It was a grey November afternoon two days later. A faint, filmy suggestion of fog hung about the streets, just enough to remind the Londoner of November possibilities, but in the western sky hung a golden sun, and underfoot there was the blessing of dry pavements.
Penelope stood at one of the windows of the flat in Edenhall Mansions, and looked down at the busy thoroughfare below. Hither and thither men and women hurried about their business; there seemed few indeed nowadays of the leisured loiterers through life. A tube strike had only recently been brought to a conclusion, and Londoners of all classes were endeavouring to make good the time lost during those days of enforced stagnation. Unfortunately, time that is lost can never be recovered. Even Eternity itself can't give us back the hours which have been flung away.
Rather bitterly Penelope reflected that, in spite of all our vaunted civilisation and education, men still resorted, as did their ancestors of old, to brute force in order to obtain their wishes. For, after all, a strike, however much you may gloss over the fact, is neither more nor less than a modern substitute for the old-time revolt of men armed with pikes and staves. That is to say, in either instance you insist on what you want by a process of making other people thoroughly uncomfortable till you get your way—unless they happen to be stronger than you! And incidentally a good many innocent folk who have nothing to do with the matter get badly hurt in the fray.
All the miseries which inevitably beset the steadfast worker when a strike occurs had fallen to Penelope's lot. She had scrambled hopelessly for a seat on a motor-'bus, or, driven by extremity into a fit of wild extravagance, had vainly hailed a taxi. Sometimes she had been compelled to tramp the whole way home, through drenching rain, from some house at which she had been giving a lesson, in each case enduring the very kind of physical stress which plays such havoc with a singer's only capital—her voice. She wondered if the strikers ever realised the extra strain they inflicted on people so much less able to contend with the hardships of a worker's life than they themselves.
The whirr and snort of a taxi broke the thread of her thoughts. With a grinding of brakes the cab came to a standstill at the entrance to the block of flats, and after a few minutes Emily, the unhurried maid-of-all-work, whom Nan's sense of fitness had re-christened "our Adagio," jerked the door open, announcing briefly:
"A lidy."
Penelope turned quickly, and a look of pleasure flashed into her face.
"Kitty! Back in town at last! Oh, it's good to see you again!"
She kissed the new-comer warmly and began to help off her enveloping furs. When these—coat, stole, and a muff of gigantic proportions—were at last shed, Mrs. Barry Seymour revealed herself as a small, plump, fashionable little person with auburn hair—the very newest shade—brown eyes that owed their shadowed lids to kohl, a glorious skin (which she had had the sense to leave to nature), and, a chic little face at once so kind and humorous and entirely delightful, that all censure was disarmed.
Her dress was Paquin, her jewellery extravagant, but her heart was as big as her banking account, and there was not a member of her household, from her adoring husband down to the kitchen-maid who evicted the grubs from the cabbages, who did not more or less worship the ground she walked on. Even her most intimate women friends kept their claws sheathed—and that, despite the undeniable becomingness of the dyed hair.
"We only got back to town last night," she said, returning Penelope's salute with fervour. "So I flew round this morning to see how you two were getting on. I can't think how you've managed without the advantage of my counsels for three whole months!"
"I don't think we have managed too well," admitted Penelope drily.
"There! What did I say?"—with manifest delight. "I told Barry, when he would go up to Scotland just for the pleasure of killing small birds, that I was sure something would happen in my absence. What is it? Nothing very serious, of course. By the way, where's Nan this morning?"
"Playing at a concert in Exeter. At least, the concert took place last night. I'm expecting her back this afternoon."
"Well, that's good news, not bad. How did you induce her to do it?She's been slacking abominably lately."
Penelope nodded sombrely.
"I know. I've been pitching into her for it. The Peace has upset her."
"She's like every other girl. She can't settle down after four years of perpetual thrills and excitement. But if she'd had a husband fighting"—Kitty's gay little face softened incredibly—"she'd be thanking God on her knees that the war is over—however beastly," she added characteristically, "the peace may be."
"She worked splendidly during the war," interposed Penelope, her sense of justice impelling the remark.
"Yes"—quickly. "But she's done precious little work of any kind since.What's she been doing lately? Has she written anything new?"
Penelope laughed grimly.
"Oh, a song or two. And she's composed one gruesome thing which makes your blood run cold. It's really for orchestra, and I believe it's meant to represent the murder of a soul. . . . It does!"
"She's rather inclined to err on the side of tragedy," observed Kitty.
"Especially just now," added Penelope pointedly.
Kitty glanced sharply across at her.
"What do you mean? Is anything wrong with Nan?"
"Yes, there's something very wrong. I'm worried about her."
"Well, what is it?"—impatiently.
"It's all the fault of that wretched artist man we met at your house."
"Do you mean Maryon Rooke?"
"Yes"—briefly. "He's rather smashed Nan up."
"He?Nan?" Kitty's voice rose in a crescendo of incredulity. "But he was crazy about her! Has been, all through the war. Why, I thought there was practically an understanding between them!"
"Yes. So did most people," replied Penelope shortly.
"For goodness' sake be more explicit, Penny! Surely she hasn't turned him down?"
"He hasn't given her the chance."
"You mean—youcan'tmean that he's chucked her?"
"That's practically what it amounts to. And I don't understand it. Nan is so essentially attractive from a man's point of view."
