CHAPTER IX
A SKIRMISH WITH DEATH
It was a soft, misty day when Trenby called to drive Nan over to the Trevithick Kennels—one of those veiled mornings which break about noon into a glory of blue sky and golden sunlight.
As she stepped into the waiting car, Roger stopped her abruptly.
"Go back and put on something thicker," he commanded. "It'll be chilly driving in this mist."
"But it's going to be hot later on," protested Nan.
"Yes, only it happens to be now that we're driving—and it will be cool again, in the evening when I bring you back."
Nan laughed.
"Nonsense!" she said and put her foot on the step of the car. Trenby, standing by to help her in, closed his hand firmly round her arm and held her back. His hawk's eyes flashed a little.
"I shan't take you unless you do as I say," he observed.
She stared at him in astonishment. Then she turned away as though to re-enter the house.
"Oh, very well," she replied airily.
Roger bit his lip, then followed her rapidly. He did not in the least like yielding his point.
"Come back, then—and catch a cold if you like!" he said ungraciously.
Nan paused and looked up at him.
"Do you think I should catch cold?"
"It's ten to one you would."
"Then I'll do as I'm bid and get an extra coat."
She went into the house, leaving Trenby rather taken aback by her sudden submission. But it pleased him, nevertheless. He liked a woman to be malleable. It seemed, to him a truly womanly quality—certainly a wifely one! Moreover, almost any man experiences a pleasant feeling of complacency when he thinks he has dominated a woman, even over so small a matter as to whether she shall wear an extra coat or not—although he generally fails to guess the origin of that attractive surrender and comfortably regards it as a tribute to his strong, masculine will-power. Few women are foolish enough to undeceive him.
"Will I do now?" asked Nan, reappearing and stepping lightly into the car.
Roger smiled approvingly and proceeded to tuck the rugs well round her. Then he started the engine and soon they were spinning down the drive which ran to the left of Mallow Court gardens towards the village. They flashed through St. Wennys and turned inland along the great white road that swept away in the direction of Trenby Hall, ten miles distant. The kennels themselves lay a further four miles beyond the Hall.
"Oh, how gorgeous it is!" exclaimed Nan, as their road cut through a wild piece of open country where, with the sea and the tall cliffs behind them, vista after vista of wooded hills and graciously sloping valleys unfolded in front of them.
"Yes, you get some fine scenery inland," replied Trenby. "And the roads are good for motoring. I suppose you don't ride?" he added.
"Why should you suppose that?"
"Well"—a trifle awkwardly—"one doesn't expect a Londoner to know much about country pursuits."
Nan smiled.
"Are you imagining I've spent all my life in a Seven Dials slum?" she asked serenely.
"No, no, of course not. But—"
"But country people take a very limited view of a Londoner. We do sometimes get out of town, you know—and some of us can ride and play games quite nicely! As a matter of fact I hunted when I was about six."
Roger's face lightened, eagerly.
"Oh, then I hope you're staying at Mallow till the hunting season starts? I've a lovely mare I could lend you if you'd let me."
Nan shook her head and made a hasty gesture of dissent.
"Oh, no, no. Quite honestly, I've not ridden for years—and even if I took up riding once more I should never hunt again. I think"—she shrank a little—"it's too cruel."
Trenby regarded her with ingenuous amazement.
"Cruel!" he exclaimed. "Why, it's sport!"
"Magic word!" Nan's lips curled a little. "You say it's 'sport' as though that made it all right."
"So it does," answered Trenby contentedly.
"It may—for the sportsman. But as far as the fox is concerned, it's sheer cruelty."
Trenby drove on without speaking for a short time. Then he said slowly:
"Well, in a way I suppose you're right. But, all the same, it's the sporting instinct—the cultivated sporting instinct—which has made the Englishman what he is. It's that which won the war, you know."
"It's a big price to pay. Couldn't you"—a sudden charming smile curving her lips—"couldn't you do it—I mean cultivate the sporting instinct—by polo and things like that?"
"It's not the same." Trenby shook his head. "You don't understand. It's the desire to find your quarry, to go through anything rather than to let him beat you—no matter how done or tired you feel."
"It may be very good for you," allowed Nan. "But it's very bad luck on the fox. I wouldn't mind so much if he had fair play. But even if he succeeds in getting away from you—beating you, in fact—and runs to earth, you proceed to dig him out. I call that mean."
