JEAN, surprisingly revived by a hot bath and a hot drink, and comfortably tucked up beside the fire in her room, was recounting the day’s adventure to Madame de Varigny.
It was a somewhat expurgated version of the affair that she outlined—thoughtfully calculated to allay the natural apprehensions of a temporary chaperon—in which the unknown Englishman figured innocuously as merely having come to her assistance when, in the course of her afternoon’s tramp, she had been overtaken by the blizzard. Of the stolen day, snatched from under Mrs. Grundy’s enquiring nose, Jean preserved a discreet silence.
“I don’t know who he could be,” she pursued. “I’ve never seen him on the ice before; I should certainly have recognised him if I had. He was a lean, brown man, very English-looking—that sort of cold-tub-every-morning effect, you know. Oh! And he had one perfectly white lock of hair that was distinctly attractive. It looked”—descriptively—“as though someone had dabbed a powdered finger on his hair—just in the right place.”
Madame de Varigny’s eyes narrowed, and a quick ejaculation escaped her. It was something more than a mere exclamation connoting interest; it held a definitely individual note, as though it sprang from some sudden access of personal feeling.
Jean, hearing it, looked up in some surprise, and the other, meeting her questioning glance, rushed hastily into speech.
“A lock of white hair? But howchic!
“It should not”—thoughtfully—“be difficult to discover the identity of anyone with so distinctive a characteristic.”
“He is not staying in the hotel, at all events,” said Jean. “He told me he was at a friend’s chalet.”
“And he did not enlighten you as to his name? Gave you no hint?”
Madame de Varigny spoke with an assumption of indifference, but there was an undertone of suppressed eagerness in her liquid voice.
Jean shook her head, smiling a little to herself. It had been part of the charm of that brief companionship that neither of the two comrades knew any of the everyday, commonplace details concerning the other.
“Perhaps you will see him again at the rink to-morrow,” suggested Madame de Varigny, still with that note of restrained eagerness in her tones. “The snow is not deep except where it has drifted; they will clear the ice in the morning.”
Jean was silent. She was not altogether sure that she wanted to see him again. As it stood, robbed of all the commonplace circumstances of convention, the incident held a certain glamour of whimsical romance which could not but appeal to the daughter of Glyn Peterson. Nicely rounded off, as, for instance, by the unknown Englishman’s prosaically calling at the hotel the next day to enquire whether she had suffered any ill effects, it would lose all the thrill of adventure. It was the suggestion of incompleteness which flavoured the entire episode so piquantly.
No, on the whole, Jean rather hoped that she would not meet the Englishman again—at least, not yet. Some day, perhaps, it might be rather nice if chance brought them together once more. There would be a certain element of romantic fitness about it, should that happen.
“I don’t think I am likely to see him again,” she said quietly, replying to Madame de Varigny’s suggestion. “He told me he was going away to-morrow.”
Had it been conceivable, Jean would have said that a flash of disappointment crossed the Countess’s face. But there seemed no possible reason why the movements of an unknown Englishman should cause her any excitation of feeling whatever, pleasant or otherwise. The only feasible explanation was that odd little streak of inquisitiveness concerning other people’s affairs which appeared to be characteristic of her and which she had before evinced concerning the circumstances of Lady Anne Brennan.
Whatever curiosity she may have felt, however, on this occasion Madame de Varigny refrained from giving expression to it. Apparently dismissing the subject of the Englishman’s identity from her mind, she switched the conversation into a fresh channel.
“It is unfortunate that you should have met with such a contretemps to-day. You will not feel disposed to dance this evening, after so much fatigue,” she observed commiseratingly.
But Jean scouted the notion. With the incomparable resiliency of youth, she felt quite equal to dancing all night if needs be.
“Mais tout au contraire!” she exclaimed. “I’m practically recovered—at least, I shall be after another half-hour’s lazing by this glorious fire. I wonder what heaven-sent inspiration induced Monsieur Vautrinot to install a real English fire-place in this room? It’s delicious.”
The Countess rose, shrugging her expressive shoulders.
“You are wonderful—you English! If it had been I who had experienced your adventure to-day, I should be fit for nothing. As to dancing the same evening—ma foi, non! Voyons, I shall leave you to rest a little.”
She nodded smilingly and left the room. Once in the corridor outside, however, the smile vanished as though it had been wiped off her face by an unseen hand. Her curving lips settled into a hard, inflexible line, and the soft, disarming dark eyes grew suddenly sombre and brooding.
She passed swiftly along to her own suite. It was empty. The little Count was downstairs, agreeably occupied in comparing symptoms with a fellow health crank he had discovered.