"How do you know?" queried Kitty whimsically. "You're only a woman."
"Why, because I've used my eyes, my dear! . . . But in this case it seems we were all mistaken. If ever a man deliberately set himself to make a woman care, Maryon Rooke was the man. And when he'd succeeded—he went away."
Kitty produced a small gold cigarette case from the depths of an elaborate bead bag and extracted a cigarette. She lit it and began smoking reflectively.
"And I suppose all this, coming on top of the staleness of things in general after the war, has flattened her out?"
"It's given her a bad knock."
"Did she tell you anything about it?"
"A little. He came here to say good-bye to her before going to France—"
"I know," interpolated Kitty. "He's going there to paint PrincessSomebody-or-other while she's staying in Paris."
"Well, I came in when he'd left and found Nan sitting like a stone statue, gazing blankly in front of her. She wouldn't say much, but bit by bit I dragged it out of her. Since then she has never referred to the matter again. She is quite gay at times in a sort of artificial way, but she doesn't do any work, though she spends odd moments fooling about at the piano. She goes out morning, noon, and night, and comes back dead-beat, apparently not having enjoyed herself at all. Can you imagine Nan like that?"
"Not very easily."
"I believe he's taken the savour out of things for her," said Penelope, adding slowly, in a voice that was quite unlike her usual practical tones: "Brushed the bloom off the world for her."
"Poor old Nan! She must be hard hit. . . . She's never been hurt badly before."
"Never—before she met that man. I can't forgive him, Kitty. I'm horribly afraid what sort of effect this miserable affair is going to have on a girl of Nan's queer temperament."
Kitty turned the matter over in her mind in silence. Then with a small, sage nod of her red head, she advanced a suggestion.
"Bring her over to dinner to-morrow—no, not to-morrow, I'm booked. Say Thursday, and I'll have a nice man to meet her. She needs someone to play around with. There's nothing like another man to knock the first one out of a woman's head. It's cure by homeopathy."
Penelope smiled dubiously.
"It's a bit of bad luck on the second man, isn't it—if he's nice? You know, Nan is rather fatal to the peace of the male mind."
"Oh, the man I'm thinking of has himself well in hand. He's a novelist—and finds safety in numbers. His mother was French."
"And Nan's great-grandmother. Kitty, is it wise?"
"Extreme measures are sometimes necessary. He and she will hit it off together at once, I know."
As Kitty finished speaking there came a trill at the front-door bell, followed a minute later by a masculine knock on the door.
"Come in," cried Penelope.
The door opened to admit a tall, fair man who somehow reminded one of a big, genial Newfoundland.
"I've called for my wife," he said, shaking hands with. Penelope, and smiling down at her with a pair of lazily humorous blue eyes. "Can I have her?"
"In a minute, Barry"—Kitty nodded at him cheerfully. "We're just settling plans about Nan."
"Nan? I should have imagined that young woman was very capable of making her own plans," returned Barry Seymour, letting his long length down into a chair. "In fact, I was under the impression she'd already made 'em," he added with a grin.
"No, they're unsettled at present," returned Kitty. "She's not very keen about Maryon Rooke now." Kitty was of the opinion that you should never tell even the best of husbands more than he need know. "So we think she requires distraction," she pursued firmly.
"And who's the poor devil you've fixed on as a burnt-offering?" enquiredSeymour, tugging reflectively at his big, fair moustache.
"It certainly is a man," conceded Kitty.
"Naturally," agreed her husband amicably.
"But I'm not going to tell you who it is or I know you'd let the cat out of the bag, and then Nan will be put off at the beginning. Men"—superbly—"never can keep a secret."
"But they can use their native observation, my dear," retorted Barry calmly. "And I bet you five to one in gloves that I tell you the name of the man inside a week."
"In a week it won't matter," pronounced Kitty oracularly. "Give me a week—and you can have all the time that's left."
"Well, we'd better occupy what's left of this afternoon in getting back home, old thing," returned her husband. "Or you'll never be dressed in time for the Granleys' dinner to-night."
Kitty looked at the clock and jumped up quickly.
"Good heavens! I'd forgotten all about them! Penelope, I must fly!Thursday, then—don't forget. Dinner at eight."
She caught up her furs. There was a faint rustle of feminine garments, a fleeting whiff of violets in the air, and Kitty had taken her departure, followed by her husband.
A short time afterwards a taxi pulled up at Edenhall Mansions and Nan stepped out of it. Penelope sprang up to welcome her as she entered the sitting-room. She was darning stockings, foolish, pretty, silken things—Nan's, be it said.
"Well, how did it go?" she asked eagerly.
"The concert? Oh, quite well. I had a very good reception, and this morning's notices in the newspapers were positively calculated to make me blush."
There was an odd note of indifference in her voice; the concert did not appear to interest her much. Penelope pursued her interrogation.
"Did you enjoy yourself?"
A curious look of reminiscence came into Nan's eyes.
"Oh, yes. I enjoyed myself. Very much."
"I'm so glad. I thought the Chattertons would look after you well."
"They did."
She omitted to add that someone else had looked after her even better—someone distinctly more interesting than dear old Lady Chatterton, kindest soul alive though she might be. For some reason or other Nan felt reluctant to share with Penelope—or with anyone else just at present—the fact of her meeting with Peter Mallory.
"You caught your train all right at Paddington?" went on Penelope.
