A sense of bustle and mild excitement pervaded Trenby Hall. The hounds were to meet some distance away, and on a hunting morning it invariably necessitated the services of at least two of the menservants and possibly those of an observant maid—who had noted where last he had left his tobacco pouch—to get Roger off successfully.
"My hunting boots, Jenkins!" he demanded as he issued from the library. "And look sharp with them! Flask and sandwich-case—that's right." He busied himself bestowing these two requisites in his pockets.
Nan, cool and unperturbed; joined him in the hall, a small, amused smile on her face. She had stayed at Trenby long enough by now to be well used to the cyclone which habitually accompanied Roger's departure to the meet, and the boyish unreasonableness of it—seeing that the well-trained servants invariably had everything in readiness for him—rather appealed to her. He was like a big, overgrown school-boy returning to school and greatly concerned as to whether his cricket-bat and tuck-box were safely included amongst his baggage.
"You, darling?" Roger nodded at her perfunctorily, preoccupied with the necessities of the moment. "Now, have I got my pipe?"—slapping his pockets to ascertain. To miss his customary pipe as he trotted leisurely home after the day's hunting was unthinkable. "Matches! I've no matches! Here, Morton"—to the butler who was standing by with Roger's hunting-crop in his hand. "Got any matches?"
Morton produced a box at once. He had been in Roger's service from boyhood, fought side by side with him in Flanders, and no demand of his master's had yet found him unprepared. Nan was wont to declare that had Roger requested the Crown jewels, Morton would have immediately produced them from his pocket.
Outside, a groom was patiently walking a couple of horses up and down. Quivering, velvety nostrils snuffed the keen air while gleaming black hoofs danced gently on the gravel drive, executing little side steps of excitement—for no hunting day comes round but that in some mysterious way the unerring instinct of the four-legged hunter acquaints him of the fact. Further along clustered the pack, the hounds padding restlessly here and there, but kept within bounds by the occasional crack of a long-lashed crop or a gruff command from one of the whips.
Nan was always conscious of a curious intermingling of feeling when, as now, she watched Roger ride away at the head of his hounds. The day she had almost lost her life at the kennels recurred to her mind inevitably—those moments of swift and terrible danger when it seemed as though nothing could save her. And with that memory came another—the memory of Roger flinging himself forward to the rescue, forcing back with bare hands the great hound which had attacked her. A quick thrill—the thrill of primitive woman—ran through her at the recollection. No woman can remain unmoved by physical courage—more especially if it is her own imperative need which has called it forth.
That was the side of Roger which she liked best to dwell upon. But she was rapidly learning that he had other less heroically attractive sides. No man who has been consistently spoiled and made much of by a couple of women is likely to escape developing a certain amount of selfishness, and Nan had already discovered that Roger was somewhat inclined to play the autocrat. As he grew accustomed to her presence in the house he settled down more or less tranquilly into the normal ways of existence, and sometimes, when things went awry, he would lose his temper pretty badly, as is the natural way of man.
Unfortunately, Nan's honest endeavours to get on better terms with her future mother-in-law met with no success. Lady Gertrude had presented an imperturbably polite and hostile front almost from the moment of the girl's arrival at the Hall. Even at dinner the first evening, she had cast a disapproving eye upon Nan's frock—a diaphanous little garment in black: with veiled gleams of hyacinth and gold beneath the surface and apparently sustained about its wearer by a thread of the same glistening hyacinth and gold across each slender shoulder.
With the quickness of a squirrel Isobel Carson, demurely garbed as befitted a poor relative, noted the disapprobation conveyed by Lady Gertrude's sweeping glance.
"I suppose that's what they're wearing now in town?" she asked conversationally of Nan across the table.
Roger looked up and seeing the young, privet-white throat and shoulders which gleamed above the black, smiled contentedly.
"It's jolly pretty, isn't it?" he rejoined, innocently unaware that any intention lurked behind his cousin's query.
"It might be—if there were more of it," said Lady Gertrude icily. She had not failed to notice earlier that Nan was wearing the abbreviated skirt of the moment—though in no way an exaggerated form of it—revealing delectable shoes and cobwebby stockings which seemed to cry out a gay defiance to the plain and serviceable footgear which she herself affected.
"It does look just a tiny bit daring—in the country," murmured Isobel deprecatingly. "You see, we're used to such quiet fashions here."
"I don't think anything can be much quieter than black," replied Nan evenly.
There for the moment the matter rested, but the next day Roger had asked her, rather diffidently, if she couldn't find something plainer to wear in an evening.
"I thought you liked the dress," she countered.
"Well—yes. But—"
"But your mother has been talking t0 you about it? Is that it?"
Roger nodded.
"Even Isobel thought it a little outré for country wear," he said eagerly, making matters worse instead of better, in the blundering way a man generally contrives to do when he tries to settle a feminine difference of opinion.
Nan's foot tapped the floor impatiently and a spark of anger lit itself in her eyes.
"I don't think my choice of clothes has anything to do with MissCarson," she answered sharply.
"No, sweetheart, of course it hasn't, really. But I know you'd like to please my mother—and she's not used to these new styles, you see."
He stumbled on awkwardly, then drew her into his arms and kissed her.
"To please me—wear something else," he said. Although unformulated even to himself, Roger's creed was of the old school. He quite honestly believed that a woman's chief object in life was to please her male belongings, and it seemed to him a perfectly good arrangement.
Not to please him, but because she was genuinely anxious to win Lady Gertrude's liking, Nan yielded. Perhaps if she conceded this particular point it would pave the way towards a better understanding.
"Very well," she said, smiling. "That especial frock shan't appear again while I'm down here. But it's a duck of a frock, really, Roger!"—with a feminine sigh of regret.
She was to find, however, as time went on, that there were very many other points over which she would have to accept Lady Gertrude's rulings. Punctuality at meals was regarded at Trenby Hall as one of the laws of the Medes and Persians, and Nan, accustomed to the liberty generally accorded a musician in such matters, failed on more than one occasion to appear at lunch with the promptness expected of her.
In the West Parlour—-a sitting-room which Lady Gertrude herself never used—there was a fairly good piano, and here Nan frequently found refuge, playing her heart out in the welcome solitude the room afforded. Inevitably she would forget the time, remaining entirely oblivious of such mundane things as meals. Then she would be sharply recalled to the fact that she had committed an unforgivable sin by receiving a stately message from Lady Gertrude to the effect that they were waiting lunch for her.
