Except for one of Trenby's frequent telephone calls, enquiring as to Nan's progress, Saturday passed uneventfully enough until the evening. Then, through the clear summer dusk Kitty discerned the Mallow car returning from the station whither it had been sent to meet Ralph's train.
Hurrying down the drive, she saw Ralph lean forward and speak to the chauffeur who slowed down to a standstill, while he himself sprang out and came eagerly to her side.
"You angelic woman!" he exclaimed fervently. "How did you manage it?Will she—will she really—"
"I think she will," answered Kitty, smiling. "So you needn't worry.But I'm not thedea ex machinato whom you owe the 'happy ending.'Nan managed it—in some incomprehensible way of her own."
"Then blessed be Nan!" said Ralph piously, as he opened the door of the car for her to enter. Two minutes' further driving brought them to the house.
Following his hostess's instructions, Ralph remained outside, and as Kitty entered the great hall, alone, a white-clad figure suddenly made as though to escape by a further door.
"Come back, Penny," called Kitty, a hint of kindly mischief in her voice. "You'll just get half an hour to yourselves before the dressing-bell rings. Afterwards we shall expect to see you both, clothed and in your right minds, at dinner."
The still look of happiness that had dwelt all day in Penelope's eyes woke suddenly into radiance, just as you may watch the calm surface of the sea, when the tide is at its full, break into a hundred sparkling ripples at the vivifying touch of a wandering breeze.
She turned back hesitatingly, looking all at once absurdly young and a little frightened—this tall and stately Penelope—while a faint blush-rose colour ran swiftly up beneath the pallor of her skin, and her eyes—those nice, humorous brown eyes of hers that always looked the world so kindly and honestly in the face—held the troubled shyness of a little child.
Kitty laid a gentle hand on her arm.
"Run along, my chicken," she said, suddenly feeling a thousand years old as she saw Penelope standing, virginal and sweet, at the threshold of the gate through which she herself had passed with happy footsteps years ago—that gate which opens to the wondering fingers of girlhood, laid so tremulously upon love's latch, and which closes behind the woman, shutting her into paradise or hell.
"Run along, my chicken. . . . And give Ralph my blessing!"
* * * * * *
It was not until the next day, towards the end of lunch, that Ralph shot his bolt from the blue. Other matters—which seemed almost too good to be true in the light of Penelope's unqualified refusal of him three days ago—had occupied his mind to the exclusion of everything else. Nor, to give him his due, was he in the least aware that he was administering any kind of shock, since he was quite ignorant as to the actual state of affairs betwixt Nan and Maryon Rooke.
It was Kitty herself who inadvertently touched the spring which let loose the bolt.
"What's the news in town, Ralph?" she asked. "Surely you gleanedsomething, even though you were only there for a single night?"
Fenton laughed.
"Would I dare to come back to you without the latest?" he returned, smiling. "The very latest is that Maryon Rooke is to be married."
A silence followed, as though a bombshell had descended in their midst and scattered the whole party to the four winds of heaven.
Then Kitty, making a desperate clutch at her self-possession, remarked rather superficially:
"Surely that's not true? I thought Maryon was far too confirmed a bachelor to be beguiled into the holy bonds."
"It's perfectly true," returned Fenton. "First-hand source. I ran across Rooke himself and it was he who told me. They're to be married very shortly, I believe."
Fell another awkward silence. Then:
"So old Rooke will be in the cart with the rest of us poor married men," observed Barry, whose lazy blue eyes had yet contrived to notice that Nan's slim fingers were nervously occupied in crumbling her bread into small pieces.
"In the car, rather," responded Ralph, "The lady is fabulously wealthy,I believe. Former husband, a steel magnate or something of the sort."
"Well, that will help Maryon in his profession," said Nan, "with a quiet composure that was rather astonishing. But, as usual, in a social crisis of this nature, she seemed able to control her voice, though her restless fingers betrayed her.
"Yes, presumably that's why he's marrying her," replied Ralph. "It can't be a case of love at first sight"—grimly.
"Isn't she pretty, then?" asked Penelope.
"Plain as a pikestaff"—with emphasis. "I've met her once or twice—Lady Beverley."
It appeared from the chorus which followed that everyone present knew her more or less.
"I should think she is plain!" exclaimed Kitty heartily.
"Yes, she'd need to be very well gilded," commented her husband.
"You're all rather severe, aren't you?" suggested Lord St. John."After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
"Not with an artist," asserted Nan promptly. "He can't see beauty where there isn't any."
To the depths of her soul she felt that this was true, and inwardly she recoiled violently from the idea of Maryon's marriage. She had been bitterly hurt by his treatment of her, but to a certain extent she had been able to envisage the whole affair from his point of view and to understand it.
A rising young artist, if he wishes to succeed, cannot afford to hamper himself with a wife and contend with the endless sordid details of housekeeping conducted on a necessarily economical scale. It slowly but surely deadens the artist in him—the delicate creative inspiration that is so easily smothered by material cares and worries. Nan refused to blame Maryon simply because he had not married her then and there. But she could not forgive him for deliberately seeking her out and laying on her that strange fascination of his when, in his own heart, he must have known that he would always ultimately place his art before love.
And that he should marry Lady Beverley, a thoroughly commonplace woman hung round with the money her late husband had bequeathed her, Maryon's very antithesis in all that pertained to the beautiful—this sickened her. It seemed to her as though he were yielding his birthright in exchange for a mess of pottage.
Where was his self-respect that he could do this thing? The high courage of the artist to conquer single-handed? Not only had he trampled on the love which he professed to have borne her—and which, in her innermost heart, she knew hehadborne her—but he was trampling on everything else in life that mattered. She felt that his projected marriage with Lady Beverley was like the sale of a soul.
When lunch was over, the whole party adjourned to the terrace for coffee, and as soon as she decently could after the performance of this sacred rite, Nan escaped into the rose-garden by herself, there to wrestle with the thoughts to which Ralph's carelessly uttered news had given rise.
They were rather bitter thoughts. She was aware of an odd sense of loss, for whatever may have come between them, no woman ever quite believes that the man who has once loved her will eventually marry some other woman. Whether it happens early or late, it is always somewhat of a shock. These marriages deal such a blow at faith in the deathlessness of love, and whether the woman herself is married or not, there remains always a secret and very tender corner in her heart for the man who, having loved her unavailingly, has still found no other to take her place even twenty or thirty years later.
