A SKIRMISH WITH DEATH
It was a soft, misty day when Trenby called to drive Nan over to the
Trevithick Kennels--one of those veiled mornings which break about noon
into a glory of blue sky and golden sunlight.
As she stepped into the waiting car, Roger stopped her abruptly.
"Go back and put on something thicker," he commanded. "It'll be chilly
driving in this mist."
"But it's going to be hot later on," protested Nan.
"Yes, only it happens to be now that we're driving--and it will be cool
again, in the evening when I bring you back."
Nan laughed.
"Nonsense!" she said and put her foot on the step of the car. Trenby,
standing by to help her in, closed his hand firmly round her arm and
held her back. His hawk's eyes flashed a little.
"I shan't take you unless you do as I say," he observed.
She stared at him in astonishment. Then she turned away as though to
re-enter the house.
"Oh, very well," she replied airily.
Roger bit his lip, then followed her rapidly. He did not in the least
like yielding his point.
"Come back, then--and catch a cold if you like!" he said ungraciously.
Nan paused and looked up at him.
"Do you think I should catch cold?"
"It's ten to one you would."
"Then I'll do as I'm bid and get an extra coat."
She went into the house, leaving Trenby rather taken aback by her
sudden submission. But it pleased him, nevertheless. He liked a woman
to be malleable. It seemed, to him a truly womanly quality--certainly
a wifely one! Moreover, almost any man experiences a pleasant feeling
of complacency when he thinks he has dominated a woman, even over so
small a matter as to whether she shall wear an extra coat or
not--although he generally fails to guess the origin of that attractive
surrender and comfortably regards it as a tribute to his strong,
masculine will-power. Few women are foolish enough to undeceive him.
"Will I do now?" asked Nan, reappearing and stepping lightly into the
car.
Roger smiled approvingly and proceeded to tuck the rugs well round her.
Then he started the engine and soon they were spinning down the drive
which ran to the left of Mallow Court gardens towards the village.
They flashed through St. Wennys and turned inland along the great white
road that swept away in the direction of Trenby Hall, ten miles
distant. The kennels themselves lay a further four miles beyond the
Hall.
"Oh, how gorgeous it is!" exclaimed Nan, as their road cut through a
wild piece of open country where, with the sea and the tall cliffs
behind them, vista after vista of wooded hills and graciously sloping
valleys unfolded in front of them.
"Yes, you get some fine scenery inland," replied Trenby. "And the
roads are good for motoring. I suppose you don't ride?" he added.
"Why should you suppose that?"
"Well"--a trifle awkwardly--"one doesn't expect a Londoner to know much
about country pursuits."
Nan smiled.
"Are you imagining I've spent all my life in a Seven Dials slum?" she
asked serenely.
"No, no, of course not. But--"
"But country people take a very limited view of a Londoner. We _do_
sometimes get out of town, you know--and some of us can ride and play
games quite nicely! As a matter of fact I hunted when I was about six."
Roger's face lightened, eagerly.
"Oh, then I hope you're staying at Mallow till the hunting season
starts? I've a lovely mare I could lend you if you'd let me."
Nan shook her head and made a hasty gesture of dissent.
"Oh, no, no. Quite honestly, I've not ridden for years--and even if I
took up riding once more I should never hunt again. I think"--she
shrank a little--"it's too cruel."
Trenby regarded her with ingenuous amazement.
"Cruel!" he exclaimed. "Why, it's sport!"
"Magic word!" Nan's lips curled a little. "You say it's 'sport' as
though that made it all right."
"So it does," answered Trenby contentedly.
"It may--for the sportsman. But as far as the fox is concerned, it's
sheer cruelty."
Trenby drove on without speaking for a short time. Then he said slowly:
"Well, in a way I suppose you're right. But, all the same, it's the
sporting instinct--the cultivated sporting instinct--which has made the
Englishman what he is. It's that which won the war, you know."
"It's a big price to pay. Couldn't you"--a sudden charming smile
curving her lips--"couldn't you do it--I mean cultivate the sporting
instinct--by polo and things like that?"
"It's not the same." Trenby shook his head. "You don't understand.
It's the desire to find your quarry, to go through anything rather than
to let him beat you--no matter how done or tired you feel."
"It may be very good for you," allowed Nan. "But it's very bad luck on
the fox. I wouldn't mind so much if he had fair play. But even if he
succeeds in getting away from you--beating _you_, in fact--and runs to
earth, you proceed to dig him out. I call that _mean_."