On such occasions Nan sometimes felt that it was almost a physical impossibility to enter that formal dining-room and face the glacial disapproval manifest on Lady Gertrude's face, the quick glance of condolence which Isobel would throw her—and which always somehow filled her with distrust—and the irritability which Roger was scarcely able to conceal.
Roger's annoyance was generally due to the veiled criticism which his mother and cousin contrived to exude prior to her appearance. Nothing definite—an intonation here, a double-edged phrase there—but enough to show him that his future wife fell far short of the standard Lady Gertrude had in mind for her. It nettled him, and accordingly he felt irritated with Nan for giving his mother a fresh opportunity for disapprobation.
They were all unimportant things—these small jars and clashes of habit and opinion. But to Nan, who had been used to such absolute freedom, they were like so many links of a chain which held and chafed her. She fretted under them as a caged bird frets. Gradually, too, she was awakening to the limitations of the life which would be hers when she married Roger, realising that, much as he loved her, he was quite unable to supply her with either the kind of companionship or the mental stimulus her temperament craved and which the little coterie of clever, brilliant people who had been her intimates in town had given her in full measure. The Trenbys' circle of friends interested her not at all. The men mostly of the sturdy, sporting type, bored her ineffably, and she found the women, with their perpetual local gossip and discussion of domestic difficulties, dull and uninspiring. Of the McBains, unfortunately, she saw very little, owing to the distance, between the Hall and Trevarthen Wood.
It was, therefore, with a cry of delight that she welcomed Sandy, who arrived in his two-seater shortly after Roger had ridden off to the meet. Lady Gertrude and Isobel had already gone out together, bent upon some parochial errand in the village, so that Nan was alone with her thoughts. And they were not particularly pleasant ones.
"Sandy!" She greeted him with outstretched hands. "You angel boy! I wasn't even hoping to see you for another few weeks or so."
"Just this minute arrived—thought it about time I looked you up again," returned Sandy cheerfully. "I met Trenby about a mile away and scattered his horses and hounds to the four winds of heaven with my stink-pot."
"Yes," agreed Nan reminiscently. "Why does your car smell so atrociously, Sandy?"
"It's only in slow movements—never in a presto. That's why I'm always getting held up for exceeding the speed limit. I'm bound to let her rip—out of consideration to the passersby."
"Well, I'm awfully glad you felt moved to come over here this morning.I'm—I'm rather fractious to-day, I think. Do you suppose LadyGertrude will ask you to stay to lunch?"
"I hope so. But as it's only about ten-thirty a.m., lunch is merely a futurist dream at present."
"I know. I wonder why there are such enormous intervals between meals in the country?" said Nan speculatively. "In town there's never any time to get things in and meals are a perfect nuisance. Here they seem to be the only breaks in the day."
"That," replied Sandy sententiously, "is because you're leading an idle existence. You're not doing anything—so of course there's no time to do it in."
"Not doing anything? Well, what is there to do?" She flung out her hands with an odd little gesture of hopelessness. "Besides, I am doing something—I learned how to make puddings yesterday, and to-morrow I'm to be initiated into soup jellies—you know, the kind of stuff you trot around to old women in the village at Christmas time."
"Can't the cook make them?"
"Of course she can. But Lady Gertrude is appalled at my lack of domestic knowledge—so soup jellies it has to be."
Sandy regarded her thoughtfully. She seemed spiritless, and the charming face held a gravity that was quite foreign to it. In the searching winter sunlight he could even discern one or two faint lines about the violet-blue eyes, while the curving mouth, with its provocative short upper lip, drooped rather wearily at its corners.
"You're bored stiff," he told her firmly. "Why don't you run up to town for a few days and see your pals there?"
Nan shrugged her shoulders.
"For the excellent reason that half of them are away, or—or married or something."
Only a few days previously she had seen the announcement of Maryon Rooke's marriage in the papers, and although the fact that he was married had now no power to wound her, it was like the snapping of yet another link with that happy, irresponsible, Bohemian life which she and Penelope had shared together.
"Sandy"—she spoke impetuously. "After I'm—married, I don't think I shall ever go to London again. It would be like peeping into heaven. Then the door would slam and I'd come back—here! I'm out of it now—out of everything. The others will all go on singing and playing and making books and pictures—right in the heart of it all. While I shall be stuck away here . . . by myself . . . making soup jellies!"
She sprang up and walked restlessly to the window, staring out at the undulating meadowland.
"I'm sick of the sight of those fields!" she exclaimed almost violently. "The same deadly dull green fields day after day. If—if one of them would only turn pink for a change it would be a relief!" Her breath caught in a strangled sob.
Sandy followed her to the window.
"Look here, Nan, you can't go on like this." There was an unaccustomed decision in his tones; the boyish inflection had gone. It was a man who was speaking, and determinedly, too. "You've no business to be everlastingly gazing at green fields. You ought to be turning 'em into music so that the people who've got only bricks and mortar to stare at can get a whiff of them."
Nan gazed at him in astonishment—at this new, surprising Sandy who was talking to her with the forcefulness of a man ten years his senior.
"As for being 'out of it,' as you say," he went on emphatically. "If you are, it's only by your own consent. Anyone who writes as you can need never be out of it. If you'd only do the big stuff you're capable of doing, you'd be 'in it' right enough—half the time confabbing with singers and conductors, and the other half glad to get back to your green fields and the blessed quiet. If you were like me, now—not a damn bit of good because I've no technical knowledge . . ."
In an instant her quick sympathies responded to the note of regret which he could not keep quite out of his voice.
"Sandy, I'm a beast to grouse. It's true—you've had much harder luck." She spoke eagerly, then paused, checked by a sudden piercing memory. "But—but music . . . after all, it isn't the only thing."
"No," he returned cheerfully. "But it will do quite well to go on with. Let's toddle along to the piano and amuse each other."
She nodded, and together they made their way to the West Parlour.
"Have you written anything new?" he asked, turning over some sheets of scribbled, manuscript that were lying on the piano. "Let's hear it."
Rather reluctantly she played him a few odd bits of her recent work—the outcome of dull, depressing days.
Sandy listened, and as he listened his lips set in an uncompromising straight line.
"Well, I never heard more maudlin piffle in my life!" was his frank comment when she had finished. "If you can't do better than that, you'd better shut the piano and go digging potatoes."
Nan laughed rather mirthlessly.
"I don't know what sort of a hand you'd make at potato digging," pursued Sandy. "But apparently this is the net result of your musical studies"—and, seating himself at the piano, he rattled off a caustic parody of her performance.
