text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/171

 grasp an abiding answer, that he had evoked a deeper enigma. For the beauty, born of nature and spirit, itself was dumb. Beauty arose before him; but her finger was on her lips. He was no Orpheus; he lamented no lost Eurydice. He felt, he sought; but he had never seen her.

But where was his thought now leading him? Graham felt himself turn back. And, as so often in his life, it was to Jill he turned. Dear Jill. Bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh; innocent earth; earth without its enigma. He never sought, since he had never needed, Jill. She was there too completely; his child, his playmate, his companion. With Jill he was at one with nature; with all that had been happy in his childhood. That was his good fortune;—but it had nothing to do with the self beneath appearance. It was an Eurydice that self needed; the habitant of another, and a deeper world; she who knew the secrets of the grave and the secrets—must it not be so?—of Elysium; of the eternal beauty that drew life on towards a perpetual contemplation.

'But what am I thinking of now?' said Graham to himself as he saw suddenly that the sycamores of the Manoir were below him. 'In Heaven's name let me rid myself of this folly. It's as if I were bewitched,' he thought. 'And I'm not going, at this time of my life, to confuse the ewig-weibliche with the Platonic forms!' Such, indeed, had never been his tendency. The loves of his youth had been ironically transient. And now, in passing through the Manoir gate, he could shake off

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/171


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/172

 the obsessing mood of the forest and tell himself that he had come, in the most literal, most dryly professional sense, to see Mademoiselle Ludérac. Let him but once possess her face, so that he could draw it from memory, and the mood would be exorcised. And there drifted dimly through his mind the outline of an ethereal, leaning head; a shape only, featureless; yet it gazed, as if on paradise, and he saw the backward lines of its windswept hair.

Though he had come so slowly—and hours, to his apprehension, seemed to have passed since he had said good-bye to Jill—the Manoir clock was just striking eleven when Joseph let him in. He made some affable remark about the bad weather as Joseph helped him off with his coat, but, answering never a word, Joseph only bowed his head in sad assent.

Madame de Lamouderie was the first object that met his eye on entering the drawing-room. She sat in readiness, in her bergère, her lips rouged, her cheeks powdered, her mantilla on her head; and his easel was in place and the portrait was upon it. But though she was ready, she showed no sparkle. She was grave, and almost distant.

'This is terrible weather, is it not?' she said, giving him her hand. 'It is brave of you indeed to venture out.—Madame Graham is well?'

'Yes, Jill's always well.'

'You are wise to cherish her.'

'I don't cherish her!' laughed Graham. 'You might as well talk of cherishing an oak-tree!'

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/172


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/173

 'To me the simile she suggests is rather that of a rose.'

'Oh, I only spoke hygienically,' said Graham, all good-humour. 'If it comes to æsthetic analogies I can match you, I feel sure.'

'I thought that, æsthetically, Madame Graham did not interest you. I had even feared that you might look upon her only as a peach.'

Graham, at that, shot a glance at his old friend, and it conveyed a warning.

She changed the subject. 'We are all in readiness for you, you see. Marthe will be here directly. She is engaged, I think, in dusting my room. But she does not forget our hour. Ah, here she is,' and Graham, turning, saw that Mademoiselle Ludérac had entered.

She was in black, as always. It was for that, perhaps, that she had always the peasant look. All that he saw of her was that she was in black and that she bowed her head in answer to his murmured greeting.

'Have you any choice of a book?' asked Madame de Lamouderie, as he turned again to his easel, and he was aware that she observed maliciously something awkward in his demeanour. 'Marthe is ready to read us anything that we may choose.—Are you not, Marthe?'

Mademoiselle Ludérac made no reply to this question, conceiving, probably, that it required none.

'But I've nothing to do with the reading,' said Graham. 'It must be your choice. Or perhaps I may rely on Mademoiselle Ludérac to choose something

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/173


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/174

 that will absorb and delight you.' Graham looked towards the young woman.

'Ah, Marthe is my good angel, but she is not a magician,' said the old lady, who, evidently, was bent on making him feel her mood a bitter one. There is no book written that could absorb or delight me. A passing diversion; that is alone possible.—What have you, Marthe?'

Mademoiselle Ludérac was standing before a row of books set side by side on the table in the alcove. 'Shall we go on with "La Colline Inspirée"?' she inquired.

 ' Ah, non; I am weary of that Barrès! He is too intellectual.—Distinguished, but lifeless. I like people, not localities; it is always localities, or theories, he gives us.'

Graham saw that Mademoiselle Ludérac slightly smiled. The old lady's humour did not flourish in an unappreciative atmosphere.

'The new François Mauriac?'

'Ah, ''non, par exemple! ' '' Madame de Lamouderie rejected the suggestion with even more emphasis. 'He is indeed of a dreariness, that young man!—He is like hot dust in the mouth. One imagines that one has found a tale of passion, of flesh and blood, and lo, before one knows where one is, all is tombs and dust and penitence! I do not relish these young Catholics.—I am indeed a ''diable dans leur bénitier! ' '' the old lady laughed grimly; adding, 'Have you a volume of Maupassant?'

'Not much penitence, perhaps, but no lack of dust in

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/174


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/175

 him,' Graham remarked, sitting down before his work and aware that though his eyes were on it he did not see it. His thought was not behind his eyes. It was fixed on Mademoiselle Ludérac, standing at the other end of the room before the table; and at the blurred edge of his field of vision a tall blackness was her form and a narrow slip of white her hand, hanging against her skirt—'Always her hands!' thought Graham.

'But Maupassant is not dreary,' the old lady was saying, and it was reassuring to know that she could not guess that he was really looking at Mademoiselle Ludérac. 'Horrible, often; and amusing, to the extreme, but never dreary; and never, never edifying. What I most dislike is the attempt, surreptitiously, as it were, to edify.—Still, if you dislike him?'

'Oh, I don't dislike him. Only, are we not over with him a long time since?'

'You said the other day that you would like to hear "Dominique" again,' Mademoiselle Ludérac spoke and turned her head to glance at Madame de Lamouderie.

'Monsieur Graham will say that we are over with him even a longer time since!' Madame de Lamouderie replied.

'I've never read "Dominique, said Graham. 'But it provides you, surely, with no salt or spice.'

'You must not take me au pied de la lettre, Monsieur,' rejoined the old lady with her stately bitterness. 'My spices and salts would seem very insipid to your young palate!'—and once again she laughed, very grimly.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/175


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/176

 Graham, in spite of his devouring preoccupation, was amused by her ill-humour and, as his eyes now met hers, they showed so infectious a spark of mirth that, helplessly, Madame de Lamouderie smiled back at him.

'Do let us have "Dominique, he said.

'Let us have "Dominique," Marthe,' the old lady echoed.

Mademoiselle Ludérac, her book in her hand, passed behind Graham to seat herself at the window and as she went a low thud-thud from the hearth drew his attention to the old dog lying there, the black-and-white dog that he and Jill had seen on their first visit to the Manoir. He was of a nondescript breed, half spaniel, half retriever, with a broad silky head, laid flatly on his paws, and large dim eyes which followed Mademoiselle Ludérac to her place and dwelt upon her with devout, contented passion. He evidently could still see his adored mistress and she must have made some answering gesture of love, for the contentment deepened and again the tail thudded heavily.

'What a charming dog!' said Graham, mixing his grisaille on his palette.

'He is Marthe's dog,' said the old lady. 'She has had him for many years. She is, as you may observe, the centre of his life; but to me he is very kind when we are alone together in the winter, n'est-ce-pas, Médor?' and the old lady smiled at the dog, who, without moving his head, turned his eyes on her and once more, gently, thudded his tail, though with a lessened emphasis.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/176


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/177

 'Médor? He couldn't be anything but Médor, could he?—Is he one of Mademoiselle Ludérac's rescued animals?' Graham inquired. It was odd to speak of her as if she were not present. But it would, he felt, be even more odd to speak to her.

'Yes. She rescued him. He was tied up, day and night, at a farm. She used to go and see him; and sit with him. It touched the people's hearts, perhaps. At all events, Médor was sold to Marthe.'

Médor, hearing that he attracted so much attention, could remain passive no longer and, with a low, blissful grumbling, he rose and went slowly and stiffly across to where his mistress sat.

 ' Là, mon cher; là, mon bon chien, '  Graham heard her whispering, while she fondled Médor's head.  ' Couche-toi;—sois tranquil. You will not be as comfortable as by the fire.'

At this Graham got up, took the hearth-rug and laid it beside Mademoiselle Ludérac.—'So that Médor can be happy body and soul,' he commented and, not looking at him, her eyes on Médor, she murmured, '' ' Vous êtes trop aimable. ' ''

'Well, now that Médor is settled, shall we read?' said Madame de Lamouderie who had observed this little scene with not unsympathetic eyes.

Graham sat down again at his easel and behind him Mademoiselle Ludérac raised her book and began to read. Her voice was calm and clear. The slow, silver rhythms of 'Dominique' circled through his consciousness and made him think of Gluck's Elysian fields. It

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/177


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/178

 was emotion not even recollected in tranquillity; or did not the slow pulse of memory beat softly beneath the current, presaging resuscitation? Half hypnotized, he listened, and met the ambiguous stare of the mournful old owl perched there before him. He held himself steady before Madame de Lamouderie. His mind was watchful and the alertness served his work. Steadily, accurately, his hand obeyed the bidding of his will.

'And now you may rest and we may talk,' he said at the end of a half-hour. Mademoiselle Ludérac rose and said that she would take ten minutes for her lamps. Médor followed her out of the room, and Graham and his old friend were left alone together.

Madame de Lamouderie showed no change of expression. She turned her eyes on the weather and remarked that they would soon be threatened by floods if the rain continued.

'I should like to see a flood, with corpses,' Graham smiled at her, leaning back and stretching his arms.

'Ah,' the old lady continued to gaze out of the window. 'You see life, I am aware, as a banquet for yourself. Other people's tragedies are your stimulants.'

'No, no; not at all,' Graham gently laughed. 'I am like you. I enjoy drama, I enjoy being in drama; not only observing it.'

This made her look at him. 'Yes, you enjoy drama,' she repeated, eyeing him. 'Whether that is like me!