Nan was conscious of an unspeakably deserted feeling. Maryon had gone completely out of her life; Peter, the man she loved, could never come into it; and the only man who strove for entrance was, as Penelope had said, the last man in the world to make her happy.
Nevertheless, it seemed as though with gentle taps and pushes Fate were urging them together—forcing her towards Roger so that she might escape from forbidden love and the desperate fear and pain of it.
And then she saw him coming—it seemed almost as though her thought had drawn him—coming with swift feet over the grassy slopes of the park, too eager to follow the winding carriage-way, while the fallow-deer bounded lightly aside at the sound of his footsteps, halting at a safe distance to regard the intruder with big, timorous, velvety eyes.
Nan paused in the middle of the rose-garden, where a stone sundial stood—grey and weather-beaten, its warning motto half obliterated by the tender touches of the years:
"Time flies. Remember that each breathBut wafts thy erring spirit nearer death."
Rather nervously, while she waited for Trenby to join her, she traced the ancient lettering with a slim forefinger. He crossed the lawn rapidly, pausing beside her, and without looking up she read aloud the grim couplet graven round the dial.
"That's a nice cheery motto," commented Trenby lightly. "They must have been a lugubrious lot in the good old days!"
"They weren't so afraid of facing the truth as we are," Nan made answer musingly. "I wonder why we always try to shut our eyes against the fact of death? . . . It's there waiting for us round the corner all the time."
"But there's life and love to come first," flashed out Roger.
Nan looked at him thoughtfully.
"Not for everyone," she said. Then suddenly: "Why are you here to-day,Roger? I told you to come on Monday."
"I know you did. But I couldn't wait. It was horrible, Nan, just getting a few words over the 'phone twice a day to say how you were. I had to see for myself."
His eyes sought her throat where the lash of the hunting-crop had wealed it. The mark had almost disappeared. With a sudden, passionate movement he caught her in his arms and pressed his lips against the faint scar.
"Nan!" he said hoarsely. "Nan, say 'yes'! Say it quickly!"
She drew away from him, freeing herself from the clasp of his arms.
"I'm not sure it is 'yes.' You must hear what I have to say first. You wouldn't listen the other day. But to-day, Roger, you must—youmust."
"You're not going to take back your promise?" he demanded jealously.
"It wasn't quite a promise, was it?" she said gently. "But it's for you to decide—when you know everything."
"Then I'll decide now," he answered quickly. "I want you—Nan, how I want you! I don't care anything at all about the past—I don't want to know anything—"
"But you must know"—steadily. "Perhaps when you know—you won't want me."
"I shall always want you."
Followed a pause. Then Nan, with an effort, said quietly:
"Do you want to marry a woman who has no love to give you?"
He drew a step nearer.
"I'll teach you how to love," he said unevenly. "I'll make you love me—love me as I love you."
"No, no," she answered. "You can't do that, Roger. You can't."
His face whitened. Then, with his piercing eyes bent on her as though to read her inmost thoughts, he asked:
"What do you mean? Is there—anyone else?"
"Yes." The answer came very low.
"And you care for him?"
She nodded.
"But we can never be anything to each other," she said, still in that same low, emotionless voice.
"Then—then—you'd grow to care—"
"No. I shall never care for anyone else again. That love has burnt up everything—like a fire." She paused. "You don't want to marry—an empty grate, do you?" she asked, with a sudden desperate little laugh.
Roger's arm drew her closer.
"Yes, I do. And I'll light another fire there and by its warmth we'll make our home together. I won't ask much, Nan dear—only to be allowed to love you and make you happy. And in time—in time, I'll teach you to love me in return and to forget the past. Only say yes, sweetheart! I'll keep you so safe—so safe!"
What magic is it teaches men how to answer the women they love—endows them with a quickness of perception denied them till the flame of love flares up within them, and doubly denied them should that flame burn low behind the bars of matrimony? Surely it must be some cunning wile of old Dame Nature's—whose chief concern is, after all, the continuation of the species. She it is who knows how to deck the peacock in fine feathers to the undoing of the plain little peahen, to crown the stag with the antlers of magnificence so that the doe's velvet eyes melt in adoration. And shall not the same wise old Dame know how to add a glamour to the sons of men when one of them goes forth to seek his mate?
Had Roger been just his normal self that afternoon—his matter-of-fact, imperceptive self—he would never have known how to answer Nan's half-desperate question, and the rose-garden might have witnessed a different ending to the scene. But Mother Mature was fighting on the side of this man-child of hers, whispering her age-old wisdom into his ears, and the tender comprehension of his answer fell like balm on Nan's sore heart.
"I'll keep you safe!"
It was safety she craved most of all—the safety of some stronger barrier betwixt herself and Peter. Once she were Roger's wife she knew she would be well-guarded. The barrier would be too high for her to climb, even though Peter called to her from the other side.
A momentary terror of giving up her freedom assailed her, and for an instant she wavered. Then she remembered her bargain with Fate—and if, finally, Roger were willing to take her when he knew everything, she would marry him.
Her hand crept out and slid into his big palm.
"Very well, Roger," she said quietly. "If—knowing everything—you still want me . . . I'll marry you."
And as his arms closed round her, crushing her in his embrace, she seemed to hear a distant sound like the closing of a door—the door of the forbidden might-have-been.
The usual shower of congratulations descended upon the heads of Nan and Roger when, on their return from the rose-garden, the news of their engagement filtered through the house-party and the little bunch of friends who had "dropped in" for tea, sure of the unfailing hospitality of Mallow Court. Those amongst the former who had deeper and more troubled thoughts about the matter were perforce compelled to keep them in abeyance for the time being.
It was only when the visitors had departed that Kitty succeeded in getting Nan alone for a few minutes.
"Are you quite—quite happy, Nan?" she asked somewhat wistfully.
Nan's eyes met hers with a blankness of expression which betrayed nothing.
"Yes, thank you. What a funny question to ask!" she responded promptly.
And Kitty felt as though she had laid her hand on the soft folds of a velvet curtain, only to come sharply up against a shutter of steel concealed beneath it.