Nan's mouth tilted in a faint smile.
"Quite all right," she responded placidly.
Finding that the question and answer process was not getting them very far, Penelope resumed her darning and announced her own small item of news.
"Kit's been here this afternoon," she said.
Nan shrugged her shoulders.
"Just my luck to miss her," she muttered irritably.
"No, it isn't 'just your luck,' my dear. It's anyone's luck. You make such a grievance of trifles."
In an instant Nan's charming smile flashed out.
"Iamabeast," she said in a tone of acquiescence. "What on earth should I do without you, Penny, to bully me and generally lick me into shape?" She dropped a light kiss on the top of Penelope's bent head. "But, truly, I hate to miss Kit Seymour. She's as good as a tonic—and just now I feel like a bottle of champagne that's been uncorked for a week."
"You're overtired," replied Penelope prosaically. "You're so—soexcessivein all you do."
Nan laughed.
"The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," she acknowledged. "Well, what's the Kitten's news? What colour is her hair this season?"
"Red. It suits her remarkably well."
Nan rippled with mirth.
"I never knew a painted Jezebel so perfectly delightful as Kitty. EvenAunt Eliza can't resist her."
Mrs. McBain, generally known to her intimates as "Aunt Eliza," was a connection of Nan's on the paternal side. She was a lady of Scottish antecedents and Early Victorian tendencies, to whom the modern woman and her methods were altogether anathema. She regarded her niece as walking—or, more truly, pirouetting aggressively—along the road which leads to destruction.
Penelope folded a pair of renovated stockings and tossed them into her work-basket.
"The Seymours want us to dine there on Thursday. I suppose you can?" she asked.
"With all the pleasure in life. Their chef is a dream," murmured Nan reminiscently.
"As though you cared!" scoffed Penelope.
Nan lit a cigarette and seated herself on the humpty-dumpty cushion by the fire.
"But I do care—extremely." she averred. "It isn't my little inside which cares. It's a purely external feeling which likes to have everything just right. If it's going to be a dinner, I want it perfect from soup to savoury."
Penelope regarded her with a glint of amusement.
"You're such a demanding person."
"I know I am—about the way things are done. What pleasure is there in anything which offends your sense of fitness?"
"You bestow far too much importance on the outside of the cup and platter."
Nan shook her head.
"Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais—Je bois dans mon verre." she quoted, frivolously obstinate.
"Bah!" Penelope grunted, "The critical faculty is over-developed in you, my child."
"Not a bit! Would you like to drink champagne out of a kitchen tea-cup? Of course not. I merely apply the same principle to other things. For instance, if the man I married ate peas with a knife and made loud juicy noises when he drank his soup, not all the sterling qualities he might possess would compensate. Whereas if he had perfect manners, I believe I could forgive him half the sins in the Decalogue."
"Manners are merely an external," protested Penelope, although privately she acknowledged to a sneaking agreement with Nan's point of view.
"Well," retorted Nan. "We've got to live with externals, haven't we? It's only on rare occasions that people admit each other on to their souls' doorsteps. Besides"—argumentatively—"decent mannersaren'tan external. They're the 'outward and visible sign.' Why"—waxing enthusiastic—"if a man just opens a door or puts some coal on the fire for you, it involves a whole history of the homage and protective instinct of man for woman."
"The theory may be correct," admitted Penelope, "though a trifle idealistic for the twentieth century. Most men," she added drily, "Regard coaling up the fire as a damned nuisance rather than a 'history of homage.'"
"It oughtn't to be idealistic." There was a faint note of wistfulness in Nan's voice. "Why should everything that is beautiful be invariably termed 'idealistic'? Oh, there are ten thousand things I'd like altered in this world of ours!"
"Of course there are. You wouldn't be you otherwise! You want a specially constructed world and a peculiarly adapted human nature. In fact—you want the moon!"
Nan stared into the fire reflectively.
"I wonder," she said slowly, "if I shall get it?"
Penelope glanced at her sharply.
"It's highly improbable," she said. "But a little philosophy would be quite as useful—and a far more likely acquisition."
As she finished speaking a bell pealed through the flat—pealed with an irritable suggestion that it had been rung unavailingly before. Followed the abigail's footstep as she pursued her unhurried way to answer its imperative demand, and presently a visitor was shown into the room. He was a man of over seventy, erect and well-preserved, with white hair and clipped moustache. There was an indefinable courtliness of manner about him which recalled the days of lace ruffles and knee-breeches. The two girls rose to greet him with unfeigned delight.
"Uncle!" cried Nan. "How dear of you to come just when our spirits were at their lowest ebb!"
"My dears!" He kissed his niece and shook hands with Penelope. Nan pushed an armchair towards the fire and tendered her cigarette case.
"You needn't be afraid of them, Uncle David," she informed him reassuringly. "They're not gaspers."
"Sybarite! With the same confidence as if they were my own." And LordSt. John helped himself smilingly.
"And why," he continued, "has the barometer fallen?"
Nan laughed.
"You can't expect it to be always 'set fair'!"
"I'd like it to be," returned St. John simply.
A fugitive thought flashed through Nan's mind that he and Peter Mallory were merely young and old representatives of a similar type of man. She could imagine Mallory growing into the same gracious old manhood as her uncle.
"A propos," pursued Lord St. John, with a twinkle, "your handmaiden appears to me a quite just cause and impediment."
