In due course Mallory paid his call upon the occupants of the flat, and entertained both girls immensely by the utter lack of self-consciousness with which he assisted in the preparations for tea—toasting scones and coaxing the kettle to boil as naturally as they themselves would have done.
He had none of the average Englishman'smauvaise honte—though be it thankfully acknowledged that, in the case of the younger generation, the experiences of the war have largely contributed towards rubbing it off. Mallory appeared serenely unconscious of any incongruity in the fact of a man whose clothes breathed Savile Row and whose linen was immaculate as only that of the Londoner—determinedly emergent from the grime of the city—ever is, pottering about in the tiny kitchen, and brooding over the blackly obstinate kettle.
This first visit was soon followed by others, and then by a foursome dinner at the Carlton, Ralph Fenton being invited to complete the party. Before long Peter was on a pleasant footing of intimacy with the two girls at the flat, though beyond this he did not seek to progress.
The explanation was simple enough. Primarily he was always aware of the cord which shackled him to a restless, butterfly woman who played at life out in India, and secondly, although he was undoubtedly attracted by Nan, he was not the type of man to fall headlong in love. He was too fastidious, too critical, altogether too much master of himself. Few women caused him a single quickened heart-beat. But it is to such men as this that when at last love grips them, binding them slowly and secretly with its clinging tendrils, it comes as an irresistible force to be reckoned with throughout the remainder of their lives.
So it came about that as the weeks grew into months, Mallory perceived—dimly and with a quaint resignation to the inevitable—that Nan and Love were coming to him hand in hand.
His first thought had been to seek safety in flight; then that gently humorous philosophy with which he habitually looked life in the face asserted itself, and with a shrug and a muttered "Kismet," he remained.
Nan appealed to him as no other woman had ever done. The ineffaceable quality of race about her pleased his fastidious taste; the French blood in her called to his; nor could he escape the heritage of charm bequeathed her by the fair and frail Angèle de Varincourt. Above all, he understood her. Her temperament—idealistic and highly-strung, responsive as a violin to every shade of atmosphere—invoked his own, with its sensitiveness and keen, perceptive faculty.
But this very comprehension of her temperament blinded him to the possibility that there was any danger of her growing to care for him other than as a friend. He appreciated the fact that she had just received a buffeting from fate, that her confidence was shaken and her pride hurt to breaking-point, and the thought never entered his head that a woman so recently bruised by the hands of love—or more truly, love's simulacrum—could be tempted to risk her heart again so soon.
Feeling very safe, therefore, in the fact of his marriage, which was yet no marriage, and sure that there was no chance of his hurting Nan, he let himself love her, keeping his love tenderly in one of those secret empty rooms of the heart—empty rooms of which only the thrice-blessed in this world have no knowledge.
Outwardly, all that Peter permitted himself was to give her an unfailing friendship, to surround her with an atmosphere of homage and protection and adapt himself responsively to her varying moods. This he did untiringly, demanding nothing in return—and he alone knew the bitter effort it cost him.
Gradually Nan began to lean upon him, finding in the restfulness of such a friendship the healing of which she stood in need. She worked at her music with suddenly renewed enthusiasm, secure in the knowledge that Peter was always at hand to help and criticise with kindly, unerring judgment. She ceased to rail at fate and almost learned to bring a little philosophy—the happy philosophy of laughter—to bear upon the ills of life.
Consciously she thought of him only as Peter—Peter, her good pal—and so long as the pleasant, even course of their friendship remained uninterrupted she was never likely to realise that something bigger and more enduring than mere comradeship lay at the back of it all. She, too, like Mallory, reassured herself with the fact of his marriage—though the wife she had never seen and of whom Peter never spoke had inevitably receded in her mind into a somewhat vague and nebulous personality.
"Well?" demanded Kitty triumphantly one day. "And what is your opinion of Peter Mallory now?"
As she spoke, she caressed with light finger-tips a bowl of sun-gold narcissus—Mallory habitually kept the Edenhall flat supplied with flowers.
"We're frankly grateful to you for introducing him," replied Penelope."He's been an absolute godsend all through this hateful long winter."
"What's so perfect about him," added Nan, "is that he never jars on one. He's never Philistine."
"In fact," interpolated Penelope somewhat ruefully, "he's so far from being Philistine that he has a dreadful faculty for making me feel deplorably commonplace."
Kitty gurgled.
"What rubbish! I'm sure nothing in the world would make Peter more unhappy than to think he affected anyone like that. He's the least assuming and most tender-hearted soul I know. You may be common-sense, Penny dear, but you're not in the least commonplace. They're two quite different things."
Nan lit a cigarette with deliberation.
"I'll tell you what is remarkable about Peter Mallory," she said."He'ssahib—right through. Very few men are."
Kitty, always tolerant and charitable, patted her arm deprecatingly.
"Oh, come, Nan, that's rather sweeping. There are heaps of nice men in the world."
"Heaps," assented Nan agreeably. "Heaps—bless 'em! But very fewpreux chevaliers. I only know two—one is my lamb of an uncle and the other is Peter."
"And where does my poor Barry come in?"
Nan smiled across at her indulgently.
"Barry? Pooh! He's just a delightful overgrown schoolboy—and you know it!"
* * * * * *
July in London, hot, dusty, and oppressive. Even the breezy altitude of the top-floor flat could not save its occupants from the intense heat which seemed to be wafted up from the baking streets below. The flat was "at home" to-day, the festive occasion indicated by the quantities of flowers which adorned it—big bowls of golden-hearted roses, tall vases of sweet peas—the creamy-yellow ones which merge into oyster pink, while the gorgeous royal scarlet of "King Edward" glowed in dusky corners.
Penelope trailed somewhat lethargically hither and thither, adding last touches to the small green tables, arranged in readiness for bridge, and sighing at the oppressive heat of the afternoon. First she opened the windows to let in the air, then closed them to shut out the heat, only to fling them open once again, exclaiming impatiently:
"Phew! I really don't know which is the cooler!"
"Neither!" responded a gay voice from the doorway. "The bottomless pit would probably be refreshingly draughty in comparison with town just now."
Penelope whirled round to find Kitty, immaculate in white from head to foot and looking perfectly cool and composed, standing on the threshold.
"How do you manage it?" she said admiringly. "Even in this sweltering heat, when the rest of us look as though we had run in the wash, you give the impression that you've just stepped out of a refrigerated bandbox."
