Jane--Our Stranger: A Novel

by Mary Borden

X

There is little more to tell you. You know about Jinny’s subsequent marriage and how after all Philibert, if he did not secure Prince Damas, his heart’s desire, is still well enough satisfied with the young Duke, his son-in-law. Philibert wanted the Duke, so I let him have him. Jinny wanted the house in Paris so I gave it to her. The three live there together, quite harmoniously I am told. And I? I do not pretend that Jinny’s husband is a cad. He is no doubt, as nice as most young men about town. I merely regret that he does not love her nor she him. Doubtless they will get on very well once that fact is established between them.

You see Jinny’s marriage was my supreme failure. I have lost her, I can never do anything more for her. She will never turn to me in joy—or in trouble.

She hates me. It was because she came to hate me that I gave way. She believed that I killed Bianca. I didn’t, but then I might have, I have no way of knowing whether or not I would have killed her.

I am trying to explain to you why I have come back to St. Mary’s Plains. You remember Patience Forbes’ will. It read—“To my beloved niece Jane Carpenter, now called the Marquise de Joigny, I leave the Grey House and all that is in it, because some day, she may want some place to go.” Well, she was right—I came back because I had no other place to go to. I came back but I came too late. The people who lived here and who loved me are all dead and I cannot, somehow, communicate with them as I had hoped to. I do not know what Patience Forbes would say of my life, and I shall never know. Her ghost does not comfort me because I failed her too. I let her die, here alone.

They found her, you know on the floor by her bed, in her dressing gown, the candle on the table burned down to its socket; she must have been saying her prayers. Her Bible was open on the patchwork quilt; her spectacles were beside it and three of my letters, some weeks old, also, strangely enough, a facsimile (reduced) of the Declaration of Independence, with a pencil note “To send to Jane.” You know how it reads: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.... We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness—”

The last lines I have quoted were underlined. What did she mean by them? What did she want them to mean for me, lying there, dying, going out on the great journey alone from the empty Grey House—dead, alone in the house through that long night with the Bible and the Declaration of Independence beside her?

I do not know what she meant—I only know that I left her alone to die.

And I do not know whether I have come back defeated or victorious. In the conduct of life I was defeated. Whenever I tried to do right, I did wrong. To the people I loved I was a curse. I had a few friends. You remain, and Clémentine and Ludovic. But I must lose you too, now. I feel it my destiny to be alone. I did not understand how to live among men. But there are hours when sitting here in this shabby room, I am conscious of a feeling of high stark bitter triumph. At such times I think of my father’s grave over there beyond the horizon, on a wide prairie under a high sky. A stone. That stone and I are linked together. I loved Philibert once, I love Jinny. I am alone now, but I shall hold out. I shall not give in. My life has been wasted, but I shan’t end it. I shall see it through. It stretches behind me, a confused series of blunders. I try to understand. It is finished, but I go on living. There is nothing left for me to do but wait. Maybe if I wait long enough I shall understand what it is all for.

I love France, but I had to come back here, and I know that I will stay. It is right for me to be here. It is fitting and just. In some way that I cannot explain the equation of my life is satisfied by my coming, and the problem—I see it as clear, precise and cold as a problem in algebra—is solved.

Here, in St. Mary’s Plains there is nothing for me. The big bustling awkward town is full of strangers who have no time to interest themselves in a derelict woman who has drifted back to them from “foreign parts.” My return seems to those who remember me to be a confession of failure. They are not interested in failure, so they leave me alone. It is as well. I did not come back to talk but to think. I did not come back to begin something new, but to understand something old and finished. I do not need these bright brave ignorant young people. To do what I am doing it is necessary to be alone.

But to go back to my story. Jinny had a shivering fit that night, after the scene in your mother’s flat. Her maid called me. She lay on her back in bed her teeth chattering, her knees drawn up and knocking together. We put hot water bottles to her feet and her sides. It was a warm night late in June, but she kept whispering that she was cold. The doctor when he came said that it was nerves. He prescribed bromide and perfect quiet for some time, afterwards a change. He told me that she had a hypersensitive nervous organism, and should be protected always as much as possible from excitement or emotional strain.

She slept quietly towards morning. Her hair clung to her forehead in little damp curls, soft pale golden hair like a child’s. Her closed eyelids were swollen above the long brown eyelashes. She lay on her side with both hands together under her cheek, her lovely young body at rest. Beautiful Jinny.

