NEW YEAR’S EYE found Jean sitting alone in Claire’s special sanctum—the room which had witnessed that frightful scene when Sir Adrian had suddenly gone mad.
It was a cosy enough little room in winter-time. A cheery fire crackled in the open grate, while a heavy velvet curtain was drawn across the door that gave egress to the terrace, effectually screening out the ubiquitous draught which invariably seeks entry through crack and hinge-space.
Claire was at the Dower House this evening, where a New Year’s dinner-party was in progress, but Jean had no heart for festivities of any kind even had she not been precluded from taking part in them by reason of her father’s death.
The grief and strain of the last four months had set their mark upon her. She was much thinner than formerly—her extreme slenderness accentuated by the clinging black of the dress she was wearing—while faint purple shadows lay beneath her eyes, giving her a look of frailty and fatigue.
She and Claire led a very sober and uneventful existence at Charnwood, the one absorbed in her quiet happiness, the other in her quiet grief. But the bond of their friendship had held true throughout the differing fortunes which had fallen to the lot of each, and although for Jean there was inevitable additional pain involved in still remaining within the neighbourhood of Staple, it was counterbalanced by the comfort she drew from Clare’s companionship.
Besides, as she reflected dispiritedly, where else had she to go? The Dower House would have been open to her, of course, at any time, but there she would be certain to encounter Blaise more frequently, and of late her principal preoccupation had been to avoid such meeting whenever possible. And she could not face Beirnfels yet—alone! Some day, when Claire was married, she knew that she must brace herself to return there—to a house of dreams that would never come true now. But at present she shrank intolerably from the idea. She craved companionship—above all, the consoling, tender understanding which Claire, who had herself suffered, was so well able to give her.
The book that she had been reading earlier in the evening lay open on her knee, and her thoughts were with Claire now. She pictured her sitting next to Nick at dinner, her flower-like face radiant with unclouded happiness, and Jean was thankful to the very bottom of her heart that she was able to feel glad—glad of that happiness. At least her own sorrow had not yet taught her the grudging envy which cannot endure another’s joy.
With a quickly repressed sigh, she turned again to her book. Its pages fluttered faintly, as though stirred by some passing current of air, and Jean, coming suddenly out of her reverie, was conscious of a cool draught wafting towards her from the direction of the terrace door.
Vaguely surprised, she glanced up, and a startled cry broke from her lips. The door was open, the folds of the curtain had been drawn aside, and in the aperture stood Blaise Tormarin.
Jean sprang up from her chair and stood staring at him with dilated eyes, one hand gripping the edge of the chimney-piece.
“Blaise!... You!” The words issued stammeringly from her lips.
“Yes,” he returned shortly. “May I come in?”
Without waiting for an answer he closed the door behind him, letting the curtain fall back into its place, and crossed the room to her side.
Jean felt her heart contract as her eyes marked the changes wrought in him by the few weeks which had elapsed since she had seen him. His face was haggard as though from lack of sleep, and the lines on either side the mouth were scored deep into the flesh. The mouth itself closed in a tense line of savage misery and the stark bitterness of his eyes filled her with grief and pity, knowing how utterly powerless she was to help or comfort him.
Distrusting her self-control, she snatched at the first conventional remark that suggested itself.
“I thought—I thought you and Nesta were both dining at the Dower House,” she said confusedly.
“Nesta is there. I made an excuse. I came here instead.”
Something in the curt, clipped sentences sounded a note of warning in her ears.
“But you ought not to have come here,” she replied quickly—defensively almost. “Why have you come, Blaise?”
“I came,” he said slowly, “because I can’t bear my life without you a day longer. Because—— Oh, Jean! Jean!...Beloved!Do you need to ask me why I came?”
With a swift, irresistible movement he swept her up into his arms, holding her crushed against his breast, his mouth on hers, kissing her as a man kisses when love that has been long thwarted and denied at last bursts asunder the shackles which constrained it.
And Jean, starved for four long months of the touch of the beloved arms, the pressure of the beloved lips upon her own, had yielded to him almost before she was aware of her surrender.
Then the remembrance of the woman who stood between them rushed across her and she tore herself free from his embrace, white and trembling in every limb.
