The Moon Out of Reach (Ainslee's serial)/Part 4

by Margaret Pedler

 

CHAPTER XVIII.

WITHIN a fortnight of Mallory's departure from St. Wennys, the whole of the house party at Mallow had scattered. Lord St. John was the first to go—leaving in order to pay a short visit to Eliza McBain before returning to town. Often though she might scarify him with her sharp tongue she was genuinely attached to him, and her clannishly hospitable soul would have been sorely wounded if he had not spent a few days at Trevarthen Wood, while he was in the neighborhood. Ralph Fenton had been obliged to hurry north to fulfill an unexpected concert engagement and, on the same day, Barry left home to join a shooting party in Scotland. A few days later Nan and Penelope returned to London, accompanied by Kitty, who asserted an unshakable determination to take part in the orgy of spending which Penelope's forthcoming wedding would entail.

Meanwhile, Ralph had secured his future wife's engagement as a member of the concert party—by the simple method of declining to accept the American tour himself unless she were included, so that to the joy of buying a trousseau was added the superlative delight of choosing special frocks for Penelope's appearances on tour in the States. Lord St. John had insisted upon presenting the trousseau. Barry Seymour made himself responsible for the concert gowns, and Kitty announced that the wedding was to take place from her house in Green Street.

For the first time in the whole of her brave, hard-working life, Penelope knew what it was to spend as she had seen other women spend, without being driven into choosing the second-best material or the less becoming frock for the unsatisfying reason that it was the cheaper. The two men had given Kitty carte blanche as regards expenditure and she proceeded to take full advantage of the fact, promptly quelling any tentative suggestions toward economy which Penelope, rather overwhelmed by Mrs. Seymour's lavish notions, occasionally put forth.

The date on which the concert party sailed was already fixed, leaving a bare month in which to accomplish the necessary preparations, and the time seemed positively to fly. Nan evaded taking part in the shopping expeditions which filled the days of Penelope and Kitty, since each new purchase served only to remind her that the approaching parting with Penelope was drawing nearer.

Nan sat staring info the fire—for the first breath of autumn had already chilled the air—trying to realize that to-day was actually the eve of Penelope's wedding day. It seemed incredible, and even more incredible that Kitty and she should have gone off laughing together to see about some detail of the next day's arrangements which had been overlooked.

She was suddenly conscious that if this were the eve or her own marriage with Roger laughter would be far away from her. Regarded dispassionately, her decision to marry him because she couldn't marry the man she loved seemed rather absurd and illogical. She had rushed recklessly into her engagement, regarding marriage with Roger much as though it were a stout set of palings with “No Right of Way” written across them in large letters. Outside, the waves of emotion might surge in vain, while within she and Roger would settle down to the humdrum placidity of married life. But the dull, ceaseless ache at her heart made her sometimes question whether anything in the world could keep at bay the insistent claim of love.

She tried to reassure herself. At least, there would always remain her music and the passionate delight of creative work. These and other disconnected thoughts flitted fugitively through her mind as she sat waiting for Penelope's return. Vague visions of the future; memories—hastily slurred over; odd, rather frightened musings on the morrow's ceremony, when Penny would bind herself to Ralph “in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation.”

Rather curiously Nan reflected that she had never actually read the marriage service, only caught chance phrases here and there in the course of other people's marriages. She switched on the lights and hunted about for a Book of Common Prayer, turning the pages with quick, nervous fingers till she came to one headed: “The Solemnization of Matrimony.”

Her eyes flew along the words of the service, skimming hastily over the tender beauty of the vows the man and woman give each other. For they are only beautiful if love informs them. To Nan they were rather terrifying with their suggestion of irrevocability.

“So long as ye both shall live.”

Why, she and Roger were young enough to anticipate thirty or forty years together! Thirty or forty years—before death came and released them from each other. Driven by circumstances, she had not stopped to consider the possible duration, of marriage when she pledged her word to Roger.

Latterly, Nan had been feeling quite affectionately disposed toward him—he was really a dear in some ways! And she had accepted an invitation to spend part of the winter at Trenby Hall.

The Seymours had planned to go abroad for several months and, since Penelope would be married and on tour, it had seemed a very natural solution of matters. So that when Lady Gertrude's rather stiffly worded letter of invitation had arrived, Nan accepted it, determining in her own mind that, during the visit, she would try to overcome her mother-in-law's dislike for her. The knowledge of how much Roger loved her and of how little she was really able to give him in return made her feel that it was only playing the game to please him in any way she could. And she recognized that, to a man of Roger's ideas, the fact that his wife and mother were on good terms with one another would be a source of very definite satisfaction,

But now, as she reread the solemn phrase: “So long as ye both shall live,” she was seized with panic. To be married for ten, twenty, forty years, perhaps, with never the hand of happy chance—the wonderful, enthralling “might be” of life—to help her to endure it! With a little, stifled cry she sprang up and began pacing the room restlessly—up and down, up and down, her slim hands clenching and unclenching as she walked.

Presently—she could not have told whether it was five minutes or five hours later—she heard the click of a latchkey in the lock. At the sound, the imperative need for self-control rushed over her. Penelope, of all people, must never know, never guess that she wasn't happy in her engagement to Roger. She didn't intend to spoil Penny's own happiness by the faintest cloud of worry on her account.

