The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 26
TO step from the house into the garden was like passing from a vault into some strange, fierce resurrection. The great sun flaming in the midday sky was like the sound of trumpets. Aromatic odours exhaled in ardour through the quivering air. So hot, so bright, so clamorous was the outer world that Graham for a moment paused and looked about him in a sort of stupor.
Then, at the further end, he saw Marthe Ludérac sitting on the bench against the garden wall. She was waiting for him, and he remembered that autumn day when he had first seen the garden. This was the presence, this the consummation, for which it had waited. She rose as he approached her and stood there to receive him.
Cold and white she stood, under the hot sunlight; remote; repudiating. Ah, but how unavailingly she fixed those haughty, unappealing eyes upon him. Her eyes, her hands might repulse him and oceans might flow between them; and years; but they were for all time intimate. They knew each other. Under the blue window with the moonlit air blowing in upon them she had been as close as a consenting lover. He remembered how close; and so did she; he remembered his kisses; as she did. Not all her will could obliterate those moments.
Bareheaded, he stood in the path before her and every least detail of her sunlit face was his. The barrier in his heart, and in hers, was down, and his senses were unafraid of her. A bitter ecstasy filled his heart.
She spoke to him. 'I have asked you to come. It is not for my sake. It is for your wife. I love her. For her sake I ask you to pursue me no longer.'
It was a strangely worded request.
'I've not pursued you,' said Graham. Old Médor, lying beside the bench in the sun, lifted his head as he heard his voice and uttered a low, uncertain growl. 'Not unless you call this morning pursuit. All the rest has been chance. You know it.'
'I do not know it,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, and he was now to hear how fierce, under its quiet, her voice could be. 'You came before in the morning, when you were sure of finding me. You came to seek me on the island—though you had no need to give me the message. You have pursued me from the first, and though it was by chance that you found your way to my room the other night, it was not by chance that you entered and insulted me.'
'No—no;—you can't say that. That's unworthy of you;—unworthy of us both,' Graham muttered, eyeing her. 'Even then you understood. Even then you forgave; because you longed for me as much as I longed for you.'
Marthe Ludérac's face took on an arctic pallor. 'I understood you then. What you say of me is true. But I did not know what I know now; that you came to me believing me to be a light woman.' And with no change of tone, though more swiftly, more scornfully, she added, glancing beyond him, 'Control yourself, I beg. Madame de Lamouderie is at her window watching us.'
Let her watch them! He blessed her malignancy. It had brought him here; set him in this miraculous solitude face to face with Marthe Ludérac. He saw now why she had sent for him. She would have risked no such encounter had she not thought herself securely armed against him.
'So you heard that. I wonder where,' he said. 'No; I don't mind her; but I'll be careful. That story parted me from you for ten whole days. Whether I really believed it or not I can't say. I think I tried to believe it, because it seemed to part us; to save us. And I've struggled—though you may not believe it of me. Then I found you again, and when I saw you, on that night, it made no difference. Had it been true, or false, my conduct would have been the same.'
Now she was alone with him indeed; more surely alone, despite the watcher at the window, than the other night, for every shield against him was gone. And as he put the truth before her, her eyes, for the first time, under the pressure of his gaze, faltered. She looked away from him. She was terribly white.
'So there's an end to all disguises,' Graham said.
'Let us walk,' said Marthe Ludérac, after a moment.
They turned and walked down the central path towards the house. Old Médor, casting a reproachful glance at his mistress, got upon his feet and limped at their heels. At the open door, where he had remained standing, Joseph discreetly withdrew, and there, at her upper window, sitting in full view, was Madame de Lamouderie, and her ancient face, marked like the moon's with cavernous shadows, looked like a skull set up to stare at them. Let her stare. Something dark and dangerous in Graham's nature rejoiced in the sinister fairy-tale background of his love. Here he walked in the sunlight with his heavenly Eurydice and all Hades might yawn before them, all its furies shriek, for any faltering they could bring to his exultant heart.
'So there's an end to all disguises,' he repeated; and they paused at the end of the path, invisible now to the watcher above. They are gone. There's nothing between us.'