In duty bound, however, she invited Trenby to remain for dinner, an invitation which he accepted with alacrity, and throughout the meal Nan was at her gayest and most sparkling. It seemed impossible to believe that all was not well with her, and if the brilliant mood were designed to prevent Penny from guessing the real state of affairs it was eminently successful. Even Lord St. John and the Seymours were almost persuaded into the belief that she was happy in her engagement. But as each and all of them were arguing from the false premise that the change in Nan had been entirely due to Rooke's treatment of her, they were inevitably very far from the truth.
That Peter was in love with Nan, Kitty was aware, but she knew nothing of that brief scene at the flat, interrupted by the delivery of Rooke's telegram, and during which, with hardly a word spoken, Nan had suddenly realised that Peter loved her and that she, too, returned his love. Perhaps had any of them known of that first meeting between the two, when Peter had come to Nan's rescue in Hyde Park and helped her to her journey's end, it might have gone far towards enlightening them, but neither Peter nor Nan had ever supplied any information on the subject. It almost seemed as though by some mental process of thought transference, each had communicated with the other and resolved to keep their secret—an invisible bond between them.
"You're not frightened, are you, Nan?" asked Roger, when the rest of the household had tactfully left them alone together a few minutes before his departure.
He spoke very gently and tenderly. Like most men, he was at his best just now, when he had so newly gained the promise of the woman he loved—rather humble, even a little awed at the great gift bestowed upon him, and thinking only of Nan and of what he would do to compass her happiness in the future when she should be his wife.
"No, I'm not frightened." replied Nan. "I think"—quietly—"I shall be so—safe—with you."
"Safe?"—emphatically. "I should think you would be safe! I'm strong enough to guard my wife from most dangers, I think!"
The violet-blue eyes meeting his held a somewhat weary smile. It was beginning already—that inevitable noncomprehension of two such divergent natures. They did not sense the same things—did not even speak the same language. Trenby took everything quite literally—the obvious surface meaning of the words, and the delicate nuances of speech, the significant inflections interwoven with it, meant about as much to him as the frail Venetian glass, the dainty porcelain figures of old Bristol or Chelsea ware, would mean to the proverbial bull in a china-shop.
"And now, sweetheart," he went on, rather conventionally, "when will you come to see my mother? She will be longing to meet you."
Nan shuddered inwardly. Of course she knew one alwaysdidultimately meet one's future mother-in-law, but the prompt and dutiful way in which Roger brought out his suggestion seemed like a sentence culled from some Early Victorian book. Certainly it was altogether alien to Nan's ultra-modern, semi-Bohemian notions.
"Suppose you come to lunch to-morrow? I should like you to meet her as soon as possible."
There was something just the least bit didactic in the latter part of the sentence, a hint of the proprietary note. Nan recoiled from it instinctively.
"No, not to-morrow," she exclaimed hastily. "I'm going over to see Aunt Eliza—Mrs. McBain, you know—and I can't put it off. I haven't been near her for a fortnight, and she'll he awfully offended if I don't go."
"Then it must be Tuesday," said Roger, with an air of making a concession.
Nan felt that nothing could save her from Tuesday, and agreed meekly. At the same moment, to her unspeakable relief, Kitty looked into the room to enquire gaily:
"Are you two still saying good-bye?"
Trenby rose reluctantly.
"No. We were just making arrangements about Nan's coming to the Hall to meet my mother. We've fixed it all up, so I must be off now."
It was with a curious sense of freedom regained that Nan watched the lights of Roger's car speed down the drive.
At least she was her own mistress again till Tuesday!
* * * * * *
Although Nan had conferred the brevet rank of aunt upon Eliza McBain, the latter was in reality only the sister of an uncle by marriage and no blood relation—a dispensation for which, at not infrequent intervals of Nan's career, Mrs. McBain had been led to thank the Almighty effusively. Born and reared in the uncompromising tenets of Scotch Presbyterianism, her attitude towards Nan was one of rigid disapproval—a disapproval that warred somewhat pathetically against the affection with which the girl's essential lovableness inspired her. For there was no gainsaying the charm of the Davenant women! But Eliza still remembered very clearly the sense of shocked dismay which, years ago, had overwhelmed her righteous soul on learning that her only brother, Andrew McDermot, had become engaged to one of the beautiful Davenant sisters.
In those days the insane extravagances and lawlessness of the Davenant family had become proverbial. There had been only three of them left to carry on the wild tradition—Timothy, Nan's father, who feared neither man nor devil, but could wile a bird off a tree or a woman's heart from her keeping, and his two sisters, whose beauty had broken more hearts than their kindness could ever mend. And not one of the three had escaped the temperamental heritage which Angèle de Varincourt had grafted on to a parent stem of dare-devil, reckless English growth.
The McDermots of Tarn, on the other hand, traced their descent in a direct line from one of the unbending old Scotch Covenanters of 1638, and it had always been a source of vague bewilderment to Eliza that a race sprang from so staunchly Puritan a stock should have been juggled by that inimitable trickster, Fate, into allying itself with a family in whose veins ran the hot French blood of the Varincourts.
Perhaps old Dame Nature in her garnered wisdom could have explained the riddle. Certain it was that no sooner had Andrew McDermot set eyes upon Gabrielle Davenant—sister to that Annabel whom Lord St. John had loved and married—than straightway the visions of his youth, in which he had pictured some staid and modest-seeming Scotswoman as his helpmeet, were swept away by an overwhelming Celtic passion of love and romance of which he had not dreamed that he could be possessed.
It was a meeting of extremes, and since Gabrielle had drooped and pined in the bleak northern castle where the lairds of Tarn had dwelt from time immemorial, McDermot laid even his ancestral home upon love's altar and, coming south, had bought Trevarthen Wood, a tree-girt, sheltered house no great distance from Mallow, though further inland.
But the change was made too late to accomplish its purpose of renewing Gabrielle's enfeebled health. Almost imperceptibly, with slow and kindly footsteps, Death had drawn daily nearer, until at last, quite happily and like a little child that is tired of playing and only wants to rest, Gabrielle slipped out of the world and her place knew her no more.
