The Moon out of Reach

by Margaret Pedler

  CHAPTER XII

  THE DOUBLED BARRIER

  Except for one of Trenby's frequent telephone calls, enquiring as toNan's progress, Saturday passed uneventfully enough until the evening.Then, through the clear summer dusk Kitty discerned the Mallow carreturning from the station whither it had been sent to meet Ralph'strain.

  Hurrying down the drive, she saw Ralph lean forward and speak to thechauffeur who slowed down to a standstill, while he himself sprang outand came eagerly to her side.

  "You angelic woman!" he exclaimed fervently. "How did you manage it?Will she--will she really--"

  "I think she will," answered Kitty, smiling. "So you needn't worry.But I'm not the _dea ex machina_ to whom you owe the 'happy ending.'Nan managed it--in some incomprehensible way of her own."

  "Then blessed be Nan!" said Ralph piously, as he opened the door of thecar for her to enter. Two minutes' further driving brought them to thehouse.

  Following his hostess's instructions, Ralph remained outside, and asKitty entered the great hall, alone, a white-clad figure suddenly madeas though to escape by a further door.

  "Come back, Penny," called Kitty, a hint of kindly mischief in hervoice. "You'll just get half an hour to yourselves before thedressing-bell rings. Afterwards we shall expect to see you both,clothed and in your right minds, at dinner."

  The still look of happiness that had dwelt all day in Penelope's eyeswoke suddenly into radiance, just as you may watch the calm surface ofthe sea, when the tide is at its full, break into a hundred sparklingripples at the vivifying touch of a wandering breeze.

  She turned back hesitatingly, looking all at once absurdly young and alittle frightened--this tall and stately Penelope--while a faintblush-rose colour ran swiftly up beneath the pallor of her skin, andher eyes--those nice, humorous brown eyes of hers that always lookedthe world so kindly and honestly in the face--held the troubled shynessof a little child.

  Kitty laid a gentle hand on her arm.

  "Run along, my chicken," she said, suddenly feeling a thousand yearsold as she saw Penelope standing, virginal and sweet, at the thresholdof the gate through which she herself had passed with happy footstepsyears ago--that gate which opens to the wondering fingers of girlhood,laid so tremulously upon love's latch, and which closes behind thewoman, shutting her into paradise or hell.

  "Run along, my chicken. . . . And give Ralph my blessing!"

  * * * * * *

  It was not until the next day, towards the end of lunch, that Ralphshot his bolt from the blue. Other matters--which seemed almost toogood to be true in the light of Penelope's unqualified refusal of himthree days ago--had occupied his mind to the exclusion of everythingelse. Nor, to give him his due, was he in the least aware that he wasadministering any kind of shock, since he was quite ignorant as to theactual state of affairs betwixt Nan and Maryon Rooke.

  It was Kitty herself who inadvertently touched the spring which letloose the bolt.

  "What's the news in town, Ralph?" she asked. "Surely you gleaned_something_, even though you were only there for a single night?"

  Fenton laughed.

  "Would I dare to come back to you without the latest?" he returned,smiling. "The very latest is that Maryon Rooke is to be married."

  A silence followed, as though a bombshell had descended in their midstand scattered the whole party to the four winds of heaven.

  Then Kitty, making a desperate clutch at her self-possession, remarkedrather superficially:

  "Surely that's not true? I thought Maryon was far too confirmed abachelor to be beguiled into the holy bonds."

  "It's perfectly true," returned Fenton. "First-hand source. I ranacross Rooke himself and it was he who told me. They're to be marriedvery shortly, I believe."

  Fell another awkward silence. Then:

  "So old Rooke will be in the cart with the rest of us poor marriedmen," observed Barry, whose lazy blue eyes had yet contrived to noticethat Nan's slim fingers were nervously occupied in crumbling her breadinto small pieces.

  "In the car, rather," responded Ralph, "The lady is fabulously wealthy,I believe. Former husband, a steel magnate or something of the sort."

  "Well, that will help Maryon in his profession," said Nan, "with aquiet composure that was rather astonishing. But, as usual, in asocial crisis of this nature, she seemed able to control her voice,though her restless fingers betrayed her.

