The Moon Out of Reach (Ainslee's serial)/Part 1
CHAPTER I.
SHE was kneeling on the hearthrug, grasping the poker firmly in one hand. Now and again she gave the fire a truculent prod with it as if to emphasize her remarks,
“'Ask and ye shall receive!' 'Tout vient à point à celui qué sait attendre!' Where on earth is there any foundation for such optimism, I'd like to know?”
A sleek, brown head, bent determinedly above some sewing, lifted itself, and a pair of amused eyes rested on the speaker.
“Really, Nan, you mustn't confound French proverbs with quotations from the Scriptures. They're not at all the same thing.”
“Those two run on parallel lines, anyway. When I was a kiddie I used to pray for hours, and it wasn't through any lack of faith that my prayers weren't answered. On the contrary, I was enormously astonished to find how entirely the Almighty had overlooked my request for a white pony like the one at the circus.”
“Well, then, my dear, try to solace yourself with the fact that 'everything comes at last to him who knows how to wait.'”
“But it doesn't!”
Penelope Craig reflected a moment.
“Do you know how to wait?” she demanded.
“I've waited in vain. No white pony has ever come, and if it trotted in now—why, I don't want one any longer. I tell you, Penny,” she said, tapping an emphatic forefinger on the other's knee, “you never get your wishes until you've outgrown them.”
“You've reached the mature age of three-and-twenty,” Penelope answered dryly. “It's a trifle early to be so definite.”
“Not a bit! I want my wishes now, while I'm young and can enjoy them.”
“But what do you want, my dear? You're always kicking against the pricks. What do you really want?”
“I don't know,” Nan said slowly. Then she added whimsically: “I believe that's the root of the trouble.”
“I'll tell you what's the matter,” returned Penelope. “During the war you lived on excitement.”
“I worked jolly hard,” interpolated Nan indignantly.
The other's eyes softened.
“I know you worked,” she said quickly. “Like a brick. But all the same you did live on excitement. The whole four years were just one pulsing, throbbing rush. Oh, I know! You were caught up into it just the same as the rest of the world, and now that it's over and normal existence is feebly struggling up to the surface again, you're all to pieces, hugely dissatisfied, like every one else. You're shirking, too, Nan. You've not picked up your work again; you're just idling.” The look of disapproval on Penelope's face deepened.
“There's mo excuse for you. You've got breeding, and that means the pluck to stand up to things, even to deadly dullness,” Penelope continued grimly.
“Oh, heavens! You ought to go in for lecturing, Penny,” groaned Nan.
Penelope laid down her sewing and stretched cramped arms above her head.
“At this point,” she observed, “the House adjourned for tea. Nan, it's your week for domesticity. Go and make the tea.”
Nan scrambled up from the hearth-rug obediently and disappeared into the kitchen regions, while Penelope, curling herself up on a cushion in front of the fire, sat musing.
For nearly six years now, she and Nan had shared the flat they were living in. When they had first joined forces, Nan was still studying for her career as a pianist, while Penelope, her senior by five years, had been before the public as a singer for some time. With the outbreak of the war, they had both thrown themselves heartily into war work of various kinds, reserving only a certain portion of their time for professional purposes. The double work was a great strain, and now that the war was past, it seemed as though Nan, at least, was incapable of getting a fresh grip on things.
Luckily—or, from some points of view, unluckily—she was the recipient of an allowance of three hundred pounds a year from a benevolent uncle. Without this the two girls might have found it difficult to weather the profitless intervals which sometimes punctuated their professional engagements. But with this addition to their income they managed pretty well, and contrived to find a fair amount of amusement in life.
Penelope, the daughter of a country rector, long since dead, had known the significance of the words “small means” all her life, and she managed the financial affairs of the little ménage in Edenhall Mansions; with creditable success.
She alone had some slight understanding of Nan Davenant's complexities—complexities of temperament which both baffled the unfortunate possessor of them and hopelessly misled the world at large.
The Davenant history showed a line of men and women gifted beyond the average, the artistic bias paramount, and the interpolation of a Frenchwoman, in the person of Nan's great-grandmother, had only added to the temperamental burden of the race. She had been a strange, brilliant creature, with that mysterious touch of genius which, by its destined suffering, buys forgiveness for its destined sins.
And, in Nan, the soul of her French ancestress lived anew. The charm of the frail and fair Angele de Varincourt, baffling, elusive, but irresistible, was hers, and the soul of the artist, with its restless imagination, its craving for the beautiful, its sensitive response to all emotion—this, too, was her inheritance.
To Penelope, Nan's ultimate unfolding was a matter of absorbing interest. Her own small triumphs as a singer paled into insignificance beside the riot of her visions for Nan's future. Nevertheless, she was sometimes conscious of an undercurrent of foreboding. Something was lacking. Had the gods, giving so much, withheld the two best gifts of all—success and happiness?
While Penelope mused in the firelight, the clatter of china, issuing from the kitchen, indicated unusual domestic activity on Nan's part, and finally culminated in her entry into the sitting room, bearing a laden tea tray.
“Hot scones!” she announced joyfully. “I've made a burnt offering of myself, toasting them.”
Penelope laughed and began to pour out tea.
“I half thought Maryon Rooke might be here by now,” remarked Nan, selecting a scone from the golden-brown pyramid on the plate and carefully avoiding Penelope's eyes. “He said he might look in some time this afternoon.”
“How condescending of him!” Penelope commented dryly. “If he comes, exit Penelope.”
“You're an ideal chaperon, Penny,” murmured Nan with approval.
“Chaperons are superfluous women, nowadays. And you and Maryon are so nearly engaged that you wouldn't require one, even if they weren't quite out of date.”
“Are we?” A queer look of uncertainty showed in Nan's eyes. One might almost have said she was afraid.
“Aren't you?” Penelope's counter-question flashed back swiftly. “I thought there was a perfectly definite understanding between you.”
“So you trot tactfully away when he comes? Nice of you, Penny.”
“It's not in the least 'nice' of me,” retorted the other. “I happen to be giving a singing lesson at half past five; that's all.” After a pause, she added tentatively, “Nan, why don't you take some pupils? It means hard cash.”
“And endless patience!” commented Nan. “No, don't ask me that, Penny, if you love me! I couldn't watch their silly fingers lumbering over the piano.”
“Well, why don't you take more concert work? You could get it if you chose! You're simply throwing away your chances! How long is it since you composed anything, I'd like to know?”
“Precisely five minutes. Listen, and I'll play it for you. It's a setting to those words of old Omar:
“Ah, Love! Could you and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits, and then
Remold it nearer to the heart's desire!”
She seated herself at the piano and her slim hands wandered soundlessly, a moment, above the keys. Then a wailing minor melody grew beneath them, unsatisfied, asking, with now and then an ecstasy of joyous chords which died away into the querying despair of the original theme. She broke off abruptly, humming the words beneath her breath.
“Nan, it's sheer madness! You've got this wonderful talent, a real gift of the gods, and you do nothing with it!” Penelope exclaimed.
Nan laughed uncertainly and bent her head so that all Penelope could see was a cloud of dusky hair.
“I can't,” she said.
“Why not?” Penelope's voice was urgent. “Why don't you work up that last composition, for instance, and get it published? Surely,” she said wrathfully, “surely you've some ambition?”
“Do you remember what that funny old Scotch clairvoyant said to me? 'You have ambition, great ambition, but not the stability or perseverance to achieve.' It's true, every word of it,” asserted Nan.
“You'll break every one's heart before you've finished,” Penelope said despairingly. Then she added, in a lighter tone, “I'm going out now. If Maryon Rooke comes, don't begin by breaking his.”
The door closed behind her, and Nan, left alone, strolled restlessly over to the window and stood looking out.