Trenby was silent again for a moment. Then he asked suddenly:
"What would you do if your husband hunted?"
"Put up with it, I suppose, just as I should put up with his other
faults--if I loved him."
Roger made no answer but quickened the speed of the car, letting her
race over the level surface of the road, and when next he spoke it was
on some quite other topic.
Half an hour later a solid-looking grey house, built in the substantial
Georgian fashion and surrounded by trees, came into view. Roger slowed
up as the car passed the gates which guarded the entrance to the drive.
"That's Trenby Hall," he said. And Nan was conscious of an impishly
amused feeling that just so might Noah, when the Flood began, have
announced: "That's my Ark.'"
"You've never been over yet," continued Roger. "But I want you to come
one day. I should like you to meet my mother."
A queer little dart of fear shot through her as he spoke.
She felt as though she were being gradually hemmed in.
"It looks a beautiful place," she answered conventionally, though
inwardly thinking how she would loathe to live in a solid, square
mansion of that type, prosaically dull and shut away from the world by
enclosing woods.
Roger looked pleased.
"Yes, it's a fine old place," he said. "Now for the kennels."
Nan breathed a sigh of relief. She had had one instant of anxiety lest
he should suggest that, instead of lunching, as arranged, from the
picnic basket safely bestowed in the back of the car, they should lunch
at the Hall.
Another fifteen minutes brought them to the kennels, Denman, the first
whip, meeting them at the gates. He touched his hat and threw a keen
glance at Nan. The Master of the Trevithick was not in the habit of
bringing ladies to see the kennels, and the whip and his wife had
discussed the matter very fully over their supper the previous evening,
trying to guess what it might portend. "A new mistress up at the 'All,
I shouldn't wonder," asserted Mrs. Denman confidently.
"Hounds all fit, Denman?" asked Trenby in quick, authoritative tones.
"Yes, sir. All 'cept 'Wrangler there--'e's still a bit stiff on that
near hind leg he sprained."
As he spoke, he held open the gate for Nan to pass in, and she glanced
round with lively interest. A flagged path ran straight ahead,
dividing the large paved enclosure reserved for youngsters from the
iron-fenced yards inhabited by the older hounds of the pack; while at
the back of each enclosure lay the sleeping quarters of roofed and
sheltered benches. At the further end of the kennels stood a couple of
cottages, where the whips and kennelman lived.
"How beautifully clean it all is!" exclaimed Nan.
The whip smiled with obvious delight.
"If you keep 'ounds, miss, you must keep 'em clean--or they won't be
'ealthy and fit to do their day's work. An' a day's hunting is a day's
work for 'ounds, an' no mistake."
"How like a woman to remark about cleanliness first of all!" laughed
Roger. "A man would have gone straight to look at the hounds before
anything else!"
"I'm going now," replied Nan, approaching the bars of one of the
enclosures.
It seemed to her as though she were looking at a perfect sea of white
and tan bodies with slowly waving sterns, while at intervals from the
big throats came a murmurous sound, rising now and again into a low
growl, or the sharp snap of powerful jaws and a whine of rage as a
couple or more hounds scuffled together over some private disagreement.
At Nan's appearance, drawn by curiosity, some of them approached her
gingerly, half-suspicious, half as though anxious to make friends, and,
knowing no fear of animals, she thrust her hand through the bars and
stroked the great heads and necks.
"Can't we go in? They're such dear things!" she begged.
"Better not," answered Roger. "They don't always like strangers."
"I'm not afraid," she replied mutinously. "Do just open the gate,
anyway--_please_!"
Trenby hesitated.
"Well--" He yielded unwillingly, but Nan's eyes were rather difficult
to resist when they appealed. "Open the gate, then, Denman."
He stood close behind her when the gate was opened, watching the hounds
narrowly, and now and again uttering an imperative, "Down, Victor! Get
down, Marquis!" when one or other of the great beasts playfully leapt
up against Nan's side, pawing at her in friendly fashion. Meanwhile
Denman had quietly disappeared, and when he returned he carried a
long-lashed hunting-crop in his hand.
Nan was smoothing first one tan head, then another, receiving eager
caresses from rough, pink tongues in return, and insensibly she had
moved step by step further into the yard to reach this or that hound as
it caught her attention.
"Come back!" called Trenby hastily. "Don't go any further."
Perhaps the wind carried his voice away from her, or perhaps she was so
preoccupied with the hounds that the meaning of his words hardly
penetrated her mind. Whichever it may have been, with a low cry of,
"Oh, you beauty!" she stepped quickly towards Vengeance, one of the
best hounds in the pack, a fierce-looking beast with a handsome head
and sullen month, who had been standing apart, showing no disposition
to join the clamorous, slobbering throng at the gate.
