THERE are some people to whom love comes in a single blinding flash; it
is as though the heavens were opened and the vision and the glory theirs
in a sudden, transcendant revelation. To others it comes gradually,
their hearts opening diffidently to its warmth and light as a closed
bud unfolds its petals, almost imperceptibly, to the sun.
With Jean, its coming partook in a measure of both of these. Love itself
did not come to her suddenly. It had been secretly growing and deepening
within her for months. But the recognition of it came upon her with an
overwhelming suddenness.
Lady Anne, in recalling that bleak tragedy of the past, had accomplished
more than she knew. She had shown Jean her own heart.
From those fierce, unexpected pangs of jealousy which had stabbed her
as she realised the part played by another woman in Blaise’s life--the
woman who had been his wife--had sprung the knowledge that she loved
him. Only love could explain the instant, clamorous rebellion of her
whole being against that other woman’s claim. And now, looking back
upon the months which she had spent at Staple, she comprehended that the
veiled figure of Love, face shrouded, had walked beside her all the
way. That was why these even, uneventful weeks at Staple had seemed so
wonderful!
The recognition of the great thing that had come into her life left her
a little breathless and shaken. But she did not seek to evade or deny
it. The absolute candour of her mind--candid even to itself--accepted
the truth quite simply and frankly. No false shame that she had, as far
as actual fact went, given her love unasked, tempted her to disguise
from herself the reality of what had happened. For good or ill, whether
Blaise returned her love or no, it was his.
But in her inmost heart she believed that he, too,
cared--half-fearfully, half-joyfully recognising the pent-up force which
surged behind the bars of his deliberate aloofness.
True, he had never definitely spoken of his love in so many words, hut
Lady Anne had supplied the key to his silence. The past still bound him!
Alive, Nesta had held him by her beauty; and dead, she still held him
with the cords of remorse and unavailing self-reproach--cords which can
bind almost as closely as the strands of love.
But for that----
The hot colour surged into Jean’s cheeks at the sweet, secret thought
which lay behind that “but”. Blaise cared! Cared for her, needed
her, just as she cared for and needed him. To her woman’s eyes, newly
anointed with love’s sacramental oil and given sight, it had become
suddenly evident in a hundred ways, most of all evident in his sullen
effort to conceal it from her.
So much that he had said, or had not said--those clipped sentences,
bitten off short with a savage intensity that had often enough troubled
and bewildered her, now found their right interpretation. He cared...
but the bondage of the past still held.
And with that thought came reaction. The brief, quivering ecstacy, which
had sent little fugitive thrills and currents racing through every nerve
of her, died suddenly like a damped-out fire, as she realised all which
that bondage implied.
It was possible he might never break the silence which he himself
had decreed. From the very beginning he had recognised and insisted
upon--the fact that they two were only “ships that pass,” and though
now, for a little space, Fate had directed the course of each into the
same channel, a year, at most, would float them out again on to the big
ocean of life where vessels signalled--and passed--each other. She must,
in the ordinary course of events, return eventually to Beirnfels, while
Blaise remained in England. And that would be the end of it.
She knew the man’s dogged pertinacity; he would hold to an idea or
belief immovably if he conceived it right, no matter what the temptation
to break away. And in the flood of light vouchsafed by Lady Anne’s
disclosure, she felt convinced that he had somehow come to regard the
tragic happenings of the past as standing betwixt him and any future
happiness. Why, Jean could not altogether fathom, but she guessed
that the dominant factor in the matter was probably an exaggerated
consciousness of responsibility for his wife’s death, and perhaps, too,
a certain lingering tenderness, a subconscious feeling of loyalty to
the dead woman, which urged him on to the sacrifice of his own personal
happiness as some kind of atonement.
Unless--and a swift spasm of pain shot through her, searing its way like
a tongue of flame--unless Lady Anne had been altogether mistaken in her
fixed belief that Blaise had not really cared for his wife but had only
been carried away on the swift tide of passion--that tide which runs so
fiercely and untrammelled in hot youth.
Jean had her black hour then, when she faced the fact that although her
love was given, and although she tremulously believed it was returned,
she would probably never know the supreme joy of utter certainty, never
hear the beloved’s voice utter those words which hold all heaven for the
woman who hears them.
But, through the darkness that closed about her, there gleamed a single
thread of light--the light of her own bestowal of love. Even if she
never knew, of a surety, that Blaise cared, even if--and here she
shrank, but forced herself to face the possibility sincerely--even if
she were utterly mistaken and he did not care for her in any other way
save as a friend--his “little comrade”--still there would remain always
the golden gleam of love that has been given. For no one who loves can
be quite unhappy.