CHAPTER XXVII
THE DARK ANGEL
The following morning Ralph and Penelope breakfasted alone, the latter having given orders that Nan was on no account to be disturbed. It was rather a dreary meal. They were each oppressed by the knowledge which last night had revealed to them—the knowledge of the tragedy of love into which their two friends had been thrust by circumstances.
On their return from the concert at the Albert Hall they had encountered Mallory in the vestibule of the Mansions, and the naked misery stamped upon his face had arrested them at once.
"Peter, what is it?"
The question had sped involuntarily from Penelope's lips as she met his blank, unseeing gaze. The sound of her voice seemed to bring him back to recognition.
"Go to Nan!" he said in queer, clipped tones. "She'll need you. Go at once!"
And from a Nan whose high courage had at last bent beneath the storm, leaving her spent and unresisting, Penelope had learned the whole unhappy truth.
Since breakfast the Fentons had been dejectedly discussing the matter together.
"Why doesn't she break off this miserable engagement with Trenby?" asked Ralph moodily.
"She won't. I think she would have done if—if—for Peter's sake. But not otherwise. She's got some sort of fixed notion that it wouldn't be playing fair." Penelope paused, then added wretchedly: "I feel as if our happiness had been bought at her expense!"
"Ours?" Completely mystified, Ralph looked across at her inquiringly.
"Yes, ours." And she proceeded to fill in the gaps, explaining how, when she had refused to marry him, down at Mallow the previous summer, it was Nan who had brought about his recall from London.
"I asked her if she intended to marry Roger, anyway—whether it affected my marriage or not," she said. "And she told me that she should marry him 'in any case.' But now, I believe it was just a splendid lie to make me happy."
"It's done that, hasn't it?" asked Ralph, smiling a little.
Penelope's eyes shone softly.
"You know," she answered. "But—Nan has paid for it."
The telephone hell buzzed suddenly into the middle of the conversation and Penelope flew to answer it. When she came back her face held a look of mingled apprehension and relief.
"Who rang up?" asked Ralph.
"It was Kitty. She's back in town. I've told her Nan is here, and she's coming round at once. She said she'd got some bad news for her, but I think it'll have to be kept from her. She isn't fit to stand anything more just now."
Ralph pulled out his watch.
"I'm afraid I can't stay to see Kitty," he said. "I've that oratorio rehearsal fixed for half-past ten."
"Then, my dear, you'd better get off at once," answered Penelope with her usual common sense. "You can't do any good here, and it's quite certain you'll upset things there if you're late."
So that when Kitty arrived, a few minutes later, it was Penelope alone who received her. She was looking very blooming after her sojourn in the south of France.
"I've left Barry behind at Cannes," she announced. "The little green tables have such a violent attraction for him, and he's just evolved a new and infallible system which he wants to try. Funnily enough, I had a craving for home. I can't think why—just in the middle of the season there! But I'm glad, now, that I came." Her small, piquant face shadowed suddenly. "I've bad news," she began abruptly, after a pause. Penelope checked her.
"Hear mine first," she said quickly. And launched into an account of the happenings of the last three days—Nan's quarrel with Roger, her sudden rush up to town and unexpected meeting with Peter at Maryon's studio, and finally the distraught condition in which she had discovered her last night after Peter had gone.
"Oh, Penny! How dreadful! How dreadful it all is!" exclaimed Kitty pitifully, when the other had finished. "I knew that Peter cared a long time ago. But not Nan! . . . Though I remember once, at Mallow, wondering the tiniest bit if she were losing her heart to him."
"Well, she's done it. If you'd seen them last night, after they'd parted, you'd have had no doubts. They were both absolutely broken up."
Kitty moved restlessly.
"And I suppose it's really my fault," she said unhappily. "I brought them together in the first instance. Penny, I was a fool. But I was so afraid—so afraid of Nan with Maryon. He might have made her do anything! He could have twisted her round his little finger at the time if he'd wanted to. Thank goodness he'd the decency not to try—that."
Penelope regarded her with an odd expression.
"Maryon's still in love with Nan," she observed quietly, "I saw that at the studio."