“Break his!” she whispered under her breath. “Dear old Penny! She doesn't know the probabilities in this particular game of chance.”
The slanting afternoon sunlight revealed once more that sudden look of gravity, almost of fear. The merciless light of a wintry sun disclosed a charming face, delicately angled. The faint color in her cheeks was of that same warm rose which the sun kisses into glowing life on the velvet skin of an apricot.
The color deepened suddenly in her face as the sound of a bell trilled through the flat, and she stood motionless, like a bird poised for flight. Then, with a little, impatient shrug of her shoulders, she made her way slowly, almost unwillingly, across the hall and threw open the door.
“You, Maryon?” she said a trifle breathlessly. Then, as he entered: “I—I hardly expected you.”
He took both her hands in his and kissed them.
“It's several years since I expected anything,” he answered. “Now, I only hope.”
Nan smiled.
“Come in, pessimist, and don't begin by being epigrammatic on the very doorstep. Tea? Or coffee? I'm afraid the flat doesn't run to whisky and soda.”
“Coffee, please, and your conversation will suffice.
“A loaf of bread and thou beside me singing in the wilderness.”
“You'd much prefer a whisky and soda and a grilled steak to the loaf and—the et ceteras,” observed Nan cynically. “There's a very wide gulf between what a man says and what he thinks.”
“There's a much wider one between what a man wants and what he gets,” he returned grimly.
“You'll soon have all you want,” she answered. “You're well on the way to fame already.”
“Do you know,” he remarked irrelevantly, “your eyes are exactly like blue violets. I'd like to paint you, Nan.”
“Perhaps I'll sit for you some day,” she replied, handing him his coffee. “That is, if you're very good.”
The merit of Maryon Rooke's work was just beginning to be noticed in the art world. For years he had labored unacknowledged and with increasing bitterness, for he knew his own worth. But now, though he was only in his early thirties, his reputation, particularly as a painter of women's portraits, had begun to be noised abroad. His feet were on the lower rungs of the ladder, and it was generally prophesied that he would ultimately reach the top. His gifts were undeniable, and there was a certain ruthlessness in the line of the lips above the small Vandyke beard he wore which suggested that he would permit little to stand in the way of his attaining his goal, be it what it might.
“You'd make a delightful picture, 'Sun-kissed,'” he said, narrowing his eyes. “With your blue-violet eyes and that rose-petal skin of yours.”
Nan smiled involuntarily.
“Don't be so flowery, Maryon. Really, you and Penelope are very good antidotes to each other. She's just been giving me a lecture on the error of my ways.”
“What's the crime?”
“Lack of application, waste of opportunities, and general idleness.”
“It's all true.” Rooke leaned forward, his eyes lit by momentary enthusiasm. They were curious eyes, hazel-brown, with a misleading softness in them which appealed to every woman he met. “It's all true,” he repeated. “You could do big things, Nan. And you do nothing.”
Nan laughed, half pleased, half vexed.
“I think you overrate my capabilities.”
“I don't. There are very few pianists who have your technique, and fewer still who have your soul and power of interpretation.”
“Oh, yes, there are! Heaps. And they've got what I lack.”
“And that is?”
“The power to hold their audiences.”
“You lack that? You who can hold a man!”
She broke in excitedly.
“Yes, I can hold one man or woman. I can play to a few people and hold them. I know that. But I can't hold a crowd.”
Rooke regarded her thoughtfully.
Perhaps it was true that in spite of her charm, in spite of the compelling fascination which made her so unforgetable—did he not know how unforgetable!—she lacked the tremendous force of magnetic personality which penetrates through a whole concourse of people and carries them away on one great tidal wave of enthusiasm.
“It may be true,” he said, at last, reluctantly. “I don't think you possess great animal magnetism. Yours is a more elusive, more—how shall I put it?—an attraction more spirituelle. To those it touches, worse luck, a more enduring one.”
“More enduring?”
“Far more. Animal magnetism is a thing of bodily presence. Once one is away from it, one is free. Until the next meeting! But your victims aren't even free from you when you're not there.”
“It sounds a trifle boring.”
Rooke smiled.
“Don't try to switch me off the main theme, which is your work.”
Nan sprang up.
“Don't bully me any more,” she said quickly, “and I'll play one of my recent compositions for you.”
She sauntered across to the piano and began to play a little rippling melody, full of sunshine and laughter, even though a sob ran through it. Rooke crossed to her side and quietly lifted her hands from the keys.
“Charming,” he said. “But it doesn't ring true. That was meant to be a sad song. As it stands, it's merely flippant, insincere. And insincerity is the death-knell of art.”
Nan skimmed the surface defiantly.
“What a disagreeable criticism! You might have given me some encouragement instead of crushing my poor little attempt at composition like that!”
Rooke looked at her gravely. With him sincerity in art was a fetish; in life, superfluity. But for the moment, he was genuinely moved. The poseur's mask, which he habitually wore, slipped aside and the real man peeped out.
“Yours ought to be more than attempts,” he said quietly. “It's in you to do something really big. And you must do it. If not, you'll go to pieces. You don't understand yourself.”
“And do you profess to?”
“A little.” He smiled down at her. “The gods have given you the golden gift, the creative faculty. And there's a price to pay if you don't use the gift.”
Nan's blue-violet eyes held a startled look.
“You've got something which isn't given to every one. To precious few, in fact. And if you don't use it, it will poison everything. We artists must not rust. If we do, the soul corrodes.”
The sincerity of his tone was unmistakable. Art was the only altar at which Rooke worshiped; it was probably the only altar at which he ever would worship consistently. Nan suddenly yielded to the driving force at the back of his speech.
“Listen to this, then,” she said. “It's a setting to some words I came across the other day.”
She handed him a slip of paper on which the words were written, and his eyes ran swiftly down the verses of the brief lyric which was called “Empty Hands.”
Away in the sky, high over our heads,
With the width of the world between,
The far moon sails like a shining ship
Which the dreamer's eyes have seen.
And empty hands are outstretched in vain,
While aching eyes beseech,
And hearts may break that cry for the moon,
The silver moon out of reach!
But sometimes God on His great white throne
Looks down from the heaven above,
And lays in the hands that are empty,
The tremulous star of love.
Nan played softly, humming the melody in her wistful little pipe of a voice. It had an appealing quality, the heart-touching quality of the mezzo-soprano, while through the music ran the same unsatisfied cry as in her setting of the old Tentmaker's passionate words, a terrible demand for those things which life sometimes withholds.
As she ceased playing Maryon Rooke spoke musingly.
“It's a queer world,” he said. “What a man warts he can't have. He sees the good gifts and may not take them. Or, if he takes the one he wants the most, he loses all the rest. Fame and love and life—the great god Circumstance arranges all these little matters for us. And mighty badly sometimes! And that's why I can't”
He broke off abruptly, checking what he had intended to say. Nan felt as if a door had been shut in her face. This man had a rare faculty for implying everything and saying nothing.
“I don't understand,” she said.
“An artist isn't a free agent, he isn't free to take the things life offers,” he answered steadily. “He's seen 'the far moon' with the dreamer's eyes, and that's probably all he'll ever see of it. His 'empty hands' may not even grasp at the star.”
He had adapted the verses very cleverly to suit his purpose. With a sudden flash of intuition, Nan understood him, and the fear which had knocked at her heart when Penelope had assumed that there was a definite understanding between herself and Rooke knocked again. He was giving her her congé, by frankly admitting that art came first and love a poor second.
“Last talks are always odious!” he asserted, after a moment of silence.
“Last?” she queried. Her fingers were trifling nervously with the pages of an album of songs which rested against the music desk.
He did not look at her.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I'm going away. I leave for Paris to-morrow.”
There was a crash of jangled notes as the album suddenly pitched forward on to the keys of the piano.