I sat watching her. The sound of her father’s voice and of mine, saying hideous things rang in my ears.

Beyond the open window, the darkness was turning to light. All about were still shuttered houses filled with sleeping people, a million sleeping men and women. Their dreams and their weariness, and their disappointments seemed to be rising like a mist above the hot close houses.

I had promised Patience Forbes to love Jinny enough—enough for what? Enough—for this—to save her this.

I had failed, and I felt old, so very old, and at the same time my heart was full of childish longings and weakness. If only some one would come and comfort me. If only some one would take my responsibilities from me. I wanted help and relief. I thought of you. I knew that you, Blaise, would have helped me, but Philibert had shut the door in your face that evening and had snarled at me horrible things, saying he would never have you in the house again. He had accused you and me of a criminal affection for each other. I remembered his livid face and twitching lips. A feeling of sickness pervaded my body and soul. Jinny, asleep, was fragrant as a flower. I was contaminated, unclean.

Suddenly she was there,—Patience Forbes, my Aunt Patience, standing on the other side of Jinny’s bed. She had on her black mackintosh and her bonnet with the strings tied in a knot under her chin. But she was not quite as I had last seen her. The wisps of hair that straggled down under her bonnet were white. There was something terrible and grand about her. She was old, very old. Her face was brown and withered. She looked thin, emaciated, her eyes sunken. She looked starved. Her clothes were very shabby, the clothes of a poor woman. She was grand and terrible. Her sunken eyes shone with a splendour I had never seen before. She was looking down at Jinny—I saw her smile an ineffable smile of unutterable beauty, then I waited breathlessly, with such longing, with an anguish of longing. Surely in a moment she would turn to me, gather me into her arms—now—now she was turning—

“Mummy—what time is it?” Jinny was sitting up in her bed rubbing her eyes, yawning. Sunlight shone through the parted curtains. I looked at my watch.

“Seven o’clock, darling.”

“I would like some coffee. Is any one about? I’m so hungry. Oh dear—” She sank back onto her pillow. “I remember now, I remember—why did I wake up?”

The next day, I received a cable announcing my Aunt Patience’s death. Jinny was lying on her “chaise longue” eating chocolates. She said—“Poor thing, but she was very old, wasn’t she?”

“Yes, seventy-five years old.”

“Older than grandmère!”

“Yes, several years older—” Jinny was not interested. There was no one in Paris who had ever seen Patience Forbes.

Jinny seemed quite well again; only a little languid and silent. She spent most of the day on her chaise longue, reading, having her nails manicured, having her hair brushed, eating sweets, dozing; she was quite affectionate.

One evening she said, “I think, Mummy, that I would like to go into a convent.” She had on, I remember, a white satin négligé trimmed with white fox, and emerald green brocade slippers. I must have smiled.

“Don’t smile, Mummy. I’m not joking, I have thought it all out. ‘Il faut se connaître.’ I am weak, I have a weak character. I liked Sam Chilbrook, but I didn’t dare say so. I disliked the Prince very much, I didn’t dare say so. If you and Papa could agree, I would be content to do what you decided for me—but you can’t agree. No, no, don’t be tragic. Don’t be so sorry. Let us be reasonable. If you never agree on a husband for me, I must either choose one for myself and run off with him and be married, or become an old maid. Neither seems a very nice idea, does it—but to be a nun—that is beautiful. You remember when I was little and tried to lead the saintly life—you thought it ridiculous. You did not understand. There is something in me that you do not take seriously because I am lazy and like pretty things and marrons glacés. But it is there all the same. If you were a true Catholic I could explain. To be a nun is beautiful—beautiful, and I would be safe there, and out of the way. For you and Papa there would be no more problem, you would not have to live together any more. And the sisters love me; they would be glad to receive me. They are so gentle, so sweet—you have no idea, and quite happy you know. Sometimes they laugh and make little jokes, like children. It is much happier in the convent than here.”

It was I that broke down then, and cried. I cried miserably, ugly tears, sobbing against Jinny’s languid knees. I, a middle-aged woman, disfigured, with a swollen face, a great, strong, tired, drab creature, in whose tough body life had gone stale, was humbled before my beautiful child.