Kitty laughed a trifle harshly.
"Nan must be 'Maryon-proof' now, anyway," she asserted.
Penelope remained silent, her eyes brooding and reflective. That odd, magician's charm which Rooke so indubitably possessed might prove difficult for any woman to resist—doubly difficult for a woman whose entire happiness in life had fallen in ruins.
The entrance of the maid with a telegram gave her the chance to evade answering. She tore open the envelope and perused the wire with a puzzled frown on her face. Then she read it aloud for Kitty's benefit, still with the same rather bewildered expression.
"Is Nan with you? Reply Trenby, Century Club, Exeter."
"I don't understand it," she said doubtfully.
"I do!"
She and Kitty both looked up at the sound of the mocking, contemptuous voice, Nan was standing, fully dressed, on the threshold of the room.
"Nan!" Penelope almost gasped. "I thought you were still asleep!"
Nan glanced at her curiously.
"I've not been asleep—all night," she said evenly. "I asked your maid for a cup of tea some time ago. How d'you do, Kitty?"
She kissed the latter perfunctorily, her thoughts evidently preoccupied. She was very pale and heavy violet shadows lay beneath her eyes. To Penelope it seemed as though she had become immensely frailer and more fragile-looking in the passage of a single night. Refraining from comment, however, she held out the telegram.
"What does it mean, Nan?" she asked. "I thought you said you'd left a note telling Roger you were coming here?"
Nan read the wire in silence. Her face turned a shade whiter than before, if that were possible, and there was a smouldering anger in her eyes as she crushed the flimsy sheet in suddenly tense fingers and tossed it into the fire.
"No answer," she said shortly. As soon as the maid had left the room, she burst out furiously:
"How dare he? How dare he think such a thing?"
"What's the matter?" asked Penelope in a perturbed voice.
Nan turned to her passionately.
"Don't you see what he means? Don't you see? . . . It's because I didn't write to him yesterday from here. He doesn't believe the note I left behind—he doesn't believe I'm with you!"
"But, my dear, where else should you be?" protested Penelope. "And why shouldn't he believe it?"
Nan shrugged her shoulders.
"I told you we'd had a row. It—it was rather a big one. He probably thinks I've run away and married—oh, well"—she laughed mirthlessly—"anyone!"
"Nan!"
"That's what's happened"—nodding. "It was really . . . quite a big row." She paused, then continued, indignantly:
"As if I'd have tried to deceive him over it—writing that I was going to you when I wasn't! Roger's a fool! He ought to have known me better. I've never yet been coward enough to lie about anything I wanted to do."
"But, my dear"—Penelope was openly distressed—"we must send him a wire at once. I'd no idea you'd quarrelled—like that! He'll be out of his mind with anxiety."
"He deserves to be"—in a hard voice—"for distrusting me. No, Penny"—as Penelope drew a form towards her preparatory to inditing a reassuring telegram. "I won't have a wire sent to him. D'you hear? I won't have it!" Her foot beat excitedly on the floor.
Penelope signed and laid the telegraph form reluctantly aside.
"You agree with me, Kitten?" Nan whirled round upon Kitty for support.
"I'm not quite sure," came the answer. "You see, I've been away so long I really hardly know how things stand between you and Roger."
"They stand exactly as they were. I've promised to marry him in April.
And I'm going to keep my promise."
"Not in April," said Kitty very quietly. "You won't be able to marry him so soon. Nan, dear, I've—I've bad news for you." She hesitated and Nan broke in hastily:
"Bad news? What—who is it? Not—not Uncle David?" Her voice rose a little shrilly.
Kitty nodded, her face very sorrowful. And now Nan noticed that she had evidently been crying before she came to the flat.
"Yes. He died this morning—in his sleep. They sent round to let me know. He had told his man to do this if—whenever it happened. He didn't want you to have the shock of receiving a wire."
"I don't think it would have been a shock," said Nan at last, quietly.
"I think I knew it wouldn't be very long before—before he went away.
I've known . . . since Christmas."