With a quick sigh of relief at his absence she flung herself into a chair and lit a cigarette, smoking rapidly and exhaling the smoke in quick, nervous jerks. The long, pliant fingers which held the cigarette were not quite steady.
“Tout va bien!” she muttered restlessly. “All goes well!Assurément, his punishment will come.” She bent her head. “Que Dieu le veuille!” she whispered passionately.
Jean took a final and not altogether displeased survey of herself in the mirror before descending to the bigsallewhere the fancy-dress ball was to be held. She had had her dinner served to her in her room so that she might rest the longer, and now, as there came wafted to her ears the preliminary grunts and squeals and snatches of melody of the hotel orchestra in process of tuning up, she was conscious of a pleasant glow of anticipation.
There was nothing strikingly original about the conception of her costume. It represented “Autumn,” and had been designed for a fancy-dress ball of more than a year ago—before the death of Jacqueline had suddenly shuttered down all gaiety and mirth at Beirnfels. But, simple as it was, it had been carried out by an artist in colour, and the filmy diaphanous layers of brown and orange and scarlet, one over the other, zoned with a girdle of autumn-tinted leaves, served to emphasise the russet of beech-leaf hair and the topaz-gold of hazel eyes.
Madame de Varigny’s glance swept the girl with approval as they entered the greatsalletogether.
“But it is charming, your costume!Regarde, Henri”—turning to the Count, who, as a swashbuckling d’Artagnan, was getting into difficulties with his sword. “Has it not distinction—this costumed’automne?”
The Count retrieved himself and, hitching his sword once more into position, poured forth an unembarrassed stream of Gallic compliment.
Madame de Varigny herself was looking supremely handsome as Cleopatra. Jean reflected that her eyes,—slumberous and profound, with their dusky frame of lashes and that strange implacability she always sensed in them—might very well have been the eyes of the Egyptian queen herself.
Thesallewas filling up rapidly. Jean, who did not anticipate dancing overmuch, as she had made but few acquaintances in the hotel, watched the colourful, shifting scene with interest. There was the usual miscellany of a masquerade—Pierrots jostling against Kings and Cossacks, Marie Antoinettes flaunting their jewels before the eyes of demure-faced nuns, with here and there an occasional costume of outstanding originality or merit of design.
Contrary to her expectations, however, Jean soon found herself with more partners than she had dances to bestow, and, newly emancipated from the rigour of her year’s mourning, she threw herself into the enjoyment of the moment with all the long repressed enthusiasm of her youth.
It was nearing the small hours when at last she found herself alone for a few minutes. In the exhilaration of rapid movement she had completely forgotten the earlier fatigues of the day, but now she was beginning to feel conscious of the strain which the morning’s skating, followed by that long, exhausting struggle through the blizzard, had imposed upon even young bones and muscles. Close at hand was a deserted alcove, curtained off from the remainder of thesalle, and here Jean found temporary sanctuary, subsiding thankfully on to a big cushioned divan.
The sound of the orchestra came to her ears pleasantly dulled by the heavy folds of the screening curtain. Vaguely she could feel the rhythmic pulsing, the sense of movement, in thesallebeyond. It was all very soothing and reposeful, and she leaned her head against a fat, pink satin cushion and dosed, at the back of her mind the faintly disturbing thought that she was cutting a Roman senator’s dance.
Presently she stirred a little, hazily aware of some disquiet that was pushing itself into her consciousness. The discomfort grew, crystallising at last into the feeling that she was no longer alone. Eor a moment, physically unwilling to be disturbed, she tried to disregard it, but it persisted, and, as though to strengthen it, the recollection of the defrauded senator came back to her with increased insistence.
Broad awake at last, she opened her eyes. Someone—the senator presumably—was standing at the entrance to the little alcove, and she rushed into conscience-stricken speech.
“Oh, have I cut your dance? I’m so sorry——”
She broke off abruptly, realising as she spoke that the intruder was not, after all, the senator come to claim his dance, but a stranger wearing a black mask and domino. She was sure she had not seen him before amongst the dancers in thesalle, and for a moment she stared at him bewildered and even a little frightened. Vague stories she had heard of a “hold-up” by masked men at some fancy-dress ball recalled themselves disagreeably to her memory, and her pulse quickened its beat perceptibly.
Then, quite suddenly, she knew who it was. It did not need even the evidence of that lock ofpoudréhair above the mask he wore, just visible in the dim light of the recess, to tell her. She knew. And with the knowledge came a sudden, disturbing sense of shy tumult.
She half-rose from the divan.
“You?” she stammered nervously. “Is it you?”
He whipped off his mask.