He was looking straight into those wonderful longsought eyes; eyes of wide, windswept, lonely dawn, with its slender moon, its morning star. Never on earth had there been eyes like Marthe Ludérac's, and to believe them attainable was as if in the fairy-tale one stretched forth one's hand and found that one could touch the silver moon. 'So why keep up defences?' he said, and he almost smiled at her. There had been no tenderness between them. His smile was hardly tender now. It possessed rather than caressed her.
'We keep them up for Jill,' said Marthe Ludérac.
The helpless physical closeness of the other night was as nothing compared to this avowal.
'You mean—it's only because of Jill?'
'How should it not be?'
'We belong to each other—but for Jill?'
Marthe Ludérac turned away her eyes and made no reply.
'It's not as if I didn't love Jill,' Graham muttered. 'It seems to me that I've never loved her so much.'
'That is because you feel her menaced,' said Marthe Ludérac.
They went on then, up a mossy side path where the sun seldom fell.
'Listen to me,' said Graham. The path was narrow, their shoulders nearly brushed as they went, their hands could, with a slight gesture, touch; but they walked on evenly, sad Médor following. 'That may be true. But we must face the truth. You've changed my life, as I've changed yours. We are all menaced. But what Jill would want first of all from us is the truth. And the truth is that you and I belong to each other. You must come away with me. Jill is young and strong and she has her home and friends. I've taken her away from everything she loves; it's my life, not her own she lives. It will be horrible for her; but it won't all be loss; and she'd rather lose me than keep me, loving you.—We must leave Buissac together. At once.'
They had reached the further end of the garden and were come to the wall again and out into the sun. 'It is impossible,' said Marthe Ludérac. She did not look at him, but straight before her.
And even as he had spoken, a doubt had fallen upon him. Jill might bear it; but how could he? How could he cut Jill out of his life? The deep paternal instincts interwoven in long-rooted marriage cried out against him. How leave his wife, his child, his dear, dear Jill? It was impossible. He could not contradict Marthe Ludérac.
They crossed the width of the garden, under the wall. Here black currant bushes grew and their spicy odour filled the hot air. They turned the corner and went under lilac branches that cast a shadow at their feet.
'Then'—Graham lowered his voice and did not look at her as he walked, evenly, carefully beside her—'we must be secret lovers. Here. Now. Before I leave Buissac. It's torment for us, whichever way we turn; but that's the best torment. When we part we shall have had each other.'
They walked on steadily, emerging from the lilacs; visible once more to the sentinel skull.
And Marthe Ludérac said nothing. She was silent. Horror-stricken? Frozen in repudiation? He shot a glance at her. White, fixed, considering, her eyes bent on the ground, she walked beside him; but it was not in horror or repulsion. As Graham felt and saw the substance of her silence, the blood surged again before his eyes and he heard the pounding of his heart. 'You will?' he said. 'To-night? Every night before I go?'
Still she was silent. He could hardly believe in her beautiful, terrible silence. They reached the house again before she spoke. And they were the same words as before: 'It is impossible.'
'No; no! Not impossible!' Her silence had given him an immense advantage. It was as if he had felt her come into his arms. She could not now take herself back. 'Not impossible. I would come when the others are asleep. I know the way. And I would guard you. No one would ever know. I can stay on in Buissac. Madame de Lamouderie's portrait is our screen. Even now, up there, she does not dream of what is between us. I will keep it from her; from Jill. We are strong enough; both of us. And the one impossible thing is that we should not love one another—completely.'
His eyes were on her, and as she felt them her faint, strange, violent blush answered him. Her face was inundated with her awareness of him and with her pain. And cursing himself for his grossness, his brutality, he saw that it was pain; and then, as she walked on in her silence, that she did not shrink from it, or from him. Overwhelmed, even desperate she might be, but it seemed to him that she resented nothing; that she saw as plainly as he did their necessity and their resources. Only after the silence had grown long, after they had walked and turned again, did he hear her speak. A faint, a rigid voice. 'No; no,' she said; and the words seemed forced from her. 'I could not bear it.'
