Chapter 19

THE PRICE

A sense of bustle and mild excitement pervaded Trenby Hall. The hounds were to meet some distance away, and on a hunting morning it invariably necessitated the services of at least two of the menservants and possibly those of an observant maid--who had noted where last he had left his tobacco pouch--to get Roger off successfully.

"My hunting boots, Jenkins!" he demanded as he issued from the library. "And look sharp with them! Flask and sandwich-case--that's right." He busied himself bestowing these two requisites in his pockets.

Nan, cool and unperturbed; joined him in the hall, a small, amused smile on her face. She had stayed at Trenby long enough by now to be well used to the cyclone which habitually accompanied Roger's departure to the meet, and the boyish unreasonableness of it--seeing that the well-trained servants invariably had everything in readiness for him--rather appealed to her. He was like a big, overgrown school-boy returning to school and greatly concerned as to whether his cricket-bat and tuck-box were safely included amongst his baggage.

"You, darling?" Roger nodded at her perfunctorily, preoccupied with the necessities of the moment. "Now, have I got my pipe?"--slapping his pockets to ascertain. To miss his customary pipe as he trotted leisurely home after the day's hunting was unthinkable. "Matches! I've no matches! Here, Morton"--to the butler who was standing by with Roger's hunting-crop in his hand. "Got any matches?"

Morton produced a box at once. He had been in Roger's service from boyhood, fought side by side with him in Flanders, and no demand of his master's had yet found him unprepared. Nan was wont to declare that had Roger requested the Crown jewels, Morton would have immediately produced them from his pocket.

Outside, a groom was patiently walking a couple of horses up and down. Quivering, velvety nostrils snuffed the keen air while gleaming black hoofs danced gently on the gravel drive, executing little side steps of excitement--for no hunting day comes round but that in some mysterious way the unerring instinct of the four-legged hunter acquaints him of the fact. Further along clustered the pack, the hounds padding restlessly here and there, but kept within bounds by the occasional crack of a long-lashed crop or a gruff command from one of the whips.

Nan was always conscious of a curious intermingling of feeling when, as now, she watched Roger ride away at the head of his hounds. The day she had almost lost her life at the kennels recurred to her mind inevitably--those moments of swift and terrible danger when it seemed as though nothing could save her. And with that memory came another--the memory of Roger flinging himself forward to the rescue, forcing back with bare hands the great hound which had attacked her. A quick thrill--the thrill of primitive woman--ran through her at the recollection. No woman can remain unmoved by physical courage--more especially if it is her own imperative need which has called it forth.

That was the side of Roger which she liked best to dwell upon. But she was rapidly learning that he had other less heroically attractive sides. No man who has been consistently spoiled and made much of by a couple of women is likely to escape developing a certain amount of selfishness, and Nan had already discovered that Roger was somewhat inclined to play the autocrat. As he grew accustomed to her presence in the house he settled down more or less tranquilly into the normal ways of existence, and sometimes, when things went awry, he would lose his temper pretty badly, as is the natural way of man.

Unfortunately, Nan's honest endeavours to get on better terms with her future mother-in-law met with no success. Lady Gertrude had presented an imperturbably polite and hostile front almost from the moment of the girl's arrival at the Hall. Even at dinner the first evening, she had cast a disapproving eye upon Nan's frock--a diaphanous little garment in black: with veiled gleams of hyacinth and gold beneath the surface and apparently sustained about its wearer by a thread of the same glistening hyacinth and gold across each slender shoulder.

With the quickness of a squirrel Isobel Carson, demurely garbed as befitted a poor relative, noted the disapprobation conveyed by Lady Gertrude's sweeping glance.

"I suppose that's what they're wearing now in town?" she asked conversationally of Nan across the table.

Roger looked up and seeing the young, privet-white throat and shoulders which gleamed above the black, smiled contentedly.

"It's jolly pretty, isn't it?" he rejoined, innocently unaware that any intention lurked behind his cousin's query.

"It might be--if there were more of it," said Lady Gertrude icily. She had not failed to notice earlier that Nan was wearing the abbreviated skirt of the moment--though in no way an exaggerated form of it--revealing delectable shoes and cobwebby stockings which seemed to cry out a gay defiance to the plain and serviceable footgear which she herself affected.

"It does look just a tiny bit daring--in the country," murmured Isobel deprecatingly. "You see, we're used to such quiet fashions here."

"I don't think anything can be much quieter than black," replied Nan evenly.

There for the moment the matter rested, but the next day Roger had asked her, rather diffidently, if she couldn't find something plainer to wear in an evening.

"I thought you liked the dress," she countered.

