Margaret Pedler - The Moon out of Reach

M >> Margaret Pedler >> The Moon out of Reach

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It was a quaint little village, typical of the West Country, with its
double row of small houses climbing the side of a steep hill capped at
the summit by an ancient church of weather-beaten stone. The bright
June sunshine winked against the panes, of the cottage windows and
flickered down upon the knobby surface of the cobbled pavements, while
in the dust of the wide road an indiscriminate group of children and
dogs played joyously together.

The warning hoot of a motor-horn sent them scuttling to the side of the
road, and, as Sandy smilingly watched the grubby little crowd's hasty
flight for safety, a big green car shot by and was swiftly lost to
sight in a cloud of whirling dust.

But not before Sandy's keen eyes had noted its occupants.

"Nan and the artist fellow!" he muttered.

Then, remembering that Nan had promised to go with him that afternoon
for a run in the "stink-pot," he stepped out into the middle of the
street and stood staring up the broad white road along which the car
had disappeared--the great road which led to London.

An ominous foreboding knocked at the door of his mind.

Where was Nan going with Rooke--driving at reckless speed at this hour
of the day on the way to London, when, according to arrangement, she
should have been ready later on to adventure herself in the "stink-pot"?

Of course it was just possible she had only gone out for a morning spin
with Maryon and proposed returning in time to keep her appointment with
him. But the hour was an unusually early one at which to make a start,
and the green car was ripping along at a pace which rather precluded
the idea of a pleasure jaunt.

Sandy was obsessed by a sense of misgiving that would not be denied.
Wheeling his bicycle round, he mounted and headed straight for Mallow
Court at break-neck speed.

He arrived to find Kitty composedly dividing her attention between her
breakfast and an illustrated paper, and for a moment he felt reassured.
She jumped up and greeted him joyfully.

"Hullo, Sandy! Been down to bathe? Come along and have some breakfast
with me. Or have you had it already?"

He shook his head.

"No, I've not been home yet."

"Then you must be famished. I'll ring for another cup. I'm all alone
in my glory. Barry and the Fentons departed yesterday on their fishing
trip, and Nan--"

"Yes. Where's Nan?" For the life of him he could not check the eager
question.

"She's gone off for the day with Maryon. He's driving her over to
Clovelly--she's never been there, you know."

Sandy's heart sank. He knew the quickest route from St. Wennys to
Clovelly--and the green car's nose had been set in quite a different
direction.

"She's fixed up to go out with me this afternoon," he said slowly.

"Tch!" Kitty clicked her tongue sharply against her teeth and,
crossing to the chimneypiece, took down a letter which, was resting
there. "I'd forgotten this! She left it to be given to you when you
called for her this afternoon. I wanted her to 'phone and put you off,
but she said you would understand when you'd read the letter and that
there was something she wanted you to do for her."

Sandy ripped open the envelope and his eyes flew down the page. Its
contents struck him like a blow--none the less hard because it had been
vaguely anticipated--and a half-stifled exclamation broke from him.

"Sandy dear"--it ran--"I'm going to vanish out of your life, but we've
been such good pals that I can't do it without just a word of good-bye,
not of justification--I know there's none for what I'm going to do.
But I know, too, that there'll be a little pity in your heart for me,
and that you, at least, will understand in a way why I've had to do
this, and won't blame me quite so much as the rest of the world. I'm
going away with Maryon, and by this afternoon, when you come to fetch
me for our motor spin, I shall have taken the first step on the new
road. Nothing you could have said would have altered my determination,
so you need never think that, Sandy boy. I know your first impulse
will be to put the 'stink-pot' along at forty miles an hour in wild
pursuit of me. But you can spare your petrol. Be very sure that even
if you overtook me, I shouldn't come back.

"I don't expect to find happiness, but life with Maryon can never be
dull. There'd never be anything to occupy my mind at Trenby--except
soup jellies. So it would just go running round and round in
circles--with the memory of all I've missed as the pivot of the circle.
I'm sure Maryon will at least be able to stop me from thinking in
circles. He's always flying off at a tangent--and naturally I shall
have to go flying after him.

"And now there's just one thing I want you still to do for me. _Tell
Kitty_. I couldn't leave a letter for her, as it might have been found
almost at once. You won't get this till you come over for me in the
afternoon, and by that time Maryon and I shall be far enough away.
Give Kitty all my love, and tell her I feel a beast to leave her like
this after her angel goodness to me. And say to her, too, that I will
write very soon.

"Good-bye, Sandy boy."