She snatched up the prayer book she had let fall and, switching off the lights, dropped down on the hearthrug, just as Penelope came in, fresh and glowing from her walk.

“All in the dark?” she queried as she entered. “You look like a kitten curled up by the fire.” She stooped and kissed Nan with unwonted tenderness. Then she turned up the lights and drew the curtains across the window, shutting out the gray October twilight.

“Penny,” said Nan, fingering the prayer book, “have you ever read the marriage service?”

Penelope's face lightened with a sudden radiance.

“Yes, isn't it beautiful?”

Nan stared at her.

“Beautiful?” She gave an odd little laugh. “It sounds to me much more like a commination service. Doesn't it frighten you?”

“Not a bit.” Penelope's serenely happy eyes confirmed her quick denial.

“Well”—Nan regarded her contemplatively—“it rubs in all the dreadful things that may happen to you, like ill health, and poverty, and 'for worse'—whatever that may mean—and dins into your ears the fact that nothing but death can release you.”

“You're looking at the wrong side of it, Nan. It seems to me to show just exactly how much a husband and wife may be to each other, and how—together—they can face all the ills that flesh is heir to.”

“Reminds one of a visit to the dentist—you can screw your courage up more easily if some one goes with you,” remarked Nan grimly.

“You're simply determined to look on the ugly side of things,” protested Penelope.

“And yet, Penny dear, at one time you used to scold me for being too idealistic in my notions!”

But Penelope declined to shift her present standpoint.

“And now you're expecting so little that, when your turn comes, you'll be beautifuly disappointed,” she remarked as she left the room in order to finish some odds and ends of packing.

 

In her capacity of sole bridesmaid Nan followed Penelope's tall, white-clad figure up the aisle. Each step was taking her friend farther away from her and nearer to the man whom the next half hour would make her husband. With a swift leap of the imagination, she visioned herself in Penelope's place, leaning on Lord St. John's arm—and the man who waited for her at the chancel steps was Roger! She swayed a moment, then by an immense effort forced herself back to the reality of things, following steadily once more in the wake of her uncle and Penelope.

There seemed to be something dreamlike in their slow progression. The atmosphere was heavy with the scent of flowers, a sea of blurred faces loomed up at her from the pews on either side, and the young, sweet voices of the choristers soared high above the organ. She stole a glance at her uncle. He looked frailer than usual, she thought, with a sudden pang of apprehension; perhaps the heat of the summer had told upon him a little. Then her gaze ran on to where the bridegroom stood, the tall altar lights flickering behind him, his face turned toward the body of the church, and his eyes, very bright and steady, resting on Penelope as she approached.

He stepped forward quickly as she neared the chancel and Nan saw that a smile passed between them as he took his place beside her. A feeling of reassurance crept over her, quieting the sense, of almost breathless panic which had, for a moment, overwhelmed her when she had pictured herself in Penny's place. There was dear old Ralph, looking quite ordinary and matter of fact, only rather sprucer than usual in his brand-new wedding garments, The feeling of reassurance deepened. Marriage wasn't so appalling. Good heavens! Dozens of people were married every day and she was quite sure they were not all wildly in love with each other.

Then the service commenced and the soft rise and fall of responsive voices murmured through the church.

It was over very quickly—Nan almost gasped to find how astonishingly short a time it takes to settle one of the biggest things in life. In a few minutes the scented dimness of the church was exchanged for the pale gold of the autumn sunlight, the hush of prayer for the throb of waiting cars.

Later still, when the afternoon was spent, came the last handshakings and kisses. A rising chorus of good wishes, a dust of confetti, the closing of a door, and then the pur of a car as Penelope and Ralph were borne away on the first stage of that new, untried life into which they were adventuring together.

Nan's face wore a queer look of strain as she turned back into the house. Once more the shadow of the future had fallen across her—the shadow of her marriage with Roger Trenby.

CHAPTER XIX.

A sense of bustle and mild excitement pervaded Trenby Hall. The hounds were to meet some distance away and a hunting morning invariably necessitated the services of at least two of the menservants and possibly those of an observant maid 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 been at Trenby long enough to be well used to the cyclone which habitually accompanied Roger's departure to the meet, and the boyish unreasonableness of it rather appealed to her. He was like a big, overgrown schoolboy returning to school, and greatly concerned as to whether his cricket bat and tuck box were safely included in his baggage.

“You, darling?” Roger nodded at her perfunctorily, preoccupied with the necessities of the moment. “Now, have I got my pipe?” He slapped his pockets to ascertain. “Matches! I've no matches! Here, Morton,” he called to the butler who was standing by with a hunting crop in his hand, “got any matches?”

Morton produced a box at once. He had been in Roger's service from boyhood 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 procured 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. Further along clustered the pack, the hounds padding restlessly here and—there, but kept within bounds by the occasional crack of a long-lashed whip or a gruff command from one of the whips.

Nan was always conscious of a curious intermingling of feelings when, as now, she watched Roger ride away at the head of the 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 his bare hands the great hound which had attacked her. A quick thrill ran through her at the recollection. No woman can remain unmoved by physical courage—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 attractive sides. 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, and she had discovered, too, that Roger was somewhat inclined to play the autocrat.

