BLAISE was seated at his study table, regarding somewhat dubiously a
letter which lay open in front of him.
It was written in a flowing, foreign hand and expressed with a quaintly
stilted, un-English turn of phrase. The heading of the notepaper upon
which it was inscribed was that of a hotel in Exeter.
“Dear Mr. Tormarin,” it ran. “You will, without doubt, be
surprised to receive a letter from me, since we have met
only once. But I have something of the most great importance
to confide in you, and I therefore beg that you will accord
me an interview. When I add to this that the matter
approaches very closely the future of your fiancée, Miss
Peterson, I do not doubt to myself that you will appoint a
time when I may call to see you.”
The letter was signed _M. de Varigny_.
Blaise had received this thought-provoking epistle two days previously,
and had been impressed by an uncomfortable consciousness that it
foreboded something unpleasant. He could not imagine in what manner the
affairs of Madame de Varigny impinged upon his own, or rather, as
she seemed to imply, upon those of his future wife, and this very
uncertainty had impelled him to fix the interview the Countess had
demanded at as early a moment as possible. Disagreeables were best met
and faced without delay. So now he was momentarily awaiting her arrival,
still unable to rid himself of the impression that something of an
unpleasant nature impended.
He glanced through the open window, facing him. Afterwards, he was
always able to recall every little detail of the picture upon which his
eyes rested; it was etched upon his mind as ineffaceably as though cut
upon steel with a graver’s tool.
Although the mellow sunlight of September flooded the lawns and
terraces, that indescribable change which heralds autumn had already
begun to manifest itself. Not that any hint of chill as yet edged the
balmy atmosphere or tint of russet reddened the gently waving foliage of
the trees. It was something less definite--a suggestion of maturity, of
completed ripening, conveyed by the deep, rich green of the grass, the
strong, woody growth of the trees, the full-blown glory of the roses
nodding on their stems.
To the left, in the shade of a stately cedar, Lady Anne and Jean were
encamped with their sewing and writing materials at hand, and the rays
of sunshine, filtering between the widespread branches above them,
woke fugitive gold and silver lights in the down-bent auburn and
white-crowned heads. Further away, in the valley below, the brown smudge
of a wide-bottomed boat broke the smooth expanse of the lake whence the
mingled laughter of Nick and Claire came floating up on the breeze.
It was a peaceful scene, full of intimate happiness and tender promises,
and Blaise watched it with contented eyes. The voice of Baines, formal
and urbane, roused him from a pleasant reverie.
“Madame de Varigny,” announced that functionary, throwing open the door
and standing aside for the visitor to enter.
Blaise rose courteously to greet her, holding out his hand. But the
Countess shook her head.
“No, I will not shake hands,” she said abruptly. “When you know why I am
come, you will not want to shake hands with me.”
There was something not unattractive about the outspoken refusal to sail
under false colours, more especially softened, as it was, by the charm
of the faintly foreign accent and intonation.
Madame de Varigny had paused a moment in the middle of the room and
was regarding her host with curiously appraising eyes, and as Blaise
returned her gaze he was conscious, as once before at the fancy-dress
ball at Montavan, of the strange sense of familiarity this woman had for
him.
“I am sorry for that,” he said, answering her refusal to shake hands.
“Won’t you, at least, sit down?” pulling forward a chair.
“Yes, I will sit.”
She sank into the chair with the quick, graceful motion of the South,
and continued to regard Blaise watchfully between the thick fringes of
her lashes. Had Jean been present, she would have been struck anew by
the expression of implacability which hardened the dark-brown eyes. By
that, and by something else as well--a look of unmistakable triumph.
“I have much--much to say to you, Monsieur Tor-ma-rin,” she began at
last. “I will commence by telling you a little about myself. I am”--here
she looked away for an instant, then shot a swift, penetrating glance at
him--“an Italian by birth.”
A brief silence followed this announcement. Blaise was thinking
concentratedly. So Madame de Varigny, despite her French name and her
French mannerisms, was an Italian! He might have guessed it had the
possibility ever definitely presented itself to him--guessed it from
those broad, high cheek bones, those liquid, southern-dark eyes, and
the coarse, blue-black hair. Yet, except for one fleeting moment at
Montavan, the idea had never occurred to him, and it had then been
swiftly dissipated by Jean’s explanation that the impressive-looking
Cleopatra was the Comtesse de Varigny and her chaperon for the time
being.
Italian! Blaise felt more convinced than ever now that Madame de
Varigny’s visit portended unpleasant developments. Something, a voice
from the past, was about to break stridently on the peaceful present. He
braced himself to meet and counter whatever might be coming. Vaguely
he foresaw some kind of blackmail, and he thanked Heaven for Jean’s
absolute understanding and complete knowledge of the past and of all
that appertained to his first unhappy marriage. There would be little
foothold here for an attempt at blackmail, however skilfully worked, he
reflected grimly.
He therefore responded civilly to Madame de Varigny’s statement,
apparently accepting it at its mere face value.
“I am surprised,” he told her. “You have altogether the air of a
Parisian.”
The Countess smiled.
