CHAPTER VIII—THE MAN FROM MONTAVAN

JEAN arrived in London with a good three hours to spare before the South-Western express, by which she proposed to travel to Devonshire, was due to leave Waterloo Station. She elected, therefore, to occupy the time by touring round the great, unknown city of her dreams in a taxicab, and spent a beatific hour glimpsing the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and the old, grey, misty river that Londoners love, and skirmishing in and out of the shops in Regent Street and Bond Street with her hands full of absurd, expensive, unnecessary purchases only bought because this was London and she felt she just simply must have something English at once, and winding up with a spin through Hyde Park—which didn’t impress her very favourably in its winter aspect of leafless trees and barren stretches of sodden grass.

Then she drove to a hotel, and, her luggage deposited there to await her departure, her thoughts turned very naturally towards lunch. Her scamper round London in the crisp, clear, frosty air had converted the recollection of her early morning coffee and roll into something extremely nebulous and unsupporting, and it was with the healthy appetite of an eager young mind in an eager young body that she faced the several courses of the table d’hote.

She glanced about her with interest, the little snatches of English conversation which drifted to her from other near-by tables giving her a patriotic thrill of pure delight. These were typically English people lunching in a typically English hotel, and she, hitherto a stranger to her own mother-country, was doing likewise. The knowledge filled her with ridiculous satisfaction.

Nor were English people—at home in their own country—anything like as dull and dowdy as Glyn Peterson’s sweeping criticisms had led her to expect. The men were immensely well-groomed and clean-looking. She liked the “morning-tub” appearance they all had; it reminded her of the Englishman at Montavan. Apparently it was a British characteristic.

The women, too, filled her with a species of vicarious pride. They were so well turned-out, with a slim, long limbed grace of figure she found admirable, and with splendid natural complexions—skins like rose and ivory.

Two of them were drifting into the room together now, with a superbly cool assurance of manner—rather as though they had bought the hotel—which brought the sleek head-waiter automatically to their side, bowing and obsequious.

Somewhat to Jean’s satisfaction he convoyed them to the table next her own, and she was pleasantly conscious, as they passed her, of a provocative whisper of silk and of the faint fragrance of violets subtly permeating the atmosphere.

Conscious that perhaps she had been manifesting her interest a little too openly, she turned her attention to a magazine she had bought en route from Dover and was soon absorbed in the inevitable happy-ever-after conclusion of the story she had been reading.

“Lady Anne? Oh, she lives at Staple now. Didn’t you know?”

The speaker’s voice was clear and resonant, with the peculiar carrying quality which has replaced in the modern Englishwoman of the upper classes that excellent thing in woman which was the proud boast of an earlier generation.

The conjunction of the familiar words “Lady Anne” and “Staple” struck sharply on Jean’s ears, and almost instinctively she looked up.

As she stirred, one of the women glanced indifferently in her direction, then placidly resumed her conversation with her companion.

“It was just after the smash-up,” she pursued glibly. “Blaise Tormarin rushed off abroad for a time, and the news of Nesta’s death came while he was away. Poor Lady Anne had to write and tell him of it.”

“Rather ghastly!” commented the other woman. “I never heard the whole story of the affair. I was in Paris, then, and it was all over—barring the general gossip, of course!—by the time I returned. I tried to pump it out of Lady Anne once, but she was as close as an oyster.”

Both women talked without lowering their voices in the slightest degree, and with that complete indifference to the proximity of a stranger sometimes exhibited by a certain arrogant type.

Jean, realising that it was her father’s friends who were under discussion, and finding herself forced into the position of an unwilling auditor, felt wretchedly uncomfortable. She wished fervently that she could in some way arrest the conversation. Yet it was clearly as impossible for her to lean forward and say: “You are talking about the people I am on my way to visit,” as it would have been for her to put her fingers in her ears. So far nothing had been said to which she could actually object. Her feeling was chiefly the offspring of a supersensitive fear that she might learn from the lips of these two gossiping women, one of whom was apparently intimately acquainted with the private history of the Tormarin family, some little fact or detail which Lady Anne might not care for her future guest to know. Apart from this fear, it would hardly have been compatible with human nature—certainly not feminine human nature—if she had not felt pricked to considerable personal interest in the topic under discussion.

