CHAPTER XV—LADY ANNE’S DISCLOSURE

“W ELL, have you enjoyed yourself?” enquired Lady Anne when Jean returned. “I suppose so, as you stayed to tea”—smiling.

“Oh, I had tea with Claire. Sir Adrian was away”—with a small grimace—“so we had quite a nice little time together. But, yes, madonna”—Jean had fallen into the use of the gracious little name which Blaise and Nick kept for their mother—“I really enjoyed myself very much. Judith was ever so much nicer than I expected.”

“So now, I suppose, we shall all be side-tracked in favour of Burke and his sister?” put in Blaise, who had been listening quietly. There was a sharpness in his tones, as though the prospect did not please.

Jean smiled at him engagingly.

“Of course you will,” she replied. “I invariably sidetrack old friends when I get the chance.”

“Oh, you’ll get the chance right enough!”—rather sulkily. “Yes, I think I shall”—demurely. “Geoffrey has always been nice to me; and now Judith, too, has succumbed to my charms, and says she hopes we shall be good pals.”

Tormarin rose, pushing back his chair with unnecessary violence.

“I don’t think I see Judith Craig extending her friendship to Glyn Peterson’s daughter,” he commented cynically.

An instant later the door banged behind, and Lady Anne and Jean looked across at each other smiling, as women will when one of their menkind proceeds to behave exactly like a cross little boy.

But a quick sigh chased the smile from Lady Anne’s lips.

“Poor old Blaise!” she murmured, as though to herself. Then, her grey eyes meeting Jean’s squarely, she said quietly:

“Jean, you’re so much one of us, now, that I should like you to know what lies at the hack of things. You’d understand—some of us—better.”

Jean turned impulsively.

“I don’t need to understand you,” she said quickly. “I love you.”

“Thank you, my dear.” Lady Anne’s voice trembled slightly. “If I were not sure of that, I shouldn’t tell you what I am going to. But I want you to understand Blaise—and to make allowances for him, if you can.”

Jean pulled forward a stool and settled herself at Lady Anno’s feet.

“Do you mean about the ‘mark of the beast’?” she asked, smiling a little. “Blaise told me to ask you about it one day.”

“Did he? He thinks far too much about it and what it stands for”—sadly. “It has come to be almost a symbol in his eyes. You see, he too has suffered from the family failing—the very failing that was responsible for that white lock of hair.”

“Tell me about it.”

Lady Anne looked down at her thoughtfully.

“Well, there’s no need for me to tell you that the Tor-marins have hot tempers! You’ve seen evidences of it in Blaise—that sudden flaming up of anger. Though he has learnt through one most bitter experience to hold himself more or less in check.” She paused a moment, as if her thoughts had reverted painfully to the past. Presently she resumed: “All the Tormarin men have had it—that blazing, uncontrollable kind of temper which simply cannot brook opposition. Blaise’s father had it, and it was that which made our life together so unhappy.”

So Destiny had been busy with her snuffers here, also!

“You—you, too!” whispered Jean.

“I. too?” Lady Anne questioned. “What does that mean?”

“Why, it seems to me as if no one is ever allowed to be really happy and to live their life in peace! There is Judith, whose life my father spoilt, and Claire, whose life Sir Adrian spoils—and that means Nick’s life as well. And now—you!”

Some unconscious instinct of reticence deep within her forbade the mention of Blaise Tormarin’s name.

“I expect we are not meant to be too joyful,” said Lady Anne. “Though, after all, it’s largely our own fault if we are not. We make or mar each other’s happiness; it isn’t all Fate.... But I’ve had my share of happiness, Jean—never think that I haven’t. Afterwards, with Claude, I was utterly happy.”

She fell silent for a space, ceasing on that quiet note of happiness. Presently, almost loth to disturb the reverie into which she had fallen, Jean questioned hesitantly:

“And the ‘mark of the beast,’ madonna? You were going to tell me about it.”