"Appearances are as deceitful as usual, then," replied Kitty, sinking down into an arm-chair and unfurling a small fan. "I'm simply melted! Am I the first arrival?" she continued. "Where's Nan?"
"She and Peter are decorating the tea-table—smiles and things, you know"—Penelope waved an explanatory hand.
Kitty nodded.
"I think my plan was a good one, don't you? Peter's been an excellent antidote to Maryon Rooke," she observed complacently.
"I'm not so sure," returned Penelope with characteristic caution. "I think a married man—especially such an _un_married married man as Pete—is rather a dangerous antidote."
"Nonsense! They bothknowhe's married! And they've both got normal common-sense."
"But," objected Penelope, suddenly and unexpectedly, "love has nothing whatever to do with common-sense."
Kitty gazed at her in frank amazement.
"Penelope! What's come to you? We've always regarded you as the severely practical member of the community, and here you are talking rank heresy!"
Penelope laughed a little, and a faint flush stole up into her cheeks.
"I'm not unobservant, remember," she returned, lightly, her eyes avoiding Kitty's. "And my observations have led me to the conclusion that love and common-sense are distinctly antipathic."
"Well, Nan seems quite happy and cheerful again, anyway," retorted Kitty. "And if she'd fallen in love with Peter, knowing that there was a very much alive Mrs. Peter in the background, she would hardly be feeling particularly cheery."
"Oh, I don't think Nan's fallen in love—yet. And as to her present joyful mood, that's easily accounted for by the doubled income Lord St. John is allowing her—I never knew anyone extract quite so much satisfaction as Nan from the actual spending of money. Besides, although she doesn't realise it, Peter has made himself rather indispensable to her."
Kitty spoke with nervous sharpness:
"But you don't think she cares for him?"
The other reflected a moment before replying. Finally she said:
"If she does, it is quite unconsciously. Consciously, I feel almost sure that Maryon Rooke still occupies her thoughts."
"I wonder where she finds the great attraction in him?" queried Kitty thoughtfully.
"Simply this: That he was the first and, go far, the only man who has ever appealed to her at all. And as he has treated her rather badly, he's succeeded in fixing himself in her mind."
"Well, I've never understood the affair at all. Rooke was in love if ever a man was."
"Yes," agreed Penelope slowly. "But I think Maryon Rooke is what I should describe as—a born bachelor."
"Then he's no business philandering round with women who aren't born spinsters," retorted Kitty promptly.
Penelope's brown eyes twinkled.
"You're rather limiting his horizon," she observed.
Kitty laughed.
"Possibly. But I'm furious with him for hashing up Nan's life. . . .As he has done," she added.
"Not necessarily," suggested Penelope. "I think Nan's rather like a little hard, unopened bud. He's bruised the bud, perhaps, but I don't think he's injured the flower."
"Good gracious, Penny, you're not trying to find excuses for the man!"
"Not a bit of it. But I believe that Nan has such a tremendous fascination for him that he simply can't resist her. In fact, I think if the question of finance didn't enter into the matter he'd be ready to shoulder the matrimonial yoke. . . But I don't see Maryon Rooke settling down to matrimony on a limited income! And of course Nan's own income ceases if she marries."
"It was very queer of Lord St. John to make that stipulation," commented Kitty.
"I don't think so at all. He wants to make quite sure that the man who marries Nan does so for love—and nothing else. And also to give her a free hand. How many women, if they had money of their own, as Nan has, would marry, do you suppose?" Penelope spoke heatedly. She was a modern of the moderns in her ideas. "Subconsciously it's the feeling of economical dependence, the dread of ultimate poverty, which has driven half the untrained women one knows into unhappy marriages. And Lord St. John recognises it. He's progressed with the times, bless him!"
"But Rooke will be making big money before very long," protested Kitty, keeping firmly to the point and declining to be led aside into one of Penelope's argumentative byeways. "He'll be able to settle a decent income on his wife in a few years."
"Very possibly. He'll be one of the most fashionable portrait painters of the day. But until that day comes, Maryon isn't going to tie himself up with a woman whose income ceases when she marries. Besides"—drily—"an unattached bachelor is considerably more in demand as a painter of society women's portraits than a Benedict."
"So Nan is to be sacrificed?" threw out Kitty.
"It seems like it. And as long as Maryon Rooke occupies the foreground in her mind, no other man will occur to her as anything but a friend."
"Then I wish somebody—or something—would sweep him out of her mind!"
"Well, he's away now, at any rate," said Penelope soothingly. "So let's be thankful for small mercies."
As she spoke, the maid—an improvement on their original "Adagio"—entered with a telegram on a salver which she offered to Penelope. The latter slit open the envelope without glancing at the address and uttered a sharp exclamation of dismay as she read the brief communication it contained.
Kitty leaned forward.
"What is it, Penny? Not bad news?"
"It's for Nan," returned Penelope shortly. "You can read it."
Kitty perused it in silence.
"Am in town. Shall call this afternoon on chance of finding you in.—ROOKE."
"The very last person we wanted to blow in here just now," commentedKitty as she returned the wire.
Penelope slipped it back into its envelope and replaced it on the salver.
"Take it to Miss Davenant," she told the maid quietly. "And explain that you brought it to me by mistake."
Meanwhile, in the next room, Peter and Nan, having completed their scheme of decoration with "smilax and things," were resting from their labours and smoking sociably together.
Nan cast a reflective eye upon the table.
"You don't think it looks too much like a shrubbery where you have to hunt for the cakes, do you?" she suggested.
"Certainly I don't," replied Peter promptly. "If there is some slight confusion occasioned by that trail of smilax round the pink sugar-icing cake it merely adds to its attractiveness. The charm of mystery, you know!"
"I believe if Maryon were here he would sweep it all on to the floor in disgust!" observed Nan suddenly. "He'd say we'd forfeited simplicity."
"Maryon Rooke, the artist, you mean?"
The warm colour rushed into Nan's face, and she glanced at Peter with startled—almost frightened—eyes. She could not conceive why the sudden recollection of Rooke should have sprung into her mind at this particular moment. With difficulty her lips framed the monosyllable "Yes."
Peter bent forward. They were sitting together on the wide window-seat, the sound of the traffic from below coming murmuringly to their ears like some muted diapason.
"Nan"—Peter spoke very quietly—"Nan—was he the man?"
She nodded voicelessly. Peter made a quick gesture as though to lay his hand over hers, then checked it abruptly.