“Blaise!... Blaise!... What are you thinking of? Oh! We’re mad—mad!”
She covered her face with her shaking hands but he drew them away, gazing down at her with eyes that worshipped.
“No, beloved, we’re not mad,” lie cried triumphantly. “We’re sane—sane at last. We were mad to think we could live apart, mad to dream we could starve love like ours. That was when we were mad! But we’ll never be parted again; sweet——”
“Blaise,” she whispered, staring at him with horrified, dilated eyes. “You don’t know what you are saying! You’re forgetting Nesta—your wife. Oh, go—go quickly! You must not stay here and talk like this to me!”
“No,” he returned. “I won’t go, Jean. I’ve come to take you away with me.” Once more his arms went round her. “Belovedest, I can’t live without you any longer. I’ve tried—and I can’t do it. Jean, you’ll come? You love me enough—enough to come away with me to the ends of the earth where we’ll find happiness at last?”
She sought to free herself from his, clasp, pressing with straining hands against his chest.
“No! No!” she cried breathlessly. “I can’t go with you... you know I can’t! Ah! Don’t ask me, Blaise!” There was an agony of supplication in her voice.
“But I do ask you. And if you love me”—his eyes holding hers—“you’ll come, Jean.”
“I do love you,” she answered earnestly. “But it isn’t the you I love asking me this, Blaise. It’s some other man—a stranger——”
“If you love me, you’ll come,” he reiterated doggedly. “I can’t live without you, Jean. I want you—oh, heart’s beloved, if you knew—” And the burning, passionate words, the pent-up love and longing of months of separation and despair, came pouring from his lips—beseeching and demanding, wringing her heart, pulling at the love within her that ached to give him the answer which he craved.
“Oh, Blaise, dearest of all—hush! Hush!” She checked him brokenly, with quivering lips. “I can’t go with you. It wouldn’t bring us happiness. Ah, listen to me, dear!” She came close to him and laid her hands imploringly on his arm, lifting her white, stricken face to his. “It would only spoil our love—to take it like that when we have no right to. It would smirch and soil it, make it something different. I think—I think, in the end, Blaise, it would kill it.”
“Nothing would ever kill my love for you,” he exclaimed passionately. “Jean, little Jean, think of what our life together might be—the glory and beauty of it—just you and I in our House of Dreams!”
She caught her breath. Oh! Why did he make it so hard for her? With every fibre of her being yearning towards him she must refuse, deny him, drive him away from her.
“No, no!” she cried tremulously. “We could never reach our House of Dreams that way—Oh, I know it! At least, not the sort of House of Dreams that would be worth anything to you or me, Blaise. It would only be a sham, a make-believe. You can’t build true on a rotten foundation.... Don’t ask me any more, dear. It’s so hard—so hard to keep on saying no when everything in me wants to say yes. But I must say it. And you... you must go back to Nesta.”
Her voice almost failed her. She could feel her strength ebbing with every moment that he stayed beside her. She knew that she would not be able to resist his pleading much longer. Her own heart was fighting against her—fighting on his side!
He saw her weakness and caught at it eagerly.
“Do you know what you’re asking?” he demanded hoarsely. “Do you know what you are sending me back to? Our life together—Nesta’s and mine—has been simple hell upon earth. I obeyed you—and I took her back. But I have done no good by it. She is as weak and worthless as she ever was. Our days are one continual round of bickering and quarrels.” His face darkened. “And she is not satisfied! Her nominal position as my wife does not con tent her. Do you understand what that must mean—if I go back?” He paused, his eyes bent steadily upon her. “Jean”—very low—“now that you know—will you still send me back to Nesta? Or will you come with me and let us find our happiness together?”
He watched the scarlet flood surge into her face and then retreat, leaving it a pallid white.
“Answer me!” he persisted, as she remained silent.
“Wait... wait a little...” she muttered helplessly.
She turned away from him and, leaning her elbows on the chimney-piece, buried her face in her hands.
The supreme test had come at last. She realised, now, that her renunciation—that renunciation which had cost her so much pain and bitterness—had been, after all, only something superficial and incomplete. She had not made the full sacrifice that duty and honour demanded of her. Though she had outwardly renounced her lover—bade him return to Nesta—she still held him hers by the utter faithfulness of his love for her. Nesta had had but the husk, the shell—a husband in name only, every hour of their life together an insult to her pride and womanhood.
