CHAPTER XVII
"THE KEYS OF HEAVEN"
Nan awoke the next morning to find the sunlight pouring into her room. Outside, the notes of a bird's song lilted very sweetly on the air, while the creamy head of a rose tapped now and again at the window as though bidding her come out and share in the glory of the summer's day. She had slept far into the morning—the deep, dreamless slumber of utter mental and physical exhaustion. And now, waking, she stared about her bewilderedly, unable at first to recall where she was or what had happened.
But that blessed lack of realisation did not last for long. Almost immediately the recollection of all that had occurred yesterday rushed over her with stunning force, and the sunlight, the bird song, and that futile rose tapping softly there against the window-pane, seemed stupidly incongruous.
Nan felt she almost hated them. Only a few hours before she had said good-bye to the man she loved. Not good-bye for a month or a year, but for the rest of life. Possibly, at some distant time, they might chance to meet at the house of a mutual friend, but they would meet merely as acquaintances, never again as lovers. Triumphing in spirit over the desire of the heart, they had taken their farewell of love—bowed to the destiny which had made of that love a forbidden thing.
But last night, even through the anguish of farewell, they had been unconsciously upheld by a feeling of exultation—that strange ecstasy of sacrifice which sometimes fires frail human beings to live up to the god that is within them.
To-day the inevitable reaction had succeeded and only the bleak, bitter facts remained. Nan faced them squarely, though it called for all the pluck of which she was possessed. Peter had gone, and throughout the years that stretched ahead she saw herself travelling through life step by step with Roger, living the same dull existence year in, year out, till at last, when they were both too old for anything to matter very much—too supine for romance to send the quick blood racing through their veins, too dull of sight to perceive the glamour and glory of the world—merciful death would step in and take one or other of them away.
She shivered a little with youth's instinctive dread of the time when age shall quieten the bounding pulses, slowly but surely taking the savour out of things. She wanted to live first, to gather up the joy of life with both hands. . . .
Her thoughts were suddenly scattered by the sound of the opening door and the sight of Mrs. Seymour's inquiring face peeping round it.
"Awake?" queried Kitty.
With a determined mental effort Nan pulled herself together, prepared to face the world as it was and not as she wanted it to be. She answered promptly:
"Yes. And hungry, please. May I have some breakfast?"
"Good child!" murmured Kitty approvingly. "As a matter of fact, your brekkie is coming hard on my heels"—gesturing, as she spoke, towards the trim maid who had followed her into the room, carrying an attractive-looking breakfast tray. When she had taken her departure, Kitty sat down and gossiped, while Nan did her best to appear as hungry as she had rashly implied she was.
Somehow she must manage to throw dust in Kitty's keen eyes—and a simulated appetite made quite an excellent beginning. She was determined that no one should ever know that she was anything other than happy in her engagement to Roger. She owed him that much, at least. So when Kitty, making an effort to speak quite naturally, mentioned that Peter had been obliged to return to town unexpectedly, she accepted the news with an assumption of naturalness as good as Kitty's own. Half an hour later, leaving Nan to dress, Kitty departed with any suspicions she might have had entirely lulled.
But her heart ached for the man whose haggard, stern-set face, when he had told her last night that he must go, had conveyed all, and more, than his brief words of explanation.
"Must you really go, Peter?" she had asked him wistfully. "I thought—you told me once—that you didn't mean to break off your friendship? . . . Can't you even be friends with her?"
His reply came swiftly and with a definiteness there was no mistaking.
"No," he said. "I can't. It's true what you say—I did once think I might keep her friendship. I was wrong."
There was a pause. Then Kitty asked quickly:
"But you won't refuse to meet her? It isn't as bad as that, Peter?"
He looked down at her oddly.
"It's quite as bad as that."
She felt herself trembling a little at the queer intensity of his tone. It was as though the man beside her were keeping in check, by sheer force of will, some big emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. She hesitated, then spoke very quietly and simply:
"That was a perfectly selfish question on my part, Peter. Don't take any notice of it."
"How—selfish?" he asked, with a faint smile.
"Because, if you refuse to meet Nan, I shall always have to see you separately—never together. I love you both and I can't give up either of you, so it will be rather like cutting myself in half."
Mallory took her hand in both his.
"You shall not have to cut yourself in half for me, dear friend," he said, with that touch of foreignness in his manner which revealed itself at times—not infrequently when he was concealing some strong feeling. "We shall meet again—some day—Nan and I. But not now—not at present."
"She'll miss you, Peter. . . . You're such a good pal!" Kitty gripped his hands hard and her voice was a trifle unsteady. After Barry, there was no one in the whole world she loved as much as she loved Peter. And she was powerless to help him.
"You'll be back in town soon," he answered her. "I shall come and see you sometimes. After all"—smiling a little—"Nan isn't constantly with you. She has her music." He paused a moment, then added gravely, with a quiet note of thankfulness in his voice: "As I, also, shall have my work."