After his wife's death, McDermot had returned to his old home in Scotland and had reassumed his duties there as laird of the district, and when, later on, Death struck again, this time leaving his sister Eliza a widow in none too affluent circumstances, he had presented her with his Cornish home, glad to be rid of a place so haunted by poignant memories.
In such wise had Mrs. McBain and Sandy come to dwell in Cornwall, and since this, their third summer there, had brought his adored Nan Davenant once more to Mallow Court on a lengthy visit, Sandy's cup of joy was filled to the brim.
Mrs. McBain regarded her offspring from much the same standpoint as does a hen the brood of enterprising ducklings which, owing to some stratagem on the part of the powers that be, have hatched out from the eggs upon which she has been conscientiously sitting in the fond belief that they were those of her own species.
Sandy was a source of perpetual surprise to his mother, and of not inconsiderable anxiety. How she and the late Duncan McBain of entirely prosaic memory had contrived to produce more or less of a musical genius by way of offspring she had never been able to fathom. Neither parent had ever shown the slightest tendency in that direction, and it is very certain that had such a development manifested itself, they would have speedily set to work to correct it, regarding music—other than hymnal—as a lure of Satan.
They had indeed done their best for Sandy himself in that respect, negativing firmly his desire for proper musical tuition, with the result that now, at twenty years of age, he was a musician spoilt through lack of training. Most of his pocket-money in early days had been expended upon surreptitious violin lessons, and he had frequently practised for hours out of doors in the woods, at a distance from the house which secured the parental ear from outrage.
Since her husband's death, however, Eliza, chiding herself the while for her weakness, had yielded to a pulsing young enthusiasm that would not be denied, and music of a secular nature was permitted at Trevarthen—unchecked though disapproved.
Thus it came about that on the afternoon of Nan's visit Sandy was to be found zealously absorbed in the composition of a triumphal march. The blare of trumpets, the swinging tramp of marching men and the thunderous roll of drums—this last occurring very low down in the bass—were combining to fill the room with joyful noise when there came a light tap at the open French window and Nan herself stood poised on the threshold.
"Hullo, Sandy, what's that you're playing?"
Sandy sprang off the music stool, beaming with delight, and, seizing her by both arms, drew her rapturously into the room.
"You're the very person I want," he exclaimed without further greeting. "It's a march, and I don't know whether I like this modulation into D minor or not. Listen."
Nan obeyed, gave her opinion, and finally subsided rather listlessly into a low arm-chair.
"Give me a cigarette, Sandy. It's an awfully tiring walk here. IsAunt Eliza in? I hope she is, because I want some tea."
"She is. But I'd give you tea if she wasn't."
"And set the whole of St. Wennys gossiping! It wouldn't be proper, boy."
"Oh, yes, it would. I count as a kind of cousin, you know."
"All the same, Mrs. Petherick at the lodge would confide the information that we'd had tea alone together to Miss Penwarne at the Post Office, and in half an hour the entire village would be all agog to know when the subsequent elopement was likely to occur."
Sandy grinned. He had proposed to Nan several times already, only to be good-naturedly turned down.
"I'd supply a date with pleasure."
Nan shook her head at him.
"A man may not marry his grandmother."
He struck a match and held it while she lit her cigarette. Then, blowing out the flame, he enquired:
"Does that apply when she's only three years his senior?"
"Oh, Sandy, I'm aeons older than you. A woman always is.Besides"—her words hurrying a little—"I'm engaged already."
"Engaged?"
He dropped the dead match he was still holding and stared out of the window a moment. Then, squaring his shoulders, he said quietly:
"Who's the lucky beggar?"
"Roger Trenby."
Sandy's lips pursed themselves to whistle, but he checked himself in time and no sound escaped. Turning to Nan, he spoke with a gravity that sat strangely on him.
"Old girl, I hope you'll be very happy—the happiest woman in the world." But there was a look of dissatisfaction in his eyes which had nothing whatever to do with his own disappointment. He had known all along that he had really no chance with her.
"But we're pals, Nan—pals, just the same?" he went on.
She slipped her hand into his.
"Pals—always, Sandy," she replied.
"Thank you," he said simply. "And remember, Nan"—the boyish voice took on a note of earnestness—"if you're ever in need of a pal—-I'm here, mind."
Nan was conscious of a sudden sharp pain—like the stab of a nerve. The memory of just such another pledge swept over her: "I think I should always know if you were in trouble—and I should come." Only it had been uttered by a different voice—the quiet, drawling voice of Peter Mallory.
"Thank you, Sandy dear. I won't forget."
There was a faint weariness in her tones, despite the smile which accompanied them. Sandy's nice green eyes surveyed her critically, noting the slight hollowing of the outline of her cheek and the little tired droop of her lips as the smile faded.
"I tell you what it is," he said, "you're fagged out, tramping over here in all this heat. I'll ring and tell them to hurry up tea."
But before he could reach the bell a servant entered, bringing in the tea paraphernalia. Sandy turned abruptly to the piano, thrumming out a few desultory minor chords which probably gave his perturbed young soul a certain amount of relief, while Nan sat gazing with a half-maternal, half-humorous tenderness at the head of flaming red hair which had earned him his sobriquet.
"Weel, so ye've come to see me at last—or is it Sandy that you're calling on?"
The door had opened to admit Mrs. McBain—a tall, gaunt woman with iron-grey hair and shrewd, observant eyes that glinted with the grey flash of steel.
Nan jumped up at her entrance.
"Oh, Aunt Eliza? How are you? I should have been over to see you before, but there always seems to be something or other going on at Mallow."
"I don't doubt it—in yon house of Belial," retorted Mrs. McBain, presenting a chaste cheek to Nan's salute. The young red lips pressed against the hard-featured face curved into a smile. Nan was no whit in awe of her aunt's bitter tongue, and it was probably for this very reason that Mrs. McBain could not help liking her. Most sharp-spoken people appreciate someone who is not afraid to stand up to them, and Nan and Mrs. McBain had crossed swords in many a wordy battle.
"Are you applying the name of Belial to poor old Barry?" enquired Sandy with interest. "I don't consider he's half earned it."
"Barry Seymour's a puir weak fule and canna rule his ain hoose," came the curt answer.
Mrs. McBain habitually spoke as excellent English as only a Scotswoman can, but it pleased her on occasion to assume the Doric—much as a duchess may her tiara.