  "Yes, presumably that's why he's marrying her," replied Ralph. "Itcan't be a case of love at first sight"--grimly.

  "Isn't she pretty, then?" asked Penelope.

  "Plain as a pikestaff"--with emphasis. "I've met her once ortwice--Lady Beverley."

  It appeared from the chorus which followed that everyone present knewher more or less.

  "I should think she is plain!" exclaimed Kitty heartily.

  "Yes, she'd need to be very well gilded," commented her husband.

  "You're all rather severe, aren't you?" suggested Lord St. John."After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

  "Not with an artist," asserted Nan promptly. "He can't see beautywhere there isn't any."

  To the depths of her soul she felt that this was true, and inwardly sherecoiled violently from the idea of Maryon's marriage. She had beenbitterly hurt by his treatment of her, but to a certain extent she hadbeen able to envisage the whole affair from his point of view and tounderstand it.

  A rising young artist, if he wishes to succeed, cannot afford to hamperhimself with a wife and contend with the endless sordid details ofhousekeeping conducted on a necessarily economical scale. It slowlybut surely deadens the artist in him--the delicate creative inspirationthat is so easily smothered by material cares and worries. Nan refusedto blame Maryon simply because he had not married her then and there.But she could not forgive him for deliberately seeking her out andlaying on her that strange fascination of his when, in his own heart,he must have known that he would always ultimately place his art beforelove.

  And that he should marry Lady Beverley, a thoroughly commonplace womanhung round with the money her late husband had bequeathed her, Maryon'svery antithesis in all that pertained to the beautiful--this sickenedher. It seemed to her as though he were yielding his birthright inexchange for a mess of pottage.

  Where was his self-respect that he could do this thing? The highcourage of the artist to conquer single-handed? Not only had hetrampled on the love which he professed to have borne her--and which,in her innermost heart, she knew he _had_ borne her--but he wastrampling on everything else in life that mattered. She felt that hisprojected marriage with Lady Beverley was like the sale of a soul.

  When lunch was over, the whole party adjourned to the terrace forcoffee, and as soon as she decently could after the performance of thissacred rite, Nan escaped into the rose-garden by herself, there towrestle with the thoughts to which Ralph's carelessly uttered news hadgiven rise.

  They were rather bitter thoughts. She was aware of an odd sense ofloss, for whatever may have come between them, no woman ever quitebelieves that the man who has once loved her will eventually marry someother woman. Whether it happens early or late, it is always somewhatof a shock. These marriages deal such a blow at faith in thedeathlessness of love, and whether the woman herself is married or not,there remains always a secret and very tender corner in her heart forthe man who, having loved her unavailingly, has still found no other totake her place even twenty or thirty years later.

  Nan was conscious of an unspeakably deserted feeling. Maryon had gonecompletely out of her life; Peter, the man she loved, could never comeinto it; and the only man who strove for entrance was, as Penelope hadsaid, the last man in the world to make her happy.

  Nevertheless, it seemed as though with gentle taps and pushes Fate wereurging them together--forcing her towards Roger so that she mightescape from forbidden love and the desperate fear and pain of it.

  And then she saw him coming--it seemed almost as though her thought
haddrawn him--coming with swift feet over the grassy slopes of the park,too eager to follow the winding carriage-way, while the fallow-deerbounded lightly aside at the sound of his footsteps, halting at a safedistance to regard the intruder with big, timorous, velvety eyes.

  Nan paused in the middle of the rose-garden, where a stone sundialstood--grey and weather-beaten, its warning motto half obliterated bythe tender touches of the years:

  "Time flies. Remember that each breath But wafts thy erring spirit nearer death."

  Rather nervously, while she waited for Trenby to join her, she tracedthe ancient lettering with a slim forefinger. He crossed the lawnrapidly, pausing beside her, and without looking up she read aloud thegrim couplet graven round the dial.

  "That's a nice cheery motto," commented Trenby lightly. "They musthave been a lugubrious lot in the good old days!"

  "They weren't so afraid of facing the truth as we are," Nan made answermusingly. "I wonder why we always try to shut our eyes against thefact of death? . . . It's there waiting for us round the corner allthe time."

