TWO months had elapsed since Fate’s dividing sword had fallen, forever
separating Jean from the man she loved, and the subsequent march of
events, with the many changes involved and the bitter loneliness of soul
entailed, had made the two months seem to her more like two years.
She had left Staple for Charnwood on the day following that of Madame de
Varigny’s visit. It was no longer possible for her to remain under the
same roof with Blaise, where the enforced strain of meeting each other
daily, and of endeavouring to behave as though nothing more than mere
commonplace friendship linked them together, would have been too great
for either of them to endure even for the few remaining days which still
intervened before the date originally planned for her departure.
Lady Anne, with her usual sympathetic insight, had made no effort
to dissuade her, reluctant though she had been to part with her. For
herself, the fact that Nesta was alive had come upon her in the light of
an almost overwhelming blow. She had never liked the girl, whereas
she had grown to look upon Jean as a beloved daughter, and no one had
rejoiced more sincerely than his mother when Blaise had confided to her
the news of his engagement. At last she would see that grey page in his
life turned down for ever and the beginning of a newer, fairer page,
illuminated with happiness! And instead, like a tide that has receded
far out and then rushes in again with redoubled energy, the whole
misery and sorrow of the past had returned upon him, a thousand times
accentuated by reason of his love for Jean.
It was with a heavy heart, therefore, that Lady Anne, together with
Nick, quitted Staple and established herself for the second time at the
Dower House, retiring thither in favour of Nesta who was now installed
once more at the Manor. And the thought of how gladly she would have
effected the same change, had it been Jean whom Blaise was bringing home
as his bride, added but a keener pang to her sorrow.
She watched with anxious eyes the progress of events at Staple. At the
commencement of the new régime Nesta had appeared genuinely repentant
and ashamed of her conduct in the past, and there was something
disarming in the little, half-apologetic air with which she had at first
reassumed her position of châtelaine of Staple, deferring eagerly to
Blaise on every point and trying her utmost to please him and conform
to his wishes. It held something of the appeal of a forgiven child who
tries to atone for former naughtiness by an almost alarming access of
virtue.
She accepted with meek docility Blaise’s decision regarding the purely
formal relations upon which their married life was henceforth to be
based, apparently humbly thankful to be reinstated as his wife on any
terms whatsoever that he chose to dictate..
“I know I have been bad--_bad_,” she declared, “to run away and leave
you like that. I can’t”--forlornly--“hope for you to love me again----”
And Tormarin had replied with unmistakable decision:
“No, you can’t hope for that. And I’m glad you understand and recognise
the fact. Still, we can try to be good friends, Nesta, at least.”
But this tranquil state of things only lasted for a comparatively short
time. Very soon, as the novelty and satisfaction of her reinstatement
began to wear off, Nesta became more self-assured and, apparently,
considerably less frequently visited by spasms of repentance and
remorse.
Her butterfly nature could retain no very deep impression for any
length of time, and gradually the characteristics of the old Nesta--the
pettish, self-willed, pleasure-loving woman of former times--began to
reassert themselves.
Blaise tried hard to exercise forbearance with her and to treat her, at
least with justice and with a certain meed of kindliness. But she did
not second his efforts. Instead, she became more exigeant and difficult
as time passed on.
She was no longer satisfied by the fact that she was once more installed
as the mistress of Staple. She demanded a husband who would surround her
with all the little observances that only love itself can dictate, whom
she could alternately scold and cajole as the fancy took her, but who
would always come back to her, after a tiff, ready anew to play the
adoring lover.
She found Blaise’s cool, measured, elder-brotherly kindness unendurable,
and she exhausted herself beating continually against the rock of his
determination, without producing any effect other than to make his
manner even more austere, less friendly than it had been before.
Then when she recognised her total inability to move him to any sort of
responsive emotion, and that her beauty--which was undeniable--made no
more impression upon him than if he had been blind, she resorted to the
old, painfully, familiar weapons of tears and fits of temper, in the
course of which she would upbraid him bitterly, pouring forth streams
of reproaches which more often than not culminated in an attack of
hysterics.
All of which Blaise bore with a curious, stoical self-control. It seemed
as though the Tormarin temper had been exorcised, as if that fierce
storm of anger provoked by Madame de Varigny’s taunts, and which had so
nearly resulted in a tragedy, had shocked Blaise into realisation of
the terrible latent possibilities of the family failing and the absolute
necessity for an iron self-government.
For weeks he supported Nesta’s petty gibes and ebullitions of temper
with illimitable patience, and it was only when, trading on his
unaccustomed forbearance, she ventured too far, that she was brought
very suddenly to understand that there was a limit beyond which she
might not go.