I asked her forgiveness. Brokenly I begged her to be kind. And I apologized to her. Kneeling beside her I tried to explain my inability to believe in any creed, any dogma of the Church, I spoke of truth, I proclaimed as if before a high spiritual judge, my honest search for truth. Pitiful? Yes—but do you not believe that it is often so—mothers kneeling to their children, avowing their mistakes, their failures, begging for love?

I was desperate to destroy the thing that separated us—I was so lonely so alone—it seemed to me that this moment held my one chance, my one hope of drawing my child close to me. I looked up at her. Cool, lovely youth holding aloof, if only she would come, if only she would respond and take me in her slim fresh innocent arms. Ah, the relief it would be—the comfort!

“Jinny—Jinny—love me—I need your love, I am your mother. I am growing old. There is no one left for me to turn to—no one to advise me, no one to care for me, except you. Do you realize what I mean? My life is finished, it goes on only in you, only for you. Jinny, Jinny, don’t you understand, I need you.”

She stroked my hair lightly with delicate fingers, but looking up, I saw that her face was contracted in a nervous spasm—of distaste. A moment longer I waited staring up at her face with a longing that must have communicated itself to her, a longing so intense that I felt it going out of me in waves but she made no sign.

“I do love you, Mummy—you know I do,” she said in a dull little voice.

I stumbled to my feet and left the room.

Philibert had gone away, so when the doctor said a few days later that Jinny should go to Biarritz it was I who took her, though I knew she would rather have gone with some one else. I should have sent her with a companion. Had I left her alone then things might have been mended, but I was too jealous, and though I knew the truth in my heart I couldn’t bear to admit that my child didn’t like being with me. I kept on thinking of ways to win back her love, silly feeble ways. I was like a despairing and foolish lover who cannot bring himself to leave the object of his passion though he knows that everything he does exasperates her. I had no pride. I gave her presents. I did errands for her that the servants should have done. With a great lump of burning pain in my heart I went on smiling and busy, avoiding her eyes and fussing about her, and she was exquisitely patient and polite.

I do not know to this day whether Bianca followed us to Biarritz knowingly and with intent, or not. Clémentine told me afterwards that she had seen Bianca with Philibert at Fontainebleau at the Hôtel de France on the Sunday, the day he left Jinny and me, after our scene, but whether she learned from Philibert during the week they spent together of Jinny’s whereabouts and tracked her down, I cannot tell. Probably not. Yet it may be.... It is all so strange that one can believe anything. Philibert and Bianca together—after all those years—that in itself is extraordinary. What sort of relationship could have existed between them at the end? I don’t know. I do not attempt to understand. They were people beyond my comprehension, but some thing that they possessed in common, some bond, some feeling profound and complex, had evidently survived.

It is useless dwelling upon their problem. Revolting? Evil? I suppose so, and yet their infernal passion has somehow imposed upon me a dread respect. Philibert after Bianca’s death crumpled up as if by magic into a silly little old man. I saw it happen to him, there in that hotel where he came rushing on receipt of the news. He stood in my room shaking and disintegrating visibly before my eyes, profoundly unpleasant, pitiful. It was as if Bianca had held in her hand the vital stuff of his life, and as if with her death he was emptied of all energy and power.

All this happened you see at Biarritz where Bianca came and found us.

I am almost sure that I did not think of killing Bianca, even at the very end, when I found myself in her room, standing over her. And yet, if she hadn’t taken that overdose of morphine herself, that very night, what would have happened I don’t know.

It is very curious, her dying like that, whether by accident or intent, no one will ever know, on just that night, and in just that place, involving me in Jinny’s eyes, for ever. God knows there were plenty of other places on the earth where she might more logically have chosen to breathe her last. Why not in Venice in that great dark vaulted palace of hers with the black water lapping under her balcony? Or in her castle in Provence, where she lived with her demons, or in Paris in the red lacquer den with its golden cushions? Any one of those settings would have been more in keeping—but in the Plage Hôtel—above the sea, no, there was no poetic justice in her choosing that spot. And if it was an accident, then the freakish spirit who planned it did it with his diabolical eye on Jinny and me.

We had been a week in Biarritz. Jinny had found some young people with whom she played tennis in the afternoon. Occasionally I left her for a game of golf. One day coming back I saw her sitting on the terrace with a woman whose eccentric elegance was familiar, but whom I did not at first recognize. I saw her back, long and narrow, a fur wrap slipping from the shoulders, an attenuated arm hanging across the back of her chair. Jinny, all in white, her hair a golden halo in the light of the sun that was setting behind her, was facing her. Their faces were close together. The older woman was leaning forward. She had Jinny’s hand in both of hers. There was about this pose something intimate and intense. Jinny started up at the sight of me, and the woman turned her small dark head round and gave me a little nod. It was Bianca.

