CHAPTER XXXIV—THE TEST

NEW YEAR’S EYE found Jean sitting alone in Claire’s special sanctum—the room which had witnessed that frightful scene when Sir Adrian had suddenly gone mad.

It was a cosy enough little room in winter-time. A cheery fire crackled in the open grate, while a heavy velvet curtain was drawn across the door that gave egress to the terrace, effectually screening out the ubiquitous draught which invariably seeks entry through crack and hinge-space.

Claire was at the Dower House this evening, where a New Year’s dinner-party was in progress, but Jean had no heart for festivities of any kind even had she not been precluded from taking part in them by reason of her father’s death.

The grief and strain of the last four months had set their mark upon her. She was much thinner than formerly—her extreme slenderness accentuated by the clinging black of the dress she was wearing—while faint purple shadows lay beneath her eyes, giving her a look of frailty and fatigue.

She and Claire led a very sober and uneventful existence at Chamwood, the one absorbed in her quiet happiness, the other in her quiet grief. But the bond of their friendship had held true throughout the differing fortunes which had fallen to the lot of each, and although for Jean there was inevitable additional pain involved in still remaining within the neighbourhood of Staple, it was counterbalanced by the comfort she drew from Clare’s companionship.

Besides, as she reflected dispiritedly, where else had she to go? The Dower House would have been open to her, of course, at any time, but there she would be certain to encounter Blaise more frequently, and of late her principal preoccupation had been to avoid such meeting whenever possible. And she could not face Beirnfels yet—alone! Some day, when Claire was married, she knew that she must brace herself to return there—to a house of dreams that would never come true now. But at present she shrank intolerably from the idea. She craved companionship—above all, the consoling, tender understanding which Claire, who had herself suffered, was so well able to give her.

The book that she had been reading earlier in the evening lay open on her knee, and her thoughts were with Claire now. She pictured her sitting next to Nick at dinner, her flower-like face radiant with unclouded happiness, and Jean was thankful to the very bottom of her heart that she was able to feel glad—glad of that happiness. At least her own sorrow had not yet taught her the grudging envy which cannot endure another’s joy.

With a quickly repressed sigh, she turned again to her book. Its pages fluttered faintly, as though stirred by some passing current of air, and Jean, coming suddenly out of her reverie, was conscious of a cool draught wafting towards her from the direction of the terrace door.

Vaguely surprised, she glanced up, and a startled cry broke from her lips. The door was open, the folds of the curtain had been drawn aside, and in the aperture stood Blaise Tormarin.

Jean sprang up from her chair and stood staring at him with dilated eyes, one hand gripping the edge of the chimney-piece.

“Blaise!... You!” The words issued stammeringly from her lips.

“Yes,” he returned shortly. “May I come in?”

Without waiting for an answer he closed the door behind him, letting the curtain fall back into its place, and crossed the room to her side.

Jean felt her heart contract as her eyes marked the changes wrought in him by the few weeks which had elapsed since she had seen him. His face was haggard as though from lack of sleep, and the lines on either side the mouth were scored deep into the flesh. The mouth itself closed in a tense line of savage misery and the stark bitterness of his eyes filled her with grief and pity, knowing how utterly powerless she was to help or comfort him.

Distrusting her self-control, she snatched at the first conventional remark that suggested itself.

“I thought—I thought you and Nesta were both dining at the Dower House,” she said confusedly.

“Nesta is there. I made an excuse. I came here instead.”

Something in the curt, clipped sentences sounded a note of warning in her ears.

“But you ought not to have come here,” she replied quickly—defensively almost. “Why have you come, Blaise?”

“I came,” he said slowly, “because I can’t bear my life without you a day longer. Because—— Oh, Jean! Jean!... Beloved! Do you need to ask me why I came?”

With a swift, irresistible movement he swept her up into his arms, holding her crushed against his breast, his mouth on hers, kissing her as a man kisses when love that has been long thwarted and denied at last bursts asunder the shackles which constrained it.

And Jean, starved for four long months of the touch of the beloved arms, the pressure of the beloved lips upon her own, had yielded to him almost before she was aware of her surrender.

Then the remembrance of the woman who stood between them rushed across her and she tore herself free from his embrace, white and trembling in every limb.

“Blaise!... Blaise!... What are you thinking of? Oh! We’re mad—mad!”

She covered her face with her shaking hands but he drew them away, gazing down at her with eyes that worshipped.

