CHAPTER XX
THE CAGE DOOR
For the first few days succeeding Lord St. John's departure from Trenby Hall, matters progressed comparatively smoothly. Then, as his influence waned with absence, the usual difficulties reappeared, the old hostilities—hostilities of outlook and generation—arising once more betwixt Nan and Lady Gertrude. Mutual understanding is impossible between two people whose sense of values is fundamentally opposed, and music, the one thing that had counted all through Nan's life, was a matter of supreme unimportance to the older woman. She regarded it—or, indeed, any other form of art, for that matter—as amongst the immaterial fripperies of life, something to be put aside at any moment in favour of social or domestic duties. It signified even less to her than it did to Eliza McBain, to whom it at least represented one of the lures of Satan—and for this reason could not be entirely discounted.
Since Sandy's stimulating visit Nan had devoted considerable time to the composition of her concerto, working at it with a recrudescence of her old enthusiasm, and the work had been good for her. It had carried her out of herself, preventing her from dwelling continually upon the past. Unfortunately, however, the hours she spent in the seclusion of the West Parlour were not allowed to pass without comment.
"It seems to take you a long time to compose a new piece," remarked Isobel at dinner one day, the trite expression "new piece" very evidently culled from her school-day memories.
Nan smiled across at her.
"A concerto's a pretty big undertaking, you see," she explained.
"Rather an unnecessary one, I should have thought, as you are so soon to be married." Lady Gertrude spoke with her usual acid brevity. "It certainly prevents our enjoying as much of your society as we should wish."
Nan flushed scarlet at the implied slur on her behaviour as a guest in the house, even though she recognised the injustice of it. An awkward pause ensued. Isobel, having started the ball rolling, seemed content to let things take their course without interference, while Roger's shaggy brows drew together in a heavy frown—though whether he were displeased by his mother's comment, or by Nan's having given her cause for it, it was impossible to say.
"This afternoon, for instance," pursued Lady Gertrude, "Isobel and I paid several calls in the neighbourhood, and in each case your absence was a disappointment to our friends—very naturally."
"I—I'm sorry," stammered Nan. She found it utterly incomprehensible that anyone should expect her to break off in the middle of an afternoon's inspiration in order to pay a duty call upon some absolute strangers—whose disappointment was probably solely due to baulked curiosity concerning Roger's future wife.
Isobel laughed lightly and let fly one of her little two-edged shafts.
"I expect you think we're a lot of very commonplace people, Nan," she commented. "Own up, now!" challengingly.
Lady Gertrude's eyes flashed like steel.
"Hardly that, I hope," she said coldly.
"Well, we're none of us in the least artistic," persisted her niece, perfectly aware that her small thrusts were as irritating to Lady Gertrude and Roger as the picador's darts to the bull in the arena. "So of course we must appear rather Philistine compared with Nan's set in London."
Roger levelled a keen glance at Nan. There was suppressed anger and a searching, almost fierce enquiry in his eyes beneath which she shrank. That imperious temper of his was not difficult to rouse, as she had discovered on more than one occasion since she had come to Trenby Hall, and she felt intensely annoyed with Isobel, who was apparently unable to see that her ill-timed observations were goading the pride of both Roger and his mother.
"Silence evidently gives consent," laughed Isobel, as Nan, absorbed in her own reflections for the moment, vouchsafed no contradiction to her last remark.
Nan met the other's mocking glance defiantly. With a sudden wilfulness, born of the incessant opposition she encountered, she determined to let Miss Carson's second challenge go unanswered. She had tried—tried desperately—to win the affection, or even the bare liking, of Roger's women-kind, and she had failed. It was all just so much useless effort. Henceforward they might think of her what they chose.
The remainder of the meal passed in a strained and uncomfortable manner. Lady Gertrude and Isobel discussed various matters pertaining to the village Welfare Club, while Roger preserved an impenetrable silence, and though Nan made a valiant pretence at eating, lest Lady Gertrude's gimlet eyes should observe her lack of appetite and her thin, disdainful voice comment on the fact, she felt all the time as though the next mouthful must inevitably choke her.
The long, formal meal came to an end at last, and she rose from the table with a sigh of relief and accompanied the other two women out of the room, leaving Roger to smoke his pipe alone as usual. An instant later, to her surprise, she heard his footstep and found that he had followed them into the hall and was standing on the threshold of the library.