"Well--yes. But--"

"But your mother has been talking t0 you about it? Is that it?"

Roger nodded.

"Even Isobel thought it a little outr� for country wear," he said eagerly, making matters worse instead of better, in the blundering way a man generally contrives to do when he tries to settle a feminine difference of opinion.

Nan's foot tapped the floor impatiently and a spark of anger lit itself in her eyes.

"I don't think my choice of clothes has anything to do with 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 into his arms and kissed her.

"To please me--wear something else," he said. Although unformulated even to himself, Roger's creed was of the old school. He quite honestly believed that a woman's chief object in life was to please her male belongings, and it seemed to him a perfectly good arrangement.

Not to please him, but because she was genuinely anxious to win Lady Gertrude's liking, Nan yielded. Perhaps if she conceded this particular point it would pave the way towards a better understanding.

"Very well," she said, smiling. "That especial frock shan't appear again while I'm down here. But it's a duck of a frock, really, Roger!"--with a feminine sigh of regret.

She was to find, however, as time went on, that there were very many other points over which she would have to accept Lady Gertrude's rulings. Punctuality at meals was regarded at Trenby Hall as one of the laws of the Medes and Persians, and Nan, accustomed to the liberty generally accorded a musician in such matters, failed on more than one occasion to appear at lunch with the promptness expected of her.

In the West Parlour---a sitting-room which Lady Gertrude herself never used--there was a fairly good piano, and here Nan frequently found refuge, playing her heart out in the welcome solitude the room afforded. Inevitably she would forget the time, remaining entirely oblivious of such mundane things as meals. Then she would be sharply recalled to the fact that she had committed an unforgivable sin by receiving a stately message from Lady Gertrude to the effect that they were waiting lunch for her.

On such occasions Nan sometimes felt that it was almost a physical impossibility to enter that formal dining-room and face the glacial disapproval manifest on Lady Gertrude's face, the quick glance of condolence which Isobel would throw her--and which always somehow filled her with distrust--and the irritability which Roger was scarcely able to conceal.

Roger's annoyance was generally due to the veiled criticism which his mother and cousin contrived to exude prior to her appearance. Nothing definite--an intonation here, a double-edged phrase there--but enough to show him that his future wife fell far short of the standard Lady Gertrude had in mind for her. It nettled him, and accordingly he felt irritated with Nan for giving his mother a fresh opportunity for disapprobation.

They were all unimportant things--these small jars and clashes of habit and opinion. But to Nan, who had been used to such absolute freedom, they were like so many links of a chain which held and chafed her. She fretted under them as a caged bird frets. Gradually, too, she was awakening to the limitations of the life which would be hers when she married Roger, realising that, much as he loved her, he was quite unable to supply her with either the kind of companionship or the mental stimulus her temperament craved and which the little coterie of clever, brilliant people who had been her intimates in town had given her in full measure. The Trenbys' circle of friends interested her not at all. The men mostly of the sturdy, sporting type, bored her ineffably, and she found the women, with their perpetual local gossip and discussion of domestic difficulties, dull and uninspiring. Of the McBains, unfortunately, she saw very little, owing to the distance, between the Hall and Trevarthen Wood.

It was, therefore, with a cry of delight that she welcomed Sandy, who arrived in his two-seater shortly after Roger had ridden off to the meet. Lady Gertrude and Isobel had already gone out together, bent upon some parochial errand in the village, so that Nan was alone with her thoughts. And they were not particularly pleasant ones.

"Sandy!" She greeted him with outstretched hands. "You angel boy! I wasn't even hoping to see you for another few weeks or so."

"Just this minute arrived--thought it about time I looked you up again," returned Sandy cheerfully. "I met Trenby about a mile away and scattered his horses and hounds to the four winds of heaven with my stink-pot."

"Yes," agreed Nan reminiscently. "Why does your car smell so atrociously, Sandy?"

"It's only in slow movements--never in a presto. That's why I'm always getting held up for exceeding the speed limit. I'm bound to let her rip--out of consideration to the passersby."

"Well, I'm awfully glad you felt moved to come over here this morning. I'm--I'm rather fractious to-day, I think. Do you suppose 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 get things in and meals are a perfect nuisance. Here they seem to be the only breaks in the day."

"That," replied Sandy sententiously, "is because you're leading an idle existence. You're not doing anything--so of course there's no time to do it in."

"Not doing anything? Well, what is there to do?" She flung out her hands with an odd little gesture of hopelessness. "Besides, I am doing something--I learned how to make puddings yesterday, and to-morrow I'm to be initiated into soup jellies--you know, the kind of stuff you trot around to old women in the village at Christmas time."