Jean’s thoughts lashed her. Her shoulders bent and cowered a little as though beneath a physical blow.
There had been a time—oh! very long ago, it seemed, before Destiny had come with her snuffers and quenched the twin flames and love and happiness—a time when dimly, as in some exquisite dream, she had heard the sound of little voices, felt the helpless touch of tiny hands. Perhaps Nesta, too, had heard those voices, felt those clinging hands, while her soul quickened to the vision of a future which might hold some deeper meaning, some more sacred trust and purpose, than her empty, wayward past.
And she, Jean, had stood between Nesta and the fulfilment of that dream, forever forbidding her entrance to her woman’s kingdom.
She saw it all now with a terrible clarity of vision, understood to the full the two alternatives which faced her—to go with Blaise, as he implored, or to send him—her man, the man she loved—back to Nesta. There was no longer any middle course.
A voice sounded in her ears.
“No true happiness ever came of running away from duty. And if ever I’m up against such a thing—a choice like this—I hope to God I’d be able to hang on, to run straight, even if it half-killed me to do it!”
The words sounded so clear and distinct that Jean half raised her head to see who spoke them. And then, in an overwhelming rush of memory, she recognised that it was no actual voice she heard but the mental echo of her own words to Nick—to Nick at the time when he had been passing through a like fire of fierce temptation.
How easily, in her young, untried ignorance, the words had fallen from her lips as she had urged Nick to renounce his fixed resolve! Such eminently wise and excellent counsel! And how little—how crassly little had she realised at the time the huge demand that she was making!
She had spoken as though it were comparatively easy to reject the wrong and choose the right—to follow the stern and narrow path of Duty, through the mists and utter darkness that enshrouded it, up to those shining heights which lie beyond human sight—the outposts of Eternal Heaven itself.
Easy!.... Oh, God!....
When at last Jean uncovered her face and lifted it to meet the set gaze of the man beside her, it was wan and ravaged “the face of one who has come through some fierce purgatory of torment.”
“Well?” he demanded, his voice roughened because he found himself unable to steady it with that strained and altered face upturned to his. “Well? Are you going to send me back to Nesta?”
She did not answer his question. Instead, she put another.
“Do you think she—loves you?”
He stared.
“Nesta? Yes. As far as her sort can love, I believe she does.”
Jean nodded, as though it were the answer she had expected.
“Blaise... I’m going to send you back to her. I’m sure now. Iknow. It’s the only thing we can do... We must say good-bye—altogether—never see each other again.”
“Never?” The word came draggingly.
“Never. It—it would be too hard for us, Blaise, to see each other.”
“Yes,” he answered slowly. “It would be too hard.”
They were both silent. The minutes ticked away unregarded. Time had ceased to count. This farewell was till the end of time.
“Blaise—” All the resonance had gone out of her voice. It sounded flat and tired. “You—you will go back to her?”
“Yes, I will go back.”
She stretched out her hands flutteringly.
“Then go.... go soon, Blaise! I—I can’t bear very much more.”
He opened his arms, then, and she went to him, and for a space they clung together in silence. For the last time he set his lips to hers, held her once more against his heart. Then slowly they drew apart, stricken eyes gazing lingeringly into other eyes as stricken, and presently the closing of the terrace door told her that he had gone, and that she must turn her feet to the solitary path of those who have said farewell to love.
Henceforth, she would be alone—living or dying, quite alone.
It was long past midnight when Claire returned from the Dower House.
She found Jean sitting beside the grey embers of a burnt-out fire, her hands lying folded upon her knee, her eyes staring stonily in front of her in a fixed, unseeing gaze.
Claire called to her softly, as when one wakes a sleeper.
“Jean!”
Jean turned her head.
“So you have got back?” she said dully. She stood up stiffly, as though her limbs were cramped. “Claire, I am going away—right away from here—to Beirnfels.”
“Why?” asked Claire.
She waited tensely for the answer.
“Blaise has been here. He asked me to go away with him. I’ve sent him back to Nesta.”