“It came as a consequence of the Tormarin temper. That’s why Blaise calls it the ‘mark of the beast.’ It was just before he was born—when I was waiting for the supreme joy of holding my first-born in my arms. Derrick—Blaise’s father—was an extremely jealous-natured man. He hated to think that there had ever been anyone besides himself who cared for me. And there was one man, in particular, of whom he had always been foolishly jealous and suspicious. I can’t imagine why, though”—with a little puzzled laugh. “You would think that the mere fact that I had married him, and not the other man, would have been sufficient proof that he had no cause for jealousy. But no! Men are queer creatures, and he always resented my friendship with John Lovett—which continued after my marriage. I had known John from childhood, and he was the truest friend a woman ever had!” She sighed: “And I needed friends in those days! For somehow, brooding over things to himself, my husband conceived the idea that the little son who was coming was not his own child—but the child of John Lovett. I think someone must have poisoned his mind. There was a certain woman of our acquaintance whom I always suspected; she hated me and was very much attached to Derrick—she had wanted to marry him, I believe. In any case, he came home one evening, from her house, like a madman; and there was a scene... a terrible scene... he hurling accusations at me.... I won’t talk of it, because he was bitterly repentant afterwards. As soon as the fit of rage was past, he realised how utterly groundless his suspicions had been, and I don’t think he ever ceased to reproach himself. But that has always been the way! The Tormarins have invariably brought the bitterest self-reproach upon themselves. One way or another, the same story of blind, reckless anger, and its consequences, has repeated itself generation after generation.”

“And then? What happened then?” asked Jean in low, shocked tones.

“I was very ill—so ill that they thought I should not live. But I did live, and I brought my baby into the world. Only, he was born with that white lock of hair. And my own hair had turned perfectly white.”

Jean was silent for a little. At last she said softly:

“I’m so glad, madonna, that you were happy afterwards. Your ‘house of dreams’ came true in the end!”

“Yes”—Lady Anne’s grey eyes were very bright and luminous. “My house of dreams came true.”

After a while, she went on quietly:

“But my poor Blaise’s house of dreams fell in ruins. The foundation was rotten. You knew, didn’t you, that there was a woman he once cared for?”

Jean nodded. Speech was difficult to her just at that moment.

“It was a miserable business altogether. The girl, Nesta Freyne was an Italian. Blaise met her when he was travelling in Italy, and—oh, well, it wasn’t love! Not love as I know it, and as I think, one day, you too will know it. It blazed up, just one of those wild infatuations that sometimes spring into being between a man and a woman, and almost before he had time to think, Blaise had married her——”

“Married her!”

The words leapt from Jean’s lips before she could check them. In the account of Tormarin’s disastrous love affair which had been forced upon her hearing in London, there had been no mention of the word marriage, and she had always imagined that the woman, this Nesta Freyne, had simply jilted him in favour of another man. Moreover, since she had been at Staple, nothing had been said to correct this impression, as, very naturally, the subject was one avoided by general consent.

And now, without warning or preparation, she found herself face to face with the fact that Blaise had been married—that he had belonged to another woman! It seemed to set her suddenly very far apart from him, and a fierce, intolerable jealousy of that other woman leaped to life in her heart, racking her with an anguish that was almost physical. She was confused, bewildered, by the storm of emotion which suddenly swept her whole being.

“Married her?” she repeated with dry lips.

“Yes. Didn’t you know that Blaise was a widower?”

Had Lady Anne divined the stress under which the girl was labouring that she so quickly interposed the knowledge that his wife was dead?

“No,” answered Jean unsteadily. “I didn’t even know that he had been married.”

The fact of that other woman’s being dead did not serve to allay the tumult within her. She had lived, and while she lived she had been his wife!

“Yes, he married her.” Lady Anne went on speaking in level tones. “I think matters were hurried to a climax by the fact that Nesta’s step-sister, Margherita Valdi, detested English people. She was much the elder of the two, and as their mother had died when Nesta was born, she had practically brought the girl up. She would never have countenanced the idea of her marrying an Englishman, but Nesta so contrived her meetings with Blaise that Margherita was unaware of his very existence, and eventually they married without her knowledge. From that day onward, Margherita declined to hold any communication with her sister.”

“Why had she such a rooted antipathy to the English?” Jean had recovered her composure during the course of Lady Anne’s narrative, and now put her question with a very good semblance of detachment. But, inside, her brain was dully hammering out the words “Married—married!”

