THE CAGE DOOR
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--hostilities of outlook and generation--arising once
more betwixt 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 all through Nan's life, was a
matter of supreme unimportance to the older woman. She regarded
it--or, indeed, any other form of art, for that matter--as amongst the
immaterial fripperies of life, something to be put aside at any moment
in favour of social or domestic duties. It signified even less to her
than it did to Eliza McBain, to whom it at least represented one of the
lures of Satan--and for this reason could not be entirely discounted.
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. It had carried
her out of herself, preventing her from dwelling continually upon the
past. Unfortunately, however, the hours she spent in the seclusion of
the West Parlour 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 day, 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 behaviour as a guest in
the house, even though she recognised the injustice of it. An awkward
pause ensued. Isobel, having started the ball rolling, seemed content
to let things take their course without interference, while Roger's
shaggy brows drew together in a heavy frown--though whether he were
displeased by his mother's comment, or by Nan's having given her cause
for it, it was impossible to say.
"This afternoon, for instance," pursued Lady Gertrude, "Isobel and I
paid several calls in the neighbourhood, 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 anyone should expect her to break off in the middle of an
afternoon's inspiration in order to pay a duty call upon some absolute
strangers--whose disappointment was probably solely due to baulked
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!" challengingly.
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 levelled a keen glance at Nan. There was suppressed anger and a
searching, almost fierce enquiry 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,
and she felt intensely annoyed with Isobel, who was apparently unable
to see that her ill-timed observations were goading the pride of both
Roger and his mother.
"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
wilfulness, 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, or even the bare
liking, of Roger's women-kind, and she had failed. It was all just so
much useless effort. Henceforward they might think of her what they
chose.
The remainder of the meal passed in a strained and uncomfortable
manner. Lady Gertrude and Isobel discussed various matters pertaining
to the village Welfare Club, while Roger preserved an impenetrable
silence, and though Nan made a valiant pretence at eating, lest Lady
Gertrude's gimlet eyes should observe her lack of appetite and her
thin, disdainful voice comment on the fact, she felt all the time as
though the next mouthful must inevitably choke her.
The long, formal meal 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 it 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. It woke in her the eternal motherhood which lies in every
woman and she felt that she wanted to comfort him. She could forgive
him his violence. In his furious antagonism towards 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"--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 in his own ears. 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 told him she
once 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 betwixt himself and Nan.
"Have I nothing else--_no one else_"--significantly---"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--someone--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?"--moodily.
"Yes."
The brief reply acted like a spark to tinder. With a stifled
exclamation he caught her up 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 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!"--flushing
swiftly--"you must know it!"
"Yes"--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 anyone 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?
"My God, yes! It'll he 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"--reading 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"--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 he 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 sallow, nimble fingers never paused 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."
Lady Gertrude was busily engaged upon the making of a utilitarian
flannel petticoat for one of her protégées in the village. She
anchored her needle carefully in the material before she laid it aside.
"Do you mean from her house in town?" she asked.
"Why, yes, I suppose so." Nan looked faintly puzzled.
"Then I hope you will re-arrange matters."
Although Lady Gertrude's manner was colder and infinitely more precise,
yet the short speech held the same arrogance as Roger's "Then you'll
marry me in April"--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 someone of the
district. So I hope"--conclusively--"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 again
as though the matter were settled, supremely oblivious of the fact that
she had succeeded, as usual, in rousing every rebellious feeling her
future daughter-in-law possessed.
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 realised how much propinquity adds fuel to love's fire.
Unknown, even to himself, Roger's passion had been gradually rising
towards flood-tide. Man being by nature a contradictory animal, the
attitude assumed by his mother and cousin towards 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
moulded 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 moulding 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 everyone 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 were Philistine or not, Nan had promised to
marry him, and he would know neither rest nor peace of mind until that
promise were fulfilled.
And Nan, as she lay in bed with wide eyes staring into the darkness,
felt as though the door of the cage were slowly closing upon her.