"My dear," he said, "do you still care?"
"No, I don't think so," she answered uncertainly. "I—I'm not sure. Oh,Peter, how difficult life is!"
He assented briefly. He knew very well how difficult.
"I can't imagine why I thought of Maryon just now," went on Nan, a puzzled frown wrinkling her brows. "I never do, as a rule, when I'm with you."
She smiled rather wistfully and with a restless movement he sprang to his feet and began pacing the room. A little cry of dismay broke from her and she came quickly to his side, lifting a questioning face to his.
"Why, Peter—Peter—What have I said? You're not angry, are you?"
"Angry!" His voice roughened a bit. "If I could only tell you the truth!"
"Tell it me," she said simply.
For a moment he was silent. Then:
"Don't ask me, Nan. There are some things that can't be told."
As he spoke, his eyes, dark and passionate with some forcibly restrained emotion, met hers, and in an instant it seemed as though the thing he must not speak were spoken.
Nan flushed scarlet from brow to throat, her eyes widened, and the breath fluttered unevenly between her parted lips. She knew—she knewwhat Mallory had left unsaid.
"Peter——"
She held out her hands to him with a sudden childish gesture of surrender, and involuntarily he gathered them into his own. At the same moment the door opened to admit the maid and he drew back quickly, while Nan's outstretched hands fell limply to her side.
"This wire's just come for you, miss," said the maid, and from her manner it was quite impossible to guess whether she had observed anything unusual or not. "I took it to Miss Craig by mistake."
Mechanically Nan extracted the thin sheet from its torn envelope. As her eyes absorbed the few lines of writing, her face whitened and she drew her breath in sharply.
The next instant, however, she recovered her poise, and crumpling the telegram into a ball she addressed the maid composedly.
"There's no answer," she said. Adding: "Has anyone arrived yet?"
"Mrs. Seymour is here, miss. And"—listening—"I think Lord St. John must have arrived."
Nan turned to Mallory.
"Then we'd better go, Peter. Come along."
Mallory, as he followed her into the sitting-room, realised that she had all at once retreated a thousand miles away from him. He wondered what the contents of the telegram could have been. The oblong red envelope seemed to have descended suddenly between them like a shutter.
Lord St. John, having only just arrived, was still standing as they entered the room, and Nan rushed into apologies as she shook hands with him and kissed Mrs. Seymour.
"Heaps of apologies for not being here when you arrived. I really haven't any excuse to offer except"—with a smallgaminsmile—"that I was otherwise occupied!"
"If the occupation was a matter of toilette, we'll excuse you," observed St. John, surveying her with the usual masculine approbation of a white frock defined with touches of black. "The time wasn't wasted."
Nan slipped her arm affectionately into his.
"Oh,whyaren't you forty years younger and someone else's uncle?You'd be such a charming young man!" she exclaimed.
St. John smiled.
"I was, my dear—forty years ago." And he sighed.
During the next half hour the remainder of the guests came dropping in by twos and threes, and after a little desultory conversation everyone settled down to the serious business of bridge. Now and then those who were not playing ventured a subdued murmur of talk amongst themselves, but for the most part the silence of the room was only broken by voices declaring trumps in a rapidly ascending scale of values, and then, after a hectic interval, by the same voices calling out the score in varying degrees of satisfaction or otherwise.
Nan, as a rule, played a good game, but to-day her play was nervous and erratic, and Mallory, her partner of the moment, instinctively connected this with the agitation she had shown on receiving the wire. Ignorant of its contents, he awaited developments.
He had not very long to wait. Shortly afterwards the trill of the door-bell pealed through the flat, followed by a sound of footsteps in the hall, and, a minute later, Maryon Rooke came into the room. A brief stir succeeded his entrance, as Penelope and one or two other non-players exchanged greetings with him. Then he crossed over to where Nan was playing. She was acutely conscious of his tall, loose-limbed figure as he threaded his way carefully between the tables.
"Gambling as usual?" he queried, when he had shaken hands. "And winning—also as usual—I suppose?"
"On the contrary," she retorted. "I've just thrown away a perfectly good trick. Your arrival distracted my attention."
Oddly enough, she had complete control of her voice, although her play and the slight trembling of her fingers as she held her cards fan-wise were sufficient indication to Mallory of the deep waters that had been stirred beneath the surface.
"I'm sorry my return has proved so—inopportune," returned Rooke. As he spoke his eyes rested for a reflective moment upon Peter Mallory, then returned challengingly to Nan's face. The betraying colour flew up under her skin. She understood what he intended to convey as well as though he had clothed his thought in words.
"Having none, partner?"
Mallory's kindly, drawling voice recalled her to the game, and she made an effort to focus her attention on the cards. But it was quite useless. Her play grew wilder and more erratic with each hand that was dealt, until at last a good no-trump call, completely thrown away by her disastrous tactics, brought the rubber to an end.
"You're not in your usual form this afternoon, Nan," remarked one of her opponents as they all rose from the table. Other tables, too, were breaking up and some of the guests preparing to leave.
"No. I've played abominably," she acquiesced. "I'm sorry, partner"—turning to Peter. "It must be the weather. This heat's intolerable."
He put her apology aside with a quick gesture.
"There's thunder in the air, I think. You shouldn't have troubled to play if you didn't feel inclined."
Nan threw him a glance of gratitude—Peter never seemed to fail her either in big or little things. Then, having settled accounts with her opponents, she moved away to join the chattering knot of departing guests congregated round the doorway.
Mallory's eyes followed her thoughtfully. He had already surmised that Maryon Rooke was the sender of the telegram, and he could see how unmistakably his sudden reappearance had shaken her. He felt baffled. Did the man still hold her? Was all the striving of the last few months to prove useless? Those long hours of self-effacement when he had tried by every means in his power to restore Nan to a normal interest in life, to be the good comrade she needed at no matter what cost to himself, demanding nothing in return! For it had been a hard struggle to be constantly with the woman he loved and yet keep himself in hand. To Mallory, Rooke's return seemed grotesquely inopportune.
He was roused from his thoughts to the realisation that people were leaving. Everyone appeared to be talking at once and the air was full of the murmur of wins and losses and of sharp-edged criticism of "my partner's play." Maryon Rooke alone showed no signs of moving, but remained standing a little apart near the window, an unlit cigarette in his hand.
