SEEKING TO FORGET
"And this is my holiday!" exclaimed Maryon, standing back from his
easel the better to view the effect of his work. "Nan, you've a lot to
answer for."
Another fortnight had gone by, and the long hours passed is the
music-room, which had been temporarily converted into a studio, were
beginning to show fruit in the shape of a nearly completed portrait.
Nan slipped down from the makeshift "throne."
"May I come and look?"
Rooke moved aside.
"Yes, if you like. I've been working at the face to-day."
She regarded the picture for some time in silence, Rooke watching her
intently the while.
"Well?" he said at last, interrogatively.
"Maryon"--she spoke slowly--"do I really look like--that?"
He nodded.
"Yes," he replied quietly. "When you let yourself go--when you take
off the meaningless mask I complained of."
With that uncanny discernment of his--that faculty for painting
people's souls, as Nan described it--he had sensed the passionate,
wistful, unhappy spirit which looked out from her eyes, and the face on
the canvas gave back a dumb appeal that was almost painfully arresting.
Nan frowned.
"You'd no right to do it," she exclaimed a little breathlessly.
"I painted what I saw."
She was silent, tremulously disturbed. He could see the quick rise and
fall of her breast beneath the filmy white of her gown.
"Nan," he went on in low, tense tones. "Did you think I could be with
you, day after day like this, and not--find out? Could I have painted
your face, loving each line of it, and not learned the truth?" She
stretched out her hand as though to check him, but he paid no heed.
"The truth that Roger is nothing to you--never will be!"
"He's the man I'm going to marry," she said unevenly.
"And I'm only the man who loves you! . . . But because I failed once,
putting love second, must I be punished eternally? I'm ready to put it
first now--to lay all I have and all I've done on its altar."
"What--what do you mean?" she stammered.
He put his hands lightly on her shoulders and drew her nearer to him.
"Is it hard to guess, Nan? . . . I want you to leave this life you
hate and come with me. Let me take you away--right away from it
all--and, somewhere we'll find happiness together."
She stared at him with wide, horrified eyes.
"Oh, you're mad--you're mad!"
With a struggle she freed herself from his grasp and stood away from
him.
"Listen," she said. "Listen to me and then you'll understand what
you're asking. I'm not happy--that's true. But it's my own fault, not
Roger's. I ought never to have given him my promise. There was
someone else--"
"Mallory!" broke in Rooke.
"Yes--Peter. It's quite simple. We met too late. But I learned then
what love means. Once I asked him--I _begged_ him--to take me away
with him. And he wouldn't. I'd have gone to the ends of the earth
with him. I'd go to-morrow if he'd take me! But he won't. And he
never will." She paused, panting a little. "And now," she went on,
with a hard laugh, "I don't think you'll ask me again to go away with
you!"
"Yes, I shall. Mallory may be able to live at such high altitudes that
he can throw over his life's happiness--and yours, too--for a scruple.
I can't--and I don't want to. I love you, and I'm selfish enough to be
ready to take you any minute that you'll come."
Throwing one arm about her shoulders, he turned her face up to his.
"Don't you understand?" he went on hoarsely. "I'm flesh and blood man,
and you're the woman I love."
The hazel eyes blazed with a curious light, like flame, and she
shivered a little, fighting the man's personality--battling against
that strange kinship of temperament by which he always drew her.
"I can wait," he said, quietly releasing her. "You can't go on long as
you're living now; the tension's too high. And when you're through
with it--come to me, Nan! I'd at least make you happier than Trenby
ever will."
Without reply she moved towards the door and he stood aside, allowing
her to pass out of the room in silence.
In the hall she encountered Roger, who had ridden over, accompanied by
a trio of dogs, and the sight of his big, tweed-clad figure, so solidly
suggestive of normal, everyday things, filled her with an unexpected
sense of relief. He might not be the man she loved, but he was, at any
rate, a sheet-anchor in the midst of the emotional storms that were
blowing up around her.
To-day, however, his face wore a clouded, sullen expression when he
greeted her.
"What have you been doing with yourself?" he asked, his eyes fastening
suspiciously on her flushed cheeks.
She answered him with a poor attempt at her usual nonchalance.
"Oh, Maryon came over this morning, so I've been sitting to him."
"All day? I don't like it too well." The look of displeasure deepened
on his face. "People will talk. You know what country folks are like."
Nan's eyes flashed.
"Let them talk! I'm not going to regulate my conduct according to the
villagers' standard of propriety," she replied indignantly.
"It isn't merely the villagers," pursued Roger. "Isobel said, only
yesterday, she thought it was rather indiscreet."
"Isobel!" interrupted Nan scornfully. "It would be better if she kept
her thoughts for home consumption. The neighbourhood might conceivably
comment on the number of times you and she go 'farming' together."
Roger looked quickly at her, a half-smile on his lips.