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/178


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/179

 do not know. You enjoy danger. You enjoy playing with fire.'

'True.' Graham, his hands now locked behind his head, nodded at her. 'Fire is a delicious element.'

'I have seen a great deal of life,' the old lady went on, after they had contemplated each other for a moment. 'I have known a great many men, and I may tell you that those who play with fire always burn their fingers.'

'As mine are now being burned by you, you mean?' Graham cheerfully inquired. 'I gladly pay the price. The game is worth the candle.'

'I do not burn you,' the old lady continued, ignoring his levity. 'I do not even freeze you. I am your friend. I merely offer you a little cold water.'

'But why? I'm not fire!' laughed Graham. 'You mustn't judge me by all those ardent princes and diplomats of your youth! I'm an essentially stolid Britisher.' But he was not at ease. There was in the old lady's unexpected impersonality a note of genuineness that disturbed him.

'Stolid! Oh, no; you are not stolid!' Madame de Lamouderie returned with open mockery. 'Nor are you a mystic visionary. It is not the apparition of a Saint Cecilia you wait for, a Saint Cecilia among the pots and pans and dusters!—You are fire; and if you choose to run underground, do not imagine that I do not detect you!'

Graham kept his countenance with difficulty, for he was indeed confounded. 'You know,' he warned her,

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/179


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/180

 trying to maintain a rallying tone, 'if you won't be the kind of Goya I want you to be, you'll have to be another kind. Interesting, too; very; but not nearly so pleasing from your point of view, I'm sure. You are delightful in this mood, perfectly delightful; to me. But you won't be delighted with your portrait when you see what I shall have to make of you.'

'Make of me what you will, Monsieur. I am at your service. The sinner, by all means, after the saint.—I do not care for saints. Des gens forts louches; that is what I suspect them of being.—Shall we go on with our work?—Marthe!' called the old lady.

'But it's a jocund sinner I want; not a tragic one,' said Graham, and he smiled at her. 'Come, come;—we are friends, as you say. You are not going to be a menacing sky to me;—not a Cassandra; but my merry Sphinx of the hillside.'

A dim smile passed across her features at that. 'Ah, the poor old Sphinx! She was never merry.'

'She was. She is. And sphinxes are more to my taste than saints. You know that.'

'Do I know it? What do you really mean, you ambiguous young man?'

'Just as much as you do.'

'It is the Sphinx who should speak in riddles; not you.'

'The Sphinx should not ask questions, then. Come; shall we really get to work?'

'By all means.—Marthe!—She does not come.' But as she spoke Mademoiselle Ludérac entered.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/180


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/181

 'What do you think of my sketch, Mademoiselle?' Graham asked, without hesitation, as she passed behind his chair. To speak to her in this easy tone was to demonstrate to the old lady that he was not running underground.

She paused there, behind him. Solitudes; solitudes where violets grew; the breath of lonely woods seemed wafted to him from her presence.

'Do I look a cheerful or a tragic sinner, Marthe?' the old lady inquired.

Mademoiselle Ludérac considered. The portrait is very interesting, but it does not flatter you, 'she said.

'And why should it flatter me? Monsieur Graham is no flatterer. Do you like it? That is the point.'

'I do not like the smile.—But the eyes I like, very much.'

'Are they eyes that, in youth, could have stirred men's hearts? Can you tell me that?'

Graham saw that Mademoiselle Ludérac smiled at her old friend over his head.  ' Mais oui, mais oui, '  she answered, 'and much more besides.'

'I ask for no more,' said the old lady.

'And what is wrong with the smile?' asked Graham.

'The moment of arrest that always followed any direct approach he ventured upon made itself felt; but Mademoiselle Ludérac found a full reply—'If it could be the smile she gave to Médor?'

'Ah, but she isn't looking at Médor, you must remember; she is looking at me,' said Graham. 'I

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/181


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/182

 should ask nothing better than that she should look at me as she looks at Médor!'

'Médor has no secrets!' the old lady rejoined and the sparkle of challenge shot from her eyes as they met his smile. 'Imitate Médor, and you shall be looked at as he is looked at!' She challenged him; but she was mollified, if ever so little.

Graham then painted, Mademoiselle Ludérac read, and, outside, the desperate day dashed itself against the window-panes. On his rug Médor, with a drowsy sigh, stretched himself to deeper slumbers, and presently Graham saw that the great eyes before him were closing. Tick-tock, he heard the old clock in the hall. The silver rhythms of Dominique flowed on; but Madame de Lamouderie had fallen asleep.

Graham continued to paint for a little while. He touched soft pallor on the folded hands and drew a line of rose along the tips. Then his hand was still. The reading paused; continued, paused again, and then ceased. Silence flowed around them. All the world was sleeping. 'Now I can turn and look at her,' thought Graham.

But another thought inhibited an impulse that had almost accomplished itself. How intolerable—for him, and for Mademoiselle Ludérac—how destructive of his position at the Manoir, if the old lady's eyes should open and find him so engaged. No; he could not risk it. His frame was taut with the strain of his repression, and a curious contraction tightened the muscles of the arm that held his palette; but he

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/182


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/183

 did not dare to turn. Behind him Mademoiselle Ludérac neither spoke nor moved. Médor slept, and Madame de Lamouderie slept; the clock ticked, loudly; softly; and it seemed suddenly to Graham that the silence was filled by a complicity of control. Did not she also wish him to look at her?

Madame de Lamouderie opened her eyes. She gazed at Graham for a moment, in astonishment; then, swiftly, over at Mademoiselle Ludérac. Her expression took on a sudden calm. 'Have I slept?' she inquired.

'For at least five minutes,' said Graham.

'It seems an hour to me. I am refreshed. And you, what have you done?'

'I've stared at you, and at my picture. Mademoiselle Ludérac, I suppose,' and, deliberately, Graham turned in his chair and looked at her, 'has stared at the rain.'

'Yes,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, and now, as her dark eyes rested upon him, he attempted to turn his desire at its very source, to refrain from the quest and concentrate his faculty in a cold, devouring intentness, so that her features should at last be stamped ineffaceably upon his brain. For one sliding instant he saw her; saw the long oval of her face; the clear, wide spaces in which her eyes were set, the rosy mauve that shaped her lips; but it was only for an instant. The vision slipped from him; the sharp flame burnt him; he saw her face no longer, but only felt a presence, pale, piteous, darkly preoccupied, yet still resisting; a presence that in this new guise had come nearer than

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/183


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/184

 ever before; so near that when her eyes removed themselves from his—and with a self-command at which he marvelled—it was as if from an actual contact.

 ' Bien. I shall not again transgress.'

He had almost forgotten Madame de Lamouderie, and from the blandness of her tone he could measure the degree of Mademoiselle Ludérac's self-command. She had sustained the old lady's scrutiny through a moment that would not have left his pulses pounding as they were had it not brought to her, also, some revelation. He had felt that piteousness in her because of all that was required of her in self-command. She feared him; she greatly feared him. To Madame de Lamouderie she had showed only calm; but to him she had betrayed her fear.

'I had pleasant dreams; very pleasant,' the old lady went on, as he took up his palette. 'I was walking in the garden of my childhood and Médor was by my side. I wore a broad straw hat tied with blue ribbons and Médor carried in his mouth a basket of strawberries. Continue, therefore, your tragic portrait. I am all at your service.'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/184


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/185

ILL had spent the morning at the Ecu d'Or, writing letters. They had taken a small salon, au premier, sparsely furnished with a carved centre-table, two red velvet chairs, a velvet sofa, and three bronzes on the mantelpiece; two of them vases encrusted with flowers and between these a galloping horse, a clock set in its chest, and on its back a rider clothed only in a turbulent scarf.

The day was so cold and so dreary that Jill had had a fire lighted and it was before the fire that Graham found her, stretched on the sofa, a cigarette between her lips; and, turning her head to look round at him, she said, 'Well?'

Graham came and stood at the head of the sofa. She could not see him as he stood there above her.

'What kind of time did you have?' she asked.

'The old lady was very cross with me,' said Graham after a moment.

'Of course she was,' said Jill.

'But I enjoyed her,' said Graham. 'She's such a clever old scoundrel.'

'Of course she is.—Not such a scoundrel, either. She's merely very human. And I'm sorry for her,' said Jill. 'It must be so bewildering to see you transfer

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/185


text: Author:Lucy Elizabeth Georgina Whitmore

title: Author:Lucy Elizabeth Georgina Whitmore


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/186

 your attention to someone else; just when she was having the time of her life with you.—Did Marthe Ludérac read?'

'Naturally. The old lady wouldn't have been cross if she hadn't read.'

'But I somehow thought she'd have prevented it; circumvented you by some trick or plan.'

'She'd have liked to, of course; only she was afraid of losing me altogether if she did,' Graham analysed the old lady's dilemma.

'Oh, it is too bad, you know. You're bound to her more than ever now;—I hope you realize that;—and to let her see she's not to lose you.'

'Ah, well, that will still depend on her; on her behaviour,' laughed Graham, enjoying, apparently, the gross complacency of his own attitude. But Jill felt something else under the complacency. He still stood above her.

'Did you get a talk with Marthe?' she now inquired.

'A talk? How should I?'

'Well, I suppose you couldn't, since the old lady was there. And after all,' said Jill, 'you didn't expect to talk to her, did you? All you expected was to look at her.'

'Well, I didn't look at her, either. She sat behind me.—How long to lunch?' he asked.

The bronze horseman stood, disconcertingly, above five o'clock.

'Only fifteen minutes, I think.—What an awful day!' Jill glanced at the windows.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/186


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/187

 'I shall have another walk this afternoon, all the same. I'm feeling a little liverish.'

'I don't think I'll go out. I'm feeling as if I'd caught a cold.'

'I don't wonder.' Graham now walked over to the window and looked out.

Jill, in the silence that followed, was asking herself whether she was really frightened. Dick and she were together. Together. Nothing was hidden between them. Why this strange breathlessness? Was it Dick who was frightened?—She steadied her nerves. It was like drawing at a rein.

Suddenly Graham came back, and sat down beside her and put his head on her shoulder. Jill's heart stood still.

'What would you feel about clearing out of all this, Jill?' he said.

