CHAPTER XXXIII
KEEPING FAITH
It was not until Sandy was actually in the express heading for London that he realised quite all the difficulties which lay ahead. He was just a big-hearted, impulsive boy, and, without wasting time in futile blame or vain regrets, he had plunged straight into the maelstrom which had engulfed his pal, determined to help her back to shore.
But, assuming he was right in his surmise that Rooke would take Nan first of all to London, he doubted his own ability to persuade her to return with him, and even if he were successful in this, there still remained the outstanding fact that by no human means could she reach Mallow until the small hours of the morning. He could well imagine the consternation and scandal which would ensue should she arrive back at the Court about five o'clock A.M.!
In a place like Mallow, where there was a large staff of indoor and outdoor servants, it would be practically impossible to secure Nan's return there unobserved. And as far as the neighbourhood—and Roger Trenby—were concerned, she might just as well run away with Maryon Rooke as return with Sandy McBain at that ungodly hour! She would be equally compromised. Besides, Kitty would have informed her household that she was not expecting Miss Davenant back that night.
Sandy began to see that the plans which he and Kitty had hastily thrown together in the dire emergency of the moment might serve well enough by way of temporary cover, but that in the long run they would rather complicate matters. Lies would have to be bolstered up with other lies. For example, what was he to do with Nan if he succeeded in persuading her to return? Where was she really to spend the night? It looked as though a veritable tissue of deceit must be woven if she were to be shielded from the consequences of her mad act. And Sandy was not a bit of good at telling lies. He hated them.
Suddenly into his harassed mind sprang the thought of Mallory. Of all men in the world, surely he, who loved Nan, would find a way to save her!
From the moment this idea took hold of him Sandy felt as though part of the insuperable load of trouble and anxiety had been lifted from his shoulders. His duty was now quite simple and straightforward. When he reached down he had only to seek out Peter, lay the whole matter before him, and then in some way or other he believed that Nan's errant feet would be turned from the dangerous path on which they were set.
There was something rather touching in his boyish faith that Peter would be able, even at the last moment, to save the woman he loved.
With unwonted forethought, born of the urgent need of the moment, he despatched the following telegram to Peter:
"Coming to see you. Arrive London to-night seven-thirty. Very urgent. Sandy McBain."
"Well, young Sandy McBain?"
Peter looked up from a table littered with manuscript. His face, a moment before rather troubled and stern, relaxed into a friendly smile, although the fingers of one hand still tapped restlessly on a sheet of paper that lay beside him—a cablegram from India which had evidently been the subject of his thoughts at the moment of Sandy's arrival.
"What's the urgent matter? Have you got into a hole and want a friendly haul-out? If so, I'm your man."
Sandy looked down wretchedly at the fine-cut face with its kind eyes and sensitive mouth.
"Oh, don't!" he said hastily, checking the friendly welcome as though it hurt him. "It—it isn't me. . . . It's Nan."
Peter sat quite still, only the hand that held his pen tightened in its grip.
"Nan!" he repeated, and something in the tone of his voice as he uttered the little name seemed to catch at Sandy's heart-strings and sent a sudden unmanageable lump up into his throat.
"Yes, Nan," he answered. Then, with a rush: "She's gone . . . gone away with Maryon Rooke."
The penholder snapped suddenly. Peter tossed the pieces aside and rose quietly to his feet.
"When?" he asked tensely.
"Now—to-day. If they've come to London, they'll be here very soon. They were in his car—I saw them on the London road. . . . And she left a letter for me. . . . Oh, good God, Mallory! Can't you save her—can't you save her?" And Sandy grabbed the older man by the shoulder and stared at him with feverish eyes.
Throughout the whole journey from Exeter to London he had been revolving the matter in his mind, thinking . . . thinking . . . thinking . . . to the ceaseless throb and hum of the train as it raced over the metals, and now he felt almost as though his brain would burst.
Peter pushed him down into a chair.
"You shall tell me all about it in a minute," he said quietly. Crossing the room to a cupboard in the wall, he took down a decanter and glass and poured out a stiff dose of whisky.