"Oh, our 'Adagio'?" exclaimed Nan. "We've long since ceased to expect much from her. Did she keep you waiting on the doorstep long?"
"Only about ten minutes," murmured St. John mildly. "But seriously, why don't you—er—give her warning?"
"My dear innocent uncle!" protested Nan amusedly. "Don't you know that that sort of thing isn't done nowadays—not in the best circles?"
"Besides," added Penelope practically, "we should probably be only out of the frying pan into the fire. The jewels in the domestic line are few and far between and certainly not to be purchased within our financial limits. And frankly, there are very few jewels left at any price. Most of the nice ones got married during the war—the servants you loved and regarded as part of the family—and nine-tenths of those that are left have no sense of even giving good work in return for their wages—let alone civility! The tradition of good service has gone."
"Have you been having much bother, then?" asked St. John concernedly."You never used to have trouble with maids."
"No. But everyone has now. You wouldn't believe what they're like! I don't think it's in the least surprising so many women have nervous break-downs through nothing more nor less than domestic worry. Why, the home-life of women these days is more like a daily battlefield than anything else!"
Penelope spoke strongly. She had suffered considerably at the hands of various inefficient maids and this, added to the strain of her own professional work, had brought her at one time to the verge of a break-down in health.
"I'd no idea you were so strong on domestic matters, Penelope," chaffedSt. John, smiling across at her.
"I'm not. But I've got common sense, and I can see that if the small wheels of the machine refuse to turn, the big wheels are bound to stick."
"If only servants knew how much one liked and respected a really good maid!" murmured Nan with a recrudescence of idealism.
"Do wages make any difference?" ventured St. John somewhat timidly. Penelope was rather forcible when the spirit moved her, and he was becoming conscious of the fact that he was a mere ignorant man.
"Of course they do—to a certain extent," she replied.
"Money makes a difference to most things, doesn't it?"
"There are one or two things it can't taint," he answered quietly, but now you've really brought me to the very object of my visit."
"I thought it was a desire to enquire after the health of your favourite niece," hazarded Nan impertinently.
"So it was. And as finance plays a most important part in that affair, the matter dovetails exactly!"
He smoked in silence for a moment. Then he resumed:
"I should like, Nan, with your permission, to double your allowance and make it six hundred a year."
Nan gasped.
"You see," he pursued, "though I'm only a mere man, I know the cost of living has soared sky-high, including"—with a sly glance at Penelope—"the cost of menservants and maidservants."
"Well, but really, Uncle, I could manage with less than that," protested Nan. "Four or five hundred, with what we earn, would be quite sufficient—quite."
St. John regarded her reflectively.
"It might be—for some people. But not for you, my child. I know your temperament too well! You've the Davenant love of beauty and the instinct to surround yourself with all that's worth having, and I hate to think of its being thwarted just for lack of money. After all, money is only of value for what it can procure—what it does for you. Well, being a Davenant, you want a lot of the things that money can procure—things which wouldn't mean anything at all to many people. They wouldn't even notice whether they were there or not. So six hundred a year it will be, my dear. On the same understanding as before—that you renounce the income should you marry."
Nan gripped his hand hard.
"Uncle," she began. "I can't thank you—"
"Don't, my dear. I merely want to give you a little freedom. You mayn't have it always. You won't if you marry"—with a twinkle. "Now, may I have my usual cup of coffee—notfrom the hands of your Hebe!"
She nodded and slipped out of the room to make the coffee, while Penelope turned towards the visitor with an expression of dismay on her face.
"Do forgive me, Lord St. John," she said. "But is it wise? Aren't you taking from her all incentive to work?"
"I don't believe in pot-boiling," he replied promptly. "The best work of a talent like Nan's is not the work that's done to buy the dinner."
He lit another cigarette before he spoke again. Then he went on rather wistfully:
"I may be wrong, Penelope. But remember, my wife was a Davenant, nearer than Nan by one generation to Angèle de Varincourt. And she was never happy! Though I loved her, I couldn't make her happy."
"I should have thought you would have made her happy if any man could," said Penelope gently.
"My dear, it's given to very few men to make a woman of temperament happy. And Nan is so like my dear, dead Annabel that, if for no other reason, I should always wish to give her what happiness I can." He paused, then went on thoughtfully: "Unfortunately money won't buy happiness. I can't do very much for her—only give her what money can buy. But even the harmony of material environment means a great deal to Nan—the difference between a pert, indifferent maid and a civil and experienced one; flowers in your rooms; a taxi instead of a scramble for a motor-'bus. Just small things in such a big thing as life, but they make an enormous difference."
"You of all men surely understand a temperamental woman!" exclaimed Penelope, surprised at his keen perception of the details which can fret a woman so sorely in proportion to their apparent unimportance.
St. John hardly seemed to hear her, for he continued:
"And I want to give her freedom—freedom from marriage if she wishes it. That's why I stipulate that the income ceases If she marries. I'm trying to weight the balance against her marrying."
Penelope looked at him questioningly.
"But why? Surely love is the best thing of all?"
"Love and marriage, my dear, are two very different things," commented St. John, with an unwonted touch of cynicism. After a moment he went on: "Annabel and I—we loved. But I couldn't make her happy. Our temperaments were unsuited, we looked out on life from different windows. I'm not at all sure"—reflectively—"that the union of sympathetic temperaments, even where less love is, does not result in a much larger degree of happiness than the union of opposites, where there is great love. The jar and fret is there, despite the attraction, and love starves in an atmosphere of discord. For the race, probably the mysterious attraction of opposites will produce the best results. But for individual happiness the sympathetic temperament is the first necessity."