“No, beloved, we’re not mad,” lie cried triumphantly. “We’re sane—sane at last. We were mad to think we could live apart, mad to dream we could starve love like ours. That was when we were mad! But we’ll never be parted again; sweet——”

“Blaise,” she whispered, staring at him with horrified, dilated eyes. “You don’t know what you are saying! You’re forgetting Nesta—your wife. Oh, go—go quickly! You must not stay here and talk like this to me!”

“No,” he returned. “I won’t go, Jean. I’ve come to take you away with me.” Once more his arms went round her. “Belovedest, I can’t live without you any longer. I’ve tried—and I can’t do it. Jean, you’ll come? You love me enough—enough to come away with me to the ends of the earth where we’ll find happiness at last?”

She sought to free herself from his, clasp, pressing with straining hands against his chest.

“No! No!” she cried breathlessly. “I can’t go with you... you know I can’t! Ah! Don’t ask me, Blaise!” There was an agony of supplication in her voice.

“But I do ask you. And if you love me”—his eyes holding hers—“you’ll come, Jean.”

“I do love you,” she answered earnestly. “But it isn’t the you I love asking me this, Blaise. It’s some other man—a stranger——”

“If you love me, you’ll come,” he reiterated doggedly. “I can’t live without you, Jean. I want you—oh, heart’s beloved, if you knew—” And the burning, passionate words, the pent-up love and longing of months of separation and despair, came pouring from his lips—beseeching and demanding, wringing her heart, pulling at the love within her that ached to give him the answer which he craved.

“Oh, Blaise, dearest of all—hush! Hush!” She checked him brokenly, with quivering lips. “I can’t go with you. It wouldn’t bring us happiness. Ah, listen to me, dear!” She came close to him and laid her hands imploringly on his arm, lifting her white, stricken face to his. “It would only spoil our love—to take it like that when we have no right to. It would smirch and soil it, make it something different. I think—I think, in the end, Blaise, it would kill it.”

“Nothing would ever kill my love for you,” he exclaimed passionately. “Jean, little Jean, think of what our life together might be—the glory and beauty of it—just you and I in our House of Dreams!”

She caught her breath. Oh! Why did he make it so hard for her? With every fibre of her being yearning towards him she must refuse, deny him, drive him away from her.

“No, no!” she cried tremulously. “We could never reach our House of Dreams that way—Oh, I know it! At least, not the sort of House of Dreams that would be worth anything to you or me, Blaise. It would only be a sham, a make-believe. You can’t build true on a rotten foundation.... Don’t ask me any more, dear. It’s so hard—so hard to keep on saying no when everything in me wants to say yes. But I must say it. And you... you must go back to Nesta.”

Her voice almost failed her. She could feel her strength ebbing with every moment that he stayed beside her. She knew that she would not be able to resist his pleading much longer. Her own heart was fighting against her—fighting on his side!

He saw her weakness and caught at it eagerly.

“Do you know what you’re asking?” he demanded hoarsely. “Do you know what you are sending me back to? Our life together—Nesta’s and mine—has been simple hell upon earth. I obeyed you—and I took her back. But I have done no good by it. She is as weak and worthless as she ever was. Our days are one continual round of bickering and quarrels.” His face darkened. “And she is not satisfied! Her nominal position as my wife does not con tent her. Do you understand what that must mean—if I go back?” He paused, his eyes bent steadily upon her. “Jean”—very low—“now that you know—will you still send me hack to Nesta? Or will you come with me and let us find our happiness together?”

He watched the scarlet flood surge into her face and then retreat, leaving it a pallid white.

“Answer me!” he persisted, as she remained silent.

“Wait... wait a little...” she muttered helplessly.

She turned away from him and, leaning her elbows on the chimney-piece, buried her face in her hands.

The supreme test had come at last. She realised, now, that her renunciation—that renunciation which had cost her so much pain and bitterness—had been, after all, only something superficial and incomplete. She had not made the full sacrifice that duty and honour demanded of her. Though she had outwardly renounced her lover—bade him return to Nesta—she still held him hers by the utter faithfulness of his love for her. Nesta had had but the husk, the shell—a husband in name only, every hour of their life together an insult to her pride and womanhood.

Jean’s thoughts lashed her. Her shoulders bent and cowered a little as though beneath a physical blow.