"Penelope, do come back to Green Street with me." Kitty's voice was beseeching. "My little milliner was to have had a couple of hats ready for me this afternoon, which means she will arrive with a perfect avalanche of boxes, each containing a dinkier hat than the last, and I shall fall a helpless victim."
Her husband grinned unkindly.
"Yes, do come along, Penny," he urged. "Then you can lay a restraining hand on Kitty when she's bought the first half dozen."
"There'll just be time before dinner, and the car shall bring you back again," entreated Kitty, and Penelope, knowing that the former would be but clay in the practised hands of her "little milliner," smiled acquiescence.
"Barry"—Kitty tapped her husband's arm—"go down and see if the car is there. Peter, can I drop you anywhere?"
In a couple of minutes the room was cleared, and Kitty, shepherding her flock before her, departed in a gale of good-byes, leaving Nan and Maryon Rooke together.
Each was silent. The girl's small head was thrown back, and in the poise of her slim young body there was a mingling of challenge and appealing self-defence. She looked like some trapped wild thing at bay.
Slowly Rooke crossed the room and came towards her, and as she met those odd, magnetic eyes of his—passionately expressive as only hazel eyes can be—she felt the old fascination stealing over her once more. Her heart sank. She had dreaded this, fought against it, and in her inmost soul believed that she had conquered it. Yet now his mere presence sent the blood racing through, her veins with a hurrying, leaping speed that frightened her.
"Nan!" As he spoke he bent and took her two hands gently into his. Then, as though the touch of her slight fingers roused some slumbering fire within him, his grasp tightened suddenly. He drew her nearer, his eyes holding hers, and her slim body swayed towards him, yielding to the eager clasp of his arms.
"Kiss me, Nan!" he said, the roughness of passion in his voice. "You never kissed me—never in all those beautiful months we were together. And now—now when there's only parting ahead of us—"
His eyes burned down on to her tilted face. She could hear his hurried breathing. His lips were almost touching hers.
. . . Then the door opened quickly and Peter Mallory stood upon the threshold.
Swiftly though they started apart, it was impossible that he should not have seen Rooke holding Nan close in his arms, his head bent above hers. Their attitude was unmistakable—it could have but one significance.
Mallory paused abruptly in the doorway. Then, in a voice entirely devoid of expression, he said quietly:
"Mrs. Seymour left her fan behind—I came back to fetch it." With a slight bow he picked up the forgotten fan and turned to go. "Good-bye once more."
The door closed behind him, and Nan stood very still, her arms hanging down at her sides. But Maryon could read the stricken expression in her eyes—the desperate appeal of them. They betrayed her.
"What's that man to you?" he demanded.
"Nothing."
He caught her roughly by the shoulders.
"I don't believe it!" he exclaimed hotly. "He's the man you love. The very expression of your face gave it away."
"I've told you," she answered unemotionally. "Peter Mallory is nothing to me, never can be anything, except"—her voice quivered a little despite herself—"just a friend."
Maryon's eyes searched her face.
"Then kiss me!" He repeated his earlier demand, imperiously.
She drew back.
"Why should I kiss you?"
The quietly uttered question seemed to set him very far apart from her.In an instant he knew how much he had forfeited by his absence.
"Nan," he said, in his voice a curious charm of appeal, "do you know it's nearly a year since I saw you? And now—now I've only half an hour!"
"Only half an hour?" she repeated vaguely.
"Yes, I go back to Devonshire to-night. But I craved a glimpse of the'Beloved' before I went."
The words brought Nan sharply back to herself. He was still the same incomprehensible, unsatisfactory lover as of old, and with the realisation a cold fury of scorn and resentment swept over her, blotting out what she had always counted as her love for him. It was as though a string, too tightly stretched, had suddenly snapped.
She answered him indifferently.
"To cheer you on your way, I suppose?"
"No. I shouldn't"—significantly—"call it cheering. I've been back in England a month, alone in the damned desolation of Dartmoor, fighting—fighting to keep away from you."
She looked at him with steady, scrutinising eyes.
"Why need you have kept away?" she asked incisively.
"At the bidding of the great god Circumstance. Oh, my dear, my dear"—speaking with passionate vehemence—"don't you know . . . don't you understand that if only I weren't a poor devil of a painter with my way to make in a world that can only be bought with gold—nothing should part us ever again? . . . But as it is—"
Nan listened to the outburst with down-bent head. She understood now—oh, yes, she understood perfectly. He loved her well enough in his own way—but Maryon's way meant that the love and happiness of the woman who married him would always be a matter of secondary importance. The bitterness of her resentment deepened within her, flooding her whole being.
"'If only!'" repeated Rooke. "It's the old story, Nan—the desire of the moth for the flame."
"The moth is a very blundering creature," said Nan quietly. "He makes mistakes sometimes—perhaps imagining a flame where there is none."
"No!" exclaimed Rooke violently. "I made no mistake! You loved me as much as I loved you. I know it! By God, do you think a man can't tell when the woman he loves, loves him?"
"Well, you must accept the only alternative then," she answered coolly."Sometimes a flame flickers out—and dies."
It was as though she had cut him across the face with a whip. In a sudden madness he caught her in his arms, crushing her slender body against his, and kissed her savagely.
"There!" he cried, a note of fierce triumph ringing in his voice. "Whether your love is dead or no, I'll not go out of your life with nothing to call my own, and I've made your lips—mine."
Loosening his hold of her he stumbled from the room.
Nan remained just where he had left her. She stood quite motionless for several minutes, almost as though she were waiting for something. Then with a leap of her breath, half-sigh, half-exultation, the knowledge of what had happened to her crystallised into clear significance.
In one swift, overwhelming moment of illumination she realised that the frail blossom of love which had been tentatively budding in the garden of her heart was dead—withered, starved out of existence ere it had quite believed in its own reality.
Maryon Rooke no longer meant anything to her. She felt completely indifferent as to whether she ever saw him again or not. She was free! While he had been with her she had felt unsure, uncertain of herself. The interview had shaken her. Yet actually, after those first dazzled moments, the emotion she felt partook more of the dim, sad ache that the memory-haunted scent of a flower may bring than of any more vital sentiment. But now that he had gone, it came upon her with a shock of joyful surprise that she was free—beautifully, gloriously free!
The ecstasy only lasted for a moment. Then with a sudden childish movement she put her hand resentfully to her face where the roughness of his beard had grazed it. She wished he had not kissed her—it would be a disagreeable memory.
"I shall never forget now," she muttered. "I shall never be able to forget."