She was very much changed. I remember every detail of her appearance, her red turban, her soiled white gown, her fur coat that looked somehow rather shabby. She was carelessly dressed, she had an air both tawdry and neglected. Actually she didn’t look clean. Her face was startling. The makeup was badly done. Once it had been a smooth even white, now the eyelids were yellow and on the thin cheek-bones were spots of red. The finger nails of the beautiful hand that hung limp over the back of her chair were enamelled pink but dirty. She had obviously been going down hill at a rapid pace, and for one instant this realization in the midst of my panic at finding her with Jinny, gave me pleasure. For Bianca to turn into an untidy hag; that was something to make me wickedly exultant.

She looked at me calmly out of her monstrous eyes. “It is centuries since we met,” she said. I did not reply. I was trembling and I saw that she saw my trembling. Her discoloured eyelids lifted, and sent out their old fiery blue light. Her eyes grew more enormous. She stared into mine and her thin pointed lips curved into a smile. “Not since Deauville, after the death of poor Fan Ivanoff—four, five, six years—is it not? Before the war. I have been so little in Paris.” Her eyelids fluttered, her eyes deadened, a curious lassitude spread over her suddenly. She drooped in her chair, she was like a bruised soiled faded plant, almost to me she seemed to exhale the odour of decay. “I have travelled—I have wandered—Spain—Portugal—America—Buenos Aires—I am so restless, I go anywhere—” her voice trailed off. She gave herself a little jerk. Her eyes slid to Jinny, dwelt upon her. “Your daughter and I have been talking. ‘Quel amour d’enfant’—so exaltée, so sensitive.”

Jinny, it seemed to me, was rather pale. She stood nervously clasping her hands, her eyes moving from one of us to the other.

“The Princess brought me a message from Papa,” she said in a shrill defiant note.

“Ah yes, I saw him just the other day—where was it? I cannot remember, I have no memory, but he told me you were here.”

The long unclean hand again went out to Jinny. It caressed her arm. I shivered. “Don’t,” I muttered in spite of myself.

Bianca jerked, a nervous twitch, and gave a little laugh.

“Ah, you see, my child, your mother doesn’t like—” She broke off. Jinny’s face was crimson now. “Never mind—she is perhaps right. I will leave you now. I go to the Casino. It is all so boring. Perhaps later—”

She did not look back at us as she trailed away. I thought to see toads jumping up from the imprint of her feet.

Upstairs, I said as quietly as I could:

“How is it that you know the Princess?”

“Papa introduced me to her long ago—when I was quite a little girl.”

“You have seen her since?”

“Yes.”

“Often?”

“Several times.”

“You admire her?”

“Yes—she is strange. I like strange things.”

“I do not like her at all,” I said curtly.

Jinny sat on the edge of a table, poking into a box of chocolates.

“Why don’t you like her, Mummy?”

“Because she is a bad woman.”

“Oh no, surely you are wrong. She is Papa’s oldest friend.” She popped a sweet into her mouth.

“Who told you that?”

“She did herself—and besides, I know—I have known a long time. She was his first romance, his—what do you call it,—his calf love.”

I burst into harsh laughter. My laugh sounded to me ugly and terrible. Jinny’s face went pale; I crossed to the window.

“What else did she tell you?” I asked with my back to her.

“She has told me about life in convents, she is very devout. She has often been in convents to ‘faire une retraite.’ She says it is very soothing there, but that I should not be in a hurry about making a decision.”

“Ah!”

“Yes—she seems to understand me—she conveys much sympathy. She has a magnetism—it draws one.”

“I know.”

“What is the matter, Mummy? You are angry. I feel sorry for the Princess, she is so alone in the world, and she says she loves me, that she is wonderfully attracted to me, that I would do her good. She called herself laughing you know, but with a sadness—she called herself ‘une damnée.’”

I could contain myself no longer. “Une damnée—well, that’s just what she is—” I wheeled about. I felt my voice rising in spite of me. “I forbid you ever to speak to her again. Do you understand? You must never speak to her again.” My child’s face hardened. The eyes widened, the nostrils dilated. She was very pale. Something sinister seemed to rise between us. She receded from me.

