The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 32
THE bridge was already under water, though the handrail still emerged; his feet found the plank and he crossed on it. Films and fans of water were sliding over the meadow and he heard the deep rush of the streams on either side; but as he turned and ran, on higher ground, round the promontory, he was hardly ankle-deep in water. The dyke was not yet down. The cabin was not far: not more than a quarter of a mile. If the plank was too deep by the time they got back to the bridge, they could pull themselves across by the hand-rail. Even if they had to throw themselves into the stream, the current might carry them against the cliff. They could climb up and be saved. On one hand as he ran he saw the shadowy ranks of the poplars, swaying against the wind; on the other, looming above him, was the cliff. The memory of all his old terrors was in his mind, but a fiercer fear raced beside him. Should he outstrip the fall of the dyke? Even as he ran he could feel that the confluent streams met in mounting waves over his feet.
Suddenly his ankle turned under him in a sickening twist and wrench. He fell heavily on his hands and knees over a hidden obstacle, and as he raised himself he ground his teeth with fury, for the foot was sprained, or broken. Forcing it to bear his weight, he splashed forward, catching at his breath, the anguish bringing a cold sweat to his brow, and he saw at last before him the cabin, set small and low between the heights; visionary no longer; its sinister secret all displayed; the place appointed for their death, unless they could outstrip the flood. And, loud and piteous now, came once more the cry of the kid.
He reached the cabin and dragged himself round to the door, holding by the wall. The door was on the further side, and there, bending to the latch, was Marthe. She was picking, pulling, fiercely yet accurately, at a knot tied with wet rope to a padlock across it. She wore the small black shawl tied under her chin and the black raincoat in which he had first seen her. Graham laid his hands upon her shoulders.
She started back, and then stood still under his hands. In the gaze they exchanged her eyes measured the full meaning of his presence; yet it might have been the kid only she was thinking of as she said: 'It is tied too tight. I have no knife. I cannot open it.'
Without a word, leaning against the cabin wall, Graham took out his knife and sawed at the tough, wet rope.
'Did you hear the kid cry? In all this storm? Is that how you found me?' Marthe went on. And not pausing for a reply: 'She carried it down. She took it from its place in the shed and carried it down. I met her. She told me it was here. She did not even trouble to lie to me. She did not even pretend that it had run away;—she was so sure that I was to die. She tied the rope; so that I should take too long. She risked her life to do it. She is mad.'
'Yes. That was what she did. I met her. She lied to me. To the last she tried to keep me from you. But we've foiled her, this time;—we've foiled her at last,' muttered Graham, bending over the knot. Terror and joy inundated his soul. And again it was as if he blessed Madame de Lamouderie who brought them thus together.
The rope snapped. Inside the hut the kid was cowering. Marthe lifted it, murmuring, 'My poor little one, you shall not be left to die.'
'We shall all die, unless we make haste. Give me the kid. And run. Run to the bridge. I'm following.' He leaned against the cabin and put out his hands for the kid, while he felt the water lap about their feet.
But she was standing still. Her white face scanned him. 'What is the matter? Why do you not come, too?'
'I am coming. Give me the kid.' He forced himself forward on the broken foot.
'You have injured yourself. You are in great pain. You cannot walk,' said Marthe.
'I've hurt my foot, a little. It is nothing. I can get along—more slowly. In God's name, give me the beast and go!' cried Graham in a voice of sudden fury. 'I promise to you to save it—and myself—if I can.'
'You think that I will leave you? You cannot think it. Take my arm,' said Marthe. 'Lean on me.'
As she spoke a distant tumult shook the air. Muffled yet portentous, it seemed to drop down upon them from the promontory as the echo of the catastrophe was beaten against the rock. And a strange stillness followed it. As though the very wind and rain had paused to listen.
'The dyke is down,' said Marthe.
'Run! Run! In God's name run! There is time yet!' cried Graham. 'The river will take five minutes to reach you! You can reach the bridge in five minutes!'
She had turned her head to listen; now she looked back at him. 'There is no time. And you cannot think that I would leave you. There is no time. We must climb onto the roof,' said Marthe. 'Wait. Hold the kid.'
She put the kid in his arms and ran inside the cabin and returned pulling through the water a heavy trestle. She pushed it against the wall of the cabin, not pausing to dispute when he made her mount first. She took the kid from him and helped him to struggle up beside her. The cabin stood some six feet high. It was solidly built. 'The river may not rise to this level,' said Graham.
'Yes. It will,' said Marthe. 'I was a child in the last great flood. It was less terrible than this. When the dyke went down, the river rose far above this height. But wait. It may not be so sudden. The dyke may give way by degrees. I do not think that all has fallen yet.'
