Jane--Our Stranger: A Novel

Transcriber’s Note: A Table of Contents has been added. Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
JANE— OUR STRANGER
A NOVEL
MARY BORDEN
AUTHOR OF “THE ROMANTIC WOMAN”
LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD.
First published, 1923 New Impressions January, February, March, April, August, 1924
Printed in Great Britain by Woods & Sons, Ltd., London, N.1.


It is a pity we do not die when our lives are finished. Jane may live another twenty years—a long time to wait, alone between two worlds. Jane is forty-three, I am five years older, Philibert is fifty-six, my mother nearly eighty, we are all alive, and strangely enough Maman is the only one whose life is not yet ended. Hers will not end till the moment of her death. She has been a wise artist. She is still embroidering delicately the pattern of her days; she still holds the many threads in her fingers. Quietly, exquisitely she will put in the last stitches. They will be the most beautiful of all; they will be her signature, the signature of a lady. Then she will close her eyes and commend her soul to God and the perfect work of her worldly wisdom will be finished.
As for me, I see no reason why I should not live on indefinitely just as I have done, and on the whole I am more comfortable here than in Purgatory, a place that I imagine to be like the suburbs of London. I see myself there, tapping with my crutch, along endless tramway lines between interminable rows of dingy perky villas. This little street in the Faubourg Saint Germain is much nicer. It is old and proud and secretive; a good street for a cripple to live in; it shelters and protects him. Once he has entered it he has no distance to go to get home. It is usually deserted and the great pale houses show discreet shuttered windows with no one behind the shutters to stare at him. I am Philibert’s crippled brother. Something went wrong with me before I was born. Nothing else of importance has ever happened to me, except Jane’s marrying my brother.