Trenby was silent again for a moment. Then he asked suddenly:
"What would you do if your husband hunted?"
"Put up with it, I suppose, just as I should put up with his other faults—if I loved him."
Roger made no answer but quickened the speed of the car, letting her race over the level surface of the road, and when next he spoke it was on some quite other topic.
Half an hour later a solid-looking grey house, built in the substantial Georgian fashion and surrounded by trees, came into view. Roger slowed up as the car passed the gates which guarded the entrance to the drive.
"That's Trenby Hall," he said. And Nan was conscious of an impishly amused feeling that just so might Noah, when the Flood began, have announced: "That's my Ark.'"
"You've never been over yet," continued Roger. "But I want you to come one day. I should like you to meet my mother."
A queer little dart of fear shot through her as he spoke.
She felt as though she were being gradually hemmed in.
"It looks a beautiful place," she answered conventionally, though inwardly thinking how she would loathe to live in a solid, square mansion of that type, prosaically dull and shut away from the world by enclosing woods.
Roger looked pleased.
"Yes, it's a fine old place," he said. "Now for the kennels."
Nan breathed a sigh of relief. She had had one instant of anxiety lest he should suggest that, instead of lunching, as arranged, from the picnic basket safely bestowed in the back of the car, they should lunch at the Hall.
Another fifteen minutes brought them to the kennels, Denman, the first whip, meeting them at the gates. He touched his hat and threw a keen glance at Nan. The Master of the Trevithick was not in the habit of bringing ladies to see the kennels, and the whip and his wife had discussed the matter very fully over their supper the previous evening, trying to guess what it might portend. "A new mistress up at the 'All, I shouldn't wonder," asserted Mrs. Denman confidently.
"Hounds all fit, Denman?" asked Trenby in quick, authoritative tones.
"Yes, sir. All 'cept 'Wrangler there—'e's still a bit stiff on that near hind leg he sprained."
As he spoke, he held open the gate for Nan to pass in, and she glanced round with lively interest. A flagged path ran straight ahead, dividing the large paved enclosure reserved for youngsters from the iron-fenced yards inhabited by the older hounds of the pack; while at the back of each enclosure lay the sleeping quarters of roofed and sheltered benches. At the further end of the kennels stood a couple of cottages, where the whips and kennelman lived.
"How beautifully clean it all is!" exclaimed Nan.
The whip smiled with obvious delight.
"If you keep 'ounds, miss, you must keep 'em clean—or they won't be 'ealthy and fit to do their day's work. An' a day's hunting is a day's work for 'ounds, an' no mistake."
"How like a woman to remark about cleanliness first of all!" laughed Roger. "A man would have gone straight to look at the hounds before anything else!"
"I'm going now," replied Nan, approaching the bars of one of the enclosures.
It seemed to her as though she were looking at a perfect sea of white and tan bodies with slowly waving sterns, while at intervals from the big throats came a murmurous sound, rising now and again into a low growl, or the sharp snap of powerful jaws and a whine of rage as a couple or more hounds scuffled together over some private disagreement. At Nan's appearance, drawn by curiosity, some of them approached her gingerly, half-suspicious, half as though anxious to make friends, and, knowing no fear of animals, she thrust her hand through the bars and stroked the great heads and necks.
"Can't we go in? They're such dear things!" she begged.
"Better not," answered Roger. "They don't always like strangers."
"I'm not afraid," she replied mutinously. "Do just open the gate, anyway—please!"
Trenby hesitated.
"Well—" He yielded unwillingly, but Nan's eyes were rather difficult to resist when they appealed. "Open the gate, then, Denman."
He stood close behind her when the gate was opened, watching the hounds narrowly, and now and again uttering an imperative, "Down, Victor! Get down, Marquis!" when one or other of the great beasts playfully leapt up against Nan's side, pawing at her in friendly fashion. Meanwhile Denman had quietly disappeared, and when he returned he carried a long-lashed hunting-crop in his hand.
Nan was smoothing first one tan head, then another, receiving eager caresses from rough, pink tongues in return, and insensibly she had moved step by step further into the yard to reach this or that hound as it caught her attention.
"Come back!" called Trenby hastily. "Don't go any further."
Perhaps the wind carried his voice away from her, or perhaps she was so preoccupied with the hounds that the meaning of his words hardly penetrated her mind. Whichever it may have been, with a low cry of, "Oh, you beauty!" she stepped quickly towards Vengeance, one of the best hounds in the pack, a fierce-looking beast with a handsome head and sullen month, who had been standing apart, showing no disposition to join the clamorous, slobbering throng at the gate.
