CHAPTER XXI
LADY GERTRUDE'S POINT OF VIEW
It was a cheerless morning. Gusts of fine, sprinkling rain drove hither and thither on a blustering wind, while overhead hung a leaden sky with patches of black cloud scudding raggedly across it.
Nan, coming slowly downstairs to breakfast, regarded the state of the weather as merely in keeping with everything else. The constant friction of her visit to Trenby had been taking its daily toll of her natural buoyancy, and last night's interview with Roger had tried her frayed nerves to the uttermost. This morning, after an almost sleepless night, she felt that to remain there any longer would be more than she could endure. She must get away—secure at least a few days' respite from the dreadful atmosphere of disapprobation and dislike which Lady Gertrude managed to convey.
The consciousness of it was never absent from her. Pride had upheld her so far, but underneath the pride lay a very sore heart. To anyone as sensitive as Nan, whose own lovableness had always hitherto evoked both love and friendship as naturally as flowers open to the sun, it was a new and bewildering experience to be disliked. She did not know how to meet it. It hurt inexpressibly, and she was tired of being hurt.
She hesitated nervously outside the morning-room door, whence issued the soft clink of china and a murmur of voices. The clock in the hall had struck the hour five minutes ago. She was late, and she knew that the instant she entered the room she would feel that unfriendly atmosphere rushing to meet her like a great black wave. Finally, with an effort, she turned the door-handle and went in.
For once Lady Gertrude refrained from comment upon her lack of punctuality. She seemed preoccupied and, to judge from the pinched closing of her lips, her thoughts were anything but pleasing, while Roger was in the sullen, rather impenetrable mood which Nan had learned to recognise as a sign of storm. He hardly spoke at all, and then only to fling out one or two curt remarks in connection with estate matters. Immediately breakfast was at an end he rose from the table, remarking that he should not be in for lunch, and left the room.
Lady Gertrude looked up from her morning's letters.
"I suppose he's riding over to Berry Farm—the tenant wants some repairs done. He ought to take a few sandwiches with him if he won't be here for lunch."
Isobel jumped up from her seat.
"I'll see that he does," she said quickly, and went out of the room in search of him. Any need of Roger's must be instantly supplied.
Lady Gertrude waited until the servants had cleared away the breakfast, then she turned to Nan with a very definite air of having something to say.
"Have you and Roger quarrelled?" she asked abruptly.
The girl started nervously. She had not expected this as a consequence of Roger's taciturnity.
"No," she said, stumbling a little. "No, we haven't—quarrelled."
Lady Gertrude scrutinised her with keen, light-grey eyes that had the same penetrating glance as Roger's own, and Nan felt herself colouring under it.
"You've displeased him in some way or other," insisted Lady Gertrude, and waited for a reply.
Nan flared up at the older woman's arbitrary manner.
"That's rather a funny way to put it, isn't it?" she said quickly.
"I'm—I'm not a child, you know."
"You behave very much like one at times," retorted Lady Gertrude. "I've done my utmost since you came here to fit you to be Roger's wife, and without any appreciable result. You seem to be exactly as irresponsible and thoughtless as when you arrived."
The cold, contemptuous criticism flicked the girl's raw nerves like the point of a lash. She sprang to her feet, her eyes very bright, as though tears were not far distant, her young breast rising and falling unevenly with her hurrying breath.
"Is that what you think of me?" she said unsteadily. "Because then I'd better go away. It's what I want—to go away! I—I can't bear it here any longer." Her fingers gripped the edge of the table tensely. She was struggling to keep down the rising sobs which threatened to choke her speech. "I know you don't want me to be Roger's wife—you don't think I'm fit for it! You've just said so! And—and you've let me see it every day. I'll go—I'll go!"
Lady Gertrude's face remained quite unchanged. Only the steely gleam in her eyes hardened.
"When this hysterical outburst is quite over," she said scathingly, "I shall be better able to talk to you."
Nan made no answer. It was all she could do to prevent herself from bursting into tears.