With an impetuous movement, he leaned toward her and caught her hands in his.
“Nan!” he said hoarsely. “Nan! Do you care?”
But the next moment, he had released her.
“I'm a fool!” he said. “What's the use of drawing a boundary line and then overstepping it?”
“And where”—Nan's voice was very low—“where do you draw the line?”
He stood motionless a moment. Then he drew a line with his hand, a line between himself and her.
“There,” he said briefly.
She caught her breath. But before she could reply, he was speaking again.
“You've been very good to me, Nan; you've pushed the gate of paradise at least ajar. And if it closes now, I've no earthly right to grumble. After all, I'm only one among your many friends. Good-by, beloved,” he said. His voice was rough and uneven.
Mechancally, she shook hands and her lips murmured some mechanical response. She heard the door of the flat close behind him, followed almost immediately by the clang of the iron door of the elevator. It seemed to her as if a curious note of finality sounded in the metallic clamor of the door.
With a little strangled cry she sank into a chair, clasping her hands tightly together. She sat there, very still and quiet, staring blankly into space.
And so, an hour later, Penelope found her, and was startled by the curious, dazed look in her eyes.
“Nan!” she cried sharply. “Nan! What's the matter?”
Nan turned her head fretfully from one side to the other.
“Nothing,” she answered dully. “Nothing whatever.”
But Penelope saw the look in her face. Very deliberately she divested herself of her hat and coat and sat down.
“Tell me about it,” she said practically. “Is it—is it that man?”
A gleam of humor shot across Nan's face.
“Yes,” she said, smiling a little. “It is 'that man.'”
“Well, what's happened? Surely,” Penelope went on with an accent of reproof, “surely you've not refused him?”
Nan still regarded her with a faintly humorous smile.
“Do you think I should not have refused him?” she queried.
Penelope answered with decision.
“Certainly I do. You could see, any one could see, that he cared badly, and you ought to have sent him away months ago if you only meant to give him his congé at the end. It wasn't playing the game.”
Nan began to laugh helplessly.
“Penny, you're too funny for words, if you only knew it. But still, you're beginning to restore my self-respect. If you were mistaken in him, then perhaps I've not been quite such an incredible fool as I thought.”
“Mistaken?” There was a look of consternation in Penelope's honest brown eyes. “Mistaken? Nan, what do you mean?”
“It's quite simple.” Nan's laughter ceased suddenly. “Maryon Rooke has not asked me to marry him. I've not refused him. He—he didn't give me the opportunity.” Her voice shook a little. “He's just been in to say good-by,” she went on, after a pause. “He's going abroad.”
“Listen to me, Nan.” Penelope spoke very quietly. “There's a mistake somewhere. I'm absolutely sure Maryon cares for you, and cares pretty badly, too.”
“Oh, yes, he cares! But,” Nan said, in a studiously light voice which hid the quivering pain at her heart, “a rising artist has to consider his art. He can't hamper himself by marriage with an impecunious musician who isn't able to pull wires and help him on. 'He travels the fastest who travels alone.' You know it. And Maryon Rooke knows it. I suppose it's true.”
She got up from her chair and walked over to Penelope.
“We won't talk of this again, Penny. What one wants is a 'far moon,' and I'd forgotten the width of the world which always seems to lie between. My 'shining ship' has foundered. That's all.”
And so the subject was dropped.
CHAPTER II.
Penelope tapped sharply at Nan's bedroom door.
“Nan, are you ready? Your taxi's waiting outside.”
“Ticking tuppences away like the very dickens, too!” returned Nan, emerging from her room dressed for a journey.
It was a week or two later and in response to a wire—and as the result of a good deal of persuasion on the part of Penelope—Nan had accepted an engagement to play at a big charity concert in Exeter. Lady Chatterton, the manager of the concert, had offered to put her up for the couple of nights involved, and Nan was now hurrying to catch the Paddington train.
“I've induced the taxi driver to come up and carry down your baggage,” pursued Penelope. “You'll have to look fairly sharp if you're to catch the one-fifty.”
“I must catch it,” declared Nan. “Why, the Chattertons are fourteen miles from Abbencombe station, and it would be simply ghastly if they sent all that way to meet me and there was no me! Besides, there's a rehearsal fixed for ten o'clock to-morrow morning.”
While she spoke the two girls were making their way down the circular flight of stone steps, since the elevator was temporarily out of order, preceded by the driver who was grumblingly carrying Nan's suit case and hatbox. A minute or two later, the taxi emitted a grunt from somewhere within the depths of its being and Nan was off, with Penelope's cheery “Good luck!” ringing in her ears.
She sat back against the cushions with a sigh of relief. She had run it rather close, but now, glancing down at her wrist watch, she realized that she would catch her train fairly easily.
It was after they had entered the Park that the first contretemps occurred. The taxi came abruptly to a standstill. Nan let down the window and leaned out.
“What's the matter?” she asked, with some anxiety.
The driver descended from his seat and regarded her with a complete lack of interest.
“That's just whot I'm goin' to find out,” he replied in a detached way.
Nan watched him while he poked about the engine, then sank back into her seat with a murmur of relief as he climbed once more into his place behind the wheel and the taxi started again.
But before two minutes had elapsed, there came another halt, followed by another lengthy examination of the engine's internals, Engine trouble spelled disaster, and Nan hopped out and joined the driver in the road.
“What's wrong?” she asked. “I'm afraid I shall miss my train at this rate.”
“I can't help it if you do,” returned the man.
“But I can't miss it!” declared Nan.
“And this here taxi can't catch it.”
“Do you mean you really can't get her to go?”
“Haven't I just bin saying so?” he returned aggressively. “That's just how it stands. She won't go.”
He ignored Nan's exclamation of dismay and renewed his investigation of the engine.
“No,” he said at last. “I can't get you to Paddington, or anywhere else.” He spoke with a stubborn unconcern that was simply maddening.
“Then call another taxi quick!” said Nan.
“Where from?” he asked contemptuously. “There ain't no taxi stand here.”
Nan looked around hopelessly. Cars and taxis, some with luggage and some without, went speeding past her, but never one that was empty.
“Oh”—she turned desperately to the driver—“can't you do anything? Run down and see if you can hail one for me. I'll stay here by the taxi.”
He shook his head.
“Callin' taxis for people ain't my job,” he remarked negligently.
Nan, driven by the extreme urgency of her need, stepped out into the middle of the road and excitedly hailed the next taxicab which passed her carrying luggage. She waved so frantically that the driver slowed up. Some one looked out of the window, and with a vague, troubled surprise, Nan realized that the cab's solitary passenger was a man. But she was far beyond being deterred by that circumstance.
“Are you going to Paddington?” she demanded breathlessly.
“Yes, I am,” came the answer, in a slight, well-bred drawl. “Can I do anything for you?”
“You can drive me there, if you will,” replied Nan, with the bluntness of despair. “My taxi's broken down.”
“But with pleasure.”
The man was out of his own cab in an instant, and held the door open while Nan paid her fare and ordered the driver to transfer her baggage. A minute later the transfer was accomplished, and Nan found herself sitting in a taxi with an absolute stranger.
“He was a perfect beast of a driver!” was her first heartfelt ejaculation.
The man beside her smiled.
“I'm sure he was,” he replied.
Nan stole a veiled glance at him. His face was lean, with a squarish jaw; very dark brows and lashes contrasted oddly with his fair hair and blue-gray eyes. In one eye he wore a horn-rimmed monocle from which depended a narrow black ribbon.
“I can't thank you enough for coming to my rescue,” said Nan, after her quick scrutiny. “It was so frightfully important that I should catch this train.”
“Was it?”
Somehow the brief question compelled an explanation, although it held no suggestion of curiosity, nothing more than a friendly interest.