“Oh, I had a French grandmother,” she returned carelessly. “Also, I have
lived much in Paris.”
“Ah! that explains it,” replied Tormarin, leaning back in his chair as
though satisfied. “It’s the influence of environment and heredity, I
expect.”
He was fencing carefully, waiting for the woman to show her hand.
“I have also Corsican blood in my veins,” pursued Madame de Varigny.
Then, as Tormarin made no answer, she leaned forward and said intently:
“Do you know the characteristic of the Corsicans, Monsieur Tor-ma-rin?
They never forget--_nevaire_”--her foreign accent increasing, as usual,
with emotion of any kind. “The Corsican always repays.”
“Yes? And you have something to repay? Is that it?”
“Yes. I have something to repay.”
“A revenge, in fact?”
“She shook her head.
“No. I do not call it revenge. It is punishment--the just punishment
earned by the man who married Nesta Freyne and brought her in return
nothing but misery.” Tormarin rose abruptly.
“What have the affairs of Nesta Freyne to do with you?” he asked
sternly. “As you are obviously aware, she was my wife. And I do not
propose to discuss private personal matters with an entire stranger.” He
moved towards the door. “I think our interview can very well terminate
at that. I do not wish to forget that I am your host.”
“You are more than that,” said Madame de Varigny suavely. “You are my
brother-in-law.”
“_What?_” Tormarin swung ’round and faced her.
“Yes.” The suavity was gone now, replaced by a curious deadly precision
of utterance, enhanced by the foreign rendering of syllabic values. “I
am--or was, until my marriage--Margherita Valdi. I am Nesta’s sister.”
Tormarin regarded her steadily.
“In that case,” he said, “I will hear what you have to say. Though I
don’t think,” he added, “that any good can come of raking up the past.
It is better--forgotten.”
“Forgotten?” Madame de Varigny seized upon the unlucky word. “Yes--it
may be easy enough for you to forget--you who took Nesta’s young,
beautiful life and crushed it; you who came like a thief and stole from
me the one creature in the whole world whom I loved--my _bambina_, my
little sister. Oh, yes”--her voice rose passionately--“easy enough when
there is another woman--a new love--with whom you think to start your
life all over again! But I tell you, you _shall not!_ There shall be no
new beginning for you--no marriage with this Jean Peterson to whom you
are now _fiancé_. I forbid it--I----”
Blaise stemmed the torrent of her speech with an authoritative gesture.
“May I ask how the news of my engagement reached you?” he asked, his
cool, dispassionate question falling like a hailstone dropped into some
molten stream of lava.
“Oh, I have kept watch. I have the means of knowing. There is very
little that has happened to you since--since I wrote to you of Nesta’s
death”--she stumbled a little over the words, and Blaise, despite his
anger, was conscious of a sudden flash of sympathy for her--“very little
that I have not known. And this--your engagement, I knew of that when it
was barely a week old.”
“I’m really curious to know why my affairs should be of such surpassing
interest to you. My engagement, for instance--how did you hear of it?”
“Oh, that was easy”--contemptuously. “There was another man who loved
your Mees Peterson--this Monsieur Burke. I used him. I knew he was
afraid that you might win her, and I told him that if ever you became
engaged he must come and tell me, and I would show him how to make sure
that you should never marry her. Oh! That was _vairy_ simple!”
“I’m afraid you promised him more than you can hope to perform. I
grant that you have every reason to dislike me--hate me, if you will. I
acknowledge, too, that I was to blame, miserably to blame, for Nesta’s
unhappiness--as much in fault as she herself. But there is nothing
gained at this late hour by apportioning the blame. We each made bad
mistakes--and we have each had to pay the price.”
“Yours has been a very light price--comparatively,” she commented with
intense bitterness.
“Do you think so?”
Something in the quiet, still utterance of the brief question brought
her glance swiftly, curiously, back to his face. It was as though,
behind those four short words, she could feel the intolerable pressure
of years of endurance. For a moment she seemed to waver, then, as
though she had deliberately pushed the impression aside, she laughed
disagreeably.
“Too light to satisfy her sister, at any rate.”
Tormarin froze.
“It is fortunate, then, that my ultimate fate does not lie in your
hands,” he observed.
“But that is just where it does lie--in the palm of my hand--there!”
She flung out one shapely hand, palm, upward, and pointed to it with the
other.
“And now--see--I close my hand--so!... And this beautiful marriage of
which you have dreamed, your marriage with Mees Peterson--_it does not
take place!_”
“Are you mad?” asked Blaise contemptuously, experiencing all an
Englishman’s distaste for this display of unforced drama.
She shook her head.
“No,” she said quietly. “I am not mad.”
The air of theatricality seemed to fall suddenly away from her, leaving
her a stern and sombre figure, invested with an intrinsic atmosphere of
tragedy, filled with one sentiment only--the thirst for vengeance.
“No. I am not mad. I am telling you the truth. You can never marry Jean
Peterson, because Nesta--your wife--still lives.”
Tormarin fell back a pace. For one moment he believed the woman had gone
genuinely mad--that by dint of long brooding upon how she might most
hurt and punish the Englishman whom she had never forgiven for marrying
her sister, she had evolved from a half-crazed mind the belief that
Nesta still lived and that thus she would be able to prevent his
marriage with any other woman.
