THROUGHOUT the day following that of the expedition to Dartmoor, Nick
seemed determined to keep out of Jean’s way. It was as though he feared
she might force some confidence from him that he was loth to give, and,
in consequence, deliberately avoided being alone with her.
On the second day, however, as luck would have it, she encountered
him in the corridor just outside her own sitting-room. He was striding
blindly along, obviously not heeding where he was going, and had almost
collided with her before he realised that she was there.
He jerked himself backwards.
“I beg your pardon,” he muttered, still without looking at her, and made
as though to pass on.
Jean checked him with a hand on his sleeve. She had not watched the
dogged sullenness of his face throughout yesterday to no purpose,
and now, as her swift gaze searched it anew, she felt convinced that
something fresh had occurred to stir him. It was impossible for Jean to
see a friend in trouble without wanting to “stand by.”
“Nick, old thing, what’s wrong?” she asked.
He stared at her unseeingly. “Wrong?” he muttered. “Wrong?”
“Yes. Come in here and let’s talk it out--whatever it is.” With gentle
insistence she drew him into her sitting-room. “How,” she said, when she
had established him in an easy-chair by the open window and herself in
another, “what’s gone wrong? Are you still boiling over about that trick
Sir Adrian played on Claire the day of the picnic?”
She spoke lightly--more lightly than the occasion warranted--of set
purpose, hoping to reduce the tension under which Nick was obviously
labouring. His face hurt her. The familiar lazy insouciance which was
half its charm was blotted out of it by some heavy cloud of tragic
significance. He looked as though he had not slept for days, and his
eyes, the gaiety burnt out of them by pain, seemed sunken in his head.
He stared at her blankly for a moment. Then he seemed to awaken to the
meaning of her question.
“No,” he said slowly. “No. The boiling over part is done
with--finished.... I’m going to take her away from him.”
He spoke with a curious precision. It frightened Jean far more than any
impetuous outburst of anger could have done. She made no answer for
a moment, but her mind worked rapidly. She did not doubt the absolute
sincerity of his intention. This was no mere reckless boast of an angry
lover, but the sane, considered aim and object of a man who has come, by
way of some long agony of thwarting, to a set determination.
“Do you mean that, Nick?” she asked at last, to gain time.
“Do I mean it?” he laughed. Then his hands gripped the arms of the chair
and he leaned forward. “I saw her--last evening after dinner.... Her
shoulder was black.”
A sharp cry broke from Jean’s lips.
“Not--not--he hadn’t----”
Nick nodded.
“He had struck her. There was one of the usual scenes when they got back
from the Moor--and he struck her.... It’s the first time he has ever
actually laid hands on her. It’s going to be the last”--grimly.
Jean was silent. Her whole soul was in revolt against the half-mad,
drug-ridden creature who was making of Claire’s life a devil martyrdom;
the instinct to protect her, to succour her in some way, asserting
itself with almost passionate force. And yet---- She knew that Nick’s
way was not the right way.
“Yes, it must be the last time,” she agreed. “But--but, Nick, your plan
won’t do, you know.”
Nick stiffened.
“Think not?” he said curtly. “Can you suggest a better?” Then, as Jean
remained miserably silent: “Nor can I. And one thing I swear--I won’t
leave the woman I love in the hands of a man who is practically a
maniac, to be tortured day after day, mentally and physically, just
whenever he feels like it.”
It struck Jean as curious that Nick had been able, more or less, to
keep himself in hand whilst Sir Adrian inflicted upon Claire whatever of
mental and spiritual torture seemed good in his distorted vision. It
was the fact that he had hurt her physically, laid his hand upon her
in actual violence, which had scattered Nick’s self-control to the four
winds of heaven. To Jean herself, it seemed conceivable that the mental
anguish of Claire’s married life had probably far outstripped any mere
bodily pain. Half tentatively she gave expression to her thoughts.
Nick sprang to his feet.
“Good God!” he exclaimed. “If you were a man, you’d understand! I see
red when I think of that damned brute striking the woman I love. It--it
was sacrilege!”
“And won’t it be--another kind of sacrilege--if you take her away with
you, Nick?” asked Jean very quietly.
He flushed dully.
“He’ll divorce her, and then we shall marry,” he answered.
“Even so”--steadily--“it would be doing evil that good may come.”
“Then we’ll do it”--savagely. “It’s easy enough for you to sit there
moralising, perfectly placid and comfortable. Claire and I have borne
all we can. It has been bad enough to care as we care for each other,
and to live apart But when it means that Claire is to suffer unspeakable
misery and humiliation while I stand by and look on--why, it’s beyond
human endurance. You’re not tempted. You’ve no conception what you’re
talking about.”
Jean sat very still and silent while Nick stormed out the bitterness of
soul, recognising the truth of every word he littered--even of the gibes
which, in the heedlessness of his own pain, he flung at herself.
