"THE WIDTH OF A WORLD BETWEEN"
Nan gave a final touch to Penelope's hair, drawing the gold fillet
which bound it a little lower down on to the broad brow, then stood
back and regarded the effect with critical eyes.
"That'll do," she declared. "You look a duck, Penelope! I hope you'll
get a splendid reception. You will if you smile at the audience as
prettily as you're smiling now! Won't she, Ralph?"
"I hope so," answered Fenton seriously. "It would be a waste of a
perfectly good smile if she doesn't." And amid laughter and good
wishes the Fentons departed for the concert, Peter Mallory accompanying
them downstairs to speed them on their way.
Meanwhile Nan, left alone for the moment, became suddenly conscious of
an overpowering nervousness at the prospect of spending the evening
alone with Peter. There was so much--so much that lay behind them that
they must either restrict their conversation to the merest
trivialities, avoiding all reference to the past, or find themselves
plunged into dangerous depths. Dinner had passed without incident.
Sustained by the presence of Penelope and Ralph, Nan had carried
through her part in it with a brilliance and reckless daring which
revealed nothing at all of the turmoil of confused emotions which
underlay her apparent gaiety.
She seemed to have become a new being this evening, an enchanting
creature of flame and fire. She said the most outrageous things at
dinner, talking a lot of clever nonsense but sheering quickly away if
any more serious strain of thought crept into the conversation. For an
instant she might plumb the depths, the next she would be winging
lightly over the surface again, while a spray of sparkling laughter
rose and fell around her. With butterfly touch she opened the cupboard
of memory, daring Peter the while with her eyes, skimming the thin ice
of bygone times with the adroitness of an expert skater.
She was wearing the frock which had called forth Lady Gertrude's ire,
and from its filmy folds her head and shoulders emerged like a flower
from its sheath, vividly arresting, her scarlet lips and "blue-violet"
eyes splashes of live colour against the warm golden ivory of her skin.
It was Nan at her most emotionally distracting, now sparkling with an
almost feverish vivacity, now drooping into sudden silence, while the
lines of her delicately angled face took on a touching, languorous
appeal.
But now, now that the need for playing a part was over, and she stood
waiting for Mallory's return, something tragic and desperate looked out
of her eyes. She paced the room restlessly. Outside a gale was
blowing. She could hear the wind roaring through the street. A sudden
gust blew down the chimney and the flames flickered and bent beneath
it, while in the distance sounded a low rumble of thunder--the odd,
unexpected thunder that comes sometimes in winter.
Presently the lift gates clanged apart. She heard Mallory's step as he
crossed the hall. Then the door of the room opened and shut.
She did not speak. For a moment she could not even look up. She was
conscious of nothing beyond the one great fact that she and Peter were
alone together--alone, yet as much divided as though the whole world
lay between them.
At last, with an effort, she raised her eyes and saw him standing
beside her. A stifled cry escaped her. Throughout dinner, while the
Fentons had been present, he had smiled and talked much as usual, so
that the change in the man had been less noticeable. But the mask was
off now, and in repose his face showed, so worn and ravaged by grief
that Nan cried out involuntarily in pitiful dismay.
Her first impulse was to fold her arms about him, drawing that lined
and altered face against her bosom, hiding from sight the stark
bitterness of the eyes that met her own, and comforting him as only the
woman who loves a man knows how.
Then, like a black, surging flood, the memory of all that kept them
apart rushed over her and she drew back her arms, half-raised, falling
limply to her sides. He made no effort to approach her. Only his eyes
remained fixed on her, hungrily devouring every line of the beloved
face.
"Why did you come?" she asked at last. Her voice seemed to herself as
though it came from a great distance. It sounded like someone else
speaking.
"I couldn't keep away. Life without you has become one long,
unbearable hell."
He spoke with a strange, slow vehemence which seemed to hold the
aggregated bitterness and pain of all those solitary months.
A shudder ran through her slight frame. Her own agony of separation
had been measurable with his.
"But you said . . . at Tintagel . . . that we mustn't meet again. You
shouldn't have come--oh, you shouldn't have come!" she cried
tremulously.
He drew a step nearer to her.
"I _had_ to come, I'm a man--not a saint!" he answered.
She looked up swiftly, trying to read what lay behind the harsh
repression in his tones. She felt as though he were holding something
in leash--something that strained and fought against restraint.
"_I'm a man--not a saint_!" The memory of his renunciation at King
Arthur's Castle swept over her.
"Yet I once thought you--almost that, Peter," she said slowly.
But he brushed her words aside.
"Well, I'm not. When I saw you to-day at the studio . . . God! Did
you think I'd keep away? . . . Nan, did you _want_ me to?"
The leash was slipping. She trembled, aching to answer him as her
whole soul dictated, to tell him the truth--that she wanted him every
minute of the day and that life without him stretched before her like a
barren waste.