"Rank sentimentalism, Nan," he said coolly, as he dropped his hands from the keys. "And you know it as well as I do."
"Yes, I suppose it is. But it's impossible to do any serious work here. Lady Gertrude fairly radiates disapproval whenever I spend an hour or two at the piano. Oh!"—her sense of humour rising uppermost for a moment—"she asked me to play to them one evening, so I gave them some Debussy—out of sheer devilment, I think"—smiling a little—"and at the end Lady Gertrude said politely: 'Thank you. And now, might we have something with a little more tune in it?"
Sandy shouted with delight.
"After all, people like that are awfully refreshing," he said at last.
"At times," admitted Nan. "All the same," she went on dispiritedly, "one must be in the right atmosphere to do anything worth while."
"Well, I'm exuding as much as I can," said Sandy. "Atmosphere, I mean. Look here, what about that concerto for pianoforte and orchestra which you had in mind? Have you done anything to it yet?"
She shook her head.
"Then get on to it quick—and stick at it. Don't waste your time writing the usual type of sentimental ballad-song—a degree or two below par."
Nan was silent for a few minutes. Then:
"Sandy," she said, "you're rather like a dose of physic—wholesome but unpalatable. I'll get to work to-morrow. Now let's go and forage for some food. You've made me fearfully hungry—like a long sermon in church."
Christmas came, bringing with it, at Roger's suggestion, a visit from Lord St. John, and his presence at the house worked wonders in the way of transforming the general atmosphere. Even Lady Gertrude thawed beneath the charm of his kindly, whimsical personality, and to Nan the few days he spent at the Hall were of more value than a dozen tonics. She was no longer shut in alone with her own thoughts—with him she could talk freely and naturally. Even the under-current of hostile criticism of which she was almost hourly conscious ceased to fret her nerves.
Insensibly Lord St. John's evident affection for his niece and quiet appreciation of her musicianship influenced Lady Gertrude for the time being, softening her attitude towards her future daughter-in-law, even though it brought her no nearer understanding her. Isobel, alertly capable of adapting herself to the prevailing atmosphere, reflected in her manner the same change. She had long since learned to keep the private workings of her mind locked up—when it seemed advisable.
"I'm glad to see you in what will one day be your own home, Nan," said Lord St. John. They were sitting alone together in the West Parlour, chatting in the cosy intimacy of the firelight.
"I'd rather you saw it when itismy own home," she returned with a rueful smile. "It will look very different then, I hope."
"Yet I'm glad to see it now," he repeated.
There was a slight emphasis on the word "now," and Nan glanced up in surprise.
"Why now particularly?" she asked, smiling. "Are you going to cold-shoulder me after I'm married?"
Lord St. John shook his head.
"That's very likely, isn't it?" he said, smiling. "No, my dear, that's not the reason." He paused as though searching for words, then went on quietly: "The silver chord is getting a bit frayed, you know, Nan. I'm an old man, and I'm just beginning to know it."
She caught her breath quickly and her face whitened. Then she forced a laugh.
"Nonsense, Uncle David! Kitty always declares you're the youngest of us all."
His eyes smiled back at her.
"Unfortunately, my dear, Time takes no account of a juvenile spirit. His job is with this body of ours. But the spirit," he added dreamingly, "and its youthfulness—that's for eternity."
"But you look quite well—quitewell," she insisted. And her manner was the more positive because in her inmost mind she thought she could detect a slight increase of that frail appearance she had first noticed on Penelope's wedding-day.
"I've had hints, Nan—Nature's wireless. So I saw Jermyn Carter a few weeks back—"
"What did he say?" She interrupted swiftly.
"That at my age a man mustn't expect his heart to be the same as in his twenties."
A silence fell between them. Then Nan's hand stole out and clasped his. She had never imagined a world without this good comrade in it. The bare thought of it brought a choking lump into her throat, robbing her of words. Presently St. John spoke again.
"I've nothing to grizzle about. I've known love and I've known friendship—the two biggest things in life. And, after all, since . . . since she went, I've only been waiting. The world, without her, has never been quite the same."
"I know," she whispered.
"You Davenant women," he went on more lightly, "are never loved and forgotten."
"And we don't love—and forget," said Nan in a low voice.
St. John looked at her with eyes that held a very tender comprehension.
"Tell me, Nan, was it—Peter Mallory?"
She met his glance bravely for a moment.
"Yes," she answered at last, very quietly. "It was Peter." With a sudden shudder she bent forward and covered her face with her hands. "And I can't forget," she said hoarsely.
A long, heavy silence fell between them.
"Then why—" began Lord St. John.
Nan lifted her head.
"Why did I promise Roger?" she broke in. "Because it seemed the onlyway. I—I was afraid! And then there was Penelope—and Ralph. . . .Oh, it was a ghastly mistake. I know now. But—but there'sRoger . . . he cares . . ."
"Yes. There's Roger," he said gravely. "And you've given him your word. You can't draw back now." There was a note of sternness in the old man's voice—the sternness of a man who has a high creed of honour and who has always lived up to it, no matter what it cost.
"Remember, Nan, no Davenant was ever a coward in the face of difficulties. They always pulled through somehow."
"Or ran away—like Angèle de Varincourt."
"She only ran from one difficulty into the arms of a hundred others.No wrong can be righted by another wrong."
"Can any wrong ever be really righted?" she demanded bitterly.
"We have to pay for our mistakes—each in our turn." He himself had paid to the uttermost farthing. "Is it a very heavy price, Nan?"
She turned her face away a little.
"It will be . . . higher than I expected," she acknowledged slowly.
"Well, then, pay up. Don't make—Roger—pay for your blunder. You have other things—your music, for instance. Many people have to go through life with only their work for company. . . . Whereas you are Roger's whole world."
With the New Year Lord St. John returned to town. Nan missed him every minute of the day, but she had drawn new strength and steadfastness from his kindly counsels. He understood both the big tragedies of life—which often hold some brief, perfect memory to make them bearable—and those incessant, gnat-like irritations which uncongenial fellowship involves.
Somehow he had the faculty of relegating small personal vexations to their proper place in the scheme of things—thrusting them far into the background. It was as though someone drew you to the window and, ignoring the small, man-made flower-beds of the garden with their insistent crop of weeds, the circumscribed lawns, and the foolish, twisting paths that led to nowhere, pointed you to the distant landscape where the big breadths of light and shadow, the broad draughtmanship of God, stretched right away to the dim blue line of the horizon.
