THE DOUBLED BARRIER
Except for one of Trenby's frequent telephone calls, enquiring as to
Nan's progress, Saturday passed uneventfully enough until the evening.
Then, through the clear summer dusk Kitty discerned the Mallow car
returning from the station whither it had been sent to meet Ralph's
train.
Hurrying down the drive, she saw Ralph lean forward and speak to the
chauffeur who slowed down to a standstill, while he himself sprang out
and came eagerly to her side.
"You angelic woman!" he exclaimed fervently. "How did you manage it?
Will she--will she really--"
"I think she will," answered Kitty, smiling. "So you needn't worry.
But I'm not the _dea ex machina_ to whom you owe the 'happy ending.'
Nan managed it--in some incomprehensible way of her own."
"Then blessed be Nan!" said Ralph piously, as he opened the door of the
car for her to enter. Two minutes' further driving brought them to the
house.
Following his hostess's instructions, Ralph remained outside, and as
Kitty entered the great hall, alone, a white-clad figure suddenly made
as though to escape by a further door.
"Come back, Penny," called Kitty, a hint of kindly mischief in her
voice. "You'll just get half an hour to yourselves before the
dressing-bell rings. Afterwards we shall expect to see you both,
clothed and in your right minds, at dinner."
The still look of happiness that had dwelt all day in Penelope's eyes
woke suddenly into radiance, just as you may watch the calm surface of
the sea, when the tide is at its full, break into a hundred sparkling
ripples at the vivifying touch of a wandering breeze.
She turned back hesitatingly, looking all at once absurdly young and a
little frightened--this tall and stately Penelope--while a faint
blush-rose colour ran swiftly up beneath the pallor of her skin, and
her eyes--those nice, humorous brown eyes of hers that always looked
the world so kindly and honestly in the face--held the troubled shyness
of a little child.
Kitty laid a gentle hand on her arm.
"Run along, my chicken," she said, suddenly feeling a thousand years
old as she saw Penelope standing, virginal and sweet, at the threshold
of the gate through which she herself had passed with happy footsteps
years ago--that gate which opens to the wondering fingers of girlhood,
laid so tremulously upon love's latch, and which closes behind the
woman, shutting her into paradise or hell.
"Run along, my chicken. . . . And give Ralph my blessing!"
* * * * * *
It was not until the next day, towards the end of lunch, that Ralph
shot his bolt from the blue. Other matters--which seemed almost too
good to be true in the light of Penelope's unqualified refusal of him
three days ago--had occupied his mind to the exclusion of everything
else. Nor, to give him his due, was he in the least aware that he was
administering any kind of shock, since he was quite ignorant as to the
actual state of affairs betwixt Nan and Maryon Rooke.
It was Kitty herself who inadvertently touched the spring which let
loose the bolt.
"What's the news in town, Ralph?" she asked. "Surely you gleaned
_something_, even though you were only there for a single night?"
Fenton laughed.
"Would I dare to come back to you without the latest?" he returned,
smiling. "The very latest is that Maryon Rooke is to be married."
A silence followed, as though a bombshell had descended in their midst
and scattered the whole party to the four winds of heaven.
Then Kitty, making a desperate clutch at her self-possession, remarked
rather superficially:
"Surely that's not true? I thought Maryon was far too confirmed a
bachelor to be beguiled into the holy bonds."
"It's perfectly true," returned Fenton. "First-hand source. I ran
across Rooke himself and it was he who told me. They're to be married
very shortly, I believe."
Fell another awkward silence. Then:
"So old Rooke will be in the cart with the rest of us poor married
men," observed Barry, whose lazy blue eyes had yet contrived to notice
that Nan's slim fingers were nervously occupied in crumbling her bread
into small pieces.
"In the car, rather," responded Ralph, "The lady is fabulously wealthy,
I believe. Former husband, a steel magnate or something of the sort."
"Well, that will help Maryon in his profession," said Nan, "with a
quiet composure that was rather astonishing. But, as usual, in a
social crisis of this nature, she seemed able to control her voice,
though her restless fingers betrayed her.
