I'M like the Wandering Jew,' thought Jill as, on the afternoon of that blazing day, she raced her car through the spring landscape. Jill could never, in the most tragic moments, address herself in tragic terms, and it steadied her nerves now to see herself in this comic, if dolorous, aspect of a creature who must keep in movement from dawn to dusk. For Dick might return at any moment to the Ecu d'Or and she could not see him yet. He must rest, and she must rest; a night must pass over them before they could speak to one another. She, too, had hardly slept, and until night she would keep away from him. Ah, if only she and Dick could, both of them, go to sleep for days and days and wake to find everything understood between them without one word. Her very flesh shrank from the searing thought of what they might have to say to one another.
So she drove. She took the valley road up towards the gorges and climbed the mountain to the great tablelands, there to make the widest circle of all her adventurings, through the birch forests, down into gently wooded valleys, where apple-blossom was breaking into bud, up to the plain once more and past a chain of lakes that glittered in the sunlight under the sultry sky like polished steel. Everything was splendid, but nothing beautiful this afternoon, she thought, and the white heat beat up from the road into her eyes and the yellow heat from the sun beat down into her brain. She paused at a wayside buvette to raise her hood so that she might drive in shelter and went inside and sat down at a rustic table on the sanded floor to rest and drink a glass of beer. The woman who came to serve her had eyes swollen with weeping, and as Jill looked up at her kindly, she told her suddenly that her little girl lay dead in the next room. Would Madame like to see her—she was as beautiful as an angel. Jill did not want to see her at all, but she followed the mother into the dark, airless inner room and saw lying on the bed, a candle burning beside it, the pathetic small body; very beautiful, indeed, with waxen face and earnest, gentle smile. The mother stood, holding her apron to her lips, gazing and weeping, and Jill felt that her own tears fell. It was not only the sight of the dead child that made her cry. Her personal sorrow thus found relief.
Now she went on and came to unknown sign-posts, marking hamlets scattered far inland, with names that smelt of wine and garlic. But the sun had begun to dip down in the sky and she took the turnings to the left so that she should not lose herself too completely. However far away it might be, she was now heading for Buissac.
For some little time she had been aware of ominous noises and falterings in her engine and had disregarded them, and when the car stopped suddenly she got out to find that her magneto was broken. There was nothing for it but to push the car along into a sheltered spot, and find her way back on foot. She took a path running along the edges of a wood where the budding wayside trees gave, at least, a scant shelter. Her face streamed with sweat, and she passed her silk sleeve over her forehead and took off her cap and fanned herself. At the first opening she turned down into the woodland and here, among the trees, she walked for an hour.
Ominously still it was. Not a bird sang. But a brook went beside her, hurrying down to the Dordogne, and Jill stopped to drink at it and to bathe her smarting eyes. 'What a fool I was to let myself cry,' she muttered.
Suddenly, at a turn of the path, she stood still. This was a familiar spot. She was quite near Buissac. It was here that she had come that very morning—oh, how long ago! This was the same brook; that the same stone bridge where she had seen Marthe sitting, exhausted; where Marthe had looked at her with that dark, that heavy look.
Standing there, gazing at the bridge, a tidal wave of suffering suddenly swept all Jill's hard-held courage from her heart, and for a long, suffocating moment it seemed to her that she hated Marthe Ludérac.
What had been the fatal darkness that had underlain their morning encounter if it had not been the knowledge that they were for ever fixed in enmity? Marthe loved Dick. Marthe had taken Dick from her. How could he ever come back to her, when that sorceress had cast her magic glance upon him? Dick was sorry for her now. He loved Marthe, and was sorry for her; as Marthe's father had been sorry for his wife. He had never really loved her; never as he loved Marthe. And as these tumultuous thoughts went through her mind, Jill felt herself dashed to and fro on the horrible surges of the tidal wave, unable to feel herself as anything but that darkness and that suffering. It was as if she had never known herself before; as if her self were all that was left to her and as if it were revealed to her to be mere tumult, darkness, and misery.
She stood there, at the entrance to the descending woodland path, her head bent down, her hands deeply thrust into her pockets. The memory of the dead child's face returned to her; the gentle, earnest look. It had escaped. It was better to escape. Life wasn't worth it. It came to nothing. With all her heart Jill, for that black moment, and for the first time in her happy existence, wished that she were dead.