They saw, as she spoke, that the obscurity before them shaped itself into an advancing, a darker obscurity. It came with a sinister stillness, softly, swiftly, and spread about them. The river finding its ancient bed once more; rippling and gliding deeply to the poplar groves; to the cliff; as distant now and as inaccessible as the island. The timbers of the cabin groaned and trembled as they felt the impact. But they still held, and the river paused a foot below the cabin roof.
'Can you swim?' asked Graham, scanning the waters.
'No.'
'Nor can I. Yet'—still he looked about him—'one might keep afloat. You could put your hand on my shoulder. The current might carry us down against the cliff—'
'To dash us against it?—You with your broken foot? We could not keep afloat. Why waste our last moments in a vain struggle?' said Marthe. She spoke almost with a tender mockery.
He looked back at her. 'Then we are to die together, Marthe,' he said.
She had drawn her shawl down about her shoulders and folded the kid in it against her side. The form of her face seemed to float upon the darkness; he saw only her gaze and that a starry ecstasy breathed from her. 'Yes. Together,' she said. 'Are you not glad, too?'
He made no reply. He put his arms around her and laid his head, at last, upon her breast. So the dream came true. That had been her secret from the first. It was because she did not belong to life, and to the earth, that he had sought her. She was the light that trembled through all living; but she did not belong to life. It belonged to her; as the earth belongs to the sky. It was so clear to him now that she could not have lived and belonged to him; that he possessed her now only because she was to die. 'Eurydice,' he murmured.
She smiled, as if she understood, though he was almost unaware that he called her by the name of his dreams, and, held in his arms, she bent her head so that she could look into his eyes. And she began to speak to him, at last; swiftly, unhesitatingly, with a passionate quiet and impetuosity; like that of the river rushing over the broken barrier; with an intimacy profound and unfaltering that years of life together could hardly have made more complete.
'I may tell you now how much I love you. I have loved you from the beginning; from the first moment that I saw you;—though at first I thought it fear. It was as if I had been waiting for you always; as if my roots in the dark had been seeking you; listening for you. When I saw you my life ran into yours. I could do nothing to help myself; I could be silent; but I could not help myself; it was like a river running into the sea. And Jill was there, beautiful to me as no one in my life had been beautiful. It seemed to me that you were the darkness that pursued me, and she the light:—I hid myself in her so that you should not find me. Yet my thoughts were full of you always. It was of you I was thinking when you came that night; and when I saw you there I did not think of Jill at all;—only of you, and of my gladness—my terrible gladness, that you had come. All yesterday I wandered, and it seemed to me that I could not live when you were gone. Oh, say that you are glad, too. Say that you are glad to die with me as I am glad to die with you.'
'All I know is that I am with you,' Graham muttered. Her passion, her beauty dazed him. She was like a flame within his arms. 'I am glad because I have you. That is all I need.'
Silent, with closed eyes, they kissed each other, again and again, passionately; and as they clung together the sound of the dull, portentous uproar smote again upon their ears.
But those longed-for kisses, in all their tragic sweetness, seemed now irrelevant. He was nearer her when he could look at her than when he kissed her. Let him sink once more into those radiant eyes. Let him lose himself. For the cabin again trembled beneath them; the water had risen nearly to the roof; he was seeing, in dark flashes, the swiftly approaching death. How would it be at the end? Could they keep this rapture fast?—hold closely to each other, while they fought the cold, insensate element that would batter at lips and nostrils? How horrible to have to fight death even while one prayed for its deliverance! And, looking into her starry eyes, thinking that this loveliness must die in torment, Graham groaned aloud.
As if she guessed his thoughts she smiled at him and, with a gesture maternal in its tenderness, she drew his head to hers, pressing it against her cold, wet cheek. 'Do you remember, in the garden yesterday?' she said. 'When you asked me to love you, I was silent. Shall I tell you why I was silent all that time? It was like an hallucination that came into my mind. A little boy; our child. If I loved you as you asked there might be a child to make the meaning of my life—even after you had left me. I seemed to see him running up the garden path before us there; very young; with ruffled hair, and eyes like yours. Only his were not lonely eyes; but happy, for he was with his mother. It was like an hallucination.—I saw him turn his face to smile at us. And then I saw that it must never be. He would have been a disinherited child; like me. An outcast. It was only a dream. I had not to struggle. But while it lasted it kept me silent.'
'My angel! My saint!' Graham whispered.
She had kept her face pressed close to his while she told her dream and she was silent for a moment while the water lapped up to their feet. 'No; not an angel,' she said then. 'Not a saint. Saints do not long for human love as I have longed. I have had desires as wild, as desperate, as those of any woman. You must know me as I am. Not a saint. But it has not all been that. I have had other longings.' She drew from him to look at him again. The rain streamed like tears over her face. It was as if already the dividing waters were veiling her from him. Yet light came to him from her. 'Do you believe in God?' she said. 'Can you feel, before we die, that you believe in God?'