"Barry's a dear," protested Nan, "and he doesn't need to play at being master in his own house."
"I'm willing to believe you. That red-headed body is mistress and master too."
Sandy grinned.
"I consider that remark eminently personal. The hue of one's hair is a misfortune, not a fault," he submitted teasingly. "In Kitty you must at least allow that the red takes a more pleasing form than it does with me."
Mrs. McBain sniffed.
"You'll be tellin' me next that her hair's the colour God made it," she observed indignantly.
Sandy and Nan broke into laughter.
"Well, mine is, anyway," said the former. "It would never have been this colour if I'd had a say in the matter."
Eliza surveyed her offspring with disfavour.
"It's an ill thing, Sandy McBain, to question the ways of the Almighty who made you."
"I don't. It's you who seem far more disposed to disparage the completed article than I." He beamed at her seraphically.
Eliza's thin lips relaxed into an unwilling smile. Sandy was as equally the joy of her heart as he was the flagellation of her conscience.
"Well, I'll own you're the first of the McBains to go daft over music."
She handed a cup of tea to Nan as she spoke. Then asked;
"And how's your uncle, St. John?"
"He's at Mallow, too. We all are—Penelope and Uncle David, and RalphFenton—"
"And who may Mr. Fenton be? I've never met him—have I, Sandy?"
"No. He's a well-known singer Kitty's recently admitted into the fold."
"Do you mean he earns his living by singing at concerts?"
"Yes. And a jolly good living, too."
A shadow fell across Sandy's pleasant freckled face. It was a matter of unavailing regret to him that owing to his parents' prejudice against music and musicians he had been debarred from earning a living in like manner with his long, capable fingers. Eliza saw the shadow, and her brows contracted in a slight frown. Vaguely she was beginning to realise some small part of the suffering which the parental restriction had imposed upon her son—the perpetual irritation of a thwarted longing which it had entailed. But she had not yet advanced sufficiently along the widening road of thought to grasp the pitiful, irreparable waste it had involved of a talent bordering on genius.
She pursed her lips obstinately together.
"There'll come no blessing with money that's earned by mere pleasuring," she averred.
"If you only knew what hard work it means to be a successful musician, Aunt Eliza, you'd be less drastic in your criticism," interposed Nan, with warmth.
Eliza's shrewd eyes twinkled.
"You work hard, don't you, my dear?" she observed drily.
Nan laughed, colouring a little.
"Perhaps I should work harder if Uncle David didn't spoil me so. You know he's increased my allowance lately?"
Eliza snorted indignantly.
"I always kent he was mair fulish than maist o' his sex."
"It's rather an endearing kind of foolishness," remarked Sandy.
His mother eyed him sharply.
"We're not put into the world to be endearing," she retorted, "but to do our duty."
"It might be possible to combine both," suggested Sandy.
"Well, you're not the one to do it," she answered grimly. "And what's Penelope doing?" she continued, turning to Nan. "She's more sense than the rest of ye put together, for all she's so daft about music."
"Penelope," said Sandy solemnly, "is preparing to enter upon the duties and privileges of matrimony."
"What may you mean by that?"
Sandy stirred his tea while Eliza waited impatiently for his answer.
"She's certainly 'walking out,'" he maintained.
"And that's by no means the shortest road to matrimony," snapped Eliza. "My cook's been walking out with the village carpenter ever since she came to St. Wennys, but she's no nearer a wedding ring than she was twelve months ago."
"I think," observed Sandy gravely, "that greater success will attend Penelope's perambulations. Kitty was so cock-a-hoop over it that she couldn't refrain from 'phoning the good news on Sunday morning. I meant to tell you when you came back from church, but clean forgot."
"And who's the man?"
"Penelope's young man? Oh, Ralph Fenton, the fellow who makes 'pleasuring' pay so uncommonly well. He's been occupying an ignominious position at the wheels of Penelope's chariot ever since they both came to Mallow. I think Kitty Seymour would make a matrimonial agentpar excellence—young men and maidens introduced under the most favourable circumstances andnofee when suited!"—Sandy flourished his arms expressively.
"And if she could find a good, sensible lassie to tak' ye in hand,Sandy McBain, I'd no be grudgin' a fee."
"No good, mother of mine. I lost my heart to Nan here too long ago, and now"—with a lightness of tone that effectually concealed his feelings—"not to be outdone by Penny, she herself has gone and got engaged. So I shall live and die alone."
"And what like is the man ye've chosen?" demanded Eliza, turning toNan. "Not another of these music-daft creatures, I hope?"
"I think you'll quite approve, Aunt Eliza," answered Nan with a becoming meekness. "I'm engaged to marry Roger Trenby."
"Well, I hope ye'll be happier than maist o' the married folks I ken.Eh!"—with a chuckle—"but Roger's picked a stick for his own back!"
Nan smiled.
"Do you think I'll be so bad to live with, then?"
"'Tisn't so much that you'll be bad with intent. But you're that Varincourt woman's own great-grand-daughter. Not that ye can help it, and I'm no blamin' ye for it. But 'tis wild blood!"
Nan rose, laughing, and kissed her aunt.
"After such a snub as that, I think I'd better take myself off. It's really time I started, as I'm walking."
"Let me run you back in the car," suggested Sandy eagerly.
"No, thanks. I'm taking the short cut home through the woods."
Sandy accompanied her down the drive. At the gates he stopped abruptly.
"Nan," he said quietly. "Is it quite O.K. about your engagement?You'll be really happy with Trenby?"
Nan paused a moment. Then she spoke, very quietly and with a touch of cynicism quite foreign to the fresh, sweet outlook upon life which had been hers before she had ever met Maryon Rooke.
"I don't suppose I should be really happy with anyone, Sandy. I want too much. . . . But it's quite O.K. and you needn't worry."
With a parting nod she started off along the ribbon of road which wound its way past the gates of Trevarthen Wood, and then, dipping into the valley, climbed the hill beyond and lost itself in the broad highway of light which shimmered from the western sky. Presently she turned aside from the road and, scrambling through a gap in a stone wall, plunged into the cool shadows of the woods. A heavy rain had fallen during the night, soaking the thirsty earth, and the growing green things were all responsively alive and vivid once again, while the clean, pleasant smell of damp soil came fragrantly to her nostrils.