"Can't the cook make them?"

"Of course she can. But Lady Gertrude is appalled at my lack of domestic knowledge--so soup jellies it has to be."

Sandy regarded her thoughtfully. She seemed spiritless, and the charming face held a gravity that was quite foreign to it. In the searching winter sunlight he could even discern one or two faint lines about the violet-blue eyes, while the curving mouth, with its provocative short upper lip, drooped rather wearily at its corners.

"You're bored stiff," he told her firmly. "Why don't you run up to town for a few days and see your pals there?"

Nan shrugged her shoulders.

"For the excellent reason that half of them are away, or--or married or something."

Only a few days previously she had seen the announcement of Maryon Rooke's marriage in the papers, and although the fact that he was married had now no power to wound her, it was like the snapping of yet another link with that happy, irresponsible, Bohemian life which she and Penelope had shared together.

"Sandy"--she spoke impetuously. "After I'm--married, I don't think I shall ever go to London again. It would be like peeping into heaven. Then the door would slam and I'd come back--here! I'm out of it now--out of everything. The others will all go on singing and playing and making books and pictures--right in the heart of it all. While I shall be stuck away here . . . by myself . . . making soup jellies!"

She sprang up and walked restlessly to the window, staring out at the undulating meadowland.

"I'm sick of the sight of those fields!" she exclaimed almost violently. "The same deadly dull green fields day after day. If--if one of them would only turn pink for a change it would be a relief!" Her breath caught in a strangled sob.

Sandy followed her to the window.

"Look here, Nan, you can't go on like this." There was an unaccustomed decision in his tones; the boyish inflection had gone. It was a man who was speaking, and determinedly, too. "You've no business to be everlastingly gazing at green fields. You ought to be turning 'em into music so that the people who've got only bricks and mortar to stare at can get a whiff of them."

Nan gazed at him in astonishment--at this new, surprising Sandy who was talking to her with the forcefulness of a man ten years his senior.

"As for being 'out of it,' as you say," he went on emphatically. "If you are, it's only by your own consent. Anyone who writes as you can need never be out of it. If you'd only do the big stuff you're capable of doing, you'd be 'in it' right enough--half the time confabbing with singers and conductors, and the other half glad to get back to your green fields and the blessed quiet. If you were like me, now--not a damn bit of good because I've no technical knowledge . . ."

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

"Sandy, I'm a beast to grouse. It's true--you've had much harder luck." She spoke eagerly, then paused, checked by a sudden piercing memory. "But--but music . . . after all, it isn't the only thing."

"No," he returned cheerfully. "But it will do quite well to go on with. Let's toddle along to the piano and amuse each other."

She nodded, and together they made their way to the West Parlour.

"Have you written anything new?" he asked, turning over some sheets of scribbled, manuscript that were lying on the piano. "Let's hear it."

Rather reluctantly she played him a few odd bits of her recent work--the outcome of dull, depressing days.

Sandy listened, and as he listened his lips set in an uncompromising straight line.

"Well, I never heard more maudlin piffle in my life!" was his frank comment when she had finished. "If you can't do better than that, you'd better shut the piano and go digging potatoes."

Nan laughed rather mirthlessly.

"I don't know what sort of a hand you'd make at potato digging," pursued Sandy. "But apparently this is the net result of your musical studies"--and, seating himself at the piano, he rattled off a caustic parody of her performance.

"Rank sentimentalism, Nan," he said coolly, as he dropped his hands from the keys. "And you know it as well as I do."

"Yes, I suppose it is. But it's impossible to do any serious work here. Lady Gertrude fairly radiates disapproval whenever I spend an hour or two at the piano. Oh!"--her sense of humour rising uppermost for a moment--"she asked me to play to them one evening, so I gave them some Debussy--out of sheer devilment, I think"--smiling a little--"and at the end Lady Gertrude said politely: 'Thank you. And now, might we have something with a little more tune in it?"

Sandy shouted with delight.

"After all, people like that are awfully refreshing," he said at last.

"At times," admitted Nan. "All the same," she went on dispiritedly, "one must be in the right atmosphere to do anything worth while."

"Well, I'm exuding as much as I can," said Sandy. "Atmosphere, I mean. Look here, what about that concerto for pianoforte and orchestra which you had in mind? Have you done anything to it yet?"

She shook her head.

"Then get on to it quick--and stick at it. Don't waste your time writing the usual type of sentimental ballad-song--a degree or two below par."

