Margaret Pedler - The Moon out of Reach

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His eyes burned down on to her tilted face. She could hear his hurried
breathing. His lips were almost touching hers.

. . . Then the door opened quickly and Peter Mallory stood upon the
threshold.

Swiftly though they started apart, it was impossible that he should not
have seen Rooke holding Nan close in his arms, his head bent above hers.
Their attitude was unmistakable--it could have but one significance.

Mallory paused abruptly in the doorway. Then, in a voice entirely devoid
of expression, he said quietly:

"Mrs. Seymour left her fan behind--I came back to fetch it." With a
slight bow he picked up the forgotten fan and turned to go. "Good-bye
once more."

The door closed behind him, and Nan stood very still, her arms hanging
down at her sides. But Maryon could read the stricken expression in her
eyes--the desperate appeal of them. They betrayed her.

"What's that man to you?" he demanded.

"Nothing."

He caught her roughly by the shoulders.

"I don't believe it!" he exclaimed hotly. "He's the man you love. The
very expression of your face gave it away."

"I've told you," she answered unemotionally. "Peter Mallory is nothing
to me, never can be anything, except"--her voice quivered a little
despite herself--"just a friend."

Maryon's eyes searched her face.

"Then kiss me!" He repeated his earlier demand, imperiously.

She drew back.

"Why should I kiss you?"

The quietly uttered question seemed to set him very far apart from her.
In an instant he knew how much he had forfeited by his absence.

"Nan," he said, in his voice a curious charm of appeal, "do you know it's
nearly a year since I saw you? And now--now I've only half an hour!"

"Only half an hour?" she repeated vaguely.

"Yes, I go back to Devonshire to-night. But I craved a glimpse of the
'Beloved' before I went."

The words brought Nan sharply back to herself. He was still the same
incomprehensible, unsatisfactory lover as of old, and with the
realisation a cold fury of scorn and resentment swept over her, blotting
out what she had always counted as her love for him. It was as though a
string, too tightly stretched, had suddenly snapped.

She answered him indifferently.

"To cheer you on your way, I suppose?"

"No. I shouldn't"--significantly--"call it cheering. I've been back in
England a month, alone in the damned desolation of Dartmoor,
fighting--fighting to keep away from you."

She looked at him with steady, scrutinising eyes.

"Why need you have kept away?" she asked incisively.

"At the bidding of the great god Circumstance. Oh, my dear, my
dear"--speaking with passionate vehemence--"don't you know . . . don't
you understand that if only I weren't a poor devil of a painter with my
way to make in a world that can only be bought with gold--nothing should
part us ever again? . . . But as it is--"

Nan listened to the outburst with down-bent head. She understood
now--oh, yes, she understood perfectly. He loved her well enough in his
own way--but Maryon's way meant that the love and happiness of the woman
who married him would always be a matter of secondary importance. The
bitterness of her resentment deepened within her, flooding her whole
being.

"'If only!'" repeated Rooke. "It's the old story, Nan--the desire of the
moth for the flame."

"The moth is a very blundering creature," said Nan quietly. "He makes
mistakes sometimes--perhaps imagining a flame where there is none."

"No!" exclaimed Rooke violently. "I made no mistake! You loved me as
much as I loved you. I know it! By God, do you think a man can't tell
when the woman he loves, loves him?"

"Well, you must accept the only alternative then," she answered coolly.
"Sometimes a flame flickers out--and dies."

It was as though she had cut him across the face with a whip. In a
sudden madness he caught her in his arms, crushing her slender body
against his, and kissed her savagely.

"There!" he cried, a note of fierce triumph ringing in his voice.
"Whether your love is dead or no, I'll not go out of your life with
nothing to call my own, and I've made your lips--mine."

Loosening his hold of her he stumbled from the room.

Nan remained just where he had left her. She stood quite motionless for
several minutes, almost as though she were waiting for something. Then
with a leap of her breath, half-sigh, half-exultation, the knowledge of
what had happened to her crystallised into clear significance.

In one swift, overwhelming moment of illumination she realised that the
frail blossom of love which had been tentatively budding in the garden of
her heart was dead--withered, starved out of existence ere it had quite
believed in its own reality.

Maryon Rooke no longer meant anything to her. She felt completely
indifferent as to whether she ever saw him again or not. She was free!
While he had been with her she had felt unsure, uncertain of herself.
The interview had shaken her. Yet actually, after those first dazzled
moments, the emotion she felt partook more of the dim, sad ache that the
memory-haunted scent of a flower may bring than of any more vital
sentiment. But now that he had gone, it came upon her with a shock of
joyful surprise that she was free--beautifully, gloriously free!