There was an odd note of fear in her voice.
Having secured Kitty's forgotten fan, Mallory absent-mindedly descended the long stone flight of steps instead of taking the lift and, regaining the street, hailed a passing taxi and drove towards Green Street, whither the Seymours' car had already proceeded.
As the driver threaded his way through the traffic, Peter's thoughts revolved round the scene which his unexpected return to the flat had interrupted. There was only one deduction to be drawn from it, which was that Nan, after all, still cared for Maryon Rooke. The old love still held her.
The realisation was bitter. Even though the woman who was his wife must always stand betwixt himself and Nan, yet loving her as he did, it had meant a good deal to Mallory to know that no other man had any claim upon her.
And earlier in the afternoon, just before the maid had intruded on them to deliver Rooke's telegram, it had seemed almost as though Nan, too, had cared. One moment more alone together and he would have known—been sure.
A vague vision of the future had even flashed through his mind—he and Nan never any more to one another than good comrades, but each knowing that underneath their friendship lay something stronger and deeper—the knowledge that, though unavowed, they belonged to each other. And even a love that can never be satisfied is better than life without love. It may bring its moments of unbearable agony, but it is still love—the most beautiful and glorious thing in the world. And the pain of knowing that a great gulf is for ever set between two who love is a penalty that real love can face and triumph over.
But now the whole situation was altered. Unmistakably Maryon Rooke still meant a good deal to Nan, although Peter felt a certain consciousness that if he were to pit himself against Rooke he could probably make the latter's position very insecure. But was it fair? Was it fair to take advantage of the quick responsiveness of Nan's emotions—that sensitiveness which gave reply as readily as a violin to the bow?
She was not a woman to find happiness very easily, and he himself had nothing to offer her except a love that must always be forbidden, unconsummated. In God's Name, then, if Maryon Rooke could give her happiness, what right had he to stand in the way?
By the time the taxi had brought him to the door of Kitty's house, his decision was taken. He would clear out—see as little of Nan as possible. It was the best thing he could do for her, and the consideration of what it would cost him he relegated to a later period.
His steps lagged somewhat as he followed the manservant upstairs to Kitty's own particular den, and the slight limp which the war had left him seemed rather more marked than usual. Any great physical or nervous strain, invariably produced this effect. But he mustered up a smile as he entered the room and held out the recovered fan.
The "little milliner" was nowhere to be seen, and Kitty herself was ensconced on the Chesterfield, enjoying an iced lemon-squash and a cigarette, while Penelope and Barry were downstairs playing a desultory game of billiards. The irregular click of the ivory balls came faintly to Mallory's ears.
"Got my fan, Peter? Heaps of thanks. What will you have? A whisky-and-soda? . . . Why—Peter—"
She broke on abruptly as she caught sight of his face. He was rather pale and his eyes had a tired, beaten look in them.
"What's wrong, Peter?"
He smiled down at her as she lay tucked up amongst her cushions.
"Why should there be anything wrong?"
"Something is," replied Kitty decidedly. "Did I swish you away from the flat against your will?"
"I should be a very ungrateful person if I failed to appreciate my present privileges."
She shook her head disgustedly.
"You're a very annoying person!" she returned. "You invariably take refuge in a compliment."
"Dear Madame Kitty"—Mallory leaned forward and looked down at her with his steady grey-blue eyes—"dear Madame Kitty, I say to youwhat I mean. I do not compliment my friends"—his voice deepened—"my dear, trusted friends."
His foreign twist of phrase was unusually pronounced, as always in moments of strong feeling.
"But that's just it!" she declared emphatically. "You'renottrusting me—you're keeping me outside the door."
"Believe me, there's nothing you'd wish to see—the other side."
"Which means that in any case it's no use knocking at a door that won't be opened," said Kitty, apparently yielding the point. "So we'll switch off that subject and get on to the next. We go down to Mallow Court at the end of this week. I can't stand town in July. What date are you coming to us?"
Peter was silent a moment, his eyes bent on the ground. Then he raised his head suddenly as though he had just come to a decision.
"I'm afraid I shan't be able to come down," he said quietly.
"But you promised us!" objected Kitty. "Peter, you can't go back on a promise!"
He regarded her gravely. Then:
"Sometimes one has to do—even that."
Kitty, discerning in his refusal another facet of that "something wrong" she had suspected, clasped her hands round her knees and faced him with deliberation.
"Look here, Peter, it isn't you to break a promise without some real good reason. You say you can't come down to us at Mallow. Why not?"
He met her eyes steadily.
"I can't answer that," he replied.
Kitty remained obdurate.
"I want an answer, Peter. We've been pals for some time now, and"—with vigour—"I'm not going to be kept out of whatever it is that's hurting you. So tell me."
He made no answer, and she slipped down from the Chesterfield and came to his side.
"Is it anything to do with Nan?" she asked gently, her thoughts going back to the talk she had had with Penelope before the bridge party began.
A rather weary smile curved his lips.
"It doesn't seem much use trying to keep you in the dark, does it?"
"I must know," she urged. Adding with feminine guile:
"Of course I should be frightfully hurt if I thought you weren't coming just because you didn't want to. But still I'd rather know—even if that were the reason."
"Not want to?" he broke out, his control suddenly snapping. "I'd give my soul to come!"
The bitterness in his voice—in the lazy, drawling tones she knew so well—let in a flood of light upon the darkness in which she had been groping.
"Peter—oh, Peter!" she cried tremulously. "You're not—you don't mean that you care for Nan—seriously?"
"I don't think many men could be with her much without caring," he answered simply.
"Oh, I'm sorry—I'm sorry! . . . I—I never thought of that when I asked you to be a pal to her." Her voice shook uncontrollably.
He smiled again—the game half-weary, half-tenderly amused smile which was so characteristic.
"You needn't be sorry," he said, speaking with great gentleness. "I shall never be sorry that I love her. It's only that just now she doesn't need me. That's why I won't come down to Mallow."
"Not need you!"
"No. The man she needs has come back. I can't tell youhowI know—you'll have to trust me over that—but I do know that Maryon Rooke has come back to her and that he is the man who means everything to her."
Kitty's brows drew together as she pondered the question whether Peter were right or wrong in his opinion.
"I don't think you're right," she said at last in tones of conviction. "I don't believe she 'needs' him at all. I dare-say he still fascinates her. He has"—she hesitated—"a curious sort of fascination for some women. And the sooner Nan is cured of it the better."