"There—drink that," he said, squirting in the soda-water. "You'll be all right directly," he added.
In a few minutes he had drawn the whole story from Sandy's eager lips, and as he listened his eyes grew curiously hard and determined.
"So we've just one chance—the house in Westminster," he commented.
"We'll go there, Sandy. At once."
They made their way quickly downstairs and out into the street. Hailing a passing taxi, Peter directed the man to drive to Maryon's house, where he enquired for Rooke in a perfectly ordinary manner, as though expecting to find him in, and was told by the maid who opened the door that Mr. Rooke had only just arrived and had gone out again immediately, but that she expected him back at any moment.
"Then I'll wait," said Peter, easily. "Miss Davenant's waiting here, too, isn't she?"
An odd look of surprise crossed the girl's face. She had thought—well, what matter what she had thought since it was evident there was really no secret about the lady's presence in her master's house. These people obviously expected to meet her there. Perhaps there were others coming as well, to an appointed rendezvous for a restaurant supper party or something of the sort.
"Yes, sir," she answered civilly, "Miss Davenant is in the studio."
Sandy heard Peter catch his breath at the reply as though some kind of tension had been suddenly slackened. Then the maid threw open the studio door and they saw Nan sitting in a chair beside a recently lit fire, her hands clasped round her knees.
She turned at the sound of their entrance and, as her eyes fell upon Peter, she rose slowly to her feet, staring at him, while every drop of colour drained away from her face.
"Peter!" she cried wonderingly. "Peter!" Her hands groped for the back of the chair from which she had risen and clung to it.
But her eyes never left his face. There was an expression in them as of the dawning of a great joy struggling against amazed unbelief, so that Sandy felt as though he had seen into some secret holy place. Turning, he stumbled out of the room, leaving those two who loved alone together.
"Peter, you're asking me to do the hardest thing in the world," said
Nan at last.
She had listened in heavy silence while he urged her to return.
"I know I am," he answered. "And do you think it's—easy—for me to ask it? To ask you to go back? . . . If it were possible. . . . Dear God! If it were possible to take you away, would I have left it undone?"
"I can't go back—I can't indeed! Why should I? I've only made Roger either furious or wretched ever since we were engaged. It isn't as if I could do any good by going back!"
"Isn't it something good to have kept faith?" There was a stern note in his voice.
She looked at him wistfully.
"If it had been you, Peter. . . . It's easy to keep faith when one loves."
"And are you being faithful—even to our love?" he asked quietly.
"To our love?" she whispered.
"There is a faithfulness of the Spirit, Nan—the only faithfulness possible to those who are set apart as we are."
He broke off and stood silent a moment, looking down at her with hard, hurt eyes. Presently he went on:
"That was all we might keep, you and I—our faith. Honour binds each of us to someone else. But"—his voice vibrating—"honour doesn't bind you to Maryon Rooke! If you go with him, you betray our love—the part of it that nothing can touch or spoil if we so will it. You won't do that, Nan. . . . You can't do it!"
She knew, then, that she would have to go back, go back and keep faith with Roger—and keep that deeper faith which love itself demanded.
Her head drooped, and she stretched out her hands as though seeking something of which they might lay hold. Peter took them into his and held them.
After a while a slight tremor ran through her body, and she drew herself away from him, relinquishing his hands.
"I'll go back," she said. "You've won, Peter. I can't . . . hurt . . . our love."
To Sandy the time seemed immeasurably long as he waited on the further side of the closed door, but at last they came to him—Peter, stern and rather strained-looking, and Nan with tear-bright eyes and a face from which every vestige of colour had vanished.
"Get a taxi, will you, Sandy?" said Peter.
Perhaps Sandy's face asked the question his lips dared not utter, for
Nan nodded to him with a twisted little smile.
"Yes, Sandy boy, I'm going back."
"Thank God!"
He wrung her hands and then went off in search of a taxi. Nan glanced round her a trifle nervously.
"Maryon may be here at any moment," she said. "Something's gone wrong with the car and he's taken it round to the garage to get it put right."