And then, looking into those seeming soft brown eyes with the granite
hardness in their depths, he could see the light of reason burning
steadily within them.
Madame de Varigny was quite sane, as sane as he was himself. And if
so...
A great fear came upon him--the fear of a man who dimly senses the
approach of some appalling danger and knows that it will find him
utterly defenceless.
“Do you know what you are saying?” he demanded, his voice roughened and
uneven.
“Yes, I know. Nesta is alive,” she repeated simply.
“_Alive?_”
The word was wrung from him, hardly more than a hoarse whisper of sound.
He swung round upon her violently.
“But you yourself wrote and told me of her death?” She nodded placidly.
“Yes. I wrote a lie.”
“But the official information? We had that, too, later, from the French
police, confirming your account. You had better be careful about what
you are telling me,” he added sternly. “Lies won’t answer, now.”
“The need for lying is past,” she answered with the most absolute
candour. “The French police wrote quite truthfully all they knew. They
had found the body of a suicide, whom I identified as my sister. To
strengthen matters I bribed someone I knew also to identify the dead
girl as Nesta. She was a married woman, too, the poor little dead, one!
So it was quite simple. And I took Nesta home--home to Château Varigny.
I had married by then. But she had heard of my marriage through friends
in Italy and wrote to me from there, telling me of her misery with you
and begging me to succour her. So I went to Italy and brought her back
with me to Varigny. Then I planned that you should believe her dead. It
was all very simple,” she repeated complacently.
“But what was your object in all this? Why did you scheme to keep me in
ignorance? What was your purpose?”
“Why?” Her voice deepened suddenly, the placid satisfaction with which
she had narrated the carrying out of her plan disappearing from it
completely. “Why? I did it to punish you--first for stealing my Nesta
from me and then because, after you had stolen her, you brought her
nothing but misery and heart-break. She was so young--so young! And you,
with your hideous temper and cold, formal English ways--you broke her
heart, cowed her, crushed her!”
“She was old enough to coquette with every man she met,” came grimly
between Tormarin’s teeth. “No husband--English or Italian, least of all
Italian--would have endured her conduct.”
“She would not have played with other men if you had loved her. She
was all fire. And you--you were like a wet log that will not burn!”
She gestured fiercely. “You _never_ loved her! It was in a moment
of passion--of desire that you married her!... But you were sure,
eventually, to meet some other woman and learn what love--real love--is.
So I waited. And when I saw you at Montavan with Jean--I knew that
the day I had waited for so long would come at last. I knew that your
punishment was ready to my hand.”
“Do you mean”--Blaise spoke in curiously measured accents--“do you
mean that you deliberately concealed the fact that Nesta still lived so
that----”
“So that you should not marry the woman that you loved when the time
came! Yes, I planned it all! I kept Nesta safely hidden at Varigny,
and I made little changes in her appearance--a woman can, you
know”--mockingly--“the colour of her hair, the way of dressing it. Oh,
just little changes, so that if by chance she was seen in the street
by anyone who had known her as your wife she would not easily be
recognised.” Oh once more with that exasperating complacence at her own
skill in deception--“I thought of every little detail.”
Tormarin stood listening to her silently, like a man in a trance. His
face had grown drawn and haggard, and his eyes burned in their sockets.
Once, as she poured out her story of trickery and deception, she heard
him mutter dazedly: “Jean... Jean,” and the anguish in his voice might
have moved any woman to pity save only one who was utterly and entirely
obsessed with the desire for vengeance.
But the intolerable suffering which had suddenly lined his face and
rimmed his mouth with tiny beads of sweat was meat and drink to her. She
gloried in it. This was her hour of triumph after long years of waiting.
She smiled at him blandly.
“I think I have behaved very well,” she pursued. “I might have waited
till you were actually married. But I have no wish to punish the little
Jean. She, at least, is ‘on the square,’ as you say--though it would
have revenged my Nesta well had I waited. You ruined Nesta’s life; I
could have ruined the life of the woman you love. I did think of it. Ah!
You would have suffered then, knowing that the Jean you worshipped was
neither wife, nor maid, but a----”
“_Be silent, woman!_”
Tortured beyond bearing, this final taunt, levelled at the woman he
held more dear than anything in life, snapped his last thread of
self-control.
He flung himself forward and his hands were gripping, gripping at the
soft ivory throat from which the taunt had sprung. He felt the woman
writhe, struggling to pull his hands from her neck. But it meant nothing
to him. He did not think of her any longer as a woman. She was something
vile--leprous to the very core of her being--a thing to be destroyed.
The thing which had made of all Jean’s promised happiness a black and
bitter mockery.
The mad Tormarin rage surged through his veins like a consuming fire. He
would break her--break her and utterly destroy her just as one destroyed
a deadly snake.
And then across the thunderous roar that beat in his ears came the
beloved voice, the voice that would have power to call him out of the
depths of hell itself--Jean’s voice.
“Blaise! Blaise! What are you doing? Stop!”