There remained always that—work, the great palliative, a narcotic dulling the pain which, without it, would be almost beyond human endurance.
* * * * * *
"Everything's just about as bad as it could be!"
Kitty's voice was troubled and the eyes that sought Lord St. John's lacked all their customary vivacity. The tall old man, pacing the quadrangle beside her in the warmth of the afternoon sunshine, made no comment for a moment. Then he said slowly:
"Yes, it's pretty bad. I'm sorry Mallory had to leave this morning."
"Oh, well," murmured Kitty vaguely, "a well-known writer like that often has to dash off to town in the middle of a holiday. Things crop up, you know"—still more vaguely.
St. John paused in the middle of his pacing and, putting his hand under Kitty's chin, tilted her face upward, scrutinising it with a kindly, quizzical gaze.
"Lookers-on see most of the game, my dear," he observed, "I've no doubts about the 'business' which called Mallory away."
"You've guessed, then?"
"I was there when we first thought Nan might be in danger last night—and
I saw his face. Then I was sure. I'd only suspected before."
"I knew," said Kitty simply. "He told me in London. At first he didn't intend coming down to Mallow at all."
"Better, perhaps, if he'd kept to his intention," muttered St. John abstractedly. He was thinking deeply, his fine brows drawn together.
"You see, he—some of us thought Maryon had come back meaning to fix up things with Nan. So Peter kept out of the way. He thinks only of her—her happiness."
"His own is out of the question, poor devil!"
Kitty nodded.
"And the worst of it is," she went on, "I can't feel quite sure that Nan will be really happy with Roger. They're the last two people in the world to get on well together."
Lord St. John looked out across the sea, his shoulders a little stooped, his hands clasped behind his back. No one regretted Nan's precipitate engagement more than he, but he recognised that little good could be accomplished by interference. Moreover, to his scrupulous, old-world sense of honour, a promise, once given, was not to be broken at will.
"I'm afraid, my dear," he said at last, turning back to Kitty, "I'm afraid we've reached a cul-de-sac."
His tones were despondent, and Kitty's spirits sank a degree lower. She looked at him bleakly, and he returned her glance with one equally bleak. Then, into this dejected council of two—cheerful, decided, and aboundingly energetic swept Aunt Eliza.
"Good afternoon, my dear," she said, making a peck at Kitty's cheek. "That flunkey, idling his life away on the hall mat, said I should find you here, so I saved him from overwork by showing myself in. How are you, St. John? You're looking a bit peaky this afternoon, aren't you?"
"It's old age beginning to tell," laughed Lord St. John, shaking hands.
"Old age?—Fiddlesticks!" Eliza fumed contemptuously. "I suppose the truth is you're fashin' yourself because Nan's engaged to be married. I've always said you were just like an old hen with one chick."
"I'd like to see the child with a nest of her own, all the same, Eliza."
"Hark to the man! And when 'tis settled she shall have the nest, he looks for all the world as though she had just fallen out of it!"
St. John wheeled round suddenly.
"That's exactly what I'm afraid of—that some day she may . . . fall out of this particular nest that's building."
"And why should she do that?" demanded Eliza truculently. "Roger's as bonnie and brave a mate as any woman need look for, and Trenby Hall's a fine home to bring his bride to."
"Yes. But don't you see," explained Kitty, "it's all happened so suddenly. A little while ago we thought Nan cared for someone else and now we don't want her to rush off and tie herself up with anyone in a hurry—and be miserable ever after."
"I'm no' in favour of long engagements."
"In this case a little delay might have been wiser before any engagement was entered upon," said Lord St. John.
"I don't hold with delays—nor interfering between folks that have promised to be man and wife. The Almighty never intended us to play at being providence. If it's ordained for Nan to marry Roger Trenby—marry him she will. And the lass is old enough to know her own mind; maybe you're wrong in thinking her heart's elsewhere."
Then, catching an expression of dissent on Kitty's face, she added shrewdly:
"Oh, I ken weel he's nae musician—but it's no' a few notes of the piano will be binding husband and wife together. 'Tis the wee bairns build the bridges we can cross in safety."
There was an unwontedly tender gleam in her hard-featured face. Kitty jumped up and kissed her impulsively.
"Aunt Eliza dear, you've a much softer heart than you pretend, and if Nan weren't happily married you'd be just as sorry as the rest of us."
"Perhaps Eliza's right," hazarded St. John rather uncertainly. "We may have been too ready to assume Nan won't be happy with the man she's chosen."
"I know Nan," persisted Kitty obstinately. "And I know she and Roger have really nothing in common."
"Then perhaps they'll find something after they're married," retorted Eliza, "and the looking for it will give a spice to life. There's many a man—ay, and woman, too!—who have fallen deeper in love after they've taken the plunge than ever they did while they were hovering on the brink."