Suddenly, deep in the silent woodland, far, far off, she heard the inconsequent yet intent note of the chiff-chaff. Not the wood-wren—oh, she was glad it was not the beautiful song—only the chiff-chaff; only something one could bear—like the simple toy put into the weak hands of a convalescent child. Foolish little bird; dear little bird. As she listened to it, it made her think, first, of home; of bells at Easter; and she felt the tidal wave slowly sinking, slowly drawing away, the darkness shallower; the light coming softly through and breathing into her heart once more. And then she remembered Marthe's eyes of resurrection; Marthe's face as, at the gate, on the spring evening when they had first found each other, she had laid Jill's hand against her cheek and said, 'This dear heart will be kind to everything.' How could she have dreamed that the past was spoiled? The past, and Marthe as she had known her in it, was the one sure thing.
She stood there, softly breathing in her convalescence, aged, had she known it, by those moments of experience as decades of her former life could not have aged her, and the last thought that came to her—from the chiff-chaff's song, from the memory of Marthe's face and Marthe's words—was of a hunted fox; and then of a hunted cat. The wretched old lady down there below the woods. What had she been suffering? And was not her suffering the worst of all?
'I must see her,' Jill muttered to herself. And it seemed now clearly the next step. She could not leave Buissac without seeing her; in kindness, if that were possible. She must try to make her own that she had lied, but to make her feel that even if she had lied she was understood, not hated. 'I might have been just as bad myself,' thought Jill. 'We're all one. Just as Marthe said.' She went on down the path towards the Manoir.
As she entered the Manoir gate she heard the half-slumberous yet sinister reverberations of distant thunder. The sound of it was like a great snake dragging itself in dusty rolls and coils along the horizon. She turned to look at the sky, when she had rung, and saw that a vast thunder-cloud had reared its head above the trees, black, magnificent, rimmed against the blue with glittering sunlight. No one answered the bell, and even after she had rung a second time there was a long interval before the door half opened and Joseph peeped out.
'Here I am again, you see, Joseph,' she said. Something in the old man's demeanour affected her unpleasantly. It was almost as if he were unwilling to let her in. 'I've come to take shelter. We're going to have a storm.'
'Mademoiselle has gone out,' said Joseph, still holding the door ajar and peering at Jill with eyes at once furtive and penetrating. 'She is gone to the meadow to fetch up the goat and kid. Madame will perhaps join her there.'
Jill eyed him, pondering. He did not want to let her in. 'It's really Madame la comtesse I've come to see this time,' she said.
'I fear that Madame la comtesse is indisposed to-day,' said Joseph, and the elastic French indisposée, on his lips, was significant of all sorts of warnings. 'Madame will do well not to see her again.'
'Oh, but I must see her before we go away,' said Jill. 'I've not said good-bye to her, and we may be going quite soon.'
'The sooner the better!' said Joseph suddenly; and as Jill gazed at him, astonished and arrested, he put his face close to hers and uttered in a piercing whisper: 'Madame la comtesse is a bad old woman. She will bring Madame no good.'
'But none of us are quite bad or quite good, are we, Joseph?' said Jill in an unsteady voice, for Joseph almost frightened her. 'And even if she's very bad indeed, I'm not afraid of her.'
'Yes; some of us are quite bad, and some quite good,' said Joseph. 'Mademoiselle Marthe—has Madame not discovered that she is quite good? Too good—or she would have driven the evil old woman out long ago.'
'Oh—but that would have been so cruel. She couldn't have done that,' Jill murmured, gazing spellbound at Joseph. 'She's been so dreadfully unhappy, hasn't she?'
'Eh, bien! tout le monde a ses misères,' said Joseph with a bitter shrug of the shoulders; 'but some of our calamities are our own fault and some are not. What are the misfortunes of Madame la comtesse to those of Mademoiselle Marthe? Yet she is innocent of all. And we may be sure, Madame, that Madame la comtesse is innocent of nothing.'
'I'm afraid that's true, Joseph. But it makes her more pitiful. That's what Mademoiselle Marthe feels, I know.'
'Yes. That is what she feels. She would give the clothes off her back for any creature for whom she felt pity. It has always been so. See how she dresses; like a peasant, is it not? Yet Mademoiselle Marthe is well-born,' said Joseph, and a passionate resentment, long suppressed, spoke in his voice. 'She is of noble blood—on her mother's side. Yet see how she dresses. Never one sou on herself will she spend when there is that old woman to cosset, to buy sweetmeats for, to tie with pink ribbon. Has Madame ever seen her room? That was Mademoiselle Marthe's work. All muslin and pink ribbon; as a surprise to her on her last birthday. All day long Mademoiselle Marthe worked at it. And I can promise you that it gave pleasure. Yes, she sleeps among the pink ribbons while Mademoiselle Marthe has not a shred of lace on her chemises.'