"I've done—all that I could," he answered briefly.
"Don't I know that?" Kitty slipped her arm into his. "You've been splendid! That's just why I want you to come down to us in Cornwall."
"But if Rooke is there—"
"Maryon?" She paused, then went on with a chilly little note of haughtiness in her voice. "I certainly don't propose to invite Maryon Rooke to Mallow."
"Still, you can't prevent him from taking a summer holiday at St.Wennys."
St. Wennys was a small fishing village on the Cornish coast, barely a mile away from Mallow Court.
"He won't come—I'm sure!" asserted Kitty. "Sir Robert Burnham lives quite near there—he's Maryon's godfather—and they hate each other like poison."
"Why?"
"Oh, old Sir Robert was Maryon's guardian till he came of age, and then, when Maryon decided to go in for painting, he presented him with the small patrimony to which he was entitled and declined to have anything further to do with him—either financially or otherwise. Simply chucked him. Maryon went through some very bad times, I believe, in his early days," continued Kitty, striving to be just. "That's the one thing I respect him for. He stuck to it and won through to where he stands now."
"It shows he's got some grit, anyway," agreed Peter. "And do you think"—smiling—"that that's the type of man who's going to give in over winning the woman he wants? . . . Should I, if things were different—if I were free?"
Kitty laughed reluctantly.
"You? No. But you're not Maryon Rooke. He could never be the kind of lover you would be, my Peter. With him, his art counts first of anything in the wide world. And that's why I don't think he'll come to St. Wennys. He's in love with Nan—as far as his type can be in love—but he's not going to tie himself up with her. So he'll keep away."
She paused, then went on urgently:
"Peter dear, we shall all of us hate it so if you don't come down to Cornwall with us this year. Look, if Rooke doesn't show up down there, so that we know he's only philandering with Nan and has no real intention of marrying her, will you come then?"
He still hesitated. And all at once Kitty saw the other side of the picture—Peter's side. She wanted him at Mallow—they all wanted him. But she had not thought of the matter from his point of view. Now that she knew he cared for Nan she recognised that it would be a bitterly hard thing for him to be under the same roof with the woman he loved, yet from whom he was barred by every law of God and man, and who, as far as Kitty knew, regarded him solely in the light of a friend. Even if Nan were growing to care for Peter—the bare possibility flashed through Kitty's mind only to be instantly dismissed—even so, it would serve only to complicate matters still further.
When she spoke again it was in a very subdued tone of voice and with an accent of keen self-reproach.
"Peter, I'm a selfish pig! All this time I've never been thinking of you—only of ourselves. I believe it's your own fault"—with a rather quavering laugh. "You've taught us all to expect so much from you—and to give so little."
Mallory made a quick gesture of dissent.
"Oh, yes, you have," she insisted. "You're always giving and we just—take! I never thought how hard a thing I was asking when I begged you to come down to Mallow while Nan was with us. It was sheer brutality to suggest it." Her voice trembled. "Please forgive me, Peter!"
"My dear, there's nothing to forgive. You know I love Nan, that she'll always be the one woman for me. But you know, too, that there's Celia, and that Nan and I can never be more to each other than we are now—just friends. I'm not going to forfeit that friendship—unless it happens it would be best for Nan that we should forget we were even friends. And I won't say it doesn't hurt to be with her. But there are some hurts that one would rather bear than lose what goes with them."
The grave voice, with the undertone of pain running through it, ceased.Kitty's tears were flowing unchecked.
"Oh, Peter, Peter!" she cried sobbingly. "Why aren't you free? You and Nan are just made for each other."
He winced a little, as though she had laid her finger on a raw spot.
"Hush, Kitten," he said quietly. "Don't cry so! These things happen and we've got to face them."
Kitty subsided into a chair and mopped her eyes.
"It's wicked—wicked that you should be tied up to a woman like Celia—a woman who's got no more soul than this chair!"—banging the chair-arm viciously.
"And you mustn't say things like that, either," chided Peter, smiling at her very kindly.
As he spoke there came the sound of footsteps, and the voices of Barry and Penelope could be heard as they approached Kitty's den, by way of the corridor.
"I owe you a bob, then," Barry was saying in his easy, good-natured tones. "You beat me fair and square that last game, Penny."
Kitty sprang up, suddenly conscious of her tear-stained face.
"Oh, I can't see them—-not now! Peter, stop them from coming here!"
A moment later Mallory came out of the room and met the approaching couple before they had reached the door.
"I was just coming to say good-bye to Kitty," began Penelope. "I'd no idea the time had flown so quickly."
"Charm of my society," murmured Barry.
Peter's face was rather white and set, but he managed to reply in a voice that sounded fairly normal.
"Kitty's very fagged and she's going to rest for a few minutes before dressing for dinner. She asked me to say good-bye to you for her, Penelope."
"Then it falls to my lot to speed the parting guest," said Barry cheerily. "Peter, old son, can the car take you on anywhere after dropping Penny at the Mansions?"
Peter was conscious of a sudden panic. He had just come from baring the rawness of his wound to Kitty, and, gently as her fingers had probed, even the kind hands of a friend may sometimes hurt excruciatingly. He felt that at the moment he could not endure the companionship of any living soul.
"No, thanks," he answered jerkily. "I'll walk."
Mallow Court, the Seymours' country home, lay not a mile from the village of St. Wennys. A low, two-storied house of creeper-clad stone, it stood perched upon the cliffs, overlooking the wild sea which beats up against the Cornish coast.
The house itself had been built in a quaint, three-sided fashion, the central portion and the two wings which flanked it rectangularly serving to enclose a sunk lawn round which ran a wide, flagged path. A low, grey stone wall, facing the sea, fenced the fourth side of the square, at one end of which a gate gave egress on to the sea-bitten grassy slope that led to the edge of the cliff itself.
A grove of trees half-girdled the house, and this, together with the sheltering upward trend of the downs on one side of it, tempered the violence of the fierce winds which sometimes swept the coast-line even in summer.
Behind the house, under the lee of the rising upland, lay the gardens of Mallow, witness to the loving care of generations. Stretches of lawn, coolly green and shaven, sloped away from a terrace which ran the whole length of the house, meeting the gravelled drive as it curved past the house-door. Beyond lay dim sweet alleys, over-arched by trees, and below, where a sudden dip in the configuration of the land admitted of it, were grassy terraces, gay with beds of flowers, linked together by short flights of grass-grown steps.