There was a silence, Penelope feeling that Lord St. John had crystallised in words, thoughts and theories that she sensed as being the foundation of her own opinions, hitherto unrecognised and nebulous.
Presently he spoke again.
"And I don't really think men are at all suited to have the care and guardianship of women."
"Unfortunately they're all that Providence has seen fit to provide," replied Penelope, with her usual bluntly philosophical acceptance of facts.
"And yet—we men don't understand women. We're constantly hurting them with our clumsy misconceptions—with our failure to respond to their complexities."
Penelope's eyes grew kind.
"I don't think you would," she said.
"Ah, my dear, I'm an old man now and perhaps I understand. But there was a time when I understood no better than the average youngster who gaily asks some nice woman to trust her future in his hands—without a second thought as to whether he's fit for such a trust. And that was just the time when a little understanding would have given happiness to the woman I loved best on earth."
He spoke rather wearily, but contrived a smile as Nan entered, carrying a cup of coffee in her hand.
"My compliments, Nan. Your coffee equals that of any Frenchwoman."
"A reversion to type. Don't forget that Angèle de Varincourt is always at the back of me."
St. John laughed and drank his coffee appreciatively, and after a little further desultory conversation took his departure, leaving the two girls alone together.
"Isn't he a perfect old dear?" said Nan.
"Yes," agreed Penelope. "He is. And he absolutely spoils you."
Nan gave a little grin.
"I really think he does—a bit. Imagine it, Penny, after our strenuous economies! Six hundred a year in addition to our hard-earned pence! Within limits it really does mean pretty frocks, and theatres, and taxis when we want them."
Penelope smiled at her riotous satisfaction. Nan lived tremendously in the present—her capacity for enjoyment and for suffering was so intense that every little pleasure magnified itself and each small fret and jar became a minor tragedy.
But Penelope was acutely conscious that beneath all the surface tears and laughter there lay a hurt which had not healed, the ultimate effect and consequence of which she was afraid to contemplate.
"Nan, may I introduce Mr. Mallory?"
It was the evening of Kitty's little dinner—a cosy gathering of sympathetic souls, the majority of whom were more or less intimately known to each other.
"As you both have French blood in your veins, you can chant the Marseillaise in unison." And with a nod and smile Kitty passed on to where her husband was chatting with Ralph Fenton, the well-known baritone, and a couple of members of Parliament. Each of them had cut a niche of his own in the world, for Kitty was discriminating in her taste, and the receptions at her house in Green Street were always duly seasoned with the spice of brains and talent.
As Nan looked up into the face of the man whose acquaintance she had already made in such curious fashion, the thought flashed through her mind that here, in his partly French blood was the explanation of his unusual colouring—black brows and lashes contrasting so oddly with the kinky fair hair which, despite the barber's periodical shearing and the fervent use of a stiff-bristled hair-brush, still insisted on springing into crisp waves over his head and refused to lie flat.
"What luck!" he exclaimed boyishly. "I must be in the Fates' good books to-night. What virtuous deed can I have done to deserve it?"
"Playing the part of Good Samaritan might have counted," suggested Nan, smiling. "Unless you can recall any particularly good action which you've performed in the interval."
"I don't think I've been guilty of a solitary one," he replied seriously. "May I?" He offered his arm as the guests began trooping in to dinner—Penelope appropriately paired off with Fenton, whom she had come to know fairly well in the course of her professional work. Although, as she was wont to remark, "Ralph Fenton's a big fish and I'm only a little one." They were chattering happily together of songs and singers.
"So France has a partial claim, on you, too?" remarked Mallory, unfolding his napkin.
"Yes—a great-grandmother. I let her take the burden of all my sins."
"Not a very heavy one, I imagine," he returned, smiling.
"I don't know. Sometimes"—Nan's eyes grew suddenly pensive—"sometimes I feel that one day I shall do something which will make the burden too heavy to be shunted on to great-grandmamma! Then I'll have to bear it myself, I suppose."
"There'll be a pal or two around, to give you a hand with it, I expect," answered Mallory.
"I don't know if there will even be that," she answered dreamily. "Do you know, I've always had the idea that sometime or other I shall get myself into an awful hole and that there won't be a single soul in the world to get me out of it."
She spoke with an odd note of prescience in her voice. It was so pronounced that the sense of foreboding communicated itself to Mallory.
"Don't talk like that. If you think it, you'll be carried forward to just such disaster on the current of the thought. Be sure—quite, quite sure—that there will be someone at hand, even if it's only me"—quaintly.
"The Good Samaritan again? But you mightn't know I was in a difficulty," she protested.
"I think I should always know if you were in trouble," he said quietly.
There was a new quality in the familiar lazy drawl—something that was very strong and steady. Although he had laid no stress on the word "you," yet Nan was conscious in every nerve of her that there was an emphatic individual significance in the brief words he had just uttered. She shied away from it like a frightened colt.
"Still you mightn't come to the rescue, even if I were struggling in the quicksands," she answered.
"I should come," he said deliberately, "whether you wanted me to come or not."