For the first few days succeeding Lord St. John's departure from Trenby Hall, matters progressed comparatively smoothly. Then, as his influence waned with absence, the usual difficulties reappeared, the old hostilities—hostilities of outlook and generation—arising once more betwixt Nan and Lady Gertrude. Mutual understanding is impossible between two people whose sense of values is fundamentally opposed, and music, the one thing that had counted all through Nan's life, was a matter of supreme unimportance to the older woman. She regarded it—or, indeed, any other form of art, for that matter—as amongst the immaterial fripperies of life, something to be put aside at any moment in favour of social or domestic duties. It signified even less to her than it did to Eliza McBain, to whom it at least represented one of the lures of Satan—and for this reason could not be entirely discounted.
Since Sandy's stimulating visit Nan had devoted considerable time to the composition of her concerto, working at it with a recrudescence of her old enthusiasm, and the work had been good for her. It had carried her out of herself, preventing her from dwelling continually upon the past. Unfortunately, however, the hours she spent in the seclusion of the West Parlour were not allowed to pass without comment.
"It seems to take you a long time to compose a new piece," remarked Isobel at dinner one day, the trite expression "new piece" very evidently culled from her school-day memories.
Nan smiled across at her.
"A concerto's a pretty big undertaking, you see," she explained.
"Rather an unnecessary one, I should have thought, as you are so soon to be married." Lady Gertrude spoke with her usual acid brevity. "It certainly prevents our enjoying as much of your society as we should wish."
Nan flushed scarlet at the implied slur on her behaviour as a guest in the house, even though she recognised the injustice of it. An awkward pause ensued. Isobel, having started the ball rolling, seemed content to let things take their course without interference, while Roger's shaggy brows drew together in a heavy frown—though whether he were displeased by his mother's comment, or by Nan's having given her cause for it, it was impossible to say.
"This afternoon, for instance," pursued Lady Gertrude, "Isobel and I paid several calls in the neighbourhood, and in each case your absence was a disappointment to our friends—very naturally."
"I—I'm sorry," stammered Nan. She found it utterly incomprehensible that anyone should expect her to break off in the middle of an afternoon's inspiration in order to pay a duty call upon some absolute strangers—whose disappointment was probably solely due to baulked curiosity concerning Roger's future wife.
Isobel laughed lightly and let fly one of her little two-edged shafts.
"I expect you think we're a lot of very commonplace people, Nan," she commented. "Own up, now!" challengingly.
Lady Gertrude's eyes flashed like steel.
"Hardly that, I hope," she said coldly.
"Well, we're none of us in the least artistic," persisted her niece, perfectly aware that her small thrusts were as irritating to Lady Gertrude and Roger as the picador's darts to the bull in the arena. "So of course we must appear rather Philistine compared with Nan's set in London."
Roger levelled a keen glance at Nan. There was suppressed anger and a searching, almost fierce enquiry in his eyes beneath which she shrank. That imperious temper of his was not difficult to rouse, as she had discovered on more than one occasion since she had come to Trenby Hall, and she felt intensely annoyed with Isobel, who was apparently unable to see that her ill-timed observations were goading the pride of both Roger and his mother.
"Silence evidently gives consent," laughed Isobel, as Nan, absorbed in her own reflections for the moment, vouchsafed no contradiction to her last remark.
Nan met the other's mocking glance defiantly. With a sudden wilfulness, born of the incessant opposition she encountered, she determined to let Miss Carson's second challenge go unanswered. She had tried—tried desperately—to win the affection, or even the bare liking, of Roger's women-kind, and she had failed. It was all just so much useless effort. Henceforward they might think of her what they chose.
The remainder of the meal passed in a strained and uncomfortable manner. Lady Gertrude and Isobel discussed various matters pertaining to the village Welfare Club, while Roger preserved an impenetrable silence, and though Nan made a valiant pretence at eating, lest Lady Gertrude's gimlet eyes should observe her lack of appetite and her thin, disdainful voice comment on the fact, she felt all the time as though the next mouthful must inevitably choke her.
The long, formal meal came to an end at last, and she rose from the table with a sigh of relief and accompanied the other two women out of the room, leaving Roger to smoke his pipe alone as usual. An instant later, to her surprise, she heard his footstep and found that he had followed them into the hall and was standing on the threshold of the library.
"Come in here, Nan," he said briefly.
Somewhat reluctantly she followed him into the room. He closed the door behind her, then swung round on his heel so that they stood fronting one another.
At the sight of his face she recoiled a step in sheer nervous astonishment. It was a curious ashen-white, and from beneath drawn brows his hawk's eyes seemed positively to blaze at her.
"Roger," she stammered, "what—what is it?"
"Is it true?" he demanded, ignoring her halting question, and fixing her with a glance that seemed to penetrate right through her.
"Is—is what true?" she faltered.
"Is it true—what Isobel said—that you look down on us because we're countrified, that you're still hankering after that precious artistic crew of yours in London?"
He spoke violently—so violently that it roused Nan's spirit. She turned away from him.
"Don't be so absurd, Roger," she said contemptuously. "Isobel was only joking. It was very silly of her, but it's sillier still for you to take any notice of what she said."
"She wasnotjoking. You've shown it clearly enough—ever since you came here—that you're dissatisfied—bored! Do you suppose I haven't seen it? I'm not blind! And I won't stand it! If your music is going to come between us, I'll smash the piano—"
"Roger! You ridiculous person!"
She was smiling now. Something in his anger reminded her of an enraged small boy. It woke in her the eternal motherhood which lies in every woman and she felt that she wanted to comfort him. She could forgive him his violence. In his furious antagonism towards the art which meant so much to her, she traced the combined influence of Lady Gertrude and Isobel. Not merely the latter's pin-pricks at dinner this particular evening, but the constant pressure of criticism of which she was the subject.
"You ridiculous person! If you did smash the piano, it wouldn't make me any less a musician. And"—lightly—"I really can't have you being jealous of an inanimate thing like a grand piano!"
Roger's frown relaxed a little. His threat to smash the piano sounded foolish even in his own ears. But he hated the instrument none the less, although without precisely knowing why. Subconsciously he was aware that the real Nan still eluded him. She was his in the eyes of the world—pledged to be his wife—yet he knew that although he might possess her body it would bring him no nearer the possession of her soul and spirit. That other man—the one for whom she had told him she once cared—held those! Trenby was not given to psychological analysis, but in a blind, bewildered fashion he felt that that thing of wood and ivory and stretched strings represented in concrete form everything that stood betwixt himself and Nan.
"Have I nothing else—no one else"—significantly—-"to be jealous of?" he demanded. "Answer me!"