Jill could hardly repress a smile, even though Joseph touched her so deeply. 'But how well one understands that, Joseph,' she said. 'Who would care for lace on their chemises when there was some one who could be made so happy by pink ribbon? Who would care, I mean, if they were like Mademoiselle Marthe? It's because I know she's like that that I love her so. It's really for Mademoiselle Marthe's sake that I want to see Madame la comtesse.'
Joseph, at this, looked at her for a moment in silence. 'If Madame loves Mademoiselle, the best thing she could do for her would be to leave Buissac,' he then said, slowly.
'But I am going away,' Jill faltered.
'But at once,' said Joseph, his eyes on hers. 'At once. It cannot be too soon. Alone with me, Mademoiselle is safe. She is safe from the old woman when she is alone. She has her own life; she can find happiness. If Madame would go, at once, and persuade Monsieur to go, all would still be well.' And holding the door with his bony old hand, edging himself half outside, Joseph whispered, still more piercingly: 'If Madame would empower me, now, to go in to Madame la comtesse and tell her that she and Monsieur had left Buissac for good—ah—that would be the blow to deal her! That would be to protect Mademoiselle Marthe!'
Jill stood gazing at him. She felt petrified.
Suddenly, within, the drawing-room door opened and behind Joseph she saw that Madame de Lamouderie had emerged into the hall.
'What is it? What are you doing? Whom are you keeping out?—I will report you at once to Mademoiselle Marthe!' she cried in a strange, hoarse voice that Jill had never heard from her before.
Joseph, not replying, stepped back and Jill entered. She could not have made Joseph that promise. For herself it might have been given; but not for Graham, and it was Graham Joseph feared.
'It's I. It's Jill Graham. I've come to see you,' she said.
Madame de Lamouderie stood on the threshold of the drawing-room, a hand on either side of the doorway, and she stared at Jill, one eye half closed, while her mouth opened and shut like the mouth of a fish lying on a river bank.
'Madame Graham? Is it indeed Madame Graham?—And what do you do here?' she asked in the hoarse voice.
'Why, I've come to see you. I've not seen you for so long,' said Jill, and pity struck deeply into her as she saw the gasping, disintegrated old face. 'Come,' she said gently, putting her hand on Madame de Lamouderie's arm. 'Let me sit with you for a little while. And she guided her back into the drawing-room.
The old lady suffered herself to be placed in her chair and Jill seated herself beside her, neither of them uttering a word.
The thunder-cloud had now mounted to the zenith. All the window-panes showed its blackness above the tossing tree-tops and again a roll of thunder shook the air.
'Where is Marthe? Hark to the thunder. She is not in her room,' said the old lady, suddenly, and in an amazingly normal voice.
'She's gone down to the meadow to get the kid and its mother,' said Jill.
Madame de Lamouderie again stared at her. 'The kid?' she repeated. 'It is Blaise's kid. They will eat it at his first communion. Why not leave it where it is?—I would rather be drowned than eaten, would not you?'
'Well, I don't know,' said Jill, striving to speak naturally. 'Drowning must be very unpleasant, and one wouldn't know that one was being eaten.'
'No. But one would know when the knife was at one's throat,' said Madame de Lamouderie.
Jill was aware of a gathering sense of fear. The room was dark. Only a spot of red glowed on the hearth. Madame de Lamouderie's great gaze rested on her for a moment and then turned slowly round the room. 'My portrait will never be finished now,' she said.
'Why do you say that?' Jill faltered. Her eyes followed Madame de Lamouderie's to the corner where Dick's canvas and easel stood. 'Dick hopes to go on with it, I think.'
'I do not think so,' said Madame de Lamouderie. 'He is finished with it—and with me. Show it to me.'
Jill got up and went to the canvas and turned it outward. And as she saw it she suppressed an exclamation of horror.
'Bring it nearer,' said Madame de Lamouderie.
'No, no,' said Jill, putting it back against the wall. 'It's still so rough. He doesn't mean you to see it yet.'
'I have already seen it. I have repeatedly seen it,' said Madame de Lamouderie. 'Bring it nearer—unless you wish to force me to get it for myself.'
Jill brought it to her then and held it for her to see and the old lady gazed at it in silence for a long time.
'He has made a devil of me, has he not?' she then said.
'It's not finished,' said Jill in a trembling voice. 'It isn't at all like you yet.'