  "But there's life and love to come first," flashed out Roger.

  Nan looked at him thoughtfully.

  "Not for everyone," she said. Then suddenly: "Why are you here to-day,Roger? I told you to come on Monday."

  "I know you did. But I couldn't wait. It was horrible, Nan, justgetting a few words over the 'phone twice a day to say how you were. Ihad to see for myself."

  His eyes sought her throat where the lash of the hunting-crop hadwealed it. The mark had almost disappeared. With a sudden, passionatemovement he caught her in his arms and pressed his lips against thefaint scar.

  "Nan!" he said hoarsely. "Nan, say 'yes'! Say it quickly!"

  She drew away from him, freeing herself from the clasp of his arms.

  "I'm not sure it is 'yes.' You must hear what I have to say first.You wouldn't listen the other day. But to-day, Roger, you must--you_must_."

  "You're not going to take back your promise?" he demanded jealously.

  "It wasn't quite a promise, was it?" she said gently. "But it's foryou to decide--when you know everything."

  "Then I'll decide now," he answered quickly. "I want you--Nan, how Iwant you! I don't care anything at all about the past--I don't want toknow anything--"

  "But you must know"--steadily. "Perhaps when you know--you won't wantme."

  "I shall always want you."

  Followed a pause. Then Nan, with an effort, said quietly:

  "Do you want to marry a woman who has no love to give you?"

  He drew a step nearer.

  "I'll teach you how to love," he said unevenly. "I'll make you loveme--love me as I love you."

  "No, no," she answered. "You can't do that, Roger. You can't."

  His face whitened. Then, with his piercing eyes bent on her as thoughto read her inmost thoughts, he asked:

  "What do you mean? Is there--anyone else?"

  "Yes." The answer came very low.

  "And you care for him?"

  She nodded.

  "But we can never be anything to each other," she said, still in thatsame low, emotionless voice.

  "Then--then--you'd grow to care--"

  "No. I shall never care for anyone else again. That love has burnt upeverything--like a fire." She paused. "You don't want to marry--anempty grate, do you?" she asked, with a sudden desperate little laugh.

  Roger's arm drew her closer.

  "Yes, I do. And I'll light another fire there and by its warmth we'llmake our home together. I won't ask much, Nan dear--only to be allowedto love you and make you happy. And in time--in time, I'll teach youto love me in return and to forget the past. Only say yes, sweetheart!I'll keep you so safe--so safe!"

  What magic is it teaches men how to answer the women they love--endowsthem with a quickness of perception denied them till the flame of loveflares up within them, and doubly denied them should that flame burnlow behind the bars of matrimony? Surely it must be some cunning wileof old Dame Nature's--whose chief concern is, after all, thecontinuation of the species. She it is who knows how to deck thepeacock in fine feathers to the undoing of the plain little peahen, tocrown the stag with the antlers of magnificence so that the doe'svelvet eyes melt in adoration. And shall not the same wise old Dameknow how to add a glamour to the sons of men when one of them goesforth to seek his mate?

  Had Roger been just his normal self that afternoon--his matter-of-fact,imperceptive self--he would never have known how to answer Nan'shalf-desperate question, and the rose-garden might have witnessed adifferent ending to the scene. But Mother Mature was fighting on theside of this man-child of hers, whispering her age-old wisdom into hisears, and the tender comprehension of his answer fell like balm onNan's sore heart.

  "I'll keep you safe!"

  It was safety she craved most of all--the safety of some strongerbarrier betwixt herself and Peter. Once she were Roger's wife she knewshe would be well-guarded. The barrier would be too high for her toclimb, even though Peter called to her from the other side.

  A momentary terror of giving up her freedom assailed her, and for aninstant she wavered. Then she remembered her bargain with Fate--andif, finally, Roger were willing to take her when he knew everything,she would marry him.

  Her hand crept out and slid into his big palm.

  "Very well, Roger," she said quietly. "If--knowing everything--youstill want me . . . I'll marry you."

  And as his arms closed round her, crushing her in his embrace, sheseemed to hear a distant sound like the closing of a door--the door ofthe forbidden might-have-been.