CHAPTER XXVII
THE DARK ANGEL
The following morning Ralph and Penelope breakfasted alone, the latterhaving given orders that Nan was on no account to be disturbed. It wasrather a dreary meal. They were each oppressed by the knowledge whichlast night had revealed to them--the knowledge of the tragedy of loveinto which their two friends had been thrust by circumstances.
On their return from the concert at the Albert Hall they hadencountered Mallory in the vestibule of the Mansions, and the nakedmisery 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 hisblank, unseeing gaze. The sound of her voice seemed to bring him backto recognition.
"Go to Nan!" he said in queer, clipped tones. "She'll need you. Go atonce!"
And from a Nan whose high courage had at last bent beneath the storm,leaving her spent and unresisting, Penelope had learned the wholeunhappy truth.
Since breakfast the Fentons had been dejectedly discussing the mattertogether.
"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. Butnot otherwise. She's got some sort of fixed notion that it wouldn't beplaying fair." Penelope paused, then added wretchedly: "I feel as ifour 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 itaffected my marriage or not," she said. "And she told me that sheshould marry him 'in any case.' But now, I believe it was just asplendid 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 conversationand Penelope flew to answer it. When she came back her face held alook 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, andshe'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 standanything more just now."
Ralph pulled out his watch.
"I'm afraid I can't stay to see Kitty," he said. "I've that oratoriorehearsal fixed for half-past ten."
"Then, my dear, you'd better get off at once," answered Penelope withher usual common sense. "You can't do any good here, and it's quitecertain you'll upset things there if you're late."
So that when Kitty arrived, a few minutes later, it was Penelope alonewho received her. She was looking very blooming after her sojourn inthe south of France.
"I've left Barry behind at Cannes," she announced. "The little greentables have such a violent attraction for him, and he's just evolved anew and infallible system which he wants to try. Funnily enough, I hada craving for home. I can't think why--just in the middle of theseason there! But I'm glad, now, that I came." Her small, piquantface shadowed suddenly. "I've bad news," she began abruptly, after apause. Penelope checked her.
"Hear mine first," she said quickly. And launched into an account ofthe happenings of the last three days--Nan's quarrel with Roger, hersudden rush up to town and unexpected meeting with Peter at Maryon'sstudio, and finally the distraught condition in which she haddiscovered her last night after Peter had gone.
"Oh, Penny! How dreadful! How dreadful it all is!" exclaimed Kittypitifully, when the other had finished. "I knew that Peter cared along 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'dparted, 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 broughtthem together in the first instance. Penny, I was a fool. But I wasso afraid--so afraid of Nan with Maryon. He might have made her doanything! He could have twisted her round his little finger at thetime if he'd wanted to. Thank goodness he'd the decency not totry--that."
Penelope regarded her with an odd expression.
"Maryon's still in love with Nan," she observed quietly, "I saw that atthe 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 provedifficult for any woman to resist--doubly difficult for a woman whoseentire happiness in life had fallen in ruins.
The entrance of the maid with a telegram gave her the chance to evadeanswering. She tore open the envelope and perused the wire with apuzzled 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, contemptuousvoice, 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 maidfor a cup of tea some time ago. How d'you do, Kitty?"
She kissed the latter perfunctorily, her thoughts evidentlypreoccupied. She was very pale and heavy violet shadows lay beneathher eyes. To Penelope it seemed as though she had become immenselyfrailer 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 anote telling Roger you were coming here?"
Nan read the wire in silence. Her face turned a shade whiter thanbefore, if that were possible, and there was a smouldering anger in hereyes as she crushed the flimsy sheet in suddenly tense fingers andtossed 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 Ididn't write to him yesterday from here. He doesn't _believe_ the noteI left behind--he doesn't believe I'm with you!"
"But, my dear, where else should you be?" protested Penelope. "And whyshouldn't he believe it?"
Nan shrugged her shoulders.
"I told you we'd had a row. It--it was rather a big one. He probablythinks I've run away and married--oh, well"--she laughedmirthlessly--"anyone!"
"Nan!"
"That's what's happened"--nodding. "It was really . . . quite a bigrow." She paused, then continued, indignantly:
"As if I'd have tried to deceive him over it--writing that I was goingto you when I wasn't! Roger's a fool! He ought to have known mebetter. I've never yet been coward enough to lie about anything Iwanted to do."