“Who else? Did this deceive you?”—dangling the strip of velvet from his finger, and regarding her with quizzical grey eyes. “I’ve been hunting for you everywhere. I’d almost made up my mind that you had gone to bed like a good little girl. And then my patron saint—or was it the special devil told off to look after me, I wonder?—prompted me to look in here.Et vous voilà, mademoiselle!How are you feeling after your exploits in the snow?”
He spoke very rapidly, in a light half-mocking tone that seemed to Joan to make the happenings of the afternoon unreal and remote. His eyes were very bright, almost defiant in their expression—holding a suggestion of recklessness, as though he were embarked upon something of which his inmost self refused to approve but which he was nevertheless determined to carry through.
“So youdid‘call to enquire,’ after all!”
As she spoke, Jean’s mouth curled up at the corners in an involuntary little smile of amused recollection.
“So I did call after all?” He looked puzzled—not unnaturally, since he had no clue to her thoughts. “What do you mean? I came”—he went on lightly—“because I wanted the rest of the day which you promised to share with me. The proceedings were cut short rather abruptly this afternoon.”
“But how did you get here?” she asked. “And—and why did you disappear so suddenly after we got back to the hotel this afternoon?”
“I got here by the aid of a pair of excellent skis and the light of the moon; the snow ceased some hours ago and the surface is hardening nicely. I disappeared because, as I told you, if you gave me this one day, it should bind you to nothing—not even to introducing me to your friends.”
“I should have had to present you asMonsieur l’Inconnu,” remarked Jean without thinking.
“Yes.” He met her glance with smiling eyes, but he did not volunteer his name.
He had made no comment, uttered no word beyond the bald affirmative, yet somehow Jean felt as though she had committed an indiscretion and he had snubbed her for it. The blood rushed into her cheeks, staining them scarlet.
“I beg your pardon,” she said stiffly.
Again that glint of ironical amusement in his eyes.
“For what, mademoiselle?”
She was conscious of a rising indignation at his attitude. She could not understand it; he seemed to have completely changed from the man of a few hours ago. Then he had proved himself so good a comrade, been so entirely delightful in his thought and care of her, whereas now he appeared bent on wilfully misunderstanding her, putting her in a false position just for his own amusement.
“You know perfectly well what I meant,” she answered, a tremor born of anger and wounded feeling in her voice. “You thought I was inquisitive—trying to find out your name——”
“Well”—humorously—“you were, weren’t you?” Then, as her lip quivered sensitively, “Ah! Forgive me for teasing you! And”—more earnestly—“forgive me for not telling you my name. It is better—much better—that you should not know. Remember, we can only have this one day together; we’re just ‘ships that pass.’” He paused, then added: “Mine’s only a battered old hulk—a derelict vessel—and derelicts are best forgotten.”
There was an undercurrent of deep sadness in his voice, the steadfast, submissive sadness of a man who has long ago substituted endurance for revolt.
“Remember, we can only have this one day together.” The quiet utterance of the words stung Jean into a realisation of their significance, and suddenly she was conscious that the knowledge that this unknown Englishman was going away—going out of her life as abruptly as he had come into it—filled her with a quite disproportionate sense of regret. She found herself unexpectedly up against the recognition of the fact that she would miss him—that she would like to see him again.
“Then—you want me to forget?” she asked rather wistfully.
Her eyes fell away from him as she spoke.
“Yes,” he returned gravely. “Just that. I want you to forget.”
“And—and you?” The words seemed dragged from her without her own volition.
“I? Oh”—he laughed a little—“I’m afraid I’m inconsistent. I’m going to ask you to give me something I can remember. That’ll even matters up, if you forget and I—remember.”
“What do you want me to give you?”
He made a sudden step towards her.
“I want you to dance with me—just once. Will you?”—intently.
He waited for her reply, his keen, compelling glance fixed on her face. Then, as though he read his answer there, he stepped to her side and held out his arm.
“Come,” he said.
Almost as if she were in a dream, Jean laid her hand lightly on his sleeve and he pulled aside the portière for her to pass through. Then, putting his arm about her, he swung her out on to the smooth floor of thesalle.
They danced almost in silence. Somehow the customary small-change of ballroom conversation would have seemed irrelevant and apart. This dance—the Englishman had implied as much—was in the nature of a farewell. It was the end of their stolen day.
The band was playingValse Triste, that unearthly, infinitely sad vision of Sibelius’, and the music seemed to hold all the strange, breathless ecstacy, the regret and foreboding of approaching end of which this first, and last, dance was compact.
It was over at last. The three final chords of theValse—inexorable Death knocking at the door—dropped into silence, and with the end of the dance uprose the eager hum of gay young voices, as the couples drifted out from thesallein search of the buffet or of secluded corners in which to “sit out” the interval, according as the spirit moved them.