The short, stilted sentences fell mechanically from her lips. She spoke exactly like a child repeating a lesson learned by rote.
Claire’s eyes grew very pitiful.
“And must you go to Beirnfels alone?” she asked quietly. “Won’t you take me with you?”
“Will you come?”—incredulously.
“Of course I’ll come. I shouldn’t dream of letting you go by yourself.”
And then, all at once, Jean’s tired body, exhausted by the soul’s long conflict, gave way, and she slipped to the ground in a dead faint.
AWEEK later Jean sat at the foot of the stairs and surveyed with faint amusement the motley collection of trunks and suit-cases which thronged the hall.
She was still looking pale and worn, strung up to face her self-imposed exile from the country which now held everything that was dear to her, but no enormity of sorrow, would ever blind Jean for long to the whimsical aspect that attends so many of the little things of daily life.
“What a lot of useless lumber we women carry about with us wherever we go!” she commented. “Five—six—sevenpackages to supply the needs of two solitary females—and Heaven only knows how many brown paper parcels will be required at the last moment for all the things we shall find we have forgotten when the time actually comes to start.” Claire, standing on the flight of stairs above and viewing the assemblage in the hall from over the top of the banister rail, giggled helplessly.
“Yes, they do look a lot,” she admitted. “However”—hopefully—“there’ll be plenty of room for them all when we actually get to Beirnfels.”
“Oh, plenty,” agreed Jean. “But we’ve got to convey them half across Europe first—two lone women and one miserable maid who will probably combine train-sickness and home-sickness to an extent that will totally incapacitate her for the performance of her duties.”
At this moment the front-door bell clanged violently through the house, as though pulled by someone in a tremendous hurry. Claire hastily withdrew her head from over the banister rail and disappeared upstairs, while Jean relinquished the accommodation offered by the bottommost step and sought refuge in the nearest of the sitting-rooms, closing the door stealthily behind her.
A moment later Tucker, who had caught sight of her hurriedly retreating figure, reopened it and announced imperturbably:
“Mr. Burke.”
Jean greeted him with surprise, but without any feeling of embarrassment. So much had happened since the day she had eluded him on the Moor, events of such intimate and tragic import had swept her path, that the unexpected meeting failed to rouse any feeling either of anger or dismay. Burke, and everything connected with him, belonged to another period of her existence altogether—to that glorious care-free time when it had seemed as though life were a deep, inexhaustible well bubbling over with wonderful possibilities. Burke was merely a ghost—arevenantfrom that far distant epoch.
“I’m in time, then?” he said, when he had shaken hands. “In time? In time for what?”
“In time to see you before you go.”
“Oh, yes.” Jean spoke lightly. “You’re in time for that. But who told you I was going away? I didn’t know you were in England, even.”
“I came back a fortnight ago—to London. Judith wired me from home that you were leaving Coombe Eavie.”
“I don’t see the necessity for her wiring you,” remarked Jean a little coldly. “There was no need for you to see me.”
“There was—every need.”
She glanced at him keenly, detecting a new note in his voice, an unexpected gravity and restraint.
“Every need,” he repeated. He paused, then went on quickly, with a nervousness that was foreign to him. “Jean, I know everything that has happened—that your engagement to Tormarin is at an end—and I have come to ask you if you will be my wife. No—hear me out!”—as she would have interrupted him. “I’m not asking you now as—as I did before. If you will marry me, I swear I will ask for nothing that you are not willing to give. I’m making no demands. I’ve learned now”—with a faint weary smile—“that you cannot force love. It can only be given. And I want nothing but just the right to take care of you, to shield you—to keep the sharp corners of life away from you.” Then, as he read her incredulous face, he went on gravely: “If I had wanted more than that, Jean, if I had not learned something—just from loving you, I should not have waited until now. I should have come at once—as soon as I learned from Madame de Varigny that Tormarin’s wife was still alive.”
She looked at him curiously.
“Why didn’t you come then, Geoffrey? I sometimes wondered—you being you!”—with a faint smile. “Because, of course, I knew why you had rushed off to France. Madame de Varigny explained that.”
A dull flush mounted to his face.