"Yes, presumably that's why he's marrying her," replied Ralph. "It
can't be a case of love at first sight"--grimly.
"Isn't she pretty, then?" asked Penelope.
"Plain as a pikestaff"--with emphasis. "I've met her once or
twice--Lady Beverley."
It appeared from the chorus which followed that everyone present knew
her more or less.
"I should think she is plain!" exclaimed Kitty heartily.
"Yes, she'd need to be very well gilded," commented her husband.
"You're all rather severe, aren't you?" suggested Lord St. John.
"After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
"Not with an artist," asserted Nan promptly. "He can't see beauty
where there isn't any."
To the depths of her soul she felt that this was true, and inwardly she
recoiled violently from the idea of Maryon's marriage. She had been
bitterly hurt by his treatment of her, but to a certain extent she had
been able to envisage the whole affair from his point of view and to
understand it.
A rising young artist, if he wishes to succeed, cannot afford to hamper
himself with a wife and contend with the endless sordid details of
housekeeping conducted on a necessarily economical scale. It slowly
but surely deadens the artist in him--the delicate creative inspiration
that is so easily smothered by material cares and worries. Nan refused
to blame Maryon simply because he had not married her then and there.
But she could not forgive him for deliberately seeking her out and
laying on her that strange fascination of his when, in his own heart,
he must have known that he would always ultimately place his art before
love.
And that he should marry Lady Beverley, a thoroughly commonplace woman
hung round with the money her late husband had bequeathed her, Maryon's
very antithesis in all that pertained to the beautiful--this sickened
her. It seemed to her as though he were yielding his birthright in
exchange for a mess of pottage.
Where was his self-respect that he could do this thing? The high
courage of the artist to conquer single-handed? Not only had he
trampled on the love which he professed to have borne her--and which,
in her innermost heart, she knew he _had_ borne her--but he was
trampling on everything else in life that mattered. She felt that his
projected marriage with Lady Beverley was like the sale of a soul.
When lunch was over, the whole party adjourned to the terrace for
coffee, and as soon as she decently could after the performance of this
sacred rite, Nan escaped into the rose-garden by herself, there to
wrestle with the thoughts to which Ralph's carelessly uttered news had
given rise.
They were rather bitter thoughts. She was aware of an odd sense of
loss, for whatever may have come between them, no woman ever quite
believes that the man who has once loved her will eventually marry some
other woman. Whether it happens early or late, it is always somewhat
of a shock. These marriages deal such a blow at faith in the
deathlessness of love, and whether the woman herself is married or not,
there remains always a secret and very tender corner in her heart for
the man who, having loved her unavailingly, has still found no other to
take her place even twenty or thirty years later.
Nan was conscious of an unspeakably deserted feeling. Maryon had gone
completely out of her life; Peter, the man she loved, could never come
into it; and the only man who strove for entrance was, as Penelope had
said, the last man in the world to make her happy.
Nevertheless, it seemed as though with gentle taps and pushes Fate were
urging them together--forcing her towards Roger so that she might
escape from forbidden love and the desperate fear and pain of it.
And then she saw him coming--it seemed almost as though her thought had
drawn him--coming with swift feet over the grassy slopes of the park,
too eager to follow the winding carriage-way, while the fallow-deer
bounded lightly aside at the sound of his footsteps, halting at a safe
distance to regard the intruder with big, timorous, velvety eyes.
Nan paused in the middle of the rose-garden, where a stone sundial
stood--grey and weather-beaten, its warning motto half obliterated by
the tender touches of the years:
"Time flies. Remember that each breath
But wafts thy erring spirit nearer death."
Rather nervously, while she waited for Trenby to join her, she traced
the ancient lettering with a slim forefinger. He crossed the lawn
rapidly, pausing beside her, and without looking up she read aloud the
grim couplet graven round the dial.
"That's a nice cheery motto," commented Trenby lightly. "They must
have been a lugubrious lot in the good old days!"
"They weren't so afraid of facing the truth as we are," Nan made answer
musingly. "I wonder why we always try to shut our eyes against the
fact of death? . . . It's there waiting for us round the corner all
the time."