'All this?'

'Yes. Buissac.'

'Are you tired of Buissac?'

'Yes, I think I am. Tired of the old woman. And tired of the young one.—They get on my nerves.'

It was Dick's superstition then. Only that. They must not yield to superstition; though a real fear it might be well to yield to. 'But the portrait?' said Jill.

'I'll chuck it.'

'It seems so cruel to chuck her.'

'I don't mind being cruel.'

'And all those pictures you've started. Don't you mind leaving them?'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/187


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/188

 'Yes, I mind, in a way. But what do you feel about it all?' Dick muttered.

It was difficult to know what she felt, with Dick's dear head pressed against her neck, his arm holding her across her breast. But Dick was not caressing her. He was taking refuge with her. And she, too, was afraid of Buissac now. She hated being afraid. She hated to yield to fear.

'What I feel is what you feel,' she said slowly, trying to think. 'I mean—it's all for you, of course, the places we stay at. If you want to go, so do I. What is there to keep us, if you really want to go?'

But as she spoke she knew that there was something that did keep her. Was it only her superstition, as against Dick's? Her white magic against his black mood? Marthe Ludérac kept her. She and Marthe Ludérac had something to do for each other. Was that only superstition? But it seemed like running away, it seemed like cowardice, to turn one's back not only on Marthe Ludérac's celestial secret, but on her tragedy.

Dick kept his face pressed into her shoulder. He was waiting for an answer.

'Have your walk first,' she found. 'Lunch will make a difference, too, perhaps. Don't forget that it's nothing new, Dick. You wanted to run away the other day, before—' She had been going to say, 'before you had seen Marthe Ludérac,' but she changed it to—'before you'd begun the portrait. If you run away now, I mean, it might become a habit!' and Jill tried

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/188


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/189

 to make her voice very light as she found this admonition. 'And it would be such an inconvenient habit. Think it over, by yourself, first, Dick. And then, if you really want to go, we will go.'

Graham felt that she was saying: 'Steady, old boy; steady.'

When after lunch, he had gone out into the rain—and they did not speak again of the decision she thus left to him—Jill lay down on the sofa. She had a headache. She did not want to read. A wood fire on a wet spring day was a pleasant thing to look at and she lay and looked at it.

Suddenly the door opened and Amélie's head, in uncouth fashion, appeared round it while her moist red hand held it ajar.

'' ' Mademoiselle Ludérac demande à voir Madame. ' ''

Jill sat up. An electric shock seemed to pass through her; a mingling of reluctance and delight.

Amélie thoughtfully surveyed her. 'I shall tell her that Madame is occupied?'

'No, no—of course not.—Tell her to come up,' said Jill. She rose to her feet. This was the solution, then. She could not decide. Dick could not decide. Marthe Ludérac would decide for them whether they were to stay on in Buissac.—'But what nonsense,' said Jill to herself. 'I shall soon become as dotty as poor Dick.'

She stood looking towards the door which Amélie had left ajar, and in a moment it was pushed softly open and Marthe Ludérac stood before her. She wore

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/189


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/190

 the black raincoat in which Jill had first seen her and a small black hat which made her face look strangely young. Her expression, too, was young. Everybody was frightened to-day. Marthe Ludérac was frightened.

'Oh, how wet you are!' Jill started forward after the involuntary pause in which they had contemplated each other. 'You are dripping wet!—Let me take this.'

Mademoiselle Ludérac, in an unresisting silence, submitted to her help. 'Sit down here, beside me,' said Jill; but, looking unseeingly around her, she took a chair at the table and Jill sank down again on the sofa opposite her.

'I wished to see you alone. I must speak with you,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac in a fixed, firm manner. 'I saw that your husband was gone.—Is it for long? Shall we be uninterrupted?'

'Yes, he's gone. He'll be gone for a long time. What is it? Has anything happened to trouble you?' asked Jill, and her voice trembled a little.

'No, nothing has happened. Nothing new has happened to trouble me.—It is you who trouble me,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, putting her hands, clasped together, on the table before her and fixing her eyes upon them. 'There is something you should know. I did not think I should have to speak of it. Not to another soul have I ever spoken of my life. But last night it came to me that you must know; for I cannot defend myself against you.' She checked herself. Her

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/190


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/191

 voice, too, was trembling. For a moment she sat silent, while Jill, motionless, gazed at her. Then she said, and her voice was firm again: 'It is this. My mother was a murderess.'

Jill, transfixed, gazed upon her.

'She killed my father,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac, not raising her eyes from her knotted hands. 'It was what is called a crime passionnel. He loved another woman and she killed him and tried to kill herself.'

Jill sat and gazed upon the black, resolute figure; the pale, fixed face. As the meaning of the knife-like words came fully to her understanding, she saw that Mademoiselle Ludérac had come to cut herself away; to set herself apart again. It was severance she had come to ensure. And it was true that the sense of awe that descended upon Jill had in it an abyss-like element; as though the gulf of suffering revealed in the words did indeed divide them.

'Madame de Lamouderie told me that your mother was mad,' she said. This was all that she could find to say at first.

'I asked her what she had told you. It was kind of her to say no more; very kind,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac.

'She was so dreadfully sorry, of course. But I wish she could have told me everything. It would have spared you this,' said Jill. 'When you asked her, she could have told you that I knew. Then you need never have spoken about it, unless you felt you wanted to.'

At this Mademoiselle Ludérac sat silent, looking

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/191


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/192

 fixedly at her hands. She sat for some moments; then she rose. That is all. I will go now. You have been good to me. You will believe in my gratitude.'

Jill also rose and confronted her. 'But what do you think you have done? Do you think that I shall care for you the less because your mother killed your father?'

Across the table, arrested, with the glance, almost, of a trapped creature, Mademoiselle Ludérac met her eyes. It was what she had thought; or feared; or hoped;—for she seemed trapped rather than released. And, turning her eyes away, she murmured, darkly: 'You must not try to be my friend; I cannot have a friend. It is not a happy thing for you that you should have come to Buissac.'

'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.' It floated through Jill's mind; and with it Dick's face as she had seen it a little while before. It had not been a happy thing for Dick. Dick's intuition had been right. There was a dark tower; and Mademoiselle Ludérac had been shut into it since childhood. All the more reason to break down the doors, and let her out.

'But you see I am your friend,' she said, and tears came to her eyes. 'You can't get rid of me. You don't know what a friend is. You've lived so long shut up by yourself in the dark that you are afraid of the daylight. Friends do not love you the less because you've been unhappy. They love you the more. You may not care about me,' said Jill, while her voice trembled, 'but I shall care for you always.'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/192


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/193

 It may have been because she saw her tears and they weakened her too much, or it may have been with an overwhelming sense of woe, but Mademoiselle Ludérac sank down on her chair beside the table and leaned her face upon her hands. She said nothing. She made no sound. Jill did not think that she was crying. Perhaps she was thinking; thinking intently behind this last rampart. Jill, after a moment, came and sat down beside her.

'Let me tell you. It's so strange. I feel as if we were meant to meet, long ago. I've thought and thought about you and your mother. You've both been real to me since I saw her grave last autumn, with your roses on it. When Madame de Lamouderie told me about you, how she had first met you both in the woods, and how you led her—and loved her—it seemed to break my heart. I saw her portrait last night and it brought you both still nearer. It's just as if I'd known that little girl. You can't keep me away. You must let me share it with you. Nobody, since she's gone, has ever cared for you as I do.'

Marthe Ludérac was weeping now. No sob shook her. They were not passionate tears; but Jill saw them falling, falling, slowly, between her hands; and leaning closely to her she put her arms around her and drew her head upon her shoulder and murmured: 'Oh—my dear, dear Marthe!'

Marthe Ludérac lay on her shoulder and wept. 'Thank Heaven for this,' Jill was thinking. 'Thank Heaven we did not leave Buissac before this happened.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/193


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/194

 She can never be so lonely again, now. Even if I have to leave her, she will know that I am there, and that I know, and love her.' And a beautiful sense of happiness, deeper, more beautiful, perhaps, than any she had ever felt, filled Jill's heart.

'No, there is no one like you,' she heard Marthe Ludérac say at last.

'Tell me about it. Don't you want to? Wouldn't it help? It's so dreadful to keep things to oneself always.'

A long time seemed to have passed, and as Jill questioned her thus, so gently, Marthe Ludérac took her hand and pressed it for a moment against her wet cheek, repeating. 'There is no one like you.'

'Will you tell me?' said Jill. 'Was she really mad? Or was that only what people thought.'

'No, she was not mad.' Helplessly, before Jill's tenderness, Marthe Ludérac suffered herself to be led forth, and her look, almost of astonishment, was indeed the look of one who can hardly believe in daylight. Wan with her tears, weak, gentle, she leaned on her hand and kept her eyes on Jill. 'Sometimes, the injury to her head gave her such pain that she became unconscious—or fell into a frenzy; but she was not really mad. That people thought her so was well for us; it gave us shelter.'

'But it kept people from you, dear Marthe.'

'But that was well. It was a veil, a cloak.—What could we have done with people?' said Marthe Ludérac in her weak, gentle voice.

'It must have been so lonely, so horribly lonely,'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/194


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/195

 Jill murmured. 'Had you no one?—no one at all? Were there no relations to care what became of her and you?'

'No one at all. My grandmother, the one who lived here, died of grief, before my mother's trial came on. My father had lost his parents; two old aunts of his would have taken me, but they were my mother's enemies.'

'And you were so poor,' Jill mused on her. 'How did you manage all those years? You could not work then.'

'My mother had her little fortune; it almost all went to pay the expenses of her defence; but there was a little left.'

Jill wondered how she should question further; but Marthe Ludérac, after the pause which followed her last words, continued to speak. 'It was un crime passionnel, '  she said. 'There were extenuating circumstances. That was why she was set at liberty. And to see her, half dying, appear before them, with her bandaged head; that, too, softened their hearts.'

'You were there? At her trial?'

'I was a witness.'

'But you were so young—'

'I had seen it all,' said Marthe Ludérac. 'Yes; I was young, but I think that from the beginning I had understood it all. Joseph and I, and the young woman's husband, were the chief witnesses.'