“Did she? I expect she told you merely what was the truth. I went to see her because she had assured me that she could stop your marriage with Tormarin—could interfere in some way to prevent it. That was why I went to France.... But when she told me her blackguardly scheme—how she had planned and plotted to conceal the fact that Tormarin’s wife was alive—and whyshe had done it, I would have no hand in anything that followed. I’m no saint”—a brief, ironical smile flitted across his face—“but there are some methods at which even I draw the line.”
“So—that was why you stayed away?”
“That was why. I wanted you, Jean—God only knows how I wanted you!—but I couldn’t try to force your hand at such a time. I couldn’t profit by a damnable scheme like that.”
Jean’s eyes grew soft as she realised that beneath all the impetuous arrogance and dominant demands of the man’s temperament there yet lay something fine and clean and straight—difficult to get at, perhaps, but which could yet rise, in answer to a sense of honour and fairness with which she had not credited him, and take command of his whole nature.
“I’m glad—glad you didn’t come, Geoffrey,” she said gently. “Glad you—couldn’t.”
“I don’t know that I’m glad about it,” he returned with a grim candour. “I simply couldn’t do it, and that’s all there is to it. But I’ve come now, Jean. I’ve come because I want you to give me just the right to look after you. I’m not asking for anything. I only want to serve you—if you’ll let me—just to be near you. If Tormarin were free, I would not have come to you again. I know I should have no chance. But he’s not free. Does that give me a chance, Jean? If it doesn’t, I’ll take myself off—I’ll never bother you again. I’ll try Africa—big game shooting”—with a short laugh. “But if it does——”
He paused and waited for her answer. The intensity of longing in his eyes was the sole indication of the emotion that stirred within him—an emotion held in check by a stern self-control that seemed to Jean to be part of this new, changed lover of hers. Surely, in the months which had elapsed since she had fled from him on Dartmoor, he had fought with his devils and cast them out!
She held out her hands to him.
“Geoffrey, I’m so sorry—but I’m afraid it doesn’t. I wish—I wish I could give you any other answer. But, you see, it isn’t marrying—it’s love that matters. And all my love is given.”
He took her hands in his and held them gently with that strange, new restraint he seemed to have learned.
“I see,” he said slowly. Then for a moment his calm wavered. The underlying passion, so strongly held in leash, shook the even tones of his voice. “Tormarin is a lucky man—in spite of everything! I’d give my soul to have what he has—your love, Jean.”
His big hands closed round her slight ones and he lifted them to his lips. Then, without another word, he went away, and Jean was left wondering sorrowfully why the love that she did not want was offered her in such full measure, hers to take at will, while the love for which she craved, the love which would have meant the glory and fulfilment of life itself, was denied her—shut away by all the laws of God and Man.
JEAN leaned idly against the ancient wall which bounded the stone-paved court at Beirnfels and looked down towards the valley below.
Spring was in the air—late comer to this eastern corner of Europe—but, at last, even here the fragrance of fresh growing things was permeating the atmosphere, strips of vivid blue rent the grey skies, and splashes of golden sunshine lay dappled over the shining roofs of the village that nestled in the valley.
But no responsive light had lit itself in Jean’s wistful eyes. She was out of tune with the season. Spring and hope go hand in hand, the one symbolical of the other, and the promise of spring-time, the blossom of hope, was dead within her heart—withered almost before it had had time to bud.
The months since she had quitted England had sufficed to blunt the keen edge of her pain, but always she was conscious of a dull, unending ache—a corroding sense of the uselessness and emptiness of life.
Yet she had learned to be thankful for even this much respite from the piercing agony of the first few weeks which she had spent at Beirnfels. Whatever the coming years might bring her of relief from pain, or even of some modicum of joy, those weeks when she had suffered the torments of the damned would remain stamped indelibly upon her memory.
During the last days at Charnwood she had been keyed up to a high pitch of endurance by the very magnitude of the renunciation she had made. It seems as though, when the soul strains upwards to the accomplishment of some deed that is almost beyond the power of weak human nature to achieve, there is vouchsafed, for the time being, a merciful oblivion to the immensity of pain involved. A transport of spiritual fervour lifts the martyr beyond any ordinary recognition of the physical fire that burns and chars his flesh, and some such ecstasy of sacrifice had supported Jean through the act of abnegation by which she had surrendered her love, and with it her life’s happiness, at the foot of the stern altar of Duty.