Jean and her partner, making their way through the throng, encountered Madame de Varigny on the arm of a handsome Bedouin Arab. For the fraction of a second her eyes rested curiously on Jean’s partner, and a gleam of something that seemed like triumph flickered across her face. But it was gone in an instant, and, murmuring some commonplace to Jean, she passed on.
“Who was that?”
The Englishman rapped out the question harshly, and Jean was struck by an unaccustomed note in his voice. It held apprehension, distaste; she could not quite analyse the quality.
“The Cleopatra, do you mean?” she said. “That was my chaperon, the Comtesse de Varigny. Why do you ask?” He gave a short, relieved laugh.
“No particular reason,” he returned with some constraint “She reminded me—extraordinarily—of someone I used to know, that’s all. Even the timbre of her voice was similar. It startled me for a moment.”
He dismissed the matter with apparent indifference, and led Jean again into the same little alcove in which he had found her. They stood together silently in the dim, rose-hued twilight diffused by the shaded lamp above.
“Well,” he said at last, slowly, reluctantly. “So this is really the end of our stolen day.”
Jean’s hands, hanging loosely clasped in front of her, suddenly tightened their grip of each other. She felt herself struggling in the press of new and incomprehensible emotions. A voice within her was crying out rebelliously: “Why? Why must it be the end? Why not—other days?” Pride alone kept her silent. It was his choice, his decision, that they were not to meet again, and if he could so composedly define the limits of their acquaintance, she was far too sensitively proud to utter a word of protest. After all, he was only the comrade of a day. How—why should it matter to her whether he stayed or went?
“I always believe”—the Englishman was speaking again, his eyes bent on hers—“I always believe that, no matter how sad or tragic people’s lives may be, God invariably gives them one magic moment—so that they may believe in heaven.... I have had mine to-day.”
“Don’t you—believe in heaven?”
He laid his hands lightly on her shoulders.
“I do now. I believe... in a heaven that is out of my reach.”
His hands slipped upward from her shoulders, cupping her face, and for a moment he held her so, staring down at her with grave, inscrutable eyes. Then, stooping his head, he kissed her lips.
“Good-bye, little comrade,” he said unevenly. “Thank you for my magic moment.”
He turned away sharply. She heard his step, followed by the quick, jarring rattle of brass rings jerked violently along the curtain-pole, and a moment later he was gone. With a dull sense of finality she watched the heavy folds of the portière swing sullenly back into their place.
THE dawn of a new day possesses a curious potency of readjustment. It is as though Dame Nature, like some autocratic old nurse, wakes us up and washes and dresses our minds afresh for us each morning, so that they come to the renewed consideration of the affairs of life freed from the influences and emotions which were clogging their pores when we went asleep. Not infrequently, in the course of this species of mental ablution, a good deal of the glamour which invested the doings of the previous day gets scrubbed off, and a new and not altogether pleasing aspect of affairs presents itself.
This was somewhat Jean’s experience when she woke on the morning following that of the fancy-dress ball. Looking back upon the events of the previous day, it seemed to her newly-tubbed, matutinal mind almost incredible that they should have occurred. It was like a dream—life itself tricked out in fancy dress.
Stripped of the glamour of romance and adventure with which the unknown Englishman had contrived to clothe it, the whole episode of their day together presented itself as disagreeably open to criticism, and the memory of that final scene in the alcove sent the blood flying into her cheeks. She asked herself in mute amazement how it was possible that such a thing should have happened to her,—to “our chaste Diana,” as her father used laughingly to call her in recognition of the instinctive little air of aloofness with which she had been wont to keep men at a distance.
Of course, the Englishman had taken her by surprise, but Jean was too honest, even in her dealings with herself, to shelter behind this excuse.
She knew that she had yielded to his kiss—and knew, too, that the bare memory of it sent her heart throbbing in an inexplicable tumult of emotion.
The stolen day, that day embarked upon so unconcernedly, in a gay spirit of adventure, had flamed up at its ending into something altogether different from the light-hearted companionship with which it had begun.
Then her conscience, recreated and vigorous from its morning toilet, presented another facet of the affair for her inspection. With officious detail it marshalled the whole series of events before her, dwelling particularly on the fact that, with hut very slight demur, she had consented to abrogate the accepted conventions of her class—conventions designed to safeguard people from just such consequences as had ensued—and winding up triumphantly with the corollary that although, like most men in similar circumstances, the Englishman had not scrupled to avail himself of the advantages the occasion offered, he had probably, none the less, thought rather cheaply of her for permitting him to do so.
