# The Old Countess (Sedgwick)/Chapter 13

JILL had followed Mademoiselle Ludérac to the other end of the room. 'I shall sit here, to be near you while you play. A little place all to myself,' she said.
The room was L-shaped and in the alcove-like turn there was a small table set with daffodils. Jill drew a chair to it and sat down. From here she could see Mademoiselle Ludérac in profile and look down the long room to watch the effect of the music upon Madame de Lamouderie and Dick. They seemed suddenly a long way off; Dick sitting there and nursing his foot across his knee, and the figure of the old woman, ravaged, absurd, yet beautiful, leaning for—ward to look up at him.
Mademoiselle Ludérac was tuning the strings of her harp, her head laid against them, and Jill's eyes were drawn to a portrait that hung above the daffodils on the inner wall of the alcove. It was evidently an enlarged photograph, a three-quarter length of a little girl, tinted, and framed in an oval gilt frame. The child was dressed in the elaborate white muslins of the eighties; blue knots of ribbon perched on her shoulders, a blue sash around her waist, a blue bow tied on the summit of her head. Her golden hair was cut across her forehead and long golden curls, disposed, one felt, by a proud maternal hand, fell about her small ​decorated body. The face was a rounded, nondescript child-face with something at once sweet and sullen in the expression of the mouth; but the dark eyes held Jill's attention. Resentful, mournful, unchildish eyes, set so unevenly (one seeming with its heavy gaze to sink into the cheek and one to rise, plaintively, into the temple) that they made her think of the suffering, uneven eyes of Eleanora Duse whom she had once seen act. Suddenly, as she looked, she realized that this must be Mademoiselle Ludérac's mother in childhood, and it almost frightened her to see her there. She moved her chair so that she should not face the portrait. She had found no resemblance in it, yet had had time to feel, in those dark eyes, a familiar, a tragic potency.
Mademoiselle Ludérac had tuned her harp to her satisfaction and was now seated in the majestic pose, foot outstretched to the pedal, arms laid along the strings, that the playing of the instrument involves. She glanced at Jill, and there was something dark, preoccupied in her expression.
'She must have seen me looking,' thought Jill.
'Passionate? Romantic?' Mademoiselle Ludérac addressed Madame de Lamouderie. That might be a Chopin Nocturne, then. But shall we begin with a Mozart Sonata?'
'Yes; by all means. He is cheerful, light-hearted, Mozart. There was a picture of him as a child in a room at my home; a small boy, at the harpsichord, with powdered hair. Ah, there are no such musicians now​adays.' And the old lady sighed, perhaps dismissing an impulse to claim Mozart as a protégé of her family's. Mademoiselle Ludérac bent her head against the harp for a moment, and Jill felt that in the power and sustenance of her communion with it she put aside the discords of her life. Then her fingers swept the strings, and the bright, unearthly tones filled the air with magic. In her corner, Jill listened spell-bound. This was unlike any other sound, with the heart-plucking depth of its bass, the thin clarity of its treble; it was all depth and light; like golden fruits falling into deep translucent water; and the form of the music came to her metamorphosed into the visual aspects about her; the daffodils reflected in the mirrors, the candleflames all steadily pointing upwards, the watery greys and greens of the room, Marthe Ludérac herself, with her intent, dark head, her rhythmic, silvery arms. It was a golden magic, and it dispelled the sadness that, for a moment, had filled Jill's heart. It made one strong again; serene and confident. It was beautiful to see and hear and she could not distinguish the two beauties.
'Ah, bravo! Marvellous!' cried the old lady when all three movements had been played. 'Beautiful indeed;—but too long.—Let it be Chopin, now, Marthe.—Chopin is my passion. My mother knew him well; he wrote one of his symphonies under her inspiration!' cried the old lady flown with excitement. Even Jill knew that Chopin wrote no symphonies; but Dick made no comment on the absurdity.
​The starlit melancholy of a Nocturne flowed from Mademoiselle Ludérac's fingers. Tears, languor, protestation, a folding, cloud-like acquiescence were in it, and Jill saw that she seemed to yield herself to it, yet to hold herself aloof; resolute and dispassionate.
'Ah, it breaks one's heart, that music!' cried Madame de Lamouderie. 'It makes one wish to weep all the tears of one's body.' She looked at Graham; but he was not listening to her. From under gloomy brows he gazed at Mademoiselle Ludérac. The old lady laid her fan against his arm. 'Does it not break even your hard heart, Milord Byron?'
Dick looked round and down at her; coldly. It was still as if he did not hear her, though he smiled response.