The ecstasy only lasted for a moment. Then with a sudden childish
movement she put her hand resentfully to her face where the roughness of
his beard had grazed it. She wished he had not kissed her--it would be a
disagreeable memory.

"I shall never forget now," she muttered. "I shall never be able to
forget."

There was an odd note of fear in her voice.

CHAPTER VII

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR

Having secured Kitty's forgotten fan, Mallory absent-mindedly descended
the long stone flight of steps instead of taking the lift and,
regaining the street, hailed a passing taxi and drove towards Green
Street, whither the Seymours' car had already proceeded.

As the driver threaded his way through the traffic, Peter's thoughts
revolved round the scene which his unexpected return to the flat had
interrupted. There was only one deduction to be drawn from it, which
was that Nan, after all, still cared for Maryon Rooke. The old love
still held her.

The realisation was bitter. Even though the woman who was his wife
must always stand betwixt himself and Nan, yet loving her as he did, it
had meant a good deal to Mallory to know that no other man had any
claim upon her.

And earlier in the afternoon, just before the maid had intruded on them
to deliver Rooke's telegram, it had seemed almost as though Nan, too,
had cared. One moment more alone together and he would have
known--been sure.

A vague vision of the future had even flashed through his mind--he and
Nan never any more to one another than good comrades, but each knowing
that underneath their friendship lay something stronger and deeper--the
knowledge that, though unavowed, they belonged to each other. And even
a love that can never be satisfied is better than life without love.
It may bring its moments of unbearable agony, but it is still love--the
most beautiful and glorious thing in the world. And the pain of
knowing that a great gulf is for ever set between two who love is a
penalty that real love can face and triumph over.

But now the whole situation was altered. Unmistakably Maryon Rooke
still meant a good deal to Nan, although Peter felt a certain
consciousness that if he were to pit himself against Rooke he could
probably make the latter's position very insecure. But was it fair?
Was it fair to take advantage of the quick responsiveness of Nan's
emotions--that sensitiveness which gave reply as readily as a violin to
the bow?

She was not a woman to find happiness very easily, and he himself had
nothing to offer her except a love that must always be forbidden,
unconsummated. In God's Name, then, if Maryon Rooke could give her
happiness, what right had he to stand in the way?

By the time the taxi had brought him to the door of Kitty's house, his
decision was taken. He would clear out--see as little of Nan as
possible. It was the best thing he could do for her, and the
consideration of what it would cost him he relegated to a later period.

His steps lagged somewhat as he followed the manservant upstairs to
Kitty's own particular den, and the slight limp which the war had left
him seemed rather more marked than usual. Any great physical or
nervous strain, invariably produced this effect. But he mustered up a
smile as he entered the room and held out the recovered fan.

The "little milliner" was nowhere to be seen, and Kitty herself was
ensconced on the Chesterfield, enjoying an iced lemon-squash and a
cigarette, while Penelope and Barry were downstairs playing a desultory
game of billiards. The irregular click of the ivory balls came faintly
to Mallory's ears.

"Got my fan, Peter? Heaps of thanks. What will you have? A
whisky-and-soda? . . . Why--Peter--"

She broke on abruptly as she caught sight of his face. He was rather
pale and his eyes had a tired, beaten look in them.

"What's wrong, Peter?"

He smiled down at her as she lay tucked up amongst her cushions.

"Why should there be anything wrong?"

"Something is," replied Kitty decidedly. "Did I swish you away from
the flat against your will?"

"I should be a very ungrateful person if I failed to appreciate my
present privileges."

She shook her head disgustedly.

"You're a very annoying person!" she returned. "You invariably take
refuge in a compliment."

"Dear Madame Kitty"--Mallory leaned forward and looked down at her with
his steady grey-blue eyes--"dear Madame Kitty, I say to you _what I
mean_. I do not compliment my friends"--his voice deepened--"my dear,
trusted friends."

His foreign twist of phrase was unusually pronounced, as always in
moments of strong feeling.

"But that's just it!" she declared emphatically. "You're _not_
trusting me--you're keeping me outside the door."

"Believe me, there's nothing you'd wish to see--the other side."

"Which means that in any case it's no use knocking at a door that won't
be opened," said Kitty, apparently yielding the point. "So we'll
switch off that subject and get on to the next. We go down to Mallow
Court at the end of this week. I can't stand town in July. What date
are you coming to us?"