She needed no questioning. Jill saw that she would tell her everything. For the first time in her life she

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/195


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/196

 was speaking, without fear, openly, to another soul. She did not look at Jill. Her eyes, fixed on the window, reflected the grey, melancholy day; her words fell like the rain, softly and steadily; the sorrow of her voice was hushed to contemplation. 'My mother was always unhappy,' she said. That was the first thing I understood. The very nursery songs she sang to me came to me with the sense of melancholy. She was always afraid. She loved him so much;—and he was only kind to her. There was not a time that I can see, in looking back, when I did not know that her heart was breaking.'

'Oh, wasn't it all your dreadful way of getting married?' Jill murmured. 'Wasn't it a mariage de convenance? People don't expect love in marriage, so they have to find it somewhere else. I wonder tragedies don't happen oftener.'

Marthe Ludérac paused to consider this. 'Do they indeed happen more often with us than with the people who marry for love?' She considered and she put it away. 'I do not know. It is true that their marriage was arranged for them; by their mothers, who had been friends at school. But it had seemed a happy arrangement. My father, though he had no personal fortune, was a brilliant young scientist; his position was excellent; he was steady, devoted, serious. Had my mother loved him less, and had the other woman not come into their lives, they might have been happy. But it was not like that. It was a passion with her. She longed always for the love that he gave, at once,

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/196


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/197

 helplessly, to the other woman. I was only twelve when the other came. But I knew what was happening.'

'Who was she? Do you remember her? Is she still alive?'

'Do I remember her? I can see her now, as plainly as I see you—with her smiling face and little fur cap and collar up there on that great terrace you spoke of, above the cathedral, in Angoulême. It was so I first saw her; on a winter day, when I was walking with my father. Yes. She is still alive. Is it not strange, when they have been dead for so long? But she was not to blame,' said Marthe Ludérac. 'She was helpless, too.'

'But she was to blame!' said Jill indignantly. 'She took another woman's husband away from her.'

Again Marthe Ludérac paused and considered. 'She did not take him. He took her. He was full of charm and power. She was very young; the young wife, married from her convent, of an old man; our neighbour; a friend of my father's father. How can one blame her? I saw how she struggled and resisted. For a long year her resistance lasted. He struggled too. By nature he was a loyal man. I saw it all,' Marthe Ludérac repeated.

'And your mother—did she not see?'

'At first, nothing. It was her happiest year. Can you understand that? He was more loving to her through all that year than he had ever been. She was his refuge. I understood it well. It was because he was so full of

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/197


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/198

 fear—and of pity—that he clung to her with his passionate, agonized tenderness.'

Something shot into Jill's heart at that; not a thought, not even a recollection. It was only a trail of sharpness; a flickering light on the horizon; a far, shrill cry. Marthe Ludérac spoke on and held her mind.

'I was so young; but I knew when the struggle ceased. Not as a woman would know; but the essential; that my father was unfaithful; that they were lovers. I was terrified. I must have understood, instinctively, the dark forces in my mother's nature, and to what extremes they might carry her. I loved my father dearly; perhaps I loved him more than I loved her; but it was for her sake that I helped him to blind her still; a childish, half-conscious complicity. I was always there between them. One night, I remember, I pretended to be very ill—so that he should not leave her. But if she did not know, it was because she would not let herself. At the end everyone knew—Joseph, the friends who came to the house. I saw it in their faces. My father and his mistress must have seen it, too. Their hearts, too, must have been full of fear.'

Marthe Ludérac raised her hands and held them before her face and looked at them for a moment; then she bowed her forehead upon them. 'My father's mistress became enceinte. I did not understand what had happened to her, but I knew that she was desperate. I met her once, in the garden of the house. Their apartment was in the same house as ours. It was early spring, but very warm. She was walking under the

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/198


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/199

 trees in a pink dress. She must have seen the grief and pity in my face, for she took me by the hand and we walked up and down together, saying not a word. She was in despair. I knew it. It was soon after that, perhaps a few mornings after, that she came to see my father. She did not ask for my mother. She asked only to see my father. I was in the room opposite and saw Joseph let her into my father's bureau. I knew that she should not have come. I knew that there was danger. Joseph knew it, too. He stood and looked at me as if he would have asked me to do something; and then he went away, leaving me there. I was standing looking at the closed door when my mother came down the passage, very quickly as though she had been called. She did not ask me a question. She stopped short and fixed her eyes on my face, and then without one word she went into the bureau and shut the door. She found them in each other's arms. My father kept his pistols in a case on the bookshelves, next the door. She took the weapon and fired at my father and turned the second bullet against herself. All over the house the shots were heard. Then I went in and saw them.'

'Oh, no;—oh, no—' Jill muttered. She, too, hid her face.

'My father lay there, dead,' said Marthe Ludérac. 'His mistress knelt beside him. She wore the pink dress and when she staggered up all the front was covered with his blood. My mother was lying on a chair near the door. She was moaning, and half her face seemed shot away. That was how I found them.'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/199


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/200

 'What did you do?' Jill whispered.

'I held my mother. I called. There was no need to call. Everybody was running to us. Everybody had heard. The room at once was full of people. Joseph and his wife were there; and the old husband—crying—crying.—He took his wife away. He was tender to her; he is a good old man.—And the doctor and the police. They carried my mother to her room. I went with them. They always let me stay with her. They felt that I should be calm, and that they could trust me. From the first,' said Marthe Ludérac, and she put down her hands and turned her eyes on Jill, 'strength was given to me.'

Jill sat silent. The sense of awe, of distance, crept over her again. Her young, jocund face had a strained, strange look.

'I distress you too much,' said Marthe Ludérac, considering her gently. 'And now you have heard all my story.'

'No, no;—not all. I want to hear it to the end,' Jill said faintly, again putting her hand on Marthe Ludérac's. 'I want to hear how you and she lived here, when you brought her back. I want to hear what you did for all those years. You were not quite alone? You had Joseph. I did not know that Joseph was your servant.'

'Yes. He came from Buissac, with my mother, when she married. He has always been in my life, good Joseph. We could give them no money, but he and his wife, who was living then, followed us and took

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/200


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/201

 care of us. I do not know what would have become of us without them. All their little savings they spent in our service.'

'I thought he was Madame de Lamouderie's servant. But go on, dear Marthe. Your mother taught you the harp, you told me. She was well enough to teach you.'

'Yes; she was often well enough for that. It was her great solace. And as I grew older I could be more of a companion for her. I read to her. We walked a great deal in the woods; on the mountains; down on the island. The island was a favourite walk of hers; that is one reason why I love it so.—I was always with her; day and night. She could not bear to be left alone for one moment. The terror was always lying in wait for her, but, together, we could keep it at bay. At night we slept in the same bed and I held her in my arms till she could sleep. The terror came much nearer at night. Rest was difficult for her. She often wept and there was the frenzy to fear when she yielded to her grief. I used to sing to her; old songs—Sur le pont d'Avignon, Les Filles de La Rochelle—and she would at last fall asleep. Yes,' Marthe Ludérac repeated, now with a strange, stern calm, 'strength was given tome. We even had many happy hours together.'

This, then, was the celestial, thought Jill. She felt herself bathed in its terrible beauty.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/201


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/202

MUST go now,' said Marthe Ludérac. For a long time they had sat side by side, silent, and pressing Jill's hand, with a deep sigh, she released it and rose.

'Yes, you must go,' said Jill vaguely. 'May I call you Marthe?'

'Will you?'

'I think of you as Marthe—and you must call me Jill.'

'Jill,' said Marthe Ludérac gently, looking into her eyes. She pronounced the word with a soft French g. 'Jill,' she repeated. 'My friend.'

Jill nodded, smiling faintly. 'That's it. You've got it at last. It seems a long time, doesn't it? Though it was only the other day we met.'

'Yes. It seems a long time. I did not know then that there were people in the world like you,' said Marthe Ludérac, still gently considering her.

'And what are we going to do?' said Jill. 'That's what I want to ask you. What's going to become of the friends? How can I go away and leave you?'

'But'—Marthe Ludérac, her eyes so deeply, so gently considering her, hesitated—'when your husband's work is finished, you will go? Is not that so?'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/202


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/203

 'Yes. And perhaps even before.' Jill stood looking down. 'Does it mean that we are to part?'

'I think it must mean that.'

Jill brooded, and Marthe Ludérac looked at her. Presently, timidly she said—and Jill felt that she had been seeking consolation for them both—'It is not something lost, Jill. It is something gained, is it not? I never thought to have what you have given me. But it is mine, now, and it will be with me to the end.'

'Yes; but life is day after day,' Jill muttered. 'It's every day, over and over again, that one needs bread. You are so lonely. So terribly lonely.'

'No; not so lonely.' Marthe Ludérac spoke in quiet protest. 'There is Madame de Lamouderie; there is Joseph; there are my dear animals. Our femme de ménage, Madame Jeannin, lives in the hut below the Manoir and I am fond of her and often see her and her little boy. And there is my work in Bordeaux, full of interest. And my music, best of all. I practise my music for hours and hours, every day, Jill. Mine is not an empty life.'

'You may be able to bear it for yourself,' said Jill, 'but I can hardly bear it for you.'

'But you must not make me think,' said Marthe Ludérac, taking her hand again and slightly shaking it as she recalled her earlier warning, 'that it is an unhappy thing for you to have come to Buissac. If you go, feeling so sorrowful, that would indeed be hard for me to bear. No, Jill, no; it is something gained.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/203


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/204

 And our lives could not run in the same channel. Do not be sad.'

'I'm afraid I am, though. Very sad,' said Jill. She held Marthe Ludérac's hand and they moved towards the door. She was wondering whether she should ever see her again. What would Marthe feel if she were to tell her that she and Dick might leave Buissac next morning? 'But no,' she said to herself, 'Dick will be all right again when he comes in from his walk.'

They had gone together to the door, and, pausing there, Marthe still seemed to defer the farewell. She glanced at Jill and her face altered. 'There is one more thing I would speak of with you,' she said, and Jill saw that she nerved herself.

'Yes? What is it, Marthe?'

'It is something I wish to ask.' Standing there, her eyes on Jill's, her face resumed the look it had worn on first entering.