Unfortunately, Nan's honest endeavors 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, 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 Isoble 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.

“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 the evening.

“I thought you liked the dress,” she countered.

“Well—yes. But——”

“But your mother has been talking to 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 glinted in her eyes.

“I don't think my choice of clothes has anything to do with Miss Carson,” 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 up in his arms and kissed her.

“To please me—wear something else,” he said.

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 toward 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!” she affirmed 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 ruling. 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 parlor, 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. But she would be sharply reminded of 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. 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, realizing 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. 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.

“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 Lady Gertrude 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 do things 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 round 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 the 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 before she had seen the announcement of Maryon Rooke's marriage in the papers, and, though 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 note of decision in his voice; the boyish inflection had gone. “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. This was a new, surprising Sandy who was talking to her with the forcefulness of a man.

“As for being 'out of it,' as you say,” he went on emphatically, “if you are, it's only by your own consent. Any one who composes 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! If you were like me, now—not a damn bit of good because I've no technical knowledge——”

In an instant her quick sympathy responded to the note of regret which he could not quite keep out of his voice.

“Sandy, I'm a beast to grumble. 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, isn't the only thing.”

“No,” he returned cheerfully. “But it will do quite well to go on with. Have you composed anything new?” he demanded suddenly.

“No,” Nan admitted, “but it's impossible to do any work here. Lady Gertrude fairly radiates disapproval whenever I spend an hour or two at the piano, and you know 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 to work at it quick—and stick to it.”

Nan was silent for a few minutes.

“Sandy,” she said at length, “you're like a dose of physic—wholesome, but unpalatable. I'll get to work to-morrow. Now let's go out 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.

“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 parlor, chatting in the cozy intimacy of the firelight.

“I'd rather you saw it when it is my 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. “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 juvenile spirit. His job is with these bodies of ours. But the spirit,” he added dreamily, “and its youthfulness—that's for eternity.”

“But you look quite well—quite well,” 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 hits, 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 it was 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 complain 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——” Lord St. John began slowly.

Nan lifted her head.

“Why did I promise Roger?” she broke in. “Because it seemed the only way. I—I was afraid! And then there was Penelope and Ralph. Oh, it was a ghastly mistake. I know now. But—but there's Roger. 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 honor 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 ran from one difficulty into 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.

CHAPTER XX.

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 arose once more between 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 throughout Nan's life, was a matter of supreme unimportance to the older woman.

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. Unfortunately, however, the hours she spent in the seclusion of the west parlor 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 evening, 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 behavior as a guest in the house, even though she recognized the injustice of it. An awkward pause ensued.

“This afternoon, for instance,” pursued Lady Gertrude, “Isobel and I paid several calls in the neighborhood, 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 any one should expect her to break off in the middle of an afternoon's inspiration in order to pay a duty call upon absolute strangers whose disappointment was probably solely due to balked 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!” Her tone was challenging.

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 leveled a keen glance at Nan. There was suppressed anger and a searching, almost fierce inquiry 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.

“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 willfulness, 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, even the bare liking, of Rogers' womankind, and she had failed. It was all just so much useless effort. Henceforward, they might think what they chose of her.

The remainder of the meal passed in a strained and uncomfortable manner, but it 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 was not joking. You've shown 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, and she felt that she wanted to comfort him. She could forgive him his violence. In his furious antagonism toward 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,” she continued 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 to himself. 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 once told him she 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 between himself and Nan.

“Have I nothing else—no one else—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 some one for whom I cared. But, if you believed all I told you then—you know, too, that you have no reason to be jealous.”

“You mean because you can't marry him?” he asked moodily.

“Yes.”

The brief reply acted like a spark to tinder. With a stifled exclamation he caught her 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 that 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!” She flushed swiftly. “You must know it!”

“Yes,” he acquiesced 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 any one 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 it would be 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.

“By God, yes! It'll be different then. I shall have you to myself!”

“Your mother?” She questioned, a thought timidly.

“She—and Isobel—will go to the dower house. No”—he seemed to read 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,” he declared 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 be 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 nimble fingers did not pause 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.”

“Do you mean from her house in town?” Lady Gertrude asked, laying down the utilitarian flannel petticoat she was making for one of her protégées in the village.

“Why, yes, I suppose so.” Nan looked faintly puzzled.

“Then I hope you will rearrange matters.”

Lady Gertrude's manner, though colder and infinitely more precise, was as arrogant as Roger's, with 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 some one of the district. So I hope 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 as though the matter were settled.

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 realized how much propinquity adds fuel to love's fire. Unknown even to himself Roger's passion had been gradually rising toward flood tide. Man being by nature a contradictory animal, the attitude assumed by his mother and cousin toward 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 molded 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 molding 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 every one 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 was Philistine or not, Nan had promised to marry him, and he would know neither rest nor peace of mind until that promise was fulfilled.

And Nan, as she lay in bed with wide eyes staring into the darkness, felt as if the door of the cage was slowly closing upon her.

CHAPTER XXI.

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 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.

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 doorknob 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 pleasant, while Roger was in the sullen, rather impenetrable mood which Nan had learned to recognize as a sign of storm. He hardly spoke at all and, immediately breakfast was at an end, he rose from the table, remarking that he should not be in for lunch, and left the room.