“It seems that Margherita’s step-father—Nesta’s father, of course,—who was an Englishman, treated his wife extremely badly, and Margherita, who had adored her mother, never forgave him and hated all Englishmen in consequence. At least, that was what Nesta told Blaise, and it seems quite probable. Italians are a hot-blooded race, you know, and very vindictive and revengeful. Of course, these Valdis were of no particular family—that was where the trouble began. Nesta was just a rather second-rate, though extraordinarily beautiful girl, suddenly elevated to a position which she was not in the least fitted to fill. It didn’t take a month for the glamour to wear off—and for Blaise to see her as I saw her. He came to his senses to find himself married to a bit of soulless, passionate flesh and blood. Oh, Jean! If I could only have been there—in Italy, to have saved him from it all!”

Jean hardly heeded that instinctive mother-cry. She was keyed up to know the end of the story. She felt as though she must scream if Lady Anne were long about the telling.

“Go on,” she said, forcing herself to speak quietly. “Tell me the rest.”

“The rest had the Tormarin temper for its corner-stone. Nesta was an utterly spoilt child, and a coquette to her very finger-tips. She tossed dignity to the winds, and there were everlasting scenes and quarrels. Then, one day, Blaise came in and found her entertaining a man whom he had forbidden the house. I don’t know what he said to her—but I can guess, poor child! He horsewhipped the man, and he must have frightened Nesta half out of her mind. That evening she ran away from Staple—Nick and I, of course, were living at the Dower House then—and after months of fruitless enquiry I had a letter from Margherita Valdi telling me that she had been found drowned. She had evidently made her way back to Italy, hoping to reach her sister, and then, in a fit of despair, committed suicide.”

“Oh, poor Blaise! How awful for him!” exclaimed Jean, horror-stricken. For the moment her own individual point of view was swept away in a flood of sympathy for Tormarin.

“Yes. It broke him up badly. Always, I think, he is brooding over the past. It colours his entire outlook on things. You see, he blamed himself—his ungovernable temper—for the whole tragedy.... If only he had been gentler with her, not terrified her into running away!... After all, she was a mere child—barely seventeen. But she was a heartless, conscienceless minx, nevertheless.... And Margherita Valdi did not let him down lightly. She wrote him a terrible letter, accusing him of her sister’s death. I opened it—he was abroad at the time—but, of course, he had to see it ultimately. Tied up in a little separate packet was Nesta’s wedding-ring, together with a newspaper report of the affair, and, to add a last stab of horror, she had folded the newspaper clipping and thrust it through the wedding-ring, labelling the packet ‘Cause and effect.’ It was a brutal thing to do.”

They were both silent for a space, Jean painfully envisaging the tragedy that lay behind that stern, habitual gravity of Tormarin’s, Lady Aime asking herself tremulously if she had been wise—if she had been wise in her disclosure? She wanted her son’s happiness so immeasurably! She believed she knew wherein it might lie, and she had raked over the burning embers of the past that she might help to give it him.

She knew that he himself was very unlikely to confide in Jean the story of his unhappy marriage, or that if he ever did so, it would be but to shoulder all the blame himself, exonerating Nesta entirely. Nor, unless Jean understood the fiery furnace through which he had passed—that ordeal of impetuous, mistaken love, of disillusion, and, finally, of the most bitter self-reproach—could she possibly interpret aright Blaise’s strange, churlish moods, his insistent efforts to stand always on one side, as though he were entitled to make no further claim on life, and, above all, the bitter quality which permeated his whole outlook.

All these things had been in Lady Anne’s mind when she had decided to enlighten Jean. She had seen, just as Judith had seen, whither Blaise was tending, fight against it as he might, and she was determined to remove from his path whatever of stumbling-block and hindrance she could. And, in this instance, she felt instinctively that Jean’s own attitude might constitute the greatest danger. Any woman, as sincere and positive as she, might easily be driven in upon herself, shrinkingly misunderstanding Blaise’s deliberate aloofness, and thus unconsciously assist in strengthening that barrier against love which he was striving to hold in place between them—and which Lady Anne so yearned to see thrown down.

It was to this end that she had reopened the shadowed pages of the past—so that no foolish obstacle, born of sheer misunderstanding, might imperil her son’s hope of happiness if the time should ever come—as she prayed it would come—when he would free himself from the shackles of a tragic memory and turn his face towards the light of a new dawn.