JEAN was standing looking out from the window of her room in the hotel
at Montavan. In the distance, the great white peaks of the Alps strained
upwards, piercing the mass of drifting cloud, whilst below lay a world
sheeted in snow, the long reach of dazzling purity broken only where
the pine-woods etched black trunks against the whiteness and the steely
gleam of a frozen lake showed like a broad blade drawn from a white
velvet scabbard.
It had been part of Peterson’s expressed programme that, before going
their separate ways, he and Jean should make a brief stay at Montavan,
there to await Lady Anne Brennan’s answer to his letter. Jean had
divined in this determination an excuse, covering his need to take
farewell of that grave on the lonely mountain-side before he set out
upon the solitary journey which could not fail to hold poignant memories
of other, former wanderings--wanderings invested with the exquisite joy
of sharing each adventure with a beloved fellow-wayfarer.
Instinctively though Jean had recognised the desire at the back of
Glyn’s decision to stop at Montavan, she was scrupulously careful not to
let him guess her recognition. She took her cue from his own demeanour,
which was outwardly that of a man merely travelling for pleasure,
and she listened with a grim sense of amusement when poor Monsieur
Vautrinot, the _maître d’hôtel_, recognising Peterson as a former
client, sympathetically recalled the sad circumstances of his previous
visit and was roundly snubbed for his pains.
To Jean the loss of her mother had meant far less than it would have
done to a girl in more commonplace circumstances. It was true that
Jacqueline had shown herself all that was kindhearted and generous in
her genuine wish to compass the girl’s happiness, and that Jean had been
frankly fond of her and attracted by her, but in no sense of the words
had there been any interpretation of a maternal or filial relationship.
As Jean herself, to the huge entertainment of her parents, had on
one occasion summed up the situation: “Of course I know I’m a quite
superfluous third at Beirnfels, but, all the same, you two really do
make the most perfect host and hostess, and you try awfully hard not to
let me feel _de trop_.”
But, despite the fact that Jacqueline had represented little more to
her daughter than a brilliant and delightful personality with whom
circumstances happened to have brought her into contact, Jean was
conscious of a sudden thrill of pain as her glance travelled across the
wide stretches of snow and came at last to rest on the little burial
ground which lay half hidden beneath the shoulder of a hill. She was
moved by an immense consciousness of loss--not just the mere sense of
bereavement which the circumstances would naturally have engendered, but
something more absolute--a sense of all the exquisite maternal element
which she had missed in the woman who was dead.
And then came recognition of the uselessness of such regret. Nothing
could have made Jacqueline other than she was--one of the world’s great
lovers. Mated to the man she loved, she asked nothing more of Nature,
nor had she herself anything more to give. And the same reasoning,
though perhaps in a less degree, could be applied to Peterson’s
own attitude of detachment towards his daughter; although Jean was
intuitively aware that she had come to mean much more to him since
her mother’s death, even though it might be, perhaps, only because she
represented a tangible link with his past happiness.
Thrusting aside the oppression of thought conjured up by her glimpse of
that quiet God’s Acre, set high up among the hills, she turned abruptly
from the window and made her way downstairs to the hotel vestibule.
Here she discovered that Peterson had been claimed by some
acquaintances. The encounter was obviously not of his own choosing, for,
to Jean’s experienced eye, his face bore the slightly restive expression
common to it when circumstances had momentarily got the better of him.
His companions were a somewhat elaborate little Frenchman of fifty
or thereabouts, with an unmistakable air of breeding about him, and a
stately-looking woman some fifteen years younger, whose warm brunette
colouring and swift, mobile gesture proclaimed her of Latin blood. All
three were conversing in French.
“_Ah! La voici qui vient!_,” Peterson turned as Jean approached, his quick
exclamation tinctured with relief. Still in French, which both he
and Jean spoke as fluently and with as little accent as English, he
continued rapidly: “Jean, let me present you to Madame la Comtesse de
Varigny.”
The girl found herself looking straight into a pair of eyes of that
peculiarly opaque, dense brown common to Southern races. They were
heavily fringed with long black lashes, giving them a fictitiously soft
and disarming expression, yet Jean was vaguely conscious that their real
expression held something secret and implacable, almost repellant, an
impression strengthened by the virile, strongly-marked black brows that
lay so close above them.
For the rest, Madame de Varigny was undeniably a beautiful woman, her
blue-black, rather coarse hair framing an oval face, extraordinarily
attractive in contour, with somewhat high cheek bones and a clever,
flexible mouth.
Jean’s first instinctive feeling was one of distaste. In spite of
her knowledge that Varigny was one of the oldest names in France, the
Countess struck her as partaking a little of the adventuress--of the
type of woman of no particular birth who has climbed by her wits--and
she wondered what position she had occupied prior to her marriage.