“I know why you no longer love me,” she told him at last, on an occasion
when she had been vainly endeavouring, by every feminine blandishment
and wile of which she was mistress, to evoke from him some sign of an
awakening _tendresse_. “I know!”
She nodded her dark head significantly, while pin-points of jealous
anger flickered in her long, narrow eyes, black as midnight.
“Then, if you know,” replied Tormarin patiently, “it is surely most
foolish of you to keep asking why I do not. Why can’t you content
yourself with things as they are, Nesta? We can only try to make the
best of a bad job. You don’t help me much in the matter.”
“I don’t want to help you,” she retorted viciously. “I want you to love
me. And you won’t, because of that washed-out-looking, carroty-haired
woman who is living with Lady Latimer. And she’s in love with
you, too!... No! I _won’t_ be quiet! Oh!”--her voice rising
hysterically--“you think I don’t notice things, but I do. I do, I tell
you!”
She sprang up from the couch, where she had been lolling indolently amid
a heap of cushions, and crossed the room to his side.
“Do you hear me?” she cried violently, shaking him by the arm. “You
think I’m a blind fool! But I’m not! I’m not! I’ve seen that Peterson
woman looking at you like a cat looking through the larder window----”
Suddenly she felt Blaise’s hand clapped against her lips, stemming the
torrent of vulgar recrimination and abuse that poured from them. He held
it there quite gently, so as not to hurt her, but immovably, and she had
perforce to hear what he wished to say in rebellious silence.
“Listen to me,” he said gently. “It is quite true what you say--that I
love Jean Peterson and that she loves me. But we have given up our love,
and with it our hope of happiness in this world, for you. In return, you
will give up something for us. You will give up the infinite pleasure
you appear to derive from vilifying and belittling a woman who is as
much above you as the heavens are above the earth, whose conception of
love is as fine and pure as yours is mean and commonplace and jealous.
You will never again speak to Miss Peterson with anything but respect,
nor will you ever again refer to the love which you now know for a fact
exists between us. Your lips soil such love as ours. If you do, if you
disobey my commands in either of these respects, you go out of my house
that same day. _And you don’t return._”
He released her and had the satisfaction, for once, of perceiving
that she believed he meant what he said. Presumably she came to the
conclusion that, in the circumstances, discretion was the better part
of valour, for she made no attempt to challenge his determination in the
matter.
At the same time, unknown to him, she compelled Jean to pay for the
silence enforced upon her at home. With a species of venom, absurdly
childish in its manifestation, she essayed to excite Jean’s envy by
constantly enlarging to her upon the subject of Blaise’s perfections as
a husband, drawing entirely imaginary descriptions of the attention he
paid her and of his constant solicitude for her welfare, and vaunting
her happiness at being his wife.
“I am so proud to have won so fine and splendid a husband,” she would
declare fervently. “Would you not feel the same, Miss Peterson, if you
were me?”
And Jean would make answer, outwardly unmoved:
“Indeed I should. You ought to be a happy woman, Mrs. Tormarin.”
The quiet composure which Jean invariably opposed to these knat-like
attacks annoyed Nesta intensely. Endowed with all the petty jealousy of
a small nature, she herself, had the situation been reversed, would
have found this pinprick kind of warfare insupportable, and it made her
furious that her best thought-out and most spiteful efforts failed to
goad Jean into any expression of either anger or distress. The “cold
Englishwoman’s” armour of indifference and reserve seemed impervious to
no matter what poison-tipped dart she loosed against her.
Nesta felt that, as the woman in possession, she was missing half the
satisfaction in life by reason of her inability to triumph openly over
the other woman--the woman without the gate. Finally, at the end of
her resources of innuendo and allusion, she tried the effect of open
warfare.
She had driven over to Charnwood to call and, as Claire was away,
spending the afternoon with friends, Jean had perforce to entertain her
undesired visitor alone. It was just as she was preparing to take her
departure that Nesta launched her attack.
“You look so ill, Miss Peterson,” she remarked commiseratingly. “So pale
and worn! It does not suit you, I am sure, for of course you must have
been very pretty at one time for my husband to have wished to marry
you.”
Jean stared at her without reply. The outrageous speech almost took her
breath away, by its sheer, impudent bravado.
“There!” Nesta feigned dismay. “Now I have offended you! And I so want
us to be good friends. But of course”--quickly--“it is difficult for you
to feel friendly towards the wife of Blaise. I can understand that. I
suppose”--her head a little tilted to one side like that of an enquiring
robin and her eyes fastened on the other’s white face with a merciless,
gimlet gaze that filled Jean with helpless rage--“I suppose you loved
him _very_ much?”