'I can believe in God when you are there,' said Graham.
'I believe in Him even when you are not there,' said Marthe. 'Always, at great moments, the sense of a presence has come to me. When my mother killed my father and I found them; when I held her in her frenzies at night; when she died and left me. I feel it bless us now.'
Graham was trembling with grief and pain and adoration. The sense of light was about him, and while he gazed into her eyes he felt himself lifted and sustained on a strength infinitely transcending his own. Marthe's strength? God's strength? What did that matter? Was not the heart of the mystery this flame that she revealed to him in whose light he might find it bliss to die? And as he gazed at it, at that moment, he saw it fall from her face. He felt a shock go through her and heard a far off cry.
The watery wastes were empty. The promontory cut its vast bulk across the sky, shutting out Buissac; but, borne on the wind, beaten by the rain, wavering as a foam-bell wavers on swirling water, the cry had reached them, and he drew away to listen. And Marthe, too, turned her face away and looked towards Buissac.
And in that silent, listening moment Graham felt a vast menace, an abyss of emptiness, poised above them, opening beneath them, and remembered all his terrors. It was as if in that moment Marthe left him. It was the voice of life calling out to them and as she heard it her flame went out.
Again it came, and round the promontory they saw a light appear, wavering like the cry, floating in the darkness, rising and falling as if it pulsed and breathed.
'No; no; no,' he heard Marthe say—or thought he heard her say. The words were hardly a whisper and her head was turned away from him.
Graham sprang to his feet, steadying himself by a hand laid on her shoulder. 'Jill! Jill! Jill!' he shouted. Already he could see the boat; the lantern at the bows; the two forms straining at the oars in the racing current. And Jill answered him, crying: 'Marthe! Dick!'
He looked down at Marthe. She sat below him still, her face turned towards the boat, the kid, wrapped in the shawl, held closely to her side. 'We're to live, Marthe,' he said. 'She's come to save us. Nothing can part us now.'
She did not look up at him. She made him no reply. The water lapped up about her feet.
'Come,' he said harshly. 'Stand beside me. Help me. I can't be saved unless I lean on you. You've got to live;—for me.'
It was life Jill brought them; but what was this dark dismay lapping at his soul?
Marthe rose to her knees and he took her hand and pulled her up beside him, grasping her shoulder, fastening her to his side. Let him hold her close. Let him feel her there, against his heart. Life might be the looming menace; but he wanted Marthe.
And she was obedient. She stood steadying him, sustaining them both, for the water was sweeping now strongly over their feet and without her he could not have held himself upright. The boat was near them and the lantern illuminated the faces of the rescuers; a man's face, wary, resolute; Jill's face, golden in the light, exhausted, joyful.
'Attrappez!' called the man. He half rose, crouched and poised himself, flinging a coiled rope. Graham fell to his knees to catch it. He passed it round a corner of the cabin roof, looped it over a projecting beam and over one arm, holding Marthe round the knees with the other.
The boat shot down the stream, while the rowers struggled at the oars, and, as the rope drew taut, turned in the current with a violent jar, then slid, docile, against the roof; and, as they all drew thus near together, Jill, for one moment, raised her eyes upon the two who stood there in a deep glance of love and triumph.
'Gare à vous!' cried the man. 'Keep clear of the boat. Get in carefully.'
'Put your hand on my arm,' said Graham. Then on his. Quickly. Quickly.'
'I cannot with the kid,' said Marthe in a low voice. Take it. Put it in first.'
He controlled a rage of terror and impatience that rose in him, but she had unwrapped the kid and he took it from her.
The terrified little creature struggled in his arms and he tottered and nearly fell, saving himself by a clutch at the side of the boat. Jill held hard at her oars; the boat was righted; the kid was safe. He had tossed it in and turned again to Marthe.
She was not there.
'Marthe!' he cried, looking wildly round him.
She was not there.
'She has fallen!' shouted the boatman. 'She has gone under the boat!—Down the current!—Look!'
Jill shipped her oars and snatched the lantern from its place and held it up. 'Marthe!' she cried. 'Marthe!' and she turned the lantern on the black water, on the poplar groves, on the cliff, round on every side, while the vacant beams stretched far, far into the desolate night.
'Where is she? Let me go to her!' Graham was crying in a nightmare voice; for the boatman had seized him by the arm, and Jill had seized him. 'Let me go to her!' he cried, struggling fiercely. But they dragged him in.
'Row! Row! Row!' said Jill.
And the man rowed down under the cliff-side where the current flowed so swiftly and Jill crouched with the lantern and Graham lay insensible at the bottom of the boat.
There was no face upon the water. Marthe was not there. She had slipped—or fallen—or been swept away. The river had taken her. She was gone.