The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 7
WHEN the next afternoon came it brought a chill spring rain, and as Jill in her raincoat started for the Manoir, Graham joined her. It was too wet for painting.
At the kitchen door Jill paused to ask Madame Michon if the road to the Manoir past the cemetery were the only way. 'I seem to remember a little path running down from the vineyards.'
'Madame has a good memory,' said Madame Michon, drying her arms as she came forward from dish-washing. Even when engaged in the most menial tasks, Madame Michon maintained an air of panoply and conquest. Her hair was richly undulated and her bosom solidly sustained by stays that gave every advantage to the opulent curves of her figure. 'There is another way; but it is a rough climb. Do you see, at the end of the village, where the road turns up the mountain?'—Madame Michon led them to the door and pointed:—'there is a causeway built out to what we call the island. What you can see from here, with the groves of poplars, is indeed an island, for the water goes all round it; but when you come to it you will find a long stretch of meadow between it and the mainland. The people graze their cattle there, and grow their hay; it is the finest meadow in the commune. You descend to it and follow it, round the promontory, and you will find a bridge crossing the stream that flows at the foot of the cliff. From there you climb to the grande route, and from the road straight up to the vineyards. You cannot miss the path. It runs straight up from the meadow to the Manoir.'
'And who uses it? The Manoir people?' Jill asked.
'No; Monsieur Trumier brings down their grapes, at the vintage, by the road—and they have no cattle. It is used only by some poor folk who live in the cottage below the Manoir and graze their sheep and goats on the island. Indeed it is fit only for goats and Madame would do better to keep to the road.'
'No; because the road leads past the cemetery, and I don't like cemeteries,' said Jill.
'Ah, Madame is sensitive,' Madame Michon smiled. 'And it is true that cemeteries have lugubrious associations. But ours is well arranged;—on peut même dire coquet,' said Madame Michon. 'Madame has not yet visited it?'
'Yes. I've visited it. It's certainly very neat,' said Jill.—'Coquet!' she repeated, as they set out.
Graham smiled sardonically, but made no comment on Madame Michon's laudatory term.
The peninsula that ran out from the foot of the mountain had been built, they found, when they reached the end of the village, into a breakwater, half natural and half artificial. It was broad enough to allow of the passage of a hay-cart and sloped down to the rich alluvial meadow that must once have been the river bed. Two arms of the river enclosed the meadow, dividing it on one side from the cliff and on the other from the island proper, whose rocky outer shores, continuing the breakwater, followed the great sweep of the river round the promontory. Jill paused on the causeway to look at the sluices which regulated the currents.
'You see it can all be irrigated in dry weather,' she said, her country eye gratified by the promise of admirable crops. 'And this dyke is so high that I don't think any flood could ever go over it. What splendid hay they must have! How cleverly it's all contrived!'
'As well contrived as the cemetery, isn't it,' said Graham, looking up at the beetling cliff.
'Just as well. But it does them more credit.'
'I don't like contrivances. They show a bee-like brain.'
'Not a bit of it. They show new ideas. Bees do the same thing over and over. The people of Buissac can make this and the cemetery, too. There are our cows, over on the island.'
'Let's go to the island. I like the island, but I don't like the meadow,' said Graham. 'The cliff looks like a tidal wave above it.'
'We haven't time for the island to-day. We must find the bridge. I don't see it.'
'It's on the other side of the promontory, Madame Michon said.—No, it's not pleasant being down here,' Graham remarked, as they descended and went forward on the meadow. 'I feel that the tidal wave will curl over at the tip and come surging down upon us. It's a horrible thing, really, a great height above you.'
'Nonsense, Dick.—There's nothing horrible about it.—Look at the cows under the poplars if you don't want to look at the cliff.'
But Graham said: 'One can't look at cows when the cliff is there.'
They rounded the promontory and found the bridge, a mere plank and handrail, laid across the inner stream. Then, when they had crossed the bridge, it was bare cliff-side they climbed, and then, as Madame Michon had told them, they crossed the grande route, breasted the steeper ascent, and soon found themselves among the vineyards. 'And here we are on the tip of your tidal wave,' said Jill, when, at the top, they paused to look around them. From here the island was lost to view. It was only grey sky, grey river, that they saw, and the rain-dimmed hillsides opposite.
'Yes. The very tip.—And what a dismal day!' said Graham. 'A sort of end of all things.'
'A beginning of all things;—it's full of the spring. Don't you smell and feel it? The vines are budding, and we might hear a chiff-chaff at any moment. I love this sort of day; it's so soft and kind. What an old pessimist you are, Dick.'