Though she tramped manfully along, Nan found her progress far from swift, for the surface of the ground was sticky and sodden after the rain. Her boots made soft little sucking sounds at every step. Nor was she quite sure of her road back to Mallow by way of the woods. She had been instructed that somewhere there ran a tiny river which she must cross by means of a footbridge, and then ascend the hill on the opposite side. "And after that," Barry had told her, "you can't lose yourself if you try."
But prior to that it seemed a very probable contingency, and she was beginning to weary of plodding over the boggy land, alternately slapped by outstanding branches or—when a little puff of wind raced overhead—drenched by a shower of garnered raindrops from some tree which seemed to shake itself in the breeze just as a dog may shake himself after a plunge in the sea, and with apparently the same intention of wetting you as much as possible in the process.
At last from somewhere below came the sound of running water, and Nan bent her steps hopefully in its direction. A few minutes' further walking brought her to the head of a deep-bosomed coombe, and the mere sight of it was almost reward enough for the difficulties of the journey. A verdant cleft, it slanted down between the hills, the trees on either side giving slow, reluctant place to big boulders, moss-bestrewn and grey, while athwart the tall brown trunks which crowned it, golden spears, sped by the westering sun, tremulously pierced the summer dusts.
Nan made her way down the coombe's steep side with feet that slipped and slid on the wet, shelving banks of mossy grass. But at length she reached the level of the water and here her progress became more sure. Further on, she knew, must be the footbridge which Barry had described—probably beyond the sharp curve which lay just ahead of her. She rounded the bend, then stopped abruptly, startled at seeing the figure of a man standing by the bank of the river. He had his back towards her and seemed engrossed in his thoughts. Almost instantly, however, as though subconsciously aware of her approach, he turned.
Nan stood quite still as he came towards her, limping a little. She felt that if she moved she must surely stumble and fall. The beating of her heart thundered in her ears and for a moment the river, and the steep sides of the coombe, and the figure of Peter Mallory himself all seemed to grow dim and vague as though seen through a thick mist.
"Nan!"
The dear, familiar voice, with an ineffable tenderness in its slow drawl, reached her even through the thrumming beat of her heart.
"Peter—oh, Peter—"
Her voice failed her, and the next moment they were shaking hands conventionally just as though they were two quite ordinary people with whom love had nothing to do.
"I didn't know you were coming to-day," she said, making a fierce effort to regain composure.
"I wired Kitty on the train. Hasn't she had the telegram?"
"Yes, I expect so. Only I've been out all afternoon, so knew nothing about it. And now I've lost my way!"
"Lost your way?"
"Yes. I expected to find a footbridge round the corner."
"It's round the next one. I sent the car on with my kit, and thought I'd walk up from the station. So we're both making for the same bridge. It's only about two minutes' walk from here."
They strolled on side by side, Peter rather silent, and each of them vibrantly conscious of the other's nearness. Suddenly Mallory pulled up and a quick exclamation broke from him as he pointed ahead.
"We're done! The bridge is gone!"
Nan's eyes followed the direction of his hand. Here the river ran more swiftly, and swollen by last nights storm of wind and rain, it had swept away the frail old footbridge which spanned it. Only a few decayed sticks and rotten wooden stumps remained of what had once been known as the Lovers' Bridge—the trysting place of who shall say how many lovers in the days of its wooden prime?
Somehow a tinge of melancholy seemed to hang about the few scraps of wreckage. How many times the little bridge must have tempted men and maidens to linger of a summer evening, dreaming the big dreams of youth—visions which the spreading wings of Time bear away into the Land of Lost Desires. Perhaps some kind hand garners them—those tender, wonderful, courageous dreams of our wise youth and keeps them safely for us against the Day of Reckoning, so that they may weight the scales a little in our favour.
Peter stood looking down at the scattered fragments of the bridge with an odd kind of gravity in his eyes. It seemed a piece of trenchant symbolism that the Lovers' Bridge should break when he and Nan essayed to cross it. There was a slight, whimsical smile, which held something of pain, on his lips when he turned to her again.
"I shall have to carry you across," he said.
She shook her head.
"No, thanks. You might drop me. I can wade over."
"It's too deep for you to do that. I won't let you drop."
But Nan still hesitated. She was caught by sudden panic. She felt that she couldn't let Peter—Peter, of all men in the world—carry her in his arms!
"It isn't so deep higher up, is it?" she suggested. "I could wade there."
"No, it's not so deep, but the river bed is very stony. You'd cut your feet to pieces."
"Then I suppose you'll have to carry me," she agreed at last, with obvious reluctance.
"I promise I won't drop you," he assured her quietly.
He gathered her up into his arms, and as he lifted her the rough tweed of his coat brushed her cheek. Then, holding her very carefully, he stepped down from the bank into the stream and began to make his way across.
Nan had no fear that he might let her fall. The arms that held her felt pliant and strong as steel, and their clasp about her filled her with a strange, new ecstasy that thrilled her from head to foot. It frightened her.
"Am I awfully heavy?" she asked, nervously anxious to introduce some element of commonplace.
And Peter, looking down at the delicately angled face which lay against his shoulder, drew his breath hard.
"No," he answered briefly. "You're not heavy."
There was that in his gaze which brought the warm colour into her face. Her lids fell swiftly, veiling her eyes, and she turned her face quickly towards his shoulder. All that remained visible was the edge of the little turban hat she wore and, below this, a dusky sweep of hair against her white skin.
He went on in silence, conscious in every fibre of his being of the supple body gathered so close against his own, of the young, sweet, clean-cut curve of her cheek, and of the warmth of her hair against his shoulder. He jerked his head aside, his mouth set grimly, and crossed quickly to the other bank of the river.
As he let her slip to the ground, steadying her with his arms about her, he bent swiftly and for an instant his lips just brushed her hair. Nan scarcely felt the touch of his kiss, it fell so lightly, but she sensed it through every nerve of her. Standing in the twilight, shaken and clutching wildly after her self-control, she knew that if he touched her again or took her in his arms, she would yield helplessly—gladly!
Peter knew it, too, knew that the merest thread of courage and self-respect kept them apart. His arms strained at his sides. Forcing his voice to an impersonal, level tone, he said practically:
"It's getting late. Come on, little pal, we must make up time, or they'll be sending out a search party for us from Mallow."