'My heart?—It does something to me. But Chopin leaves my heart intact.'
'What experience is there that does not leave your heart intact! You are of stone!—Of cold, hard marble!'
Graham still smiled, but he made no reply and Jill saw a shade of dissatisfaction cloud the old lady's radiance.
'Is that enough?' Mademoiselle Ludérac glanced over at them again.
'Oh, no! Not nearly enough!' cried Jill, and Graham said, looking at Madame de Lamouderie and not at their musician: 'May we hear some César Franck?'
'But by all means! César Franck, Marthe. He is dreary; like a consecrated wafer; beneficent, perhaps; ​but insipid. Marthe, however, would ask nothing better than to play him all the night!'
'Oh, do go on all night!' laughed Jill. 'We'd ask nothing better, either, would we, Dick!'
'No,' said Dick, holding his foot across his knee and looking at Mademoiselle Ludérac; 'we wouldn't.'
'I play very little of César Franck for solo. You will not have to listen all night,' Mademoiselle Ludérac smiled at Jill. 'This is a voluntary for the organ; yet the harp will take it.'
It was, indeed, over all too soon, strange and lovely, like a fleeting glimpse of the fields of paradise—like paradise, Jill felt, seen through a veil of ice. Perhaps only so could one see it. 'Oh, that's best of all!' she cried.
'Do you know Gluck's' "Orféo"?' Mademoiselle Ludérac asked, while her fingers swept the magically singing, magically sighing strings. 'That is like heaven, too.'
'Oh, play it, do,' said Jill. 'I only know Ché faro.'
'I will play that; first the Elysian fields, and then the lament of Orfeo for his lost Eurydice.'
Was it like heaven, Jill wondered, listening to the far-away, trance-like measure? She closed her eyes and seemed to float in dreams. Gliding fields of asphodel went past her, white mists and slowly dowing, silver streams. 'It's all too peaceful to be really happy,' thought Jill. 'It's like a dream, a beautiful dream; and one loves it, yet wants to wake out of it, too.'
​The last sweet notes dropped softly and there was a pause. Jill opened her eyes and met the eyes of Mademoiselle Ludérac turned, for a moment, upon her: 'Now listen,' they seemed to say.
It was as if one saw the colour of the sky changing; as if the mists parted and the figure of human suffering appeared. It was all memory, this lament of Orpheus; sweet, passionate memory; memories of lost beauty, of summer when winter is come; of love and parting. It spoke to Jill of her love and Dick's, and of how they, too, must one day part for ever. She had closed her eyes again in listening and when it was ended such a pang of grief came to her that it seemed to her for a moment that everything was really over and she and Dick long dead. She looked across the room at him. There he sat; they were still together, and she sought his eyes for reassurance. But he did not see her. He had folded his arms now and sat there, his head bent forward a little, gazing darkly at Marthe Ludérac.
'Yes, yes—for to-night that is sufficient!' said Madame de Lamouderie with palpable fretfulness.
The music had made her sad, too; and Dick was not thinking of her at all. 'It is too mournful, that "Ché faro." I do not like your Gluck; I like passion; brilliancy. "La Traviata"; "Théodora";—but no; I confuse; that is the play; Sardou's play.—Did you ever see our great Sarah in the days of her triumphs?' With her fan laid on his arm she drew Graham's eyes to her and she went on, eagerly: 'No, you were too young.—But what a tigress—what a cooing dove! ​Not beauty; she had no true beauty; it was, essentially, the versatile face of the Jewess; but what a vehicle for every passion; and, preëminently, for the passion of love.—Ah, and she could draw upon experience, Sarah! In my own monde, how many men have I not known to whom she granted her favours!'
Poor old lady. How terribly out of key she was! And did she not guess as much from the look that drifted down upon her from Dick's cold eyes as he leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head? But perhaps Dick, still, was not listening to her. He had cared for the music as much as she herself had; more, of course, for he was so much deeper than she was. And had he not begun to see, too, something of what she saw in Marthe Ludérac? What a triumph that would be! But the 'Ché faro' still made her feel miserable. She joined Mademoiselle Ludérac, who stood beside her harp.
'I can't tell you how I loved it,' she said.
Mademoiselle Ludérac smiled. 'I saw that you loved it.—Some day you must hear César Franck's 'Psyché,' she said.
'Is it anything like the Gluck?'
'There is a resemblance; yes; as if of colour.'
'What you said: something celestial?'
'Yes. Something celestial. Only in the "Psyché" there is so much more of that quality.'