Afterwards had followed the preparations and bustle of departure, the necessary arrangements to be made and telegraphed to Beirnfels, and finally the long journey across Europe and the hundred and one small details that required settlement before she and Claire were fully installed at Beirnfels and the wheels of the household machinery running smoothly.
But when all this was accomplished, when the need to arrange and plan and make decisions had gone by and her mind was free to concern itself again with her own affairs, then Jean realised the full price of her renunciation.
And she paid it. In days that were an endless procession of anguished hours; in sleepless nights that were a mental and physical torment of unbearable longing such as she had never dreamed of; in tears and in dumb, helpless silences, she paid it. And at last, out of those racked and tortured weeks she emerged into a numbed, listless capacity to pick up once more the torn and mutilated threads of life.
Looking backward, she marvelled at the wonderful patience with which Claire had borne with her, at the selfless way in which she had devoted all her energies to ministering to one who was suffering from heart-sickness—that most wearying of all complaints to the sufferer’s friends because so difficult of comprehension by those not similarly afflicted.
Nick’s “pale golden narcissus!” To Jean, who had clung to her, helped inexpressibly by her tranquil, steadfast, unswerving faith and loving-kindness, it seemed as though the staunch and sturdy oak were a more appropriate metaphor in which to express the soul of Claire.
She heard her now, coming with light steps across the court. She rarely left Jean brooding long alone these days, exercising all her tact and ingenuity to devise some means by which she might distract her thoughts when she could see they had slipped back into the past.
Jean turned to greet her with a faint smile.
“Well, my good angel? Come to rout me out? I suppose”—teasingly—“you want me to ride down to the village and bring back two lemons urgently demanded by the cook?”
Claire laughed a little. Many had been the transparent little devices she had employed to beguile Jean into the saddle, knowing well that once she was on the back of her favourite mare the errand which was the ostensible purpose of the occasion would quite probably be entirely forgotten. But Jean would return from a long ride over the beloved hills and valleys that had been familiar to her from childhood with a faint colour in her pale cheeks, and with the shadow in her eyes a little lightened. There is no cure for sickness of the soul like the big, open spaces of the earth and God’s clean winds and sunlight.
“No,” said Claire, “it’s not lemons this time.”
“Then what is it?” demanded Jean. “You didn’t come out here just to look at the view. There’s an air of importance about you.”
It was true. Claire wore a little fluttering aspect of excitement. The colour came and went swiftly in her cheeks, and her eyes had a bright, almost dazzled look, while a small anxious frown kept appearing between her pretty brows. She regarded Jean uncertainly.
“Well—yes, it is something,” she acknowledged. “I had a letter from Lady Anne this morning.”
Both girls had theirpremiers déjeunersserved to them in their rooms, so that each one’s morning mail was an unknown quantity to the other until they met downstairs.
“From Lady Anne?” Jean looked interested. “What does she say?”
“She says—she writes———” Here Claire floundered and came to a stop as though uncertain how to proceed, the little puzzled frown deepening between her brows. “Oh, Jean, she had a special reason for writing—some news——”
Jean’s arm, hanging slackly at her side, jerked suddenly. Something in Claire’s half-frightened, deprecating air sent a thrill of foreboding through her. Her heart turned to ice within her.
“News?” she said in a harsh, strangled voice. “Tell me quick—what is it?... Blaise? He’s not—dead?” Her face, drained of every drop of colour, her suddenly pinched nostrils and eyes stricken with quick fear drew a swift cry from Claire.
“No—no!” she exclaimed in hasty reassurance. “It’sgoodnews! Good—-not bad!”
Jean’s taut muscles relaxed and she leaned against the wall as though seeking support.
“You frightened me,” she said dully. “Good news? Then it can’t be for me. What is it, Claire? Is Nick”—forcing a smile—“coming out here to see you?”
Claire nodded.
“Yes, Nick—and Blaise with him.”
Jean stared at her.