"Well? Well?" Kitty's patience was getting exhausted. Moreover there
was something in the set look on Sandy's face that frightened her.

He handed her the letter.

"She's bolted with Maryon Rooke," he said simply.

When Kitty had absorbed the contents of the letter she looked up at him
blankly. The shock of it held her momentarily speechless. Then, after
what seemed to her an endless silence, she stammered out:

"Nan--gone! And it's too late to stop her!"

"It's not!" The words leapt from Sandy's lips. "We _must_ stop her!"

The absolute determination in his voice infected Kitty. She felt her
courage rising to the emergency.

"What can we do?" she asked quietly. She was as steady as a rock now.

Sandy dropped into a chair, absent-mindedly lighting one of the
"gaspers" he had so recently purchased.

"We must work it out," he said slowly. "Rooke told you they were going
to Clovelly, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"Well, they're not going anywhere near. That was just a blind. They
took the London road."

"Even that mightn't mean they were going to London. They could branch
off anywhere."

"They could," agreed Sandy, puffing thoughtfully at his cigarette.
"But we've got to remember Rooke has a house in Westminster--nice
little backwater. It's just on the cards they might go there
first--wherever else they intended going on to afterwards--just to pick
up anything Rooke might want, arrange about letters and so on."

"Yes?" There was a keen light in Kitty's eyes. She was following
Sandy's thought with all a woman's quickness. "And you think you might
overtake them there?"

"I must do more than that. I must _be there first_--to receive them."

"Can you do it in the time?"

"Yes. By train. They're travelling by car, remember."

Kitty glanced at the clock.

"It's too late for you to catch the early train from St. Wennys Halt.
And there's no other till the afternoon."

"I shan't risk the afternoon train. It stops at every little wayside
station and if it were ten minutes late I'd miss the express from
Exeter."

"Then you'll motor?"

"Yes, I'll drive to Exeter, and catch the train that gets in to town
about half-past seven. Maryon isn't likely to reach London till about
an hour or so after that."

"That's settled, then. The next thing is breakfast for two," said
Kitty practically. "I'd only just begun when you came, and I--I'll
start again to keep you company. You must be absolutely starving by
now."

She rang the bell and gave her orders to the servant who appeared in
answer.

"What about Aunt Eliza?" she went on when they were alone again. "I'll
'phone her you're having breakfast here, shall I?"

"Yes. And, look here, we've got to make things appear quite ordinary.
The mater knows I'm supposed to be taking Nan for a run this afternoon.
You'd better say I'm coming straight back to fetch the car, as we're
starting earlier."

Kitty nodded and hurried off to the telephone.

"It's all right," she announced, when she returned. "Aunt Eliza took
it all in, and merely remarked that I spoilt you!" She succeeded in
summoning up a faint smile.

"Then that coast's clear," said Sandy. "Who else? There's Roger.
What shall you do if he comes over to-day?"

"He won't. Lady Gertrude had a heart attack yesterday, and as Isobel
Carson's away, Roger, of course, has to stay with his mother. He
'phoned Nan last night."

"I think that safeguards everything this end, then," replied Sandy,
heaving a sigh of relief. "Allah is very good!"

After that, being a man with a long journey in front of him, he
sensibly applied himself to the consumption of bacon and eggs, while
Kitty, being a woman, made a poor attempt at swallowing a cup of tea.

Half an hour later he was ready to start for home.

"It's the slenderest chance, Kitty," he reminded, her gravely. "They
may not go near London. . . . But it's the _only_ chance!"

"I know," she assented with equal gravity.

"And in any case I can't get her back here till the morning. . . .
Good heavens!"--a new thought striking him. "What about the mater?
She'll be scared stiff if I don't turn up in the evening! Probably
she'll ring up the police, thinking we've had a smash-up in the car.
That would settle everything!"

"Don't worry about it," urged Kitty. "I'll invent something--'phone
her later on to say you're stopping here for the night."

Sandy nodded soberly.

"That'll do it, and I'll--Oh, hang! What about your servants? They'll
talk."

"And I shall lie," replied Kitty valiantly. "Nan will be staying the
night with friends. . . . Each of you stopping just where you
aren't!"--with a short strained laugh. "Oh, leave things to me at this
end! I'll manage, somehow. Only bring her back--bring her back,
Sandy!"