'But of course you may ask anything.'

'It is this. Only a little thing.' She tried to speak calmly, but her voice was shallow, breathless. 'Will your husband, please, not come in the mornings when Tread? Will you ask him? It is a little thing. He will grant it to you. Madame de Lamouderie has so few joys. It grieves me to see her happiness in being with your husband spoiled for her.'

It seemed, indeed, a little thing, but Jill stood there, astonished; she did not know what to say. 'But—he thought it would be more cheerful for her—to listen

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/204


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/205

 to you while he paints.—He gets so absorbed when he paints.' It was not the truth. The colour came into her face as she said it.

'It does not make her cheerful,' said Marthe Ludérac quickly. 'It makes her very unhappy. Very angry, too—very angry with me, though she tries to hide it.'

'But what have you to do with it!' What had she to do with it? As Jill heard her own unguarded question the blood mounted hotly in her cheeks.

'I am in the way. She is very much discomposed. She does not know what to do,' Mademoiselle Ludérac murmured, and, as if the warmth of Jill's flush had touched her own pale cheeks, the faint, intense colour rose to them. 'It is as if a toy had been given to a child, and then withdrawn from it. It is not kind to treat her so! Not kind!' said Marthe with a sudden startling vehemence.

'He doesn't mean to be unkind.' All sorts of thoughts were racing through Jill's mind. Why not tell Marthe, boldly, that Dick went up to see her? But at the mere thought of such an avowal her flush deepened. 'He is full of caprices, you know. All artists are, I suppose; and he probably felt that he could work more peacefully—more happily, if there was reading going on.—But of course I'll tell him. He won't dream of going when you are there when he knows it gives you pain.'

She had not helped her friend. She had, indeed, for a moment, reduced her to speechlessness. She stood

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/205


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/206

 there gazing, the faint colour fixed in her cheek, and she murmured hurriedly, putting her hand on the door, as if with an impulse of escape: 'But it must not be for me!'

'No; no—of course not!' It would be intolerable to part thus, Jill felt. She would say anything to reassure her; to bring her back. 'I'll make it quite all right;—I promise you. Is she really angry with you, poor old thing? What a shame, though. And how horrid for you. It's stopped raining, Marthe. What if I came with you and saw her now? It might cheer her up.'

This, at last, was a happy thought. The distress on Marthe Ludérac's face melted to gratitude. 'Will you? It is not too late? It would be the greatest joy to her.'

'Of course it's not too late. It's not nearly tea-time yet.'

It took but a moment for Jill to equip herself. 'I live with one foot out of doors always,' she said, smiling, as she took up cap, coat, and stick from the chair where she had last tossed them. 'I'm very untidy, you see. But it saves time. It's everything to be able to get out at once, isn't it?'

'It is.' Marthe Ludérac, watching her, smiled irrepressibly.

'That's what it comes to,' Jill thought, as they went downstairs. 'She's afraid of Dick, and he's afraid of her. How absurd it is. But now things will go better.'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/206


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/207

 The day was chill and sullen. The wind had dropped and the river ran, not turbulently, but in vast, heaving eddies, like molten steel. The brooding sky was pierced, far away, over the plains, beyond the jut of cliff, by one sharp lance of light. Jill glanced at Marthe as she went beside her. Her face, with its wide, forward gaze, was fixed before her. She moved swiftly, with a long, light step. One saw her, set in such a landscape, oddly dominating it. She made Jill think of the passionate château, and of the patient church. She seemed an historic, no, a symbolic figure, striding lightly, swiftly across the French centuries, with a message for all time. But here they were, she and Jill, in their own small place, and there was a corner to turn, a difficulty to evade, to forget, if possible. The old lady had offered an escape.

'When did Madame de Lamouderie come to live with you?' Jill asked. They had gone in silence along the village highway and now, following the grande route, were on the ascent.

'After my mother's death,' said Marthe. Jill saw that she, too, found relief with the old lady. 'We met through Médor. She is very fond of animals, you know. She used to stop me and pat his head and I felt that she was sorry for me. She was living very sadly, very poorly, in that hut below the Manoir I told you of. The old grandmother, who is dead now, used to be a house-maid in her family. I was free then to seek work, and my home was there, empty for half the year. So it seemed natural that

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/207


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/208

 two unfortunate people should make a common foyer. It is sad that I have to leave her for all those winter months. But Joseph, whom I leave with her, is absolutely to be trusted. I can pay him a wage now, the good old man. And I have left the Manoir to him, since I have no family. That is a recompense to him for all his years of devotion. If I outlive him, it will go to his relations in Buissac.'

Jill was recollecting Madame de Lamouderie's references, long ago, to 'My landlady: my housekeeper,' and an old distaste and irony brushed across her charitable mood. She was simply vulgar, the poor old countess. She had felt a bourgeoise landlady to be a more decorative adjunct than a bourgeoise friend.

'Do you know anything of her life, and why she came to live here?' she asked.

Marthe Ludérac, considering for a moment, turned her eyes then on Jill with a slight smile. 'She has told me a great deal, but I do not feel that I know much. She had misfortunes; terrible misfortunes; that is evident. Her husband was involved in financial difficulties and I fear that he committed suicide. But I do not know. I have never questioned her. She prefers not to be questioned. And when one is as old as that a mist comes easily, I think, in which one can wrap oneself; with which one can shut out the past. That she had fallen into destitution, even misery, was but too plainly to be seen from the state in which I found her. Yet she was always beautiful, you know,' said Marthe, again smiling. 'Always, even, bien mise.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/208


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/209

 A great distinction has survived everything, has it not?'

'Yes. She is beautiful; and distinguished, in spite of everything,' mused Jill. The 'everything' to which she referred, however, was not destitution or misfortune. The old lady was a person to whom one would forgive much. She wondered how much she had given Mademoiselle Ludérac to forgive.

Joseph opened to them at the Manoir.  ' Du thé, Joseph,' said Marthe Ludérac. A stranger might have said that she spoke very tersely to the old man. But Jill was no longer a stranger. It was because affection was so secure that the tone was so short. Joseph's reply revealed as much.

'Mademoiselle will not drink tea herself.'

'Well, what of that? Madame will drink it, and Madame la comtesse.'

'It is not wholesome, so much tea. Moreover, the milk has not yet come,' grumbled the old man.

'But there is milk still left from this morning!' cried Marthe, and her capacity for sudden vehemence was touching and amusing.

'Only a half cup. The animals have had the rest.'

'That is quite sufficient. A half cup is all that will be necessary.—And the petits beurres.—Allons, allons, Joseph. Do not stand there arguing. Let the tea be ready at half-past four.'

'Since Mademoiselle does not drink it herself, I have no more to say,' Joseph replied with an air of

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/209


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/210

 grim concession, and Marthe laughed: '' ' A la bonne heure! ' ''

'You know, I really ought to get back to Buissac, to give Dick his tea,' said Jill when Joseph had departed. 'He may be in by then.'

'But it is hardly half-past three now. It would grieve Madame de Lamouderie if you did not have a cup of tea with her. I will tell Joseph to bring it at four.—And I will leave you now to be with her.'

'But—I'll see you again—before I go?'

The menace of immediate departure from Buissac had not yet lifted and Jill's voice must have struck Marthe as unreasonably fearful; for suddenly, warmed perhaps to an unaccustomed gaiety by the encounter with Joseph, she smiled, fondly, radiantly, upon her. 'Yes, you will see me again.' It was as if Jill had released all her imprisoned girlhood. 'I will wait for you here, when you come out. Of course, you will see me!' she said.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/210


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/211

ILL on entering the drawing-room was at once aware, though the light was failing, of the gloomy, resentful gaze that the old lady fixed upon her. It was evidently Marthe who was expected, and her welcome would have been a chill one. When her advancing figure disclosed its identity, the change of expression on Madame de Lamouderie's face was almost ludicrous. Jill pressed her back into her chair as, impeded by the rug wrapped round her knees, she tried to struggle to her feet.

'No, no, don't get up,' she said, laughing. 'I've just come for a little chat.—I'll sit here. This will do beautifully.—It's such a dismal day. I wanted to hear some of your wonderful stories.'

'Ah—this is what it is to have a friend!—This is what it is to have a true friend!' said Madame de Lamouderie in tones of almost vindictive assertion. 'No one cares for me but you! I am abandoned by all the rest!'

'No, you're not,' Jill retorted, smiling upon her. 'I've just walked up with Mademoiselle Ludérac. She hasn't abandoned you, for one. And since it's probably going to go on raining, I expect you'll see Dick again to-morrow afternoon.'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/211


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/212

 These two pieces of information left the old lady gaping and, for the moment, at a loss.

'To-morrow afternoon? It is in the mornings that he has now elected to come.' She had seized, at all events, the happy implication.

'Well, I'm afraid he didn't find his plan succeeded. He didn't find you more cheerful when you were being read to, though he did find you most awfully amusing and witty.'

'Witty? He found me witty? ''Tant mieux! ' '' The old lady, though aware of a change of fortune, spoke bitterly. 'He did not find me changed, that is certain. And why should he? I see Marthe day after day, month after month. I have no need to see more of her. It was him I wanted to see. And he knows it!'

'Well, it's all right now,' said Jill soothingly, though she was a little taken aback.

'Ah; is it indeed all right?' said the old lady. 'So you may say; and we shall see.—And what had Marthe to do with you that you came up together?' she added with a change of tone.

Jill considered her for a moment. Would one be able to go on being sorry for her, she wondered. This might be but the fretfulness of a sulky, froward child; but it might be something more unpleasant. There was a hint of peremptoriness in her question that she did not at all relish.

'Mademoiselle Ludérac came to see me,' she said, looking very gravely at her. 'She came to tell me the story of her life. She wanted me to know.'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/212


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/213

 Madame de Lamouderie as she heard these words showed an altered countenance. They sobered her. She was drawn outside the consideration of her own griefs. 'She told you?'

'Yes. About her father and her mother.'

'Why did she tell you?' said Madame de Lamouderie after a moment.

'She felt that I was fond of her and ought to know.'

Madame de Lamouderie looked into the fire. 'I should not have told you had I been she. I should tell nobody of such a thing.'