"Sit down again." Lady Gertrude pointed to a chair, and Nan, who felt her legs trembling under her, sat down obediently. "You're quite mistaken in thinking I don't wish you to be Roger's wife," continued Lady Gertrude quietly. "I do wish it."
Nan glanced across at her in astonishment. This was the last thing she had expected her to say—irreconcilable with her whole attitude throughout the last two months. Lady Gertrude returned the glance with one of faint amusement. She could make a good guess at what the girl was thinking.
"I wish it," she pursued, "because Roger wishes it. I should like my son to have everything he wants. To be perfectly frank, I don't consider he has made a very suitable choice, but since he wants you—why, he must have you. No, don't interrupt me, please"—for Nan, quivering with indignation, was about to protest. "When—if ever you are a mother you will understand my point of view. Roger has made his choice—and of course he hasn't the least idea how unsuitable a one it is. Men rarely get beyond a pretty face. So it devolves upon me to make you better fitted to be his wife than you are at present."
The cold, dispassionate speech roused Nan to a fury of exasperation and revolt. Evidently, in Lady Gertrude's mind, Roger was the only person who mattered. She herself was of the utmost unimportance except for the fact that he wanted her for his wife! She felt as though she were a slave who had been bartered away to a new owner.
"You understand, now?"
Lady Gertrude's clear, unmoved accents dropped like ice into the midst of her burning resentment.
"Yes, I do understand!" she exclaimed, in a voice that she hardly recognised as her own. "And I think everything you've said is horrible! If I thought Roger looked at things like that, I'd break our engagement to-morrow! But he doesn't—I know he doesn't. It's only you who think such hateful things. And—and I won't stay here! I—I can't!"
"It's foolish to talk of breaking off your engagement," returned Lady Gertrude composedly. "Roger is not a man to be picked up and put down at any woman's whim—as you would find out if you tried to do it."
Inwardly Nan felt bitterly conscious that this was true. She didn't believe for a moment that Roger would release her, however much she might implore him to. And unless he himself released her, her pledge to him must stand.
"As to going away"—Lady Gertrude was speaking again. "Where would you go?"
"To the flat, of course."
"Do you mean to the flat you used to share with Mrs. Fenton?"—on a glacial note of incredulity.
"Yes."
"Who is living there?"
Nan looked puzzled. What did it matter to Lady Gertrude who lived there?
"No one, just now. The Fentons are going to stay there, when they come back, while they look for a house."
"But they are not there now?" persisted Lady Gertrude.
Nan shook her head, wondering what was the drift of so much questioning.
She was soon to know.
"Then, my dear child," said Lady Gertrude decidedly, "of course it would be quite impossible for you to go there."
"Why impossible?"
Lady Gertrude's brows lifted, superciliously.
"I should have thought it was obvious," she replied curtly. "Hasn't it occurred to you that it would be hardly the thing for a young unmarried girl to be staying alone in a flat in London?"
"No, it hasn't," returned Nan bluntly. "Penelope and I have each stayed there alone—heaps of times—when the other was away."
"Very possibly." There was an edge to Lady Gertrude's voice which it was impossible to misinterpret. "Professional musicians are very lax—I suppose you would call it Bohemian—in their ideas. That I can quite believe. But you have someone else to consider now. Roger would hardly wish his future wife to be stopping alone at a flat in London."
Nan was silent. Ridiculous as it seemed, she had to admit that Lady Gertrude was speaking no more than the bare truth concerning Roger's point of view. She felt perfectly sure that he would object—very strenuously!
Lady Gertrude rose.
"I think there is no more to be said. You can put any idea of rushing off to London out of your head. Even if Roger were agreeable, I should not allow it while you are in my charge. Neither is it exactly complimentary to us that you should even suggest such a thing."
With this parting comment she quitted the room, leaving Nan staring stonily out of the window.