"I can't understand why you spend so much time in stuffy old London,Kitty, when you have this heavenly place to come to."
Nan spoke from a nest of half-a-dozen cushions heaped together beneath the shade of a tree. Here she was lounging luxuriously, smoking innumerable Turkish cigarettes, while Kitty swung tranquilly in a hammock close by. Penelope had been invisible since lunch time. They had all been down at Mallow the better part of a month, and she and Ralph Fenton quite frequently absented themselves, "hovering," as Barry explained, "on the verge of an engagement."
"My dear, the longer I stay in town, the more thoroughly I enjoy the country when we come here. I get the quintessence of enjoyment by treating Mallow as a liqueur."
Nan laughed. There was a faint flavour of bitterness in her laughter.
"Practically most of our good times in this world are only to be obtained in the liqueur form. The gods don't make a habit of offering you a big jug of enjoyment."
"If they did, you'd be certain to refuse it because you didn't like the shape of the jug!" retorted Kitty.
Nan smiled whole-heartedly.
"What a miserable, carping, discontented creature I must be!"
"I'll swear that's not true!" An emphatic masculine voice intervened, and round the corner of the clump of trees beneath which the two girls had taken refuge, swung a man's tall, well-setup figure clad in knickerbockers and a Norfolk coat.
"Good gracious, Roger, how you made me jump!" And Kitty hurriedly lowered a pair of smartly-shod feet which had been occupying a somewhat elevated position in the hammock.
"I'm sorry. How d'you do, Kit? And how are you, Miss Davenant?" answered the new-comer.
The alteration in his voice as he addressed Nan was quite perceptible to anyone well-versed in the symptoms of the state of being in love, and his piercing light-grey eyes beneath their shaggy, sunburnt brows—fierce, far-visioned eyes that reminded one of the eyes of a hawk—softened amazingly as they rested upon her charming face.
"Oh, we're quite all right, thanks," she answered. "That is, when people don't drop suddenly from the clouds and galvanise us into action this warm weather."
She regarded him with a faintly quizzical smile. He was not particularly attractive in appearance, though tall and well-built. About forty-two, a typical English sportsman of the out-door, cold-tub-in-the-morning genus, he had a square-jawed, rather ugly face, roofed with a crop of brown hair a trifle sunburnt at its tips as a consequence of long days spent in the open. His mouth indicated a certain amount of self-will, the inborn imperiousness of a man who has met with obedient services as a matter of course, and whose forebears, from one generation to another, have always been masters of men. And, it might be added, masters of their women-kind as well, in the good, old-fashioned way. There was, too, more than a hint of obstinacy and temper in the long, rather projecting chin and dominant nose.
But the smile he bestowed on Nan when he answered her redeemed the ugliness of his face considerably. It was the smile of a man who could be both kindly and generous where his prejudices were not involved, who might even be capable of something rather big if occasion warranted it.
"It was too bad of me to startle you like that," he acknowledged. "Please forgive me. I caught sight of you both through the trees and declared myself rather too suddenly."
"Always a mistake," commented Nan, nodding wisely.
Roger Trenby regarded her doubtfully. She was extraordinarily attractive, this slim young woman from London who was staying at Mallow, but she not infrequently gave utterances to remarks which, although apparently straight-forward enough, yet filled him with a vague, uneasy feeling that they held some undercurrent of significance which had eluded him.
He skirted the quicksand hastily, and turned the conversation to a subject where be felt himself on sure ground.
"I've been exercising hounds to-day."
Trenby was Master of the Trevithick Foxhounds, and had the reputation of being one of the finest huntsmen in the county, and his heart and his pluck and a great deal of his money went to the preserving of it.
"Oh," cried Nan warmly, "why didn't you bring them round by Mallow before you went back to the kennels?"
"We didn't come coastward at all," he replied. "I never thought of your caring to see them."
Nan was not in the least a sportswoman by nature, though she had hunted as a child—albeit much against her will—to satisfy the whim of a father who had been a dare-devil rider across country and had found his joy in life—and finally his death—in the hunting field he had loved. But she was a lover of animals, like most people of artistic temperament, and her reply was enthusiastic.
"Of course I'd like to have seen them!"
Roger's face brightened.
"Then will you let me show you the kennels one day? I could motor over for you and bring you back afterwards."
Nan nodded up at him.
"I'd like to come very much. When shall we do it?"
Kitty stirred idly in her hammock.
"You've let yourself in for it now, Roger," she remarked. "Nan is the most impatient person alive."
Once more Nan looked up, with lazy "blue violet" eyes whose seductive sweetness sent an unaccustomed thrill down Roger's spine. She was so different, this slender bit of womanhood with her dusky hair and petal skin, from the sturdy, thick-booted, sporting type of girl to which he was accustomed. For Roger Trenby very rarely left his ancestral acres to essay the possibilities of the great outer world, and his knowledge of women had been hitherto chiefly gleaned from the comely—if somewhat stolid—damsels of the countryside, with whom he had shot and fished and hunted since the days of his boyhood.
"Don't be alarmed by what Kitty tells you, Mr. Trenby," Nan smiled gently as she spoke and Roger found himself delightedly watching the adorable way her lips curled up at the corners and the faint dimple which came and went. "She considers it a duty to pick holes in poor me—good for my morals, you know."
"It must be a somewhat difficult occupation," he returned, bowing awkwardly.
Into Nan's mind flashed the recollection of a supple, expressive, un-English bow, and of a deftness of phrase compared with which Trenby's laboured compliment savoured of the elephantine. Swiftly she dismissed the memory, irritably chasing it from her mind, for was it not five long, black, incomprehensible weeks since Peter had vanished from her ken? From the day of the bridge-party at the Edenhall flat, she had neither seen nor heard from him, and during those five silent weeks she had come to recognise the fact that Peter meant much more to her than merely a friend, just as he himself had realised that she was the one woman in the world for him. And between them, now and always, stood Celia, the woman in possession.
"Well, then, what about Thursday next for going over to the kennels?Are you disengaged?"
Trenby's voice broke suddenly across her reverie. She threw him a brilliant smile.
"Yes. Thursday would do very well."
"Agreed, then. I'll call for you at half-past ten," said Trenby. "Well"—rising reluctantly to his feet—"I must be moving on now. I have to go over one of my off-farms before dinner, so I'll say good-bye."