"That may be true in some cases," responded St. John. "But you're advocating a big risk, Eliza."
"And there's mighty few things worth having in this world that aren't obtained at a risk," averred Mrs. McBain stoutly. "You've always been for wrapping Nan up in cotton wool, St. John—shielding her from this, protecting her from that! Sic' havers! She'd be more of a woman if you'd let her stand on her own feet a bit."
Lord St. John sighed.
"Well, she'll have to stand on her own feet henceforth," he said.
"What about the money?" demanded Eliza. "Are you still going to allow her the same income?"
"I think not," he answered thoughtfully. "That was to give her freedom of choice—freedom from matrimony if she wished. Well, she's chosen. And I believe Nan will be all the better for being dependent on her husband for—everything. At any rate, just at first."
Kitty looked somewhat dubious, but Mrs. McBain nodded her approval vigorously.
"That's sound common-sense," she said decidedly. "More than I expected of ye, St. John."
He smiled a little. Then, seeing the unspoken question in Kitty's eyes, he turned to her reassuringly.
"No need to worry, Madame Kitty. Remember, I'm always there, if need be, with the money-bags. My idea is that if Nan doesn't like entire dependence on her husband, it may spur her into working at her music. I'm always waiting for her to do something big. And the desire for independence is a different spur—and a better one—-than the necessity of boiling the pot for dinner."
"You seem to have forgotten that being a professional musician is next door to a crime in Lady Gertrude's eyes," observed Kitty. "She doesn't care for anyone to do more than 'play a little' in a nice, amateur, lady-like fashion!"
"Then Lady Gertrude will have to learn better," replied St. John sharply. Adding, with a grim smile: "One of my wedding-presents to Nan will be a full-sized grand piano."
So, in accordance with Eliza's advice, everyone refrained from "playing providence" and Nan's engagement to Roger Trenby progressed along conventional lines. Letters of congratulation poured in upon them both, and Kitty grew unmistakably bored by the number of her friends in the neighbourhood who, impelled by curiosity concerning the future mistress of Trenby Hall, suddenly discovered that they owed a call at Mallow and that the present moment was an opportune time to pay it.
Nan herself was keyed up to a rather high pitch these days, and it was difficult for those who were watching her with the anxious eyes of friendship to gauge the extent of her happiness or otherwise. From the moment of Mallory's departure she had flung herself with zest into each day's amusement behaving precisely as though she hadn't a care in life—playing about with Sandy, and flirting so exasperatingly with Roger that, although she wore his ring, within himself he never felt quite sure of her.
Kitty used every endeavour to get the girl to herself for half an hour, hoping she might be able to extract the truth from her. But Nan had developed an extraordinary elusiveness and she skilfully avoided tête-à-tête talks with anyone other than Roger. Moreover, there was that in her manner which utterly forbade even the delicate probing of a friend. The Nan who was wont to be so frank and ingenuous—surprisingly so at times—seemed all at once to have retired behind an impenetrable wall of reticence.
Meanwhile Fenton and Penelope had mutually decided to admit none but a few intimate friends into the secret of their engagement. As Ralph sagely observed: "We shall be married so soon that it isn't worth while facing a barrage of congratulations over such a short engagement."
They were radiantly happy, with the kind of happiness that keeps bubbling up from sheer joy of itself—in love with each other in such a delightfully frank and barefaced manner that everyone at Mallow regarded them with gentle amusement and loved them for being lovers.
Nothing pleased Nan better than to persuade them into singing that quaintly charming old song, The Keys of Heaven—the words of which hold such a tender, whimsical understanding of the feminine heart. Perhaps the refusal of the coach and four black horses "as black as pitch," and of all the other good things wherewith the lover in the song seeks to embellish his suit, was not rendered with quite as much emphasis as it should have been. One might almost have suspected the lady of a desire not to be too discouraging in her denials. But the final verse lacked nothing in interpretation.
Passionate and beseeching, as the lover makes his last appeal, offering the greatest gift of all, Ralph's glorious baritone entreated her:
"Oh, I will give you the keys of my heart,
And we'll be married till death us do part,
Madam, will you walk?
Madam, will you talk?
Madam, will you walk and talk with me?"
Then Penelope's eyes would glow with a lovely inner light, as though the beautiful possibilities of that journey through life together were envisioned in them, and her voice would deepen and mellow till it seemed to hold all the laughter and tears, and all the kindness and tender gaiety and exquisite solicitude of love.
Sometimes, as she was playing the accompaniment, Nan's own eyes would fill unexpectedly with tears and the black and white notes of the piano run together into an oblong blur of grey.
For though Peter had given her the keys of his heart that night of moon and sea at Tintagel, she might never use them to unlock the door of heaven.