Margaret Pedler - The Moon out of Reach

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After dinner Ralph deserted to his club, and the three women drew round
the fire, talking desultorily, as women will, and avoiding as though by
common consent matters that touched them too nearly. Presently the
maid, came noiselessly into the firelit room.

"A gentleman has called to see Miss Davenant," she said, addressing her
mistress.

Nan's heart missed a beat. It was Peter--she was sure of it--Peter,
who had come back to her! In the long watches of the night he had found
out that they could not part . . . not like this . . . never to see
each other any more! It was madness. And he had come to tell her so.
The agony of the interminable night had been his as well as hers.

"Did he give any name?" Her violet eyes were almost black with
excitement.

"No, miss. He is in the sitting-room."

Slowly Nan made her way across the hall, one hand pressed against her
breast to still the painful throbbing of her heart. Outside the room
she hesitated a moment; then, with a quick indrawing of her breath, she
opened the door and went in.

"_Roger_!"

She shrank back and stood gazing at him dumbly, silent with the shock
of sudden and undreamed-of disappointment. She had been so sure, so
_sure_ that it was Peter! And yet, jerked suddenly back to the reality
of things, she almost smiled at her own certainty. Peter was too
strong a man to renounce and then retract his renunciation twenty-four
hours later.

Trenby, who had been standing staring into the fire, turned at the
sound of her entrance. He looked dog-tired, and his eyes were sunken
as though sleep had not visited them recently. At the sight of her a
momentary expression of what seemed to be unutterable relief flashed
across his face, then vanished, leaving him with bent brows and his
under-jaw thrust out a little.

"Roger!" repeated Nan in astonishment.

"Yes," he replied gruffly. "Are you surprised to see me?"

"Certainly I am. Why have you come? Why have you followed me here?"

"I've come to take you back," he said arrogantly.

Her spirit rose in instant revolt.

"You might have saved yourself the trouble," she flashed back angrily.
"I'm not coming. I'll return when I've finished my visit to Penelope."

"You'll come back with me now--to-night," he replied doggedly. "We can
catch the night mail and I've a car waiting below."

"Then it can wait! Good heavens, Roger! D'you think I'll submit to be
made a perfect fool of--fetched back like a child?"

He took a step towards her.

"And do you think that _I'll_ submit to be made a fool of?" he asked in
a voice of intense anger. "To be made a fool of by your rushing away
from my house in my absence--to have the servants gossiping--not to
know what has become of you--"

"I left a note for you," she interrupted. "And you didn't believe what
I told you in it."

"No," he acknowledged. "I didn't. I was afraid . . . Good God, Nan!"
he broke out with sudden passion. "Haven't you any idea of what I've
been through this last forty-eight hours? . . . It's been hell!"

She looked at him as though amazed.

"I don't understand," she said impatiently. "Please explain."

"Explain? Can't you understand?" His face darkened. "You said you
couldn't marry me--you asked me to release you! And then--after
that!--I come home to find you gone--gone with no word of explanation,
and the whole household buzzing with the story that you've run away! I
waited for a letter from you, and none came. Then I wired--to
safeguard you I wired from Exeter. No answer! What was I to
think? . . . What _could_ I think but that you'd gone? Gone to some
other man!"

"Do you suppose if I'd left you for someone else I should have been
afraid to tell you? That I should have written an idiotic note like
that? . . . How dared you wire to Penelope? It was abominable of you!"

"Why didn't she reply? I thought they must be away--"

"That clinched matters in your mind, I suppose?" she said
contemptuously. "But it's quite simple. Penelope didn't wire because
I wouldn't let her."

He was silent. It was quite true that since Nan's disappearance from
Trenby Hall he had been through untold agony of mind. The possibility
that she might have left him altogether in a wild fit of temper had not
seemed to him at all outside the bounds of probability. And it was
equally true that when another day had elapsed without bringing further
news of her, he had become a prey to the increasing atmosphere of
suspicion which, thanks to the gossip that always gathers in the
servants' hall, had even spread to the village.

Nor had either his mother or cousin made the least attempt to stem his
rising anger. Far from it. Lady Gertrude had expressed her opinion
with a conciseness that was entirely characteristic.

"You made an unwise choice, my son. Nan has no sense of her future
position as your wife."

Isobel had been less blunt in her methods, but a corrosive acid had
underlain her gentle speech.

"I can't understand it, Roger. She--she was fond of you, wasn't she?
Oh"--with a quick gesture of her small brown hands--"she _must_ have
been!"

