'In Buissac?' she repeated.
'Yes.' Jill nodded. 'Nothing very definite, dear Marthe. But enough to make me—wonder.'
'It would give you great pain if it were true?'
Jill tried to think. It had already given her great pain. 'I should not be less fond of you, but it would give me pain.'
'Why?' asked Marthe Ludérac.
'Why?' Jill repeated. It was strange to be asked why. 'Perhaps because I think of you as set apart.'
'As too unhappy ever to be loved, you mean?'
'No;—no, Marthe. As too beautiful.' Jill struggled to make her thought clear to herself as well as to Marthe. 'Too beautiful to be loved—and then left. A lover leaves you, doesn't he? He doesn't love enough. That's our English feeling, perhaps. If you love a great deal, it can't be lightly. It's something grave. It lasts.' Jill's voice was trembling a little.
'But life may part lovers,' said Marthe Ludérac, and her voice now was cold and dark and heavy, as her gaze had been. 'Love need not be light to know itself measured. What is more grave than to be doomed to part?'
'Yes. That is true.' The sickening grief was creeping over Jill again, but still she struggled to accept Marthe's truth. 'Only—you must hide, mustn't you?—for that kind of love. You must lie. It must be difficult, I mean, to keep it beautiful.'
She had dropped her eyes to the hand she held and she could not raise them. They were heavy with the tears of her acceptance. And more than the bitter grief for the spoiled past was in her. When she heard that cold, dark, heavy voice, it made her think of Dick. As if far, far away, the warbler was singing still; but the happiness was gone.
Then she heard Marthe say: 'I have never had a lover.'
For a moment Jill was almost overwhelmed. Tears blinded her. She turned to her friend. She could not look at her, but she put her arms around her neck and whispered, 'Oh, Marthe—forgive me!'
'My friend. My dear, dear Jill,' Marthe Ludérac murmured. But she had taken Jill's arms and she gently put her away.
'Do you forgive me?' Jill whispered, clinging to her hand, and it seemed to her that with the question she had cut Marthe still more deeply, for her voice was quick and short as she answered: 'There is nothing to forgive.' She held Jill from her and turned her head away and fixed her eyes upon the ground, and Jill heard that she was breathing quickly. 'There is nothing to forgive,' she repeated. And they sat thus, for a moment, in silence.
'Let me tell you then,' said Marthe. 'I did not know that echoes of that old story had reached Buissac. Yet it is natural that it should be known. It is natural that it should be believed—of me. It was at Bordeaux, after my mother's death, during the last winter of the war, that I took a soldier into my room for the night.'
'Was he ill? Unhappy? Had he nowhere else to go?' Jill asked, timidly, for Marthe had paused and in her voice was a world of haughty solitude.
Marthe Ludérac glanced at her for a moment. 'You guess the truth, at once; the truth that no one else would care to believe. He was very unhappy and he had nowhere else to go. He was a little permissionnaire and he came on that cold, wet night into the restaurant where I ate. A cheap, poor place; it was my first winter in Bordeaux and I had difficulty in living. All the tables were full, so I beckoned him to come to mine. He came so timidly, like a gentle, frightened dog. I saw how unhappy he was. He had a young, good face, thoughtful, sensitive—with grey eyes far apart. He was a student; not of the soldier type. At once we understood each other, at once he trusted me; and while we ate he told me of his plight. He had come back from the front for his three days and had found his wife with a lover. He had not a word of anger for her. He said that he had never satisfied her. He had never been the man she needed. But there was no more home for him, and all the night before, and all that day, he had walked the streets, dazed with grief. And next morning, at dawn, he must return to the war. So I took him back to my room where there was light and warmth and my bed, and there he slept all night, exhausted, and I sat in the chair, and slept a little, too. When the day came, I heated water for him to wash, and made his breakfast for him and went with him to the train, so that he was not alone among all the others who had wives and mothers and sisters to say good-bye to them. He was killed ten days later. I heard it, long afterwards, from a comrade to whom he gave my address.'
'Oh, my dear Marthe,' Jill murmured. 'Of course it was like that.'
'No; not of course,' said Marthe Ludérac, and her softened look hardened again to the haughty solitude. 'I am not a woman of whom "of course" can be said. I am not a woman who would not take a lover for those reasons you gave. Pride might keep me from him; but not the thought of parting. Life is so dark, so short; if the brightness were there, I do not say that I should not take it. With my poor little permissionnaire; no. But there might have been another man.' And now her eyes met Jill's and the pale, violent blush that Jill had seen before suddenly swept like a tide, from brow to chin, over her silver face. 'I have often longed for love,' she said, looking steadily at Jill. 'Passionately I have longed. Can you imagine what it is to have a heart full of love and always, everywhere, to find oneself shunned? Animals are all that I have ever had. That is why I am perhaps a little foolish about them. There is so much to give, and they must receive it all.'