“Don’t—don’t!” she whispered backing away.

“Don’t—don’t what?” I cried back. “You don’t want me to stand between you and this horrible woman who has ruined my life—ruined your father—ruined us all—and who wants now to ruin you.”

“No, no, no—don’t say such things.” She was screaming too now. “It is wicked of you to say such things. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe you. I won’t believe it. I love Papa, I love Papa better than you, better than you. You have done it. You have ruined his life. I know it, I have seen it. I have seen you look at him with hatred. How do you think it feels to see one’s parents hating each other? Ruined? Yes, you have ruined my life. You—you—you ought never to have brought me into the world. I wish I were dead—I wish I were dead—” She rushed into her room and banged the door.

I told myself looking out over that horrible sea, immense, restless and cold, that nothing irretrievable had happened, that Jinny would come back to me, that she would forgive, that things would be the same. But I had no faith, and what did that mean, if things were the same. Was that sufficient as a basis for the future? What if we went on and on having scenes—screaming at each other. I was ashamed, and shaken, and I was afraid. Bianca had come back—Bianca was there, down the corridor—close to us, close to Jinny. “Une damnée”? she called herself.

I must take Jinny away in the morning, but what good would that do in the end? Bianca would follow us sooner or later to Paris. Jinny would be sure to see her. I had a ridiculous picture of Bianca pursuing us from place to place, lying in wait for Jinny—laying infernal schemes. I remembered what I had recently heard of her strange habits, her vicious tastes, of the effect she had had on certain women. I saw her, a restless, haunted damned soul, the slave of infernal passions, a prowl in the world, hunting for victims, growing more implacable as she grew old.

I dressed for dinner. Jinny sent word she would dine in bed. On the way to the lift, I saw Bianca go into her room. She looked back at me over her shoulder, half smiling but with a curious look in her eyes. Was it fear? Was it regret? I thought for a long time of that look, I thought of it all evening sitting in my high window, listening to the interminable boom of the waves. Her presence, near, under the same roof was intolerable, like a dreadful smell, or an excruciating nagging sound. I was feeling again, even now, through my terror for Jinny, and in spite of my sickened sense of the woman’s decay, the impact of her personality. She existed there beyond my door, special, vivid, intense, and I began to feel her decrepitude as a reproach, her ruin as a responsibility. Moment by moment I felt her, exerting on me a horrible pressure. There had been in her dreary face, an appeal, a claim, a despair that laid on me a weight. In her eyes, there had been, memory. It was that that haunted me. Somehow, actually, her eyes had reflected the past and had dragged my mind back, afar back to the days when we had been friends. I remembered everything. In their deep burning blue light that was like a lamp lighted inside a corpse, I saw her youth and my youth glowing, and I remembered how we had been together, two strong young things, curiously linked, responding to each other, with a sympathy that should have been a good thing to us. She had said once, “Jane, I love you—you are the only friend I have ever had.” And I remembered the day she had talked to me of herself in that old castle in Provence, above the white road and dusty vineyard.

I felt sick and was aware of an intolerable physical pain in my side. Bianca, who had been so beautiful, and whom I had loved divinely once, was a rotten rag now, soiled, dingy, bad smelling—and I hated her. We hated each other. Our youth was gone—and all its beauty. There was nothing under the sun but ugliness and hatred and the principle of life was decay.

I walked the room. Jinny was asleep—lovely youth—fresh and sweet. What would become of her? Bianca and I were two old women, done for.

To protect Jinny from her, Jinny who hated me, that was all I could do now. I must go to Bianca. Either she would respond to me and give in to me because of the memory that had stared out of her face, or I would make her; I would force her to do what I wanted as I had done before, but this was to be the last time—this must be the end.

I looked in at Jinny. She seemed to be asleep. Out in the corridor some one had turned the light low. The long red carpet of the corridor led straight to Bianca’s room. I went out quickly closing the door after me. It took an instant to reach the door of Bianca’s sitting room. I knocked. There was no answer. I opened it and went in. To the right another door was open, a light shone through. Bianca was in bed. I could see her. Her eyes were closed. The lamp beside her bed shone on her face, a peculiar odour pervaded the room. “I will wake her and have it out with her,” I thought to myself.

