slowly, reluctantly, tormarin’s hands loosened their clasp of madame de varigny’s throat, and with a swift, flexible twist of the body she slipped aside and stood a few paces away from him.
jean looked from one to the other with horrified eyes. “madame de varigny?—blaise?” she stammered. “what is it?... why, you—you might have killed her, blaise!”
he stared at her blankly. his release of the italian woman had been in mere blind response to jean’s first imperative appeal that he should desist but the mists of ungovernable anger had hardly yet cleared from his brain; the blood still drummed in his ears like the roar of the sea.
“blaise”—jean spoke imploringly. “what were you doing? tell me———”
with an effort he seemed to recover himself.
“it’s a pity you didn’t let me finish it, jean,” he said harshly. “such women are better dead.”
madame de varigny was fingering her neck delicately where the pressure of blaise’s grip had scored red marks on the cream-like flesh. she seemed quite composed. her smile still held its quiet triumph and her long dark eyes gleamed with the same mockery that had brought her within measureable distance of quick death.
“as monsieur tor-ma-rin seems to find a difficulty in explaining—permit me,” she said at last “he was angry with me because i bring him the good news that his wife is still alive, that he need mourn no longer.”
while she spoke her eyes, resting on blaise’s mask-like face, held an expression of malicious satisfaction.
“his wife... alive?” repeated jean dazedly. “blaise, is she mad? nesta has been dead years—years.” then, as he made no answer, she continued rapidly, a faint note of fear vibrating in her voice: “isn’t it so? blaise—speak! quickly, tell her—nesta has been dead some years!”
“he cannot tell me anything about her which i do not know already, mees peterson, seeing that she is my sister and has been living with me ever since her husband’s cruelty drove her from his home.”
“is it true, blaise?” whispered jean.
belief that some substance of terrible truth lay behind the italian’s coolly uttered statements was beginning to lay hold of her.
“blaise, blaise”—her voice rising a little—“say it isn’t true—tell her it isn’t true.”
he looked at her speechlessly, but the measureless pain in his eyes answered her more fully, more convincingly than any words.
“you see?” broke in madame de varigny triumphantly. “he cannot deny it! it was i who told him of her death and i who now tell him that she still lives. listen to me, mademoiselle, and i will recount you how——”
“no!” interrupted jean proudly. “whatever there may be for me to hear, i will hear it from blaise—not from you.”
she turned again to tormarin.
“tell me everything, blaise,” she said simply.
he took her outstretched hands and drew her slowly towards him. no one, reading now the calm sadness, the stern imprint of endurance on his face, could have imagined it was that of the same man who, a few moments earlier, had been swept by such a tempest of uncontrollable anger.
“jean,” he said very gently and pitifully. “i’m afraid that what madame de varigny says may be true. i have no proof that it is not——”
“nor have you any proof that it is,” broke in jean swiftly. she swung round on madame de varigny. “where is your proof—where is your proof?”
the italian smiled.
“monsieur tor-ma-rin will find his wife in my car. i bade the chauffeur wait with it at the lodge gate.”
“do you mean you have brought nesta—here?” cried blaise.
“why not?” replied madame do varigny, with a return to the same exasperating complacency with which she had originally described her whole scheme of revenge. “and—here? surely her husband’s house is the proper place to which to bring his wife?”
“she cannot remain here,” said blaise with decision.
“no? for the moment that was not my idea. i brought her with me because i thought there could be no more convincing proof.”
blaise looked at her searchingly. he fancied he detected a false note in her voluble speech, and a new idea presented itself to him. was the woman simply putting up a gigantic bluff? or was it really nesta, his wife, waiting in the car at the lodge gates? it occurred to him as perfectly feasible that it might be merely some woman whose remarkable resemblance to the dead girl had suggested to the countess’s fertile brain the scheme that she should impersonate her.
his mind seized eagerly upon the idea, bolstering it up with madame de varigny’s own admissions. “i made little changes in her appearance,” she had said. “the colour of her hair, the way of dressing it.” probably she was relying on those “little changes,” and on the blurred recollection resulting from the length of time which had elapsed since nesta’s death, to aid her in her plan of introducing as his wife a woman who closely resembled her. he felt morally sure of it, and the light of hope suddenly shone bravely.