"Why, Nan!" he said, a note of surprise, almost of satisfaction, in his
voice. "I believe you're growing jealous?"
She laughed contemptuously. She was intensely angry that he should
have quoted Isobel's opinion to her, and she struck back as hard as she
could.
"My dear Roger, surely by this time it must be clear to you that I'm
not very likely to be afflicted by--jealousy!"
The shaft went home, and in an instant the dawning smile on his face
was replaced by an expression of bitter resentment.
"No, I suppose not," he returned sullenly.
He stared down at her, and something in the indifferent pose of her
slim figure made him realise afresh for how little--how pitifully
little--he counted in this woman's life.
He gripped her shoulder in sudden anger.
"But _I_ am jealous!"--vehemently. "Do you hear, Nan? Jealous of your
reputation and your time--the time you give to Rooke."
She shrank away from him, and the movement seemed to rouse him to a
white heat of fury. Instead of releasing her, he pulled her closer to
him.
"Don't shrink like that!" he exclaimed savagely. "By God! Do you
think I'll stand being treated as though I were a leper? You avoid me
all you can--detest the sight of me, I suppose! But remember one
thing--you're going to be my wife. Nothing can alter that, and you
belong--to--me"--emphasising each word separately. "You mayn't give me
your smiles--but I'm damned if you shall give them to any other man."
He thrust his face, distorted with anger, close to hers.
"_Now_ do you understand?"
She struggled in his grasp like a frightened bird, her eyes dilating
with terror. She knew, only too well, what this big primitive-souled
man could be like when the devil in him was roused, and his white,
furious face and blazing eyes filled her with panic.
"Roger! Let me go!" she cried, her voice quick with fear. "Let me go!
You're hurting me!"
"Hurting you?" With an effort he mastered himself, slackening his
grasp a little, but still holding her. "Hurting you? I wonder if you
realise what a woman like you can do to a man? When I first met you I
was just an ordinary decent man, and I loved and trusted you
implicitly. But now, sometimes, I almost feel that I could kill
you--to make sure of you!"
"But why should you distrust me? It's Isobel--Isobel Carson who's put
these ideas into your head."
"Perhaps she's opened my eyes," he said grimly. "They've been shut too
long."
"You've no right to distrust me--"
"Haven't I, Nan, haven't I?" He held her a little away from him and
searched her face. "Answer me! Have I no right to doubt you?"
His big chest heaved under the soft fabric of his shirt as he stood
looking down at her, waiting for her answer.
She would have given the world to be able to answer him with a simple
"No." But her lips refused to shape the word. There was so much that
lay between them, so much that was complicated and difficult to
interpret.
Slowly her eyes fell before his.
"I utterly decline to answer such a question," she replied at last.
"It's an insult."
His hands fell from her shoulders.
"I think I'm answered," he said curtly, and, turning on his heel, he
strode away, leaving Nan shaken and dismayed.
As far as Maryon was concerned, he refrained from making any allusion
to what had taken place that day in the music-room, and gradually the
sense of shocked dismay with which his proposal had filled Nan at the
time, grew blurred and faded, skilfully obliterated by his unfailing
tact. But the remembrance of it lingered, tucked away in a corner of
her mind, offering a terrible solution of her difficulties.
He still demanded from her a large part of each day, on the plea that
much yet remained to be done to the portrait, while Roger, into whose
ears Isobel continued to drop small poisoned hints, became
correspondingly more difficult and moody. The tension of the situation
was only relieved by the comings and goings of Sandy McBain and the
enforced cheerfulness assumed by the members of the Mallow household.
Neither Penelope nor Kitty sensed the imminence of any real danger.
But Sandy, in whose memory the recollection of the winter's happenings
was still alive and vivid, felt disturbed and not a little anxious.
Nan's moods were an open book to him, and just now they were not very
pleasant reading.
"What about the concerto?" he asked her one day. "Aren't you going to
do anything with it?"
"Do anything with it?" she repeated vaguely.
"Yes, of course. Get it published--push it! You didn't write it just
for fun, I suppose?"
A faintly mocking smile upturned the corners of her mouth.
"I think Roger considers I wrote it expressly to annoy him," she
submitted.
"Rot!" he replied succinctly. "Just because he's not a trained
musician you appear to imagine he's devoid of ordinary appreciation."
"He is," she returned. "He hates my music. Yes, he does"--as Sandy
seemed about to protest. "He hates it!"
"Look here, Nan"--he became suddenly serious--"you're not playing fair
with Trenby. He's quite a good sort, but because he isn't a
scatter-brained artist like yourself, you're giving him a rotten time."
From the days when they had first known each other Sandy had taken it
upon himself at appropriate seasons to lecture Nan upon the error of
her ways, and it never occurred to her, even now, to resent it.
Instead, she answered him with unwonted meekness.
"I can't help it. Roger and I never see things in the same light,
and--and oh, Sandy, you might try to understand!" she ended appealingly.