'Not even a friend? It seems to me just what one would tell to a friend.'

'No.' The old lady shook her head. 'Not even to a friend. What is a friend? What does Marthe know of you? Such avowals put one at a disadvantage.'

'A disadvantage? I don't understand you.'

'Our sorrows are always disadvantages to us,' said Madame de Lamouderie, and as she gazed into the smouldering fire she looked like a sibyl, old, wise, and sinister, drawn in black and silver on the failing day. They count against us with the world. They make us of so much less value and consequence.'

'Perhaps that was what Mademoiselle Ludérac thought. Perhaps that was why she felt I ought to know—lest I should think her of more consequence than she was!' Jill spoke with her measured gravity, though the form of her words was ironic. 'She can't think so now. It may be true of the world, what you say; but it's not true of decent people.'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/213


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/214

 'The world is made up of what you call decent people—''des gens fort honnêtes. ' '' Madame de Lamouderie could match Jill in gravity. It was a new aspect of herself she showed her as she sat there, brooding, with lowered eyes. 'Put them together, and they become a herd; and a herd is the cruellest thing in nature. It scents out weakness. It hunts it down and tramples on it. All sorrow is a weakness and weakness is the one thing one must not show the world if one wishes to keep one's skin whole and one's bones unbroken.' An extraordinary bitterness infused her voice.

'You and I could never treat Mademoiselle Ludérac like that, however many people you added to us,' said Jill. Madame de Lamouderie did not frighten her. The aspect of life she put before her was so alien to her apprehension that she felt it strange rather than dismaying. 'We'd protect her if the herd tried to trample her. We'd never trample too.'

'Ah, I do not know. I do not know,' the old lady repeated, not raising her eyes. 'Nor do you, ma petite. Human nature is a singular thing; and you are very ignorant of it, let me tell you. We all fear the herd. We all fear to oppose its impulses, lest we be victims.—Fear; ambition; jealousy;—which of us, to gain what we crave, or to avoid what we dread, would not take advantage of the disinherited creature? Marthe Ludérac has, through her misfortunes, been disinherited. No one will know her. No one will marry her.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/214


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/215

 She has withered on the branch of life. Better that she should not draw attention to herself.'

Jill sat opposite the grim old creature. Her happy, tilted lips, her smiling eyes, were strangely hardened as she tried to think out a way of escape from these problems that she saw, for the first time, as menacing, yet that her heart so deeply contradicted. Unconsciously, as she pondered, she unknotted her silk scarf and threw it back over her shoulder, and the old lady, observing the gesture, raised her eyes and examined her, with a cold, profound scrutiny. Jill did not see it. Her eyes were on the fire.

'No; it's not true—' she said at last. 'It's not true, when people love each other. People do love each other. They do, often, sacrifice themselves for the sake of love. Even in Marthe's case, I don't believe they meant to be so cruel. It just happened so.'

'It would so happen—to the daughter of a murderess.'

'Her mother wasn't a common murderess. It was a pitiful crime. I expect lots of people were dreadfully sorry for her.'

'Ah, I do not blame her mother.' The old lady was terse indeed to-day.

'Well, I blame her. I'm dreadfully sorry for her; but I blame her. You ought not to kill your husband—even if he has been unfaithful to you!'

'Ought not!' Madame de Lamouderie laughed. 'Such "oughts" are straws in a conflagration when jealousy flames. It is precisely as I was telling you

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/215


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/216

 just now. We do not know ourselves till temptation comes. Madame Ludérac could not have known that she was capable of murder until she saw her rival in her husband's arms.'

'I suppose not. No, of course she couldn't.—But there must have been something wrong about her all the same. It was so senseless, so vindictive of her, wasn't it? What I mean,' Jill pondered, her eyes on the fire, 'is that she didn't really love him enough.'

'Not enough! You do not know what you are saying! Not enough! It was because she loved him too well!'

'Not in the way I mean. If she had loved him in the way I mean, she would have been able to understand a little;—and even be sorry for him, however miserable he had made her.'

'Sorry for him! Par exemple! No, in such a case I can see myself take up the pistol! But I should have shot his mistress first! And I am one who can love, let me tell you!'

Jill looked up at that. The great devouring eyes were on her and made her think of an astronomical photograph she had once seen; the dark disc of the sun with flames flickering round it. She could not interpret their gaze, but had she been of a timid and retreating nature she would have shrunk from it. Jill, however, was not disposed at any time to turn back before a five-barred gate.

'If you killed them, it wouldn't be because you loved so much, but because you didn't love enough,'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/216


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/217

 she said, considering her opponent. 'If being in love was her excuse for killing him, then it was his excuse, too. He couldn't help it if he loved somebody else.'

'He could not help it!—And she could not help it! Well and good! So be it! But let us hear no more of blame and who was right and wrong!' cried the old lady. 'There is no right and wrong in such a case, to those who are composed of flesh and blood and not of eau sucrée. You do not know what love is. You have never felt passion. You are a child—a simple child! That has been made very plain to me more than once—for where there is no jealousy there is no passion.—These are dark themes, and since you do not understand them—or yourself—we will talk no more of them,' said Madame de Lamouderie, in such commanding tones that Jill gazed at her in astonishment. Not only was Madame de Lamouderie commanding her; but with a sub-flavour of insolence. She evidently believed her to be composed of eau sucrée. She was herself one of the people—Jill saw it in a flash of insight—who, in her ambiguous past, had scented out and trampled on weakness. Well, she had miscalculated her victim in this case.

Jill was not angry. She was displeased. She reflected for a moment and then rose. 'No; we won't talk about it any more. And it's time for me to go now. Good-bye,' she said.

It was almost pitiful, but almost repulsive, too, to see how quickly Madame de Lamouderie could crumble. Dismay withered her face; horror widened

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/217


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/218

 her eyes; her hands grasped the arms of her chair on either side. 'But you will not leave me like this? I have hardly seen you. You have talked of nothing but Marthe. Have you no longer any feeling for anyone but Marthe?' she cried. 'Do not go, not yet! I implore of you!'

'But, you know, I think you were rather rude,' said Jill, standing there above her with her hands in her pockets. 'I don't like people to be rude to me.'

'Rude to you! My angel! No! It would be impossible! It was carelessly that I spoke.' Madame de Lamouderie put out her hand and laid it on Jill's dress. 'It was not of you I was thinking. . . You are my ideal of all that is wise and enchanting in womanhood!—No; I am an unfortunate and embittered old woman, battered by the storms of life. You will not be so unkind as to punish me for my bad temper!'

'Of course I don't want to punish you—or anyone,' Jill said, and as Joseph at that moment entered with the tea-tray, she sank down again into her chair, murmuring, 'Only a few moments then, because I really must get back to Dick.'

'Tea?' said the old lady. Her cheek was darkly flushed. She turned her eyes on Joseph and spoke in a haggard voice. 'It is too early for tea. Five o'clock is the proper time, as I have had occasion to tell you before.'

'Mademoiselle ordered it for four,' said Joseph, unmoved, setting down the tray.

'It's quite right. I told her I couldn't stay, and she

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/218


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/219

 said she'd have it sent in at four,' Jill explained. 'She knows you like to give me tea.'

'She is thoughtful. She is considerate. She is my good angel,' said the old lady, still disarrayed, watching Joseph leave the room.

'She really is, you've hit the mark this time,' said Jill, laughing a little despite herself. 'You know it's very wrong of you to talk about being abandoned when you have her to care for you.'

'Do not lecture me! Do not preach to me! I cannot bear it! I can bear no more to-day!' cried the old lady. Her relief at having bridged the chasm that had threatened was so great that a shaft of archness shot into her glance, giving it the cajoling charm of a naughty, impenitent child's. 'Everything has gone against me to-day—to begin with your husband! He has a hard heart, that man! He is a bright, destructive Lucifer! Yes; I assert it! Even Marthe was unkind to me at lunch. She is not a saint, Marthe;—oh, no. You do not know how severely she can speak sometimes;—and with a gloomy brow. If you, too, go against me, take me au pied de la lettre, there will be nothing left for me to do but to cast myself down into the river from the precipice! And I warn you, you calm young Englishwoman, that I am sometimes near doing it! In old age the blood becomes cold and sluggish; the old cling torpidly to life. But I am not like the others. My blood can still rebel. You would not like to have the death of an old Frenchwoman—even of such a wicked, foolish old woman—on your conscience, would you?'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/219


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/220

 She had succeeded. She was making Jill laugh. She was happy, almost happy, in her triumph, if only for the fleeting moment.

'I suppose you are wicked,' said Jill. 'But you are certainly very charming. I can't get really angry with you.'

'Ah, that is what I like to hear! Let me be charming to you and I care not how wicked you may think me!—not even if you think me more wicked than I am! That may be so, you know. I may make myself out worse than the reality. Perhaps I am not really a murderess!'

'Oh, I don't mind your being a murderess—not one bit!' Jill assured her. 'It's not that sort of thing I mind.'

'Did I call you simple? Just now? When you were so displeased with me? You are simple; I repeat it. But you are also very shrewd, very wise and shrewd, my dear young friend. You are as well aware as the most sophisticated misanthrope that it is the large crimes of which we prefer to be thought capable, rather than the small, mean ones;—the crimes of the individual, not the crimes of the herd;—eh?'

'Yes. I suppose it's that,' Jill smiled, stirring her tea, for while she had listened to Madame de Lamouderie she had poured out tea for them both. The old lady had forgotten it in her absorption. 'It's nice, I suppose, to feel oneself a tiger, rather than a sheep.'

'Precisely. Think of me as a tigress. A lonely, sad old tigress, tamed by you,' said Madame de Lamouderie.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/220


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/221

ARTHE LUDERAC had kept her promise. She was waiting for Jill in the hall. The garden door stood open behind her and the pale light of the fading afternoon was spread about her form. Her face still wore its look of radiancy, and Jill, as she saw her, realized that if the day to her had been strange and wonderful, to Marthe Ludérac it must have been even more so. There was a lovely freshness, as of resurrection, about her.

She raised one finger to her lips and whispered: 'You have worked the miracle. I heard that.'