"I don't know so much about the 'must have been,'" Roger had admitted
ruefully. "She cared--once--for someone else."

"Who was it?"

Isobel's question shot out as swiftly as the tongue of an adder.

"I can't tell you," he answered reluctantly. He wished to God he
could! That other unknown man of whom, from the very beginning, he had
been unconsciously afraid! He was actively, consciously jealous of him
now.

Then Isobel's subdued, shocked tones recalled him from his thoughts.

"Oh, Roger, Nan couldn't--she would never have run away to be--with
him?"

She had given words to the very fear which had been lurking at the back
of his mind from the moment he had read the briefly-worded note which
Nan had left for him.

Throughout the night this belief had grown and deepened within him, and
with the dawn he had motored across country to Exeter, driving like a
madman, heedless of speed limits. There he had dispatched a telegram
to Penelope, and having waited unavailingly for a reply he had come
straight on to town by rail. The mark of those long hours of sickening
apprehension was heavily imprinted on the white, set face he turned to
Nan when she informed him that it was she who had stopped Penelope from
sending any answer.

"And I suppose," he said slowly, "it merely struck you as . . .
amusing . . . to let me think what I thought?"

"You had no right to think such a thing," she retorted. "I may be
anything bad that your mother believes me, but at least I play fair! I
left Trenby to stay with Penelope, exactly as I told you in my note.
If--if I proposed to break my promise to you, I wouldn't do it on the
sly--meanly, like that." Her eyes looked steadily into his. "I'd tell
you first."

He snatched her into his arms with a sudden roughness, kissing her
passionately.

"You'd drive a man to madness!" he exclaimed thickly. "But I shan't
let you escape a second time," he went on with a quiet intensity of
purpose. "You'll come back with me now--to-night--to Trenby."

She made a quick gesture of negation.

"No, no, I can't--I couldn't come now!"

His grip of her tightened.

"Now!" he repeated in a voice of steel. "And I'll marry you by special
licence within a week. I'll not risk losing you again."

Nan shuddered in his arms. To go straight from that last farewell with
Peter into marriage with a man she did not love--it was unthinkable!
She shrank from it in every fibre of her being. Some day, perhaps, she
could steel herself to make the terrible surrender. But not now, not
yet!

"No! No!" she cried strickenly. "I can't marry you! Not so soon!
You must give me time--wait a little! Kitty--"

She struggled to break from him, but he held her fast.

"We needn't wait for Kitty to come back," he said.

"No." The door had opened immediately before he spoke and Kitty
herself came quickly into the room. "No," she answered him. "You
needn't wait for me to come back. I returned yesterday."

"Kitty!"

With a cry like some tortured captive thing Nan wrenched herself free
and fled to Kitty's side.

"Kitty! Tell him--tell him I can't marry him now! Not yet--oh, I
can't!"

Kitty patted her arm reassuringly.

"Don't worry," she answered. Then she turned to Roger.

"Your wedding will have to be postponed, Roger," she said Quietly.
"Nan's uncle died early this morning."

She watched the tense anger and suspicion die swiftly out of his eyes.
The death of a relative, necessarily postponing Nan's marriage,
appealed to that curious conventional strain in him, inherited from
Lady Gertrude.

"Lord St. John dead?" he repeated. "Nan, why didn't you tell me? I
should have understood if I'd known that. I wouldn't have worried
you." He was full of shocked contrition and remorse.

Kitty felt she had been disingenuous. But she had sheltered Nan from
the cave-man that dwelt in Roger--oddly at variance with the streak of
conventionality which lodged somewhere in his temperamental make-up.
And she was quite sure that, if Lord St. John knew, he would be glad
that his death should have succoured Nan, just as in life he had always
sought to serve her.

"I want Nan to come and stay with me for a time," pursued Kitty
steadily, on the principle of striking while the iron is hot. "Later
on I'll bring her down to Mallow, and later still we can talk about the
wedding. You'll have to wait some months, Roger."

He assented, and Nan, realising that it was his mother in him, for the
moment uppermost, making these concessions to convention, felt
conscious of a wild hysterical desire to burst out laughing. She made
a desperate effort to control herself.

The room seemed to be growing very dark. Far away in the sky--no, it
must be the ceiling--she could see the electric lights burning ever
more and more dimly as the waves of darkness surged round her, rising
higher and higher.

"But there's honour, dear, and duty. . . ." Peter's words floated up
to her on the shadowy billows which swayed towards her.

"Honour! Duty!"

There was a curious singing in her head. It sounded like the throb of
a myriad engines, rhythmically repeating again and again:

"Honour! Duty! Honour! Duty!"

