The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Epilogue
ALL Buissac, on a radiant afternoon, was gathered high above the river on the promontory road. It was at the spot where Jill Graham, two years before, had leaned on the parapet to look out over the plains and down at the island, and the scene wore again its spring-time vesture. The plains melted in azure undulations to the sky; the river flowed in silver majesty; the island was tranquil, all the ravages of the great flood mantled with compassionate green; and among the poplar groves three white cows moved, quietly grazing. Only one change there was; the unwonted stillness on the opposite shore. No women knelt at the river's edge to wash and no men fished. The sounds of the country-side had gathered themselves into one dense hive of ardent humming on the promontory road, where a memorial tablet, set into the cliff above it, was to be unveiled. It was a great day for Buissac; a day such as history is made of, on which the roots of legend flower; and since Marthe Ludérac's death, legends had rooted themselves. The soil of life in such a remote, unsophisticated community is propitious to them, and the tragic circumstances of her death, the grief that had attended it, had suddenly lifted and enshrined her shadowy, unapprehended figure.
For weeks after the catastrophe, Graham had lain at the Ecu d'Or, his life and his reason in danger, and Jill, pale and silent, had passed among the people, and wherever she was seen, with her stricken face, Marthe Ludérac was remembered. She had visited the curé when the body was recovered and made all arrangements for the funeral; she sat with the mayor and supervised the disposal of Marthe's small fortune. She was at the Manoir day and night, tending the old woman desperately dying there. Her authority was undisputed. A sense of mysterious significance and grief surrounded the dead girl with an aura. Then, when at last Graham could travel, he and she had gone, and for two years Buissac heard no more of them. But Marthe Ludérac was not forgotten. Her legend grew quietly, insistently, as lilies-of-the-valley grow underground; running ever further and throwing up at each new season fresh shoots and flowers. Excitement, elation, was felt in Buissac when it was known that Madame Graham had returned to erect a monument to her; but no surprise. She was already a presence among them.
In the cemetery, half a mile below, there were now three graves under the chestnut branches. A solitary wreath of daffodils had been laid on Madame de Lamouderie's; but Marthe Ludérac's was heaped with tinsel flowers, bead wreaths, and sacred ornaments and looked at last in keeping, it was felt, with the rest of the fine Buissac necropolis. Madame Michon might have pronounced it almost coquet when, with the others, she came to-day to lay upon it her own splendid offering, bristling with porcelain scrolls and inscriptions.
The Michons expected great things from this accession of fame to Buissac. They were enlarging the Ecu d'Or, and Madame Michon, sitting on a campstool in the shade of a large black umbrella, was graciously ready to give information to those who crowded round her. Madame Graham was staying at the Ecu d'Or, bien entendu. She was to unveil the monument and might now be expected to appear at any moment. Ce pauvre Monsieur Graham could not be with them. He had not yet recovered, Madame Michon gathered, from the effects of the terrible night when he and Madame had seen their beloved friend swept away before their eyes. But he was, at last, beginning to paint again. One saw the gladness in Madame's face when she spoke of it,—ah, she had suffered, the poor young lady; she was changed; aged. But still as charming as ever; gentille et avenante; full of thought for all her old friends. She was sending the little Germaine to a good school and Madame Jeannin had cause to bless her. But then—had it not been for Blaise Jeannin, Monsieur Graham would have perished with Mademoiselle Ludérac.
Blaise, indeed, in Sunday best, a watch-chain across his waistcoat, was a centre of interest. Many people here to-day had not seen him before and pressed round him as he recited, with the assurance of old custom, his reminiscences. He had climbed down the cliff to this very spot when his mother, on that night of disaster, had told him to follow the Monsieur anglais and help him in his search for the kid, and had seen Graham running along the flooded island. A passing motor had picked him up and brought him to the Ecu d'Or, where cries and lamentations had greeted the dreadful news he had to tell. He could recall it all. Madame Graham saying she must find a boat; Monsieur Michon telling her that it would be an act of madness to attempt to cross the broken dyke; Monsieur Prosper coming forward and asserting that he could take her. Blaise had remained at the Ecu d'Or, dozing before the fire until, hours later, Monsieur Graham had been carried in, unconscious. He had started forward then and cried: 'Et mon biquet?' And Monsieur Prosper had said: 'Ton biquet?—Eh bien, elle est morte pour ton biquet, cette pauvre demoiselle.' His biquet still remained for Blaise the central figure of the tragedy, and he could not now regret that his mother had accepted the money and he the watch; for here the watch still was and the kid would long ago have been eaten. Madame Graham had come to see them that morning and had told him that it was now a mother.