Her thoughts went back to that evening when she and St. John had sat talking together by the firelight in the West Parlour. Yes, she had known—ever since then—that the Dark Angel was drawing near. And now, now that she realised her old friend had stepped painlessly and peacefully across the border-line which divides this world we know from that other world whose ways are hidden from our sight, it came upon her less as a shock than as the inevitable ending of a long suspense.
"I wish—I wish I'd seen him just once more," she said wistfully.
"To—to say good-bye."
Kitty searched the depths of her bag and withdrew a sealed envelope.
"I think he must have known that," she said gently. "He left this to be given to you."
She gave the letter into the girl's hands and, signing to Penelope to follow her, quitted the room, leaving Nan alone with her dead.
In the silence of the empty room Nan read the last words, of her beloved Uncle David that would ever reach her.
"I think this is good-bye, Nan," he had written. "But don't grieve overmuch, my dear. If you knew how long a road to travel it has seemed since Annabel went away, you would be glad for me. Will you try to be? Always remember that the road was brightened by many flowers along the wayside—and one of those flowers has been our good friendship, yours and mine. We've been comrades, Nan, which is a far better thing than most relatives achieve. And if sometimes you feel sad and miss the old friendship—as I know you will—just remember that I'm only in the next room. People are apt to make a great to-do about death. But, after all, it's merely stepping from one of God's rooms into the next.
"I don't want to talk much about money matters, but I must just say this—that all I have will be yours, just as all my heart was yours.
"I hope life will be kind to you, my dear—kinder than you hope or expect."
There were many who would find the world the poorer for lack of the kindly, gallant spirit which had passed into "God's next room," but to Nan the old man's death meant not only the loss of a beloved friend, but the withdrawal from her life of a strong, restraining influence which, unconsciously to herself, had withheld her from many a rash action into which her temperament would otherwise have hurried her.
It seemed a very climax of the perversity of fate that now, at the very moment when the pain and bitterness of things were threatening to submerge her, Death's relentless fingers should snatch away the one man on earth who, with his wise insight and hoarded experience of life, might have found a way to bring peace and healing to her troubled soul.
She spent the rest of the day quietly in her room, and when she reappeared at dinner she was perfectly composed, although her eyes still bore traces of recent tears. Against the black of the simple frock she wore, her face and throat showed pale and clear like some delicate piece of sculpture.
Penelope greeted her with kindly reproach.
"You hardly touched the lunch I sent up for you," she said.
Nan, shook her head, smiling faintly.
"I've been saying good-bye to Uncle David," she answered quietly. "I didn't want anything to eat."
Kitty, who had remained at the flat, regarded her with some concern. The girl had altered immensely since she had last seen her before going abroad. Her face had worn rather fine and bore an indefinable look of strain. Kitty sighed, then spoke briefly.
"Well, you'll certainly eat some dinner," she announced with firmness.
"And, Ralph, you'd better unearth a bottle of champagne from somewhere.
She wants something to pick her up a bit."
Under Kitty's kindly, lynx-eyed gaze Nan dared not refuse to eat and drink what was put before her, and she was surprised, when dinner was over, to find how much better she felt in consequence. Prosaic though it may appear, the fact remains that the strain and anguish of parting, even from those we love best on earth, can be mitigated by such material things as food and drink. Or is it that these only strengthen the body to sustain the tortured soul within it?
After dinner Ralph deserted to his club, and the three women drew round the fire, talking desultorily, as women will, and avoiding as though by common consent matters that touched them too nearly. Presently the maid, came noiselessly into the firelit room.
"A gentleman has called to see Miss Davenant," she said, addressing her mistress.
Nan's heart missed a beat. It was Peter—she was sure of it—Peter, who had come back to her! In the long watches of the night he had found out that they could not part . . . not like this . . . never to see each other any more! It was madness. And he had come to tell her so. The agony of the interminable night had been his as well as hers.
"Did he give any name?" Her violet eyes were almost black with excitement.
"No, miss. He is in the sitting-room."
Slowly Nan made her way across the hall, one hand pressed against her breast to still the painful throbbing of her heart. Outside the room she hesitated a moment; then, with a quick indrawing of her breath, she opened the door and went in.