“i believe you are deceiving me,” he said quietly. “lying—as you have lied all through the piece. i’ll come and see this ‘wife’ you have waiting in the car for me”—grimly. he turned to jean. “keep up your courage, sweetheart” he said in a low voice full of infinite solicitude. “i believe the whole thing is a put-up job to separate us.”
jean smiled at him radiantly. she felt all at once very confident. in a few minutes this nightmarish story of a nesta still alive and claiming her rights as blaise’s wife would be proved a lie.
tormarin crossed the room and opened the door.
“now, madame de varigny—will you come with me?”
the woman hesitated a moment.
“come,” insisted blaise firmly. “or—are you afraid, after all, to bring me face to face with my wife?”
she shook her head.
“no,” she said. “i am not afraid. it is only that i am so sorry—so sorry for the little jean.”
her eyes, soft and dark and liquid as the eyes of a deer, sought jean’s beseechingly.
“i am so sorry,” she repeated. and passed, slowly,—almost unwillingly, it seemed, out of the room, followed by tormarin.
jean raised her head from blaise’s shoulder and pushed back her hair, damp with perspiration, from her forehead. it seemed to her as though she had been down, down into some awful, limitless abyss of darkness from which she was now feebly struggling back to a painful consciousness of material things. a great sea had surged over her head, blotting out everything, and remained poised above her like a huge black arch, imprisoning her in the vast, deserted chaos in which she found herself wandering. then—after a long time, it seemed—it had surged away again and she could distinguish blaise’s face bent above her.
“then—then it’s true?” she said stupidly. her voice sounded tiny, even to herself—a mere thread of sound.
blaise made no answer. he only held her a little closer in his arms. she supposed he hadn’t heard that thin little thread of voice. she must try again.
“is it true, blaise? is nesta——” but somehow the last word wouldn’t come.
she felt his arm jerk against her side.
“yes,” he said baldly. “it’s true. nesta is alive. i’ve seen her.”
jean said nothing. she knew it—had known it all the time the arched wall of sea had kept her down in that awful black waste where there had been neither warmth nor sunshine but only bitter, freezing cold and lightless space. she clung a little closer to blaise, like a frightened, exhausted child.
“heart’s beloved... little dearest jean...” she heard the wrung murmur of his voice above her head. then suddenly, his arms tightening round her: “my soul!”
the sunlight still slanted in through the windows, mellow and golden. a gay shout of laughter came up from the boat on the lake. the clock on the chimney-piece struck the hour—twelve slow, maddening strokes.
jean stared at its blank, foolish face. the hands had pointed to half-past eleven when the door of the room had closed behind blaise and madame de varigny. it had taken just a brief half-hour to smash up her whole world—to rob her of everything that mattered.
“i must think—i must think,” she muttered.
“belovedest”—blaise’s voice was wonderfully tender—not with the passionate tenderness of a lover but with a solicitude that was almost maternal. “belovedest, don’t try to think now. try to rest a little, won’t you?”
and at that jean came right back to an understanding of all that had happened, as the needle of a compass swings back to the frozen north.
“rest?” she said. “rest? do you realise that i shall have all the remainder of life to—rest in? there’ll he nothing else to do.”
she released herself very gently from tormarin’s arms and, crossing the room to the window, stood looking out.
“how funny!” she said in a rather high-pitched, uncertain voice. “it all looks just the same—although everything in the world is changed.”
he came and stood beside her.
“no,” he said quietly. “nothing is changed, dear. our love is the same as it was before. always remember that.”
“but we can’t every marry now.”
“no. we can’t marry—now. you’ll never have the tormarin temper to bear with, after all!”
she laid her hand swiftly across his lips.
“oh, it was dreadful!” she said, recalling the terrible scene which she had interrupted. “it—it hardly seemed—you, blaise.”
“for the moment it wasn’t. it was the tormarin devil—the curse of every generation. but i think that varigny woman could turn a saint into a devil if she tried! she said something about you—and i couldn’t stand it.”
“was that it? then i suppose i shall have to forgive you”—with a pale little attempt at a smile.
but the half-hearted smile faded again almost instantly.
“oh, blaise, what would your temper matter if we could still be together?” she cried passionately. “nothing in the wide world would matter then!”
presently she spoke again.
“but it’s worse for you than for me. i wish it were more equal.”
“how worse for me? i don’t understand. unless”—with a brief, sad smile—“you love me less?”