'But it's dreadfully sad,' said Jill, after a moment, standing and watching Mademoiselle Ludérac adjust, here and there, a string of her instrument. 'The ​celestial is dreadfully sad. As if everything was left behind.'
'Everything is left behind—in the celestial,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac.
Jill stood and thought. She had never in her life thought so deeply. 'Everything of earth, you mean. Not everything we care for, surely.'
'Perhaps everything we think we care for,' Mademoiselle Ludérac suggested, glancing up at her, and Jill felt the dreadful sadness flowing in upon her.
'But then—how can we feel it celestial?' she questioned, a tremor in her voice. 'We care for the celestial.'
Mademoiselle Ludérac's eyes were now upon her and they dwelt as Jill had not felt them dwell before. Something else came to her, as she met their gaze. Had she found it for herself? Or had Mademoiselle Ludérac shown it to her?
'That is the secret,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac. 'You have said it.'
'The secret?'
'It is what we care for most. That is all we know. But is it not enough to know?—We cannot think it. We cannot see it. It is ineffable. Yet we possess it.'
Jill gazed at her, groping in a mystery never before apprehended, yet feeling, in the darkness, a hand laid upon hers. 'I seem to understand things I don't really understand, when I am with you,' she smiled faintly. 'Is it living with great music that makes you seem to know so much more than other people?'
​Mademoiselle Ludérac smiled faintly, too, at that.
'Or is it,' Jill went on, since she received no answer, 'that you have suffered more than most people?'
At this question a deep flush swept over Mademoiselle Ludérac's face, a flush deep, yet pale; intense, yet faint. To see it was like hearing the notes of the harp whispering together after they had been struck. Jill was almost frightened; but then all their strange, sudden talk, spoken in such low tones while they stood alone together, almost frightened her.
'I think it is like that,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac. Her flush had faded and she looked at Jill quietly. 'I think it is true that if I know more than others it is because I may have suffered more.' Her gaze was like the hand in the darkness, and after a moment she added, smiling with a singular sweetness, 'You have never suffered. Yet it was to you I played. You understand so much.'
'May I look at your harp?' Dick's voice broke in suddenly, very strangely, upon them, and they both started as they heard it and saw him standing there beside them. 'What a beautiful instrument it is.—May I look at it?'
'Volontiers,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac. She stood aside as if her harp were a prize dog or cat, at a show, that a stranger had asked to examine. But now they might talk to each other; Dick might now come to know her a little. Jill left them standing there and went over to the abandoned old lady.
'We must be going, I think,' she said, bending down ​to Madame de Lamouderie and taking her by both hands. She was feeling very sorry for her; why she did not quite know—for after all she had had Dick all the evening. 'The lights at the Ecu d'Or will be out soon!—It's been too delicious.—You must ask us again to an evening concert.'
'Ah, one can have too much of music!' said the old lady crossly, and over Jill's bare, festive shoulder, her eye went to where Graham bent his head to examine Mademoiselle Ludérac's harp.
'But we will have a great deal besides music!' Jill rallied her. 'Tell me, can't I come some morning to take you for a motor-drive? The country here is so marvellous, and you can't really have seen it unless you've seen it from a car.—May I come to-morrow?'
'But my portrait?' said the old lady, mournfully now, still holding Jill by the hands and still looking over her shoulder at the other two.—Jill could hear that they were not speaking at all.—'Is it to be abandoned?'
'But of course not! It's in the afternoons Dick comes for that;—and only when it rains!'
The old lady debated the point, with evident trouble. 'And Marthe? What will she be doing? Alone here.'
Jill felt like laughing. 'But surely she's accustomed to being alone.'
'Ah—' the old lady wagged her head in sage caution. 'Alone; but alone with me.—Alone with only ​Joseph in the house would be a very different matter.—There are mauvaises langues in Buissac!'
'But what of her winters in Bordeaux? She lives all by herself in winter.'
The old lady kept some unspoken suspicion, that was evident as she said: 'Motors—they are not for my age. In my youth it was a coach-and-four I drove in, and in Paris my equipage was renowned for its brilliancy;—ah, what horses I had! Beautiful creatures, jet black and with red rosettes at their ears! That is the conveyance I care for! Motors confuse and distress me. Hardly does one recognize a scene before it is gone. One feels that one leaves oneself, dismembered, along the road!—One leaves oneself stuck to the landscape behind one!—like those distressing insects that cling to our lamps on summer nights!—you know them? Insects with long red bodies. One tries to withdraw them from their predicament—and the body comes off in one's fingers while the face and front feet remain attached to the lamp! So motoring affects me!'