"Come in here, Nan," he said briefly.
Somewhat reluctantly she followed him into the room. He closed the door behind her, then swung round on his heel so that they stood fronting one another.
At the sight of his face she recoiled a step in sheer nervous astonishment. It was a curious ashen-white, and from beneath drawn brows his hawk's eyes seemed positively to blaze at her.
"Roger," she stammered, "what—what is it?"
"Is it true?" he demanded, ignoring her halting question, and fixing her with a glance that seemed to penetrate right through her.
"Is—is what true?" she faltered.
"Is it true—what Isobel said—that you look down on us because we're countrified, that you're still hankering after that precious artistic crew of yours in London?"
He spoke violently—so violently that it roused Nan's spirit. She turned away from him.
"Don't be so absurd, Roger," she said contemptuously. "Isobel was only joking. It was very silly of her, but it's sillier still for you to take any notice of what she said."
"She was not joking. You've shown it clearly enough—ever since you came here—that you're dissatisfied—bored! Do you suppose I haven't seen it? I'm not blind! And I won't stand it! If your music is going to come between us, I'll smash the piano—"
"Roger! You ridiculous person!"
She was smiling now. Something in his anger reminded her of an enraged small boy. It woke in her the eternal motherhood which lies in every woman and she felt that she wanted to comfort him. She could forgive him his violence. In his furious antagonism towards the art which meant so much to her, she traced the combined influence of Lady Gertrude and Isobel. Not merely the latter's pin-pricks at dinner this particular evening, but the constant pressure of criticism of which she was the subject.
"You ridiculous person! If you did smash the piano, it wouldn't make me any less a musician. And"—lightly—"I really can't have you being jealous of an inanimate thing like a grand piano!"
Roger's frown relaxed a little. His threat to smash the piano sounded foolish even in his own ears. But he hated the instrument none the less, although without precisely knowing why. Subconsciously he was aware that the real Nan still eluded him. She was his in the eyes of the world—pledged to be his wife—yet he knew that although he might possess her body it would bring him no nearer the possession of her soul and spirit. That other man—the one for whom she had told him she once cared—held those! Trenby was not given to psychological analysis, but in a blind, bewildered fashion he felt that that thing of wood and ivory and stretched strings represented in concrete form everything that stood betwixt himself and Nan.
"Have I nothing else—no one else"—significantly—-"to be jealous of?" he demanded. "Answer me!"
With a swift movement he gripped her by the shoulder, forcing her to face him again, his eyes still stormy. She winced involuntarily under the pressure of his fingers, but forced herself to answer him.
"You know," she said quietly. "I told you when you asked me to be your wife that—that there was—someone—for whom I cared. But, if you believed all I told you then—you know, too, that you have no reason to be jealous."
"You mean because you can't marry him?"—moodily.
"Yes."
The brief reply acted like a spark to tinder. With a stifled exclamation he caught her up in his arms, crushing his mouth down on hers till her lips felt bruised beneath his kisses.
"It's not enough!" he said, his voice hoarse and shaken. "It's not enough! I want you—the whole of you, Nan—Nan!"
For an instant she struggled against him—almost instinctively. Then, remembering she had given him the right to kiss her if he chose, she yielded, surrendering passively to the fierce tide of his passion.
"Kiss me!" he insisted hotly.
She kissed him obediently. But there was no warmth in her kiss, no answering thrill, and the man knew it. He held her away from him, his sudden passion chilled.
"Is that the best you can do?" he demanded, looking down at her with something grimly ironic in his eyes. She steadied herself to meet his glance.
"It is—really, Roger," she replied earnestly. "Oh!"—flushing swiftly—"you must know it!"
"Yes"—with a shrug. "I suppose I ought to have known it. I'm only a second string, after all."
There was so much bitterness in his voice that Nan's heart was touched to a compassionate understanding.
"Ah! Don't speak like that!" she cried tremulously. "You know I'm giving you all I can, Roger. I've been quite fair with you—quite honest. I told you I had no love to give you, that I could never care for anyone again,—like that. And you said you would be content," she added with reproach.
"I know I did," he answered sullenly. "But I'm not. No man who loved you would be content! . . . And I'm never sure of you. . . . You hate it here—"
"But it will be different when we are married," she said gently. Surely it would be different when they were alone together in their own home without the perpetual irritation of Isobel's malicious little thrusts and Lady Gertrude's implacability?