He lifted his cap and strode away, Nan watching his broad-shouldered well-knit figure with reflective eyes, the while irrepressible little gurgles and explosions of mirth emanated from the hammock.
At last Nan burst out irritably:
"What on earth are you giggling about, Kitty?"
"At the lion endeavouring to lie down with the lamb," submitted Kitty meekly.
"Don't talk in parables."
"It's a very easy one to interpret"—Kitty succumbed once more to a gale of laughter. "It was just too delicious to watch you and Roger together! You'd much better leave him alone, my dear, and play with the dolls you're used to."
"How detestable you are, Kitty. I promise you one thing—it's going to be much worse for the lion than the lamb."
Mrs. Barry Seymour sat up suddenly, the laughter dying out of her eyes.
"Nan," she admonished, "you leave Roger alone. He's as Nature made him and not fair game for such as you. Leave him to some simple country maiden—Edna Langdon, for instance, who rides straight to hounds and whose broad acres—or what will be her broad acres when Papa Langdon is gathered—'march' with his."
"Surely I can out-general her?"—impertinently.
"Out-general her? Of course you can. But that's just what you mustn't do. I won't allow you to play with Roger. He's too good a sort—even if he is a bit heavy in hand."
"I agree. He's quite a good sort. But he needs educating. . . . And perhaps I'm not going to 'play' with him."
"Not? Then what . . . Nan, you never mean to suggest that you're in earnest?"
Nan regarded her consideringly.
"And why not, pray? Isn't he well-seeming? Hasn't he broad acres of his own? Do I not find favour in his eyes? . . . Surely the last four weeks have shown you that much?"
Kitty made a small grimace.
"They certainly have. But seriously, this is all nonsense, Nan. You and Roger Trenby are about as unsuited to each other as any man and woman could possibly be. In addition to which he has the temper of a fiend when roused—and you'd be sure to rouse him! You know a dozen men more suitable!"
"Do I? It seems to me I'm particularly destitute of men friends just now, either 'suitable' or otherwise. They've been giving me the cold shoulder lately with commendable frequency. So why not the M.F.H. and his acres?"
Kitty detected the bitter, hurt note in her voice, and privately congratulated herself on a letter she had posted only the previous evening telling Peter that everything was obviously over between Nan and Maryon Rooke, as the latter had failed to put in an appearance at St. Wennys—and would he come down to Mallow Court? With Peter once more at hand, she felt sure he would be able to charm Nan's bitterness away and even prevent her, in some magical way of his own, from committing such a rash blunder as marriage with Trenby could not fail to be.
She had been feeling rather disturbed about Nan ever since they had come to Mallow. The Nan she knew, wayward, tantalising, yet always lovable, seemed to have disappeared, and instead here was this embittered, moody Nan, very surely filled with some wild notion of defying fate by marrying out of hand and so settling for ever the disappointments of the past—and whatever chances of happiness there might be waiting for her in the lap of destiny. Settling them in favour of one most final and lasting disappointment of them all—of that Kitty felt convinced.
"Nan, don't be a fool!" she insisted vehemently. "You'd be wretched if you married the wrong man—far, far more wretched in the future than you've ever been in the past. You'd only repent that last step once, and that would be—always!"
"My dear Kit, I've taken so many steps that I've repented! But when you're in the middle of a staircase you must inevitably continue taking steps—either up or down. And if I take this one, and repent it—well, at all events it will be the last step."
"Not necessarily," replied Kitty drily.
"Where are you wandering now?" gibed Nan. "Into the Divorce Courts—or the Thames? Surely you know me better than that! I value my creature comforts far too much to exploit either, I assure you. The Divorce Courts are muddy—and the Thames is wet."
Kitty was silent a moment, her heart torn by the bitterness in the girl's voice.
"You'd regret it, I know," she insisted gravely.
Nan rose from her cushions, swinging her hat in her hand.
"Always remembering that a prophet hath no honour in his own country," she commented curtly over her shoulder, and sauntered away towards the house, defiantly humming the air of a scandalous little French song as she went.
Kitty sank back into the hammock, lighting a cigarette to aid her meditations. Truly matters had gone very crookedly. Maryon Rooke had been the first cause of all the trouble. Then she herself had intervened to distract Nan's thoughts by asking Peter to be a pal to her. And the net result of it all was that Peter, irrevocably bound to another woman, had fallen in love with Nan, while the latter was philandering desperately with a totally unsuitable second string.
"Dreaming, Kitty?" said a voice, and looking up with the frown still wrinkling her pretty brows, she saw Lord St. John approaching.
"If I am, it must be a nightmare, I think!" she answered lugubriously.
The old man's kindly face took on a look of concern.
"Any nightmare that I can dispel, my dear?"
Kitty patted the fine-bred, wrinkled old hand that rested on the edge of the hammock.
"I know you love to play the fairy godfather to us all, but in this case I'm afraid you can't help. In fact, you've done all you could—made her free to choose."
"It's Nan, then?" he said quickly.
Kitty laughed rather mirthlessly.
"'M. Isn't it always Nan who is causing us anxiety one way or another?"
"And just now?"
"Haven't you guessed? I'm sure you have!"
St. John's lips twisted in a whimsical smile.
"I suppose you mean that six-foot-odd of bone and muscle from TrenbyHall?"
"Of course I mean him! Just because she's miserable over that Rooke business and because Roger is as insistent as a man with that kind of chin always is, she'll be Mrs. Roger before we can stop her—and miserable ever after!"
"Isn't the picture a trifle overdrawn?" St. John pulled forward one of the garden chairs and sat down. "Trenby's a very decent fellow, I should imagine, and comes of good old stock."
"Oh, yes, he's all that." Kitty metaphorically tossed the whole pack of qualifications into the dustbin. "But he's got the devil's own temper when he's roused and he's filled to the brim with good old-fashioned notions about a man being master in his own house, et cetera. And no man will ever be master in his own house while Nan's in it—unless he breaks her."
St. John stirred restlessly.
"Things are a bit complicated sometimes, aren't they?" he said in a rather tired voice. "Still"—with an effort—"we must hope for the best. You've jumped far ahead of the actual state of affairs at present."
"Roger's tagging round after her from morning to night."
"He's not the first man to do that," submitted Lord. St. John, smiling, "Nan is—Nan, you know, and you mustn't assume too much from Roger's liking to be with her. I'm sure if I were one of her contemporary young men, I should 'tag round' just like the rest of 'em. So don't meet trouble half way."