Presently she got up and moved rather slowly across to his side.
“Nick,” she said, and her eyes, looking into his, were very bright
and clear and steady. Somehow for Nick they held the semblance of two
flames, torches of pure light, burning unflickeringly in the darkness.
“Nick, every word you say is true. I’m not tempted as you and Claire
have been, and so it seems sheer cheek my interfering. But I’m only
asking you to do what I pray I’d be strong enough to do myself in like
circumstances. I don’t believe any true happiness can ever come 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 quick, impassioned utterance ceased, and half shrinkingly Jean
realised that she had spoken out of the very depths of her soul,
crystallising in so many words the uttermost ideal and _credo_ of her
being. In some strange, indefinable fashion it was borne in on her that
she had reached an epoch of her life. It was as when a musician, arrived
at the end of a musical period, strikes a chord which holds the keynote
of the ensuing passage.
She faltered and looked at Nick beseechingly, suddenly self-conscious,
as we most of us are when we find we have laid bare a bit of our inmost
soul to the possibly mocking eyes of a fellow human being.
But Nick’s eyes were not in the least mocking.
Instead of that, some of the hardness seemed to have gone out of them,
and his voice was very gentle, as, taking Jean’s two hands in his, he
answered:
“I believe _you_ would run straight, little Jean--even if it meant
tearing your heart out of your body to do it. But, you know, you’re
always on the side of the angels--instinctively. I’m only a man--just
an average earthy man”--smiling ruefully--“and my ideals all tumble down
and sit on the ground in a heap when I think of what my girl’s enduring
as Latimer’s wife. I believe I might stick my part of the business--but
I can’t stick it for her.”
“And yet,” urged Jean, “if you go away together, Nick, it’s she who’ll
pay, you know. The woman always does. Supposing--supposing Sir Adrian
_doesn’t_ divorce her--refuses to? It would be just like him to punish
her that way. What about Claire--then?”
“He _would_ divorce her,” protested Nick harshly.
Jean shook her head.
“I don’t think so. Honestly, I believe he would get undiluted
satisfaction out of the fact that, as long as he lived, he could stand
between Claire and everything that a normal woman wants--home, and a
sheltered life, and the knowledge that no one can ‘say things’ about
her. Oh, Nick, Nick! Between you--you and Sir Adrian--you’d make an
outcast of Claire, make her life a worse hell with you than it is
without you.” She paused, then went on more quietly: “Have you said
anything to her about this--told her what you want her to do?”
“No, not yet--not definitely.”
Jean breathed a quick sigh of relief.
“Then don’t! Promise me you won’t, Nick?”
“She might refuse, after all,” he suggested, evading a direct answer.
“Refuse! You know her better than that. If you wanted Claire to make a
burnt-offering of herself for your benefit to-morrow, you know she’d do
it! And--and”--laughing a little hysterically--“pretend, too, that she
enjoyed the process of being grilled! No, Nick, it’s up to you to--to
just go on helping to make her life bearable, as you have done for the
last two years.”
“It’s asking too much of me, Jean.”
Nick spoke a little thickly. He was up against one of man’s most
primitive instincts--the instinct to protect and comfort and cherish the
woman he loved.
“I know. It’s asking everything of you.”
Jean waited. She felt that she had gained a certain amount of
ground--that Nick’s resolution had weakened a little in response to her
pleading, but she feared to drive him too far. She fancied she could
hear steps crossing the hall below. If someone should come upstairs and
disturb them now, while things were still trembling in the balance----
“See, Nick,” she began to speak again hurriedly. “You believe I’m your
pal--yours and Claire’s?”
“I know it,” he replied quietly.
“And--and you do care a bit about me?”--smiling a little.
“You’re the third woman in my world, Jean. After Claire and my mother.”
“Then, to please me--for nothing else in the world, if you like, but
because I ask it--will you let things stay as they are for a few weeks
longer? Just that little while, Nick? We’re going to London next week.
That’ll make a break--bring us all back to a calmer, more everyday
outlook on things. Will you wait? Sir Adrian may never strike Claire
again. And it wouldn’t be fair--just now, at a time when she is feeling
horribly bitter and humiliated from that--that insult--to ask her to go
away with you. Give her a fair chance to decide a big question like
that when things are at their normal level--not when they are worse than
usual. To ask her now would be to take advantage of the feeling she must
have, just at this moment, that her life is unbearable. It wouldn’t be
playing the game.”
He made no answer, and Jean waited with increasing trepidation. She was
sure now that she could hear footsteps. Someone had mounted the stairs
and was coming along the corridor towards her room.
“Nick!” The low, agitated whisper burst from her as the steps halted
outside the door. “Promise me!”
It seemed an eternity before he answered.
