The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 25
WHILE Marthe Ludérac and Jill were in the woods, Graham was painting in the valley road. He had gone out at eight, walking a long way up the valley and finding no subject that could chain his thought. Then he returned, and not far from Buissac set down his easel and began to paint the turn of river that happened to be before him, framed on the right by the distant jut of the promontory. As the hour of eleven approached, a temptation, daily renewed, daily beaten off, assailed him; and this morning he yielded to it. He left his painting materials at the Ecu d'Or and walked up to the Manoir. If he arrived thus, after the reading had begun, she could not escape him. Even if she left the room directly, he would have seen her. He felt now that he could not go on living unless he saw her.
With a sense of the inevitable that was like an hallucination, he entered the pale drawing-room and saw the two women before him; and he fixed his bright, fierce gaze upon them, challenging their right to question his presence. Madame de Lamouderie sat in her chair on one side of the fire and near her, between her and the window, sat Mademoiselle Ludérac, with her book.
Graham walked up to them. He took Madame de Lamouderie's hand and bent over it; he bowed to Mademoiselle Ludérac, and he said: 'I felt that I must see my portrait this morning and hear the end of "Dominique." I hope it's not finished yet.'
Madame de Lamouderie was, apparently, too astounded for utterance and no word came from Mademoiselle Ludérac. The only sound that answered him was a low growl from old Médor on the hearth-rug; and there was indeed a strangeness in Graham's voice that the dog's ear might well recognize.
He waited, however, for no reply. He fetched his easel and his chair, placed them; set out his colours, and looked from his canvas to his sitter. And as she met his eyes, half hypnotized, perhaps, the old lady seemed to acquiesce in his audacity. Her head took its prescribed attitude; she folded her hands, placing the right, with its old seal ring and dimmed old diamond, uppermost, as she had been told to do. And then, after a moment's interval, Mademoiselle Ludérac resumed her reading. From where he sat Graham, to-day, could see her without turning his head.
He listened, while he painted, half unconsciously, and his mind was drawn to the words she read by her voice rather than by their meaning. For she had reached the burning love-scene where, for the first and last time, Dominique takes Madeleine into his arms: and it was with difficulty that she read. Alien to his sympathies, and almost to his comprehension, as were the standards that sustained and separated the lovers, Graham listened with a growing anxiety and astonishment, so terribly did the human truth of helpless passion flame through the chill, retrospective style. How could she read this scene, he asked himself; how could he listen? Was it not their love, their embrace that she read of? Steadily, slowly, her voice went on, but with a betraying bitterness as though the words touched her lips with gall and wormwood, and Graham, as he heard that bitterness, felt that a hot flush mounted to his forehead. A small, snake-like smile curled the corner of Madame de Lamouderie's lips as she watched them both.
The burning scene was over. Madeleine had escaped. The hero, following the fashion of his day, managed to faint: 'Je tombai roide sur le carreau.' It almost took one back to Saint-Preux and Julie. 'Never mind. He knows what he's about, Fromentin,' thought Graham, and he took breath and looked hard at his canvas, and there came to him, as an after-taste, the visionary quality of the book; passion looked back on from a far distance; danger remembered in security; youth seen from middle age; and no depiction of present anguish could have had that savour of tears; tears never again to be shed; never to be forgotten.
'How is Madame Graham?' asked Madame de Lamouderie with a harsh suddenness.
'She is quite well again, thank you. Haven't you seen her?' Graham found a bright, hard voice.
'No, I have not seen her. You have been more fortunate than I, perhaps, Marthe?'
Mademoiselle Ludérac glanced at her from her book. 'I met her. Just now.'
'You are indeed fortunate in your meetings, Marthe; but too secretive. I should have asked you for news of our charming friend had I known you so favoured,' said Madame de Lamouderie, while the snake-like smile curled up towards her nostril.
Poor little Cécile Léonore of the beech forest; to what vast distances was she not sunken! Graham could well interpret the glassy stare of the great black eyes. Since they had last met, since he had given her that farewell kiss, the very firmament above her had altered and every star was now against her. He looked at her with a quelling eye as though he faced a tigress. He even dared to smile at her. 'Be good this morning,' he said, 'and we shall make great strides.' But it was with effrontery he spoke, for how could she fail to read his gaze? 'Yes; I am changed to you,' was what it said. 'Yes, she has changed me. Because of her I now know you to be false. And I am desperate with love and you must bear with it that it should be so, since we understand desperation in love, you and I.'
And even as these words passed through his mind he saw that they liberated him. She read him. He could not conceal himself from her. So let him at last drink to his fill of the longed-for beauty. He turned his eyes from Madame de Lamouderie and looked deliberately at Mademoiselle Ludérac and her face as she sat in profile to him was at last his own. He saw her. He saw her to his utmost need. The daffodil was within s his hand, a flame that he possessed and sheltered.