"We shall be off directly," answered Peter. "See"—he pointed down the street—"here comes Sandy with a taxi for us." He spoke reassuringly, as though to a frightened child.
In a few minutes they had started, the taxi slipping swiftly away through the lamp-lit streets. It had turned a corner and was out of sight by the time the parlourmaid, hearing the sound of the street door closing, had hurried upstairs only to find an empty studio. Nor could she give Rooke, on his return, the slightest information as to what had become of his guests—the lady, or the two gentlemen who, she told him, had called shortly afterwards, apparently expecting to find Miss Davenant there.
Meanwhile the taxi had carried them swiftly to Peter's house, where he hurried Nan and Sandy up to his own sanctum, instructing the taxi-driver to wait below.
"We've just time for a few sandwiches before we start," he said. He rang the bell for his servant and gave his orders in quick, authoritative tones.
Nan shook her head. She felt as though a single mouthful would choke her. But Peter insisted with a quiet determination she found herself unable to withstand, and gradually the food and wine brought back a little colour into her wan face, though her eyes were still full of a dumb anguish and every now and then her mouth quivered piteously.
She felt dazed and bewildered, as though she were moving in a dream. Was it really true that she had run away from the man she was to marry and was being brought back by the man who loved her? The whole affair appeared topsy-turvy and absurd. She supposed she ought to feel ashamed and overwhelmed, but somehow the only thing that seemed to her to matter was that she had failed of that high ideal of love which Peter had expected of her. She knew instinctively, despite the grave kindness of his manner, that she had hurt him immeasurably.
"And what are you going to do with me now?" she asked at last, with an odd expression in her face. She felt curiously indifferent about her immediate future.
Mallory glanced up at her from the time-table he was studying.
"There's a ten o'clock express which stops at Exeter. We're taking you home by that."
"There's no connection on to St. Wennys," remarked Nan impassively.
It didn't seem to her a matter of great importance. She merely stated it as a fact.
"No. But Sandy left his car in Exeter and we shall motor from there."
"We can all three squash in," added Sandy.
"We won't be able to keep Roger ignorant of the fact I've been away," pursued Nan.
"He will know nothing about it," said Peter quietly.
She looked dubious.
"I think," she observed slowly, "that you may find it more difficult than you expect—to manage that. Someone's sure to find out and tell him."
"Not necessarily," he answered.
"What about the servants?" persisted Nan. "They'll hardly allow my arrival at Mallow in the early hours of the morning to pass without comment! I really think, Peter," she added with a wry smile, "that it would have been simpler all round if you'd allowed me to run away."
His eyes sought hers.
"Won't you trust me, Nan?" he said patiently. "I'm not going to take you to Mallow to-night. I'm going to take you to Sandy's mother."
"To the mater!"
Sandy fairly gasped with astonishment.
Eliza, narrow-minded and pre-eminently puritanical in her views, was the very last person in the world whose help he would have thought of requisitioning in the present circumstances.
Peter nodded.
"Yes. I've only met her two or three times, but I'm quite sure she is the right person. I believe," he added, smiling gently, "that I know your mother better than you do, Sandy."
And it would appear that this was really the case. For when, in the small hours of the morning, the trio reached Trevarthen Wood and Sandy had effected an entry and aroused his mother, there followed a brief interview between Peter and Mrs. McBain, from which the latter emerged with her grim mouth all tremulous at the corners and her keen eyes shining through a mist of tears.
Sandy and Nan were waiting together in the hall, and both looked up anxiously as she bore down upon them.
To the ordinary eye she may have appeared merely a very plain old woman, arrayed in a hideous dressing-gown of uncompromising red flannel. But to Nan, as the bony arms went round her and the Scottish voice, harsh no longer but tender as an old song, murmured in her ears, she seemed the embodiment of beautiful, consoling motherhood, and her flat chest a resting-place where weary heads might gladly lie and sorrowful hearts pour out their grief in tears.
"Dinna greet, ma bairnie," crooned Eliza. "Ma wee bairnie, greet nae mair."