"I--we--oh, you're making it so hard for me!" she said imploringly.
"Please go--go, now!"
Instead, he caught her in his arms, holding her crushed against his
breast.
"No, I'm not going. Oh, Nan--little Nan that I love! I can't give you
up again. Beloved!--Soul of me!" And all the love and longing,
against which he had struggled unavailingly throughout those empty
months of separation, came pouring from his lips in a torrent of
passionate pleading that shook her heart.
With an effort she tore herself free--wrenched herself away from the
arms whose clasp about her body thrilled her from head to foot.
Somewhere in one of the cells of her brain she was conscious of a
perfectly clear understanding of the fact that she must be quite mad to
fight for escape from the sole thing in life she craved. Celia Mallory
didn't really count--nor Roger and her pledge to him. . . . They were
only shadows. What counted was Peter's love for her and hers for
him. . . . Yet in a curious numbed way she felt she must still defer
to those shadows. They stood like sentinels with drawn swords at the
gate of happiness, and she would never be able to get past them. So it
was no use Peter's staying here.
"You must go, Peter!" she exclaimed feverishly. "You must go!"
A new look sprang into his eyes--a sudden, terrible doubt and
questioning.
"You want me to go?"
"Yes--yes!" She turned away, gesturing blindly in the direction of the
door. The room seemed whirling round her. "I--I _want_ you to go!"
Then she felt his hand on her shoulder and, yielding to its insistent
pressure, she faced him again.
"Nan, is it because you've ceased to care that you tell me to go?" He
spoke very quietly, but there was something in the tense, hard-held
tones before which she blenched--a note of intolerable fear.
Her shaking hands went up to her face. It would be better if he
thought that of her--better for him, at least. For her, nothing
mattered any more.
"Don't ask me, Peter!" she gasped, sobbingly. "Don't ask me!"
Slowly his hand fell away from her shoulder.
"Then it's true? You don't care? Trenby has taken my place?"
A heavy silence dropped between them, broken only by the sullen roll of
thunder. Nan shivered a little. Her face was still hidden in her
hands. She was struggling with herself--trying to force from her lips
the lie which would send the man's reeling faith in her crashing to
earth and drive him from her for ever. She knew if he went from her
like that, believing she had ceased to care, he would never come back
again. He would wipe her out utterly from his thoughts--out of his
heart. Henceforward she would be only a dead memory to him--the symbol
of a shattered faith.
It was more than she could bear. She could not give up that--Peter's
faith in her! It was all she had to cling to--to carry her through
life.
She stretched out her arms to him, crying brokenly:
"Oh, Peter--Peter--"
At the sound, of her low, shaken voice, with its infinite appeal for
understanding, the iron control he had been forcing on himself snapped
asunder, and he caught her in his arms, kissing her with the fierce
hunger of a man who has been starved of love.
She leaned against him, physically unable to resist, and deep down in
her heart glad that she could not. For the moment everything was swept
away in an anguish of happiness--in the ecstasy of burning kisses
crushed against her mouth and throat and the strained clasp of arms
locked round her.
"My woman!" he muttered unsteadily. "My woman!"
She could feel the hard beating of his heart, and her slender body
trembled in his arms with an answering passion that sprang from the
depths of her being. Forgetful of everything, save only of each other
and their great love, their lips clung together.
Presently he tilted her head back. Her face was white, the shadowed
eyes like two dark stains on the ivory bloom of a magnolia.
"Beloved! . . . Nan, say that you love me--let me hear you say it!"
"You know!" Her voice shook uncontrollably. "You don't need to ask
me, Peter. It--it _hurts_ to love anyone as I love you."
His hold tightened round her.
"You're mine . . . mine out of all the world . . . my beloved. . . ."
A flare of lightning and again the menacing roll of thunder. Then,
sudden as the swoop of a bat, the electric burners quivered and went
out, leaving only the glow of the fire to pierce the gloom. In the dim
light she could see his face bent over her--the face of her man, the
man she loved, and all that was woman and lover within her leaped to
answer the call of her mate--the infinite, imperious demand of human
love that has waited and hungered through empty days and nights till at
last it shall be answered by the loved one.
For a moment she lay unresisting in his arms, helpless in the grip of
the passion of love which had engulfed them both. Then the memory of
the shadows--the sentinels with drawn swords--came back to her. The
swords flashed, cleaving the dividing line afresh before her eyes.
Slowly she leaned away from his breast, her face suddenly drawn and
tortured.
"Peter, I must go back--"
"Back? To Trenby?" Then, savagely: "You can't. I want you!"
He stooped his head and she felt his mouth on hers.
A glimmer of pale firelight searched out the two tense faces; the
shadowy room seemed listening, waiting--waiting--
"I want you!" he reiterated hoarsely. "I can't live without you any
longer. Nan . . . come with me . . ."