With a swift movement he gripped her by the shoulder, forcing her to face him again, his eyes still stormy. She winced involuntarily under the pressure of his fingers, but forced herself to answer him.
"You know," she said quietly. "I told you when you asked me to be your wife that—that there was—someone—for whom I cared. But, if you believedallI told you then—you know, too, that you have no reason to be jealous."
"You mean because you can't marry him?"—moodily.
"Yes."
The brief reply acted like a spark to tinder. With a stifled exclamation he caught her up in his arms, crushing his mouth down on hers till her lips felt bruised beneath his kisses.
"It's not enough!" he said, his voice hoarse and shaken. "It's not enough! I want you—the whole of you, Nan—Nan!"
For an instant she struggled against him—almost instinctively. Then, remembering she had given him the right to kiss her if he chose, she yielded, surrendering passively to the fierce tide of his passion.
"Kiss me!" he insisted hotly.
She kissed him obediently. But there was no warmth in her kiss, no answering thrill, and the man knew it. He held her away from him, his sudden passion chilled.
"Is that the best you can do?" he demanded, looking down at her with something grimly ironic in his eyes. She steadied herself to meet his glance.
"It is—really, Roger," she replied earnestly. "Oh!"—flushing swiftly—"you must know it!"
"Yes"—with a shrug. "I suppose I ought to have known it. I'm only a second string, after all."
There was so much bitterness in his voice that Nan's heart was touched to a compassionate understanding.
"Ah! Don't speak like that!" she cried tremulously. "You know I'm giving you all I can, Roger. I've been quite fair with you—quite honest. I told you I had no love to give you, that I could never care for anyone again,—like that. And you said you would be content," she added with reproach.
"I know I did," he answered sullenly. "But I'm not. No man who loved you would be content! . . . And I'm never sure of you. . . . You hate it here—"
"But it will be different when we are married," she said gently. Surely itwouldbe different when they were alone together in their own home without the perpetual irritation of Isobel's malicious little thrusts and Lady Gertrude's implacability?
"My God, yes! It'll he different then. I shall have you tomyself!"
"Your mother?" she questioned, a thought timidly.
"She—and Isobel—will go to the dower house. No"—reading her thoughts—"they won't like it. They don't want to go. That's natural enough. Once I thought—" He checked himself abruptly, wondering how he could ever have conceived it possible that his mother might remain on at the Hall after his marriage. "But not now! I'll have my wife to myself"—savagely. "Nan, how long am I to wait?"
A thrill of dismay ran through her. So far, he had not raised the question as to the actual date of their marriage, and she had been thankful to leave it for settlement at some vaguely distant period.
"Why—why, I couldn't he married till Kitty comes home," she faltered.
"I suppose not. When do you expect her back?"
"About the end of the month, I think, or the beginning of February."
"Then you'll marry me in April."
He made the statement with a certain grim arrogance that forbade all contradiction. He was in a curiously uncertain mood, and Nan, anxious not to provoke another storm, assented reluctantly.
"You mean that? You won't fail me?" His keen eyes searched her face as though he doubted her and sought to wring the truth from her lips.
"Yes," she said very low. "I mean it."
He left her then, and a few minutes later, when she had recovered her poise, she rejoined Lady Gertrude and Isobel in the drawing-room.
"You and Roger have been having a very long confab," remarked Isobel, looking up from the jumper she was knitting. "What does it portend?"
Her sallow, nimble fingers never paused in their work. The soft, even click of the needles went on unbrokenly.
"Nothing immediate," answered Nan. "He wants me to settle the date of our wedding, that's all."
The clicking ceased abruptly.
"And when is it to be?" Isobel's attention seemed entirely concentrated upon a dropped stitch.
"Some time in April. It will have to depend a little on Mrs. Seymour's plans. She wants me to be married from her house, just as Penelope was."
Lady Gertrude was busily engaged upon the making of a utilitarian flannel petticoat for one of her protégées in the village. She anchored her needle carefully in the material before she laid it aside.
"Do you mean from her house in town?" she asked.
"Why, yes, I suppose so." Nan looked faintly puzzled.
"Then I hope you will re-arrange matters."
Although Lady Gertrude's manner was colder and infinitely more precise, yet the short speech held the same arrogance as Roger's "Then you'll marry me in April"—the kind of arrogance which calmly assumes that any opposition is out of the question.
"It would be the greatest disappointment to the tenantry," she continued, "if they were unable to witness the marriage of my son—as they would have done, of course, if he'd married someone of the district. So I hope"—conclusively—"that Mrs. Seymour will arrange for your wedding to take place from Mallow Court."
She picked up the flannel petticoat and recommenced work upon it again as though the matter were settled, supremely oblivious of the fact that she had succeeded, as usual, in rousing every rebellious feeling her future daughter-in-law possessed.
Nan lay long awake that night. Roger's sudden gust of passion had taken her by surprise, filling her with a kind of terror of him. Never before had he shown her that side of himself, and she had somehow taken it for granted that he would not prove a demanding lover. He had been so diffident, so generous at the beginning, that she had been almost ashamed of the poor return which was all that she could make. But now she was suddenly face to face with the fact that he was going to demand far more of her than she was able to give.
She had not realised how much propinquity adds fuel to love's fire. Unknown, even to himself, Roger's passion had been gradually rising towards flood-tide. Man being by nature a contradictory animal, the attitude assumed by his mother and cousin towards the woman who was to be his wife had seemed to fan rather than smother the flame.
All at once the curb had snapped. He wanted Nan, the same Nan with whom he had fallen in love—the inconsequent feminine thing of elusive frocks and absurd, delicious faults and weaknesses—rather than a Nan moulded into shape by Lady Gertrude's iron hand. An intense resentment of his mother's interference had been gradually growing up within him. He would do all the moulding that was required, after matrimony!
Not that he put all this to himself in so many words. But a sense of revolt, an overwhelming jealousy of everyone who made any claim at all on Nan—jealousy even of that merry Bohemian life of hers in which he had had no share—had been slowly gathering within him until it was almost more than he could endure. Isobel's taunts at dinner had half maddened him. Whether he were Philistine or not, Nan had promised to marry him, and he would know neither rest nor peace of mind until that promise were fulfilled.
And Nan, as she lay in bed with wide eyes staring into the darkness, felt as though the door of the cage were slowly closing upon her.
It was a cheerless morning. Gusts of fine, sprinkling rain drove hither and thither on a blustering wind, while overhead hung a leaden sky with patches of black cloud scudding raggedly across it.