“I suppose he's riding over to Berry Farm—the tenant wants some repairs done,” said Lady Gertrude when he had gone. “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 quarreled?” 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—quarreled.”

Lady Gertrude scrutinized her with keen, light-gray eyes that had the same penetrating glance as Roger's own, and Nan felt herself coloring.

“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 now as you were 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. “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.

“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,” she said 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. You understand?”

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 if she were a slave who had been bartered away to a new owner.

“Yes, I do understand!” she exclaimed in a voice which she hardly recognized 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—I can'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 rose as she spoke—“you can put any idea of rushing off to London—that's where you want to go, I suppose—out of your head. It would hardly be proper for a young, unmarried girl to stay there alone. 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 leaving Trenby.” With this parting comment she left the room.

When she had gone Nan stared stonily out of the window. She felt hopeless, 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 until Kitty or Penelope came home. Of course, she could run away, but the knowledge of Lord St. John's disappointment if she did that made her banish the thought.

“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.” Had she been doing that? Remembering all that had passed between them last night she began to realize 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 parlor with her music and her memories, and in his own blundering fashion Roger had realized 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 jealously 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 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 given. She could stretch out a friendly hand and try to link their interests together, however slight the link might 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 parlor to listen to it. It was nearing completion—another week's work and it 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 all.

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, 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, but if by this road she and Roger took one step toward a better understanding, toward 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 among 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 honoring 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 the fulfillment of the pledges he had made the day he married her.

Nan leaned her head against the windowpane, realizing that, whatever Roger's faults might be, 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.

CHAPTER XXII.

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, 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 parlor, 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, must be offered to him.

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. A distracted young 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 and her aid-de-camp, Isobel, were closeted with the terrified creature, leaving Nan and Roger alone.

“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 any one.”

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. Mrs. Pike was the woman from the village.

His arm tightened around 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 realized how, utterly powerless she would be against his immense strength, and something flintlike and merciless in the expression of the 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,” he added 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! I must do 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—some one—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. So he was quite genuinely dumfounded at her heterodox pronouncement on the relative values of music and babies.

A baby was not in the least an object of absorbing interest to Nan. 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, 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 blended with love itself, that her arms would have opened to receive it.

“That's all nonsense, you know, sweetheart,” chided Roger, who was sublimely ignorant of these intricacies of the feminine heart and mind. “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 I have a concerto, come along and listen to it.”

He nodded and followed her into the west parlor. 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.

“Well, you can listen to music much better if you're really comfy,” said Nan. “Sit down and light your pipe—there, I'll light it for you when you've finished squashing the 'baccy down into it.”

Roger dropped leisurely into the big chair, filled and lit his pipe, and, when it was drawing well, stretched out his legs to the logs' warm glow with a sigh of contentment.

“Now, fire away, sweetheart,” he said. “I'm all attention.”

She looked across at him, feeling for the first time a little anxious, and uncertain of the success of her plan.

“Of course, it'll sound very bad—just played on the piano,” she explained carefully. “You'll have to try and imagine the difference the orchestral part makes.”

Switching off the lights, so that nothing but the flickering glow of the fire illumined the room, she began to play.

For half an hour she played on, lost to all thoughts of the world around her, wrapped in the melody and meaning of the music. Then, as the finale rushed in a torrent of golden chords to its climax and the last note was struck, her hands fell away from the piano and she sank back on her seat with a little sigh of exhaustion and happiness.

A pause followed. In silence she awaited Roger's approval, her lips just parted, her face still alight with the joy of the creator who knows that his work is good.

But the words for which she was listening did not come. Instead—utter silence! Wondering, half apprehensive of she knew not what, Nan twisted round on the music seat and looked at Roger. The sharp, quick intake of her breath broke the silence as might a cry. Roger was sleeping peacefully, his head thrown back against a cushion!

Nan rose slowly and, coming forward into the circle of the firelight, stared down at him incredulously. It was unbelievable! She had been giving him all the best that was in her—the work of her brain, the interpretation of her hands—baring her very heart to him during the last half hour. And he had slept through it all!

In any other circumstances, probably, the humorous side of the matter would have struck her, and the sting and smart of it been washed away in laughter.

But just now it was impossible for her to feel anything except bitterness and hopeless disappointment. For weeks she had been working hard, without the fillip of congenial atmosphere, in spite of depression and discouragement, and now she was strung up to a high pitch,

She had counted so intensely on winning Roger's sympathy and understanding, on putting an end to that blundering, terrible jealousy of his by playing the game to the limit of her ability. It had been like making a burnt offering for her to share the thing she loved best with Roger, to let him into some of the secret places where dwelt her inmost dreams and emotions. And she had nerved herself to do it, made her sacrifice—in vain! Roger was even unconscious that it was a sacrifice!

She looked down at him as he lay with the firelight flickering across his strong-featured face, and a storm of fury and indignation swept over her. She could have struck him!

Presently he stirred uneasily. Perhaps he felt the cessation of the music, the presence of some one moving in the room. A moment later ke opened his eyes and saw her standing beside him.

“You, darling?” he murmured drowsily. He stretched his arms. “I think I've been asleep. By Jove!” he exclaimed as recollection returned to him. “You were playing to me!”

“Yes,” she answered slowly. Her lips felt dry. “And I'll never play to you again as long as I live!”