It was late in the evening before Nan and Peter found themselves alone together again. Everyone was standing about in the big hall exchanging good nights and last snippets of talk before taking their several ways to bed. Peter drew Nan a little to one side.
"Nan, is it true that you're engaged to Trenby?" he asked.
"Quite true." She had to force the answer to her lips. Mallory's face was rather stern.
"Why didn't you tell me this afternoon?"
"I—I couldn't, Peter," she said, under her breath. "I couldn't."
His face still wore that white, unsmiling look. But he drew Nan's shaking hands between his own and held them very gently as he put his next question.
"You don't care for him." It was more an assertion, than a question, though it demanded a reply.
"No."
His grasp of her hands tightened.
"Then, for God's sake, don't make the same hash of your life as I made of mine. Believe me, Nan"—his voice roughened—"it's far worse to be married to someone you don't love than to remain unmarried all your days."
"I am very glad to meet you, my dear."
The frosty voice entirely failed to confirm the sense of the words as Lady Gertrude Trenby bent forward and imprinted a somewhat chilly kiss on Nan's cheek.
She was a tall woman, thin and aristocratic-looking, with a repressive manner that inspired her domestic staff with awe and her acquaintances with a nervous anxiety to placate her.
Nan shrank sensitively, and glanced upward to see if there were anything in her future mother-in-law's face which might serve to contradict the coldness of her greeting. But there was nothing. It was a stern, aquiline type of face, with a thin-lipped mouth and hard, obstinate chin, and the iron-grey hair, dressed in a high, stiff fashion, which suggested that no single hair would ever be allowed to stray from its lawful place, seemed to emphasise its severity.
The chilly welcome, then, was intentional—not the result of shyness or a natural awkwardness with strangers. Lady Gertrude was perfectly composed, and Nan felt an inward conviction that the news of Roger's engagement had not met with her approval. Perhaps she resented the idea of relinquishing the reins of government at Trenby Hall in favour of a daughter-in-law. It was quite possible, few mothers of sons who have retained their bachelorhood as long as Roger enjoy being relegated to the position of dowager. They have reigned too long to relish abdication.
As Nan replied conventionally to Lady Gertrude's greeting, some such thoughts as these flashed fugitively through her mind, and with them came a rather tender, girlish determination, to make the transition as easy as possible to the elder woman when the time came for it. The situation made a quick appeal to her eager sympathies. She could imagine so exactly how she herself would detest it if she were in the other woman's position. Somewhat absorbed in this line of thought, she followed her hostess into a stiff and formal-looking drawing-room which conveyed the same sense of frigidity as Lady Gertrude's welcome.
There are some rooms you seem to know and love almost the moment you enter them, while with others you feel that you will never get on terms of friendliness. Nan suddenly longed for the dear, comfortable intimacy of the panelled hall at Mallow, with its masses of freshly-cut flowers making a riot of colour against the dark oak background, its Persian rugs dimmed to a mellow richness by the passage of time, and the sweet, "homey" atmosphere of it all.
Behind her back she made a desperate little gesture to Roger that he should follow her, but he shook his head laughingly and went off in another direction, thinking in his unsubtle mind that this was just the occasion for his mother and his future wife to get well acquainted.
He felt sure that Nan's charm would soon overcome the various objections which Lady Gertrude had raised to the engagement when he had first confided his news to her. She had not minced matters.
"But, my dear Roger, from all I've heard, Nan Davenant is a most unsuitable woman to be your wife. For one thing, she is, I believe, a professional pianist." The thin lips seemed to grow still thinner as they propounded the indictment.
Most people, nowadays, would have laughed outright, but Roger, being altogether out of touch with the modern attitude towards such matters, regarded his mother's objection as quite a normal and reasonable one. It must be overcome in this particular instance, that was all.
"But, of course, Nan will give up everything of that kind when she's my wife," he asserted confidently. And quite believed it, since he had a touching faith in the idea that a woman can be "moulded" by her husband.
"Roger has rather taken me by surprise with the news of his engagement," said Lady Gertrude, after she and Nan had exchanged a few laboured platitudes. "Do you think you will be happy with him? We live a very simple country existence here, you know."
To Nan, the use of the word "we" sounded rather as though she were proposing to marry the family.
"Oh, I like country life very much," she replied. "After all, you can always vary the monotony by running up to town or going abroad, can't you?"
"I don't think Roger cares much for travelling about. He is extremely attached to his home. We have always made everything so easy and comfortable for him here, you see," responded Lady Gertrude, with a certain significance.
Nan surmised she was intended to gather that it would be her duty to make everything "so easy and comfortable" for him in the future! She almost smiled. Most of the married men she knew were kept busy seeing that everything was made easy and comfortable for their wives.
"Still," continued Lady Gertrude, "there could be no objection to your making an occasional trip to London."
She had a dry, decisive method of speech which gave one the impression she was well accustomed to laying down the law—and that her laws were expected to remain unbroken. The "occasional trip to London" sounded bleakly in Nan's ears. Still, she argued, Lady Gertrude would only be her mother-in-law—and she was sure she could "manage" Roger. There is a somewhat pathetic element in the way in which so many people light-heartedly enter into marriage, the man confident in his ability to "mould" his wife, the woman never doubting her power to "manage" him. It all seems quite simple during the adaptable period of engagement, when romance spreads a veil of glamour over the two people concerned, effectually concealing for the time being the wide gulf of temperament that lies between them. It is only after the knot has been tied that the unlooked-for difficulties of managing and moulding present themselves.
Nan found it increasingly difficult to sustain her side of the conversation with Lady Gertrude. The latter's old-fashioned views clashed violently with her own modern ones, and there seemed to be no mutual ground upon which they could meet. Like her son, Lady Gertrude clung blindly to the narrow outlook of a bygone period, and her ideas of matrimony were based strictly upon the English Marriage Service.
She had not realised that the Great War had created a different world from the one she had always known, and that women had earned their freedom as individuals by sharing the burden of the war side by side with men. Nor had Roger infused any fresh ideas into her mind on his return from serving in the Army. He had volunteered immediately war broke out, his sense of duty and loyalty to his country being as sturdy as his affection for every foot of her good brown earth he had inherited. But he was not an impressionable man, and when peace finally permitted him to return to his ancestral acres, he settled down again quite happily into the old routine at Trenby Hall.