“Blaise—coming here? Oh, but he must not—he mustn’t come!”—in sudden panic. “I couldn’t go through it all again! I couldn’t!”
Claire slipped an arm round her.
“You won’t have to,” she answered. “Because, Jean-Jean! Blaise has the right to come now. He’s free!”
“Free?Free?” repeated Jean. “What do you mean! How can he be free?”
“Nesta is dead,” said Claire simply.
“Dead?” Jean began to laugh a trifle hysterically.
“Oh, yes, she’s been ‘dead’ before. But——”
“She is really dead this time,” said Claire. “That is why Lady Anne has written—to tell us.”
“I can’t believe it!” muttered Jean. “I can’t believe it.”
“Youmustbelieve it,” insisted Claire quietly. “It is all quite true. She was buried last week in the little churchyard at Coombe Eavie, and Lady Anne writes that Nick and Blaise will be here almost as soon as her letter. They’re on their way now—now, Jean! Do you understand?” Her eyes filling with tears, Claire watched the gradual realisation of the amazing truth dawn in Jean’s face. That face so tragically worn, so fined and spiritualised by suffering, glowed with a new light; a glory of unimaginable hope lit itself in the tired golden eyes, and on the half-parted lips there seemed to quiver those kisses which still waited to be claimed.
Jean passed her hand across her eyes like one who has seen some bright light of surpassing radiance.
“Tell me, Claire,” she said at last, tremulously. “Tell me...” She broke off, unable to manage her voice.
“I’ll read you what Lady Anne says,” replied Claire quickly. “After writing that Nesta is dead and Nick and Blaise are coming here, she goes on: ‘Poor Nesta! One cannot help feeling sorry for her—killed so suddenly and so tragically. And yet such a death seems quite in the picture with her lawless, wayward nature! She was shot, Claire, shot in the Boundary Woods by a Frenchman who had apparently followed her to England for the express purpose. It appears he met her at Château Varigny, in the days when she was posing as Madame de Varigny’s niece, and fell violently in love with her. Of course Nesta could not marry him, and equally of course the Frenchman—he was the Vicomte de Chassaigne—did not know that she had a husband already. So, naturally, he hoped eventually to win her, and Nesta, (who, as you know, would flirt with the butcher’s boy if there were no one else handy) encouraged him and allowed him to make love to her to his heart’s content. Then, after her return to Staple, he learned of her marriage, and, furious at having been so utterly deceived, he followed. He must have watched her very carefully for some days, as he apparently knew her favourite walks, and waylaid her one afternoon in the woods. What passed between them we shall never know, for Chassaigne killed her and then immediately turned the revolver on himself. Blaise and Nick heard the shots and rushed down to the Boundary Woods where the shots had sounded—you’ll know where I mean, the woods that lie along the border between Willow Ferry and Staple. There they found them. Nesta was dead, and de Chassaigne dying. He had just strength enough to confide in Blaise all that I have written. I am writing to you, because I think it might come as too great a shock to Jean as you say she is still so far from strong. You must tell her——”
Jean interrupted the reading with a shout of laughter.
“Oh, Claire! Claire! You blessed infant! I suppose all those preliminary remarks of yours about ‘a letter from Lady Anne’ and the ‘news’ it contained were by way of preparing me for the shock—‘breaking the news’ in fact?”
“Yes,” admitted Claire, flushing a little.
Jean rocked with laughter—gay, spontaneous laughter such as Claire had not heard issue from her lips since the day when Madame de Varigny had come to Staple.
“And you just about succeeded in frightening me to death!” continued Jean. “Oh, Claire, Claire, you adorable little goose, didn’t you know that good news never kills?”
“I didn’t feel at all sure,” returned Claire, laughing a little, too, in spite of herself. “You’ve looked lately as though it wouldn’t take very much of anything—good or bad—to kill you.”
“Well, it would now,” Jean assured her solemnly. “Not all the powers of darkness would prevail against me, I verily believe.” She paused, frowning a little. “How beastly it is though, to feel outrageously happy because someone is dead! It’s indecent. Poor little Nesta! Oh, Claire! Is it hateful of me to feel like this? Do say it isn’t, because—because I can’t help it!”