“Oh, it was a fool business,” the first woman rejoined, settling down to supply the details of the story with an air of rapacious satisfaction which reminded Jean of nothing so much as of a dog with a bone. “Nesta Freyne was a typical Italian—though her father was English, I believe—all blazing, passionate eyes and blazing, passionate emotion, you know; then there was another man—and there was Blaise Tormarin! You can imagine the consequences for yourself. Blaise has his full share of the Tormarin temper—and a Tormarin in a temper is like a devil with the bit between his teeth. There were violent quarrels and finally the girl bolted, presumably with the other man. Then, later, Lady Anne heard that she had died abroad somewhere. The funny thing is that it seemed to cut Tormarin up rather badly. He’s gloomed about the world ever since, so I suppose he must have been pretty deeply in love with her before the crash came. I never saw her, but I’ve been told she was diabolically pretty.”

The other woman laughed, dismissing the tragedy of the little tale with a shallow tinkle of mirth.

“Oh, well, I’ve only met Blaise Tormarin once, but I should say he was not the type to relish being thrown over for another man!” She peered short-sightedly at the grilled fish on her plate, poking at it discontentedly with her fork. “I never think they cook their fish decently here, do you?” she complained.

And, with that, both women shelved the affairs of Blaise Tormarin and concentrated upon the variety of culinary sins from which even expensive hotel chefs are not necessarily exempt.

Jean had no time to bestow upon the information which had been thus thrust upon her until she had effected the transport of herself and her belongings from the hotel to Waterloo Station, but when this had been satisfactorily accomplished and she found herself comfortably settled in a corner seat of the Plymouth express, her thoughts reverted to her newly acquired knowledge.

It added a bit of definite outline to the very slight and shadowy picture she had been able to form of her future environment—a picture roughly sketched in her mind from the few hints dropped by her father.

She wondered a little why Glyn should have omitted all mention of Blaise Tormarin’s love affair and its unhappy sequel, but a moment’s reflection supplied the explanation. Peterson had admitted that it was ten years since he had heard from Lady Anne; presumably, then, the circumstances just recounted in Jean’s hearing had occurred during those years.

Jean felt that the additional knowledge she had gained rather detracted from the prospective pleasure of her visit to Staple. Judging from the comments which she had overheard, her host was likely to prove a somewhat morose and gloomy individual, soured by his unfortunate experience of feminine fidelity.

Thence her thoughts vaulted wildly ahead. Most probably, as a direct consequence, he was a woman-hater and, if so, it was more than possible that he would regard her presence at Staple as an unwarrantable intrusion.

A decided qualm assailed her, deepening quickly into a settled conviction—Jean was nothing if not thorough!—that the real explanation of the delay in Lady Anne’s response to Glyn’s letter had lain in Blaise Tormarin’s objection to the invasion of his home by a strange young woman—an objection Lady Anne had had to overcome, or decide to ignore, before she could answer Glyn’s request in the affirmative.

The idea that she might be an unwelcome guest at Staple filled Jean with lively consternation, and by the time she had accomplished the necessary change of train at Exeter, and found herself being trundled along on the leisurely branch line which conducted her to her ultimate destination, she had succeeded in working herself up into a condition that almost verged upon panic.

“Coombe Ea-vie! Coombe Eavie!”

The sing-song intonation of a depressed-looking porter, first rising from a low note to a higher, then descending in contrary motion abruptly from high to low, was punctuated by the sharper, clipped pronouncement of the stationmaster as he bustled up the length of the platform declaiming: “’Meavie! ’Meavie! ’Meavie!” with a maddeningly insistent repetition that reminded one of a cuckoo in June.