Peter was silent a moment, his eyes bent on the ground. Then he raised
his head suddenly as though he had just come to a decision.

"I'm afraid I shan't be able to come down," he said quietly.

"But you promised us!" objected Kitty. "Peter, you can't go back on a
promise!"

He regarded her gravely. Then:

"Sometimes one has to do--even that."

Kitty, discerning in his refusal another facet of that "something
wrong" she had suspected, clasped her hands round her knees and faced
him with deliberation.

"Look here, Peter, it isn't you to break a promise without some real
good reason. You say you can't come down to us at Mallow. Why not?"

He met her eyes steadily.

"I can't answer that," he replied.

Kitty remained obdurate.

"I want an answer, Peter. We've been pals for some time now,
and"--with vigour--"I'm not going to be kept out of whatever it is
that's hurting you. So tell me."

He made no answer, and she slipped down from the Chesterfield and came
to his side.

"Is it anything to do with Nan?" she asked gently, her thoughts going
back to the talk she had had with Penelope before the bridge party
began.

A rather weary smile curved his lips.

"It doesn't seem much use trying to keep you in the dark, does it?"

"I must know," she urged. Adding with feminine guile:

"Of course I should be frightfully hurt if I thought you weren't coming
just because you didn't want to. But still I'd rather know--even if
that were the reason."

"Not want to?" he broke out, his control suddenly snapping. "I'd give
my soul to come!"

The bitterness in his voice--in the lazy, drawling tones she knew so
well--let in a flood of light upon the darkness in which she had been
groping.

"Peter--oh, Peter!" she cried tremulously. "You're not--you don't mean
that you care for Nan--seriously?"

"I don't think many men could be with her much without caring," he
answered simply.

"Oh, I'm sorry--I'm sorry! . . . I--I never thought of that when I
asked you to be a pal to her." Her voice shook uncontrollably.

He smiled again--the game half-weary, half-tenderly amused smile which
was so characteristic.

"You needn't be sorry," he said, speaking with great gentleness. "I
shall never be sorry that I love her. It's only that just now she
doesn't need me. That's why I won't come down to Mallow."

"Not need you!"

"No. The man she needs has come back. I can't tell you _how_ I
know--you'll have to trust me over that--but I do know that Maryon
Rooke has come back to her and that he is the man who means everything
to her."

Kitty's brows drew together as she pondered the question whether Peter
were right or wrong in his opinion.

"I don't think you're right," she said at last in tones of conviction.
"I don't believe she 'needs' him at all. I dare-say he still
fascinates her. He has"--she hesitated--"a curious sort of fascination
for some women. And the sooner Nan is cured of it the better."

"I've done--all that I could," he answered briefly.

"Don't I know that?" Kitty slipped her arm into his. "You've been
splendid! That's just why I want you to come down to us in Cornwall."

"But if Rooke is there--"

"Maryon?" She paused, then went on with a chilly little note of
haughtiness in her voice. "I certainly don't propose to invite Maryon
Rooke to Mallow."

"Still, you can't prevent him from taking a summer holiday at St.
Wennys."

St. Wennys was a small fishing village on the Cornish coast, barely a
mile away from Mallow Court.

"He won't come--I'm sure!" asserted Kitty. "Sir Robert Burnham lives
quite near there--he's Maryon's godfather--and they hate each other
like poison."

"Why?"

"Oh, old Sir Robert was Maryon's guardian till he came of age, and
then, when Maryon decided to go in for painting, he presented him with
the small patrimony to which he was entitled and declined to have
anything further to do with him--either financially or otherwise.
Simply chucked him. Maryon went through some very bad times, I
believe, in his early days," continued Kitty, striving to be just.
"That's the one thing I respect him for. He stuck to it and won
through to where he stands now."

"It shows he's got some grit, anyway," agreed Peter. "And do you
think"--smiling--"that that's the type of man who's going to give in
over winning the woman he wants? . . . Should I, if things were
different--if I were free?"

Kitty laughed reluctantly.

"You? No. But you're not Maryon Rooke. He could never be the kind of
lover you would be, my Peter. With him, his art counts first of
anything in the wide world. And that's why I don't think he'll come to
St. Wennys. He's in love with Nan--as far as his type can be in
love--but he's not going to tie himself up with her. So he'll keep
away."

