THE dawn of a new day possesses a curious potency of readjustment. It is as though Dame Nature, like some autocratic old nurse, wakes us up and washes and dresses our minds afresh for us each morning, so that they come to the renewed consideration of the affairs of life freed from the influences and emotions which were clogging their pores when we went asleep. Not infrequently, in the course of this species of mental ablution, a good deal of the glamour which invested the doings of the previous day gets scrubbed off, and a new and not altogether pleasing aspect of affairs presents itself.
This was somewhat Jean’s experience when she woke on the morning following that of the fancy-dress ball. Looking back upon the events of the previous day, it seemed to her newly-tubbed, matutinal mind almost incredible that they should have occurred. It was like a dream—life itself tricked out in fancy dress.
Stripped of the glamour of romance and adventure with which the unknown Englishman had contrived to clothe it, the whole episode of their day together presented itself as disagreeably open to criticism, and the memory of that final scene in the alcove sent the blood flying into her cheeks. She asked herself in mute amazement how it was possible that such a thing should have happened to her,—to “our chaste Diana,” as her father used laughingly to call her in recognition of the instinctive little air of aloofness with which she had been wont to keep men at a distance.
Of course, the Englishman had taken her by surprise, but Jean was too honest, even in her dealings with herself, to shelter behind this excuse.
She knew that she had yielded to his kiss—and knew, too, that the bare memory of it sent her heart throbbing in an inexplicable tumult of emotion.
The stolen day, that day embarked upon so unconcernedly, in a gay spirit of adventure, had flamed up at its ending into something altogether different from the light-hearted companionship with which it had begun.
Then her conscience, recreated and vigorous from its morning toilet, presented another facet of the affair for her inspection. With officious detail it marshalled the whole series of events before her, dwelling particularly on the fact that, with hut very slight demur, she had consented to abrogate the accepted conventions of her class—conventions designed to safeguard people from just such consequences as had ensued—and winding up triumphantly with the corollary that although, like most men in similar circumstances, the Englishman had not scrupled to avail himself of the advantages the occasion offered, he had probably, none the less, thought rather cheaply of her for permitting him to do so.
This reflection stung her pride—exactly as Conscience had intended it should, without doubt. Last night there had seemed to her no question about the quality of that farewell in the little screened-off alcove. There had been nothing common or “cheap” about it. The gathering incidents of the whole day, the fight through the storm, the prelude of Valse Triste, all seemed to have led her by imperceptible degrees to a point where she and the Englishman could kiss at parting without shame. And now, with the morning, the delicate rainbow veiling woven by romance was rudely torn asunder, and the word “cheap” dinned in her ears like the clapper of a bell.
The appearance of her premier dejeuner came as a web come distraction from her thoughts, and with the consumption of caf茅 au lait and the crisp little rolls, hot from the oven, accompanying it, the whole matter began to assume a less heinous aspect. After all, argued Jean’s weak human nature, the unconventionality of the affair had been considerably tempered by the fact that the Englishman had practically saved her life during the course of the day. Alone, she would undoubtedly have foundered in the drifting snow; and when a man has rescued you from an early and unpleasantly chilly grave, it certainly sets the acquaintance between you, however short its duration, on a new and more intimate plane.
“Good-bye, little comrade; thank you for my magic moment.”
The words, and the manner of their utterance, came back to Jean, bringing with them a warm and comforting reassurance. The man who had thus spoken had not thought her cheap; he was too fine in his perceptions to have misunderstood like that. She felt suddenly certain of it. And the pendulum of self-respect swung back into its place once more.
Presently she caught herself wondering whether she would see him again before she left Montavan. True, he had told her he was going away the next day. But had he actually gone? Somewhere within her lurked a fugitive, half-formed hope that he might have altered his intention.
She tried to brush the thought aside, refusing to recognise it and determinedly maintaining that it mattered nothing to her whether he stayed or went. Nevertheless, throughout the whole day—in the morning when she made a pretence of enjoying the skating on the rink, and again in the afternoon when she walked through the pine-woods with the Varignys—she was subconsciously alert for any glimpse of the lean, supple figure which a single day had sufficed to mate so acutely familiar.
But by evening she was driven into accepting the fact that he had quitted the mountains, and of a sudden Montavan ceased to interest her; the magic that had disguised it yesterday was gone. It had become merely a dull little village where she was awaiting Lady Anne Brennan’s answer to her father’s letter, and she grew restlessly impatient for that answer to arrive.
It came at last, during the afternoon of the following day, in the form of a telegram: “Delighted to welcome you. Letter follows.”