"But, my dear"--Penelope was openly distressed--"we must send him awire at once. I'd no idea you'd quarrelled--like that! He'll be outof 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 areassuring telegram. "I won't have a wire sent to him. D'you hear? Iwon'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 solong 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 marryhim so soon. Nan, dear, I've--I've bad news for you." She hesitatedand Nan broke in hastily:
"Bad news? What--who is it? Not--_not_ Uncle David?" Her voice rose alittle shrilly.
Kitty nodded, her face very sorrowful. And now Nan noticed that shehad evidently been crying before she came to the flat.
"Yes. He died this morning--in his sleep. They sent round to let meknow. He had told his man to do this if--whenever it happened. Hedidn'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 sattalking together by the firelight in the West Parlour. Yes, she hadknown--ever since then--that the Dark Angel was drawing near. And now,now that she realised her old friend had stepped painlessly andpeacefully across the border-line which divides this world we know fromthat other world whose ways are hidden from our sight, it came upon herless 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 tobe given to you."
She gave the letter into the girl's hands and, signing to Penelope tofollow her, quitted the room, leaving Nan alone with her dead.
In the silence of the empty room Nan read the last words, of herbeloved Uncle David that would ever reach her.
"I think this is good-bye, Nan," he had written. "But don't grieveovermuch, my dear. If you knew how long a road to travel it has seemedsince 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 thewayside--and one of those flowers has been our good friendship, yoursand mine. We've been comrades, Nan, which is a far better thing thanmost relatives achieve. And if sometimes you feel sad and miss the oldfriendship--as I know you will--just remember that I'm only in the nextroom. People are apt to make a great to-do about death. But, afterall, 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 saythis--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 orexpect."
There were many who would find the world the poorer for lack of thekindly, gallant spirit which had passed into "God's next room," but toNan the old man's death meant not only the loss of a beloved friend,but the withdrawal from her life of a strong, restraining influencewhich, unconsciously to herself, had withheld her from many a rashaction into which her temperament would otherwise have hurried her.
It seemed a very climax of the perversity of fate that now, at the verymoment when the pain and bitterness of things were threatening tosubmerge her, Death's relentless fingers should snatch away the one manon 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 shereappeared at dinner she was perfectly composed, although her eyesstill bore traces of recent tears. Against the black of the simplefrock she wore, her face and throat showed pale and clear like somedelicate 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. "Ididn'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 goingabroad. Her face had worn rather fine and bore an indefinable look ofstrain. 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 anddrink what was put before her, and she was surprised, when dinner wasover, to find how much better she felt in consequence. Prosaic thoughit may appear, the fact remains that the strain and anguish of parting,even from those we love best on earth, can be mitigated by suchmaterial things as food and drink. Or is it that these only strengthenthe body to sustain the tortured soul within it?
After dinner Ralph deserted to his club, and the three women drew roundthe fire, talking desultorily, as women will, and avoiding as though bycommon consent matters that touched them too nearly. Presently themaid, came noiselessly into the firelit room.
"A gentleman has called to see Miss Davenant," she said, addressing hermistress.
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 foundout that they could not part . . . not like this . . . never to seeeach 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 withexcitement.
"No, miss. He is in the sitting-room."
Slowly Nan made her way across the hall, one hand pressed against herbreast to still the painful throbbing of her heart. Outside the roomshe hesitated a moment; then, with a quick indrawing of her breath, sheopened the door and went in.
"_Roger_!"
She shrank back and stood gazing at him dumbly, silent with the shockof sudden and undreamed-of disappointment. She had been so sure, so_sure_ that it was Peter! And yet, jerked suddenly back to the realityof things, she almost smiled at her own certainty. Peter was toostrong a man to renounce and then retract his renunciation twenty-fourhours later.
Trenby, who had been standing staring into the fire, turned at thesound of her entrance. He looked dog-tired, and his eyes were sunkenas though sleep had not visited them recently. At the sight of her amomentary expression of what seemed to be unutterable relief flashedacross his face, then vanished, leaving him with bent brows and hisunder-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 cancatch the night mail and I've a car waiting below."
"Then it can wait! Good heavens, Roger! D'you think I'll submit to bemade 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 ina voice of intense anger. "To be made a fool of by your rushing awayfrom my house in my absence--to have the servants gossiping--not toknow what has become of you--"
"I left a note for you," she interrupted. "And you didn't believe whatI 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'vebeen through this last forty-eight hours? . . . It's been hell!"