The words grew fainter, vaguer, trailing off into a regular pulsation
that beat against her ears.

"_Honour_!" She thought she said it very loudly.

But all that Kitty and Roger heard was a little moan as Nan slipped to
the ground in a dead faint.

CHAPTER XXVIII

GOOD-BYE!

A chesterfield couch had been pulled well into the bay window of one of
Kitty's big rooms so that Nan, from the nest of cushions amid which she
lay, could see all that was passing in the street below. The warm May
sunshine poured into the room, revealing with painful clarity the
changes which the last three months had wrought in her. Never at any
time robust in appearance, she seemed the slenderest, frailest thing as
she lay there, the delicate angles of her face sharpened by fever and
weakness, her cheeks so hollowed that the violet-blue eyes looked
almost amazingly big and wide-open in her small face.

Kitty was sitting near her, a half-knitted jumper lying across her
knees, the inevitable cigarette in her hand, while Barry, who had
returned from Cannes some weeks ago--entirely unperturbed at finding
his new system a complete "wash-out"--leaned, big and debonair, against
the window.

"When are we going to Mallow?" asked Nan fretfully. "I'm so tired of
staring at those houses across the way."

Barry turned his head and regarded the houses opposite reflectively.

"They're not inspiring, I admit," he answered, "even though many of
them _are_ the London habitations of belted earls and marquises."

"We'll go to Mallow as soon as you like," interposed Kitty. "I think
you're quite fit to stand the journey now."

"Fit? Of course I'm fit. Only"--Nan's face clouded--"it will mean
your leaving town just when the season's in full swing. I shan't like
dragging you away."

"Season?" scoffed Kitty. "Season be blowed! The only thing that
matters is whether you're strong enough to travel."

She regarded Nan affectionately. The latter had no idea how
dangerously ill she had been. She remembered Roger's visit to the flat
perfectly clearly. But everything which followed had been more or less
a blank, with blurred intervals of doubtful clarity, until one day she
found herself lying in a bed with Kitty standing at its foot and Peter
sitting beside it. She recollected quite well observing:

"Why, Peter, you've got some grey hairs! I never noticed them before."

Peter had laughed and made some silly reply about old age creeping on,
and presently it seemed to her that Kitty, crying blindly, had led him
out of the room while she herself was taken charge of by a cheerful,
smiling person in a starched frock, whose pretty, curling hair insisted
on escaping from beneath the white cap which coifed it.

Unknown to Nan, those were the first rational words she had spoken
since the night on which she had fainted, after refusing to return to
Trenby Hall with Roger. Moved by some inexplicable premonition of
impending illness, Kitty had insisted on driving her, carefully
pillowed and swaddled in rugs, to her house in Green Street that same
evening.

"If she's going to be ill," she remarked practically, "it will be much
easier to nurse her at my place than at the flat."

Results had justified her. During the attack of brain fever which
followed, it had required all the skill of doctors and nurses to hold
Nan back from the gates of death. The fever burnt up her strength like
a fire, and at first it had seemed as though nothing could check the
delirium. All the strain and misery of the last few months poured
itself out in terrified imaginings. Wildly she besought those who
watched beside her to keep Roger away from her, and when the fear of
Roger was not present, the whole burden of her speech had been a
pitiful, incessant crying out for Peter--Peter!

Nothing would soothe her, and at last, in desperation, Kitty had gone
to Mallory and begged him to come. His first impulse had been to
refuse, not realising the danger of Nan's illness. Then, when it was
made clear to him that her sole chance of life lay in his hands, he had
stifled his own feelings and consented at once.

But when he came Nan did not even recognise him. Instead, she gazed at
him with dry, feverishly brilliant eyes and plucked at his coat-sleeve
with restless fingers.

"Oh, you _look_ kind!" she had exclaimed piteously. "Will you bring
Peter back to me? Nobody here"--she indicated Kitty and one of the
nurses standing a little apart--"nobody here will let him come to
me. . . . I'm sure he'd come if he knew how much I wanted him!"

Mallory had been rather wonderful with her.

"I'm sure he would," he said gently, though his heart was wrung at the
sight of her flushed face and bright, unrecognising eyes. "Now will
you try to rest a little before I fetch him? See, I'll put my arm
round you--so, and if you'll go to sleep I'll send for him. He'll be
here when you wake."

He had gathered her into his arms as he spoke, and his very touch
seemed to soothe and quiet her.

"You're . . . rather like . . . Peter," she said, staring at him with a
troubled frown on her face.