There had been a time—oh! very long ago, it seemed, before Destiny had come with her snuffers and quenched the twin flames and love and happiness—a time when dimly, as in some exquisite dream, she had heard the sound of little voices, felt the helpless touch of tiny hands. Perhaps Nesta, too, had heard those voices, felt those clinging hands, while her soul quickened to the vision of a future which might hold some deeper meaning, some more sacred trust and purpose, than her empty, wayward past.

And she, Jean, had stood between Nesta and the fulfilment of that dream, forever forbidding her entrance to her woman’s kingdom.

She saw it all now with a terrible clarity of vision, understood to the full the two alternatives which faced her—to go with Blaise, as he implored, or to send him—her man, the man she loved—hack to Nesta. There was no longer any middle course.

A voice sounded in her ears.

“No true happiness ever came of running away from duty. And if ever I’m up against such a thing—a choice like this—I hope to God I’d be able to hang on, to run straight, even if it half-killed me to do it!”

The words sounded so clear and distinct that Jean half raised her head to see who spoke them. And then, in an overwhelming rush of memory, she recognised that it was no actual voice she heard but the mental echo of her own words to Nick—to Nick at the time when he had been passing through a like fire of fierce temptation.

How easily, in her young, untried ignorance, the words had fallen from her lips as she had urged Nick to renounce his fixed resolve! Such eminently wise and excellent counsel! And how little—how crassly little had she realised at the time the huge demand that she was making!

She had spoken as though it were comparatively easy to reject the wrong and choose the right—to follow the stern and narrow path of Duty, through the mists and utter darkness that enshrouded it, up to those shining heights which lie beyond human sight—the outposts of Eternal Heaven itself.

Easy!.... Oh, God!....





When at last Jean uncovered her face and lifted it to meet the set gaze of the man beside her, it was wan and ravaged “the face of one who has come through some fierce purgatory of torment.”

“Well?” he demanded, his voice roughened because he found himself unable to steady it with that strained and altered face upturned to his. “Well? Are you going to send me back to Nesta?”

She did not answer his question. Instead, she put another.

“Do you think she—loves you?”

He stared.

“Nesta? Yes. As far as her sort can love, I believe she does.”

Jean nodded, as though it were the answer she had expected.

“Blaise... I’m going to send you back to her. I’m sure now. I know. It’s the only thing we can do... We must say good-bye—altogether—never see each other again.”

“Never?” The word came draggingly.

“Never. It—it would be too hard for us, Blaise, to see each other.”

“Yes,” he answered slowly. “It would be too hard.”

They were both silent. The minutes ticked away unregarded. Time had ceased to count. This farewell was till the end of time.

“Blaise—” All the resonance had gone out of her voice. It sounded flat and tired. “You—you will go back to her?”

“Yes, I will go back.”

She stretched out her hands flutteringly.

“Then go.... go soon, Blaise! I—I can’t bear very much more.”

He opened his arms, then, and she went to him, and for a space they clung together in silence. For the last time he set his lips to hers, held her once more against his heart. Then slowly they drew apart, stricken eyes gazing lingeringly into other eyes as stricken, and presently the closing of the terrace door told her that he had gone, and that she must turn her feet to the solitary path of those who have said farewell to love.

Henceforth, she would be alone—living or dying, quite alone.

It was long past midnight when Claire returned from the Dower House.

She found Jean sitting beside the grey embers of a burnt-out fire, her hands lying folded upon her knee, her eyes staring stonily in front of her in a fixed, unseeing gaze.

Claire called to her softly, as when one wakes a sleeper.

“Jean!”

Jean turned her head.

“So you have got back?” she said dully. She stood up stiffly, as though her limbs were cramped. “Claire, I am going away—right away from here—to Beirnfels.”

“Why?” asked Claire.

She waited tensely for the answer.

“Blaise has been here. He asked me to go away with him. I’ve sent him back to Nesta.”

The short, stilted sentences fell mechanically from her lips. She spoke exactly like a child repeating a lesson learned by rote.

Claire’s eyes grew very pitiful.

“And must you go to Beirnfels alone?” she asked quietly. “Won’t you take me with you?”

“Will you come?”—incredulously.

“Of course I’ll come. I shouldn’t dream of letting you go by yourself.”

And then, all at once, Jean’s tired body, exhausted by the soul’s long conflict, gave way, and she slipped to the ground in a dead faint.