Nan, coming slowly downstairs to breakfast, regarded the state of the weather as merely in keeping with everything else. The constant friction of her visit to Trenby had been taking its daily toll of her natural buoyancy, and last night's interview with Roger had tried her frayed nerves to the uttermost. This morning, after an almost sleepless night, she felt that to remain there any longer would be more than she could endure. She must get away—secure at least a few days' respite from the dreadful atmosphere of disapprobation and dislike which Lady Gertrude managed to convey.
The consciousness of it was never absent from her. Pride had upheld her so far, but underneath the pride lay a very sore heart. To anyone as sensitive as Nan, whose own lovableness had always hitherto evoked both love and friendship as naturally as flowers open to the sun, it was a new and bewildering experience to be disliked. She did not know how to meet it. It hurt inexpressibly, and she was tired of being hurt.
She hesitated nervously outside the morning-room door, whence issued the soft clink of china and a murmur of voices. The clock in the hall had struck the hour five minutes ago. She was late, and she knew that the instant she entered the room she would feel that unfriendly atmosphere rushing to meet her like a great black wave. Finally, with an effort, she turned the door-handle and went in.
For once Lady Gertrude refrained from comment upon her lack of punctuality. She seemed preoccupied and, to judge from the pinched closing of her lips, her thoughts were anything but pleasing, while Roger was in the sullen, rather impenetrable mood which Nan had learned to recognise as a sign of storm. He hardly spoke at all, and then only to fling out one or two curt remarks in connection with estate matters. Immediately breakfast was at an end he rose from the table, remarking that he should not be in for lunch, and left the room.
Lady Gertrude looked up from her morning's letters.
"I suppose he's riding over to Berry Farm—the tenant wants some repairs done. He ought to take a few sandwiches with him if he won't be here for lunch."
Isobel jumped up from her seat.
"I'll see that he does," she said quickly, and went out of the room in search of him. Any need of Roger's must be instantly supplied.
Lady Gertrude waited until the servants had cleared away the breakfast, then she turned to Nan with a very definite air of having something to say.
"Have you and Roger quarrelled?" she asked abruptly.
The girl started nervously. She had not expected this as a consequence of Roger's taciturnity.
"No," she said, stumbling a little. "No, we haven't—quarrelled."
Lady Gertrude scrutinised her with keen, light-grey eyes that had the same penetrating glance as Roger's own, and Nan felt herself colouring under it.
"You've displeased him in some way or other," insisted Lady Gertrude, and waited for a reply.
Nan flared up at the older woman's arbitrary manner.
"That's rather a funny way to put it, isn't it?" she said quickly."I'm—I'm not a child, you know."
"You behave very much like one at times," retorted Lady Gertrude. "I've done my utmost since you came here to fit you to be Roger's wife, and without any appreciable result. You seem to be exactly as irresponsible and thoughtless as when you arrived."
The cold, contemptuous criticism flicked the girl's raw nerves like the point of a lash. She sprang to her feet, her eyes very bright, as though tears were not far distant, her young breast rising and falling unevenly with her hurrying breath.
"Is that what you think of me?" she said unsteadily. "Because then I'd better go away. It's what I want—to go away! I—I can't bear it here any longer." Her fingers gripped the edge of the table tensely. She was struggling to keep down the rising sobs which threatened to choke her speech. "I know you don't want me to be Roger's wife—you don't think I'm fit for it! You've just said so! And—and you've let me see it every day. I'll go—I'll go!"
Lady Gertrude's face remained quite unchanged. Only the steely gleam in her eyes hardened.
"When this hysterical outburst is quite over," she said scathingly, "I shall be better able to talk to you."
Nan made no answer. It was all she could do to prevent herself from bursting into tears.
"Sit down again." Lady Gertrude pointed to a chair, and Nan, who felt her legs trembling under her, sat down obediently. "You're quite mistaken in thinking I don't wish you to be Roger's wife," continued Lady Gertrude quietly. "I do wish it."
Nan glanced across at her in astonishment. This was the last thing she had expected her to say—irreconcilable with her whole attitude throughout the last two months. Lady Gertrude returned the glance with one of faint amusement. She could make a good guess at what the girl was thinking.
"I wish it," she pursued, "because Roger wishes it. I should like my son to have everything he wants. To be perfectly frank, I don't consider he has made a very suitable choice, but since he wants you—why, he must have you. No, don't interrupt me, please"—for Nan, quivering with indignation, was about to protest. "When—if ever you are a mother you will understand my point of view. Roger has made his choice—and of course he hasn't the least idea how unsuitable a one it is. Men rarely get beyond a pretty face. So it devolves upon me to make you better fitted to be his wife than you are at present."
The cold, dispassionate speech roused Nan to a fury of exasperation and revolt. Evidently, in Lady Gertrude's mind, Roger was the only person who mattered. She herself was of the utmost unimportance except for the fact that he wanted her for his wife! She felt as though she were a slave who had been bartered away to a new owner.
"You understand, now?"
Lady Gertrude's clear, unmoved accents dropped like ice into the midst of her burning resentment.
"Yes, I do understand!" she exclaimed, in a voice that she hardly recognised as her own. "And I think everything you've said is horrible! If I thought Roger looked at things like that, I'd break our engagement to-morrow! But he doesn't—I know he doesn't. It's only you who think such hateful things. And—and I won't stay here! I—Ican't!"
"It's foolish to talk of breaking off your engagement," returned Lady Gertrude composedly. "Roger is not a man to be picked up and put down at any woman's whim—as you would find out if you tried to do it."
Inwardly Nan felt bitterly conscious that this was true. She didn't believe for a moment that Roger would release her, however much she might implore him to. And unless he himself released her, her pledge to him must stand.
"As to going away"—Lady Gertrude was speaking again. "Where would you go?"
"To the flat, of course."
"Do you mean to the flat you used to share with Mrs. Fenton?"—on a glacial note of incredulity.
"Yes."
"Who is living there?"
Nan looked puzzled. What did it matter to Lady Gertrude who lived there?
"No one, just now. The Fentons are going to stay there, when they come back, while they look for a house."
"But they are not there now?" persisted Lady Gertrude.
Nan shook her head, wondering what was the drift of so much questioning.She was soon to know.
"Then, my dear child," said Lady Gertrude decidedly, "of course it would be quite impossible for you to go there."
"Why impossible?"
Lady Gertrude's brows lifted, superciliously.
"I should have thought it was obvious," she replied curtly. "Hasn't it occurred to you that it would be hardly the thing for a young unmarried girl to be staying alone in a flat in London?"