Holding that burningly bright gaze with his own steady one, he answered
quietly:

"I _am_ Peter. They said you wanted me, so of course I came. You knew
I would."

"Peter? Peter?" she whispered. Then, shaking her head: "No. You
can't be Peter. He's dead, I think. . . . I know he went away
somewhere--right away from me."

Mallory's arms closed firmly round her and she yielded passively to his
embrace. Perhaps behind the distraught and weary mind which could not
recognise him, the soul that loved him felt his presence and was
vaguely comforted. She lay very still for some time, and presently one
of the nurses, leaning over her, signed to Peter that she was asleep.

"Don't move," she urged in a low voice. "This sleep may be the saving
of her."

So, hour after hour, Peter had knelt there, hardly daring to change his
position in the slightest, with Nan's head lying against his shoulder,
and her hand in his. Now and again one of the nurses fed him with milk
and brandy, and after a time the intolerable torture of his cramped
arms and legs dulled into a deadly numbness.

Once, watching from the foot of the bed, Kitty asked him softly:

"Can you stand it, Peter?"

He looked up at her and smiled.

"Of course," he answered, as though there were no question in the
matter.

It was only when the early dawn was peering in at the window that at
last Nan stirred in his arms and opened her eyes--eyes which held once
more the blessed light of reason. Then in a voice hardly audible for
weakness, but from which the wild, delirious note had gone, she had
spoken.

"Why, Peter, you've got some grey hairs!"

And Peter, forcing a smile to his drawn lips, had answered with his
joking remark about old age creeping on. Then, letting the nurse take
her from his arms, he had toppled over on to the floor, lying prone
while the second nurse rubbed his limbs and the agony of returning life
coursed like a blazing fire through his veins. Afterwards, with the
tears running down her face, Kitty had helped him out of the room.

Nan's recovery had been slow, and Peter had been compelled to abandon
his intention to see no more of her. She seemed restless and uneasy if
he failed to visit her at least once a day, and throughout those long
weeks of convalescence he had learned anew the same self-sacrifice and
chivalry of spirit which had carried him forward to the utter
renunciation he had made that summer night in King Arthur's Castle.

There was little enough in the fragile figure, lying day after day on a
couch, to rouse a man's passion. Rather, Nan's utter weakness called
forth all the solicitude and ineffable tenderness of which Peter was
capable--such tenderness--almost maternal in its selfless, protective
quality, as is only found in a strong man--never in a weak one.

At last, with the May warmth and sunshine, she had begun to pick up
strength, and now she was actually on the high road to recovery and
demanding for the third or fourth time when they might go to Mallow.

Inwardly she was conscious of an intense craving for the sea, with its
salt, invigorating breath, for the towering cliffs of the Cornish
coast, and the wide expanse of downland that stretched away to landward
till it met and mingled with the tender blue of the sky.

"Strong enough to stand the journey?" she exclaimed in answer to
Kitty's remark. "I should think I am strong enough! I was outdoors
for a couple of hours this morning, and I don't feel the least bit
tired. I'm only lying here"--indicating the Chesterfield with a
humorous little smile that faintly recalled the Nan of former
days--"because I find it so extremely comfortable."

"That may be a slight exaggeration," returned Kitty. "Still, I think
you could travel now. And your coming down to Mallow will rather ease
things."

"Ease things? What things?"

"Your meeting with Lady Gertrude, for one. You may have
forgotten--though you can be sure she hasn't!--that you left Trenby
Hall rather unceremoniously! And then your illness immediately
afterwards prevented your making your peace with her."

Nan's face changed. The light seemed to die out of her eyes.

"I'd almost forgotten Lady Gertrude," she said painfully.

"I don't think you'll find it difficult to meet her again," replied
Kitty. "Roger stopped in town all through the time you were really
dangerously ill--"

"Did he?" interrupted Nan. "That was--rather nice of him, considering
how I'd treated him."

"Do you still mean to marry the fellow?" asked Barry, bluntly.

"Yes." The monosyllable fell slowly but quite convincingly. "Why
hasn't he been to see me lately?" she added after a moment.

"Because I asked him not to," answered Kitty. "He stayed in London
till you were out of danger. After that I bustled him off home, and
told him I should only bring you down to Mallow if he could induce Lady
Gertrude to behave decently to you."

"You seem to have ordered him about pretty considerably," remarked Nan
with a faint smile.

"Oh, he was quite meek with me," returned Kitty. "He had to be. I
told him his only chance was to keep away from you, to manage Lady
Gertrude properly, and not to worry you with letters."