His hackles rose at Nan's sudden movement towards him, and as she
stretched out her hand to stroke him the sulky head lifted with a
thunderous growl. As though at a given signal the whole pack seemed to
gather round her.
Simultaneously Vengeance leaped, and Nan was only conscious of the
ripping of her garments, the sudden pressure of hot bodies round her,
and of a blurred sound of hounds baying, the vicious cracking of a
whip, and the voices of men shouting.
She sank almost to her knees, instinctively shielding her head and
throat with her arms, borne to the ground by the force of the great
padded feet which had struck her. Open jaws, red like blood, and
gleaming ivory fangs fenced her round. Instantaneously there flashed
through her mind the recollection of something she had once been
told--that if one hound turns on you, the whole pack will turn with
him--like wolves.
This was death, then--death by those worrying, white-fanged mouths--the
tearing of soft, warm flesh from her living limbs and afterwards the
crushing of her bones between those powerful jaws.
She struck out, struggling gamely to her feet, and visioned Denman
cursing and slashing at the hounds as he drove them off. But
Vengeance, the untamed, heedless of the lash which scored his back a
dozen times, caught at her ankle and she pitched head foremost into the
stream of hot-breathed mouths and struggling bodies. She felt a huge
weight fling itself upon her--Vengeance, springing again at his
prey--and even as she waited for the agony of piercing fangs plunged
into her flesh, Trenby's voice roared in her ears as he caught the big,
powerful brute by its throat and by sheer, immense physical strength
dragged the hound off her.
Meanwhile the second whip had rushed out from his cottage to render
assistance and the whistling of the long-lashed hunting-crops drove
through the air, gradually forcing the yelping hounds into submission.
In the midst of the shouting and commotion Nan felt herself lifted up
by Roger as easily as though she were a baby, and at the same moment
the whirling lash of one of the men's hunting-crops cut her across the
throat and bosom. The red-hot agony of it was unbearable, and as
Trenby bore her out of the yard he felt her body grow suddenly limp in
his arms and, glancing down, saw that she had lost consciousness.
When Nan came to herself again it was to find she was lying on a hard
little horse-hair sofa, and the first object upon which her eyes rested
was a nightmare arrangement of wax flowers, carefully preserved from
risk of damage by a glass shade.
She was feeling stiff and sore, and the strangeness of her surroundings
bewildered her--the sofa upholstered in slippery American cloth and
hard as a board to her aching limbs, the waxen atrocity beneath its
glass shade standing on a rickety table at the foot of the couch, the
smallness of the room in which she found herself.
"Where am I?" she asked in a weak voice that was hardly more than a
whisper.
Someone--a woman--said quickly: "Ah, she's coming round!" and bustled,
out of the room. Then came Roger's voice:
"You're all right, Nan--all right." And she felt his big hands close
round her two slender ones reassuringly. "Don't be frightened."
She raised her head to find Roger kneeling beside the sofa on which she
lay.
"I'm not frightened," she said. "Only--what's happened? . . . Oh, I
remember! I was in the yard with the hounds. Did one of them bite me?"
"Yes, Vengeance just caught your ankle. But we've bathed it
thoroughly--luckily he's only torn the skin a bit--and now I'm going to
bind it up for you. Mrs. Denman's just gone to fetch some stuff for me
to bind it with. You'll be quite all right again to-morrow."
With some difficulty Nan raised herself to a sitting position and
immediately caught sight of a bowl on the ground filled with an
ominous-looking reddish-coloured liquid.
"Good gracious! Has my foot been bleeding like that?" she asked, going
rather white.
"Bless you, no, my dear!" Mrs. Denman, a cheery-faced countrywoman,
had bustled in again, with some long strips of linen to serve as a
bandage. "Bless you, no! That's just a drop of Condy's fluid, that
is, so's your foot shouldn't get any poison in it."
"That's right, Mrs. Denman," said Roger. "Give me that linen stuff
now, and then get me some more hot water."
Nan watched him lift and skilfully bandage the slightly damaged foot.
He held it carefully, as though it were something very precious, but
delicate as was his handling she could not help wincing once as the
bandage accidentally brushed a rather badly scratched ankle. Trenby
paused almost breathlessly. The hand in which he held the white,
blue-veined foot shook a little.
