CHAPTER XXXV—THE EVE OF DEPARTURE

A WEEK later Jean sat at the foot of the stairs and surveyed with faint amusement the motley collection of trunks and suit-cases which thronged the hall.

She was still looking pale and worn, strung up to face her self-imposed exile from the country which now held everything that was dear to her, but no enormity of sorrow, would ever blind Jean for long to the whimsical aspect that attends so many of the little things of daily life.

“What a lot of useless lumber we women carry about with us wherever we go!” she commented. “Five—six—seven packages to supply the needs of two solitary females—and Heaven only knows how many brown paper parcels will be required at the last moment for all the things we shall find we have forgotten when the time actually comes to start.” Claire, standing on the flight of stairs above and viewing the assemblage in the hall from over the top of the banister rail, giggled helplessly.

“Yes, they do look a lot,” she admitted. “However”—hopefully—“there’ll be plenty of room for them all when we actually get to Beirnfels.”

“Oh, plenty,” agreed Jean. “But we’ve got to convey them half across Europe first—two lone women and one miserable maid who will probably combine train-sickness and home-sickness to an extent that will totally incapacitate her for the performance of her duties.”

At this moment the front-door bell clanged violently through the house, as though pulled by someone in a tremendous hurry. Claire hastily withdrew her head from over the banister rail and disappeared upstairs, while Jean relinquished the accommodation offered by the bottommost step and sought refuge in the nearest of the sitting-rooms, closing the door stealthily behind her.

A moment later Tucker, who had caught sight of her hurriedly retreating figure, reopened it and announced imperturbably:

“Mr. Burke.”

Jean greeted him with surprise, but without any feeling of embarrassment. So much had happened since the day she had eluded him on the Moor, events of such intimate and tragic import had swept her path, that the unexpected meeting failed to rouse any feeling either of anger or dismay. Burke, and everything connected with him, belonged to another period of her existence altogether—to that glorious care-free time when it had seemed as though life were a deep, inexhaustible well bubbling over with wonderful possibilities. Burke was merely a ghost—a revenant from that far distant epoch.

“I’m in time, then?” he said, when he had shaken hands. “In time? In time for what?”

“In time to see you before you go.”

“Oh, yes.” Jean spoke lightly. “You’re in time for that. But who told you I was going away? I didn’t know you were in England, even.”

“I came back a fortnight ago—to London. Judith wired me from home that you were leaving Coombe Eavie.”

“I don’t see the necessity for her wiring you,” remarked Jean a little coldly. “There was no need for you to see me.”

“There was—every need.”

She glanced at him keenly, detecting a new note in his voice, an unexpected gravity and restraint.

“Every need,” he repeated. He paused, then went on quickly, with a nervousness that was foreign to him. “Jean, I know everything that has happened—that your engagement to Tormarin is at an end—and I have come to ask you if you will be my wife. No—hear me out!”—as she would have interrupted him. “I’m not asking you now as—as I did before. If you will marry me, I swear I will ask for nothing that you are not willing to give. I’m making no demands. I’ve learned now”—with a faint weary smile—“that you cannot force love. It can only be given. And I want nothing but just the right to take care of you, to shield you—to keep the sharp corners of life away from you.” Then, as he read her incredulous face, he went on gravely: “If I had wanted more than that, Jean, if I had not learned something—just from loving you, I should not have waited until now. I should have come at once—as soon as I learned from Madame de Varigny that Tormarin’s wife was still alive.”

She looked at him curiously.

“Why didn’t you come then, Geoffrey? I sometimes wondered—you being you!”—with a faint smile. “Because, of course, I knew why you had rushed off to France. Madame de Varigny explained that.”

A dull flush mounted to his face.

“Did she? I expect she told you merely what was the truth. I went to see her because she had assured me that she could stop your marriage with Tormarin—could interfere in some way to prevent it. That was why I went to France.... But when she told me her blackguardly scheme—how she had planned and plotted to conceal the fact that Tormarin’s wife was alive—and why she had done it, I would have no hand in anything that followed. I’m no saint”—a brief, ironical smile flitted across his face—“but there are some methods at which even I draw the line.”

“So—that was why you stayed away?”

“That was why. I wanted you, Jean—God only knows how I wanted you!—but I couldn’t try to force your hand at such a time. I couldn’t profit by a damnable scheme like that.”

Jean’s eyes grew soft as she realised that beneath all the impetuous arrogance and dominant demands of the man’s temperament there yet lay something fine and clean and straight—difficult to get at, perhaps, but which could yet rise, in answer to a sense of honour and fairness with which she had not credited him, and take command of his whole nature.

“I’m glad—glad you didn’t come, Geoffrey,” she said gently. “Glad you—couldn’t.”

“I don’t know that I’m glad about it,” he returned with a grim candour. “I simply couldn’t do it, and that’s all there is to it. But I’ve come now, Jean. I’ve come because I want you to give me just the right to look after you. I’m not asking for anything. I only want to serve you—if you’ll let me—just to be near you. If Tormarin were free, I would not have come to you again. I know I should have no chance. But he’s not free. Does that give me a chance, Jean? If it doesn’t, I’ll take myself off—I’ll never bother you again. I’ll try Africa—big game shooting”—with a short laugh. “But if it does——”

He paused and waited for her answer. The intensity of longing in his eyes was the sole indication of the emotion that stirred within him—an emotion held in check by a stem self-control that seemed to Jean to be part of this new, changed lover of hers. Surely, in the months which had elapsed since she had fled from him on Dartmoor, he had fought with his devils and cast them out!

She held out her hands to him.

“Geoffrey, I’m so sorry—but I’m afraid it doesn’t. I wish—I wish I could give you any other answer. But, you see, it isn’t marrying—it’s love that matters. And all my love is given.”

He took her hands in his and held them gently with that strange, new restraint he seemed to have learned.

“I see,” he said slowly. Then for a moment his calm wavered. The underlying passion, so strongly held in leash, shook the even tones of his voice. “Tormarin is a lucky man—in spite of everything! I’d give my soul to have what he has—your love, Jean.”

His big hands closed round her slight ones and he lifted them to his lips. Then, without another word, he went away, and Jean was left wondering sorrowfully why the love that she did not want was offered her in such full measure, hers to take at will, while the love for which she craved, the love which would have meant the glory and fulfilment of life itself, was denied her—shut away by all the laws of God and Man.