Followed a brief pause, charged with a curious emotional tensity. ThenMallory remarked lightly:
"I enjoyed the Charity Concert at Exeter."
"Were you there?" exclaimed Nan in surprise.
"Certainly I was there. When I was as near as Abbencombe, you don't suppose I was going to miss the chance of hearing you play, do you?"
"I never thought of your being there," she answered.
"And now that I know you've French blood in your veins, I can understand what always puzzled me in your playing."
"What was that?"
"The un-English element in it."
Nan smiled.
"Am I too unreserved then?" she shot at him.
His grey-blue eyes smiled back at her.
"One doesn't ask reserve of a musician. He must give himself—as you do."
She flushed a little. The man's perception was unerring.
"As no Englishwoman could," he pursued. "We English aren't dramatic—it's bad form, you know."
"'We' English?" repeated Nan. "That hardly applies to you, does it?"
"My mother is French. But I'm very English in most ways," he returned quickly. Adding, with a good-humoured laugh: "I'm a disappointment to my mother."
Nan laughed with him out of sheer friendly enjoyment.
"Oh, surely not?" she dissented.
"But yes!" A foreign turn of phrase occasionally betrayed his half-French nationality. "But yes—I'm too English to please her. It's an example of the charming inconsistency of women. My mother loves the English; she chooses an Englishman for her husband. But she desires her son to be a good Frenchman! . . . She is delightful, my mother."
Dinner proceeded leisurely. Nan noticed that her companion drank very little and exhibited a most unmasculine lack of interest in the inspirations of the chef. Yet she knew intuitively that he was alertly conscious of the quiet perfection of it all. She dropped into a brief reverie of which the man beside her was the subject and from which his voice presently recalled her.
"I hope you're going to play to us this evening?"
"I expect so—if Kitty wishes it."
"That's sufficient command for most of those to whom she gives the privilege of friendship, isn't it?"
There was a quiet ring of sincerity in his voice as he spoke of Kitty, and Nan's heart warmed towards him.
"Yes," she assented eagerly. "One can't say 'no' to her. But I don't care for it—playing in a drawing-room after dinner."
"No." Again that quick comprehension of his. "The chosen few and the chosen moment are what you like."
"How do you know?" she asked impulsively.
"Because I think the 'how' and the 'where' of things influence you enormously."
"Don't they influence you, too?" she demanded.
"Oh, they count—decidedly. But I'm not a woman, nor an artiste, soI'm not so much at the mercy of my temperament."
The man's insight was extraordinarily keen, but touched with a little insouciant tenderness that preserved it from being critical in any hostile sense. Nan heaved a small sigh of contentment at finding herself in such an atmosphere.
"How well you understand women," she commented with a smile.
"It's very nice of you to say so, though I haven't got the temerity to agree with you."
Then, looking down at her intently, he added:
"I'm not likely, however, to forget that you've said it. . . . PerhapsI may remind you of it some day."
The abrupt intensity of his manner startled her. For the second time that evening the vivid personal note had been struck, suddenly and unforgettably.
The presidential uprising of the women at the end of dinner saved her from the necessity of a reply. Mallory drew her chair aside and, as he handed her the cambric web of a handkerchief she had let fall, she found him regarding her with a gently humorous expression in his eyes.
"This quaint English custom!" he said lightly. "All you women go into another room to gossip and we men are condemned to the society of one another! I'm afraid even I'm not British enough to appreciate such a droll arrangement. Especially this evening."
Nan passed out in the wake of the other women to while away in desultory small talk that awkward after-dinner interval which splits the evening into halves and involves a picking up of the threads—not always successfully accomplished—when the men at last rejoin the feminine portion of the party. And what is it, after all, but a barbarous relic of those times when a man must needs drink so much wine as to render himself unfit for the company of his womenkind?
"Well," demanded Kitty, "how do you like my lion?"
"Mr. Mallory? I didn't know he was a lion," responded Nan.
"Of course you didn't. You musicians never realise that the human Zoo boasts any other lions but yourselves."
Nan laughed.
"He didn't roar," she said apologetically, "so how could I know? You never told me about him."
"Well, he's just written what everyone says will be the book of the year—Lindley's Wife. It's made a tremendous hit."
"I thought that was by G. A. Petersen?"
"But Peter is G. A. Petersen. Only his intimate friends know it, though, as he detests publicity. So go don't give the fact away."
"I won't. You've read this new book, I suppose?"
"Yes. And you must. It's the finest study of a woman's temperament I've ever come across. . . . Goodness knows he's had opportunity enough to study the subject!"
Nan froze a little.
"Oh, is he a gay Lothario sort of person?" she asked coldly. "He didn't strike me in that light."
"No. He's not in the least like that. He's an ideal husband wasted."
Nan's eyes twinkled.
"Don't poach on preserved ground, Kitty. Marriages are made in heaven."
As she spoke the door opened to admit the men, and somebody claiming Kitty's attention at the moment she turned away without reply. For a few minutes the conversation became more general until, after a brief hum and stir, congenial spirits sought and found each other and settled down into little groups of twos and threes. Somewhat to Nan's surprise—and, although she would not have acknowledged it, to her annoyance—Peter Mallory ensconced himself next to Penelope, and Ralph Fenton, the singer, thus driven from the haven where he would be, came to anchor beside Nan.
"I've not seen you for a long time, Miss Davenant. How's the world been treating you?"