"Did I hurt? I'm awfully sorry." His voice was gruff. "What he
wanted to do was to crush the slim, bruised foot against his lips. The
very touch of its satiny skin against his hand sent queer tremors
through every nerve of his big frame.
"There!" he said at last, gently letting her foot rest once more on the
sofa. "Is that comfortable?"
"Quite, thanks." Then, turning to the whip's wife as she re-entered
the room carrying a jug of hot water, she went on, with that inborn
instinct of hers to charm and give pleasure: "What a nice, sunny room
you have here, Mrs. Denman. I'm afraid I'm making a dreadful mess of
it. I'm so sorry."
"Don't mention it, miss. 'Tis only a drop of water to clear away, and
it's God mercy you weren't killed, by they savage 'ounds."
Nan bestowed one of her delightful smiles upon the good woman, who,
leaving the hot water in readiness; hurried out to tell her husband
that if Miss Davenant was going to be mistress of the Hall, why, then,
'twould be a lucky day for everyone concerned, for a nicer,
pleasanter-spoken young lady--and she just come round from a faint and
all!--she never wished to meet.
Nan put her hand up to her throat.
"Something hurts here," she said in a troubled voice. "Did one of the
hounds leap up at my neck?"
"No," replied Trenby, frowning as his eyes rested on the long red weal
striping the white flesh disclosed by the Y-shaped neck of her frock.
"One of those dunder-headed fools cut you with his whip by mistake.
I'd like to shoot him--and Vengeance too!"
With a wonderfully gentle touch he laid a cloth wrung out in hot water
across the angry-looking streak, and repeated the process until some of
the swelling went down. At last he desisted, wiping dry the soft
girlish throat as tenderly as a nurse might wipe the throat of a baby.
More than a little touched, Nan smiled at him.
"You're making a great fuss of me," she said. "After all, I'm not
seriously hurt, you know."
"No," he replied briefly. "But you might have been killed. For a
moment I thought you _were_ going to be killed in front of my eyes."
"I don't know that it would have mattered, very much if I had been,"
she responded indifferently.
"It would have mattered to me." His voice roughened again: "Nan--Nan--"
He broke off huskily and, casting a swift glance at his face, she
realised that the tide which had been gradually rising throughout the
foregoing weeks of close companionship had suddenly come to its full
and that no puny effort of hers could now arrest and thrust it back.
Roger had risen to his feet. His face was rather white as he stood
looking down at her, and the piercing eyes beneath the oddly sunburnt
brows held a new light in them. They were no longer cold, but burned
down upon her with the fierce ardour of passion.
"What is it?" she whispered. The words seemed wrung from her against
her will.
For a moment he made no answer, and in the pulsing silence which
followed her low-breathed question Nan was aware of a swiftly gathering
fear. She would have to make a decision within the next few
moments--and she was not ready for it.
"Do you know"--Roger spoke very slowly--"Do you know what it would have
meant to me if you had been killed just now?"
Nan shook her head.
"It would have meant the end of everything."
"Oh, I don't see why!" she responded quickly.
"Don't you?" He stooped over her and took her two slight wrists in
his. "Then I'll tell you. I love you and I want you for my wife. I
didn't intend to speak so soon--you know so little of me. But this
last hour! . . . I can't wait any longer. I want you, Nan, I want you
so unutterably that I won't _take_ no."
She tried to rise from the sofa. But in an instant his arms were round
her, pressing her back, tenderly but determinedly, against the cushions.
"No, don't get up! See, I'll kneel here beside you. Tell me, Nan,
when will you marry me?"
She was silent. What answer could she give him--she who had found one
man's love vain and betwixt whom and the man she really loved there was
a stern barrier set?
At her silence a swift fear seized him.
"Nan," he said, his voice a little hoarse. "Nan, is it--no good?"
Then, as she still made no answer, he let his arms fall heavily to his
side.
"God!" he muttered. And his eyes held a blank, dazed look like those
of a man who has just received a blow.
Nan caught him by the arm.
"No, no, Roger!" she cried quickly. "Don't look like that! I didn't
mean--"
The sudden expression of radiance that sprang into his face silenced
the remainder of the words upon her lips--the words of explanation that
should have been spoken.
"Then you do care, after all! Nan, there's no one else, is there?"
"No," she said very low.
He stretched out his arms and drew her gently within them, and for a
moment she had neither the heart nor the courage to wipe that look of
utter happiness from his face by telling him the truth, by saying
blankly: "I don't love you."
He turned her face up to his and, stooping, kissed her with sudden
passion.