“Of course it isn’t,” protested Claire. “It’s only natural.”
“I suppose it is. And I reallyamsorry for Nesta—though I’m so happy myself that it sort of swamps it. Oh, Claire darling”—the shadow passing and sheer gladness of soul bubbling up again into her voice—“I’m bound to kiss someone—at once. It’ll have to be you! And look! Those two may be here any moment—Lady Anne said so. I’m going to make myself beautiful—if I can. I wish I hadn’t grown so thin! The most ravishing frock in the world would look a failure draped on a clothes-horse. Still, I’ll do what I can to conceal from Blaise the hideous ravages of time. And I’m not going to wear black—I won’t welcome him back in sackcloth and ashes! I won’t! I won’t! I’ve got the darlingest frock upstairs—a filmy grey thing like moonlight. I’m going to wear that. I know—I know”—-softly—“that Glyn would understand.”
And if he knew anything at all about it—and one would like to think he did—it is quite certain Peterson would have approved his daughter’s decision. For to his incurably romantic spirit, the idea of a woman going to meet the lover of whom a malign fate had so nearly robbed her altogether, clad in the sable habiliments with which she had paid filial tribute to her father’s death, would have appeared of all things the most incongruous and irreconcilable.
So that when at last a prehistoric vehicle, chartered from the inn of the Green Dragon in the village below, toiled slowly up the hill to Peirnfels and Blaise and Nick climbed down from its musty interior, a slender, moon-grey figure, which might have been observed standing within the shadow of a tall stone pillar and following with straining eyes the snail-like progress of the old-fashioned carriage up the steep white road, flitted swiftly back into the shelter of the house. Claire, dimpling and smiling at the great gateway of the castle, alone received the travellers.
“Go along that corridor,” she said to Blaise, when they had exchanged greetings. “To the end door of all. That’s the sun-parlour. You’ll find Jean there. She thought it appropriate”—smiling at him.
Then, as Blaise strode down the corridor indicated, she turned to Nick and asked him with an adorable coquetry why he, too, had come to Beirnfels?
“I’ve heard it is the House of Dreams-Come-True,” replied Nick promptly. “It seemed a likely place in which to find you, most beautiful.”
Claire beamed at him.
“Oh, am I that—really, Nick?”
“Of course you are. The most beautiful in all the world. Claire”—tucking his arm into hers—“tell me, how is the ‘soul-rebuilding’ process getting on? That’s why I came, really, you know, to find out if you had completely finished redecorating your interior?—I can vouch for the outer woman myself”—with an adoring glance at the fluffy ash-blonde hair and pure little Greuze profile.
Claire rubbed her cheek against his sleeve. To a woman who has been for four months limited almost exclusively to the society of one other woman—even though that other woman be her chosen friend—the rough ‘feel’ of a man’s coat-sleeve (more particularly if he should happen to betheman) and the faint fragrance of tobacco which pervades it form an almost delirious combination.
Claire hauled down her flag precipitately.
“I’m ready to go back to England any time now, Nick,” she murmured.
“Are you? Darling! How soon can you be ready? In a week? To-morrow? Next day?”
“Quite soon. And meanwhile, mightn’t you—you and Blaise—stay for a bit at the Green Dragon?”
“We might,” replied Nick solemnly, quite omitting to mention that something of the sort had been precisely their intention when leaving England.
Meanwhile Blaise had made his way to the door at the end of the corridor. Outside it he paused, overwhelmed by the sudden realisation that beyond that wooden barrier lay holy ground—Paradise! And the Angel with the Flaming Sword stood at the gate no longer....
She was waiting for him over by the window, straight and slim and tall in her moon-grey, her hands hanging in front of her tight-clasped like those of a child. But her eyes were woman’s eyes.
With a little inarticulate cry she ran to him—to the place that was hers, now and for all time, against his heart—and his arms, that had been so long empty, held her as though he would never let her go.
“Beloved of my heart!” he murmured. “Oh, my sweet—my sweet!”
They spoke but little. Only those foolish, tender words that seem so meaningless to those who are not lovers, but which are pearls strung on a thread of gold to those who love—a rosary of memory which will be theirs to keep and tell again when the beloved voice that uttered them shall sound no more.