Graham put his arm through hers. 'That's why I married you.—Come on.—What I feel now is that we'll find the old lady lying dead in the Manoir.'
'No; she's kept alive, to see you again, as you told her she would do,' said Jill.
They approached the Manoir through the vineyards and in a few moments saw the high roof and green-stained walls through the sycamore branches.
'It's happier now the leaves aren't out to hide it,' said Jill.
'All the same, it's an uncanny place,' said Graham. 'Was ever anything so still? Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.—You're like Childe Roland, Jill.'
'Well, I'll blow my horn, then,' said Jill. Graham had read 'Childe Roland' to her and she had liked it. She put her hand to the door in the wall and pushed it open; but the bell did not clang above their heads. It still hung there, they saw; but the chain was broken, so it was in silence that they approached up the mossy path.
'What a pity we're too late for the snow-drops,' Jill whispered. They've been everywhere.'
As they stood at the door debating whether to knock or ring, a young woman came in the rain round the corner of the house. She wore a black mackintosh and one hand held a black knitted shawl under her chin; the other carried an earthenware dish. She had a pale face and dark eyes and she stopped short on seeing them and stood looking at them for a moment, as an animal stops to look when confronted by an unexpected object. There was something in her gaze that made Jill think of an animal; it was so grave and so unconscious; and after the pause of contemplation she turned and disappeared as she had come.
'Can it be Mademoiselle Ludérac?' Jill whispered.
Graham did not reply at once. He was looking at the place where the young woman had been. 'I don't think so,' he then said. 'It looked like a peasant woman.' He had a curiously perplexed expression and it was curious to hear him say 'it' as if speaking of an animal; an unknown, beautiful animal that had crossed their path.
'I think we'd better knock,' said Jill, after they had stood in silence for another moment.
'What about going back?' said Dick, looking at her, still with the curious look; though he smiled.
'Going back?'
'Yes. What if Childe Roland didn't blow the horn?'
'But Dick!' Jill tried to laugh, not quite succeeding, 'are you frightened?'
'Perhaps I am. Or perhaps I'm superstitious.'
'Do you think it was a ghost?' smiled Jill, and her own lips felt a little queer.
'Well, it may have been, you know.' Graham had Highland blood and it had played him, Jill knew, a trick or two before this. She would not tolerate the mood. 'Well, we'll face it, then,' she said, and she lifted her hand with determination to the knocker.
But before she had sounded it, the door swung open. It seemed, as if her words had been a spell, to have opened of itself and even Jill's calm English blood gave an unpleasant turn. Then she saw that behind the door was Joseph.
'Entrez, Monsieur et Dame,' he said.
'But we did not ring! We did not knock! How did you know?' said Jill. In spite of Joseph her blood was not quite comfortable; he was not reassuring, somehow; older, more derelict, more disintegrated than ever. But she now saw that he wore a peasant's blouse and had on sabots clogged with mud.
'Mademoiselle saw Monsieur et Madame and told me to open,' said Joseph in his flat, impartial tones.
The explanation, when given, was self-evident. Jill and Graham stripped off their wet coats and Joseph ushered then into the salon.
There, beside a wood fire that burned brightly, sat the old lady in her bergère; fast asleep. Joseph did not announce them to his unconscious mistress. He glanced at her cursorily, and muttering, 'Mademoiselle rentrera tout-à-l'heure,' closed the door and left them.
'Poor old thing; how she'll hate being caught like this,' Jill whispered. 'Shall we sit down and wait?'
'Tout-à-l'heure is non-committal. It's not nearly tea-time yet,' said Graham. He glanced around him as he spoke; uneasily. 'I'll wake her, I think. It would startle her to wake and find us sitting here looking at her.—She'd feel as if we were ghosts.'
And still he paused and still he looked around him. 'Is that a harp? It wasn't here last autumn.'
The tall object, standing in its green baize case at the further end of the room, was certainly a harp. 'Who plays it, I wonder?' said Jill. 'No; it wasn't here. Can it be Mademoiselle Ludérac's?'
'I don't like it; whoever plays it,' said Graham. 'And there's still time to go back, Jill. We could ask Joseph not to tell the old lady, and she'd never be the wiser.'
'But Dick—leave Buissac!—How too nonsensical you are! And it's not only her; we've come to see Mademoiselle Ludérac as well.'
'I haven't come to see her,' said Graham. 'But since you'll have it so—' He went forward and laid his hand gently on Madame de Lamouderie's shoulder.
She raised her head, opened her eyes and looked up at him; fixedly; quietly. She wore no paint; nor any lace on her white hair. She was beautiful, Jill thought, watching her awaken under Graham's touch. There was something innocent, even lovely, in her look. 'Que me voulez-vous?' she said in a tranced voice.