A tremulous flicker of lightning shivered across the darkness. The
dead electric burners leaped into golden globes of light once more, and
in the garish, shattering glare the man and woman sprang apart and
stood staring at each other, trembling, with passion-stricken
faces. . . .
The long silence was broken at last, broken by a little inarticulate
sound--half-sigh, half-sob--from Nan.
Peter raised his head and looked at her. His face was grey.
"God!" he muttered. "Where were we going?"
He stumbled to the chimneypiece, and, leaning his arms on it, buried
his face against them.
Presently she spoke to him, timidly.
"Peter?" she said. "Peter?"
At the sound of her voice he turned towards her, and the look in his
eyes hurt her like a physical blow.
"Oh, my dear . . . my dear!" she cried, trembling towards him. "Don't
look like that . . . Ah! don't look like that!"
And her hands went fluttering out in the mother-yearning that every
woman feels for her man in trouble.
"Forgive me, Nan . . . I'm sorry."
She hardly recognised the low, toneless voice.
Her eyes were shining. "Sorry for loving me?" she said.
"No--not for loving you. God knows, I can't help that! But because I
would have taken you and made you mine . . . you who are not mine at
all."
"I'm all yours, really, Peter."
She came a few steps nearer to him, standing sweet and unafraid before
him, her grave eyes shining with a kind of radiance.
"Dear," she went on simply, throwing out her hands in a little
defenceless gesture, "if you want me, I'll come to you. . . . Not--not
secretly . . . while I'm still pledged to Roger. But openly, before
all the world. I'll go with you . . . if you'll take me."
She stood very still, waiting for his answer. Right or wrong, in that
moment of utter sacrifice of self, she had risen to the best that was
in her. She was willing to lay all on love's altar--body, soul, and
spirit, and that honour of the Davenants which she had been so schooled
to keep untarnished. Her pledge to Roger, her uncle's faith in
her--all these must be tossed into the fire to make her gift complete.
But the agony in Peter's face when the mask had fallen from it had
temporarily destroyed for her all values except the value of love.
Peter took the fluttering, outstretched fingers and laid his lips
against them. Then he relinquished them slowly, lingeringly. Passion
had died out of his face. His eyes held only a grave tenderness, and
the sternly sweet expression of his mouth recalled to Nan the man as
she had first known him, before love, terrible and beautiful, had come
into their lives to destroy them.
"I should never take you, dear," he said at last. "A man doesn't hurt
the thing he loves--not in his right senses. What he'll do when the
madness is on him--only his own soul knows."
She caught his arm impetuously.
"Peter, let me come! I'm not afraid of being hurt--not if we're
together. It's only the hurt of being without you that I can't
bear. . . . Oh, I know what you're thinking"--as she read the negation
in his face--"that I should regret it, that I should mind what people
said. Dear, if I can give you happiness, things like that simply
wouldn't count. . . . Ah, believe me, Peter!"
He looked down at her with the tenderness one accords a child,
ignorantly pleading to have its way. He knew Nan's temperament--knew
that, in spite of all her courage, when the moment of exaltation had
passed not even love itself could make up for the bitterness of its
price, if bought at such a cost. He pictured her exposed to the
slights of those whose position was still unassailable, waiting
drearily at Continental watering-places till the decree absolute should
be pronounced, and finally, restored to respectability in so far as
marriage with him could make it possible, but always liable to be
unpleasantly reminded, as she went through life, that there had been a
time when she had outraged convention. It was unthinkable! It would
break her utterly.
"Even if that were all, it still wouldn't be possible," he said gently.
"You don't know what you would have to face. And I couldn't let you
face it. But it isn't all. . . . There's honour, dear, and
duty. . . ."
Her gaze met his in dreary interrogation.
"Then--then, you'll go away?" Her voice faltered, broke.
"Yes, I shall go away . . . out of your life."
He fell silent a moment. Then, with an effort, he went on:
"This is good-bye. We mustn't see each other again--"
"No, no," she broke in a little wildly. "Don't go, Peter, I can't bear
it." She clung to him, repeating piteously: "Don't go . . . don't go!"
He stooped and pressed his lips to her hair, holding her in his arms.
"My dear!" he murmured. "My very dear!"
And so they remained for a little space.
Presently she lifted her face, white and strained, to his.
"_Must_ you go, Peter?"
"Heart's beloved, there is no other way. We may not love . . . and we
can't be together and not love. . . . So I must go."
She lay very still in his arms for a moment. Then he felt a long,
shuddering sigh run through her body.
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes. . . . Peter, go very quickly. . . ."
He took her face between his hands and kissed her on the mouth--not
passionately, but with the ineffably sad calmness of farewell.
"God keep you, dear," he said.
The door closed behind him, shutting him from her sight, and she stood
for a few moments staring dazedly at its wooden panels. Then, with a
sudden desperate impulse, she tore it open again and peered out.
But there was only silence--silence and emptiness. He had gone.