His hackles rose at Nan's sudden movement towards him, and as she stretched out her hand to stroke him the sulky head lifted with a thunderous growl. As though at a given signal the whole pack seemed to gather round her.
Simultaneously Vengeance leaped, and Nan was only conscious of the ripping of her garments, the sudden pressure of hot bodies round her, and of a blurred sound of hounds baying, the vicious cracking of a whip, and the voices of men shouting.
She sank almost to her knees, instinctively shielding her head and throat with her arms, borne to the ground by the force of the great padded feet which had struck her. Open jaws, red like blood, and gleaming ivory fangs fenced her round. Instantaneously there flashed through her mind the recollection of something she had once been told—that if one hound turns on you, the whole pack will turn with him—like wolves.
This was death, then—death by those worrying, white-fanged mouths—the tearing of soft, warm flesh from her living limbs and afterwards the crushing of her bones between those powerful jaws.
She struck out, struggling gamely to her feet, and visioned Denman cursing and slashing at the hounds as he drove them off. But Vengeance, the untamed, heedless of the lash which scored his back a dozen times, caught at her ankle and she pitched head foremost into the stream of hot-breathed mouths and struggling bodies. She felt a huge weight fling itself upon her—Vengeance, springing again at his prey—and even as she waited for the agony of piercing fangs plunged into her flesh, Trenby's voice roared in her ears as he caught the big, powerful brute by its throat and by sheer, immense physical strength dragged the hound off her.
Meanwhile the second whip had rushed out from his cottage to render assistance and the whistling of the long-lashed hunting-crops drove through the air, gradually forcing the yelping hounds into submission. In the midst of the shouting and commotion Nan felt herself lifted up by Roger as easily as though she were a baby, and at the same moment the whirling lash of one of the men's hunting-crops cut her across the throat and bosom. The red-hot agony of it was unbearable, and as Trenby bore her out of the yard he felt her body grow suddenly limp in his arms and, glancing down, saw that she had lost consciousness.
When Nan came to herself again it was to find she was lying on a hard little horse-hair sofa, and the first object upon which her eyes rested was a nightmare arrangement of wax flowers, carefully preserved from risk of damage by a glass shade.
She was feeling stiff and sore, and the strangeness of her surroundings bewildered her—the sofa upholstered in slippery American cloth and hard as a board to her aching limbs, the waxen atrocity beneath its glass shade standing on a rickety table at the foot of the couch, the smallness of the room in which she found herself.
"Where am I?" she asked in a weak voice that was hardly more than a whisper.
Someone—a woman—said quickly: "Ah, she's coming round!" and bustled, out of the room. Then came Roger's voice:
"You're all right, Nan—all right." And she felt his big hands close round her two slender ones reassuringly. "Don't be frightened."
She raised her head to find Roger kneeling beside the sofa on which she lay.
"I'm not frightened," she said. "Only—what's happened? . . . Oh, I remember! I was in the yard with the hounds. Did one of them bite me?"
"Yes, Vengeance just caught your ankle. But we've bathed it thoroughly—luckily he's only torn the skin a bit—and now I'm going to bind it up for you. Mrs. Denman's just gone to fetch some stuff for me to bind it with. You'll be quite all right again to-morrow."
With some difficulty Nan raised herself to a sitting position and immediately caught sight of a bowl on the ground filled with an ominous-looking reddish-coloured liquid.
"Good gracious! Has my foot been bleeding like that?" she asked, going rather white.
"Bless you, no, my dear!" Mrs. Denman, a cheery-faced countrywoman, had bustled in again, with some long strips of linen to serve as a bandage. "Bless you, no! That's just a drop of Condy's fluid, that is, so's your foot shouldn't get any poison in it."
"That's right, Mrs. Denman," said Roger. "Give me that linen stuff now, and then get me some more hot water."
Nan watched him lift and skilfully bandage the slightly damaged foot. He held it carefully, as though it were something very precious, but delicate as was his handling she could not help wincing once as the bandage accidentally brushed a rather badly scratched ankle. Trenby paused almost breathlessly. The hand in which he held the white, blue-veined foot shook a little.