He smiled indulgently.

“That's putting it rather strong, isn't it?” he said, pulling her down to his knee.

She sprang up again instantly and stood a little away from him, her hands clenched, her breast heaving tumultuously.

“Come back, little firebrand!” he commanded laughingly.

A fresh gust of indignation swept over her. Even now he didn't comprehend, didn't realize in the very least how he had wounded her. Her nails dug into the flesh of her palms as she took a fresh grip of herself and answered him very slowly and distinctly so that he might not miss her meaning.

“It's not putting it one bit too strong. It's what I feel—that I can't ever play to you again.” She paused, then burst out impetuously: “You've always disliked my love of music! You were jealous of it. And to-night I wanted to show you, to—to share it with you. You hated the piano. You wanted to smash it, because you thought it came between us. And so I tried to make you understand!” Her words came rushing out headlong now, bitter, sobbing words, holding all the agony of mind which she had been enduring for so long.

“You've no idea what music means to me—and you've not tried to find out. Instead, you've laughed indulgently about it, been impatient over it, and behaved as though it were some child's toy of which you didn't quite approve.” Her voice shook. “And it isn't! It's part of me—part of the woman you want to marry.” She broke off, a little breathlessly.

Roger was on his feet now and there was a deep, smoldering anger in his eyes as he regarded her.

“And is all this outburst because I fell asleep while you were playing?” he asked curtly.

She was silent, battling with the emotion that was shaking her.

“Because,” he went on with a tinge of contempt in his voice, “if so, it's a ridiculous storm in a teacup.”

“'Ridiculous!' Yes, that's all it would be to you,” she answered bitterly. “But to me it's just like a light flashed en our future life together. We're miles apart—miles! We haven't a thought, an idea, in common. And when it comes to music, to the one big thing in my life, you brush it aside as if it could be taken up or put down like a child's musical box!”

Roger looked at her. Something of her passionate pain and resentment was becoming clear to him.

“I didn't know it meant as much to you as that,” he said slowly.

“It's everything to me now!” she burst out wildly. “The only thing I have left—left of my world as I knew it.”

His face whitened, and a curious, strained brilliance came into his eyes. She had touched him on the raw, roused his mad jealousy of all that had been in her life of which he had no share.

“The only thing you have left?” he repeated, with a slow, dangerous inflection in his voice. “Do you mean that?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, smiting her hands together. “Can't you see it? There's nothing here for me. Are we companions—you and I? We're absolute strangers! We don't think, or feel, or move in the same world.”

“No?”

Just the brief monosyllable, spoken as coolly as though she had remarked that she didn't like the color of his tie.

She looked up, bewildered, and met his gaze. His eyes frightened her. They were ablaze, remorseless as the eyes of a bird of prey. A sudden terror of him overwhelmed her.

“Roger!” she cried. “We can't marry! Let me go—release me from my promise! Oh, I can't bear it! I can't marry you! Let me go! Oh, please let me go!”

There was a pause, a pause during which Nan could feel her heart leaping in her body like some terrified, captive thing. Then Roger made a movement. Instinctively she knew it was toward her and flung out her arms to ward him off. But she might as well have opposed him with two straws. He caught both wrists in one of his big hands and bent her arms downward, drawing her close to him till she lay unwillingly against his breast, held there in a grasp like iron.

“Will I release you?” he said savagely. “No, I will not! Neither now, nor at any future time. You're mine! Do you understand what that means? It means if you'd one day left to live, it would be my day—one night, mine! And I swear to you if any man takes you from me I'll kill him first and you after. Now do you understand?”

She tried to speak, but her voice failed her. It was as though he had pronounced sentence on her—a life sentence. She could never get away from him—never, never! A shudder ran through her whole body. He felt it, and it stung him to fresh anger. Her head was pressed against his shoulder as if for shelter.

“Look up!” he demanded imperiously. “Don't hide your face. It's mine. And I want to see it!”

Reluctantly, compelled by his voice, she lifted a white, tortured face to his. Then, meeting his eyes, savagely alight with the fire of conquest, she turned her head quickly aside. But it was useless. She was powerless in the vise-like grip of his arms, and the next moment he was kissing her eyes and mouth and pulsing throat, with terrible, burning kisses that seemed to sear their way through her whole body, branding her indelibly his.

It was useless to struggle. She hung nervelessly in his straining arms, mute and helpless to withstand him, while,his passion swept over her like a tidal wave, submerging her utterly.

When at last he set her free she swayed unsteadily, catching at the table for support. She was voiceless, breathless from his violence. The tide had receded, leaving her utterly spent and exhausted.

He regarded her in silence for a moment.

“I don't think you'll ask me to release you from your engagement again,” he said slowly.

“No,” she whispered tonelessly. “No.”

She tottered almost as if she were going to fall. With a sort of rough kindliness he put out his hand to steady her, but she shrank from him like a beaten child.

“Don't do that!” he exclaimed unevenly, and added: “I've frightened you, I suppose?”

She bent her head.

“Well,” he continued sulkily, “it was your own fault. You roused the wild beast in me.” Then, with a queer, half-ashamed laugh, he added: “There's Spanish blood in the Trenbys, you know, as there is in many of the Cornish folk.”

