The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 30
BUT Jill did not sleep as Graham had slept. The rain poured on all night and it seemed to her that she heard it all night long, though she drifted into intervals of unconsciousness. Dick heard it, too, for she saw the crack of light under his door while he walked about and opened or shut his windows. She could do nothing for Dick now. She wondered if Marthe were lying awake, listening to the rain. And the terrible old lady, what were her thoughts? All three thinking of Dick. How strange it was! How absurd! What did it mean? Was it all a fevered, tumultuous dream, this love that so tormented and severed them? Why could they not all love each other, and Dick, and be happy in the radiance of unity? But no; the night wore on and her pulses, beating in heavy, lonely sorrow, told her that while one was enmeshed in personal life such unity could only come to one in moments that transcended and lifted one above it. It was the fire of life that burned in one, and to escape into its light was to cross from one order of being to another. But it was not the fire she felt, now, or the light; only the slow, sick pulse of sorrow.
She fell asleep at dawn and slept until Amélie knocked at her door with her breakfast tray.
'Ah—c'est un véritable déluge, Madame,' said Amélie, entering with a beaming face. 'The roads are flooded. The children cannot go to school. Viens, Germaine, et dis bonjour à Madame.'
Germaine, though chocolates had passed between her and Jill, did not say good-morning, but her small, square face, topped by its cockade of red ribbon, peered round at the pretty lady from behind her mother's skirt.
Dick looked in while Amélie was there and smiled at her and asked her how she had slept. She felt that he had seized the opportunity so that they should not be alone. His face looked strange and new. He was much older. She suddenly saw what he would be like when he was an old man. She saw what his father, perhaps his grandfather, had looked like. Something bare, elemental, atavistic, was revealed in his face.
'I'm breakfasting downstairs,' he said, 'so that I can watch the river. It's magnificent. When will you get up?'
'As soon as I've had my breakfast.'
'And come down to the salon?'
Yes.'
Dick looked at her, humbly, intently. He was afraid of her; afraid for her. Before his strange, aged, humble eyes, Jill's eyes fell. She could do nothing for Dick. She would not be able to hide from him how he must make her suffer. She took up her roll and buttered it, mechanically, and poured out her coffee, while Amélie, watching the devoted pair with fond complacency, still loitered in the door, turning her head to rebuke Germaine who sported shrilly in the corridor: 'Tais-toi, Germaine. Tu auras une claque si tu cries comme celà!'
'All right, then,' Dick muttered. 'I'll be waiting.' He closed his door.
'Did Madame see Madame la comtesse last night?' Amélie then inquired.
'Yes. Why?' Jill looked up, startled.
'The old lady seems to have lost her wits,' said Amélie, while a deeper pleasure shone from her face. 'Jean, the baker's boy, drove down from Mérinac last night and saw her in the forest, running down the road, bareheaded; not even a cloak upon her in the storm. Mademoiselle Ludérac and Monsieur Trumier came after her and led her back to the Manoir.'
'Good Heavens!' said Jill, to herself, though she spoke aloud. She was thinking of this end to Marthe's day.
Amélie looked at her consideringly and ventured further.
'Elle est toquée,' she placed a finger on her forehead.' can heard her screaming out the name of Monsieur and that she must go to him;—that she had something to say to him; a confession to make; and that he would forgive her. Jean thinks that Mademoiselle Ludérac promised her that she should see him. Only so would she consent to be led away at last. Ah—it is a sad life for that young person, is it not, Madame?—First the mad mother and then the mad friend.'
'If only she were mad. That would be a comfort,' Jill thought. Aloud she said; 'Mademoiselle Ludérac is a saint, Amélie. But the old lady isn't mad. She's had a misunderstanding with Monsieur and it makes her miserable. He will see her, as Mademoiselle Ludérac promised. And it will be all right. It's dreadfully sad when old people like that are so unhappy.'
'Ah, yes, it is a sad thing, when one is over eighty, to be capable of such attachments,' Amélie observed. 'There is an age for everything, n'est-ce-pas, Madame?'
But to this Jill found it more convenient to make no reply.
She dressed quickly, turning her eyes from her mirror to the desolate scene outside. The livid river had risen to the level of the road and flooded in upon it through openings in the wall. She fixed her mind upon the flood.
In the salon, Dick had lighted the fire and stood at the window looking out, and when he turned and saw her he said nothing.
She fumbled in her pockets for her cigarettes. She had left her case upstairs, and Dick offered her his, struck a match and lighted her cigarette for her, while she sank onto the sofa.
Half closing her eyes, she drew in a breath of smoke. The cigarette affected her as a raft they both clung to. But they must plunge. And she felt the water close over her head as she said, her eyes on the fire, 'Dick—I know everything.'
He had stood looking at her with the lighted match in his fingers, and he shook it out and tossed it into the fire, and sat down on the edge of the table, folding his arms.
'I was with Marthe, twice, yesterday,' Jill went on. 'We were both too tired. I couldn't persuade her. We had to leave it. But to-day you must see her and make her understand that you and she must go away together.'
Dick loomed up there between her and the window, tall, dark, still, with his folded arms. 'Leaving you?' was what he said at last.
'I'll be going, too,' said Jill, pausing for a moment to think. 'In another direction. It's all really simple, isn't it?—when people understand each other, and love each other.'
'Simple, do you call it? Bringing our marriage to an end?'
It was not a case for retort. He did not mean it like that. Jill understood. 'We couldn't, of course; if it had been anything small, or usual. I mean—if you'd been unfaithful, in the usual way, with the usual sort of person—I'd have forgiven you, of course. I shouldn't have dreamed of our parting. But it's not a case for forgiveness, now. It has nothing to do with forgiveness. Only for understanding. And I do understand.'