"Did I hurt? I'm awfully sorry." His voice was gruff. "What he wanted to do was to crush the slim, bruised foot against his lips. The very touch of its satiny skin against his hand sent queer tremors through every nerve of his big frame.
"There!" he said at last, gently letting her foot rest once more on the sofa. "Is that comfortable?"
"Quite, thanks." Then, turning to the whip's wife as she re-entered the room carrying a jug of hot water, she went on, with that inborn instinct of hers to charm and give pleasure: "What a nice, sunny room you have here, Mrs. Denman. I'm afraid I'm making a dreadful mess of it. I'm so sorry."
"Don't mention it, miss. 'Tis only a drop of water to clear away, and it's God mercy you weren't killed, by they savage 'ounds."
Nan bestowed one of her delightful smiles upon the good woman, who, leaving the hot water in readiness; hurried out to tell her husband that if Miss Davenant was going to be mistress of the Hall, why, then, 'twould be a lucky day for everyone concerned, for a nicer, pleasanter-spoken young lady—and she just come round from a faint and all!—she never wished to meet.
Nan put her hand up to her throat.
"Something hurts here," she said in a troubled voice. "Did one of the hounds leap up at my neck?"
"No," replied Trenby, frowning as his eyes rested on the long red weal
striping the white flesh disclosed by the Y-shaped neck of her frock.
"One of those dunder-headed fools cut you with his whip by mistake.
I'd like to shoot him—and Vengeance too!"
With a wonderfully gentle touch he laid a cloth wrung out in hot water across the angry-looking streak, and repeated the process until some of the swelling went down. At last he desisted, wiping dry the soft girlish throat as tenderly as a nurse might wipe the throat of a baby.
More than a little touched, Nan smiled at him.
"You're making a great fuss of me," she said. "After all, I'm not seriously hurt, you know."
"No," he replied briefly. "But you might have been killed. For a moment I thought you were going to be killed in front of my eyes."
"I don't know that it would have mattered, very much if I had been," she responded indifferently.
"It would have mattered to me." His voice roughened again: "Nan—Nan—"
He broke off huskily and, casting a swift glance at his face, she realised that the tide which had been gradually rising throughout the foregoing weeks of close companionship had suddenly come to its full and that no puny effort of hers could now arrest and thrust it back.
Roger had risen to his feet. His face was rather white as he stood looking down at her, and the piercing eyes beneath the oddly sunburnt brows held a new light in them. They were no longer cold, but burned down upon her with the fierce ardour of passion.
"What is it?" she whispered. The words seemed wrung from her against her will.
For a moment he made no answer, and in the pulsing silence which followed her low-breathed question Nan was aware of a swiftly gathering fear. She would have to make a decision within the next few moments—and she was not ready for it.
"Do you know"—Roger spoke very slowly—"Do you know what it would have meant to me if you had been killed just now?"
Nan shook her head.
"It would have meant the end of everything."
"Oh, I don't see why!" she responded quickly.
"Don't you?" He stooped over her and took her two slight wrists in his. "Then I'll tell you. I love you and I want you for my wife. I didn't intend to speak so soon—you know so little of me. But this last hour! . . . I can't wait any longer. I want you, Nan, I want you so unutterably that I won't take no."
She tried to rise from the sofa. But in an instant his arms were round her, pressing her back, tenderly but determinedly, against the cushions.
"No, don't get up! See, I'll kneel here beside you. Tell me, Nan, when will you marry me?"
She was silent. What answer could she give him—she who had found one man's love vain and betwixt whom and the man she really loved there was a stern barrier set?
At her silence a swift fear seized him.
"Nan," he said, his voice a little hoarse. "Nan, is it—no good?" Then, as she still made no answer, he let his arms fall heavily to his side.
"God!" he muttered. And his eyes held a blank, dazed look like those of a man who has just received a blow.
Nan caught him by the arm.
"No, no, Roger!" she cried quickly. "Don't look like that! I didn't mean—"
The sudden expression of radiance that sprang into his face silenced the remainder of the words upon her lips—the words of explanation that should have been spoken.
"Then you do care, after all! Nan, there's no one else, is there?"
"No," she said very low.
He stretched out his arms and drew her gently within them, and for a moment she had neither the heart nor the courage to wipe that look of utter happiness from his face by telling him the truth, by saying blankly: "I don't love you."
He turned her face up to his and, stooping, kissed her with sudden passion.