She paused, then went on urgently:

"Peter dear, we shall all of us hate it so if you don't come down to
Cornwall with us this year. Look, if Rooke doesn't show up down there,
so that we know he's only philandering with Nan and has no real
intention of marrying her, will you come then?"

He still hesitated. And all at once Kitty saw the other side of the
picture--Peter's side. She wanted him at Mallow--they all wanted him.
But she had not thought of the matter from his point of view. Now that
she knew he cared for Nan she recognised that it would be a bitterly
hard thing for him to be under the same roof with the woman he loved,
yet from whom he was barred by every law of God and man, and who, as
far as Kitty knew, regarded him solely in the light of a friend. Even
if Nan were growing to care for Peter--the bare possibility flashed
through Kitty's mind only to be instantly dismissed--even so, it would
serve only to complicate matters still further.

When she spoke again it was in a very subdued tone of voice and with an
accent of keen self-reproach.

"Peter, I'm a selfish pig! All this time I've never been thinking of
you--only of ourselves. I believe it's your own fault"--with a rather
quavering laugh. "You've taught us all to expect so much from you--and
to give so little."

Mallory made a quick gesture of dissent.

"Oh, yes, you have," she insisted. "You're always giving and we
just--take! I never thought how hard a thing I was asking when I
begged you to come down to Mallow while Nan was with us. It was sheer
brutality to suggest it." Her voice trembled. "Please forgive me,
Peter!"

"My dear, there's nothing to forgive. You know I love Nan, that she'll
always be the one woman for me. But you know, too, that there's Celia,
and that Nan and I can never be more to each other than we are
now--just friends. I'm not going to forfeit that friendship--unless it
happens it would be best for Nan that we should forget we were even
friends. And I won't say it doesn't hurt to be with her. But there
are some hurts that one would rather bear than lose what goes with
them."

The grave voice, with the undertone of pain running through it, ceased.
Kitty's tears were flowing unchecked.

"Oh, Peter, Peter!" she cried sobbingly. "Why aren't you free? You
and Nan are just made for each other."

He winced a little, as though she had laid her finger on a raw spot.

"Hush, Kitten," he said quietly. "Don't cry so! These things happen
and we've got to face them."

Kitty subsided into a chair and mopped her eyes.

"It's wicked--wicked that you should be tied up to a woman like
Celia--a woman who's got no more soul than this chair!"--banging the
chair-arm viciously.

"And you mustn't say things like that, either," chided Peter, smiling
at her very kindly.

As he spoke there came the sound of footsteps, and the voices of Barry
and Penelope could be heard as they approached Kitty's den, by way of
the corridor.

"I owe you a bob, then," Barry was saying in his easy, good-natured
tones. "You beat me fair and square that last game, Penny."

Kitty sprang up, suddenly conscious of her tear-stained face.

"Oh, I can't see them---not now! Peter, stop them from coming here!"

A moment later Mallory came out of the room and met the approaching
couple before they had reached the door.

"I was just coming to say good-bye to Kitty," began Penelope. "I'd no
idea the time had flown so quickly."

"Charm of my society," murmured Barry.

Peter's face was rather white and set, but he managed to reply in a
voice that sounded fairly normal.

"Kitty's very fagged and she's going to rest for a few minutes before
dressing for dinner. She asked me to say good-bye to you for her,
Penelope."

"Then it falls to my lot to speed the parting guest," said Barry
cheerily. "Peter, old son, can the car take you on anywhere after
dropping Penny at the Mansions?"

Peter was conscious of a sudden panic. He had just come from baring
the rawness of his wound to Kitty, and, gently as her fingers had
probed, even the kind hands of a friend may sometimes hurt
excruciatingly. He felt that at the moment he could not endure the
companionship of any living soul.

"No, thanks," he answered jerkily. "I'll walk."

CHAPTER VIII

THE MIDDLE OF THE STAIRCASE

Mallow Court, the Seymours' country home, lay not a mile from the
village of St. Wennys. A low, two-storied house of creeper-clad stone,
it stood perched upon the cliffs, overlooking the wild sea which beats
up against the Cornish coast.

The house itself had been built in a quaint, three-sided fashion, the
central portion and the two wings which flanked it rectangularly
serving to enclose a sunk lawn round which ran a wide, flagged path. A
low, grey stone wall, facing the sea, fenced the fourth side of the
square, at one end of which a gate gave egress on to the sea-bitten
grassy slope that led to the edge of the cliff itself.