Madame Jeannin, her pale face shining with excitement, talked with an astonishing volubility. She was a very fount of tradition, for had she not known Mademoiselle Ludérac from her childhood? She could tell them what her favourite dishes had been and how she was not always sad at all but would laugh and make jokes while they did the housework together. It was with Madame Jeannin and her old grandmother that Madame de Lamouderie had taken refuge when terrible misfortunes had befallen her. Ah, yes, she was a veritable countess, pour sûr, and of a great family. La vieille bonne maman had been a nourrice in her Paris house. 'On y mangeait de bons morceaux, je vous en réponds,' said Madame Jeannin. But how they could have gone on caring for her she did not know, since all money from Paris ceased at last to come, and well did she remember the day when Mademoiselle came to their cottage and took the poor old lady to live with her—Ah, that was a devotion! When Mademoiselle was not with her, Madame la comtesse pined. She had died of grief, and it had broken one's heart to hear her moaning day and night: 'Marthe;—Marthe;—Marthe.' Only when Madame Graham sat beside her and held her hand would she be still, and in her last moments she had cried out upon Marthe Ludérac's name, as if upon a saint's, and had begged for her intercession with le bon Dieu.
There were many, also, who remembered the child leading her mother in the woods and one or two who said that they had witnessed the scene of the stoning. She had thrown herself before her mother and had looked like a martyr; with great courageous eyes and blood upon her forehead. The story of the young permissionnaire was told; Marthe had become a heroine of the great war; and people passing the Manoir at night had heard the angelic notes of her harp and now recalled the supernatural awe that had fallen upon them. One woman said that she had seen Marthe Ludérac in the forest at evening carrying a succoured animal, and that there had been an aura about her head. So the hive hummed on, storing its legendary honey.
But one figure stood apart from all the dense and eager crowd; bereft, morose, uncommunicating, an old blind dog beside him. No one spoke to Monsieur Trumier, though glances were turned on him as he stood near the veiled monument, holding Médor by a cord.
He had let the Manoir to a family from Bordeaux and lived in Buissac near his niece's family. He made no friends; he spoke to no one, occupying himself with his niece's children and Mademoiselle Ludérac's decrepit animals. He was often to be seen in the cemetery, tending her grave, or in the woods where she had walked; and sometimes he and Médor wandered for hours on the island below, where she had lost her life. A slight feeling of superstitious awe surrounded him and it was whispered among the Buissac children that whereas Mademoiselle Ludérac blessed you if you were good to animals, Monsieur Trumier, if you were cruel, could lay a malediction upon you.
When Jill's little open car appeared at last at the turning of the road, it had to come slowly, so dense had grown the crowd. People stood on the parapet of the wall to look over the heads of others and boys had climbed up into the wayside poplars and clung there to the branches. Jill was pale as she looked at them all, opening a way for her. She had not expected such a concourse.
Sitting beside her were Monsieur le curé and Mon- sieur le maire, a marvellous proximity indeed in the eyes of Buissac, and as the three were seen it was felt, more deeply perhaps than at any other time, that Madame Graham was a remarkable woman.
She was grave and very pale; but she was not wearing black; her clothes were the girlish country clothes they had always seen her wear, and when she got out and made her way among them, she paused to shake hands with Monsieur Prosper, with Blaise, with Madame Jeannin. Then she went to stand beside Monsieur Trumier, stooping to caress the head of the old dog before she looked up at him. It was seen that though she and Monsieur Trumier looked at each other, they did not speak at all.
Monsieur le curé and Monsieur le maire then took their places before the crowd.