Nan supposed this avowal was intended as an apology, or at least as an explanation of sorts. It was rather appealing in its boyish clumsiness, but she felt too numb, too utterly weary, to respond to it.

“You're tired,” he said abruptly. “You'd better go to bed.” He put a hand beneath her arm, but she shrank away from him with a fresh spasm of terror.

“Don't be afraid. I'm not going to kiss you again.” He spoke reassuringly. “Come, let me help you. You can hardly stand.”

Once more he took her arm and, too stunned to offer any resistance, she allowed him to lead her from the room.

“Will you be all right now?” he asked anxiously, as they paused at the foot of the staircase.

She gripped the banister.

“Yes,” she answered mechanically. “I shall be all right.”

He remained at the bottom of the stairs, watching until her slight figure had disappeared round the bend of the stairway.

CHAPTER XXIII.

“Your Great-aunt Rachel is dead, Roger.”

Lady Gertrude made this announcement the following morning at breakfast. No one made any reply unless a sympathetic murmur from Isobel could be construed as such.

“Cousin Emily writes that the funeral is to take place next Thursday,” pursued Lady Gertrude, referring to a letter which she held. “We shall have to attend it, of course.”

“Must we?” asked Roger, with obvious lack of enthusiasm. “I haven't seen her for at least five years.”

“I know.” The reply came so sharply that it was evident he had touched upon a sore subject. “It is very much to be regretted that you haven't. After all, she must have left at least a hundred thousand to divide.”

“Even the prospect of a share of the spoil wouldn't have compensated for the infliction of visiting an old termagant like Great-aunt Rachel,” averred Roger unrepentantly.

“I shall be interested to hear the will read, nevertheless,” rejoined Lady Gertrude. “After all, you were her only great-nephew and, in spite of your inattentiveness, I don't suppose she has overlooked you. She may even have remembered Isobel to the extent of a piece of jewelry.”

Isobel's brown eyes gleamed like the alert eyes of a robin who suddenly perceives the crumbs some kindly hand has scattered on the lawn.

“I'm afraid we shall have to leave you alone for a night, Nan,” pursued Lady Gertrude with a stiff air of apology.

Nan, engrossed in a long epistle from Penelope, did not hear her and made no answer. It was little wonder that she was so much absorbed; Penelope's letter had been written on board ship and posted from Liverpool, and it contained the joyful tidings that she and her husband had returned to England and proposed going straight to the Edenhall flat.

“You must come up and see us as soon as your visit to Trenby comes to an end,” wrote Penelope, and Nan devoutly wished it could end that very moment.

“I don't think you heard me, Nan.” Lady Gertrude's incisive voice cut sharply across the pulsing excitement of the girl's thoughts.

“I—I—no. Did you speak to me?” she faltered. Her usual dainty assurance was fast disappearing beneath the nervous strain of living with Lady Gertrude.

The facts concerning the great-aunt's death were recapitulated for her benefit, together with the explanation that, since Lady Gertrude, Roger, and Isobel would be obliged to stay the night with “Cousin Emily” in order to attend the funeral, Nan would be reluctantly left to her own devices.

“I can't very well take you with us on such an occasion,” meditated Lady Gertrude aloud. “Would you care to have me ask some one over to keep you company while we're away?”

“Oh, no, thank you,” replied Nan hastily. “Please don't worry about me at all, Lady Gertrude. I don't in the least mind being left alone—really.”

“Well, I regret the necessity of leaving you,” said Lady Gertrude, meticulous as ever in matters of social observance. “But the servants will look after you well, I hope. And, in any case, we shall be home again on Thursday night. We shall be able to catch the last train back.”

During the days which intervened before the family exodus, Nan could hardly contain her impatience. Their absence would give her the longed-for opportunity to get away from Trenby! The idea had flashed into her mind the instant Lady Gertrude had informed her she would be left alone there, and now each hour that must elapse before she could carry out her plan seemed an eternity.

Following the prolonged strain of the preceding three months, that last terrible scene with Roger had snapped her endurance. She could not look back upon it without shuddering. Since the day of its occurrence she had hardly spoken to him, except at mealtimes when, as if by mutual consent, they both conversed as though nothing had happened—for Lady Gertrude's benefit. Apart from this, Nan avoided him as much as possible, treating him with a cool, indifferent reserve he found difficult to break down. At least, he made no very determined effort to do so. Perhaps he was even a little ashamed of himself. But it was not in his nature to own himself wrong.

Nan felt that she had made her effort—and failed. Roger had missed the whole meaning of her attempt to bring about a mutual feeling of good comradeship, brushed it aside as of no importance. And instead, he had substituted his own imperious demands, rousing her, once the stress of the actual interview itself was past, to fierce and bitter revolt. No matter what happened in the future, she must get away now, snatch a brief respite from the daily strain of her life at the Hall.

But, with an oddly persistent determination, she put away from her all thought of breaking her engagement. To most women similarly situated this would have been the obvious and simplest solution of the problem. But it seemed to Nan that her compact with Roger demanded a finer interpretation of the word honor than would have been necessary in the case of an engagement entered into under different circumstances. The personal emergency which had driven her into giving Roger her promise weighed heavily upon her, and she felt that nothing less than his own consent would entitle her to break her pledge to him.

