JEAN, surprisingly revived by a hot bath and a hot drink, and comfortably tucked up beside the fire in her room, was recounting the day’s adventure to Madame de Varigny.
It was a somewhat expurgated version of the affair that she outlined—thoughtfully calculated to allay the natural apprehensions of a temporary chaperon—in which the unknown Englishman figured innocuously as merely having come to her assistance when, in the course of her afternoon’s tramp, she had been overtaken by the blizzard. Of the stolen day, snatched from under Mrs. Grundy’s enquiring nose, Jean preserved a discreet silence.
“I don’t know who he could be,” she pursued. “I’ve never seen him on the ice before; I should certainly have recognised him if I had. He was a lean, brown man, very English-looking—that sort of cold-tub-every-morning effect, you know. Oh! And he had one perfectly white lock of hair that was distinctly attractive. It looked”—descriptively—“as though someone had dabbed a powdered finger on his hair—just in the right place.”
Madame de Varigny’s eyes narrowed, and a quick ejaculation escaped her. It was something more than a mere exclamation connoting interest; it held a definitely individual note, as though it sprang from some sudden access of personal feeling.
Jean, hearing it, looked up in some surprise, and the other, meeting her questioning glance, rushed hastily into speech.
“A lock of white hair? But how chic!
“It should not”—thoughtfully—“be difficult to discover the identity of anyone with so distinctive a characteristic.”
“He is not staying in the hotel, at all events,” said Jean. “He told me he was at a friend’s chalet.”
“And he did not enlighten you as to his name? Gave you no hint?”
Madame de Varigny spoke with an assumption of indifference, but there was an undertone of suppressed eagerness in her liquid voice.
Jean shook her head, smiling a little to herself. It had been part of the charm of that brief companionship that neither of the two comrades knew any of the everyday, commonplace details concerning the other.
“Perhaps you will see him again at the rink to-morrow,” suggested Madame de Varigny, still with that note of restrained eagerness in her tones. “The snow is not deep except where it has drifted; they will clear the ice in the morning.”
Jean was silent. She was not altogether sure that she wanted to see him again. As it stood, robbed of all the commonplace circumstances of convention, the incident held a certain glamour of whimsical romance which could not but appeal to the daughter of Glyn Peterson. Nicely rounded off, as, for instance, by the unknown Englishman’s prosaically calling at the hotel the next day to enquire whether she had suffered any ill effects, it would lose all the thrill of adventure. It was the suggestion of incompleteness which flavoured the entire episode so piquantly.
No, on the whole, Jean rather hoped that she would not meet the Englishman again—at least, not yet. Some day, perhaps, it might be rather nice if chance brought them together once more. There would be a certain element of romantic fitness about it, should that happen.
“I don’t think I am likely to see him again,” she said quietly, replying to Madame de Varigny’s suggestion. “He told me he was going away to-morrow.”
Had it been conceivable, Jean would have said that a flash of disappointment crossed the Countess’s face. But there seemed no possible reason why the movements of an unknown Englishman should cause her any excitation of feeling whatever, pleasant or otherwise. The only feasible explanation was that odd little streak of inquisitiveness concerning other people’s affairs which appeared to be characteristic of her and which she had before evinced concerning the circumstances of Lady Anne Brennan.
Whatever curiosity she may have felt, however, on this occasion Madame de Varigny refrained from giving expression to it. Apparently dismissing the subject of the Englishman’s identity from her mind, she switched the conversation into a fresh channel.
“It is unfortunate that you should have met with such a contretemps to-day. You will not feel disposed to dance this evening, after so much fatigue,” she observed commiseratingly.
But Jean scouted the notion. With the incomparable resiliency of youth, she felt quite equal to dancing all night if needs be.
“Mais tout au contraire!” she exclaimed. “I’m practically recovered—at least, I shall be after another half-hour’s lazing by this glorious fire. I wonder what heaven-sent inspiration induced Monsieur Vautrinot to install a real English fire-place in this room? It’s delicious.”
The Countess rose, shrugging her expressive shoulders.