This reflection stung her pride—exactly as Conscience had intended it should, without doubt. Last night there had seemed to her no question about the quality of that farewell in the little screened-off alcove. There had been nothing common or “cheap” about it. The gathering incidents of the whole day, the fight through the storm, the prelude ofValse Triste, all seemed to have led her by imperceptible degrees to a point where she and the Englishman could kiss at parting without shame. And now, with the morning, the delicate rainbow veiling woven by romance was rudely torn asunder, and the word “cheap” dinned in her ears like the clapper of a bell.
The appearance of herpremier dejeunercame as a web come distraction from her thoughts, and with the consumption ofcafé au laitand the crisp little rolls, hot from the oven, accompanying it, the whole matter began to assume a less heinous aspect. After all, argued Jean’s weak human nature, the unconventionality of the affair had been considerably tempered by the fact that the Englishman had practically saved her life during the course of the day. Alone, she would undoubtedly have foundered in the drifting snow; and when a man has rescued you from an early and unpleasantly chilly grave, it certainly sets the acquaintance between you, however short its duration, on a new and more intimate plane.
“Good-bye, little comrade; thank you for my magic moment.”
The words, and the manner of their utterance, came back to Jean, bringing with them a warm and comforting reassurance. The man who had thus spoken had not thought her cheap; he was too fine in his perceptions to have misunderstood like that. She felt suddenly certain of it. And the pendulum of self-respect swung back into its place once more.
Presently she caught herself wondering whether she would see him again before she left Montavan. True, he had told her he was going away the next day. But had he actually gone? Somewhere within her lurked a fugitive, half-formed hope that he might have altered his intention.
She tried to brush the thought aside, refusing to recognise it and determinedly maintaining that it mattered nothing to her whether he stayed or went. Nevertheless, throughout the whole day—in the morning when she made a pretence of enjoying the skating on the rink, and again in the afternoon when she walked through the pine-woods with the Varignys—she was subconsciously alert for any glimpse of the lean, supple figure which a single day had sufficed to mate so acutely familiar.
But by evening she was driven into accepting the fact that he had quitted the mountains, and of a sudden Montavan ceased to interest her; the magic that had disguised it yesterday was gone. It had become merely a dull little village where she was awaiting Lady Anne Brennan’s answer to her father’s letter, and she grew restlessly impatient for that answer to arrive.
It came at last, during the afternoon of the following day, in the form of a telegram: “Delighted to welcome you. Letter follows.”
The letter followed in due course, two days later, the tardiness of its arrival accounted for by the fact that the writer had been moving about from place to place, and that Peterson’s own letter, after pursuing her for days, had only just caught up with her.
“I cannot tell you,” wrote Lady Anne in her squarish, characteristic hand, “how delighted I shall be to have the daughter of Glyn and Jacqueline with me for a time. Although Glyn with a grown-up daughter sounds quite improbable; he never really grew up himself. So you must come and convince me that the unexpected has happened.”
Jean liked the warm-hearted, unconventional tone of the letter, and the knowledge that she would so soon be leaving Montavan filled her with a sense of relief.
During the four days which had elapsed since the Englishman’s departure her restlessness had grown on her. Montavan had become too vividly reminiscent of the hours which they had shared together for her peace of mind. She wanted to forget that stolen day—thrust it away into the background of her thoughts.
Unfortunately for the success of her efforts in this direction, the element of the unknown which surrounded the Englishman, quite apart from anything else, would have tended to keep him in the forefront of her mind. It was only now, surveying their acquaintance in retrospect, that she fully realised how complete had been his reticence. True his figure dominated her thoughts, but it was a figure devoid of any background of home, or friends, or profession. He might be a king or a crossing-sweeper, for all she knew to the contrary—only that neither the members of the one nor the other profession are usually addicted to sojourning at Swiss chalets and forming promiscuous friendships on the ice.
There were moments when she felt that she detested this man from nowhere who had contrived to break through her feminine guard of aloofness merely to gratify his whim to spend a day in her company.
But there were other moments when the memory of that stolen day glowed and pulsed like some rare gem against the even, grey monotony of all the days that had preceded it—and of those which must come after. She could not have analysed, even to herself, the emotions it had wakened in her. They were too complex, too fluctuating.
As she packed her trunks in preparation for an early start the following day, Jean recalled with satisfaction the genuine ring of welcome which had sounded through the letter that had come from England. Until she had received it, she had been the prey of an increasing diffidence with regard to suddenly billeting herself for an indefinite period upon even such an old friend of her father’s as Lady Anne—a timidity Peterson himself had certainly not shared when he penned his request.