'It almost needed a miracle,' Jill whispered back. Now that she looked at Marthe standing in her radiance, she felt suddenly as if she had escaped from darkness; as if darkness hung about her and was dispelled only by Marthe. The old lady had disturbed her, profoundly disturbed her. She was aware of this as she had not been while she was with her. It seemed to come to her from the sense of contrast. Marthe's radiance lifted her above the realms of darkness; but they were there, behind her, within her, even;—for did she not feel the deep, fang-like ache of an unseen wound? 'May I come with you into the garden for a moment?' she said.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/221


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/222

 'Yes. Let us walk there. It is so beautiful there now,' said Marthe Ludérac.

Time, embalmed time, was with them in the garden. The past walked with them, Marthe's past, her mother's long dead past. These were the very flowers, Jill thought as they went, that her mother's young eyes had looked at. Nothing in the garden had been changed since the young Marthe Jacquard had walked there. A mother-of-pearl sky was above their heads and along the paths the gnarled old apple-trees were full of thick, pale leaf-buds. A pear-tree was already in flower and on its topmost branch a thrush was singing. The sense of tears, and fear, and joy, were strangely mingled in Jill's mood. She walked along the mossy paths, her arm passed within Marthe's. She felt that Marthe was very happy. Her happiness was part of the joy and fear.

'Tell me,' said Jill, looking at her, and wondering at the beauty of her face, 'is Madame de Lamouderie often very cross with you? Horrid, I mean?'

'Horrid? Why should you think so? Has she been disagreeable to you?' Marthe smiled in asking it as though they must not take the old lady seriously.

'No; not exactly disagreeable. She can be so charming, can't she? I can't help being fond of her myself, sometimes. But she can be horrid, too. You must be very fond of her indeed to go on with her year after ear.'

'I think I am very fond of her,' said Marthe, after a moment, and more gravely.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/222


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/223

 'But not exactly for herself, Marthe, is it? Isn't it really because she needs you so? Isn't it more because you're sorry for her?—As if she were a wounded cat? A cat who had been chased by the boys?'

'Yes, perhaps it is really like that.' Marthe's thoughtful eyes dwelt on her. 'A poor, old, wounded cat. How could one not be fond of it?'

'And what if it were to bite your hand?' Jill pondered, looking down. Tiger or cat? The trivial, exasperated creature; or the dangerous beast, crouching there in darkness, ready to spring upon a scented weakness? Could one take Madame de Lamouderie quite lightly?—and put her in her place with a sharp cuff on the ear? 'What if it were to bite your hand?' she repeated. 'Just when you were stroking it and believing it was really loving you?'

Marthe Ludérac was grave now. Jill knew that, though she did not look up at her. And she was not surprised. She knew too well, no doubt, of what her cat was capable. 'One would not blame it,' she said.

'Wouldn't one? A cat that bites the hand that helps it? I should blame it—and feel like putting it out of the door!'

'I do not blame easily,' said Marthe Ludérac after a pause. 'I am myself often very irritable and ill-tempered. I have a hot temper, Jill;—did you guess that? I, too, can be disagreeable. Sometimes I fear for myself when I remember what I inherit.' She paused again. 'If you found her difficult just now, it

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/223


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/224

 was in part my fault. I was very harsh and short with her to-day.'

'She deserved harshness and shortness;—I'll answer for it!'

'Perhaps she did. One need not apportion blame. We will not pick my old friend to pieces, Jill. Do you know'—she looked round into Jill's face—'I often feel that to speak ill of people is to take some of their life from them. You know what I mean?—To recognize, with another, a person's faults, is as if one took some of his life away.'

'Yes.' Jill was doubtful. 'But there are faults.'

'What is a fault? What are her faults? Are we not all the same? Do we not all crave love?—To be loved most? It seems to me that we are all one in that;—all life one torrent of longing, rushing in the same bed; and what we call faults in one another are the rocks and impediments against which we dash ourselves. Do you not think of it like that? I think so much alone that I do not know whether I seem eccentric in what I say.'

Marthe's face, turned so gently, so ardently upon her, against the pearly sky, was as lovely as the pear-blossoms.

'I've never thought about anything of that sort at all,' Jill said, meditating. 'A torrent? That makes us quite helpless, doesn't it? Isn't there another side to us? The side that chooses which way it will go?'

'Yes; yes'—with her ardour, her gentleness, Marthe Ludérac nodded—'but that other side we can

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/224


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/225

 only find when we have seen that we are one. It is a mystery. Until we can see that we are one, we remain mere torrent, conditioned by the bed and by the impediments. We are only selves, only free selves, when we have seen that we are one. Then we cannot blame. We can only try to take the rock away.'

'I suppose you are very religious. It all sounds like religion,' Jill murmured, rather helplessly. 'I'm afraid I'm not a bit religious. Though I've been confirmed, of course, and go to church when I'm at home, and all that sort of thing.'

'Religious? No, I am not religious. My family have never been pratiquants. My father was a free-thinker and her church meant little to my mother,' said Marthe Ludérac. 'Perhaps if I had been taught more of religion in my childhood, I should not have had to think for myself things that are quite familiar to religious people.—But I am keeping you, Jill. It is so strange to have someone to whom I can speak my thoughts that I am forgetting. You must go back to Buissac.'

'Yes, I'm afraid I must. Can we meet somewhere to-morrow? I want you to go on telling me about the torrent.—Would it make one feel kinder to oneself, as well as to other people, if one thought of oneself as a torrent? Aren't we inclined to be too kind already?'

'Not more kind,' Marthe smiled, shaking her head. 'More tolerant, perhaps; less frightened. And it is all to the good not to be frightened, do you not think so,

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/225


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/226

 Jill?—One looks quietly at some black thought or feeling that comes to one, and one can say:—Do not be disturbed; this is the torrent. While you can look at it and recognize it for what it is, it will not carry you away.—But you have no black thoughts, Jill.'

'Oh, haven't I, just! Little do you know me! I feel a perfect worm sometimes! Nicer to be a torrent than a worm! Where shall I see you to-morrow, Marthe?'

'Shall we meet on the island?' Marthe looked fondly at her, holding her by the hand. That poor woman, of whom I told you, is in bed with rheumatism, and I take her goat and kid down to the meadow every afternoon for her and bring them up again. The thickets of hawthorn and alder are what the mother goat loves.'

'Oh, that would be heavenly! I love that island. I shall always see you as I first did there, walking under the poplars with your cat in your arms—a much safer sort of cat, Marthe; though it isn't nearly so charming and amusing as the other one, I admit!—No;—I won't be uncharitable! Are you fond of watching birds? There were some lovely wagtails, the grey and yellow sort, when I was there that day. I never saw so many together before.'

'The bergeronnettes? Yes, I often see them. They have a note like the sound of water lapping on the stones. I am very fond of them; but there are many birds I know by sight and by their song, whose names I do not know.'

'I know all our English birds, but some of your

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/226


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/227

 French warblers are new to me. The chiff-chaff is singing already; that makes me feel so at home. In England he seems to belong to us.'

'They are little rain-coloured birds, the fauvettes, are they not? My mother loved them best of all and said that some of their notes were like the harp. You will have to teach me their names, Jill.'

As they talked they had come round the corner of the house and before them the grove of tall sycamores made a roof of breaking green on a golden sky.

'There's a chiff-chaff singing now—silly little darling,' said Jill;—'and, oh, there's a willow-warbler;—listen, Marthe. Isn't he lovely? Yes; it is just like a harp, a far-away harp, rippling down like that!'

Jill had stopped to listen, and Marthe Ludérac scanned her uplifted face.

'You, too, love birds so much?' she said, when the willow-warbler had sung his wistful, joyful, lonely, descending scale.

'Oh—I care more for them—looking at them, listening to them—than for anything!' cried Jill.

'Even more than for hunting the fox?' Mademoiselle Ludérac questioned, smiling gently.

'Oh—what a shame!' Jill exclaimed. 'Oh, that's too bad, Marthe!—No; I feel you'll never really forgive me!'

But Marthe Ludérac took her hand, as she had done while she told her story that afternoon, and put it against her cheek for a moment, saying, 'In time, I know, this dear heart will be kind to everything.'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/227


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/228

 It had been the loveliest ending to the day, yet Jill, as she sped down the stony road in the twilight of the forest, felt the tears rising again and again to her eyes. This dazed, heavy, submerged sensation had oppressed her when Dick had come to her, and all the afternoon she had been aware of an almost feverish susceptibility. But even if she had caught cold, even if she were feverish, Dick, Marthe, and the old lady had all been too much for her. She wanted to lie down and cry, not so much for the tragedy and grimness of which she had partaken as for the memory of the gentle, lovely things: the song of the willow-warbler; Marthe's face of resurrection as she had held her hand against her cheek. It almost frightened her to know how completely her longing was now fulfilled; to know that Marthe Ludérac was so completely her friend. It laid a responsibility upon her for which, at the moment, she seemed to feel herself too weak. And under everything was the ache of the fang-like, unseen wound.

On the lower road the river, flooded over its grassy margins and risen high against its wall, made a deep roar beside her as she went. The sky behind her was golden, but before her a roof of dark cloud was lifted over a band of cold, intense rose colour. How long it seemed since she had seen Dick! And what was she to say to him? It seemed to her, as she climbed the stair at the Ecu d'Or that she could not find the strength or control to tell him of all that had happened to her since they had met. But when she saw him there, sitting in the gloomy evening light of their

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/228


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/229

 little room, and saw that his eyes were large with fatigue and anxiety, she knew that she could not rest until she had shared all with Dick. She had always wanted to share Marthe Ludérac with him; had always wanted him to see her as she saw her; but that he should share and see was now part of that new sense of responsibility that had come to her:—Dick and Marthe must see each other. She owed it to them both that they should see each other. What basis could there be for her friendship with Marthe unless Dick shared it?

'My darling child—where have you been!' said Graham. He came to her and put his arms around her and she sank on the sofa beside him, and laid her head on his shoulder and suddenly began to cry. And such a strange foolish little thing came first. 'Oh, Dick—I'm so afraid you'll be displeased with me!—If we stay—if you've decided to stay—please say you won't go up in the mornings, when Marthe reads!'