CHAPTER XXXIII

KEEPING FAITH

It was not until Sandy was actually in the express heading for London
that he realised quite all the difficulties which lay ahead. He was
just a big-hearted, impulsive boy, and, without wasting time in futile
blame or vain regrets, he had plunged straight into the maelstrom which
had engulfed his pal, determined to help her back to shore.

But, assuming he was right in his surmise that Rooke would take Nan
first of all to London, he doubted his own ability to persuade her to
return with him, and even if he were successful in this, there still
remained the outstanding fact that by no human means could she reach
Mallow until the small hours of the morning. He could well imagine the
consternation and scandal which would ensue should she arrive back at
the Court about five o'clock A.M.!

In a place like Mallow, where there was a large staff of indoor and
outdoor servants, it would be practically impossible to secure Nan's
return there unobserved. And as far as the neighbourhood--and Roger
Trenby--were concerned, she might just as well run away with Maryon
Rooke as return with Sandy McBain at that ungodly hour! She would be
equally compromised. Besides, Kitty would have informed her household
that she was not expecting Miss Davenant back that night.

Sandy began to see that the plans which he and Kitty had hastily thrown
together in the dire emergency of the moment might serve well enough by
way of temporary cover, but that in the long run they would rather
complicate matters. Lies would have to be bolstered up with other
lies. For example, what was he to do with Nan if he succeeded in
persuading her to return? Where was she really to spend the night? It
looked as though a veritable tissue of deceit must be woven if she were
to be shielded from the consequences of her mad act. And Sandy was not
a bit of good at telling lies. He hated them.

Suddenly into his harassed mind sprang the thought of Mallory. Of all
men in the world, surely he, who loved Nan, would find a way to save
her!

From the moment this idea took hold of him Sandy felt as though part of
the insuperable load of trouble and anxiety had been lifted from his
shoulders. His duty was now quite simple and straightforward. When he
reached down he had only to seek out Peter, lay the whole matter before
him, and then in some way or other he believed that Nan's errant feet
would be turned from the dangerous path on which they were set.

There was something rather touching in his boyish faith that Peter
would be able, even at the last moment, to save the woman he loved.

With unwonted forethought, born of the urgent need of the moment, he
despatched the following telegram to Peter:

"_Coming to see you. Arrive London to-night seven-thirty. Very
urgent. Sandy McBain._"

"Well, young Sandy McBain?"

Peter looked up from a table littered with manuscript. His face, a
moment before rather troubled and stern, relaxed into a friendly smile,
although the fingers of one hand still tapped restlessly on a sheet of
paper that lay beside him--a cablegram from India which had evidently
been the subject of his thoughts at the moment of Sandy's arrival.

"What's the urgent matter? Have you got into a hole and want a
friendly haul-out? If so, I'm your man."

Sandy looked down wretchedly at the fine-cut face with its kind eyes
and sensitive mouth.

"Oh, don't!" he said hastily, checking the friendly welcome as though
it hurt him. "It--it isn't me. . . . It's Nan."

Peter sat quite still, only the hand that held his pen tightened in its
grip.

"Nan!" he repeated, and something in the tone of his voice as he
uttered the little name seemed to catch at Sandy's heart-strings and
sent a sudden unmanageable lump up into his throat.

"Yes, Nan," he answered. Then, with a rush: "She's gone . . . gone
away with Maryon Rooke."

The penholder snapped suddenly. Peter tossed the pieces aside and rose
quietly to his feet.

"When?" he asked tensely.

"Now--to-day. If they've come to London, they'll be here very soon.
They were in his car--I saw them on the London road. . . . And she
left a letter for me. . . . Oh, good God, Mallory! Can't you save
her--can't you save her?" And Sandy grabbed the older man by the
shoulder and stared at him with feverish eyes.

Throughout the whole journey from Exeter to London he had been
revolving the matter in his mind, thinking . . . thinking . . .
thinking . . . to the ceaseless throb and hum of the train as it raced
over the metals, and now he felt almost as though his brain would burst.

Peter pushed him down into a chair.

"You shall tell me all about it in a minute," he said quietly.
Crossing the room to a cupboard in the wall, he took down a decanter
and glass and poured out a stiff dose of whisky.

"There--drink that," he said, squirting in the soda-water. "You'll be
all right directly," he added.

In a few minutes he had drawn the whole story from Sandy's eager lips,
and as he listened his eyes grew curiously hard and determined.

"So we've just one chance--the house in Westminster," he commented.
"We'll go there, Sandy. At once."