'But I am here now,' said Jill in a trembling voice. She felt as if she were adrift on a stormy sea. 'I mean—you are loved now. Anyone who knows you must love you:—and you are known.' And as she heard herself say these stumbling words the very air seemed loud with an unuttered name.
And as if she heard it—or feared too much to hear it—Marthe Ludérac rose and said, rapidly, impetuously: 'I wish you had never come to Buissac. I wish you had never seen me. I mean sorrow only;—sorrow; sorrow,' she repeated, fiercely. 'It is the worst of all;—worse than being always alone;—to feel that one can only bring sorrow to those one loves.' She walked away down the woodland path, and it was as if she were leaving Jill for ever, lest she should hear that name.
Jill followed her. 'But you don't, you don't,' she said. She hardly knew what she was saying. 'And if you do—I am glad all the same.—I am glad to have known you, whatever happens.'
Making no reply, Marthe Ludérac went on ahead.
The path ran steeply down among the trees. Below them they heard the rushing of the mountain torrent and saw its passionately hurrying gleam, now here, now there, among the spangled branches. Marthe Ludérac, though she went so swiftly, not turning to look behind, did not forget her friend, for she would pause, when a branch crossed the way, to hold it back for Jill, but Jill knew that the unspoken name separated them as truly as if Graham had walked between them.
Suddenly the Manoir roof appeared below among its sycamores. Marthe stopped short. 'It is my hour for reading. Will you come in?'
Jill hesitated. 'No; not this morning. This afternoon, perhaps.'
It was Marthe now who paused. 'Your husband does not come this afternoon to paint her portrait?'
'I don't know,' said Jill miserably. They stood there; she was still behind Marthe.
'Then, as if forcing herself, Marthe Ludérac turned round and faced her friend. 'That story. Does your husband know?'
Jill took breath. Her eyes on Marthe's were wide. 'Yes,' she said.
'It was he who told you of it?'
'Yes.'
'It was she who told him? Ten days ago?'
'Yes.'
'And she spoke of lovers? Not of one only? Not of the little soldier only?—She said that I had taken lovers?'
'Yes,' said Jill. 'But she made him believe that she was sorry for you.'
At that a terrible look crossed Marthe Ludérac's face. It blanched with fury. So white, so flashing was the look that had the old lady stood before her she would, Jill felt, have been consumed.
'Perhaps she believed it,' Jill heard herself faltering.
Marthe Ludérac looked down upon the ground. 'Yes, she may have believed it. I was turned out of the house where I lodged. The two women who kept it are known to the curé here.'
'She is not safe to live with, Marthe,' said Jill in a low voice. 'You must know that already, I think. She's your wounded cat and you took her in from pity; but she bites your hand.'
'Yes,' said Marthe Ludérac. She looked away, down at the Manoir roof; looked for a long time; and Jill saw the passion falling away, pulse by pulse, from her face. It was cold and still as she said at last: 'You remind me of justice.'
'Of justice?—You mean you will turn her out?'
'No; I do not mean that. She is the wounded cat. That is the truth.—That is the truth,' Mademoiselle Ludérac repeated, fixing her eyes on the ground. 'And we know why she bit my hand. We know that, do we not?'
'Yes,' said Jill, in the lowest voice.
'I shall say nothing. I shall do nothing,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac. 'I do not think it is she who has surprised me.'
'Oh—but, Marthe!' Jill broke down the barrier that rose between them. It was there; a wall of ice; but she broke it down and seized Marthe's hand. 'Don't misjudge Dick! She is so clever—so horribly clever! She knew how to do it! She knew how to drop in the poison! He has been so miserable.'
Marthe stood still, as if stricken to the heart. 'I do not misjudge him.'
'I mean—See him—Let him explain'—Jill heard herself, unbelievably uttering, while she saw, at last, clearly, that this was what she wanted; for Dick; for Marthe. They must see each other. They must understand.
Marthe did not speak or attempt to draw away her hand. She left it lying in Jill's, inertly, and they Stood there, not looking at each other.
From below, like the sound of a sunken bell in a drowned city, they heard the notes of the Manoir clock, faint and mournful, striking eleven.
'I must go,' Marthe muttered. 'She will be waiting for me. Good-bye.'