Monsieur le curé, who was very red, told them of the filial virtues of the dead girl. She had been, he said, a very perfect example to them all, in that respect. They would all remember how terrible was the cloud of guilt that had rested upon her home and with what patience and fortitude she had tended her mother until her death, 'munie' said the curé, with something of doggedness in his tone, 'des sacrements de l'église.' He ended with an allusion to la sainte Vierge and sainte Anne that was not felt to have much relevance; and indeed the curé evidently felt so himself, for he came to an end abruptly and stepped back to make place for the maire.
Monsieur le maire spoke at much greater length and in a florid voice. He spoke of France, its glories and attractions, and of the charming young English couple who had come among them. They had loved Buissac from the first; and who would not love Buissac that knew it? And who would not love France, the chivalrous, humanitarian nation? She was a torch to all the peoples, said Monsieur le maire—striking his chest and flinging up his short, fat arm—and, as always, she led the way towards the glorious eras of liberty and progress that opened before the new generations. How France was appreciated, and in the person of a humble and unfortunate young citizen, the magnificent work of art, now to be unveiled before them by its generous donor, attested. Monsieur le curé had spoken to them of Mademoiselle Ludérac's private virtues; he had to remind them of her acts of courageous patriotism. She had succoured French soldiers during the war. She had taken them in and given them food and shelter, poor and unprotected as she was. Her virtues had been French virtues; courage, patriotism, magnanimity; and for ages to come none of those who passed along this road would fail to honour France in honouring her. So, with a quivering voice, Monsieur le maire ended, and no one who saw Madame Graham leaning back against the cliff, with folded arms and downcast eyes, would have suspected that she controlled more than once a bitter inclination to smile.
But though Jill controlled a smile, Monsieur le curé and Monsieur le maire had done what she had intended they should do. The Church and the State had recognized Marthe Ludérac. Her turn had come. She stepped forward and withdrew the veil.
The tablet, set flatly in the grey limestone, might almost have grown by natural agencies of time and weather from the cliff, so simple, so elemental was its design. The life-size profile, carved in low relief, seemed to breathe from the rock; but with another breath than that of life. Had the spirit of the dead girl yearned for a reincarnation in her loved country, her longing might thus have found fulfilment; for this strange head, bent forward as if to gaze down at the great river and out over the plains, was like an emanation of the dreaming soul, so remembering past beauty that it had emerged through the rock—and through the minds of those who had loved her—to look and listen for ever to the sights and sounds that had accompanied its pilgrimage on earth. It looked; it listened; but what was the meaning of the beauty that it saw, the secret melody it heard?
Above it, carved in the framing stone, an inscription ran: 'Marthe Ludérac:—She had compassion on all that suffers and lost her life, below this spot, while rescuing a kid from the flood.'
Beneath was a drinking-fountain, and carved round it, processionally, a file of animals, led by an archaic girlish figure carrying a kid.
The crowd gazed, silently, and in an unbroken silence listened to Jill's brief words. She told them that her husband had drawn Marthe Ludérac's head from memory and that a friend of theirs, a young French sculptor, had carved it and the fountain from his designs.
'Very few people knew her,' said Jill, and her voice, steady till now, trembled a little. 'She was very lonely. Her life was very sad. But I think it would make her happy if she could see us all here to-day and know that we all loved her, for her heart was full of love. And it would make her happy to think that because of her everyone in Buissac was kind to animals. She was a great person; though only one or two ever saw her greatness. They will never forget her; and you, I know, will not forget her; but long after we are dead, this memorial will tell people that she lived here and was loved.'
There was nothing more that she could do. She and Dick were together, as Marthe had meant, in leaving them, that they should be; and perhaps, because of Marthe, people in Buissac would be kinder to animals; as she herself would be. There would be less cruelty in the world, because of Marthe. That was all. And she must leave her now, for ever.
She stood in silence, with the rest, gazing up at the dear face; so remote; as remote as a star; yet as near as the light of the star shining upon one.
And little whispers came to her from the crowbut td as all drew near to look more closely at the memorial.
'See;—it is as if the wind were blowing back her hair.'
'She is so grave, yet she seems about to smile.'
'It is a dead face,' said one woman, for, as they looked, a sense of awe crept over them. But her companion said: 'No; it is a face in paradise.'