“Give my little girl house-room, will you, Anne?” he had written with that candid and charming simplicity which had made and kept for him a host of friends through all the vicissitudes of his varied and irresponsible career. “I am off once more on a wander-year, and I can’t be tripped up by a petticoat—certainly not my own daughter’s—at every yard. This isn’t quite as cynical as it sounds. You’ll understand, I know. Frankly, a man whose life, to all intents and purposes, is ended, is not fit company for youth and beauty standing palpitating on the edge of the world. By the way, did I tell you that Jean is rather beautiful? I forget. Let her see England—that little corner where you live, down Devonshire way, always means England to my mind. And let her learn to love Englishwomen—if there are any more there like you.”
And, having accomplished this characteristic, if somewhat; sketchy provision for his daughter’s welfare, Peterson had gone cheerfully on his way, convinced that he had done all that was paternally encumbent on him.
Madame de Varigny was voluble in her regrets at the prospect of losing her “chère Mademoiselle Peterson,” yet in spite of her protestations of dismay Jean was conscious of an impression that the Countess derived some kind of satisfaction from the imminence of her departure.
She could not reconcile the contradiction, and it worried her a little. She believed—quite justly—that Madame de Varigny had conceived a real affection for her, and, as far as she herself was concerned, she had considerably revised her first impressions of the other, finding more to like in her than she had anticipated, noticeably a genuine warmth and fervour of nature, and a certain kind-hearted capacity for interesting herself in other people.
And, liking her so much better than she had at first conceived possible, Jean resented the sudden recurrence of her original distrust produced by the suggestion of insincerity which she thought she detected in the Countess’s expressions of regret.
On the face of it the thing seemed absurd. She could imagine no conceivable reason why her departure should give Madame de Varigny any particular cause for complacency, which only made the more perplexing her impression that this was the actual feeling underlying the latter’s cordial interest in her projected visit to England.
On the morning of her departure, Jean’s mind was too preoccupied with the small details attendant upon starting off on a journey dwell upon the matter. But, as she shook bands with Madame de Varigny for the last time, the recollection surged over her afresh, and she was strongly conscious that beneath the other woman’s pleasant, “Adieu, mademoiselle! Bon voyage!” something stirred that was less pleasant—even inimical—just as some slimy and repulsive form of life may stir amid the ooze at the bottom of a sunlit stream.
JEAN arrived in London with a good three hours to spare before the South-Western express, by which she proposed to travel to Devonshire, was due to leave Waterloo Station. She elected, therefore, to occupy the time by touring round the great, unknown city of her dreams in a taxicab, and spent a beatific hour glimpsing the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and the old, grey, misty river that Londoners love, and skirmishing in and out of the shops in Regent Street and Bond Street with her hands full of absurd, expensive, unnecessary purchases only bought because this was London and she felt she just simplymusthave something English at once, and winding up with a spin through Hyde Park—which didn’t impress her very favourably in its winter aspect of leafless trees and barren stretches of sodden grass.
Then she drove to a hotel, and, her luggage deposited there to await her departure, her thoughts turned very naturally towards lunch. Her scamper round London in the crisp, clear, frosty air had converted the recollection of her early morning coffee and roll into something extremely nebulous and unsupporting, and it was with the healthy appetite of an eager young mind in an eager young body that she faced the several courses of the table d’hote.
She glanced about her with interest, the little snatches of English conversation which drifted to her from other near-by tables giving her a patriotic thrill of pure delight. These were typically English people lunching in a typically English hotel, and she, hitherto a stranger to her own mother-country, was doing likewise. The knowledge filled her with ridiculous satisfaction.
Nor were English people—at home in their own country—anything like as dull and dowdy as Glyn Peterson’s sweeping criticisms had led her to expect. The men were immensely well-groomed and clean-looking. She liked the “morning-tub” appearance they all had; it reminded her of the Englishman at Montavan. Apparently it was a British characteristic.
The women, too, filled her with a species of vicarious pride. They were so well turned-out, with a slim, long limbed grace of figure she found admirable, and with splendid natural complexions—skins like rose and ivory.
Two of them were drifting into the room together now, with a superbly cool assurance of manner—rather as though they had bought the hotel—which brought the sleek head-waiter automatically to their side, bowing and obsequious.
Somewhat to Jean’s satisfaction he convoyed them to the table next her own, and she was pleasantly conscious, as they passed her, of a provocative whisper of silk and of the faint fragrance of violets subtly permeating the atmosphere.
Conscious that perhaps she had been manifesting her interest a little too openly, she turned her attention to a magazine she had bought en route from Dover and was soon absorbed in the inevitable happy-ever-after conclusion of the story she had been reading.
“Lady Anne? Oh, she lives at Staple now. Didn’t you know?”