“Yes. I have a concert engagement to-morrow, and if I missed this train I couldn't possibly make my connection at St. David's station. I change to another line there.”
“Then I'm very glad I sailed in at the crucial moment. Of course, you could have traveled down by an earlier train to-morrow if the worst had occurred to-day, but I suppose you'd rather not have to play in public immediately after a long railway journey.”
“How do you know I play?” demanded Nan. “It's just conceivable that I might be a singer!”
A distinct twinkle showed in his eyes.
“There are quite a number of 'conceivable' things about you. But I heard Miss Nan Davenant play several times, during the war, at concerts where special seats were allotted to the wounded. I'm sorry to say I haven't heard you lately.”
“Oh, were you in the war?” she asked quickly.
“Why, naturally!” He smiled a little. “I was perfectly sound in wind and limb, then.”
“And now? You look quite sound in wind and limb still,” she commented.
“Oh, I've been one of the lucky ones! I've only got a game leg as my souvenir of hell. I just limp a bit, that's all.”
“I'm so sorry you've a souvenir of any kind,” said Nan quickly, with the spontaneousness which was part of her charm.
“Now that's very nice of you,” he answered. “But there's no reason why you should burden yourself with the woes of a perfect stranger.”
“I don't call you a perfect stranger,” replied Nan composedly. “I call you a Good Samaritan.”
“I'm generally known as Peter Mallory,” he interjected modestly.
“And you know my name. I think that constitutes an introduction.”
“Thank you,” he said simply.
“The thanks are all on my side,” Nan answered. “Here we are at Paddington, and it's entirely due to you that I shall catch my train.”
The taxi pulled up and stood panting.
“Shares, please!” said Nan, when he had paid the driver.
For an instant, a look of swift negation flashed across Mallory's face, then he replied composedly:
“Your share is two shillings.”
Nan tendered a two-shilling piece, blessing him in her heart for refraining from putting her under a financial obligation to a stranger. He accepted the money quite simply and, turning away to speak to a porter, he tucked the two-shilling piece into his waistcoat pocket, while an odd, contemplative little smile curved his lips.
“I've told the porter to find you a good seat,” he said, turning to Nan again. “I think you ought to be all right, as the trains aren't crowded. Good-by.”
Nan held out her hand impulsively.
“Good-by,” she said. “And, once more, thank you ever so much.”
His hands closed firmly around hers.
“There's no need. I'm only too glad to have been of service.”
He raised his hat and moved away, and Nan could see the slight limp of which he had spoken.
The porter fulfilled his obligations and placed her in an empty first-class carriage, even exerting himself to fetch a newsboy, from whom she purchased some magazines. The train started and very soon she had settled down to the quiet monotony of the journey. After she had finished luncheon, which was served in her own compartment, she drowsed over a magazine until she woke with a start to find the train at a standstill. Thinking she had arrived at St. David's station, where she must change to another line, she sprang up briskly. To her amazement she found they were not at a station at all. Green fields sloped away from the railway track, and there was neither house nor cottage in sight. The agitated voices of the guard and ticket collector sounded just below, and Nan thrust her head out of the window.
“Why are we stopping?” she asked. “Have we run into something?”
The guard looked up irritably. Then, seeing the charming face bent above him, he softened visibly.
“Pretty near, miss. There's a great piece of timber across the line. Luckily the engineer saw it and pulled up just in time. And a miss is as good as a mile, isn't it?”
“How dreadful!” ejaculated Nan. “Do you think you'll get the line cleared soon?”
The guard shook his head discouragingly.
“Well, it'll take a bit of time, miss, and even when we get clear we'll have to go slow and keep a sharp lookout.”
“Do you think I shall miss my connection for Abbencombe?”
“I'm afraid you will, miss.”
Nan's face fell.
“It's better than missing a limb or two, or your life, maybe,” observed the guard, with rebuke in his tones.
Nan laughed and tipped him.
“Much better,” she agreed.
And the guard, with a beaming smile, moved off to the other end of the train.
It was some time before the obstruction on the line was removed and the train enabled to steam ahead once more. Nan found herself unable to continue reading, and she gazed out of the window, wondering in desultory fashion how long she would have to wait at St. David's before the next train ran to Abbencombe. It was impossible, now, for her to catch the one she had originally planned to take.
The train proceeded at a cautious pace and finally pulled into St. David's an hour late. Nan jumped out and made inquiry of a porter, only to learn that there was no later to Abbencombe that day!
Rather shaken by the misadventures of the journey, she turned away from him, hopelessly, and found herself face to face with Peter Mallory.
“In trouble again?” he asked, catching sight of her face.
She was surprised into another question instead of a reply.
“Did you come down by this train, too?” she asked.
“Yes. But I traveled in the smoker.”
Nan was pleased that he had made no attempt to travel with her.
“I suppose you've missed your connection?” he pursued.
“Yes. That's just it. The last train to Abbencombe has gone and my friend's car was to meet me there. I'm stranded.”
He pondered a moment.
“So am I. I must get on to Abbencombe, though, and I'm going to hire a car and drive there. Will you let me give you a lift? Probably your chauffeur will still be at the station. To make sure, we could telephone from here to the Abbencombe station master, and ask him to tell your man to wait for you, as you're coming on by motor.”
“Oh!” Nan gasped, and before she had time to say anything further, he had gone off to see about telephoning.
When he finally returned, his face wore an expression of humorous satisfaction.
“I've fixed it all,” he said. “Your car has just arrived at Abbencombe and the chauffeur has been told to wait there. I've hired another one here for our journey. Now let me put you into it and then I'll see about your luggage.”
Nan took her seat obediently and reflected that there was something tremendously reliable about this man. Almost unconsciously she compared him with Maryon Rooke; Rooke, with his curious fascination and detached, half cynical outlook on life, his beautiful ideals, and—Nan's inner self flinched from the acknowledgment—his frequent falling short of them.
Unwillingly, she had to confess that Maryon was something both of poseur and actor, with an ineradicable streak of cynicism in his composition added to a strange undercurrent of passion which he rarely allowed to carry him away. Apart from this he was a genuine, creative artist. Whereas Peter Mallory, beautifully unselfconscious, was helpful in a simple, straightforward way which gave one a feeling of. security. And she liked his whimsical smile.
She was more than ever sure of the latter fact when he joined her in the car, remarking smilingly:
“This is a great bit of luck for me. I should have had a long drive of twenty-five miles all by myself, if you hadn't been left high and dry as well.”
“It's very nice of you to call it luck,” replied Nan as the car slid away into the winter dusk of the afternoon. “Are you usually a lucky person? You look as if you might be.”
Under the light of the tiny electric bulb which illuminated the car, she saw his face change suddenly. The lines on either side of the sensitive mouth seemed to deepen and a weary gravity showed for an instant in his eyes.
“Appearances are known to be deceitful, aren't they?” he answered, with an attempt at lightness. “No, I'm afraid I've not been specially lucky.”
“In love or in cards?”
The words left her lips unthinkingly and she regretted them the moment they were spoken. She felt that he must inevitably suspect her of a prying curiosity.
“I'm lucky at cards,” he replied.
There was something in his voice that appealed to Nan's sympathy.
“Oh, I'm so sorry!” she said, rather tremulously. “Perhaps some day the other kind of luck will come, too.”
“That's out of the question,” he said harshly.
“Do you know a little poem called 'Empty Hands?'” she asked. “I set it to music one day because I liked the words so much. Listen.”
In a low voice, a trifle shaken by reason of the sudden tensity which had crept into the atmosphere, she repeated the brief lyric.
“But sometimes God on His great white throne
Looks down from the heaven above,
And lays in the hands that are empty,
The tremulous star of love.”
As she spoke the last verse, Nan's voice took on a tender, instinctive note of consolation. Had she been looking she would have seen Peter Mallory's hand clench as if to crush some sudden, urgent emotion. But she was gazing straight in front of her.