'No? Isit not? I thank you. Yet it is so he sees me. It is so he sees me now, though only a little while ago—only three nights ago—he was with me here, and kind tome. Did you know that he came up here to see me? After he had stayed away until my very blood was grown thick with grief.'
'Yes, I knew.'
'He called me his Undine. He kissed me good-night,' said Madame de Lamouderie, her eyes on Jill. 'He kissed me here.' She touched her forehead. 'I told him of my childhood. We talked of life and death. Never have I been so near a human soul as I was near his on that night. He had forgotten her.'
'He had not forgotten her. No. No;—that's where you were mistaken,' said Jill in her shaken voice, still holding the portrait. 'He did not need to forget her to care for you. Oh, try to see that!'
But as she spoke Madame de Lamouderie's face grew livid with rage. 'When he remembers her, he thinks of no one! When he remembers her, he sees me as a devil!—Give it to me!—Give me that portrait he has made of me! Had he come to me and spat in my face he could not have told me more plainly what he felt for me! Give it tome!—There! And there!—So I answer him!' And seizing the heavy paper-knife that lay beside her, she dashed it through the canvas again and again.
Jill could not withstand her. She, too, felt that Graham had insulted Madame de Lamouderie.
'And now!' Panting, with haggard, burning eyes, the old woman flung the canvas aside. 'Now—where shall we look for him? Shall I tell you—you complaisant wife? He ison the island! Your husband is on the island with his saint! He is in the hut with his Saint Cecilia and it is she who now receives his kisses!'
'What do you mean? You must not say such things!' said Jill, blanched with disdain and anger.
'I mean what I say. Marthe Ludérac has taken him from us both. Three days ago he was my friend. Three days ago he was kind to me. To-day you have seen what he feels for me. What has happened in those three days? I will tell you. They have become lovers.' Madame de Lamouderie did not quail. Jill's anger steadied her. She eyed her with a narrow, steely look.
'No,' said Jill, after a moment. She, too, spoke quietly. 'I will tell you what has happened. He has found out that you lied to him. You lied to him to take him from her and for a little while he believed you. But then he saw her again and knew that what you said could not be true.'
The old lady, leaning back in her chair, listened, intently, and with a surprising calm. And as she sat, not speaking, looking over steadily at Jill, the intentness of her thought seemed to reconstruct her very features. Her lips composed themselves. Her eyes grew cold with calculation. Careful breaths dilated her nostrils. Something even of her old state-liness and power returned to her.
'So, she has talked with you, too. She guessed what was amiss and sought you out;—once more. My compliments to Mademoiselle Ludérac for her perspicacity! I dare not ask you to take my word for hers. Of that I am too well aware. You, too, no doubt, see me as your husband sees me. But I did not lie. You may ask the curé here if I lied. Marthe Ludérac had soldiers in her room at Bordeaux. He came to me asa friend to warn me; to advise me to keep an eye on an unfortunate who had inherited criminal tendencies. He was informed of all the facts by the excellent women who keep the house where she lodged. She did not even trouble to contradict their accusation when they confronted her with it next morning.'
'The curé and his friends were mistaken,' said Jill. 'The soldier she took in had nowhere else to go. He was not her lover. And even if you believed that story—and I am sure that you did not—you lied to Dick. For you told him that she took lovers; that she was a woman who took lovers—for pay.'
Like the storm, the old lady's fury was rising again; but she controlled it. 'I repeated to your husband what I was told. I do not compute so carefully. I wished to save the unfortunate creature from his pursuit. I wished to save you. I did not act until all the signs showed me that the case was desperate. You do not know what passed between them, here in this room, while she read to me! I saw him steal his glances at her breast, her hands, her lips;—I saw her look back, under her eyelashes. They met on the island—no, you did not know—during your illness. I saw them walking there. Silent. Without one word. And his eyes passed over her like a flame, while she turned her head away. Poor ignorant child!—who think you know life and come to me with your reproofs! I saw from the first that you were blind and helpless in their experienced hands. Your husband is a libertine;—and if he has been faithful to you till now, you have to thank only your freshness and youth. It was simple of you to imagine that he would remain untempted by a woman as seductive as Marthe Ludérac. For she knows what she is doing! She knows that to the libertine there is no seduction so great as that of purity!'
Jill sat silent. A crimson flush had dyed her face as the old woman told her tale; but, in the silence that followed, it sank slowly away, leaving her pallid under her sunburn. She felt a sickness in her veins. The very air seemed tainted, though even now her faith repelled the poison that trailed over the images of those she loved. She was hardly thinking of Madame de Lamouderie as she rose slowly to her feet. 'If it's true—they must be free,' she murmured.