"My God, yes! It'll he different then. I shall have you to myself!"
"Your mother?" she questioned, a thought timidly.
"She—and Isobel—will go to the dower house. No"—reading her thoughts—"they won't like it. They don't want to go. That's natural enough. Once I thought—" He checked himself abruptly, wondering how he could ever have conceived it possible that his mother might remain on at the Hall after his marriage. "But not now! I'll have my wife to myself"—savagely. "Nan, how long am I to wait?"
A thrill of dismay ran through her. So far, he had not raised the question as to the actual date of their marriage, and she had been thankful to leave it for settlement at some vaguely distant period.
"Why—why, I couldn't he married till Kitty comes home," she faltered.
"I suppose not. When do you expect her back?"
"About the end of the month, I think, or the beginning of February."
"Then you'll marry me in April."
He made the statement with a certain grim arrogance that forbade all contradiction. He was in a curiously uncertain mood, and Nan, anxious not to provoke another storm, assented reluctantly.
"You mean that? You won't fail me?" His keen eyes searched her face as though he doubted her and sought to wring the truth from her lips.
"Yes," she said very low. "I mean it."
He left her then, and a few minutes later, when she had recovered her poise, she rejoined Lady Gertrude and Isobel in the drawing-room.
"You and Roger have been having a very long confab," remarked Isobel, looking up from the jumper she was knitting. "What does it portend?"
Her sallow, nimble fingers never paused in their work. The soft, even click of the needles went on unbrokenly.
"Nothing immediate," answered Nan. "He wants me to settle the date of our wedding, that's all."
The clicking ceased abruptly.
"And when is it to be?" Isobel's attention seemed entirely concentrated upon a dropped stitch.
"Some time in April. It will have to depend a little on Mrs. Seymour's plans. She wants me to be married from her house, just as Penelope was."
Lady Gertrude was busily engaged upon the making of a utilitarian flannel petticoat for one of her protégées in the village. She anchored her needle carefully in the material before she laid it aside.
"Do you mean from her house in town?" she asked.
"Why, yes, I suppose so." Nan looked faintly puzzled.
"Then I hope you will re-arrange matters."
Although Lady Gertrude's manner was colder and infinitely more precise, yet the short speech held the same arrogance as Roger's "Then you'll marry me in April"—the kind of arrogance which calmly assumes that any opposition is out of the question.
"It would be the greatest disappointment to the tenantry," she continued, "if they were unable to witness the marriage of my son—as they would have done, of course, if he'd married someone of the district. So I hope"—conclusively—"that Mrs. Seymour will arrange for your wedding to take place from Mallow Court."
She picked up the flannel petticoat and recommenced work upon it again as though the matter were settled, supremely oblivious of the fact that she had succeeded, as usual, in rousing every rebellious feeling her future daughter-in-law possessed.
Nan lay long awake that night. Roger's sudden gust of passion had taken her by surprise, filling her with a kind of terror of him. Never before had he shown her that side of himself, and she had somehow taken it for granted that he would not prove a demanding lover. He had been so diffident, so generous at the beginning, that she had been almost ashamed of the poor return which was all that she could make. But now she was suddenly face to face with the fact that he was going to demand far more of her than she was able to give.
She had not realised how much propinquity adds fuel to love's fire. Unknown, even to himself, Roger's passion had been gradually rising towards flood-tide. Man being by nature a contradictory animal, the attitude assumed by his mother and cousin towards the woman who was to be his wife had seemed to fan rather than smother the flame.
All at once the curb had snapped. He wanted Nan, the same Nan with whom he had fallen in love—the inconsequent feminine thing of elusive frocks and absurd, delicious faults and weaknesses—rather than a Nan moulded into shape by Lady Gertrude's iron hand. An intense resentment of his mother's interference had been gradually growing up within him. He would do all the moulding that was required, after matrimony!
Not that he put all this to himself in so many words. But a sense of revolt, an overwhelming jealousy of everyone who made any claim at all on Nan—jealousy even of that merry Bohemian life of hers in which he had had no share—had been slowly gathering within him until it was almost more than he could endure. Isobel's taunts at dinner had half maddened him. Whether he were Philistine or not, Nan had promised to marry him, and he would know neither rest nor peace of mind until that promise were fulfilled.
And Nan, as she lay in bed with wide eyes staring into the darkness, felt as though the door of the cage were slowly closing upon her.