"No, it hasn't," returned Nan bluntly. "Penelope and I have each stayed there alone—heaps of times—when the other was away."
"Very possibly." There was an edge to Lady Gertrude's voice which it was impossible to misinterpret. "Professional musicians are very lax—I supposeyouwould call it Bohemian—in their ideas. That I can quite believe. But you have someone else to consider now. Roger would hardly wish his future wife to be stopping alone at a flat in London."
Nan was silent. Ridiculous as it seemed, she had to admit that Lady Gertrude was speaking no more than the bare truth concerning Roger's point of view. She felt perfectly sure that he would object—very strenuously!
Lady Gertrude rose.
"I think there is no more to be said. You can put any idea of rushing off to London out of your head. Even if Roger were agreeable, I should not allow it while you are in my charge. Neither is it exactly complimentary to us that you should even suggest such a thing."
With this parting comment she quitted the room, leaving Nan staring stonily out of the window.
She felt helpless—helpless to withstand the thin, steel-eyed woman who was Roger's mother. Nominally free, she was to all intents and purposes a prisoner at Trenby Hall till Kitty or Penelope came home. Of course she could write to Lord St. John if she chose. But even if she did, he most certainly could not ask her to stay with him at his chambers in London. Besides, she didn't want to appeal to him. She knew he would think she was running away—playing the coward, and that it would be a bitter disappointment to him to find her falling short of the high standard which he had always set before her.
"No Davenant was ever a coward in the face of difficulties," he had told her. And she loved him far too much to hurt him as grievously as she knew it would hurt him if she ran away from them.
She stood there for a long time, staring dumbly out at the falling rain and dripping trees. She was thinking along the lines which St. John had laid down for her. "Don't make Roger pay for your own blunder." Was she doing that? Remembering all that had passed between them last night she began to realise that this was just what she had been doing.
She had no love to give him, but she had been keeping him out of everything else as well. She had not even tried to make a comrade of him, to let him into her interests and to try and share his own. Instead, she had shut herself away in the West Parlour with her music and her memories, and in his own blundering fashion Roger had realised it. Probably he had even guessed that that other man who had loved her had been able to go with her into the temple of music, comprehending it all and loving it even as she did.
She understood Roger's strange and sudden jealousy now. Although she was to be his wife, he was jealous of those invisible bonds of mutual understanding which had linked her to Peter Mallory—bonds which, had they two been free to marry, would have made of their marriage a perfect thing—the beautiful mating of spirit, soul, and body.
The doors of her soul—that innermost sanctuary of all—would never be opened for any other to enter in. But surely there was something more that she might give Roger than she had yet done. She could stretch out a friendly hand and try to link their interests together, however slight the link must be.
All at once, a plan to accomplish this formulated itself in her mind. He had wanted to "smash the piano." Well, he should never want that again. She would show him that her music was not going to stand between them—that she was willing to share it with him. She would talk to him about it, get him to understand something of what it meant to her, and when the concerto was quite finished, she would invite him into the West Parlour to listen to it. It was nearing completion—another week's work and what Sandy laughingly termed her "magnum opus" would be finished. Of course Roger wouldn't be able to give her a musician's understanding of it, but he would certainly appreciate the fact that she had played it to him first of anyone.
It would go far to heal that resentful jealousy if she "shared" the concerto with him. He would never again feel that she was keeping him outside the real interests of her life. Probably, later on, when it was performed by a big London orchestra, under the auspices of one of the best-known conductors of the day—who happened to be a particular friend of Nan's and a staunch believer in her capacity to do good work—Roger would even begin to take a quaint kind of pride in her musical achievements.
What she purposed would involve a good deal of pluck and sacrifice. For it takes both of these to reveal yourself, as any true musician must, to an audience of one with whom you are not utterly in sympathy. But if by this road she and Roger took one step towards a better understanding, towards that comradeship which was all that she could ever give him, then it would have been worth the sacrifice.
Gradually the stony look of despair lifted from her face, and a new spirit of resolution took possession of her. She was not the only person in the world who had to suffer. There were others, Peter amongst them, who were debarred by circumstances from finding happiness, and who went on doing their duty unflinchingly. It was only she who had failed—letting Roger bear the cost of her mistake. She had promised to marry him when it seemed the only way out of the difficulties which beset her, and now she was not honouring that promise. While Peter Mallory was still waiting quietly for the wife he no longer loved to come back to him—keeping the door of his house open to her whenever she should choose to claim fulfilment of the pledges he had given the day he married her.
Nan leaned her head against the window-pane, realising that, whateverRoger's faults might he, she, too, had fallen short.
"Our troth, Nan. Hang on to it—hard, when life seems a bit more uphill than usual."
She could hear Peter's voice, steady and clear and reassuring, almost as she had heard it that night on the headland at Tintagel. She felt her throat contract and a burning mist of tears blurred her vision. For a moment she fought desperately against her weakness. Then, with a little strangled cry, she buried her face against her arm and broke into a passion of tears.
The concerto was finished! Finished, at least, as far as it was possible without rehearsing the effect with orchestra, and as Nan turned over the sheets of manuscript, thickly dotted with their medley of notes and rests and slurs, she was conscious of that glorious thrill of accomplishment which is the creative artist's recompense for long hours of work and sacrifice,—and for those black moments of discouragement and self-distrust which no true artist can escape.
She sat very quietly in the West Parlour, thinking of the concerto and of what she meant to do with it. She was longing to show it to Sandy McBain, who would have a musician's comprehension of every bar, and she knew he would rejoice with her whole-heartedly over it. But that would have to wait until after Roger had heard it. The first-fruits, as it were, were to be offered to him.
She had it all planned out in her mind. Roger was out hunting to-day, so that she had been able to add certain final touches to the concerto uninterrupted, and after dinner she proposed to carry him off to the West Parlour and play it to him. There would be only their two selves, alone together—for she had no intention of inviting Lady Gertrude and Isobel to attend this first performance.
She was nervously excited at the prospect, and when she heard the distant sound of a horseman trotting up the drive she jumped up and ran to the window, peering out into the dusk. It was Roger, and as horse and rider swung past the window she drew back suddenly into the fire-lit shadows of the room, letting the short window-curtains fall together.
Five minutes later she heard his footsteps as he came striding along the corridor on to which the West Parlour opened. Then the door-handle was turned with imperious eagerness, someone switched on the light, and he came in—splashed with mud, his face red from the lash of the wind, his hair beaded with moisture from the misty air. He looked just what he was—a typical big sporting Englishman—as he tramped into the room and made his way to the warmth of the blazing log fire.
