Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/378



LL Buissac, on a radiant afternoon, was gathered high above the river on the promontory road. It was at the spot where Jill Graham, two years before, had leaned on the parapet to look out over the plains and down at the island, and the scene wore again its spring-time vesture. The plains melted in azure undulations to the sky; the river flowed in silver majesty; the island was tranquil, all the ravages of the great flood mantled with compassionate green; and among the poplar groves three white cows moved, quietly grazing. Only one change there was; the unwonted stillness on the opposite shore. No women knelt at the river's edge to wash and no men fished. The sounds of the country-side had gathered themselves into one dense hive of ardent humming on the promontory road, where a memorial tablet, set into the cliff above it, was to be unveiled. It was a great day for Buissac; a day such as history is made of, on which the roots of legend flower; and since Marthe Ludérac's death, legends had rooted themselves. The soil of life in such a remote, unsophisticated community is propitious to them, and the tragic circumstances of her death, the grief that had attended it, had suddenly lifted and enshrined her shadowy, unapprehended figure.

For weeks after the catastrophe, Graham had lain at the Ecu d'Or, his life and his reason in danger, and