"Rather better than usual," she replied gaily. "More ha'pence than kicks for once in a way."
"You're booking up pretty deep for the winter, then, I suppose?"
Nan winced at the professional jargon. There was certain aspects of a musician's life which repelled her, more particularly the commercial side of it.
She responded indifferently.
"No. I haven't booked a single further engagement. The ha'pence are due to an avuncular relative who has a quite inexplicable penchant for an idle niece."
"My congratulations. Still, I hope this unexpected windfall isn't going to keep you off the concert platform altogether?"
"Not more than my own distaste for playing in public," she answered."I'd much rather write music than perform."
"I can hardly believe you really dislike the publicity? The fascination of it grows on most of us."
"I know it does. I suppose that accounts for the endless farewell concerts a declining singer generally treats us to."
There was an unwonted touch of sharpness in her voice, and Fenton glanced at her in some surprise. It was unlike her to give vent to such an acid little speech. He could not know, of course, that Kitty's light-hearted remark concerning Peter Mallory's facilities for studying the feminine temperament was still rankling somewhere at the back of her mind.
"There's a big element of pathos in those farewell concerts," he submitted gently. "You pianists have a great advantage over the singer, whose instrument must inevitably deteriorate with the passing years."
Nan's quick sympathies responded instantly.
"I think I must be getting soured in my old age," she answered remorsefully. "What you say is dreadfully true. It's the saddest part of a singer's career. And I always clap my hardest at a farewell concert. I do, really!"
Fenton smiled down at her.
"I shall count on you, then, when I give mine."
Nan laughed.
"It's a solemn pledge—provided I'm still cumbering the ground. And now, tell me, are you singing here this evening?"
"I promised Mrs. Seymour. Would you be good enough to accompany?"
"I should love it. What are you going to sing?"
"Miss Craig and I proposed to give a duet."
"And here comes Kitty—to claim your promise, I guess."
A few minutes later the two singers' voices were blending delightfully together, while Nan's slight, musician's fingers threaded their way through intricacies of the involved accompaniment.
She was a wonderful accompanist—rarest of gifts—and when, at the end of the song, the restrained, well-bred applause broke out, Peter Mallory's share of it was offered as much to the accompanist as to the singers themselves.
"Stay where you are, Nan," cried Kitty, as the girl half rose from the music-seat. "Stay where you are and play us something."
Knowing Nan's odd liking for a dim light, she switched off most of the burners as she spoke, leaving only one or two heavily shaded lights still glowing. Mallory crossed the room so that, as he stood leaning with one elbow on the chimney-piece, he faced the player, on whose aureole of dusky hair one of the lights still burning cast a glimmer. While he waited for her to begin, he was aware of a little unaccustomed thrill of excitement, as though he were on the verge of some discovery.
Hesitatingly Nan touched a chord or two. Then without further preamble she broke into the strange, suggestive music which Penelope had described as representing the murder of a soul. It opened joyously, the calm beginnings of a happy spirit; then came a note of warning, the first low muttering of impending woe. Gradually the simple melody began to lose itself in a chaos of calamity, bent and swayed by wailing minor cadences through whose torrent of hurrying sound it could be heard vainly and fitfully trying to assert itself again, only to be at last weighed down, crushed out, by a cataclysm of despairing chords. Then, after a long, pregnant pause—the culminating silence of defeat—the original melody stole out once more, repeated in a minor key, hollow and denuded.
As the music ceased the lights sprang up again and Nan, looking across the room, met Mallory's gaze intently bent upon her. In his expression she could discern that by a queer gift of intuition he had comprehended the whole inner meaning of what she had been playing. Most people would have thought that it was a magnificent bit of composition, particularly for so young a musician, but Mallory went deeper and knew it to be a wonderful piece of self-revelation—the fruit of a spirit sorely buffeted.
Almost instantaneously Nan realised that he had understood, and she was conscious of a fierce resentment. She felt as though an unwarrantable intrusion had been made upon her privacy, and her annoyance showed itself in the quick compression of her mouth. She was about to slip away under cover of the applause when Mallory laid a detaining hand upon her arm.
"Don't go," he said. "And forgive me for understanding!"
Nan, sorely against her will, looked, up and met his eyes—eyes that were irresistibly kind and friendly. She hesitated, still anxious to escape.
"Please," he begged. "Don't leave me"—his lips endeavouring not to smile—"in high dudgeon. It's always seemed such an awful thing to be left in—like boiling oil."
Suddenly she yielded to the man's whimsical charm and sank down again into her chair.
"That's better." He smiled and seated himself beside her. "I couldn't help it, you know," he said quaintly. "It was you yourself who told me."
"Told you what?"
"That the world hadn't been quite kind."
Nan felt a sudden reckless instinct to tempt fate. There was already a breach in her privacy; for this one evening she did not care if the wall were wholly battered down.
"Tell me," she queried with averted head, "how—how much did you understand?"
Mallory scrutinised her reflectively.
"You really wish it?"
"Yes, really."
He was silent a moment. Then he spoke slowly, as though choosing his words.
"Fate has given you one of her back-handers, I think, and you want the thing you can't have—want it rather badly. And just now—nothing seems quite worth while."
"Go on," she said very low.
He hesitated. Then, as if suddenly making up his mind to hit hard, as a surgeon might decide to use the knife, he spoke incisively:
"The man wasn't worth it."