Nan looked up and threw him a little smile of greeting.
"Hullo, darling, there you are!" He stooped and kissed her, and she forced herself to sit quiet and unshrinking while his lips sought and found her own.
"Have you had a good day?" she asked.
"Topping. Best run of the season. We found at once and went right away." And he launched out into an enthusiastic description of the day's sport.
Nan listened patiently. She wasn't in the least interested, really, but she had been trying very hard latterly not to let Roger pay for what had been her own blunder—not to let him pay even in the small things of daily life. So she feigned an interest she was far from feeling and discussed the day's hunting with snatches of melody from the concerto running through her mind all the time.
The man and woman offered a curious contrast as they talked; he, big, virile, muddied with his day in the saddle, an aroma of mingled damp and leather exuding from his clothes as they steamed in front of the fire—she, slim, silken-clad, delicately wrought by nature and over-finely strung by reason of the high-pitched artist's life she had led.
Roger himself seemed suddenly struck by the contrast.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, surveying her rather ruefully. "We're a pretty fair example of beauty and the beast, aren't we?"
Nan looked back at him composedly—at the strong, ugly face and far-visioned eyes.
"Not in the least," she replied judicially. "We're—different, that's all. And"—smiling faintly—"you're rather grubby just at present."
"I suppose I am." He glanced ruefully down at his mud-bespattered coat. "I oughtn't to have come in here like this," he added with an awkward attempt at apology. "Only I couldn't wait to see you."
"Well, go and have your tub and a change," she said, with a small, indulgent laugh. "And by dinner time you'll have a better opinion of your outward man."
It was not until after dinner that she mentioned the concerto to him, snatching an opportunity when they chanced to find themselves alone for a few minutes. Some distracted young married woman from the village had called to ask Lady Gertrude's advice as to how she should deal with a husband who seemed to find his chief entertainment in life in beating her with a broomstick and in threatening to "do her in" altogether if the application of the broomstick proved barren of wifely improvement. Accordingly, Lady Gertrude, accompanied by her aide-de-camp, Isobel, were interviewing the poor, terrified creature with a view to ameliorating her lot.
"It's good, Roger," said Nan, when she had told him that the concerto was finished. "It's really good. And I want you to hear it first of anyone."
Roger smiled down at her. He was obviously pleased.
"Of course I must hear it first," he answered. "I'm your lawful lord and master, remember."
"Not yet?" she objected hastily.
He threw his arm round her and pulled her into his embrace.
"No. But very soon," he said.
"You won't beat me, I suppose—like Mrs. Pike's husband?" she suggested teasingly, with a gesture towards the room where Lady Gertrude and Isobel were closeted with the woman from the village.
His arm tightened round her possessively.
"I don't know," he said slowly. "I might—if I couldn't manage you any other way."
"Roger!"
There was almost a note of fear in her quick, astonished exclamation. With his arm gripped round her she recognised how utterly powerless she would be against his immense strength, and something flint-like and merciless in the expression of those piercing eyes which were blazing down at her made her feel, with a sudden catch at her heart, as though he might actually do the thing he said.
"I hope it won't come to beating you," he resumed in a lighter tone of voice. "But"—grimly—"not even you, when you're my wife, shall defy me with impunity."
Nan drew herself out of his arms.
"Well, I'm not your wife yet," she said, trying to laugh away the queer, unexpected tensity of the moment. "Only a very hard-working young woman, who has a concerto to play to you."
He frowned a little.
"There's no need for you to work hard. I'd rather you didn't. I want you just to enjoy life—have a good time—and keep your music as a relaxation."
Her face clouded over.
"Oh, Roger, you don't understand! Imustdo it. I couldn't live without it. It fills my life."
His expression softened. He reached out his arm again and drew her back to his side, but this time with a strange, unwonted tenderness.
"I suppose it does," he conceded. "But some day, darling, after we're married, I hope there'll be something—someone—else to fill your life. And when that time comes,—why, the music will take second place."
Nan flushed scarlet and wriggled irritably in his embrace.
"Oh, Roger, do try to understand! As if . . . having a child . . . would make any difference. A baby's a baby, and music's music—the one can't take the place of the other."
Roger looked a trifle taken aback. He held old-fashioned views and rather thought that all women regarded motherhood as a duty and privilege of existence. And, inside himself, he had never doubted that if this great happiness were ever granted to Nan, she would lose all those funny, unaccountable ways of hers—which alternately bewildered and annoyed him—and turn into a nice, normal woman like ninety-nine per cent. of the other women of his somewhat limited acquaintance.
Man has an odd trick of falling in love with the last kind of woman you would expect him to, the very antithesis of the ideal he has previously formulated to himself, and then of expecting her, after matrimony, suddenly to change her whole individuality—the very individuality which attracted him in the first instance—and conform to his preconceived notions of what a wife ought to he.
It is illogical, of course, with that gloriously pig-headed illogicalness not infrequently to be found in the supposedly logical sex, and it would be laughable were it not that it so often ends in tragedy.
So that Roger was quite genuinely dumbfounded at Nan's heterodox pronouncement on the relative values of music and babies.
A baby was not in the least an object of absorbing interest to her. It cried out of tune and made ear-piercing noises that were not included in even the most modern of compositions. Moreover, she was not by nature of the maternal type of woman, to whom marriage is but the beautiful path which leads to motherhood. She was essentially one of the lovers of the world. Had she married her mate, she would have demanded nothing more of life, though, if a child had been born of such mating, it would have seemed to her so beautiful and sure a link, so blent with love itself, that her arms would have opened to receive it.
But of all these intricacies of the feminine heart and mind Roger was sublimely ignorant. So he chided her, still with that same unwonted gentleness which the thought of fatherhood sometimes brings to men of strong and violent temper.
"That's all nonsense, you know, sweetheart. And some day . . . when there's a small son to be thought about and planned for and loved, you'll find that what I say is true."
"It might chance to be a small daughter," suggested Nan snubbily, and Roger's face fell a little. "So, meanwhile, as I haven't a baby and Ihavea concerto, come along and listen to it."
He nodded and followed her into the West Parlour. A cheerful fire was blazing on the hearth, a big lounge chair drawn up invitingly beside it, while close at hand stood a small table with pipe, tobacco pouch, and matches lying on it in readiness.
Roger smiled at the careful arrangement.
"What a thoughtful child it's becoming!" he commented, taking up his pipe.