'I don't quite make out how you do,' Dick muttered, taking a tighter grasp of his arms and turning his head to look down at the fire.
'How I understand as I do, you mean?—Because of Marthe, of course,' said Jill. 'After all'—and she could not repress a curious little smile, half sweetness, half bitterness—'I loved her before you did.'
'Did you? I wonder,' Dick murmured, his eyes on the fire.
'Well, I knew I loved her before you did,' Jill amended, gently. And this Dick, apparently, accepted.
'There's nothing left for us to go on with, is there?' Jill continued. 'We care for each other, just as much as ever, no doubt. But that's not enough, now. You've never cared for anybody as you do for Marthe. And you can't go on without her. Or she without you, for that matter; though she thinks she can.'
'Dick seemed to ponder, his eyes still on the fire. He brought them to her as he said at last; 'But how can I go on without you?'
And at that, after a moment, Jill got up and walked away to the window.
But Dick followed her. He came behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders and turned her round so that he looked down into her eyes. 'How could you go on without me, Jill?' he asked.
'If she allowed her thoughts to rest for one moment on her own shipwreck, Jill knew that her tears must gush forth; and if she wept Dick's arms would go round her. She yearned for his arms; but they would sear her flesh. She held her eyes widely open while she looked up at him, a wide, tragic gaze from the eyes so framed for mirth, and she asked in her turn: 'But how could I go on with you, Dick?'
'You've never meant so much to me,' he said, looking down into those wide eyes. 'I've never loved you so much.'
'Yes,' she nodded; she even tried to smile. 'I believe that. But it doesn't really help us. Because you love her more than you thought you could love anybody. That's what I said to her, yesterday, Dick. When you're with her you're in heaven.'
'But it helps us in this way,' said Graham. He would not pause for what she had said to Marthe. 'It makes it possible for us to go on together, in spite of everything. Not one woman in a thousand could stand it; but you are the one woman who could. Anyone else but you would tear herself—and me—to pieces; but you'd understand; as you do. You'd understand everything. And when I came back, you would have pity and help me to go on without her.'
'When you say,' came back, 'do you mean came back from her?' Jill gazed up at him, still held by him. 'Do you mean that you and Marthe would go away together and then that you'd leave her?'
'She won't come away,' said Graham.' I asked her—yesterday morning. Not only did she refuse; but she showed me why it was impossible. She showed me that I couldn't leave you. So what I asked of her then was that we should be lovers. And that's what I ask of you. That you should remain my wife, while she becomes my mistress.'
At that Jill closed her eyes. 'It was what the old woman said.'
'Madame de Lamouderie? What did she say?'
'That you were lovers; already. I knew it wasn't true. But I thought it wasn't true of you, as well as of her.'
'She said that, did she? Cursed old witch. Well, her lies are always half truths, I expect. I should have been Marthe's lover now, Jill, if she would have taken me.'
Jill was leaning away from him, with shut eyes, but fiercely, almost savagely, while he put his truths before her, he held her still and made her see it all; all that she had lost; yet all she gained in the strange triumph of such sincerity.
'Which would you rather, Jill; give me up; let me go;—or have us lovers? The truth, the real truth, that she sees as clearly as I do—more clearly—is that you are my wife and she and I lovers. It's because it's the truth that I feel I may make her accept it. I could never make her accept your place.'
'But I haven't got any place.' Jill freed herself at last, and his hands fell from her as he saw that there was no more for him to say. 'I'm your friend. But I'm not your wife. That's the truth you must make her see. She sees the other because she's French. But I'm English. I'm not a wife if my husband loves somebody else more than he loves me. Oh, I'm not unkind, Dick;—you know I'm not. It's only truth. And how could I bear it, for Marthe, that she should be your mistress? That you should love her—and leave her? I couldn't bear it. I must go. To-day. When she hears that I have gone, she will see what it means to me. She'll see that to myself I'm not a wife any longer. A wife must be everything. She must be home;—but she must be heaven, too.'
Graham stood near the window, where she had left him, and she had moved back as she spoke, till she reached the door. Her hand was on the latch now, as if indeed she was leaving him for ever. He eyed her from across the room. 'You can't go to-day,' he said. 'The car's broken down.'
Jill leaned back against the door and a look of bewilderment crossed her face.
'The car's broken,' Graham repeated, heavily. 'And everything's flooded.'
'To-morrow, then,' Jill muttered.
'To-morrow? Well; we'll see.' He eyed her strangely. 'You'd have to accept it, Jill, you know.'
'Accept what?'
'If she won't consent to come with me; but if she will consent to love me. You'd have to accept it; if she did.'
There drifted across Jill's mind the memory of a phrase that she had heard that morning; words that Marthe had spoken to her in the wood—was it only that morning when it seemed years ago?—'Love need not be light to know itself measured. What is more grave than to be doomed to part?' Even Dick did not know Marthe as she did. Even Dick did not understand the doom that rested upon Marthe. And this was why she had come to Buissac; this was why she had not turned away from the spellbound house. As if in a dream, she saw it all and felt herself armed with the power of the embracing vision.
'I will never accept it,' she said. 'Never; for Marthe. You must belong to each other—for life. You must make her happy. You must live for her; not only love her. Don't worry about me, Dick. I shall be happy again—and she's never been happy. You'll have everything to make up to her. You can't only be her lover. Do you see?'
He did see, at last. He could never himself have found strength to put Jill out. She put herself out. He could never have found the strength with which to beat down Marthe's resistance. Jill gave her to him, Never had he and Jill been so near as in this moment when he saw at last, clearly, that they must part.