Apparently both stationmaster and porter were too much absorbed in the frenzied strophe and antistrophe effect they were producing to observe that any passenger, handicapped by luggage, contemplated descending from the train—unexpected arrivals were of rare occurrence at Coombe Eavie—and Jean therefore hastened to transfer herself and her hand-baggage to the platform unassisted. A minute later the train ambled on its way again, leaving the stationmaster and the depressed porter grouped in astonished admiration before the numerous trunks and suit-cases, labelled “Peterson,” which the luggage van of the departing train had vomited forth.

To the bucolic mind, such an unwonted accumulation argued a passenger of quite superlative importance, and with one accord the combined glances of the station staff raked the diminutive platform, to discover Jean standing somewhat forlornly in the middle, of it, surrounded by the smaller fry of her luggage. The stationmaster hurried forward immediately to do the honours, and Jean addressed him eagerly.

“I want a fiacre—cab”—correcting herself hastily—“to take me to Staple Manor.”

The man shook his head.

“There are no cabs here, miss,” he informed her regretfully. “Anyone that wants to be met orders Wonnacott’s wagonette in advance.” Then, seeing Jean’s face lengthen, he continued hastily: “But if they’re expecting you up at Staple, miss, they’ll be sure to send one of the cars to meet you. There!”—triumphantly, as the chug-chug of an approaching motor came to them clearly on the crisp, cold air—“that’ll be it, for certain.”

Followed the sound of a car braking to a standstill in the road outside the station, and almost immediately a masculine figure appeared advancing rapidly from the lower end of the platform.

Even through the dusk of the winter’s afternoon Jean was struck by something curiously familiar in the man’s easy, swinging stride. A surge of memories came flooding over her, and she felt her breath catch in her throat at the sudden possibility which flashed into her mind. For an instant she was in doubt—the thing seemed so amazingly improbable. Then, touching his hat, the stationmaster moved respectfully aside, and she found herself face to face with the unknown Englishman from Montavan.

She gazed at him speechlessly, and for a moment he, too, seemed taken aback. His eyes met hers in a startled, leaping glance of recognition and something more, something that set her pulses racing unsteadily.

“Little comrade!” She could have sworn the words escaped him. Then, almost in the same instant, she saw the old, rather weary gravity replace the sudden fire that had blazed up in the man’s eyes, quenching its light.

“So—you are Miss Peterson!”

There was no pleasure, no welcome in his tones; rather, an undercurrent of ironical vexation as though Fate had played some scurvy trick upon him.

“Yes.” The brief monosyllable came baldly in reply; she hardly knew how to answer him, how to meet his mood. Then, hastily calling up her reserves, she went on lightly: “You don’t seem very pleased to see me. Shall I go away again?”

His mouth relaxed into a grim smile.

“This isn’t Clapham Junction,” he answered tersely. “There won’t be a train till ten o’clock to-night.”

A glint of humour danced in Jean’s eyes.

“In that case,” she returned gravely, “what do you advise?”

“I don’t advise,” he replied promptly. “I apologise. Please forgive such an ungracious reception, Miss Peterson—but you must acknowledge it was something in the nature of a surprise to find that you were—you!”

Jean laughed.

“It’s given you an unfair advantage, too,” she replied. “I still haven’t penetrated your incognito—but I suppose you are Mr. Brennan?”

“No. Nick Brennan’s my half-brother. I’m Blaise Tormarin, and, as my mother was unable to meet you herself, I came instead. Shall we go? I’ll give the station-master instructions about your baggage.”

So the unknown Englishman of Montavan was the man of whom the two women at the neighbouring lunch table in the hotel had been gossiping—the central figure of that most tragic love-affair! Jean thought she could discern, now, the origin of some of those embittered comments he had let fall when they were together in the mountains.

In silence she followed him out of the little wayside station to where the big head-lamps of a stationary car shed a blaze of light on the roadway, and presently they were slipping smoothly along between the high hedges which flanked the road on either hand.