'Do you mean secret loving?—or parting afterwards?'
'I can see you go. I thought that you were gone. I can see you go, now.'
'Can you? I can't see myself. It will have to be secret loving, unless you will come with me.'
'We know that we must part. That is our completion. There is no choice,' she said. 'I will not go with you and have Jill left. I will not love you secretly—and part from you afterwards.—No; no! That I could not bear!' she cried passionately, startling him with the sudden cry, not looking at him.
He held himself from seizing her. 'Marthe!—Listen. My darling. It will be easier. One can die if one has lived. You don't understand. How should you?'
'I do understand. I do. I will not have it so.'
Her hand as she spoke so passionately, though in so low a tone, had clenched itself against her chest as though she drew back from an invisible antagonist. The watcher up above them must wonder to see that desperate gesture and, lifting his eyes to the window, Graham saw that it was a wonder past endurance. Madame de Lamouderie flung wide the sash. She leaned out.
'Marthe! Have you forgotten the hour? Do you not know that it is long past the time for our déjeuner!' she screamed.
Marthe Ludérac looked up at her almost unseeingly. As awareness came, it was a weary, an enduring awareness. She bowed her head, though she made noreply to the screaming summons; but as they walked towards the house, she said in a voice changed, charged, hurried: 'There is no more to say, of ourselves. Only one thing I have to ask of you. The old woman there: do not part from her in enmity.'
'Don't speak to me of her!' Graham exclaimed in bitter exasperation. 'You know who it was who told that story of you. There is more to say of ourselves and I do not intend to waste these moments on her.'
'You have misled her. You have been cruel to her. You knew what she was when you came and saw her. You cannot go now leaving her so wretched.'
'No. I don't intend to go. I have her portrait to finish. If I'm decent to her, you'll know why.'
'No, no; I beg of you,' said Marthe Ludérac, standing still before the door and fixing her eyes upon him. 'Do not speak so. It is useless. I refuse what you offer. I refuse it all. We are not to meet again.'
'Marthe—Marthe—Marthe,' Graham murmured. He stood and gazed upon her. 'Be merciful,' he said. 'Tell me that you will see me—if only once again. I can't live without seeing you.'
'It makes it worse. It is a weakness. And it makes it worse,' she said, her eyes on his. 'But go. Go now, and I will see you once again.' She turned from him and went into the house before him.
Joseph waited in the hall. He seemed to have been biding his time, for, as his young mistress entered, followed by the Englishman, he hurried towards the front door and opened it with hasty fingers and stood there, holding it back, keeping his eyes on Graham until he had passed out. ·········· The luncheon hour was long over when Graham reached the Ecu d'Or. Monsieur Michon, who served him, told him that Madame had come in to lunch, but had immediately gone out again, in the car. 'And we shall have a storm this afternoon, Monsieur,' he said. 'I warned Madame not to go too far.'
When Graham had taken some food he went up to their sitting-room. On the table lay a note with 'Dick' written on the envelope. He opened it and read:
I saw Marthe this morning. She has never had a lover. It was only a little permissionnaire who had nowhere to go, on a winter night, and she took him into her room to sleep and next morning he went back to the war and was killed. I think it would be better if you were to see Marthe. Perhaps this afternoon. I shall be gone for a long time.
Yours ever
Jill
Graham read this over several times before its meaning reached him. It was as if he had outstripped time, he was so far ahead of all that Jill had to tell him. He had outstripped time, but Jill's comprehension, Jill's courage and loyalty, followed close on the trail of his flaming course. It was evident to him, as he tried to retrace his own steps and to mark where Jill had come upon them, that he was to spare her nothing.
'But that's all to the good, isn't it,' Graham muttered, trying to think, as he held Jill's note. There'll be nothing to explain.'
Was it all to the good? He could think no longer—of Jill, or of Marthe. The heavy day pressed on him like a pall and he had not slept for an hour the night before. He went upstairs to their room, flung himself on his bed, and fell, almost at once, into a profound and exhausted slumber.