Nan gave a faint, irrepressible start. Recovering herself quickly, she contrived a short laugh.
"You don't know him—" she began.
"But I know you."
"This is only our second meeting."
"What of that? I know you well enough to be sure—quite sure—that you wouldn't give unasked. You're too proud, too analytical, and—at present—too little passionate."
Nan's face whitened. It was true; she had not given unasked, for although Maryon Rooke had never actually asked her to marry him, his whole attitude had been that of the demanding lover.
"You're rather an uncanny person," she said at last, slowly. "You understand—too much."
"Tout comprendre—c'est tout pardonner," quoted Mallory gently.
Nan fenced.
"And do I need pardon?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered simply, "You're not the woman God meant you to be.You're too critical, too cold—without passion."
"And I a musician?"—incredulously.
"Oh, it's in your music right enough. The artist in you has it. But the woman—so far, no. You're too introspective to surrender blindly. Artiste, analyst, critic first—onlywomanwhen those other three are satisfied."
Nan nodded.
"Yes," she said slowly. "I believe that's true."
"I think it is," he affirmed quietly. "And because men are what they are, and you are you, it's quite probable you'll fail to achieve the triumph of your womanhood." He paused, then added: "You're not one of those who would count the world well lost for love, you know—except on the impulse of an imaginative moment."
"No, I'm not," she answered reflectively. "I wonder why?"
"Why? Oh, you're a product of the times—the primeval instincts almost civilised out of you."
Nan sprang to her feet with a laugh.
"I won't stay here to be vivisected one moment longer!" she declared."People like you ought to be blindfolded."
"Anything you like—so long as I'm forgiven."
"I think you'll have to be forgiven—in remembrance of the day when you took up a passenger in Hyde Park!"—smiling.
Soon afterwards people began to take their departure, Nan and Penelope alone making no move to go, since Kitty had offered to send them home in her car "at any old time." Mallory paused as he was making his farewells to the two girls.
"And am I permitted—may I have the privilege of calling?" he asked with one of his odd lapses into a quaintly elaborate manner that was wholly un-English.
"Yes, do. We shall be delighted."
"My thanks." And with a slight bow he left them.
Later on, when everyone else had gone, the Seymours, together withPenelope and Nan, drew round the fire for a final few minutes' yarn.
"Well, how do you like Kitty's latest lion?" asked Barry, lighting a cigarette.
"I think he's a dear," declared Penelope warmly. "I liked him immensely—what I saw of him."
"He's such an extraordinary faculty for reading people," chimed inKitty, puffing luxuriously at a tiny gold-tipped cigarette.
"Part of a writer's stock in trade, of course," replied Barry. "But he's a clever chap."
"Too clever, I think," said Nan. "He fills one with a desire to have one's soul carefully fitted up with frosted glass windows."
Penelope laughed.
"What nonsense! I think he's a delightful person."
"Possibly. But, all the same, I think I'm frightened of people who make me feel as if I'd no clothes on."
"Nan!"
"It's quite true. Your most dazzling get-up wouldn't make an atom of difference to his opinion of the real 'you' underneath it all. Why, one might just as well have no pretensions to good looks when talking to a man like that! It's sheer waste of good material."
"Well, he's rather likely to want to get at the real 'you' of anybody he meets," interpolated Barry. "He was badly taken in once. His wife was one of the prettiest women I've ever struck—and she was an absolute devil."
"He's a widower, then!" exclaimed Penelope.
Barry shook his head regretfully.
"No such luck! That's the skeleton in poor old Peter's cupboard. Celia Mallory is very much alive and having as good a time as she can squeeze out of India."
"They live apart," explained Kitty. "She's one of those restless, excitable women, always craving to be right in the limelight, and she simply couldn't stand Peter's literary work. She was frantically jealous of it—wanted him to be dancing attendance on her all day long. And when his work interfered with the process, as of course it was bound to do, she made endless rows. She has money of her own, and finally informed Peter that she was going to India, where she has relatives. Her uncle's a judge, and she's several Army cousins married out there."
"Do you mean she has never come back?" gasped Penelope.
"No. And I don't think she intends to if she can help it. She's the most thoroughly selfish little beast of a woman I know, and cares for nothing on earth except enjoyment. She's spoiled Peter's life for him"—Kitty's voice shook a little—"and through it all he's been as patient as one of God's saints."
"Still, they're better apart," commented Barry. "While she was living with him she made a bigger hash of his life than she can do when she's away. She was spoiling his work as well as his life. And old Peter's work means a lot to him. He's still got that left out of the wreckage."
"Yes," agreed Kitty, "and of course he's writing better than ever now.Everyone saysLindley's Wifeis a masterpiece."
Nan had been very silent during this revelation of Mallory's unfortunate domestic affairs. The discovery that he was already married came upon her as a shock. She felt stunned. Above all, she was conscious of a curious sense of loss, as though the Peter she had just began to know had suddenly receded a long way off from her and would never again be able to draw nearer.
When the Seymours' car at length bore the two girls back to Edenhall Mansions, Penelope found Nan an unwontedly silent companion. She responded to Penny's remarks in monosyllables and appeared to have nothing to say regarding the evening's happenings.
Mingled with the even throb of the engine, she could hear a constant iteration of the words:
"Married! Peter's married!"
And she was quite unconscious that in her mind he was already thinking of him as "Peter."