'What do you mean, my dearest?—Displeased with you? Why should I be?' Poor Dick was really frightened by her plight.

But she could not stop herself from sobbing on. 'She's unhappy about it;—because you made the old lady so miserable.—And I promised her, too, that I'd meet her on the island to-morrow.—Only, if we have to go—'

Dick was perfectly still—for one moment; only one. Then he said, very firmly, very rationally: 'But, Jill, what's the matter? You're ill, my dear. Your

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/229


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/230

 hand is hot. Of course we will stay as long as you want to.—All that nonsense is over,' said Dick, with a strange, hard note in his voice.

'May we really? Really, Dick?—I'm upset, that is the truth of it.—No; I'm not ill; I may have caught a little cold, but I'm not ill. But I've been through a lot. And I'm awfully afraid I shall go on crying when I tell you about Marthe and her mother.—We are friends, now, Dick. She has told me everything. She cares for me as much, I think, as I care for her. And she's never had a friend before.'

'But not now. Don't tell me anything now. Let me put you to bed first, and have a good night's rest. Let's forget all about Mademoiselle Ludérac until to-morrow morning.'

But Jill could not bear that. She knew that she could not sleep until she had told Dick. And she drew herself up a little, though she still leaned on his shoulder, and dried her eyes to show him that she was calm, and then it all came; incoherently enough, yet clearly, too, to Graham sitting there, holding her; clearly, sharply, even dryly, so it seemed to him, in his great fatigue; like a series of etchings that Jill placed before him: Marthe Ludérac watching her father and his mistress; Marthe Ludérac coming into the room where her father lay dead; Marthe Ludérac holding her distraught mother through the nights and singing old songs to her so that she should sleep. It was with a remote sense of pain that he listened; detached and dispassionate he felt himself to be. It was, so he told

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/230


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/231

 himself, of Jill that he was thinking; his dear Jill, involved in the darkness that Marthe Ludérac cast about her; the perplexity; the strain. Jill, afraid she had displeased him; Jill upset like this; her soft hair against his cheek; her hot hand in his. Was it not true, all the same, that they had better go to-morrow? If it could be for Jill's sake, not his own, that they were to go, what relief, what balm, would there not be in such an evasion! So his thought accompanied her story, cold, dry, yet agitated. And all the time the sense of strain was there; as if he were pressing against a shut door, a door insecurely shut, for which he found no lock; and from within which he felt the strength of an answering, hostile pressure. But he could count on his own strength.

He did not question Jill once; he made no comment on what she told. When she had finished, he sat silent; for so long that Jill turned her face on his shoulder and looked up at him and he knew at once that she expected to see tears in his eyes so that he said, hastily: 'Do you know what I'm going to do with you? Put you to bed and give you some aspirin and send for the doctor. You are evidently ill.'

'I should like to go to bed,' said Jill absently. She leaned her head back again. 'I don't want a doctor.—But I haven't told you yet about the old lady. She was very strange.'

'I don't want to hear about her. I don't want to hear any more about either of them. We've had our fill of horrors.'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/231


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/232

 'Oh—but it wasn't horrors, Dick.—That's just what it wasn't. Because Marthe was there, shining through everything.'

Graham stood up and drew her to her feet. 'Come on. To bed with you. They've given you a fever, between them.'

'No; I remember now; I must have caught his cold from that disgusting boy who dined next us two nights ago.' Jill went obediently with Graham up the stair. 'Don't you remember him;—the dark boy with dirty nails, who sneezed and blew his nose—or didn't blow it—all through dinner?'

'Yes. Damn him! I remember,' said Dick.

Next morning it was evident that Jill had the influenza. The local doctor was called in after lunch and pronounced upon her case. Warmth, quiet, nourishing food. There must be no question of leaving Buissac for a fortnight and he would come in and see Madame every day. Monsieur, no doubt, would not regret the enforced stay, for he had observed him often with his easel. He himself was something of an amateur and always made a point of going to the Salon, if it was open, when he was in Paris. Monsieur and Madame knew Paris? Well? It went without saying. Paris was the capital of the world.

He chattered until Graham became impatient. It was rarely that he had a case so interesting. Jill was charming with her russet locks tossed and the rose-coloured bow on her breast. She was sorry for the poor man, and amused by him and looked at him very

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/232


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/233

 kindly. He was long-jointed, dry, apprehensive, like a cicada, with prominent pale eyes behind great glasses. He sat, a hand on each thin knee, and talked eagerly of politics to the charming English pair. He assured them that all over France the Royalists were plotting for a return of the Bourbons. It behoved every true son of the Republic to be on his guard. Unfortunately for the Republic one could trust not one of her politicians. Monsieur le docteur Magnolles had the lowest opinion of them all. When at last he took himself off, Jill said that she would go to sleep.

'I'll stay with you, quietly, reading here,' said Graham. The sun was streaming into the room and it was very pleasant to sit by the window and look out.

'But I don't need you a bit, Dick,' said Jill. 'Amélie will come directly if I want anything; and I shan't; for I shall sleep till tea-time. It would keep me from sleeping if you sat there. Besides'—and Jill hesitated for one moment—'there's poor Madame de Lamouderie longing for you.'

'Damn Madame de Lamouderie,' said Graham.

'But the portrait is sure to be so splendid, Dick. Don't give it up.';

'All right. I'll go up, then.'

'And Dick—couldn't you go round by the island? To tell Marthe, you know, that I'm not coming.'

'Oh, no, my dear,' said Dick cheerfully, as if he had foreseen this request; 'that's not necessary at all. And it would frighten the young lady out of her wits. You forget that there's no love lost between us.'

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/233


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/234

 'But—I don't want it to stay like that, Dick.' Jill pressed her hand against her aching forehead. It was the responsibility—towards Marthe, towards Dick—and the memory, too, of a fang-like wound that made her head ache like this. Why not let them alone? But how unnatural not to tell Marthe when he would have to pass so near. The great thing was to keep everything quite natural;—was that not so? thought Jill. And why should Dick speak in that unfeeling tone after what she had told him yesterday? It hurt her to hear him. 'I mean, since she's my friend now, she must be yours, too, Dick. You must try for that. You can understand why she's afraid of people. I think you ought to go,' she murmured.

'All right. Just as you say,' said Graham. 'Only it will keep the old lady waiting, for it's nearly time now. And you know it won't induce a pleasant frame of mind in her if she hears I've had an assignation with Mademoiselle Ludérac on the island.'

Jill had not thought of this. She wondered. Her feverish mind fixed itself in its wonder. What was best to do? 'Would it upset her?' she again murmured.

'It would upset her most horribly,' said Graham with a laugh.

'Well, perhaps not, then.' What strange, deep relief was this? For herself? For Dick? For Marthe? Jill's mind drowsed with it. 'All right. I'll go to sleep now,' she said.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/234


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/235

O Graham started. Spring had returned again. The river still roared under the wall; but the sky was cloudless, a vast, blue sky against which trees and cliffs and villages glittered in the wind and sunlight. But though so blue, so glittering, the day was tempestuous; a Vulcan chained; such a fury of implicit power lay beneath its gladness. The great wind came swooping down the gorges and the edges of the waves were sharp with gold and silver.

While Graham was still on the lower road he saw Marthe Ludérac descending to the island, high on the promontory. She was leading a goat—even at his distance he could see the careful, tentative steps of the creature as it followed her—and on her shoulder she carried a young kid.

Dark, slightly bent with her burden against the sky, she was like a woodcut of the Good Shepherd. Her silhouette, dark and far and small, seemed to belong to distant ages. He stood and watched her until she had disappeared in a lower fold of the cliff and then, slowly, he went forward.

He had but a little way to go before the road turned to climb the promontory; but he did not follow it. He paused for a moment, looking up at the cliff or out at the river, and then walked out onto the causeway.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/235


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/236

 From where he stood he could not see the bridge that spanned the inner stream, but by now Marthe Ludérac must have crossed it and he descended to the meadow. If she were coming towards the island, he would meet her; if she was picketing her goat on the lower ground, he would join her. This was what Jill had asked him to do. He had demurred; but it was her wish.

As he rounded the promontory he saw her at some little distance before him, and, keeping close to the inner stream, he followed her. The stream, under the vast, looming curve of the cliff, was dark and still. He glanced down at it as he went and saw a sharp edge of blue reflected, deep down, and the far, high beak of the promontory cutting into it; and for a moment it made him dizzy and a little sick to see the inverted height.—Now she had put down the kid and it trotted nimbly yet unsteadily beside its bleating mother. The mother's cry came loudly, shaken by the wind and strangely echoing back from the rocky heights; a cry like the day, Graham felt—full of anxiety, anticipation, and brooding love.

Marthe Ludérac was approaching a little cabin at the furthest end of the meadow. Set small and low on its narrow strip of sunlit meadow between the poplar groves and the gigantic, looming cliff, it made him think of a cabin seen in a dream; the whole picture there before him, of which, with hallucinated vividness, he was suddenly aware, was like a dream, and its very colour seemed part of the fabric of his brain;

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/236


text:
Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/237

 the tawny sands, the sepia thickets, the blue and silver of the sky and poplars; and in the centre of its stupendous setting, the lonely cabin held the eye as if by some calm, secret significance. It seemed to him the loneliest thing he had ever looked upon; and the most familiar.

Mademoiselle Ludérac had gone round it, still leading the goat, and when she reappeared she was carrying a mallet and stake. She stood there in the sunlight, her skirts buffeted by the wind, and, as the kid tottered against her, she stooped and kissed the little animal on the forehead. A kid, thought Graham, was certainly one of the most endearing creatures in nature.

He had come slowly forward into the middle of the meadow now, leaving his shelter. There was a sound of water in the air; the deep roar of the great river, and the breathless rush of the outer stream that ran between the meadow and the island. He could not see this stream from where he walked, but he could hear its ardent voice, and high on a poplar a thrush broke into song. Hurried, loud, challenging rather than jubilant, the sudden notes startled him and seemed to knock at his heart.

He was close beside Mademoiselle Ludérac and still she had not seen him. She was finding difficulty with her mallet. She knelt on one knee, the rope twined round her arm, and twice, as she attempted to strike the stake, the goat moved away and the mallet drove into the ground.

title: Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/237