Added to this, Roger's sheer, dominant virility had imbued her with a fatalistic sense of her total inability to escape him. She had had a glimpse of the primitive man in him—of the man with the club. Even if she were to violate her conscience sufficiently to end the engagement between them, she knew perfectly well that he would refuse to accept or acknowledge any such termination. Wherever she hid herself he would find out her hiding place and come in search of her, and insist upon the fulfillment of her promise. And supposing that, in desperation, she married some one else, what was it he had said? “I swear to you if any man takes you from me I'll kill him first and you after!”

No, there was no escape for her. Roger would dog her footsteps round the world and back again sooner than let her go free of him. In a vaguely aloof and apathetic manner she felt as if it was her destiny to marry him. Life had shown her many beautiful things—even that rarest thing of all, a beautiful and unselfish love. But it had shown them only to snatch them away again when she had learned to value them.

If only she had never met Peter, never known the secret wonder and glory, the swift, sudden strength, the exquisite mingling of passion and selflessness which go to the making of the highest in love, she might have been content to become Roger's wife and bear his children.

Wearily she faced the situation for the hundredth time and knew that in the long run she must abide by it. She had learned not to cry for the moon any longer. She wanted nothing now, either in this world or the next, except the love that was denied her.

Her thoughts went back to the day when she and Peter had first met and driven together through the twilit countryside to Abbencombe. She remembered the sudden sadness which had fallen upon him and how she had tried to cheer him by repeating the verses of a little song. It all seemed very long ago.

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.

The words seemed to speak themselves in her brain just as she herself had spoken them that day, with the car slipping swiftly through the winter dusk. She could feel again the throb of the engine—see Peter's whimsical gray-blue eyes darken suddenly to a stern and tragic gravity.

For him and for her there could be no star. To the end of life they two must go empty-handed.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The big limousine was already at the door when Lady Gertrude and Isobel, clothed from head to foot in somber black, descended from their respective rooms. Roger, also clad in the same funereal hue, wearing a black tie—and looking as if his garments afforded him the acme of mental discomfort—stood waiting for them, with Nan, in the hall.

Lady Gertrude bestowed one of her chilly kisses upon her son's fiancée and stepped into the car, Isobel followed, and Roger brought up the rear. A minute later the car and its black-garbed occupants disappeared down the drive.

Nan turned back into the house, stretched her arms luxuriously above her head and exhaled a long sigh of relief. Then she fled down the long hall to the telephone stand, lifted the receiver. Her imperative summons was answered with a most unusual promptness by the exchange.

“Trunks, please!” she demanded and gave the number of the Edenhall flat; then prepared to possess her soul in patience till her call came through.

It was while she was at lunch that Morton, entering quietly, announced:

“You are wanted on the telephone, miss.” She hardly waited to hear the end of the sentence, but flew past him.

“Hello! Hello! That you, Penny? Yes, of course it's Nan! Oh, my dear, I'm so glad you're back! Listen. I want to run up to town for a few days. Yes. Roger's away. They're all away. You can put me up? To-morrow? Thanks, awfully, Penny. Yes, Waterloo. At four-sixteen. Good-by.”

She hung up the receiver and, returning to the dining room, made a pretense of finishing her lunch. Afterward, with as much composure as she could muster, she informed Morton that she had been called away suddenly to London and would require the car early the next morning to take her to the station. Whatever curiosity Morton may have felt concerning this unexpected announcement, he concealed admirably.

“Very good, miss,” he replied with his usual imperturbability.

“I'm leaving a letter for Mr. Trenby—to explain. See that he has it as soon as he gets back to-morrow.”

And once again Morton answered respectfully:

“Very good, miss.”

The writing of the letter did not occupy much time. Nan reflected that she must take one of two courses, Either she must write him at length, explaining everything—or she must leave a brief note merely stating that she had gone away. She decided on the latter and after several abortive attempts, attempts which found their ultimate fate in the fire, she achieved the following telegraphic epistle:

Dear Roger: Have gone to town. Stopping with Penelope. Nan

Afterward she packed with gleeful hands. It seemed too good to be true that in twenty-four hours she would actually find herself back in London, away from this gloomy, tree-girdled house, away from Lady Gertrude's scathing tongue and Isobel's two-edged speeches, and above all, secure for a time from Roger's tumultous lovemaking and his unuttered demand for so much more than she could ever give him.

 

“You blessed child! I am glad to see you!”

Penelope, looking the happiest and most blooming of youthful matrons, was on the platform when the Cornish express steamed into Waterloo station and Nan alighted from it.

“You can't—you can't possibly be as glad as I am, Penny mine,” returned Nan. “Hmf!” She wrinkled up her nose. “How nice London smells!”

Penelope burst out laughing.

“I mean it. You've no idea how good that smoky, petrolly smell is after the innocuous breezes of the country. It's full of gorgeous suggestions of cars and people and theaters and—and life!”

They hurried to the other end of the platform where the porters were disinterring the luggage from the van and dumping it down on the platform. Nan's attendant porter quickly extricated her baggage from the motley pile, and very soon she and Penelope were speeding away from the station as fast as their chauffeur could take them.

“How nice and familiar it all looks,” said Nan, as the car grunted up the Haymarket. “And it's heavenly to be going back to the dear old flat. Whereabouts are you looking for a house, by the way?”