They made their way quickly downstairs and out into the street.
Hailing a passing taxi, Peter directed the man to drive to Maryon's
house, where he enquired for Rooke in a perfectly ordinary manner, as
though expecting to find him in, and was told by the maid who opened
the door that Mr. Rooke had only just arrived and had gone out again
immediately, but that she expected him back at any moment.

"Then I'll wait," said Peter, easily. "Miss Davenant's waiting here,
too, isn't she?"

An odd look of surprise crossed the girl's face. She had
thought--well, what matter what she had thought since it was evident
there was really no secret about the lady's presence in her master's
house. These people obviously expected to meet her there. Perhaps
there were others coming as well, to an appointed rendezvous for a
restaurant supper party or something of the sort.

"Yes, sir," she answered civilly, "Miss Davenant is in the studio."

Sandy heard Peter catch his breath at the reply as though some kind of
tension had been suddenly slackened. Then the maid threw open the
studio door and they saw Nan sitting in a chair beside a recently lit
fire, her hands clasped round her knees.

She turned at the sound of their entrance and, as her eyes fell upon
Peter, she rose slowly to her feet, staring at him, while every drop of
colour drained away from her face.

"Peter!" she cried wonderingly. "Peter!" Her hands groped for the
back of the chair from which she had risen and clung to it.

But her eyes never left his face. There was an expression in them as
of the dawning of a great joy struggling against amazed unbelief, so
that Sandy felt as though he had seen into some secret holy place.
Turning, he stumbled out of the room, leaving those two who loved alone
together.

"Peter, you're asking me to do the hardest thing in the world," said
Nan at last.

She had listened in heavy silence while he urged her to return.

"I know I am," he answered. "And do you think it's--easy--for me to
ask it? To ask you to go back? . . . If it were possible. . . . Dear
God! If it were possible to take you away, would I have left it
undone?"

"I can't go back--I can't indeed! Why should I? I've only made Roger
either furious or wretched ever since we were engaged. It isn't as if
I could do any good by going back!"

"Isn't it something good to have kept faith?" There was a stern note
in his voice.

She looked at him wistfully.

"If it had been you, Peter. . . . It's easy to keep faith when one
loves."

"And are you being faithful--even to our love?" he asked quietly.

"To our love?" she whispered.

"There is a faithfulness of the Spirit, Nan--the only faithfulness
possible to those who are set apart as we are."

He broke off and stood silent a moment, looking down at her with hard,
hurt eyes. Presently he went on:

"That was all we might keep, you and I--our faith. Honour binds each
of us to someone else. But"--his voice vibrating--"honour doesn't bind
you to Maryon Rooke! If you go with him, you betray our love--the part
of it that nothing can touch or spoil if we so will it. You won't do
that, Nan. . . . You _can't_ do it!"

She knew, then, that she would have to go back, go back and keep faith
with Roger--and keep that deeper faith which love itself demanded.

Her head drooped, and she stretched out her hands as though seeking
something of which they might lay hold. Peter took them into his and
held them.

After a while a slight tremor ran through her body, and she drew
herself away from him, relinquishing his hands.

"I'll go back," she said. "You've won, Peter. I can't . . .
hurt . . . our love."

To Sandy the time seemed immeasurably long as he waited on the further
side of the closed door, but at last they came to him--Peter, stern and
rather strained-looking, and Nan with tear-bright eyes and a face from
which every vestige of colour had vanished.

"Get a taxi, will you, Sandy?" said Peter.

Perhaps Sandy's face asked the question his lips dared not utter, for
Nan nodded to him with a twisted little smile.

"Yes, Sandy boy, I'm going back."

"Thank God!"

He wrung her hands and then went off in search of a taxi. Nan glanced
round her a trifle nervously.

"Maryon may be here at any moment," she said. "Something's gone wrong
with the car and he's taken it round to the garage to get it put right."

"We shall be off directly," answered Peter. "See"--he pointed down the
street--"here comes Sandy with a taxi for us." He spoke reassuringly,
as though to a frightened child.

In a few minutes they had started, the taxi slipping swiftly away
through the lamp-lit streets. It had turned a corner and was out of
sight by the time the parlourmaid, hearing the sound of the street door
closing, had hurried upstairs only to find an empty studio. Nor could
she give Rooke, on his return, the slightest information as to what had
become of his guests--the lady, or the two gentlemen who, she told him,
had called shortly afterwards, apparently expecting to find Miss
Davenant there.

Meanwhile the taxi had carried them swiftly to Peter's house, where he
hurried Nan and Sandy up to his own sanctum, instructing the
taxi-driver to wait below.