A grove of trees half-girdled the house, and this, together with the
sheltering upward trend of the downs on one side of it, tempered the
violence of the fierce winds which sometimes swept the coast-line even
in summer.

Behind the house, under the lee of the rising upland, lay the gardens
of Mallow, witness to the loving care of generations. Stretches of
lawn, coolly green and shaven, sloped away from a terrace which ran the
whole length of the house, meeting the gravelled drive as it curved
past the house-door. Beyond lay dim sweet alleys, over-arched by
trees, and below, where a sudden dip in the configuration of the land
admitted of it, were grassy terraces, gay with beds of flowers, linked
together by short flights of grass-grown steps.

"I can't understand why you spend so much time in stuffy old London,
Kitty, when you have this heavenly place to come to."

Nan spoke from a nest of half-a-dozen cushions heaped together beneath
the shade of a tree. Here she was lounging luxuriously, smoking
innumerable Turkish cigarettes, while Kitty swung tranquilly in a
hammock close by. Penelope had been invisible since lunch time. They
had all been down at Mallow the better part of a month, and she and
Ralph Fenton quite frequently absented themselves, "hovering," as Barry
explained, "on the verge of an engagement."

"My dear, the longer I stay in town, the more thoroughly I enjoy the
country when we come here. I get the quintessence of enjoyment by
treating Mallow as a liqueur."

Nan laughed. There was a faint flavour of bitterness in her laughter.

"Practically most of our good times in this world are only to be
obtained in the liqueur form. The gods don't make a habit of offering
you a big jug of enjoyment."

"If they did, you'd be certain to refuse it because you didn't like the
shape of the jug!" retorted Kitty.

Nan smiled whole-heartedly.

"What a miserable, carping, discontented creature I must be!"

"I'll swear that's not true!" An emphatic masculine voice intervened,
and round the corner of the clump of trees beneath which the two girls
had taken refuge, swung a man's tall, well-setup figure clad in
knickerbockers and a Norfolk coat.

"Good gracious, Roger, how you made me jump!" And Kitty hurriedly
lowered a pair of smartly-shod feet which had been occupying a somewhat
elevated position in the hammock.

"I'm sorry. How d'you do, Kit? And how are you, Miss Davenant?"
answered the new-comer.

The alteration in his voice as he addressed Nan was quite perceptible
to anyone well-versed in the symptoms of the state of being in love,
and his piercing light-grey eyes beneath their shaggy, sunburnt
brows--fierce, far-visioned eyes that reminded one of the eyes of a
hawk--softened amazingly as they rested upon her charming face.

"Oh, we're quite all right, thanks," she answered. "That is, when
people don't drop suddenly from the clouds and galvanise us into action
this warm weather."

She regarded him with a faintly quizzical smile. He was not
particularly attractive in appearance, though tall and well-built.
About forty-two, a typical English sportsman of the out-door,
cold-tub-in-the-morning genus, he had a square-jawed, rather ugly face,
roofed with a crop of brown hair a trifle sunburnt at its tips as a
consequence of long days spent in the open. His mouth indicated a
certain amount of self-will, the inborn imperiousness of a man who has
met with obedient services as a matter of course, and whose forebears,
from one generation to another, have always been masters of men. And,
it might be added, masters of their women-kind as well, in the good,
old-fashioned way. There was, too, more than a hint of obstinacy and
temper in the long, rather projecting chin and dominant nose.

But the smile he bestowed on Nan when he answered her redeemed the
ugliness of his face considerably. It was the smile of a man who could
be both kindly and generous where his prejudices were not involved, who
might even be capable of something rather big if occasion warranted it.

"It was too bad of me to startle you like that," he acknowledged.
"Please forgive me. I caught sight of you both through the trees and
declared myself rather too suddenly."

"Always a mistake," commented Nan, nodding wisely.

Roger Trenby regarded her doubtfully. She was extraordinarily
attractive, this slim young woman from London who was staying at
Mallow, but she not infrequently gave utterances to remarks which,
although apparently straight-forward enough, yet filled him with a
vague, uneasy feeling that they held some undercurrent of significance
which had eluded him.

He skirted the quicksand hastily, and turned the conversation to a
subject where be felt himself on sure ground.

"I've been exercising hounds to-day."

Trenby was Master of the Trevithick Foxhounds, and had the reputation
of being one of the finest huntsmen in the county, and his heart and
his pluck and a great deal of his money went to the preserving of it.

"Oh," cried Nan warmly, "why didn't you bring them round by Mallow
before you went back to the kennels?"

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