“Somewhere in Hampstead, we think, where the air—and the rents—are more salubrious than nearer in.”

“Of course.” Nan nodded. “All singers live at Hampstead. You'd be quite unfashionable if you didn't. I suppose you and Ralph are frightfully busy?”

“Yes. But we're free to-night, luckily. So we can yarn to our hearts' content. To-morrow evening we're both singing at Albert Hall. And, oh, in the afternoon we're going to tea at Maryon's studio. His new picture's on view—private, of course.”

“What new picture?”

“His portrait of the famous American beauty, Mrs. T. van Decken. I believe she paid a fabulous sum for it; Maryon's all the rage now, you know. So he asked us to come down and see it before it's shipped off to New York. By the way, he inquired after you in his letter—I've got it with me somewhere. Oh, yes, here it is! He says:

“What news have you of Nan? I've lost sight of her since her engagement. But now it seems likely I shall be seeing her again before any of you.”

“I can't think what he means.”

“Nor I,” said Nan, somewhat mystified. “But anyway,” she added, smiling, “he will be seeing me even sooner than he anticipates. How has his marriage turned out?”

“Very much as one might have expected. They live most amicably—apart!” Penelope answered.

“They've surely not quarreled already?”

“Oh, no, they haven't quarreled. But, of course, they didn't fit into each other's scheme of life one bit, and they've rearranged matters to suit their own convenience. She's in the south of France just now, and when she comes to town they'll meet quite happily and visit at each other's houses. She has a palatial sort of place in Mayfair, you know, while Maryon has a duck of a house in Westminster.”

“How very modern!” commented Nan, smiling. “And—how like Maryon”

“Just like him, isn't it? And,” Penelope continued dryly, “it was just like him, too, to see that the marriage settlement arrangements were all quite water-tight. However, on the whole, it's a fair bargain between them. She rejoices in the honor and glory of being a well-known artist's wife, while he has rather more money.”

Ralph was on the steps of the Mansions to welcome them, and the lift conveyed them up to the flat.

“You're in your old room,” Penelope told her, and Nan crowed, delighted.

Dinner was a delightful meal, full of familiar gossip and the news of old friends and fervent discussions on matters musical and artistic. When it was over, the three drew cozily together round the fire in Ralph's den. Nan sank into her chair with a blissful sigh.

“Isn't this nice?” she exclaimed. Inwardly she was reflecting that at just about this time Roger, with Lady Gertrude and Isobel, would be returning from Great-aunt Rachel's funeral only to learn of her own flight from Trenby Hall.

“Yes,” agreed Penelope. “It really was angelic of Roger to spare you at a moment's notice.”

“You dear innocent!” Nan smiled grimly. “Roger didn't know I was coming.”

“What!”

“No, I just thought I'd come—and he—they were all away—and I came! I left a note behind, telling him I was going to stay with you.”

“Roger didn't know you were coming!” repeated Penelope. “Nan, have you had a quarrel?” she demanded.

“Yes,” Nan answered shortly.

“And you came straight off here? Oh, Nan, what a fool's trick! He will be furious!”

Once or twice Penelope had caught a glimpse of that hot-headed temper which lay hidden beneath Roger's somewhat blunt exterior.

“Lady Gertrude will be furious,” murmured Nan reminiscently.

“I think she'll have the right to be,” answered Penelope, with quiet rebuke in her tones. “It really was abominable of you to run away like that.”

Nan shrugged her shoulders, and Ralph looked across at her, smiling.

“You're a very exasperating young person, Nan,” he said. “If you were going to be my wife, I believe I should beat you.”

“Well, that would at least break the monotony of things,” she retorted.

“Is it monotony you're suffering from?” asked Ralph quickly.

“I'm fed up with the country and its green fields—never anything but green fields! They're so eternally, damnably green! I just yearned for London. So I came,” she answered.

The next morning, much to Nan's surprise, brought neither letter nor telegram from Roger.

“I quite expected a wire! 'Return at once. All will be forgiven,'” she said frivolously at lunch time.

“Perhaps he isn't prepared to forgive you,” suggested Ralph.

Nan stared at him without answering, her eyes dilating curiously. She had never even dreamed of such a possibility, and a sudden, wild hope flamed up within her.

“It's rather a knock to a man's pride, you know, if the girl he's engaged to bolts the moment his back is turned,” pursued Ralph.

“It was madness!” said Penelope.

Nan remained silent. Neither their praise nor blame affected her one iota at the moment. All that mattered was whether, without in the least intending to do it, she had cut the cords which bound her so irrevocably. Was it conceivable that Roger's pride would be so stung by her action in running away from Trenby Hall during his absence that he would never wish to see her again—far less make her his wife?

She had never contemplated the matter from that angle. But now, as Ralph put it before her, she realized that the attitude he indicated might reasonably be that of most men in similar circumstances.

Her heart beat deliriously at the very thought, If release came this way—by Roger's own decision—she would be free to take it! The price of the blunder she had made when she pledged herself to him—a price which was so much heavier than she could possibly have imagined—would be remitted.

And from the depths of her soul a fervent, disjointed prayer went up to Heaven:

“God, God, please don't let him forgive me—don't let him ever forgive me!”

TO BE CONTINUED IN THE JUNE AINSLEE'S.