“Only sometimes there isn't any star, and your hands would be 'outstretched in vain,' as the song says,” he commented,
“Oh, I hope not!” cried Nan. “Try to believe they wouldn't be!”
Mallory uttered a short laugh.
“I'm afraid it's no case for 'believing.' It's hard fact.”
Nan remained silent. There was a bitter note in his voice which made her feel that her poor little efforts at consolation were utterly futile. It seemed as if he read her thought, for he turned to her quickly with that charming smile of his.
“You'd make a topping pal,” he said. And Nan knew that, in some indefinable way, she had comforted him.
They drove on in silence for some time and when, later on, they began to talk again it was on ordinary, common-place topics, by mutual consent avoiding any byway which might lead them back to personal matters.
In due course, they arrived at Abbencombe and the car purred up to the station, where the Chattertons' limousine was waiting for Nan. The transit from one car to the other was quickly effected, and Peter Mallory stood bare-headed at the door of the limousine.
“Good-by,” he said. “And thank you, little pal. I hope you'll never find your moon out of reach.”
Nan held out her hand, and he carried it to his lips.
“Good-by,” he said once more.
CHAPTER III.
On a gray November afternoon two days later, Penelope stood at one of the windows of the flat in Edenhall Mansions, looking down at the busy thoroughfare below, lost in thought, Her reflections were interrupted, after a few minutes by the sudden appearance of Emily, the unhurried maid of all work, whom Nan's sense of fitness had rechristened “our Adagio.”
“Here's a lady to see you,” she announced briefly.
Penelope turned quickly and at sight of the visitor, a look of pleasure flashed into her face.
“Kitty! Back in town at last! Oh, it's good to see you again!”
She kissed the newcomer warmly and helped her remove her enveloping furs. When these were at last shed, Mrs. Barry Seymour was revealed as a plump, fashionable little person with auburn hair, the very newest shade; brown eyes which owed their shadowed lids to kohl; a glorious skin—which she had had the sense to leave to nature —and a chic little face at once so kind and humorous and entirely delightful that all censure was disarmed.
“We only got back to town last night,” she said returning Penelope's salute with fervor. “So I flew round to-day to see how you two were getting on. I can't think how you've managed without the advantage of my counsel for three whole months!”
“I don't think we have managed any too well,” admitted Penelope dryly.
“There! What did I say?” she exclaimed, with manifest delight. “I told Barry, when he would go up to Scotland just for the pleasure of killing little birds, that I was sure something would happen in my absence. What is it? Nothing very serious, of course. By the way, where's Nan this morning?”
“Playing at a concert in Exeter. At least, the concert took place last night. I'm expecting her back this afternoon.”
“Well, that's good news, not bad. How did you induce her to do it? She's been slacking abominably, lately.”
Penelope nodded somberly.
“I know. I've been pitching into her for it.”
“She's like every other girl. She can't settle down after four years of perpetual thrill and excitement. What's she been doing lately? Has she written anything new?”
Penelope laughed grimly.
“Oh, a song or two! And she has composed one gruesome thing which makes your blood run cold.”
“She's rather inclined to err on the side of tragedy,” observed Kitty.
“Especially just now,” added Penelope pointedly,
“What do you mean? Is anything wrong with Nan?” Kitty asked anxiously.
“Yes, there's something very wrong. I'm worried about her, and it's all the fault of that wretched artist man we met at your house.”
“Do you mean Maryon Rooke?”
“Yes,” Penelope answered briefly. “He's rather smashed Nan up.”
“He? Nan?” Kitty's voice rose in a crescendo of incredulity. “But he was crazy about her! And has been for some time. Why, I thought there was practically an understanding between them!”
“Yes. So did most people,” replied Penelope shortly.
“For goodness' sake, be more explicit, Penny! Surely she hasn't turned him down?”
“He hasn't given her the chance.”
“You mean—you can't mean that he has chucked her?”
“That's practically what it amounts to. And I don't understand it. If ever a man deliberately set himself to make a woman care, Maryon Rooke was the man. And when he'd succeeded, he went away.”
“And I suppose all this, coming on top of the staleness of things in general, has flattened her out?” Kitty said reflectively.
“I believe he has taken the savor out of things for her,” said Penelope. Then she added slowly, in a voice which was quite unlike her usual practical tones, “Brushed the bloom off the world for her.”
“Poor old Nan! She must be hard hit. She's never been hurt badly before.”
“Never—before she met that man. I can't forgive him, Kitty. I'm horribly afraid of the effect this miserable affair is going to have on a girl of Nan's odd temperament.”
Kitty turned the matter over in her mind in silence. Then with a small, sage nod of her red head, she advanced a suggestion.
“Bring her over to dinner to-morrow—no, not to-morrow, I'm booked. Say Thursday, and I'll have a nice man to meet her. She needs some one to play around with. There's nothing like another man to knock the first one out of a woman's head. It's cure by homeopathy.”
Penelope smiled dubiously.
“It's a bit of bad luck for the second man, isn't it? If he's nice. You know Nan is rather fatal to the peace of the male mind.”
“Oh, the man I'm thinking of has himself well in hand! He's a novelist and finds safety in numbers. His mother was French.”
“And Nan's great-grandmother was French, too. Kitty, is it wise?”
“Extreme measures are sometimes necessary. He and she will hit it off together at once, I know.”
As Kitty finished speaking there came a trill at the front doorbell. Kitty looked at the clock and jumped up quickly.
“Good heavens! That's Barry. He said he would call for me here. I'd forgotten all about it! Penelope, I must fly! Thursday, then; don't forget. Dinner at eight.”
She caught up her furs. There was a faint rustle of feminine garments, a fleeting whiff of violets in the air, and Kitty had taken her departure.
A short time afterward, a taxi pulled up at Edenhall Mansions and Nan stepped out of it. Penelope sprang up to welcome her as she entered the sitting room.
“Well, how did it go?” she asked eagerly.
“The concert? Oh, quite well! I had a very good reception, and this morning's notices in the newspapers were positively calculated to make me blush.”
There was an odd note of indifference in her voice; the concert did not appear to interest her much. Penelope pursued her interrogation.
“Did you enjoy yourself?”
A curious look of reminiscence came into Nan's eyes.
“Oh, yes! I enjoyed myself. Very much.” For some reason or other, Nan felt reluctant to share with Penelope—or with any one else, just at present—the facts of her meeting with Peter Mallory.
“You caught your train all right at Paddington?”
Nan's mouth tilted in a faint smile.
“Quite all right,” she responded placidly.
Finding that the question-and-answer process was not getting them very far, Penelope announced her own small item of news.
“Kit was here this afternoon,” she said.
“Just my luck to miss her,” Nan muttered irritably.
“No, it isn't 'just your luck,' my dear. It's any one's luck. You make such a grievance of trifles.”
In an instant, Nan's charming smile flashed out.
“I am a beast,” she said in a tone of acquiescence. “What on earth should I do without you, Penny, to bully me and generally lick me into shape?” She dropped a light kiss on the top of Penelope's bent head. “But, truly, I hate to miss Kit Seymour. She's as good as a tonic and just now I feel like a bottle of champagne that's been uncorked for a week.”
“You're overtired,” replied Penelope prosaically. “You're so—so excessive in all you do.”
“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” Nan acknowledged. “Well, what's the Kitten's news? What color is her hair this season?”
“Red. It suits her remarkably well.”
Nan rippled with mirth.
“Kit wants us to dine with them on Thursday. I suppose you can?” Penelope asked.
“With all the pleasure in life. Their chef is a dream,” murmured Nan reminiscently.
“As though you cared!” scoffed Penelope.