She was sharply recalled from her thoughts to find that Madame de
Varigny was introducing the little middle-aged Frenchman to her as her
husband, and immediately she spoke Jean felt her suspicions melting away
beneath the warm, caressing cadences of an unusually beautiful voice.
Such a voice was a straight passport to the heart. It seemed to clothe
even the prosaic little Count in an almost romantic atmosphere of tender
charm, an effect which he speedily dispelled by giving Jean a full,
true, and particular account of the various pulmonary symptoms which
annually induced him to seek the high, dry air of Montavan.
“It is as an insurance of good health that I come,” he informed Jean
gravely.
“Oh, yes, we are not here merely for pleasure--_comme ces
autres_”---Madame de Varigny gestured smilingly towards a merry party
of men and girls who had just come in from luging and were stamping
the snow from off their feet amid gay little outbursts of chaff and
laughter. “We are here just as last year, when we first made the
acquaintance of Monsieur Peterson”--the suddenly muted quality of her
voice implied just the right amount of sympathetic recollection--“so
that _mon pauvre mari_ may assure himself of yet another year of
health.”
The faintly ironical gleam in her eyes convinced Jean that, as she had
shrewdly begun to suspect, the little Count was a _malade imaginaire_,
and once she found herself wondering what could be the circumstances
responsible for the union of two such dissimilar personalities as the
high-bred, hypochondriacal little Count and the rather splendid-looking
but almost certainly plebeian-born woman who was his wife.
She intended, later on, to ask her father if he could supply the key to
the riddle, but he had contrived to drift off during the course of her
conversation with the Varignys, and, when at last she found herself free
to join him, he had disappeared altogether.
She thought it very probable that he had gone out to watch the progress
of a ski-ing match to which he had referred with some enthusiasm earlier
in the day, and she smiled a little at the characteristic way in which
he had extricated himself, at her expense, from the inconvenience of his
unexpected recontre with the Varignys.
But, two hours later, she realised that once again his superficial air
of animation had deceived her. From her window she saw him coming along
the frozen track that led from the hillside cemetery, and for a moment
she hardly recognised her father in that suddenly shrank, huddled figure
of a man, stumbling down the path, his head thrust forward and sunken on
his breast.
Her first imperative instinct was to go and meet him. Her whole being
ached with the longing to let him feel the warm rush of her sympathy, to
assure him that he was not utterly alone. But she checked the impulse,
recognising that he had no use for any sympathy or love which she could
give.
She had never really been anything other than exterior to his life,
outside his happiness, and now she felt intuitively that he would wish
her to remain equally outside the temple of his grief.
He was the type of man who would bitterly resent the knowledge that any
eyes had seen him at a moment of such utter, pitiable self-revelation,
and it was the measure of her understanding that Jean waited quietly
till he should choose to come to her.
“When he came, he had more or less regained his customary poise, though
he still looked strained and shaken. He addressed her abruptly.
“I’ve decided to go straight on to Marseilles and sail by the next boat,
Jean. There’s one I can catch if I start at once.”
“At once?” she exclaimed, taken aback. “You don’t mean--to-day?”
He nodded.
“Yes, this very evening. I find I can get down to Montreux in time for
the night mail.” Then, answering her unspoken thought: “You’ll be quite
all right. You will be certain to hear from Lady Anne in a day or two,
and, meanwhile, I’ll ask Madame de Varigny to play chaperon. She’ll
be delighted”--with a flash of the ironical humour that was never long
absent from him.
“Who was she before she married the Count?” queried Jean.
“I can’t tell you. She is very reticent about her antecedents--probably
with good reason”--smiling grimly. “But she is a big and beautiful
person, and our little Count is obviously quite happy in his choice.”
“She is rather a fascinating woman,” commented Jean.
“Yes--but preferable as a friend rather than an enemy. I don’t know
anything about her, but I wouldn’t mind wagering that she has a dash of
Corsican blood in her. Anyway, she will look after you all right till
Anne Brennan writes.”
“And if no letter comes?” suggested Jean. “Or supposing Lady Anne can’t
have me? We’re rather taking things for granted, you know.”
His face clouded, but cleared again almost instantly.
“She _will_ have you. Anne would never refuse a request of mine. If not,
you must come on to me, and I’ll make other arrangements,”--vaguely.
“I’ll let the next boat go, and stay in Paris till I hear from you. But
I can’t wait here any longer.”
He paused, then broke out hurriedly:
“I ought never to have come to this place. It’s haunted. I know you’ll
understand--you always do understand, I think, you quiet child--why I
must go.”
And Jean, looking with the clear eyes of unhurt youth into the handsome,
grief-ravaged face, was suddenly conscious of a shrinking fear of that
mysterious force called love, which can make, and so swiftly, terribly
unmake the lives of men and women.