"We've just time for a few sandwiches before we start," he said. He
rang the bell for his servant and gave his orders in quick,
authoritative tones.

Nan shook her head. She felt as though a single mouthful would choke
her. But Peter insisted with a quiet determination she found herself
unable to withstand, and gradually the food and wine brought back a
little colour into her wan face, though her eyes were still full of a
dumb anguish and every now and then her mouth quivered piteously.

She felt dazed and bewildered, as though she were moving in a dream.
Was it really true that she had run away from the man she was to marry
and was being brought back by the man who loved her? The whole affair
appeared topsy-turvy and absurd. She supposed she ought to feel
ashamed and overwhelmed, but somehow the only thing that seemed to her
to matter was that she had failed of that high ideal of love which
Peter had expected of her. She knew instinctively, despite the grave
kindness of his manner, that she had hurt him immeasurably.

"And what are you going to do with me now?" she asked at last, with an
odd expression in her face. She felt curiously indifferent about her
immediate future.

Mallory glanced up at her from the time-table he was studying.

"There's a ten o'clock express which stops at Exeter. We're taking you
home by that."

"There's no connection on to St. Wennys," remarked Nan impassively.

It didn't seem to her a matter of great importance. She merely stated
it as a fact.

"No. But Sandy left his car in Exeter and we shall motor from there."

"We can all three squash in," added Sandy.

"We won't be able to keep Roger ignorant of the fact I've been away,"
pursued Nan.

"He will know nothing about it," said Peter quietly.

She looked dubious.

"I think," she observed slowly, "that you may find it more difficult
than you expect--to manage that. Someone's sure to find out and tell
him."

"Not necessarily," he answered.

"What about the servants?" persisted Nan. "They'll hardly allow my
arrival at Mallow in the early hours of the morning to pass without
comment! I really think, Peter," she added with a wry smile, "that it
would have been simpler all round if you'd allowed me to run away."

His eyes sought hers.

"Won't you trust me, Nan?" he said patiently. "I'm not going to take
you to Mallow to-night. I'm going to take you to Sandy's mother."

"To the mater!"

Sandy fairly gasped with astonishment.

Eliza, narrow-minded and pre-eminently puritanical in her views, was
the very last person in the world whose help he would have thought of
requisitioning in the present circumstances.

Peter nodded.

"Yes. I've only met her two or three times, but I'm quite sure she is
the right person. I believe," he added, smiling gently, "that I know
your mother better than you do, Sandy."

And it would appear that this was really the case. For when, in the
small hours of the morning, the trio reached Trevarthen Wood and Sandy
had effected an entry and aroused his mother, there followed a brief
interview between Peter and Mrs. McBain, from which the latter emerged
with her grim mouth all tremulous at the corners and her keen eyes
shining through a mist of tears.

Sandy and Nan were waiting together in the hall, and both looked up
anxiously as she bore down upon them.

To the ordinary eye she may have appeared merely a very plain old
woman, arrayed in a hideous dressing-gown of uncompromising red
flannel. But to Nan, as the bony arms went round her and the Scottish
voice, harsh no longer but tender as an old song, murmured in her ears,
she seemed the embodiment of beautiful, consoling motherhood, and her
flat chest a resting-place where weary heads might gladly lie and
sorrowful hearts pour out their grief in tears.

"Dinna greet, ma bairnie," crooned Eliza. "Ma wee bairnie, greet nae
mair."

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE WHITE FLAME

It was not till late in the afternoon of the day following upon her
flight from Mallow that Nan and Peter met again. He had, so Sandy
informed her, walked over to the Court in order to see Kitty.

"I think he has some private affair of his own that he wants to talk
over with her," explained Sandy.

"It's about his wife, I expect," answered Nan dully. "She's had
sunstroke--and is ordered home from India."

"Poor devil!" The words rushed from Sandy's lips. "How rotten
everything is!" he added fiercely, with youth's instinctive revolt
against the inevitableness of life's pains and penalties.

"And I've hardly mended matters, have I?" she submitted rather bitterly.

He slipped a friendly arm round her neck.

"Don't you worry any," he said, with gruff sympathy. "Mallory's fixed
up everything--and it all dovetails in neatly with Kitty's saying you
were staying with friends for the night. You're staying _here_--do you
see? And Mallory and the mater between 'em have settled that you're to
prolong your visit for a couple of days--to give more colour to the
proceedings, so to speak! You'll emerge without a stain on your
character!" he went on, trying with boyish clumsiness to cheer her up.

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