'A cup of tea,' smiled Graham. 'And a promise that I shall paint you as the Sleeping Beauty.'
The old lady still sat leaning back in her chair, motionless; gazing at him. 'Everything you wish—everything you wish,' she murmured. 'How have you found me? I have waited long for you.'
'Clever princes always find their princesses,' said Graham; but he was troubled and cast a questioning glance on Jill, standing behind him.
She came forward to his rescue. 'It's spring, and we've come back, as we said we should,' she told the old lady, whose eyes, still tranquil from their dream, turned on her. 'Don't you remember Richard and Gillian Graham?'
The old lady looked at her with a sort of astonishment. Then she struggled suddenly to her feet. 'Dieu—Dieu—Dieu!' she uttered. 'Non! It is not possible!' She seized Jill's outstretched hands. 'Que vous êtes bons! Que vous êtes charmanis! Je ne sais pas où je suis—tellement vous me rendez heureuse!' She did not know where she was. It was evident. She held them by their hands and looked from one to the other with ecstatic eyes. 'Que vous êtes bons!' she repeated. 'You have come back! and I did not think that I should ever see you again.—It seems to me that decades have passed since you were last here;—as if you came to me from far, far away; from my youth.—Mais asseyez-vous donc; asseyez-vous;—que je vous regarde bien.'
They could see, when they had taken the chairs, one on either side of her, which her trembling hand indicated, that the poor old lady had not worn well. She looked very much older than they remembered her as looking and had something of the dreadful aspect of a waxen image galvanized suddenly to precarious life. But as they talked to her, and told her that they were to stay in Buissac for weeks—perhaps for months, the banked fires crept forth again; the smiles came, arch, provocative; the light of hope, of zest, of avidity, flickered in her great black eyes. They could note, too, that though taken unaware and somewhat dishevelled by her siesta, she was yet much neater and fresher than in the autumn. Her hair was carefully dressed in large puffs on the top of her head; the black lace fichu at her neck was gracefully knotted and a very clean handkerchief lay on the small table, with a bowl of violets beside it.
'Ah, it is too good to be believed! I can hardly understand it yet,' she said. 'That you have come; that you are to stay; that I am to see you with peace and quietness of heart.'
'Where's the parrot?' asked Graham. 'He is to go into the portrait, you know.'
'The portrait? Do you really mean to paint my portrait?'
'I've come back to Buissac to paint it.' The old lady's happiness seemed to have infected Graham and to have dispelled his clouds and, again, as she saw him smile upon her and saw her smile of adoration answer him, Jill felt the stir of trouble, of pity. It was almost as if Dick were a resplendent, careless sun-god and the old lady a hapless, rapturous Semele doomed to be shrivelled by such rays.
'But Coco is dead,' she told him. 'Can you paint me without Coco?'
'Dead? Parrots never die.'
'Ah;—Coco died, however. Yes. It is too true. And of old age, I fear; like the rest of us. Joseph found him lying on the floor of his cage one morning; cold and stiff. So it will be with me before so long.'
'Nonsense. You're not going to die in your cage,' Graham reminded her. 'You are going to die on a mountain-pass on an autumn morning, with the vineyards below you and the menacing French sky above.'
Madame de Lamouderie's eyes lighted with the rapturous recollection. 'You have not forgotten! Nor I! Nor I! Not one word of our meeting have I forgotten!—Ah, Madame, your husband is a remarkable man; you will not deny that, I know.—One has only to glance at him and one sees genius on his brow.—So it was with me that day. I saw him painting there; silent; absorbed; unaware; I looked and looked. Then I made bold to speak. I could not pass him by. One does not twice in a lifetime meet young geniuses painting by the wayside. A menacing sky? Ah, it is you who are menacing;—you and your work.—If the sky looked to me in nature as it does on your canvas, I do not know that I should care to die under it. How should I face such a sky, when I cannot face my curé!—No; I do not face him, I am such a sinner.—Once a year the poor man climbs up to hear my confession (for I tell him that I am too old to go to his church—and that is a falsehood, to begin with; but a confessional fills me with dismay);—and I tell him to place himself on a chair; so;—while I sit here; so;—my back to him. And then I tell him all my enormities;—such enormities as an ancient, caged old woman can commit;—lies, evil tempers, gluttony; envy; malice;—what you will.—And while I tell, I see the poor cure stealing glances round over his shoulder at me—to be sure that he has heard aright.—A fat, red man with a hand on each knee.—Sometimes,' said the old lady, flown with the evident success of her recital, 'I tell him sins I have not committed to see what he will do!'