“You are wonderful—you English! If it had been I who had experienced your adventure to-day, I should be fit for nothing. As to dancing the same evening—ma foi, non! Voyons, I shall leave you to rest a little.”
She nodded smilingly and left the room. Once in the corridor outside, however, the smile vanished as though it had been wiped off her face by an unseen hand. Her curving lips settled into a hard, inflexible line, and the soft, disarming dark eyes grew suddenly sombre and brooding.
She passed swiftly along to her own suite. It was empty. The little Count was downstairs, agreeably occupied in comparing symptoms with a fellow health crank he had discovered.
With a quick sigh of relief at his absence she flung herself into a chair and lit a cigarette, smoking rapidly and exhaling the smoke in quick, nervous jerks. The long, pliant fingers which held the cigarette were not quite steady.
“Tout va bien!” she muttered restlessly. “All goes well! Assur茅ment, his punishment will come.” She bent her head. “Que Dieu le veuille!” she whispered passionately.
Jean took a final and not altogether displeased survey of herself in the mirror before descending to the big salle where the fancy-dress ball was to be held. She had had her dinner served to her in her room so that she might rest the longer, and now, as there came wafted to her ears the preliminary grunts and squeals and snatches of melody of the hotel orchestra in process of tuning up, she was conscious of a pleasant glow of anticipation.
There was nothing strikingly original about the conception of her costume. It represented “Autumn,” and had been designed for a fancy-dress ball of more than a year ago—before the death of Jacqueline had suddenly shuttered down all gaiety and mirth at Beirnfels. But, simple as it was, it had been carried out by an artist in colour, and the filmy diaphanous layers of brown and orange and scarlet, one over the other, zoned with a girdle of autumn-tinted leaves, served to emphasise the russet of beech-leaf hair and the topaz-gold of hazel eyes.
Madame de Varigny’s glance swept the girl with approval as they entered the great salle together.
“But it is charming, your costume! Regarde, Henri”—turning to the Count, who, as a swashbuckling d’Artagnan, was getting into difficulties with his sword. “Has it not distinction—this costume d’automne?”
The Count retrieved himself and, hitching his sword once more into position, poured forth an unembarrassed stream of Gallic compliment.
Madame de Varigny herself was looking supremely handsome as Cleopatra. Jean reflected that her eyes,—slumberous and profound, with their dusky frame of lashes and that strange implacability she always sensed in them—might very well have been the eyes of the Egyptian queen herself.
The salle was filling up rapidly. Jean, who did not anticipate dancing overmuch, as she had made but few acquaintances in the hotel, watched the colourful, shifting scene with interest. There was the usual miscellany of a masquerade—Pierrots jostling against Kings and Cossacks, Marie Antoinettes flaunting their jewels before the eyes of demure-faced nuns, with here and there an occasional costume of outstanding originality or merit of design.
Contrary to her expectations, however, Jean soon found herself with more partners than she had dances to bestow, and, newly emancipated from the rigour of her year’s mourning, she threw herself into the enjoyment of the moment with all the long repressed enthusiasm of her youth.
It was nearing the small hours when at last she found herself alone for a few minutes. In the exhilaration of rapid movement she had completely forgotten the earlier fatigues of the day, but now she was beginning to feel conscious of the strain which the morning’s skating, followed by that long, exhausting struggle through the blizzard, had imposed upon even young bones and muscles. Close at hand was a deserted alcove, curtained off from the remainder of the salle, and here Jean found temporary sanctuary, subsiding thankfully on to a big cushioned divan.
The sound of the orchestra came to her ears pleasantly dulled by the heavy folds of the screening curtain. Vaguely she could feel the rhythmic pulsing, the sense of movement, in the salle beyond. It was all very soothing and reposeful, and she leaned her head against a fat, pink satin cushion and dosed, at the back of her mind the faintly disturbing thought that she was cutting a Roman senator’s dance.
Presently she stirred a little, hazily aware of some disquiet that was pushing itself into her consciousness. The discomfort grew, crystallising at last into the feeling that she was no longer alone. Eor a moment, physically unwilling to be disturbed, she tried to disregard it, but it persisted, and, as though to strengthen it, the recollection of the defrauded senator came back to her with increased insistence.
