I 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?'
'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. 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 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 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.'
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 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. 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 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.