So it was hardly surprising that Lady Gertrude had remained unchanged, expecting and requiring that the world should still run smoothly on—without even a side-slip!—in the same familiar groove as that to which she had always been accustomed. This being so, it was quite clear to her that Nan would require a considerable amount of tutelage before she was fit to be Roger's wife. And she was equally prepared to give it.
In some inexplicable manner her attitude of mind conveyed itself to Nan, and the latter was rebelliously conscious of the older woman's efforts to dominate her. It came as an inexpressible relief when at last their tête-à-tête was interrupted.
Through the closed door Nan could hear Roger's voice. He was evidently engaged in cheerful conversation with someone in the hall outside—a woman, from the light trill of laughter which came in response to some remark of his—and a moment later the door opened and Nan could see his head and shoulders towering above those of the woman who preceded him into the room.
"Isobel, my dear!"
For the first time since the beginning of their interview Nan heard Lady Gertrude's voice soften to a more human note. Turning to Nan she continued, still in the same affectionate tone of voice:
"This is my niece, Isobel Carson—though she is really more like a daughter to me."
"So it looks as though we shall be sisters!" put in the newcomer lightly. "Really"—with a quick, bird-like glance, that included everyone in the room—"our relationships will get rather mixed up, won't they?"
She held out a rather claw-like little hand for Nan to shake, and the unexpectedly tense and energetic grip of it was somewhat surprising. She was a small, dark creature with bright, restless brown eyes set in a somewhat sallow face—its sallowness the result of several husband-hunting years spent in India, where her father had held a post in the Indian Civil Service.
It was one of those rather incomprehensible happenings of life that she had been left still blooming on her virgin stem. It would have been difficult to guess her exact age. She owned to thirty-four, and a decade ago, when she had first joined her father in India, she must have possessed a certain elfish prettiness of her own. Now, thanks to those years spent under a tropical sun, she was a trifle faded and passée-looking.
Following upon the advent of Roger and his cousin the conversation became general for a few minutes, then Lady Gertrude drew her son towards a French window opening on to the garden—a garden immaculately laid out, with flower-beds breaking the expanse of lawn at just the correct intervals—and eventually she and Roger passed out of the room to discuss with immense seriousness the shortcomings of the gardener as exemplified in the shape of one of the geranium beds.
"Youwon't like it here!" observed Isobel Carson rather bluntly, when the two girls were left alone.
"Why shouldn't I?" Nan smiled.
"Because you won't fit in at all. You'll be like a rocket battering about in the middle of a set piece."
Isobel lacked neither brains nor observation, though she had been wise enough to conceal both these facts from Lady Gertrude.
"Don't you like it here, then?"
Isobel regarded her thoughtfully, as though speculating how far she dared be frank.
"Of course I like it. But it's Hobson's choice with me," she replied rather grimly. "When my father died I was left with very little money and no special training. Result—I spent a hateful year as nursery governess to a couple of detestable brats. Then Aunt Gertrude invited me here on a visit—and that visit has prolonged itself up till the present moment. She finds me very useful, you know," she added cynically.
"Yes, I suppose she does," answered Nan, with some embarrassment. She felt no particular desire to hear a resume of Miss Carson's past life. There was something in the girl which repelled her.
As though she sensed the other's distaste to the trend the conversation had taken, Miss Carson switched briskly off to something else, and by the time Lady Gertrude returned with Roger, suggesting that they should go in to lunch, Nan had forgotten that odd feeling of repulsion which Isobel had first aroused in her, and had come to regard her as "quite a nice little thing who had had rather a rotten time."
This was the impression Lady Gertrude's niece contrived to make on most people. It suited her very well and secured her many gifts and pleasures which would not otherwise have come her way. She had accepted her aunt's invitation to stay at Trenby Hall rather guardedly in the first instance, but when, as the visit drew towards its end, Lady Gertrude had proposed that she should make her home there altogether, she had jumped at the offer.
She speedily discovered that she and Trenby had many tastes in common, and with the sharp instinct of a woman who has tried hard to achieve a successful marriage and failed, there appeared to her no reason why in this instance "something should not come of it"—to use the time-honoured phrase which so delicately conveys so much. And but for the fact that Nan Davenant was staying at Mallow, something might have come of it! Since community of tastes is responsible for many a happy and contented marriage.
Throughout the time she had lived at Trenby Hall, Isobel had contrived to make herself almost indispensable to Roger. If a "damned button" flew off his coat, she was always at hand with needle and thread, and a quaint carved ivory thimble crowning one small finger, to sew it on again. Or should his dress tie decline to adorn his collar in precisely the proper manner, those nimble, claw-like little fingers could always produce a well-tied bow in next to no time. It was Isobel who found all the things which, manlike, he so constantly mislaid, who tramped over the fields with him, interesting herself in all the outdoor side of his life, and she was almost as good at landing a trout as he himself.
There seemed small likelihood of Roger's going far afield in search of a wife, so that Isobel had not apprehended much danger to her hopes—more especially as she had a shrewd idea that Lady Gertrude would look upon the marriage with the selfish approval of a woman who gains a daughter without losing the services of a niece who is "used to her ways."
Such a union need not even upset existing arrangements. Isobel had learned by long experience how to "get on" amicably with her autocratic relative, and the latter could remain—as her niece knew very well she would wish to remain at Trenby Hall, still nominally its chatelaine.
Lady Gertrude and Isobel had never been frequent visitors at Mallow, and it had so happened that neither they, nor Roger on the rare occasions when he was home on leave from the Front, had chanced to meet Nan Davenant during her former visits to Mallow Court.
Now that she had seen her, Isobel's ideas were altogether bouleversée. Never for a single instant would she have imagined that a woman of Nan's type—artistic, emotional, elusive—could attract a man like Roger Trenby. The fact remained, however, that Nan had succeeded where hitherto she herself had failed, and Isobel's dreams of a secure future had come tumbling about her ears. She realised bitterly that love is like quicksilver, running this way or that at its own sweet will—and rarely into the channel we have ordained for it.