“ah, you know i don’t mean that! but i’ve only the separation to face. i’m not tied to somebody i don’t love. you’ve got nesta to consider.”
“nesta?” he gave a short, grim laugh. “nesta can go back to where she came from.”
there was a long silence. at last jean broke it.
“blaise, you can’t do that—you can’t send her away again,” she said in quick, low tones. “she’s your wife.”
“my wife! she seems to have been oblivious of the fact—and to have wished me to be equally oblivious of it—for the last few years.”
“yes, of course she’s been wrong, wickedly wrong. but that doesn’t alter the fact that she’s your responsibility, blaise. you must take her back.”
“take her back?”—violently. “i’ll be shot if i do! she’s chosen to live her life without me for the last few years—she can continue to do so.”
jean laid her hand on his arm. she was smiling wistfully. “dear, you’ll have to take her back,” she persisted gently. “don’t you see—she’s not wholly to blame? you’ve admitted that. you’ve blamed yourself in a large measure for her running away. it’s up to you now to put things straight, to—to give her the chance she didn’t have before.”
“you’re discounting these last few years,” he returned gravely. “these years in which she has lived a lie, allowing me to believe her dead—-cheating and deceiving me as no man was ever cheated before. she’s cheated me out of my happiness”—heavily—“taken you from me!”
“yes, i know.” jean’s voice quivered, but she steadied it again. “but even in that, she was not solely to blame. you’ve told me how—how weak she is and easily led astray. and she’s very young. what chance would nesta have of asserting her will against her sister’s, even had she wished to return to you? she ran away from staple in a fit of temper and because you had frightened her. after that—you can see for yourself—madame de varigny is responsible for everything that has happened since.”
tormarin remained silent. the quiet justice of jean’s summing up of the situation struck at him hard.
she waited a moment, then added quietly:
“you must take her back, blaise.”
he wheeled round on her violently.
“and you?” he exclaimed. “you? did you ever love me, jean, that you can talk so coolly about turning me over to another woman?”
she whitened at the bitter accusation in his tones, but she did not flinch.
“it’s just because i love you, blaise, that i want you to do this thing—to do the only thing that is worthy of you. oh, my dear, my dear”—her hands went out to him in sudden, helpless pleading—“do you think it’s easy for me to ask it?” the desolate cry pierced him. he caught her in his arms, kissing her fiercely, adoringly.
“sweetheart!... forgive me! i’m half mad, i think. beloved, say that you forgive me!”
she leaned against him, glad to feel the straining clasp of his arms about her—to rest once more in her place against his heart.
“dearest of all,” she said tremulously, “there is no question of forgiveness between us two. there never will be. we’re just—both of us—struggling in the dark, and there’s only duty”—brokenly—“only duty to hold to.”
they stood together in silence, comforted just a little by the mere human touch of each other in this communion of sorrow which had so suddenly come upon them, yet knowing in their hearts that this was the very comfort that must for ever be denied them in the lonely future.
at last jean raised her head from its resting-place and her eyes searched blaise’s face, asking the question she could no longer bring herself to put in words. he met their gaze. “jean, is it your wish i do this thing—take nesta back?” he felt a shudder run through her frame. twice she tried ineffectually to answer. at last she forced her dry lips to utter an affirmative.
“so be it.”
his answer sounded in her ears like the knell to the whole meaning of life. the future was settled. henceforth their lives must lie apart.
“so be it,” said blaise. “she shall come back and take her place again at staple.”
jean clung to him a little closer.
“blaise, beloved—i know the harder part will be yours. but mine won’t be easy, dear. i shall go to charnwood to be with claire at once—to-morrow—and it won’t be easy, when i see in an evening the lights twinkle up at staple, to know that you two are within, shut in from the world together, while i’m outside—always outside your life and your love.”
“you’ll never be outside my love,” he said swiftly. “that’s yours, now and forever. and no other woman shall rob you of one jot or tittle of it, were she my wife twenty times over. i will bring nesta back to staple, and she shall bear my name and live as my wife in the eyes of the world. but my love—that is yours, utterly and entirely. yours and no other’s.”
she lifted her face to his, and their lips met in a kiss that was the seal of love and all love’s faithfulness.
“so is mine yours,” she said. “how and forever, in this world and the next. oh, blaise—beloved!”—she clung to him in a passion of love and anguish and straining belief—“some day, surely, in that other world, god will give us freedom to take our happiness!”