Broad awake at last, she opened her eyes. Someone—the senator presumably—was standing at the entrance to the little alcove, and she rushed into conscience-stricken speech.
“Oh, have I cut your dance? I’m so sorry——”
She broke off abruptly, realising as she spoke that the intruder was not, after all, the senator come to claim his dance, but a stranger wearing a black mask and domino. She was sure she had not seen him before amongst the dancers in the salle, and for a moment she stared at him bewildered and even a little frightened. Vague stories she had heard of a “hold-up” by masked men at some fancy-dress ball recalled themselves disagreeably to her memory, and her pulse quickened its beat perceptibly.
Then, quite suddenly, she knew who it was. It did not need even the evidence of that lock of poudr茅 hair above the mask he wore, just visible in the dim light of the recess, to tell her. She knew. And with the knowledge came a sudden, disturbing sense of shy tumult.
She half-rose from the divan.
“You?” she stammered nervously. “Is it you?”
He whipped off his mask.
“Who else? Did this deceive you?”—dangling the strip of velvet from his finger, and regarding her with quizzical grey eyes. “I’ve been hunting for you everywhere. I’d almost made up my mind that you had gone to bed like a good little girl. And then my patron saint—or was it the special devil told off to look after me, I wonder?—prompted me to look in here. Et vous voil脿, mademoiselle! How are you feeling after your exploits in the snow?”
He spoke very rapidly, in a light half-mocking tone that seemed to Joan to make the happenings of the afternoon unreal and remote. His eyes were very bright, almost defiant in their expression—holding a suggestion of recklessness, as though he were embarked upon something of which his inmost self refused to approve but which he was nevertheless determined to carry through.
“So you did ‘call to enquire,’ after all!”
As she spoke, Jean’s mouth curled up at the corners in an involuntary little smile of amused recollection.
“So I did call after all?” He looked puzzled—not unnaturally, since he had no clue to her thoughts. “What do you mean? I came”—he went on lightly—“because I wanted the rest of the day which you promised to share with me. The proceedings were cut short rather abruptly this afternoon.”
“But how did you get here?” she asked. “And—and why did you disappear so suddenly after we got back to the hotel this afternoon?”
“I got here by the aid of a pair of excellent skis and the light of the moon; the snow ceased some hours ago and the surface is hardening nicely. I disappeared because, as I told you, if you gave me this one day, it should bind you to nothing—not even to introducing me to your friends.”
“I should have had to present you as Monsieur l’Inconnu,” remarked Jean without thinking.
“Yes.” He met her glance with smiling eyes, but he did not volunteer his name.
He had made no comment, uttered no word beyond the bald affirmative, yet somehow Jean felt as though she had committed an indiscretion and he had snubbed her for it. The blood rushed into her cheeks, staining them scarlet.
“I beg your pardon,” she said stiffly.
Again that glint of ironical amusement in his eyes.
“For what, mademoiselle?”
She was conscious of a rising indignation at his attitude. She could not understand it; he seemed to have completely changed from the man of a few hours ago. Then he had proved himself so good a comrade, been so entirely delightful in his thought and care of her, whereas now he appeared bent on wilfully misunderstanding her, putting her in a false position just for his own amusement.
“You know perfectly well what I meant,” she answered, a tremor born of anger and wounded feeling in her voice. “You thought I was inquisitive—trying to find out your name——”
“Well”—humorously—“you were, weren’t you?” Then, as her lip quivered sensitively, “Ah! Forgive me for teasing you! And”—more earnestly—“forgive me for not telling you my name. It is better—much better—that you should not know. Remember, we can only have this one day together; we’re just ‘ships that pass.’” He paused, then added: “Mine’s only a battered old hulk—a derelict vessel—and derelicts are best forgotten.”
There was an undercurrent of deep sadness in his voice, the steadfast, submissive sadness of a man who has long ago substituted endurance for revolt.
“Remember, we can only have this one day together.” The quiet utterance of the words stung Jean into a realisation of their significance, and suddenly she was conscious that the knowledge that this unknown Englishman was going away—going out of her life as abruptly as he had come into it—filled her with a quite disproportionate sense of regret. She found herself unexpectedly up against the recognition of the fact that she would miss him—that she would like to see him again.