The speaker’s voice was clear and resonant, with the peculiar carrying quality which has replaced in the modern Englishwoman of the upper classes that excellent thing in woman which was the proud boast of an earlier generation.
The conjunction of the familiar words “Lady Anne” and “Staple” struck sharply on Jean’s ears, and almost instinctively she looked up.
As she stirred, one of the women glanced indifferently in her direction, then placidly resumed her conversation with her companion.
“It was just after the smash-up,” she pursued glibly. “Blaise Tormarin rushed off abroad for a time, and the news of Nesta’s death came while he was away. Poor Lady Anne had to write and tell him of it.”
“Rather ghastly!” commented the other woman. “I never heard the whole story of the affair. I was in Paris, then, and it was all over—barring the general gossip, of course!—by the time I returned. I tried to pump it out of Lady Anne once, but she was as close as an oyster.”
Both women talked without lowering their voices in the slightest degree, and with that complete indifference to the proximity of a stranger sometimes exhibited by a certain arrogant type.
Jean, realising that it was her father’s friends who were under discussion, and finding herself forced into the position of an unwilling auditor, felt wretchedly uncomfortable. She wished fervently that she could in some way arrest the conversation. Yet it was clearly as impossible for her to lean forward and say: “You are talking about the people I am on my way to visit,” as it would have been for her to put her fingers in her ears. So far nothing had been said to which she could actually object. Her feeling was chiefly the offspring of a supersensitive fear that she might learn from the lips of these two gossiping women, one of whom was apparently intimately acquainted with the private history of the Tormarin family, some little fact or detail which Lady Anne might not care for her future guest to know. Apart from this fear, it would hardly have been compatible with human nature—certainly not feminine human nature—if she had not felt pricked to considerable personal interest in the topic under discussion.
“Oh, it was a fool business,” the first woman rejoined, settling down to supply the details of the story with an air of rapacious satisfaction which reminded Jean of nothing so much as of a dog with a bone. “Nesta Freyne was a typical Italian—though her father was English, I believe—all blazing, passionate eyes and blazing, passionate emotion, you know; then there was another man—and there was Blaise Tormarin! You can imagine the consequences for yourself. Blaise has his full share of the Tormarin temper—and a Tormarin in a temper is like a devil with the bit between his teeth. There were violent quarrels and finally the girl bolted, presumably with the other man. Then, later, Lady Anne heard that she had died abroad somewhere. The funny thing is that it seemed to cut Tormarin up rather badly. He’s gloomed about the world ever since, so I suppose he must have been pretty deeply in love with her before the crash came. I never saw her, but I’ve been told she was diabolically pretty.”
The other woman laughed, dismissing the tragedy of the little tale with a shallow tinkle of mirth.
“Oh, well, I’ve only met Blaise Tormarin once, but I should say he was not the type to relish being thrown over for another man!” She peered short-sightedly at the grilled fish on her plate, poking at it discontentedly with her fork. “I never think they cook their fish decently here, do you?” she complained.
And, with that, both women shelved the affairs of Blaise Tormarin and concentrated upon the variety of culinary sins from which even expensive hotel chefs are not necessarily exempt.
Jean had no time to bestow upon the information which had been thus thrust upon her until she had effected the transport of herself and her belongings from the hotel to Waterloo Station, but when this had been satisfactorily accomplished and she found herself comfortably settled in a corner seat of the Plymouth express, her thoughts reverted to her newly acquired knowledge.
It added a bit of definite outline to the very slight and shadowy picture she had been able to form of her future environment—a picture roughly sketched in her mind from the few hints dropped by her father.
She wondered a little why Glyn should have omitted all mention of Blaise Tormarin’s love affair and its unhappy sequel, but a moment’s reflection supplied the explanation. Peterson had admitted that it was ten years since he had heard from Lady Anne; presumably, then, the circumstances just recounted in Jean’s hearing had occurred during those years.
Jean felt that the additional knowledge she had gained rather detracted from the prospective pleasure of her visit to Staple. Judging from the comments which she had overheard, her host was likely to prove a somewhat morose and gloomy individual, soured by his unfortunate experience of feminine fidelity.
Thence her thoughts vaulted wildly ahead. Most probably, as a direct consequence, he was a woman-hater and, if so, it was more than possible that he would regard her presence at Staple as an unwarrantable intrusion.
A decided qualm assailed her, deepening quickly into a settled conviction—Jean was nothing if not thorough!—that the real explanation of the delay in Lady Anne’s response to Glyn’s letter had lain in Blaise Tormarin’s objection to the invasion of his home by a strange young woman—an objection Lady Anne had had to overcome, or decide to ignore, before she could answer Glyn’s request in the affirmative.