'What is it you say?' asked the old woman.
'If they love each other, so much, they must be free. I must set them free if they belong to each other,' said Jill, looking out at the black sky.
'Grand Dieu!' cried Madame de Lamouderie, 'you will break your heart—you will wreck your life—for that little peasant! No! No! Be braver, my poor child! Just Heaven!—if I were in your place I would show you how a woman fights for her man and deals with her rivals! Wait. Be calm. Say nothing. I have made mistakes for you,—thinking that I could part them. I did not guess how much you already knew—how much you accepted. So, then. Accept it all. Let him have his fill of her. Smile and say no word and let your smile say to him: "So be it, mon cher. Take your little peasant. I do not feel her a rival!" There is nothing that so much disconcerts a man. He will soon tire of her then. And you will carry him off and punish him—as a woman knows how to punish; and some day, when he is sufficiently unhappy—forgive him. Do you see?—That is what you must do,' and the old lady's eye closed in a clinging leer as she offered her counsel.
'I'm sorry,' Jill muttered. 'You don't understand. I'm not like that.' She stood with her hand on the back of her chair, trying still to think. 'I must set them free, so that nothing shall be spoiled for them. They belong to each other;—but they are not lovers, yet.'
'They are lovers!' cried Madame de Lamouderie, passionately, though the leer still lingered like a smudge of mud across her face. 'I did not think it, either, until to-day. To-day I know. He was here this morning. To paint my portrait!—You have just seen how he painted my portrait this morning!—I am to be their pander, their go-between. That is his little plan. She sent for him to come to her in the garden and I watched them while they walked. I am not to be deceived by quiet. And all was not so quiet. Even though they saw me there, they could not control their fires. Everything—everything had passed between those two. I know the signs.'
Jill heard the thunder rolling and crackling overhead. She stood and listened to it. 'I must go now,' she said, when the reverberations had died away.
'You must go? So be it. I have indeed nothing to offer you: and this is a house of ill-omen. You do well not to stop in it.'
'Good-bye, then,' said Jill. 'I'm sorry—I wish—'
She paused. She did not know what she wished; nothing that she could say to Madame de Lamouderie.—That she and Dick had gone away when they came to the Manoir a bare month ago, perhaps. He had been afraid. He had wanted to go. Poor Dick. She looked about the dusky room where Dick had first seen his fear, and when her eyes came back to Madame de Lamouderie's they found hers fixed upon her. The pity with which she had first seen her this afternoon smote upon her once again.
'How dark it is in here,' she said. 'Can I do anything for you? Light anything before I go?'
'No,' said Madame de Lamouderie. 'You can do nothing. I prefer to sit in darkness. Only—give me your hand.'
Jill, mastering the repulsion that mingled horribly with her pity, stretched out her hand to her, and the old lady, putting both of hers upon it, held it closely, looking up at her with a devouring gaze. 'It is you I have loved,' she said in a hoarse whisper. 'You only. Not your husband. That was an old woman's caprice. A trick, such as our wretched senses may still play on us at eighty. You are worth ten of him. It is you I love. Do you understand?'
Jill, sickening, tried to draw away her hand, but, holding it fiercely now, Madame de Lamouderie staggered to her feet. 'It was all for you. All! All!—Do you understand? I risked his hatred for your sake! I knew that it was to risk his hatred! Better that than to share him with that hypocrite!—that parasite!—that low-born peasant girl!—No! No! Stay! Listen to me yet! It was for your sake! I could not bear to see you sacrificed to such a one!'
'Perhaps you believe that,' Jill muttered, pulling away her hand. 'Try not to think about it now. You've been through too much. You are not yourself. Try to rest, and forget all this for a time, if you can.'
'Forget it!' screamed the old woman suddenly, while her face suffered a horrible distortion. 'Forget what he has made me suffer! Only in my grave shall I forget it! Would God that I were there!' And as she uttered the cry she raised her arms above her head and clasped them over her eyes, and Jill, horrified, spellbound, heard that she sobbed savagely.
'Oh—don't. Don't. I beg of you. Try to be quiet.' Jill put out her hand to her, but drew it back. Madame de Lamouderie filled her with fear. She was horrible to see and hear. She stood there, her arms crossed before her face, her hands clutching at her white head behind.
'He kissed me! He loved me! All was well with us at last! He had forgotten her at last!' she cried. 'Qu'elle soit maudite! Qu'elle soit maudite!'
Casting a glance of terror upon her, Jill fled from the room.