"But there's life and love to come first," flashed out Roger.
Nan looked at him thoughtfully.
"Not for everyone," she said. Then suddenly: "Why are you here to-day,
Roger? I told you to come on Monday."
"I know you did. But I couldn't wait. It was horrible, Nan, just
getting a few words over the 'phone twice a day to say how you were. I
had to see for myself."
His eyes sought her throat where the lash of the hunting-crop had
wealed it. The mark had almost disappeared. With a sudden, passionate
movement he caught her in his arms and pressed his lips against the
faint scar.
"Nan!" he said hoarsely. "Nan, say 'yes'! Say it quickly!"
She drew away from him, freeing herself from the clasp of his arms.
"I'm not sure it is 'yes.' You must hear what I have to say first.
You wouldn't listen the other day. But to-day, Roger, you must--you
_must_."
"You're not going to take back your promise?" he demanded jealously.
"It wasn't quite a promise, was it?" she said gently. "But it's for
you to decide--when you know everything."
"Then I'll decide now," he answered quickly. "I want you--Nan, how I
want you! I don't care anything at all about the past--I don't want to
know anything--"
"But you must know"--steadily. "Perhaps when you know--you won't want
me."
"I shall always want you."
Followed a pause. Then Nan, with an effort, said quietly:
"Do you want to marry a woman who has no love to give you?"
He drew a step nearer.
"I'll teach you how to love," he said unevenly. "I'll make you love
me--love me as I love you."
"No, no," she answered. "You can't do that, Roger. You can't."
His face whitened. Then, with his piercing eyes bent on her as though
to read her inmost thoughts, he asked:
"What do you mean? Is there--anyone else?"
"Yes." The answer came very low.
"And you care for him?"
She nodded.
"But we can never be anything to each other," she said, still in that
same low, emotionless voice.
"Then--then--you'd grow to care--"
"No. I shall never care for anyone else again. That love has burnt up
everything--like a fire." She paused. "You don't want to marry--an
empty grate, do you?" she asked, with a sudden desperate little laugh.
Roger's arm drew her closer.
"Yes, I do. And I'll light another fire there and by its warmth we'll
make our home together. I won't ask much, Nan dear--only to be allowed
to love you and make you happy. And in time--in time, I'll teach you
to love me in return and to forget the past. Only say yes, sweetheart!
I'll keep you so safe--so safe!"
What magic is it teaches men how to answer the women they love--endows
them with a quickness of perception denied them till the flame of love
flares up within them, and doubly denied them should that flame burn
low behind the bars of matrimony? Surely it must be some cunning wile
of old Dame Nature's--whose chief concern is, after all, the
continuation of the species. She it is who knows how to deck the
peacock in fine feathers to the undoing of the plain little peahen, to
crown the stag with the antlers of magnificence so that the doe's
velvet eyes melt in adoration. And shall not the same wise old Dame
know how to add a glamour to the sons of men when one of them goes
forth to seek his mate?
Had Roger been just his normal self that afternoon--his matter-of-fact,
imperceptive self--he would never have known how to answer Nan's
half-desperate question, and the rose-garden might have witnessed a
different ending to the scene. But Mother Mature was fighting on the
side of this man-child of hers, whispering her age-old wisdom into his
ears, and the tender comprehension of his answer fell like balm on
Nan's sore heart.
"I'll keep you safe!"
It was safety she craved most of all--the safety of some stronger
barrier betwixt herself and Peter. Once she were Roger's wife she knew
she would be well-guarded. The barrier would be too high for her to
climb, even though Peter called to her from the other side.
A momentary terror of giving up her freedom assailed her, and for an
instant she wavered. Then she remembered her bargain with Fate--and
if, finally, Roger were willing to take her when he knew everything,
she would marry him.
Her hand crept out and slid into his big palm.
"Very well, Roger," she said quietly. "If--knowing everything--you
still want me . . . I'll marry you."
And as his arms closed round her, crushing her in his embrace, she
seemed to hear a distant sound like the closing of a door--the door of
the forbidden might-have-been.