"Roger!"
She shrank back and stood gazing at him dumbly, silent with the shock of sudden and undreamed-of disappointment. She had been so sure, so sure that it was Peter! And yet, jerked suddenly back to the reality of things, she almost smiled at her own certainty. Peter was too strong a man to renounce and then retract his renunciation twenty-four hours later.
Trenby, who had been standing staring into the fire, turned at the sound of her entrance. He looked dog-tired, and his eyes were sunken as though sleep had not visited them recently. At the sight of her a momentary expression of what seemed to be unutterable relief flashed across his face, then vanished, leaving him with bent brows and his under-jaw thrust out a little.
"Roger!" repeated Nan in astonishment.
"Yes," he replied gruffly. "Are you surprised to see me?"
"Certainly I am. Why have you come? Why have you followed me here?"
"I've come to take you back," he said arrogantly.
Her spirit rose in instant revolt.
"You might have saved yourself the trouble," she flashed back angrily.
"I'm not coming. I'll return when I've finished my visit to Penelope."
"You'll come back with me now—to-night," he replied doggedly. "We can catch the night mail and I've a car waiting below."
"Then it can wait! Good heavens, Roger! D'you think I'll submit to be made a perfect fool of—fetched back like a child?"
He took a step towards her.
"And do you think that I'll submit to be made a fool of?" he asked in a voice of intense anger. "To be made a fool of by your rushing away from my house in my absence—to have the servants gossiping—not to know what has become of you—"
"I left a note for you," she interrupted. "And you didn't believe what
I told you in it."
"No," he acknowledged. "I didn't. I was afraid . . . Good God, Nan!" he broke out with sudden passion. "Haven't you any idea of what I've been through this last forty-eight hours? . . . It's been hell!"
She looked at him as though amazed.
"I don't understand," she said impatiently. "Please explain."
"Explain? Can't you understand?" His face darkened. "You said you couldn't marry me—you asked me to release you! And then—after that!—I come home to find you gone—gone with no word of explanation, and the whole household buzzing with the story that you've run away! I waited for a letter from you, and none came. Then I wired—to safeguard you I wired from Exeter. No answer! What was I to think? . . . What could I think but that you'd gone? Gone to some other man!"
"Do you suppose if I'd left you for someone else I should have been afraid to tell you? That I should have written an idiotic note like that? . . . How dared you wire to Penelope? It was abominable of you!"
"Why didn't she reply? I thought they must be away—"
"That clinched matters in your mind, I suppose?" she said contemptuously. "But it's quite simple. Penelope didn't wire because I wouldn't let her."
He was silent. It was quite true that since Nan's disappearance from Trenby Hall he had been through untold agony of mind. The possibility that she might have left him altogether in a wild fit of temper had not seemed to him at all outside the bounds of probability. And it was equally true that when another day had elapsed without bringing further news of her, he had become a prey to the increasing atmosphere of suspicion which, thanks to the gossip that always gathers in the servants' hall, had even spread to the village.
Nor had either his mother or cousin made the least attempt to stem his rising anger. Far from it. Lady Gertrude had expressed her opinion with a conciseness that was entirely characteristic.
"You made an unwise choice, my son. Nan has no sense of her future position as your wife."
Isobel had been less blunt in her methods, but a corrosive acid had underlain her gentle speech.
"I can't understand it, Roger. She—she was fond of you, wasn't she? Oh"—with a quick gesture of her small brown hands—"she must have been!"
"I don't know so much about the 'must have been,'" Roger had admitted ruefully. "She cared—once—for someone else."
"Who was it?"
Isobel's question shot out as swiftly as the tongue of an adder.
"I can't tell you," he answered reluctantly. He wished to God he could! That other unknown man of whom, from the very beginning, he had been unconsciously afraid! He was actively, consciously jealous of him now.
Then Isobel's subdued, shocked tones recalled him from his thoughts.
"Oh, Roger, Nan couldn't—she would never have run away to be—with him?"
She had given words to the very fear which had been lurking at the back of his mind from the moment he had read the briefly-worded note which Nan had left for him.