"My dear!" he said, "my dear!" Then, after a moment:
"Oh, Nan, Nan, I can hardly believe that you really belong to me!"
Nan could hardly believe it either. It seemed just to have happened somehow, and her conscience smote her. For what had she to give in return for all the love he was offering her? Merely a little liking of a lonely heart that wanted to warm itself at someone's hearth, and beyond that a terrified longing to put something more betwixt herself and Peter Mallory, to double the strength of the barrier which kept them apart. It wasn't giving Trenby a fair deal!
"Roger," she said, at last, "I don't think I'd better belong to you. No, listen!"—as he made a sudden movement—"I must tell you. There is someone else—only we can't ever be more than friends."
Roger stared, at her with the dawning of a new fear in his eyes. When he spoke it was with a savage defiance.
"Then don't tell me! I don't want to hear. You're mine now, anyway."
"I think I ought—" she began weakly.
But he brushed her scruples aside.
"I'm not going to listen. You've said you'll marry me. I don't want to hear anything about the other men who were. I'm the man who is. And I'm going to drive you straight back to Mallow and tell everybody about it. Then I'll feel sure of you."
Faced by the irrevocableness of her action, Nan was overtaken by dismay. How recklessly, on the impulse of the moment, she had bartered her freedom away! She felt as though she were caught in the meshes of some net from which there was no escaping. A voice inside her head kept urging: "Time! Time! Give me time!"
"Please, Roger," she began with unwonted humility. "I'd rather you didn't tell people just yet."
But Trenby objected.
"I don't see that there's anything gained by waiting," he said doggedly.
"Time! . . . Time!" reiterated the voice inside Nan's head.
"To please me, Roger," she begged. "I want to think things over a bit first."
"It's too late to think things over," he answered jealously. "You've given me your promise. You don't want to take it back again?"
"Perhaps, when you know everything, you'll want me to."
"Tell me 'everything' now, then," he said grimly, "and you'll soon see whether I want you to or not."
Nan was fighting desperately to gain time. She needed it more than anything—time to think, time to weigh the pros and cons of the matter, time to decide. The past was pulling at her heart-strings, filling her with a sudden terror of the promise she had just given Roger.
"I can't tell you anything now," she said rather breathlessly. "I did try—a little while ago, and you wouldn't listen. You—you must give me a few days—you must! If you don't, I'll say 'no' now—at once!" her voice rising excitedly.
She was overwrought, strung up to such a pitch that she hardly knew what she was saying. She had been through a good deal in the last hour or two and Trenby realised it. Suddenly that grim determination of his to force her promise, to bind her his here and now, yielded to an overwhelming flood of tenderness.
"It shall be as you wish, Nan," he said very gently. "I know I'm asking everything of you, and that you're frightened and upset to-day. I ought not to have spoken. And—and I'm a lot older than you."
"Oh, it isn't that," replied Nan hastily, fearing he might be feeling sore over the disparity in their respective ages. She did not want him to be hurt about things that would never have counted at all had she loved him.
"Well, if I wait till Monday—that's four days—will that do?" he asked.
"Yes. I'll tell you then."
"Thank you"—very simply. He lifted her hands to his lips. "And remember," he added desperately, "that I love you, Nan—you're my whole world."
He paced the short length of the room and back, and when he came to her side again, every trace of emotion was wiped out of his face.
"Now I'm going to take you back home. Mrs. Denman"—smiling faintly—"says she'll put 'an 'assock' in the car for your damaged leg to rest on, so with rugs and that coat you were so averse to bringing I think you'll be all right."
He went to the table and poured out something in a glass.
"Drink that," he said, holding it towards her. "It'll warm you up."
Nan sniffed at the liquid in the glass and tendered it back to him with a grimace.
"It's brandy," she said. "I hate the stuff."
"You'll drink it, though, won't you?"—persuasively.
"No," shaking her head. "I can't bear the taste of it."
"But it's good for you." He stood in front of her, glass in hand.
"Come, Nan, don't be foolish. You need something before we start.
Drink it up."
He held it to her lips, and Nan, too proud to struggle or resist like a child, swallowed the obnoxious stuff. As Trenby drove her home she had time to reflect upon the fact that if she married him there would be many a contest of wills between them. He roused a sense of rebellion in her, and he was unmistakably a man who meant to be obeyed.
Her thoughts went back to Peter Mallory. Somehow she did not think she would ever have found it difficult to obey him.