“Then—you want me to forget?” she asked rather wistfully.
Her eyes fell away from him as she spoke.
“Yes,” he returned gravely. “Just that. I want you to forget.”
“And—and you?” The words seemed dragged from her without her own volition.
“I? Oh”—he laughed a little—“I’m afraid I’m inconsistent. I’m going to ask you to give me something I can remember. That’ll even matters up, if you forget and I—remember.”
“What do you want me to give you?”
He made a sudden step towards her.
“I want you to dance with me—just once. Will you?”—intently.
He waited for her reply, his keen, compelling glance fixed on her face. Then, as though he read his answer there, he stepped to her side and held out his arm.
“Come,” he said.
Almost as if she were in a dream, Jean laid her hand lightly on his sleeve and he pulled aside the porti猫re for her to pass through. Then, putting his arm about her, he swung her out on to the smooth floor of the salle.
They danced almost in silence. Somehow the customary small-change of ballroom conversation would have seemed irrelevant and apart. This dance—the Englishman had implied as much—was in the nature of a farewell. It was the end of their stolen day.
The band was playing Valse Triste, that unearthly, infinitely sad vision of Sibelius’, and the music seemed to hold all the strange, breathless ecstacy, the regret and foreboding of approaching end of which this first, and last, dance was compact.
It was over at last. The three final chords of the Valse—inexorable Death knocking at the door—dropped into silence, and with the end of the dance uprose the eager hum of gay young voices, as the couples drifted out from the salle in search of the buffet or of secluded corners in which to “sit out” the interval, according as the spirit moved them.
Jean and her partner, making their way through the throng, encountered Madame de Varigny on the arm of a handsome Bedouin Arab. For the fraction of a second her eyes rested curiously on Jean’s partner, and a gleam of something that seemed like triumph flickered across her face. But it was gone in an instant, and, murmuring some commonplace to Jean, she passed on.
“Who was that?”
The Englishman rapped out the question harshly, and Jean was struck by an unaccustomed note in his voice. It held apprehension, distaste; she could not quite analyse the quality.
“The Cleopatra, do you mean?” she said. “That was my chaperon, the Comtesse de Varigny. Why do you ask?” He gave a short, relieved laugh.
“No particular reason,” he returned with some constraint “She reminded me—extraordinarily—of someone I used to know, that’s all. Even the timbre of her voice was similar. It startled me for a moment.”
He dismissed the matter with apparent indifference, and led Jean again into the same little alcove in which he had found her. They stood together silently in the dim, rose-hued twilight diffused by the shaded lamp above.
“Well,” he said at last, slowly, reluctantly. “So this is really the end of our stolen day.”
Jean’s hands, hanging loosely clasped in front of her, suddenly tightened their grip of each other. She felt herself struggling in the press of new and incomprehensible emotions. A voice within her was crying out rebelliously: “Why? Why must it be the end? Why not—other days?” Pride alone kept her silent. It was his choice, his decision, that they were not to meet again, and if he could so composedly define the limits of their acquaintance, she was far too sensitively proud to utter a word of protest. After all, he was only the comrade of a day. How—why should it matter to her whether he stayed or went?
“I always believe”—the Englishman was speaking again, his eyes bent on hers—“I always believe that, no matter how sad or tragic people’s lives may be, God invariably gives them one magic moment—so that they may believe in heaven.... I have had mine to-day.”
“Don’t you—believe in heaven?”
He laid his hands lightly on her shoulders.
“I do now. I believe... in a heaven that is out of my reach.”
His hands slipped upward from her shoulders, cupping her face, and for a moment he held her so, staring down at her with grave, inscrutable eyes. Then, stooping his head, he kissed her lips.
“Good-bye, little comrade,” he said unevenly. “Thank you for my magic moment.”
He turned away sharply. She heard his step, followed by the quick, jarring rattle of brass rings jerked violently along the curtain-pole, and a moment later he was gone. With a dull sense of finality she watched the heavy folds of the porti猫re swing sullenly back into their place.