"My dear!" he said, "my dear!" Then, after a moment:
"Oh, Nan, Nan, I can hardly believe that you really belong to me!"
Nan could hardly believe it either. It seemed just to have _happened_
somehow, and her conscience smote her. For what had she to give in
return for all the love he was offering her? Merely a little liking of
a lonely heart that wanted to warm itself at someone's hearth, and
beyond that a terrified longing to put something more betwixt herself
and Peter Mallory, to double the strength of the barrier which kept
them apart. It wasn't giving Trenby a fair deal!
"Roger," she said, at last, "I don't think I'd better belong to you.
No, listen!"--as he made a sudden movement--"I must tell you. There
_is_ someone else--only we can't ever be more than friends."
Roger stared, at her with the dawning of a new fear in his eyes. When
he spoke it was with a savage defiance.
"Then don't tell me! I don't want to hear. You're mine now, anyway."
"I think I ought--" she began weakly.
But he brushed her scruples aside.
"I'm not going to listen. You've said you'll marry me. I don't want
to hear anything about the other men who were. I'm the man who is.
And I'm going to drive you straight back to Mallow and tell everybody
about it. Then I'll feel sure of you."
Faced by the irrevocableness of her action, Nan was overtaken by
dismay. How recklessly, on the impulse of the moment, she had bartered
her freedom away! She felt as though she were caught in the meshes of
some net from which there was no escaping. A voice inside her head
kept urging: "_Time_! _Time_! _Give me time_!"
"Please, Roger," she began with unwonted humility. "I'd rather you
didn't tell people just yet."
But Trenby objected.
"I don't see that there's anything gained by waiting," he said doggedly.
"Time! . . . _Time_!" reiterated the voice inside Nan's head.
"To please me, Roger," she begged. "I want to think things over a bit
first."
"It's too late to think things over," he answered jealously. "You've
given me your promise. You don't want to take it back again?"
"Perhaps, when you know everything, you'll want me to."
"Tell me 'everything' now, then," he said grimly, "and you'll soon see
whether I want you to or not."
Nan was fighting desperately to gain time. She needed it more than
anything--time to think, time to weigh the pros and cons of the matter,
time to decide. The past was pulling at her heart-strings, filling her
with a sudden terror of the promise she had just given Roger.
"I can't tell you anything now," she said rather breathlessly. "I did
try--a little while ago, and you wouldn't listen. You--you _must_ give
me a few days--you must! If you don't, I'll say 'no' now--at once!"
her voice rising excitedly.
She was overwrought, strung up to such a pitch that she hardly knew
what she was saying. She had been through a good deal in the last hour
or two and Trenby realised it. Suddenly that grim determination of his
to force her promise, to bind her his here and now, yielded to an
overwhelming flood of tenderness.
"It shall be as you wish, Nan," he said very gently. "I know I'm
asking everything of you, and that you're frightened and upset to-day.
I ought not to have spoken. And--and I'm a lot older than you."
"Oh, it isn't that," replied Nan hastily, fearing he might be feeling
sore over the disparity in their respective ages. She did not want him
to be hurt about things that would never have counted at all had she
loved him.
"Well, if I wait till Monday--that's four days--will that do?" he asked.
"Yes. I'll tell you then."
"Thank you"--very simply. He lifted her hands to his lips. "And
remember," he added desperately, "that I love you, Nan--you're my whole
world."
He paced the short length of the room and back, and when he came to her
side again, every trace of emotion was wiped out of his face.
"Now I'm going to take you back home. Mrs. Denman"--smiling
faintly--"says she'll put 'an 'assock' in the car for your damaged leg
to rest on, so with rugs and that coat you were so averse to bringing I
think you'll be all right."
He went to the table and poured out something in a glass.
"Drink that," he said, holding it towards her. "It'll warm you up."
Nan sniffed at the liquid in the glass and tendered it back to him with
a grimace.
"It's brandy," she said. "I hate the stuff."
"You'll drink it, though, won't you?"--persuasively.
"No," shaking her head. "I can't bear the taste of it."
"But it's good for you." He stood in front of her, glass in hand.
"Come, Nan, don't be foolish. You need something before we start.
Drink it up."
He held it to her lips, and Nan, too proud to struggle or resist like a
child, swallowed the obnoxious stuff. As Trenby drove her home she had
time to reflect upon the fact that if she married him there would be
many a contest of wills between them. He roused a sense of rebellion
in her, and he was unmistakably a man who meant to be obeyed.
Her thoughts went back to Peter Mallory. Somehow she did not think she
would ever have found it difficult to obey _him_.