The wonderful old creature had managed to amuse herself, and as she saw Jill's laughter she laughed, too, if ruefully. 'Aren't they dreadful! I know! I know!' said Jill. 'And such mournful faces, poor things. Why should they be so silly!'
'Ah, we are not unlike them,' said the old lady, darkly now, as another analogy offered itself. 'We are not unlike those insects. We, too, burn ourselves at the lamp of love! It is the destiny of women! ​Marthe!' she cried suddenly. 'Marthe! Here is Madame Graham who wishes to say good-night to us. We are keeping her! We must not forget our manners!'
Mademoiselle Ludérac came to them at once, but with no appearance of haste or contrition, and Jill, feeling angry and amused, turned to Graham. 'I'm trying to get someone to consent to have a motor-drive with me. Madame de Lamouderie doesn't like motors. Will you come?' she asked Mademoiselle Ludérac. 'Will you come for a drive to-morrow?'
Mademoiselle Ludérac stood silent and perplexed.
'But how can you go, Marthe? What can we do here, without you?' said Madame de Lamouderie, though, now that her protégée was before her, her tone towards her had altered. It was almost pleadingly that she spoke. 'You have the ménage in the mornings and your harp;—and it is in the mornings that you read to me. You will not abandon your old incubus for new friends?' said the old lady with a twisted, wheedling smile.
'But she can go with me in the afternoon,' interposed Jill. 'Dick is with you then, so you won't miss her.'
The old lady's expression changed at that.
'At what time is the reading?' Graham inquired, and they were none of them giving Mademoiselle Ludérac a chance to reply to Jill's invitation.
'At eleven—and again at seven!' cried the old lady, reviving in his presence. 'In the mornings she reads what I choose, and in the evenings, when I tend to go ​to sleep, I submit to her choice;—grave, edifying books! Poetry, and history;—I do not care for them! I go to sleep easily in the evening, do I not, Marthe?' she said, taking Mademoiselle Ludérac by the arm and looking up at her cajolingly. 'But at eleven she is brave, resigned. I like my books spiced and salted! I am not afraid of our gros rire gaulois!'
It was all intended, Jill saw, as a pretty display for Graham.
A crushing blow was to fall upon her. Was it in malice, Jill wondered. Did Dick enjoy tormenting his poor old admirer? 'Nothing could be more opportune for my work, then,' he announced. 'I shall come to-morrow morning while Mademoiselle Ludérac reads spicy, salted books to you. You won't have to reproach me, so, with making your portrait dreary.'
The poor old lady, still holding Mademoiselle Ludérac by the arm, gazed at him with bodeful eyes. 'Dreary? Am I then so dreary?'
'Anything but—when you are allowed to be yourself. But when I forbid you to speak, and stare at you for half an hour on end without a word, I lose you;—I completely lose you,' said Graham, with an air of kindness, smiling down upon her.
'But it will disturb you, to have someone there reading. You do not like to be overlooked.'
'I shall ask Mademoiselle Ludérac to turn her back on us; like your cure. I shall not hear her reading. I shall be too much absorbed in you.'
​'But—when you are not painting,' the poor old lady faltered—and Jill, amused at her predicament, yet surprised by Dick's whim, felt that it was as if he held her impaled on a pin—an unfortunate old insect indeed—and watched her vainly gyrate—'shall we not talk together?'
'That will be for you to decide,' said Graham. 'If you find the book very salted, you may not care to have the reading stop, even when I am not painting. I, of course, should find your conversation more interesting, and perhaps more salted, than any book.'
Mademoiselle Ludérac stood between them, tall, silent, very Byzantine in aspect. She looked at neither of them. She seemed to dissociate herself from the situation. And indeed the old lady's predicament was one from which she could not openly rescue her.
'So to-morrow, at eleven,' said Graham, smiling and raising Madame de Lamouderie's hand to his lips. 'Rain or shine. I feel a new confidence.'
'And may I come for you, for a drive, to-morrow afternoon?' Jill said, meeting Mademoiselle Ludérac's eyes at last.
'A thousand thanks, chère Madame;—but I have my practising in the afternoon, again, and to-morrow Joseph and I will be very busy in the garden,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac.
'May I come and garden with you, then? I love gardening,' said Jill, and her gaze gaily challenged, gently mocked her friend's retreat. For it was ridic​ulous of Marthe Ludérac to pretend that she was not her friend.
'Vous êtes trop bonne, Madame,' said Mademoiselle Ludérac. She evaded challenge and mockery.