"So that's why he hasn't written? I've wondered, sometimes."

Nan was silent for a time. Then she said quietly:

"You're a good pal, Kitten."

Followed a still longer pause. At last Kitty broke it reluctantly:

"I've something else to tell you."

Nan glanced up quickly, detecting some special significance in her
tones.

"What is it?" she asked.

Kitty made a gesture to her husband that he should leave them alone.
When he had gone:

"It's about Peter," she said, then paused unhappily.

"Yes. Go on. Peter and I are only friends now. We've--we've worked
up quite a presentable sort of friendship since my illness, you know.
What is there to tell me?"

"You know that Celia, his wife, has been out in India for some years.
Well--"

Nan's frail body stiffened suddenly.

"She's coming home?" she said swiftly.

Kitty nodded.

"Yes. She's been very ill with sunstroke. And she's ordered home as
soon as she is able to travel."

Nan made no answer for a moment. Then she said almost under her breath:

"Poor Peter!"

It was late in the afternoon when Peter came to pay his usual daily
visit. Kitty brought him into the room and vanished hastily, leaving
the two alone together.

"You know?" he said quietly.

Nan bent her head.

"Yes, I know," she answered. "Oh, Peter, I'm so sorry!" Adding, after
a pause: "Must you have her with you?"

"I must, dear."

"You'd be happier alone."

"Less unhappy, perhaps." He corrected her gently. "But one can't
always consider one's own personal wishes. I've a responsibility
towards Celia. She's my wife. And though she's been foolish and
treated life rather as though it were a game of battledore and
shuttlecock, she's never done anything to unfit herself to be my wife.
Even if she had--well, I still shouldn't consider I was absolved from
my responsibility towards her. Marriage is 'for better, for worse,'
and I can't be coward enough to shirk if it turns out 'for worse.' If
I did, anything might happen--anything! Celia's a woman of no
will-power--driven like a bit of fluff by every breeze that blows. So
you see, beloved, I must be waiting to help her when she comes back."

Nan lifted her eyes to his face.

"I see that you're just the best and bravest man I know--_preux
chevalier_, as I once called you. . . . Oh, Peter! She's the luckiest
woman in the world to be your wife! And she doesn't even know it!"

He drew her hands into his.

"Not really lucky to be my wife, Nan," he said quietly, "because I can
give her so little. Everything that matters--my love, my utter faith,
all my heart and soul--are yours, now and for ever."

Her hands quivered in his clasp. She dared not trust herself to speak,
lest she should give way and by her own weakness try his strength too
hard.

"Good-bye, dear," he said with infinite tenderness. Then, with a ghost
of the old whimsical smile that reminded her sharply, cruelly, of the
Peter of happier days: "We seem always to be saying good-bye, don't we?
And then Fate steps in and brings us together again. But this time it
is really good-bye--good-bye for always. When we meet again--if we
do--I shall have Celia to care for, and you will be Roger's wife."

He stooped his head and pressed his lips against first one soft palm
and then the other. She heard him cross the room and the door close
behind him. With a little cry she covered her face with her hands,
crushing the palms where his kiss had lain against her shaking lips.

CHAPTER XXIX

ON THIN ICE

May had slipped away into the ranks of the dead months, and June--a
June resplendent with sunshine and roses--had taken her place.

Nan, an open letter in her hand, sat perched on the low wall of the
quadrangular court at Mallow, delicately sniffing the delicious salt
tang which wafted up from the expanse of blue sea that stretched in
front of her. Physically she felt a different being from the girl who
had lain on a couch in London and grumbled fretfully at the houses
opposite. A month at Mallow had practically restored her health. The
good Cornish cream and butter had done much towards rounding the
sharpened contours of her face, and to all outward appearance she was
the same Nan who had stayed at Mallow almost a year ago.

But within herself she knew that a great gulf lay fixed between those
insouciant, long-ago days and this golden, scented morning. The world
had not altered. June was still vivid and sweet with the rapture of
summer. It was she herself who had changed.

Looking backward, she almost wondered how she had endured the agony of
love and suffering and sacrifice which had been compressed into a
single year. She wished sometimes that they had let her die when she
was so ill--let her slip easily out of the world while the delirium of
fever still closed the door on conscious knowledge of all that she had
lost. It seemed foolish to make so much effort to hold on to life when
everything which had made it lovely and pleasant and desirable had gone
out of it. Yet there were still moments, as to-day, when the sheer
beauty of the earth so thrilled her that for the time being life was a
thousand times worth living.

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