Jean felt the blood rush into her cheeks and caught a responsive gleam
of satisfaction in the other’s half-closed eyes.
“I think that is hardly a subject which can be discussed between us,”
she said, with a supreme effort at self-control.
And then, to her unbounded thankfulness, Tucker threw open the door and
announced that Mrs. Tormarin’s car was waiting.
This open declaration of hostility on Nesta’s part gave Jean food for
reflection. Briefly she recounted the incident to Claire, adding:
“It means I must not go to Staple again. If she intends to adopt that
attitude, it would make a situation which is already quite difficult
enough hopelessly impossible.”
The two girls were pacing up and down the terrace at Charnwood together
when Jean indicated the consequences of Nesta’s visit, and Claire,
sensing the pain in her friend’s voice, pressed her arm sympathetically.
But she said nothing. What was there to say? Within herself, she felt
that Jean’s determination to eschew the Tormarin menage altogether was
the only wise one.
“Poor Blaise!” pursued Jean, a slight tremor in her voice. “He has the
hardest part to bear. She must make life hideously difficult for him.”
Claire nodded.
“Yes. He is looking very fagged and strained. Horrid little beast!” she
added with unusual vehemence. “Why on earth couldn’t she have _stayed_
dead?”
Jean laughed joylessly.
“Why indeed?--Only she never really died, you see.”
“Jean”--Claire’s hand crept further along the other’s arm and the kind
little fingers sought and clasped Jean’s own--“if you knew how miserable
I am about you! It makes me feel wicked--disgustingly selfish and
wicked!--to be so happy myself when you have so much to bear.”
There were tears in her voice, and Jean squeezed her hand reassuringly.
“My dear,” she said earnestly, “you had your black years if anyone
ever had! If a woman ever deserved her happiness at last, you do....
I suppose we all get our share of trouble in this world,” she went on
thoughtfully. “I remember the first time I ever met Blaise--that day
at Montavan, you know--he said that Destiny, with her snuffers, came
to most of us sooner or later and snuffed out our light of happiness.
Well”--rather drearily--“I suppose it’s my turn now and she’s come to
me. That’s all.”
A little wind blew up from the valley, chill and complaining. Autumn had
the world at her mercy now, and a grey mist was rising from the sodden
fields, soaked by the continual rains of the preceding fortnight.
Claire shivered.
“Let’s go in,” she said. “It’s growing too cold to stay out any longer.
Besides, it’s depressing. Grey skies, bare branches--Oh! How I detest
the autumn!” They turned and retraced their steps to the house. As they
entered by way of the front door, they caught a glimpse of the postman
making his way briskly down the drive. A solitary letter lay upon the
hall table, addressed to Jean in a rather flourishy copper-plate style
of writing.
“A bill, I suppose!” she commented indifferently.
She picked it up carelessly, carrying it unopened to her room. Nor did
she open it immediately upon arriving there, stopping first to remove
her hat and coat.
When at last she slit the envelope she found that it was no tradesman’s
bill, as she had imagined, but a letter from Glyn Peterson’s family
solicitor, announcing, in the stiff phraseology without which no lawyer
seems able to express himself, the sudden death of her father.
Jean sat down abruptly, her legs seeming all at once to give way under
her. She could not grasp it--could not realise that the witty, charming
personality which, after all, in spite of Peterson’s lack of the more
conventional paternal attributes, had meant a great deal to her, had
been swept without warning out of her life for ever.
Glyn Peterson had, it seemed, died very suddenly, in a remote corner of
Africa whither his restless wanderings had led him, and it had been
some weeks before the news of his death had reached his lawyer, who had
immediately communicated it to Jean.
By his will, everything he possessed, except for a certain sum set aside
to cover a few legacies to old and valued servants, was left to Jean,
and with the quaint whimsicality which was characteristic of him he had
particularly mentioned: “_Beirnfels, the House of Dreams-Come-True_.”
The little phrase, with its suggestion of joyous consummation, stabbed
her with a sharp thrill of pain. Greeting her, as it did, at the moment
when all her hopes of happiness were lying trampled beneath the iron
heel of hostile destiny, it seemed to add a last touch of irony to the
bitterness of the burden she had to bear.
The House of Dreams-Come-True! In the solicitude and silence of her room
Jean laughed out loud at the mockery of it! But her breath caught in her
throat, sobbingly, and then quite suddenly the merciful, healing
tears began to fall, and, laying her head down on her arms, she cried
unrestrainedly.