“But I do care,” she averred. “It isn't my little inside which cares. It's a purely external feeling which likes to have everything just right. If it's going to be a dinner, I want it perfect from soup to savory.”
“Bah!” Penelope grunted. “The critical faculty is overdeveloped in you, my child.”
“Not a bit! Would you like to drink champagne out of a kitchen teacup? Of course not. I merely apply the same principle to other things. For instance, if the man I married ate peas with a knife, not all the sterling qualities he might possess would compensate. Whereas if he had perfect manners, I believe I could forgive him half the sins in the Decalogue.”
“Manners are merely external,” protested Penelope, although privately she acknowledged to a sneaking agreement with Nan's point of view.
“Well,” retorted Nan, “we've got to live with externals, haven't we? It's only on rare occasions that people admit each other to their souls' doorsteps. Besides,” she continued argumentatively, “decent manners aren't external. They're the 'outward and visible sign.'”
“The theory may be correct,” admitted Penelope, “though a trifle idealistic for the twentieth century.”
“It oughtn't to be idealistic.” There was a faint note of wistfulness in Nan's voice. “Why should everything that is beautiful be invariably termed 'idealistic?' Oh, there are ten thousand things I'd like altered in this world of ours!”
“Of course there are. You wouldn't be you, otherwise! You want a specially constructed world and a peculiarly adapted human nature. In fact, you want the moon!”
Nan stared into the fire reflectively.
“I wonder,” she said slowly, “if I shall get it?”
Penelope glanced at her sharply.
“It's highly improbable,” she replied. “But a little philosophy would be quite as useful and a far more likely acquisition.”
As she finished speaking a bell pealed through the flat, pealed with an irritable suggestion that it had been rung unavailingly before. Followed Emily's footsteps as she pursued her unhurried way to answer its demand, and presently a visitor was shown into the room. He was a man of over seventy, erect and well preserved, with white hair and clipped mustache. There was an indefinable courtliness of manner about him which recalled the days of lace ruffles and knee breeches. The two girls rose to greet him with unfeigned delight.
“Uncle!” cried Nan. “How dear of you to come just when our spirits were at their lowest ebb!”
“My dears!” He kissed his niece and shook hands with Penelope. Nan pushed an armchair toward the fire.
“And why,” he asked, “has the barometer fallen?”
“You can't expect it to be always 'set fair!'” Nan answered.
“I'd like it to be,” returned St. John simply.
A fugitive thought flashed through Nan's mind that he and Peter Mallory were merely young and old representatives of a similar type of man.
“Apropos,” pursued Lord St. John, with a twinkle, “your handmaiden appears to me a quite just cause and impediment.”
“Oh, our 'Adagio!'” exclaimed Nan. “We've long since ceased to expect much from her. Did she keep you waiting on the doorstep long?”
“Only about ten minutes,” murmured St. John mildly. “But seriously, why don't you—er—give her warning:”
“My dear innocent uncle!” protested Nan amusedly. “Don't you know that that sort of thing isn't done nowadays, not in the best circles?”
“Besides,” added Penelope practically, “we should probably be out of the frying pan into the fire. The jewels in the domestic line are few and far between and certainly not to be purchased within our financial limits. And, frankly, there are very few jewels left, at any price. The tradition of good service has gone.”
“Do wages make any difference?” ventured St. John.
“Of course they do—to a certain extent,” Penelope replied. “Money makes a difference in most things, doesn't it?”
“There are one or two things it can't taint,” he answered quietly. “And now you've really brought me to the very object of my visit.”
“I thought it was a desire to inquire after the health of your favorite niece,” hazarded Nan impertinently.
“So it was. And as finance plays a most important part in that affair, the matter dovetails exactly!”
He smoked in silence for a moment. Then he resumed:
“I should like, Nan, with your permission, to double your allowance and make it six hundred a year.”
Nan gasped.
“You see,” he pursued, “though I'm only a mere man, I know the cost of living has soared sky-high, including”—with a sly glance at Penelope—“the cost of servants.”
“Well, but really, uncle, I could manage with less than that,” protested Nan. “Four or five hundred, with what we earn, would be quite sufficient—quite.”
St. John regarded her reflectively.
“It might be for some people. But not for you, my child. I know your temperament too well! You've the Davenant love of beauty and the instinct to surround yourself with all that's worth having, and I hate to think of its being thwarted just for lack of money. So six hundred a year it will be, my dear. On the same understanding as before—that you renounce the income should you marry.”
“Uncle,” Nan began, “I can't thank you”
“Don't, my dear. I merely want to give you a little freedom. You mayn't have it always. You won't if you marry,” he added, with a twinkle. “Now, may I have my usual cup of coffee, not from the hands of your Hebe!”
Nan nodded and slipped out of the room to make the coffee while Penelope turned toward the visitor with an expression of dismay on her face.
“Do forgive me, Lord St. John,” she said. “But is it wise? Aren't you taking from her all incentive to work?”
“I don't believe in potboiling,” he replied promptly. “The best work of a talent like Nan's is not the work that's done to buy the dinner. I may be wrong, Penelope. But, remember, my wife was a Davenant, nearer than Nan by one generation to Angèle de Varincourt. And she was never happy! Though I loved her, I couldn't make her happy.”
“I should have thought you would have made her happy, if any man could,” said Penelope gently.
“My dear, it's given to very few men to make a woman of temperament happy. And Nan is so like my dear, dead Annabel that, if for no other reason, I should always wish to give her what happiness I can. Unfortunately money won't buy happiness. But it makes possible the harmony of material environment which means a great deal to Nan.”
“You surely understand a temperamental woman!” exclaimed Penelope, surprised at the keenness of his perception.
St. John hardly seemed to hear her, for he continued:
“And I want to give her freedom, freedom from marriage, if she wishes it. That's why I stipulate that the income ceases if she marries. I'm trying to weight the balance against her marrying.”
Penelope looked at him questioningly.
“But why? Surely love is the best thing of all?”
“Love and marriage, my dear, are two very different things,” commented St. John, with an unwonted touch of cynicism. “Annabel and I—we loved. But I couldn't make her happy. Our temperaments were unsuited; we looked out on life from different windows. I'm not at all sure that the union of sympathetic temperaments, even where there is less love, does not result in a much larger degree of happiness than the union of opposites, where there is great love. The jar and fret is there, despite the attraction, and love starves in an atmosphere of discord. For the race, probably the mysterious attraction of opposites will produce the best results. But for individual happiness, the sympathetic temperament is the first necessity.”
There was a long silence. Presently St. John spoke again.
“And I don't really think men are at all suited to have the care and guardianship of women.”
“Unfortunately they're all that Providence has seen fit to provide,” replied Penelope.
“And yet, we men don't understand women, We're constantly hurting them with our clumsy misconceptions, with our failure to respond to their complexities.”
Penelope's eyes grew kind.
“I don't think you would,” she said.
“Ah, my dear, I'm an old man now and perhaps I understand! But there was a time when I understood no better than the average youngster who gayly asks some nice woman to trust her future in his hands, without a second thought as to whether he's fit for such a trust. And that was just the time when a little understanding would have given happiness to the woman I loved.”
He spoke rather wearily, but he contrived a smile as Nan entered, carrying a cup of coffee in her hand.
“My compliments, Nan. Your coffee equals that of any Frenchwoman.”
“A reversion to type. Don't forget that Angèle de Varincourt is always at the back of me.”
St. John laughed and drank his coffee appreciatively, and, after a little further desultory conversation, took his departure.
“Isn't he a perfect old dear?” said Nan when he had gone.
“Yes,” agreed Penelope. “He is. And he absolutely spoils you.”
“I really think he does, a bit. Imagine it, Penny, after our strenuous economies! Six hundred a year in addition to our hard-earned pence! Within limits it really does mean pretty frocks, and theaters, and taxis when we want them.”