“Very well. I promise. You’ve won for the moment--‘Saint Jean’!”
He smiled at her, rather sadly. Before she could reply, Blaise’s voice
sounded outside the door, asking if he might come in, and with a feeling
of intense relief that the battle was won for the moment, Jean gave the
required permission. As his brother entered the room, Nick quitted it,
brushing past him abruptly.
Tormarin’s eyes questioned Jean’s;
“We have been discussing Sir Adrian,” she explained, as the door closed
behind Nick. “And--and Claire.”
He nodded comprehendingly.
“Poor old Nick!” he said. “It’s damned rough on him. Latimer ought to be
carefully and quickly chloroformed out of the way. He’s as much a menace
to society as a mad dog.”
Jean sighed.
“I’m afraid they’re very unhappy--Nick and Claire.”
“I wonder Claire doesn’t chuck her husband,” said Blaise. “And take
whatever of happiness she can get out of the world.”
Jean shook her head.
“You know you don’t mean that. You don’t really believe in snatching
happiness--at all costs.”
“I’d let precious little stand in the way. If I were Nick I think I
should do it.”
“But being you?”
Jean did not know what unaccountable impulse induced her to give a
personal and individual twist to what had been developing almost into an
academic discussion. Perhaps it was the familiar, unsatisfied longing to
hear Blaise himself define the thing which kept them apart--even though,
since Lady Anne’s disclosure, she could guess only too well what it
was. Or perhaps it was the faint, tormenting hope that one day his
determination would weaken and his love sweep away all barriers.
He looked at her contemplatively.
“Sometimes the past makes claims upon a man which forbid him to snatch
at happiness. I don’t believe in any man’s shirking his just punishment
for the evil he has done. What he has brought on himself, that he must
bear. But Nick and Claire have had no part in bringing about their own
tragedy. They are just the sport of chance--of an ill fate. They are
morally free to take their happiness in a way in which I shall never be
free to take mine, as long as I live.” He regarded her steadily. “There
are certain things for which I have proved myself unfitted--with
which it is evident I am not to be trusted. And one of those is the
safeguarding of any woman’s happiness.”
Jean felt her throat contract. It would always be the same, then! The
long tentacles of the past would reach out eternally into the future.
The woman who had been his wife--the woman who had destroyed herself,
and, in so doing, hanged a millstone of remorse about his neck--would
stand forever at the gateway of the garden of happiness, her dead lips
silently denying him--and, with him, the woman who loved him--the right
to enter.
With an effort Jean answered that part of his speech which had reference
only to Claire and Nick.
“There are other ways, though, in which they have no moral right. I
grant that Claire was persuaded, almost driven into marrying Sir Adrian
by her parents, but, after all, we each have our individual free will.
She _could_ have refused to obey them. Or, if she felt there were
reasons why she must marry him--the material advantage to her parents,
and so on, why, she ought to have reckoned the cost I don’t mean to be
hard, Blaise---------” She broke off wistfully.
“You--hard!” He laughed a little, as though amused.
“Only--only one must try to be fair all round--to look at things
_straight_.”
She leaned her chin on her palm and her eyes grew thoughtful.
“I don’t know, but it seems to me that we weren’t meant to run away from
things--hard things. If a man and a woman marry, they must accept their
responsibilities--not evade them.”
So absorbed was she in her trend of thought that she never realised how
directly this speech must strike at Blaise himself. His face changed
slightly.
“You’re right, of course,” he said abruptly. “You--generally are. And if
all women were like you, it would be easy enough.”
His eyes dwelt with a curious intentness on the pure outline of her
face; on the parted, tenderly curved lips, and the golden eyes with
their momentary touch of the idealist and the dreamer.
It seemed as if the quiet intensity of his regard drew her, for slowly
she turned her head and met his gaze, flushing suddenly and faltering
under it. The consciousness of him, of his nearness, swept her from head
to foot, and it seemed to her as though now, in this moment, they were
in closer touch, nearer understanding, than they had ever been.
The dreamer and idealist vanished and it was all at once just sheer
woman, passionate and wistful and tremulous, and infinitely alluring,
that looked at him out of the golden eyes.
With a stifled exclamation he caught her hands in his.
“Beloved----”
And the whole of a man’s forbidden, thwarted love vibrated in the word
as he spoke it.
Then he bent his head, and for a moment his lips were against her soft
palms....
She stood very still and quiet when he had gone, realising in every
quivering nerve of her that whatsoever the future might bring--even
though Blaise might choose to shut himself away from her again as in the
past and the dividing wall between them rise as high as heaven--she knew
now, without any shadow of doubt or questioning, that he loved her.
In the burning utterance of a single word, in the pressure of
passionate, renouncing lips, the assurance had been given, and nothing
could ever take it away again.
She spread out her hands, palms upward, and looked at them curiously.