"I think I do," he returned. "But it isn't cricket, Nan. You can kick
me out of the house if you like for saying it, but I don't think you
ought to have Maryon Rooke around so much."
She flushed hotly.
"He's painting my portrait," she protested.
"Taking a jolly long time over it, too--and making love to you in the
intervals, I suppose."
"Sandy!"
"Well, isn't he?" Sandy's green eyes met hers unflinchingly.
"Anyway, _I'm_ not in love with _him_."
"I should hope not," he observed drily, "seeing that you're going to be
Mrs. Trenby."
She gave an odd little laugh.
"That wouldn't make an insuperable barrier, would it? I don't
suppose--love--notices whether we're married or single when it comes
along."
Something in the quality of her voice filled him with a sudden sense of
fear. Hitherto he had attributed the trouble between Nan and Roger
entirely to the difference in their temperaments. Now, for the first
time, a new light was flashed upon the matter. Her tone was so sharply
bitter, like that of one chafing against some actual happening, that
his mind leaped to the possibility that there might be some more
tangible force arrayed against Roger's happiness. And if this were the
case, if Nan's love were really given elsewhere, then, knowing her as
he did, Sandy foresaw the likelihood of some rash and headlong ending
to it all.
He was silent, pondering this aspect of the matter. She watched him
curiously for a few moments, then, driven, by one of those strange
impulses which sometimes fling down all the barriers of reserve, she
broke into rapid speech.
"You needn't grudge me Maryon's friendship! I've lost everything in
the world worth having--everything real, I mean. Sometimes I feel as
though I can't bear it any longer! And Maryon interests me . . . he's
a sort of mental relation. . . . When I'm with him I can forget even
Peter for a little. . . ."
She broke off, pacing restlessly backwards and forwards, her hands
interlocked, her face set in a white mask of tragedy. All at once she
came to a standstill in front of Sandy and remained staring at him with
an odd kind of surprise in her eyes.
"What on earth have I been talking about?" she exclaimed, passing her
hand across her forehead and peering at him questioningly. "Sandy,
have you been listening? You shouldn't listen to what other people are
thinking. It's rude, you know." She laughed a little hysterically.
"You must just forget it all, Sandy boy."
Sandy had been listening with a species of horror to the sudden
outpouring. He felt as though he had overheard the crying of a soul
which has reached the furthest limit of its endurance. In Nan's
disjointed, broken sentences had been revealed the whole piteous truth,
and in those two short words, "_Even Peter_!" lay the key to all he had
found so difficult to understand. It was Peter Mallory she loved--not
Roger, nor Maryon Rooke!
He had once met Mallory and had admired the man enormously. The
meeting had occurred during the summer preceding that which had
witnessed Nan's engagement to Roger. Peter had been paying a flying
week-end visit to the Seymours, and Sandy had taken a boy's instinctive
liking to the brilliant writer who never "swanked," as the lad put it,
but who understood so well the bitter disappointment of which Duncan
McBain's uncompromising attitude towards music had been the cause. And
this was the man Nan loved and who loved her!
With instinctive tact, Sandy refrained from any comment on Nan's
outburst. Instead, he pushed her gently into a chair, talking the
while, so that she might have time to recover herself a little.
"I tell you what it is, Nan," he said with rough kindness. "You've
overdone it a bit working at that concerto, and instead of giving
yourself a holiday, you've been tiring yourself still more by sitting
for your portrait. You may find Rooke mentally refreshing if you like,
but posing for him hour after hour is a confounded strain, physically.
Now, you take your good Uncle Sandy's advice and let the portrait slide
for a bit. You might occupy yourself by making arrangements for the
production of the concerto."
"I don't feel any interest in it," she said slowly. "It's funny, isn't
it, Sandy? I was so keen about it when I was writing it. And now I
think it's rotten."
"It isn't," said Sandy. "It's good stuff, Nan. Anyone would tell you
so."
"Do you think so?" she replied, without enthusiasm.
He regarded her with an expression of anxiety.
"Oh, you mustn't drop the concerto," he protested. "That's always been
your trick, Nan, to go so far and no further."
"It's a very good rule to follow--in some things," she replied
enigmatically.
"Well, look here, will you hand the manuscript over to me and let me
show it to someone?"
"No, I won't," she said with decision. "I hate the concerto now. It
has--it has unpleasant associations. Let it rest in oblivion."
He shrugged his shoulders in despair.
"You're the most aggravating woman I know," he remarked irritably.
In an instant Nan was her own engaging self once more. It was
instinctive with her to try and charm away an atmosphere of disapproval.
"Don't say that, Sandy," she replied, making a beseeching little
_moue_. "You know it would be awfully boring if I always did just
exactly what you were expecting me to do. It's better to be
aggravating than--dull!"
Sandy smiled. Nan was always quite able to make her peace with him
when she chose to.
"Well, no one can complain that you're dull," he acknowledged.