The idea that she might be an unwelcome guest at Staple filled Jean with lively consternation, and by the time she had accomplished the necessary change of train at Exeter, and found herself being trundled along on the leisurely branch line which conducted her to her ultimate destination, she had succeeded in working herself up into a condition that almost verged upon panic.
“CoombeEa-vie!CoombeEavie!”
The sing-song intonation of a depressed-looking porter, first rising from a low note to a higher, then descending in contrary motion abruptly from high to low, was punctuated by the sharper, clipped pronouncement of the stationmaster as he bustled up the length of the platform declaiming: “’Meavie! ’Meavie! ’Meavie!” with a maddeningly insistent repetition that reminded one of a cuckoo in June.
Apparently both stationmaster and porter were too much absorbed in the frenzied strophe and antistrophe effect they were producing to observe that any passenger, handicapped by luggage, contemplated descending from the train—unexpected arrivals were of rare occurrence at Coombe Eavie—and Jean therefore hastened to transfer herself and her hand-baggage to the platform unassisted. A minute later the train ambled on its way again, leaving the stationmaster and the depressed porter grouped in astonished admiration before the numerous trunks and suit-cases, labelled “Peterson,” which the luggage van of the departing train had vomited forth.
To the bucolic mind, such an unwonted accumulation argued a passenger of quite superlative importance, and with one accord the combined glances of the station staff raked the diminutive platform, to discover Jean standing somewhat forlornly in the middle, of it, surrounded by the smaller fry of her luggage. The stationmaster hurried forward immediately to do the honours, and Jean addressed him eagerly.
“I want afiacre—cab”—correcting herself hastily—“to take me to Staple Manor.”
The man shook his head.
“There are no cabs here, miss,” he informed her regretfully. “Anyone that wants to be met orders Wonnacott’s wagonette in advance.” Then, seeing Jean’s face lengthen, he continued hastily: “But if they’re expecting you up at Staple, miss, they’ll be sure to send one of the cars to meet you. There!”—triumphantly, as the chug-chug of an approaching motor came to them clearly on the crisp, cold air—“that’ll be it, for certain.”
Followed the sound of a car braking to a standstill in the road outside the station, and almost immediately a masculine figure appeared advancing rapidly from the lower end of the platform.
Even through the dusk of the winter’s afternoon Jean was struck by something curiously familiar in the man’s easy, swinging stride. A surge of memories came flooding over her, and she felt her breath catch in her throat at the sudden possibility which flashed into her mind. For an instant she was in doubt—the thing seemed so amazingly improbable. Then, touching his hat, the stationmaster moved respectfully aside, and she found herself face to face with the unknown Englishman from Montavan.
She gazed at him speechlessly, and for a moment he, too, seemed taken aback. His eyes met hers in a startled, leaping glance of recognition and something more, something that set her pulses racing unsteadily.
“Little comrade!” She could have sworn the words escaped him. Then, almost in the same instant, she saw the old, rather weary gravity replace the sudden fire that had blazed up in the man’s eyes, quenching its light.
“So—youare Miss Peterson!”
There was no pleasure, no welcome in his tones; rather, an undercurrent of ironical vexation as though Fate had played some scurvy trick upon him.
“Yes.” The brief monosyllable came baldly in reply; she hardly knew how to answer him, how to meet his mood. Then, hastily calling up her reserves, she went on lightly: “You don’t seem very pleased to see me. Shall I go away again?”
His mouth relaxed into a grim smile.
“This isn’t Clapham Junction,” he answered tersely. “There won’t be a train till ten o’clock to-night.”
A glint of humour danced in Jean’s eyes.
“In that case,” she returned gravely, “what do you advise?”
“I don’t advise,” he replied promptly. “I apologise. Please forgive such an ungracious reception, Miss Peterson—but you must acknowledge it was something in the nature of a surprise to find that you were—you!”
Jean laughed.
“It’s given you an unfair advantage, too,” she replied. “I still haven’t penetrated your incognito—but I suppose you are Mr. Brennan?”
“No. Nick Brennan’s my half-brother. I’m Blaise Tormarin, and, as my mother was unable to meet you herself, I came instead. Shall we go? I’ll give the station-master instructions about your baggage.”
So the unknown Englishman of Montavan was the man of whom the two women at the neighbouring lunch table in the hotel had been gossiping—the central figure of that most tragic love-affair! Jean thought she could discern, now, the origin of some of those embittered comments he had let fall when they were together in the mountains.
In silence she followed him out of the little wayside station to where the big head-lamps of a stationary car shed a blaze of light on the roadway, and presently they were slipping smoothly along between the high hedges which flanked the road on either hand.