She felt helpless—helpless to withstand the thin, steel-eyed woman who was Roger's mother. Nominally free, she was to all intents and purposes a prisoner at Trenby Hall till Kitty or Penelope came home. Of course she could write to Lord St. John if she chose. But even if she did, he most certainly could not ask her to stay with him at his chambers in London. Besides, she didn't want to appeal to him. She knew he would think she was running away—playing the coward, and that it would be a bitter disappointment to him to find her falling short of the high standard which he had always set before her.
"No Davenant was ever a coward in the face of difficulties," he had told her. And she loved him far too much to hurt him as grievously as she knew it would hurt him if she ran away from them.
She stood there for a long time, staring dumbly out at the falling rain and dripping trees. She was thinking along the lines which St. John had laid down for her. "Don't make Roger pay for your own blunder." Was she doing that? Remembering all that had passed between them last night she began to realise that this was just what she had been doing.
She had no love to give him, but she had been keeping him out of everything else as well. She had not even tried to make a comrade of him, to let him into her interests and to try and share his own. Instead, she had shut herself away in the West Parlour with her music and her memories, and in his own blundering fashion Roger had realised it. Probably he had even guessed that that other man who had loved her had been able to go with her into the temple of music, comprehending it all and loving it even as she did.
She understood Roger's strange and sudden jealousy now. Although she was to be his wife, he was jealous of those invisible bonds of mutual understanding which had linked her to Peter Mallory—bonds which, had they two been free to marry, would have made of their marriage a perfect thing—the beautiful mating of spirit, soul, and body.
The doors of her soul—that innermost sanctuary of all—would never be opened for any other to enter in. But surely there was something more that she might give Roger than she had yet done. She could stretch out a friendly hand and try to link their interests together, however slight the link must be.
All at once, a plan to accomplish this formulated itself in her mind. He had wanted to "smash the piano." Well, he should never want that again. She would show him that her music was not going to stand between them—that she was willing to share it with him. She would talk to him about it, get him to understand something of what it meant to her, and when the concerto was quite finished, she would invite him into the West Parlour to listen to it. It was nearing completion—another week's work and what Sandy laughingly termed her "magnum opus" would be finished. Of course Roger wouldn't be able to give her a musician's understanding of it, but he would certainly appreciate the fact that she had played it to him first of anyone.
It would go far to heal that resentful jealousy if she "shared" the concerto with him. He would never again feel that she was keeping him outside the real interests of her life. Probably, later on, when it was performed by a big London orchestra, under the auspices of one of the best-known conductors of the day—who happened to be a particular friend of Nan's and a staunch believer in her capacity to do good work—Roger would even begin to take a quaint kind of pride in her musical achievements.
What she purposed would involve a good deal of pluck and sacrifice. For it takes both of these to reveal yourself, as any true musician must, to an audience of one with whom you are not utterly in sympathy. But if by this road she and Roger took one step towards a better understanding, towards that comradeship which was all that she could ever give him, then it would have been worth the sacrifice.
Gradually the stony look of despair lifted from her face, and a new spirit of resolution took possession of her. She was not the only person in the world who had to suffer. There were others, Peter amongst them, who were debarred by circumstances from finding happiness, and who went on doing their duty unflinchingly. It was only she who had failed—letting Roger bear the cost of her mistake. She had promised to marry him when it seemed the only way out of the difficulties which beset her, and now she was not honouring that promise. While Peter Mallory was still waiting quietly for the wife he no longer loved to come back to him—keeping the door of his house open to her whenever she should choose to claim fulfilment of the pledges he had given the day he married her.
Nan leaned her head against the window-pane, realising that, whatever
Roger's faults might he, she, too, had fallen short.
"Our troth, Nan. Hang on to it—hard, when life seems a bit more uphill than usual."
She could hear Peter's voice, steady and clear and reassuring, almost as she had heard it that night on the headland at Tintagel. She felt her throat contract and a burning mist of tears blurred her vision. For a moment she fought desperately against her weakness. Then, with a little strangled cry, she buried her face against her arm and broke into a passion of tears.