She did not even glance at him. She raised her book and began to read again.
Still leaning back in his chair Graham had not taken his eyes from her face.
'Is that the end?' asked Madame de Lamouderie.
Mademoiselle Ludérac sat there under her eyes and under Graham's eyes.
'That is the end,' she said.
'But there is another chapter.'
'It says no more of them. They are parted,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, and now she raised her eyes and looked at Graham, a poised, sword-like look; and his eyes, at last, dropped before it.
'Ah, that we do not feel credible, do we!' said Madame de Lamouderie, her face distorted with its sneer. 'Lovers in romances may assert that they do not see each other again and that the embrace is not renewed; but in life such resolutions are always broken; is it not so, Monsieur Graham?'
'I hope so, for their sakes,' said Graham.
'Bravo! Bravo! You are honest. Do you not admire such honesty, Marthe? Courage, after all, even brutality, are all that is needed with us weak women. Is it not so, Marthe?'
For a moment Mademoiselle Ludérac sat silent. Then, without a word, she rose and left the room.
Graham, automatically, took up his brushes. He looked at the old lady and, deliberately then, with a malignant amusement for her plight, touched in the sneer that twisted her lip and nostril. Only for a moment did she control herself, only for a moment wait to note what his next move would be.
'You have driven her away, you see,' she said. 'The last thing you wish to do, is it not?'
'The last thing,' said Graham, smiling, as he placed a cruel accent. 'But we were both at fault. Our conversation isn't really fit for her ears, is it?'
'Not fit for the ears of your Saint Cecilia? Is that what you would say?'
'Precisely.'
'And it was her you came to see? In spite of my warnings?'
'It was her I came to see;—very much in spite of your warnings.'
'Why do you not follow her then?'
'Because she is my Saint Cecilia and I do not wish to displease her.'
'You will not displease her. That I can promise you. I can promise you, Monsieur Graham, bold and brutal as you are, that she is as eager as you are for that embrace.' But as she saw the look of rage that crossed his face, her own look altered. The sneer dropped. She drew herself upright. A baleful splendour of demeanour fell upon her. 'Mademoiselle Ludérac is her own mistress and mistress of this house,' she said, weighing her words and braving his eyes. 'I am powerless to do more for her safety than I have done. One thing only I must demand. Itismy right. That I shall not be put into the position of a pander, a go-between. I forbid you, categorically forbid you, to carry on your intrigue under this roof. My relation to your wife is my authority. Even you will hardly dispute it. Do not carry on your intrigue under this roof. The woods at this season offer many convenient bowers for lovers.—But perhaps I need not tell you this.'
Graham resumed his painting. 'You know,' he remarked, after a silence, and with a singular calm, 'it's a pity to do what you are doing. I understand you. I've an immense tolerance for you. Even your lie of the other night, I can swallow. I ask you now to be merciful to yourself. You know what she is as well as I do. She's a holy saint. And it's hard for you and me to believe in her, I own. But why not face it? Why not grant me the right to worship her? Why not be content to help me to come here and look at her?'
For a moment his calm, his terrible detachment, checked and arrested even the heaped-up waters of the old lady's fury. Then they broke forth and she contained herself no longer. 'Not in my presence!' she cried, and leaning forward she thrust her face at him. 'Not in my presence! I will not bear it! To be ignored for that little peasant! To be put out by that little prostitute! It was not a lie! Ask her if it was a lie!—She will not deny that she took soldiers into her room at Bordeaux. I am a liar, am I? I am to be content to be a liar and despised by you, while she is to be your holy saint? No! Monsieur Graham! No! One at a time, if you please!' And stumbling out of her chair, knocking over the easel as she pushed past him, Madame de Lamouderie hastened, with all the galvanized rapidity of her passion, out of the room, and as she went Graham heard that she was sobbing.
He sat still where she had left him for some moments. 'Poor old devil,' was the thought that came to him.
The canvas lay face downward on the floor; as he picked it up, Madame de Lamouderie's head came upside down and the gaze of the eyes, thus inverted, had a startling malignancy. Righting it, he examined the canvas. No damage had been done; but should he ever finish it now? Should he ever again see the Manoir? He wondered for a moment, standing and looking round the pale, mysterious room, where Eurydice, Saint Cecilia, had first appeared to him, printing its aspect on his mind. Then he put away his work, as if, indeed, he were to return, and went into the hall.
Joseph stood there, waiting for him. 'Mademoiselle is in the garden and asks that Monsieur should go to her there.' These were the amazing words he uttered.
As he passed through the garden door, Graham felt that Joseph shot a dark glance after him.