'Was that the same cure that Mademoiselle Ludérac struck?' asked Jill, when they had done laughing.
Madame de Lamouderie's triumphant smile vanished and she looked at her, arrested. 'Mademoiselle Ludérac? You know her? She has already spoken with you?'
'We don't know her at all. We were only told how fond she was of animals;—you told us that, too;—and how she tried to save the curé's cat.'
The old lady still looked disconcerted as though the mention of her landlady's name had damped her spirits. 'They are not friends;—not friends at all, Marthe and the curé. But it is not fair to say she struck him. Marthe is very gentle. He hurt the cat in trying to get it from her and it was only then that she raised her hand against him.' And suddenly the old lady laughed. 'I should have liked to see his face! He is a pompous man and it was, I feel sure, a good, bold blow. He shows a forgiving spirit in coming to hear my confession after that episode. And indeed we never speak of it.'
'And aren't we to see her? Aren't we to make her acquaintance to-day?' Jill asked. 'I love animals, too; and I feel I should like Mademoiselle Ludérac.'
The old lady gazed at her, sobered once more, and Jill realized that her expression was like nothing so much as that of a child who has been asked to share a box of chocolates with a companion.
'But yes, certainly; of course you will make her acquaintance—since you will so often make me glad by coming here,' she said slowly. 'But to-day she will not, I know, be persuaded to come in. She is not at all accustomed to the world. She is very farouche; very sauvage—how do you say, very shy and timid indeed,' said the old lady, helping herself out with the English words. 'And she would not interest you, Madame, oh, not in any way. She is a simple country girl; a simple, good little bourgeoise. She does not know of any of the things that interest gens du monde, like ourselves. She does not know the world at all.'
'But I have heaps of friends who are not gens du monde,' said Jill, looking at the old lady with the thoughtfulness that was, as far as she was concerned, her nearest approach to displeasure. 'In fact I don't think I know many gens du monde at all;—except Dick's mother,' and Jill cast a glance of shared amusement upon her husband. 'She's very, very du monde; more than we always care for, isn't she, Dick?'
'Far more,' said Graham, tersely.
'And if Mademoiselle Ludérac is timid she'll have to get used to us,' Jill went on, while the old lady's eyes turned with their manifest anxiety from one to the other. 'Since we shall probably be here all spring, she'll have plenty of time. Perhaps she'll take me for some walks, in the mornings, while Dick paints you.'
The arrest in the old lady that followed these words was even more pronounced than the first had been, though Jill soon saw that they had induced relief and not dismay. 'But she will be honoured;—charmed, indeed, if you will indeed bear with her.—It will not interest you to go with her often;—that I must warn you; but once or twice; for her to show you some of our little-known points de vue;—yes; that will indeed be a treat for the excellent Marthe.—But the mornings?'—again anxiety clouded her face. 'It is in the mornings that she has all her work, here in the house, to do. And she practices her harp for hours. She rarely gets out then;—unless it is into the garden or basse-cour. And I myself am a late riser.—Must the portrait be for the morning?'
'I'd rather come in the afternoon,' Graham assured her. 'And it will only be on rainy days, for I have my landscapes to think of in fine weather.' And Jill, seeing relief dawn again on the strained old face, smiled inwardly, thinking: 'Yes; never fear—you poor old thing; you shall have him all to yourself.'
Joseph, at this point, tidied up, in his felt slippers and white tie, appeared with the tea-tray, and as he set it down on the centre table it revealed the influence of a superior and supervising hand. It was laid with a fine white cloth and besides the biscuits there was a plate of fresh pastries upon which the old lady's eye fastened with a glad avidity. 'Ah! Marthe has been baking! Here is indeed a treat for us!' she exclaimed. And then Joseph, standing at the door with his weary impartiality of demeanour, announced, before leaving: 'Mademoiselle begs to be excused from attendance at tea. She is very much occupied this afternoon.'
'Bien. Bien, Joseph. C'est bien,' the old lady repeated, dismissing the unnecessary information as quickly as possible. And pouring out their tea, she began, with her released and happy volubility, to tell them again about herself; about her salon in Paris; her sons, who had been 'garçons charmants,' but 'très, très dissipés'; her one remaining child, a princess; a Russian princess, who had had to flee before the Bolsheviks to a refuge offered by a relative in South America. 'I shall never see her again, never,' she declared. 'And when we meet it is not always happy. She is like her father; she has a violent temper and is d'un égoïsme effrayant.—I am alone in the world; quite alone. And no one cares whether I live or die.'