Sh
e 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 youcouldn't marry me--you asked me to release you! And then--afterthat!--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! Iwaited for a letter from you, and none came. Then I wired--tosafeguard you I wired from Exeter. No answer! What was I tothink? . . . What _could_ I think but that you'd gone? Gone to someother man!"
"Do you suppose if I'd left you for someone else I should have beenafraid to tell you? That I should have written an idiotic note likethat? . . . 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 saidcontemptuously. "But it's quite simple. Penelope didn't wire becauseI wouldn't let her."
He was silent. It was quite true that since Nan's disappearance fromTrenby Hall he had been through untold agony of mind. The possibilitythat she might have left him altogether in a wild fit of temper had notseemed to him at all outside the bounds of probability. And it wasequally true that when another day had elapsed without bringing furthernews of her, he had become a prey to the increasing atmosphere ofsuspicion which, thanks to the gossip that always gathers in theservants' hall, had even spread to the village.
Nor had either his mother or cousin made the least attempt to stem hisrising anger. Far from it. Lady Gertrude had expressed her opinionwith a conciseness that was entirely characteristic.
"You made an unwise choice, my son. Nan has no sense of her futureposition as your wife."
Isobel had been less blunt in her methods, but a corrosive acid hadunderlain 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_ havebeen!"
"I don't know so much about the 'must have been,'" Roger had admittedruefully. "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 hecould! That other unknown man of whom, from the very beginning, he hadbeen unconsciously afraid! He was actively, consciously jealous of himnow.
Then Isobel's subdued, shocked tones recalled him from his thoughts.
"Oh, Roger, Nan couldn't--she would never have run away to be--withhim?"
She had given words to the very fear which had been lurking at the backof his mind from the moment he had read the briefly-worded note whichNan had left for him.
Throughout the night this belief had grown and deepened within him, andwith the dawn he had motored across country to Exeter, driving like amadman, heedless of speed limits. There he had dispatched a telegramto Penelope, and having waited unavailingly for a reply he had comestraight on to town by rail. The mark of those long hours of sickeningapprehension was heavily imprinted on the white, set face he turned toNan when she informed him that it was she who had stopped Penelope fromsending 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 beanything bad that your mother believes me, but at least I play fair! Ileft 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 thesly--meanly, like that." Her eyes looked steadily into his. "I'd tellyou first."
He snatched her into his arms with a sudden roughness, kissing herpassionately.
"You'd drive a man to madness!" he exclaimed thickly. "But I shan'tlet you escape a second time," he went on with a quiet intensity ofpurpose. "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 speciallicence within a week. I'll not risk losing you again."
Nan shuddered in his arms. To go straight from that last farewell withPeter 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, shecould steel herself to make the terrible surrender. But not now, notyet!
"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 Kittyherself came quickly into the room. "No," she answered him. "Youneedn't wait for me to come back. I returned yesterday."
"Kitty!"
With a cry like some tortured captive thing Nan wrenched herself freeand fled to Kitty's side.
"Kitty! Tell him--tell him I can't marry him now! Not yet--oh, Ican'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 fromLady Gertrude.
"Lord St. John dead?" he repeated. "Nan, why didn't you tell me? Ishould have understood if I'd known that. I wouldn't have worriedyou." He was full of shocked contrition and remorse.
Kitty felt she had been disingenuous. But she had sheltered Nan fromthe cave-man that dwelt in Roger--oddly at variance with the streak ofconventionality which lodged somewhere in his temperamental make-up.And she was quite sure that, if Lord St. John knew, he would be gladthat his death should have succoured Nan, just as in life he had alwayssought to serve her.
"I want Nan to come and stay with me for a time," pursued Kittysteadily, on the principle of striking while the iron is hot. "Lateron I'll bring her down to Mallow, and later still we can talk about thewedding. You'll have to wait some months, Roger."
He assented, and Nan, realising that it was his mother in him, for themoment uppermost, making these concessions to convention, feltconscious of a wild hysterical desire to burst out laughing. She madea desperate effort to control herself.
The room seemed to be growing very dark. Far away in the sky--no, itmust be the ceiling--she could see the electric lights burning evermore and more dimly as the waves of darkness surged round her, risinghigher and higher.
"But there's honour, dear, and duty. . . ." Peter's words floated upto her on the shadowy billows which swayed towards her.
"Honour! Duty!"
There was a curious singing in her head. It sounded like the throb ofa myriad engines, rhythmically repeating again and again:
"Honour! Duty! Honour! Duty!"
The words grew fainter, vaguer, trailing off into a regular pulsationthat 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 tothe ground in a dead faint.
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