Throughout the night this belief had grown and deepened within him, and with the dawn he had motored across country to Exeter, driving like a madman, heedless of speed limits. There he had dispatched a telegram to Penelope, and having waited unavailingly for a reply he had come straight on to town by rail. The mark of those long hours of sickening apprehension was heavily imprinted on the white, set face he turned to Nan when she informed him that it was she who had stopped Penelope from sending any answer.
"And I suppose," he said slowly, "it merely struck you as . . . amusing . . . to let me think what I thought?"
"You had no right to think such a thing," she retorted. "I may be anything bad that your mother believes me, but at least I play fair! I left Trenby to stay with Penelope, exactly as I told you in my note. If—if I proposed to break my promise to you, I wouldn't do it on the sly—meanly, like that." Her eyes looked steadily into his. "I'd tell you first."
He snatched her into his arms with a sudden roughness, kissing her passionately.
"You'd drive a man to madness!" he exclaimed thickly. "But I shan't let you escape a second time," he went on with a quiet intensity of purpose. "You'll come back with me now—to-night—to Trenby."
She made a quick gesture of negation.
"No, no, I can't—I couldn't come now!"
His grip of her tightened.
"Now!" he repeated in a voice of steel. "And I'll marry you by special licence within a week. I'll not risk losing you again."
Nan shuddered in his arms. To go straight from that last farewell with Peter into marriage with a man she did not love—it was unthinkable! She shrank from it in every fibre of her being. Some day, perhaps, she could steel herself to make the terrible surrender. But not now, not yet!
"No! No!" she cried strickenly. "I can't marry you! Not so soon!
You must give me time—wait a little! Kitty—"
She struggled to break from him, but he held her fast.
"We needn't wait for Kitty to come back," he said.
"No." The door had opened immediately before he spoke and Kitty herself came quickly into the room. "No," she answered him. "You needn't wait for me to come back. I returned yesterday."
"Kitty!"
With a cry like some tortured captive thing Nan wrenched herself free and fled to Kitty's side.
"Kitty! Tell him—tell him I can't marry him now! Not yet—oh, I can't!"
Kitty patted her arm reassuringly.
"Don't worry," she answered. Then she turned to Roger.
"Your wedding will have to be postponed, Roger," she said Quietly.
"Nan's uncle died early this morning."
She watched the tense anger and suspicion die swiftly out of his eyes.
The death of a relative, necessarily postponing Nan's marriage,
appealed to that curious conventional strain in him, inherited from
Lady Gertrude.
"Lord St. John dead?" he repeated. "Nan, why didn't you tell me? I should have understood if I'd known that. I wouldn't have worried you." He was full of shocked contrition and remorse.
Kitty felt she had been disingenuous. But she had sheltered Nan from the cave-man that dwelt in Roger—oddly at variance with the streak of conventionality which lodged somewhere in his temperamental make-up. And she was quite sure that, if Lord St. John knew, he would be glad that his death should have succoured Nan, just as in life he had always sought to serve her.
"I want Nan to come and stay with me for a time," pursued Kitty steadily, on the principle of striking while the iron is hot. "Later on I'll bring her down to Mallow, and later still we can talk about the wedding. You'll have to wait some months, Roger."
He assented, and Nan, realising that it was his mother in him, for the moment uppermost, making these concessions to convention, felt conscious of a wild hysterical desire to burst out laughing. She made a desperate effort to control herself.
The room seemed to be growing very dark. Far away in the sky—no, it must be the ceiling—she could see the electric lights burning ever more and more dimly as the waves of darkness surged round her, rising higher and higher.
"But there's honour, dear, and duty. . . ." Peter's words floated up to her on the shadowy billows which swayed towards her.
"Honour! Duty!"
There was a curious singing in her head. It sounded like the throb of a myriad engines, rhythmically repeating again and again:
"Honour! Duty! Honour! Duty!"
The words grew fainter, vaguer, trailing off into a regular pulsation that beat against her ears.
"Honour!" She thought she said it very loudly.
But all that Kitty and Roger heard was a little moan as Nan slipped to the ground in a dead faint.