The letter followed in due course, two days later, the tardiness of its arrival accounted for by the fact that the writer had been moving about from place to place, and that Peterson’s own letter, after pursuing her for days, had only just caught up with her.
“I cannot tell you,” wrote Lady Anne in her squarish, characteristic hand, “how delighted I shall be to have the daughter of Glyn and Jacqueline with me for a time. Although Glyn with a grown-up daughter sounds quite improbable; he never really grew up himself. So you must come and convince me that the unexpected has happened.”
Jean liked the warm-hearted, unconventional tone of the letter, and the knowledge that she would so soon be leaving Montavan filled her with a sense of relief.
During the four days which had elapsed since the Englishman’s departure her restlessness had grown on her. Montavan had become too vividly reminiscent of the hours which they had shared together for her peace of mind. She wanted to forget that stolen day—thrust it away into the background of her thoughts.
Unfortunately for the success of her efforts in this direction, the element of the unknown which surrounded the Englishman, quite apart from anything else, would have tended to keep him in the forefront of her mind. It was only now, surveying their acquaintance in retrospect, that she fully realised how complete had been his reticence. True his figure dominated her thoughts, but it was a figure devoid of any background of home, or friends, or profession. He might be a king or a crossing-sweeper, for all she knew to the contrary—only that neither the members of the one nor the other profession are usually addicted to sojourning at Swiss chalets and forming promiscuous friendships on the ice.
There were moments when she felt that she detested this man from nowhere who had contrived to break through her feminine guard of aloofness merely to gratify his whim to spend a day in her company.
But there were other moments when the memory of that stolen day glowed and pulsed like some rare gem against the even, grey monotony of all the days that had preceded it—and of those which must come after. She could not have analysed, even to herself, the emotions it had wakened in her. They were too complex, too fluctuating.
As she packed her trunks in preparation for an early start the following day, Jean recalled with satisfaction the genuine ring of welcome which had sounded through the letter that had come from England. Until she had received it, she had been the prey of an increasing diffidence with regard to suddenly billeting herself for an indefinite period upon even such an old friend of her father’s as Lady Anne—a timidity Peterson himself had certainly not shared when he penned his request.
“Give my little girl house-room, will you, Anne?” he had written with that candid and charming simplicity which had made and kept for him a host of friends through all the vicissitudes of his varied and irresponsible career. “I am off once more on a wander-year, and I can’t be tripped up by a petticoat—certainly not my own daughter’s—at every yard. This isn’t quite as cynical as it sounds. You’ll understand, I know. Frankly, a man whose life, to all intents and purposes, is ended, is not fit company for youth and beauty standing palpitating on the edge of the world. By the way, did I tell you that Jean is rather beautiful? I forget. Let her see England—that little corner where you live, down Devonshire way, always means England to my mind. And let her learn to love Englishwomen—if there are any more there like you.”
And, having accomplished this characteristic, if somewhat; sketchy provision for his daughter’s welfare, Peterson had gone cheerfully on his way, convinced that he had done all that was paternally encumbent on him.
Madame de Varigny was voluble in her regrets at the prospect of losing her “ch猫re Mademoiselle Peterson,” yet in spite of her protestations of dismay Jean was conscious of an impression that the Countess derived some kind of satisfaction from the imminence of her departure.
She could not reconcile the contradiction, and it worried her a little. She believed—quite justly—that Madame de Varigny had conceived a real affection for her, and, as far as she herself was concerned, she had considerably revised her first impressions of the other, finding more to like in her than she had anticipated, noticeably a genuine warmth and fervour of nature, and a certain kind-hearted capacity for interesting herself in other people.
And, liking her so much better than she had at first conceived possible, Jean resented the sudden recurrence of her original distrust produced by the suggestion of insincerity which she thought she detected in the Countess’s expressions of regret.
On the face of it the thing seemed absurd. She could imagine no conceivable reason why her departure should give Madame de Varigny any particular cause for complacency, which only made the more perplexing her impression that this was the actual feeling underlying the latter’s cordial interest in her projected visit to England.
On the morning of her departure, Jean’s mind was too preoccupied with the small details attendant upon starting off on a journey dwell upon the matter. But, as she shook bands with Madame de Varigny for the last time, the recollection surged over her afresh, and she was strongly conscious that beneath the other woman’s pleasant, “Adieu, mademoiselle! Bon voyage!” something stirred that was less pleasant—even inimical—just as some slimy and repulsive form of life may stir amid the ooze at the bottom of a sunlit stream.