Penelope smiled at her riotous satisfaction. Nan lived tremendously in the present; her capacity for enjoyment and for suffering was so intense that every little pleasure magnified itself and each small fret and jar became a minor tragedy.
But Penelope was acutely conscious that beneath all the surface tears and laughter there lay a hurt which had not healed, the ultimate effect and consequence of which she was afraid to contemplate
CHAPTER IV.
“Nan, may I introduce Mr. Mallory?”
It was the evening of Kitty's little dinner, a cozy gathering of sympathetic souls, the majority of whom were more or less intimately known to each other.
“As you both have French blood in your veins, you can chant the 'Marseillaise' in unison.” And with a nod and a smile, Kitty passed on to where her husband was chatting with Ralph Fenton, the well-known baritone, and a couple of members of Parliament.
As Nan looked up into the face of the man whose acquaintance she had already made in such a curious fashion, the thought flashed through her mind that in his French blood was the explanation of his unusual coloring—black brows and lashes contrasting so oddly with the fair hair which insisted on springing into crisp waves over his head.
“What luck!' he exclaimed boyishly. “I must be in the fates' good books to-night. What virtuous deed can I have done to deserve it?”
“Playing the part of Good Samaritan might have counted,” suggested Nan, smiling. “Unless you can recall any particularly good action which you've performed in the interval.”
“I don't think I've been guilty of a solitary one,” he replied seriously. “May I?” He offered his arm as the guests began trooping in to dinner. Penelope was appropriately paired off with Fenton, whom she had come to know fairly well in the course of her professional work.
“So France has a partial claim on you, too?” remarked Mallory, unfolding his napkin.
“Yes; a great-grandmother. I let her take the burden of all my sins.”
“Not a very heavy one, I imagine,” he returned, smiling.
“I don't know. Sometimes”—Nan's eyes grew suddenly pensive—sometimes I feel that one day I shall do something which will make the burden too heavy to be shunted on to great-grandmamma! Then I'll have to bear it myself, I suppose. Do you know, I've always had the idea that some time or other I shall get myself into an awful hole and that there won't be a single soul in the world to get me out of it.”
She spoke with an odd note of prescience in her voice. It was so pronounced that the sense of foreboding communicated itself to Mallory.
“Don't talk like that. If you think it, you'll be carried forward to just such disaster on the current of the thought. Be sure, quite, quite sure, that there will be some one at hand, even if it's only me,” he added quaintly.
“The Good Samaritan again? But you mightn't know I was in a difficulty,” protested Nan.
“I think I should always know if you were in trouble,” he said quietly.
There was a new quality in the familiar, lazy drawl, something that was very strong and steady. Although he had laid no stress on the word “you,” yet Nan was conscious in every nerve of her that there was an emphatic individual significance in the brief words he had just uttered. She shied away from it like a frightened colt.
“Still you mightn't come to the rescue, even if I were struggling in the quicksands,” she answered.
“I should come,” he said deliberately, “whether you wanted me to come or not.”
Followed a brief pause, charged with a curious emotional tensity. Then Mallory remarked lightly:
“I hope you're going to play for us this evening?”
“I expect so, if Kitty wishes it.”
“That's sufficient command for most of those to whom she gives the privilege of friendship, isn't it?”
There was a quiet ring of sincerity in his voice as he spoke of Kitty, and Nan's heart warmed toward him.
“Yes,” she assented eagerly. “One can't say 'no' to her. But I don't care for it, playing in a drawing-room after dinner.”
“No.” Again she felt that quick comprehension of his. “The chosen few and the chosen moment are what you like.”
“How do you know?” she asked impulsively.
“Because I think the 'how' and the 'where' of things influence you enormously.”
“Don't they influence you, too?” she demanded.
“Oh, they count, decidedly! But I'm not a woman, or an artist, so I'm not so much at the mercy of my temperament.”
The man's insight was extraordinarily keen, but touched with a little insouciant tenderness which kept it from being critical in any hostile sense.
“How well you understand women!” Nan commented, with a smile.
“It's very nice of you to say so, though I haven't the temerity to agree with you. I'm not likely, however, to forget that you've said it. Perhaps I may remind you of it some day.”
The abrupt intensity of his manner startled her. For the second time that evening the vivid personal note had been struck, suddenly and unforgetably.
The providential uprising of the women at that moment saved her from the necessity of a reply. Mallory drew her chair aside and, as he handed her the cambric web of a handkerchief she had let fall, she found him regarding her with a humorous expression in his eyes.
“This quaint English custom!” he said lightly. “All you women go into another room to gossip and we men are condemned to the society of one another! I'm afraid I'm not even British enough to appreciate such a droll arrangement. Especially this evening.”
Nan passed out in the wake of the other women to spend in desultory small talk that awkward after-dinner interval which splits the evening into halves and involves a picking up of the threads—not always successfully accomplished—when the men at last rejoin the feminine portion of the party.
“Well,” demanded Kitty, “how do you like my lion?”
“Mr. Mallory? I didn't know he was a lion,” responded Nan.
“Of course you didn't. You musicians never realize that the human zoo boasts any other lions except yourselves.”
“He didn't roar,” Nan said apologetically, “so how could I know? Tell me about him.”
“Why, he's just written what every one says will be the book of the year, 'Lindley's Wife.' It's a great hit.”
“I thought that was by G. A. Petersen?”
“But Peter is G. A. Petersen. Only his intimate friends know it, though, as he detests publicity. So don't give the fact away.”
“I won't. You've read this new book, I suppose?”
“Yes. And you must. It's the finest study of a woman's temperament I've ever come across. Goodness knows, he's had opportunity enough to study the subject!”
“Oh, is he a gay Lothario sort of person?” Nan asked coldly. “He didn't strike me in that light.”
“No. He's not in the least like that. He's an ideal husband wasted.”
Nan's eyes twinkled.
“Don't poach on preserved ground, Kitty. Marriages are made in heaven.”
As she spoke, the door opened to admit the men, and, somebody claiming Kitty's attention at the moment, she turned away without reply. For a few minutes the conversation became more general until, after a brief hum and stir, congenial spirits sought and found each other and settled down into little groups of twos and threes. Somewhat to Nan's surprise—and, although she would not have acknowledged it, to her annoyance—Peter Mallory ensconced himself next to Penelope, and Ralph Fenton, the singer, thus driven from the haven where he would be, came to anchor beside Nan.
“I've not seen you for a long time, Miss Davenant. How's the world been treating you?”
“Rather better than usual,” she replied gayly. “More ha'pence than kicks, for once in a way.”
“You're booking up pretty deep for the winter, then, I suppose?”
Nan responded indifferently.
“No. I haven't booked a single future engagement. The ha'pence are due to an avuncular relative who has a quite inexplicable penchant for an idle niece.”
“My congratulations. Still, I hope this unexpected windfall isn't going to keep you off the concert platform altogether?”
“Not more than my own distaste for playing in public,” she answered. “I'd much rather write music than perform. And now, tell me, are you singing here this evening?”
“I promised Mrs. Seymour. Would you be good enough to accompany?”
“I should love it. What are you going to sing?”
“Miss Craig and I want to give a duet.”
“And here comes Kitty to claim your promise, I guess.”
A few minutes later, the two singers' voices were blending delightfully, while Nan's fingers threaded their way through the intricacies of the involved accompaniment.
She was a wonderful accompanist, and when, at the end of the song, the restrained, well-bred applause broke out, Peter Mallory's share of it was offered as much to the accompanist as to the singers themselves.
“Stay where you are, Nan,” cried Kitty, as the girl half rose from the piano bench. “Stay where you are and play something.”