I went into the bedroom. A number of bottles, a small aluminum saucepan and a hypodermic syringe were on the night table beside her. She was breathing heavily and noisily, drawing quick, regular, snoring breaths. It was obvious that she was drugged; the noise of her breathing was very ugly. Her face was sharp and pinched and evil. An extraordinary disorder prevailed in the room. I remember now being astonished by it. Untidy heaps of underwear about, not very clean, dragged lacey things on the floor, a high-heeled slipper on the centre table, a litter on the toilet table that reminded one of an actress’s dressing room, a tray with a champagne bottle and a plate of oyster shells on the end of the chaise longue. And pervading every thing that horrid odour of drugs and the sound of snoring.

I stood for a moment looking down at the woman in the bed. The sight of her filled me with loathing. How unclean she was! She was like a corpse. Already she was half dead. She was something no longer human, scarcely alive. Her sleep had the quality of a disease, her breath was poisonous.

Suddenly I felt some one beside me. It was Jinny, wrapped in her dressing gown. White as a sheet, she stood staring down at that dreadful face. “I heard you open the door,” she whispered, “I followed you. What is it? What is the matter?”

“Nothing,” I murmured. “She is drugged, that is all.” I pointed to the bottle of ether, the syringe in its little box. “Come,” I repeated nervously, “come away.” It was horrible to have Jinny in that room.

“But, Mummy, can’t we do something, oughtn’t we to do something?”

“No—come—it’s nothing—I mean she’s used to it.” I dragged Jinny away.

The next morning, the people in the hotel were informed that the Princess was dead. She had died in the night of an overdose of morphine.

It was Marie, Jinny’s maid, who burst in on her with the news, while she was having her café au lait in bed. I heard Jinny give a shriek and ran in to her—she had fainted.

Isn’t it strange the way it all happened? One would think that God had a hand in it, but if there is a God, why should He want my child to believe that I had committed a murder? It is that that I do not understand.

Jane’s narrative was ended with those words. She had talked that last night of my visit to her in St. Mary’s Plains, until nearly morning. Her forehead grew damp as she talked and her lips dry and her words carried along the sustained note of her voice like little frightened sounds.

And during all those hours that she talked, I remember hearing no other sound. I heard no voice in the street, nor the sound of trams going by nor of dogs barking. In our concentration we were as cut off from contact with the living world as if the whole city of St. Mary’s Plains had been turned to stone.

That was just a year ago today. I suppose she is still there in that meagre faded room, I can see her there, sitting in the high wooden chair that belonged once upon a time to Patience Forbes. The wind is hurrying across the immense prairies of her awful wide empty country. It rattles the windows of that frail wooden house. She is alone there.

Last night we talked of Jane in Ludovic’s rooms. Clémentine was there and Felix, we had been to Cocteau’s ballet. Jane would have enjoyed it, they said; she would have understood the joke, and perceived the beauty.

Clémentine moved restlessly about. “What is she doing now, I wonder? Surely she is doing something—”

“She is thinking things out.”

“Good God!” groaned Felix. “Our Jane—our great haughty creature—she wasn’t meant to think. She was meant to be looked at—she ought never to have had an idea in her head. What a waste—what a wicked waste.”

Clémentine on a footstool by the fire nursed her knees. “She did really think we were immoral. We took life as a joke. She couldn’t understand. She believed in the Bible—all the part about being wicked. She didn’t know it, but her creed was the ten commandments. She is a victim of the ten commandments.”

Ludovic shook his head. “She was right,” he said, “all her life she wanted to do right—now she has done it. She has gone back to her people. She should never have come here. There was nothing for her here, but ourselves.”

“And were we nothing?” cried Clémentine, “didn’t we love her well? Didn’t we understand?”

“No, we didn’t understand. And we didn’t count. We didn’t count for her.”

Ah, Jane, Jane, it was true. We didn’t count. In all your story, you scarcely alluded to us. We were just your friends who loved you, and we didn’t count. If only you could know what we know about yourself; if only you knew how we cared for you beyond all the differences of conduct; if only you could have realized that life is not a thing to fear, that it is a little trivial thing, or again, just a thing like food, an element like air, to be eaten, or breathed or enjoyed. But you thought it a mysterious gift, a terrible responsibility, a high and serious obligation, with a claim on your soul. You thought it a thing you could sin against. You confounded life with God.

This little street is so quiet tonight, so quiet and small. It shuts me in. It shuts me comfortably in, but beyond it there is a great distance—a great land—a great sea—a high and terrible sky.

THE END