Nan was silent for a few minutes. Then:

"Sandy," she said, "you're rather like a dose of physic--wholesome but unpalatable. I'll get to work to-morrow. Now let's go and forage for some food. You've made me fearfully hungry--like a long sermon in church."

Christmas came, bringing with it, at Roger's suggestion, a visit from Lord St. John, and his presence at the house worked wonders in the way of transforming the general atmosphere. Even Lady Gertrude thawed beneath the charm of his kindly, whimsical personality, and to Nan the few days he spent at the Hall were of more value than a dozen tonics. She was no longer shut in alone with her own thoughts--with him she could talk freely and naturally. Even the under-current of hostile criticism of which she was almost hourly conscious ceased to fret her nerves.

Insensibly Lord St. John's evident affection for his niece and quiet appreciation of her musicianship influenced Lady Gertrude for the time being, softening her attitude towards her future daughter-in-law, even though it brought her no nearer understanding her. Isobel, alertly capable of adapting herself to the prevailing atmosphere, reflected in her manner the same change. She had long since learned to keep the private workings of her mind locked up--when it seemed advisable.

"I'm glad to see you in what will one day be your own home, Nan," said Lord St. John. They were sitting alone together in the West Parlour, chatting in the cosy intimacy of the firelight.

"I'd rather you saw it when 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, smiling. "Are you going to cold-shoulder me after I'm married?"

Lord St. John shook his head.

"That's very likely, isn't it?" he said, smiling. "No, my dear, that's not the reason." He paused as though searching for words, then went on quietly: "The silver chord is getting a bit frayed, you know, Nan. I'm an old man, and I'm just beginning to know it."

She caught her breath quickly and her face whitened. Then she forced a laugh.

"Nonsense, Uncle David! Kitty always declares you're the youngest of us all."

His eyes smiled back at her.

"Unfortunately, my dear, Time takes no account of a juvenile spirit. His job is with this body of ours. But the spirit," he added dreamingly, "and its youthfulness--that's for eternity."

"But you look quite well--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 hints, Nan--Nature's wireless. So I saw Jermyn Carter a few weeks back--"

"What did he say?" She interrupted swiftly.

"That at my age a man mustn't expect his heart to be the same as in his twenties."

A silence fell between them. Then Nan's hand stole out and clasped his. She had never imagined a world without this good comrade in it. The bare thought of it brought a choking lump into her throat, robbing her of words. Presently St. John spoke again.

"I've nothing to grizzle about. I've known love and I've known friendship--the two biggest things in life. And, after all, since . . . since she went, I've only been waiting. The world, without her, has never been quite the same."

"I know," she whispered.

"You Davenant women," he went on more lightly, "are never loved and forgotten."

"And we don't love--and forget," said Nan in a low voice.

St. John looked at her with eyes that held a very tender comprehension.

"Tell me, Nan, was it--Peter Mallory?"

She met his glance bravely for a moment.

"Yes," she answered at last, very quietly. "It was Peter." With a sudden shudder she bent forward and covered her face with her hands. "And I can't forget," she said hoarsely.

A long, heavy silence fell between them.

"Then why--" began Lord St. John.

Nan lifted her head.

"Why did I promise Roger?" she broke in. "Because it seemed the 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 honour and who has always lived up to it, no matter what it cost.

"Remember, Nan, no Davenant was ever a coward in the face of difficulties. They always pulled through somehow."

"Or ran away--like Ang�le de Varincourt."

"She only ran from one difficulty into the arms of a hundred others. No wrong can be righted by another wrong."

"Can any wrong ever be really righted?" she demanded bitterly.

"We have to pay for our mistakes--each in our turn." He himself had paid to the uttermost farthing. "Is it a very heavy price, Nan?"

She turned her face away a little.

"It will be . . . higher than I expected," she acknowledged slowly.

"Well, then, pay up. Don't make--Roger--pay for your blunder. You have other things--your music, for instance. Many people have to go through life with only their work for company. . . . Whereas you are Roger's whole world."

With the New Year Lord St. John returned to town. Nan missed him every minute of the day, but she had drawn new strength and steadfastness from his kindly counsels. He understood both the big tragedies of life--which often hold some brief, perfect memory to make them bearable--and those incessant, gnat-like irritations which uncongenial fellowship involves.

Somehow he had the faculty of relegating small personal vexations to their proper place in the scheme of things--thrusting them far into the background. It was as though someone drew you to the window and, ignoring the small, man-made flower-beds of the garden with their insistent crop of weeds, the circumscribed lawns, and the foolish, twisting paths that led to nowhere, pointed you to the distant landscape where the big breadths of light and shadow, the broad draughtmanship of God, stretched right away to the dim blue line of the horizon.