Knowing Nan's odd liking for a dim light, she switched off most of the burners as she spoke, leaving only one or two heavily shaded lights still glowing. Mallory crossed the room so that, as he stood leaning with one elbow on the chimney piece, he faced the player, on whose aureole of dusky hair one of the lights still burning cast a glimmer. While he waited for her to begin, he was aware of a little unaccustomed thrill of excitement, as though he were on the verge of some discovery.
Hesitatingly, Nan touched a chord or two. Then, without further preamble, she broke into strange, suggestive music. It opened joyously the calm beginnings of a happy spirit; then came a note of warning, the first low muttering of impending woe. Gradually the simple melody began to lose itself in a chaos of calamity, bent and swayed by wailing minor cadences through whose torrent of hurrying sound it could be heard vainly and fitfully trying to assert itself again, only to be at last weighed down, crushed out, by a cataclysm of despairing chords. Then, after a long, pregnant pause, the culminating silence of defeat, the original melody stole out once more, repeated in a minor key, hollow and denuded.
As the music ceased the lights sprang up again and Nan, looking across the room, met Mallory's gaze intently bent upon her. In his expression she could discern that, by a queer gift of intuition, he had comprehended the whole inner meaning of what she had been playing. Most people would have thought that it was a magnificent bit of composition, particularly for so young a musician, but Mallory went deeper and knew it to be a wonderful piece of self-revelation, the fruit of a spirit sorely buffeted.
Almost instantaneously Nan was conscious of a fierce resentment. She felt as if an unwarrantable intrusion had been made upon her privacy, and her annoyance showed itself in the quick compression of her mouth. She was about to slip away under cover of the applause when Mallory laid a detaining hand upon her arm.
“Don't go,” he said. “And forgive me for understanding.”
Nan, sorely against her will, looked up and met his eyes, eyes which were irresistibly kind and friendly. She hesitated, still anxious to escape.
“Please,” he begged. “Don't leave me”—his lips endeavored not to smile—“in high dudgeon. It's always seemed such an awful thing to be left in—like boiling oil.”
Suddenly she yielded to the man's whimsical charm and sank down again on to the bench.
“That's better.” He smiled and seated himself beside her. “I couldn't help it, you know,” he said quaintly. “It was you yourself who told me.”
“Told you what?”
“That the world hadn't been quite kind.”
“Tell me,” Nan queried, with averted head, “how—how much did you understand?”
Mallory scrutinized her reflectively.
“You really wish to know?”
“Yes, really.”
He was silent a moment. Then he spoke slowly, as though choosing his words.
“Fate has given you one of her backhanders, I think, and you want the thing you can't have, want it rather badly. And, just now, nothing seems quite worth while.”
“Go on,” she said, very low.
He hesitated. Then, as if suddenly making up his mind to hit hard, he spoke incisively.
“The man wasn't worth it.”
Nan gave a faint, irrepressible start.
“You don't know him,” she began.
“But I know you.”
“This is only our second meeting.”
“What of that? I know you well enough to be sure, quite sure, that you wouldn't give unasked. You're too proud, too analytical, and, at present, too little passionate.”
Nan's face whitened.
“You're rather an uncanny person,” she said at last. “You understand too much.”
“'Tout comprendre—c'est tout pardonner,'” quoted Mallory gently.
“And do I need pardon?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered simply. “You're not the woman God meant you to be. You're too critical, too cold, without passion.”
“And I a musician?” she asked incredulously.
“Oh, it's in your music right enough! The artist in you has it. But the woman—so far, no. You're far too introspective to surrender blindly. Artist, analyst, critic first—only woman when those other three are satisfied.”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I believe that's true.”
“I think it is,” he affirmed quietly. “And because men are what they are, and you are you, it's quite probable you'll fail to achieve the triumph of your womanhood. You're not one of those who would count the world well lost for love, you know, except on the impulse of an imaginative moment.”
“No, I'm not,” she answered reflectively. “I wonder why.”
“Why? Oh, you're a product of the times! The primeval instincts are almost civilized out of you.”
Nan sprang to her feet with a laugh.
“I won't stay here to be vivisected one moment longer!” she declared. “People like you. ought to be blindfolded.”
“Anything you like, so long as I'm forgiven.”
“I think you'll have to be forgiven in remembrance of the day when you took up a passenger in Hyde Park!” she concluded, smiling.
Soon afterward people began to take their departure, Nan and Penelope alone making no move to go, since Kitty had offered to send them home in her car later. Mallory paused as he was making his farewells to the two girls.
“And am I permitted—may I have the privilege of calling?” he asked, with one of his odd lapses into a quaintly elaborate manner that was wholly un-English.
“Yes, do. We shall be delighted.”
“My thanks.” And with a slight bow he left them.
Later on, when every one else had gone, the Seymours, together with Penelope and Nan, drew round the fire for a brief chat.
“Well, how do you like Kitty's latest lion?” asked Barry, lighting a cigarette.
“I think he's a dear,” declared Penelope warmly. “I liked him immensely, what I saw of him.”
“He has an extraordinary faculty for reading people,” chimed in Kitty.
“Part of a writer's stock in trade, of course,” replied Barry. “But he's a clever chap.”
“Too clever, I think,” said Nan. “He fills one with a desire to have one's soul carefully fitted up with frosted-glass windows.”
“What nonsense!” laughed Penelope. “I think he's a delightful person.”
“Possibly. But, all the same, I think I'm frightened of people who make me feel as if I had no clothes on.”
“Nan!”
“It's quite true. Your most dazzling get-up wouldn't make an atom of difference in his opinion of the real 'you' underneath it all. Why, one might just as well have no pretensions to good looks when talking to a man like that! It's sheer waste of good material.”
“Well, he's rather likely to want to get at the real 'you' of anybody he meets,” interpolated Barry. “He was badly taken in once. His wife was one of the prettiest women I've ever seen, and she was an absolute devil.”
“He's a widower, then!” exclaimed Penelope.
Barry shook his head regretfully.
“No such luck! That's the skeleton in poor old Peter's cupboard. Celia Mallory is very much alive and having as good a time as she can squeeze out of India.”
“They live apart,” explained Kitty. “She's one of those restless, excitable women, always craving to be in the limelight, and she simply couldn't stand Peter's literary work. She was frantically jealous of it, wanted him to be dancing attendance on her all day long. And when his work interfered with the process, as it was bound to do, she made endless rows. She had money of her own, and finally informed Peter that she was going to India. She has relatives there. Her uncle's a judge, and she has several army cousins married out there.”
“Do you mean she has never come back?” gasped Penelope.
“No. And I don't think she means to, if she can help it. She's the most thoroughly selfish little beast of a woman I know, and cares for nothing on earth except enjoyment. She's spoiled Peter's life for him”—Kitty's voice shook a little—“and through it all he's been so patient!”
“Still, they're better apart,” commented Barry. “While she was living with him she made a bigger hash of his life than she can do when she's away. She was spoiling his work as well as his life. And old Peter's work means a lot to him. He's still got that left out of the wreckage.”
“Yes,” agreed Kitty, “and, of course, he's writing better than ever now. Every one says 'Lindley's Wife' is a masterpiece.”
Nan had been silent during this revelation of Mallory's unfortunate domestic affairs. The discovery that he was already married came upon her as a shock. She felt stunned. Above all, she was conscious of a curious sense of loss, as though the Peter she had just begun to know had suddenly receded a long way off from her and would never again be able to draw nearer.
When the Seymours' car at length bore the two girls back to Edenhall Mansions, Penelope found Nan an unwontedly silent companion. She responded to Penn's remarks in monosyllables and appeared to have nothing to say regarding the evening's happenings.
Mingled with the even throb of the engine, Nan could hear a constant iteration of the words:
“Married! Peter's married!”
And she was quite unconscious that in her mind she was already thinking of him as “Peter.”
To be continued in the March number.