CHAPTER XXVI
"THE WIDTH OF A WORLD BETWEEN"
Nan gave a final touch to Penelope's hair, drawing the gold filletwhich bound it a little lower down on to the broad brow, then stoodback and regarded the effect with critical eyes.
"That'll do," she declared. "You look a duck, Penelope! I hope you'llget a splendid reception. You will if you smile at the audience asprettily as you're smiling now! Won't she, Ralph?"
"I hope so," answered Fenton seriously. "It would be a waste of aperfectly good smile if she doesn't." And amid laughter and goodwishes the Fentons departed for the concert, Peter Mallory accompanyingthem downstairs to speed them on their way.
Meanwhile Nan, left alone for the moment, became suddenly conscious ofan overpowering nervousness at the prospect of spending the eveningalone with Peter. There was so much--so much that lay behind them thatthey must either restrict their conversation to the meresttrivialities, avoiding all reference to the past, or find themselvesplunged into dangerous depths. Dinner had passed without incident.Sustained by the presence of Penelope and Ralph, Nan had carriedthrough her part in it with a brilliance and reckless daring whichrevealed nothing at all of the turmoil of confused emotions whichunderlay her apparent gaiety.
She seemed to have become a new being this evening, an enchantingcreature of flame and fire. She said the most outrageous things atdinner, talking a lot of clever nonsense but sheering quickly away ifany more serious strain of thought crept into the conversation. For aninstant she might plumb the depths, the next she would be winginglightly over the surface again, while a spray of sparkling laughterrose and fell around her. With butterfly touch she opened the cupboardof memory, daring Peter the while with her eyes, skimming the thin iceof bygone times with the adroitness of an expert skater.
She was wearing the frock which had called forth Lady Gertrude's ire,and from its filmy folds her head and shoulders emerged like a flowerfrom its sheath, vividly arresting, her scarlet lips and "blue-violet"eyes splashes of live colour against the warm golden ivory of her skin.
It was Nan at her most emotionally distracting, now sparkling with analmost feverish vivacity, now drooping into sudden silence, while thelines of her delicately angled face took on a touching, languorousappeal.
But now, now that the need for playing a part was over, and she stoodwaiting for Mallory's return, something tragic and desperate looked outof her eyes. She paced the room restlessly. Outside a gale wasblowing. She could hear the wind roaring through the street. A suddengust blew down the chimney and the flames flickered and bent beneathit, while in the distance sounded a low rumble of thunder--the odd,unexpected thunder that comes sometimes in winter.
Presently the lift gates clanged apart. She heard Mallory's step as hecrossed the hall. Then the door of the room opened and shut.
She did not speak. For a moment she could not even look up. She wasconscious of nothing beyond the one great fact that she and Peter werealone together--alone, yet as much divided as though the whole worldlay between them.
At last, with an effort, she raised her eyes and saw him standingbeside her. A stifled cry escaped her. Throughout dinner, while theFentons had been present, he had smiled and talked much as usual, sothat the change in the man had been less noticeable. But the mask wasoff now, and in repose his face showed, so worn and ravaged by griefthat Nan cried out involuntarily in pitiful dismay.
Her first impulse was to fold her arms about him, drawing that linedand altered face against her bosom, hiding from sight the starkbitterness of the eyes that met her own, and comforting him as only thewoman who loves a man knows how.
Then, like a black, surging flood, the memory of all that kept themapart rushed over her and she drew back her arms, half-raised, fallinglimply to her sides. He made no effort to approach her. Only his eyesremained fixed on her, hungrily devouring every line of the belovedface.
"Why did you come?" she asked at last. Her voice seemed to herself asthough it came from a great distance. It sounded like someone elsespeaking.
"I couldn't keep away. Life without you has become one long,unbearable hell."
He spoke with a strange, slow vehemence which seemed to hold theaggregated bitterness and pain of all those solitary months.
A shudder ran through her slight frame. Her own agony of separationhad been measurable with his.
"But you said . . . at Tintagel . . . that we mustn't meet again. Youshouldn't have come--oh, you shouldn't have come!" she criedtremulously.
He drew a step nearer to her.
"I _had_ to come, I'm a man--not a saint!" he answered.
She looked up swiftly, trying to read what lay behind the harshrepression in his tones. She felt as though he were holding somethingin leash--something that strained and fought against restraint.
"_I'm a man--not a saint_!" The memory of his renunciation at KingArthur's Castle swept over her.
"Yet I once thought you--almost that, Peter," she said slowly.
But he brushed her words aside.
"Well, I'm not. When I saw you to-day at the studio . . . God! Didyou think I'd keep away? . . . Nan, did you _want_ me to?"
The leash was slipping. She trembled, aching to answer him as herwhole soul dictated, to tell him the truth--that she wanted him everyminute of the day and that life without him stretched before her like abarren waste.
"I--we--oh, you're making it so hard for me!" she said imploringly."Please go--go, now!"
Instead, he caught her in his arms, holding her crushed against hisbreast.
"No, I'm not going. Oh, Nan--little Nan that I love! I can't give youup again. Beloved!--Soul of me!" And all the love and longing,against which he had struggled unavailingly throughout those emptymonths of separation, came pouring from his lips in a torrent ofpassionate pleading that shook her heart.
With an effort she tore herself free--wrenched herself away from thearms whose clasp about her body thrilled her from head to foot.Somewhere in one of the cells of her brain she was conscious of aperfectly clear understanding of the fact that she must be quite mad tofight for escape from the sole thing in life she craved. Celia Mallorydidn't really count--nor Roger and her pledge to him. . . . They wereonly shadows. What counted was Peter's love for her and hers forhim. . . . Yet in a curious numbed way she felt she must still deferto those shadows. They stood like sentinels with drawn swords at thegate of happiness, and she would never be able to get past them. So itwas no use Peter's staying here.
"You must go, Peter!" she exclaimed feverishly. "You must go!"
A new look sprang into his eyes--a sudden, terrible doubt andquestioning.
"You want me to go?"
"Yes--yes!" She turned away, gesturing blindly in the direction of thedoor. The room seemed whirling round her. "I--I _want_ you to go!"
Then she felt his hand on her shoulder and, yielding to its insistentpressure, she faced him again.
"Nan, is it because you've ceased to care that you tell me to go?" Hespoke very quietly, but there was something in the tense, hard-heldtones before which she blenched--a note of intolerable fear.
Her shaking hands went up to her face. It would be better if hethought that of her--better for him, at least. For her, nothingmattered any more.
"Don't ask me, Peter!" she gasped, sobbingly. "Don't ask me!"
Slowly his hand fell away from her shoulder.
"Then it's true? You don't care? Trenby has taken my place?"
A heavy silence dropped between them, broken only by the sullen roll ofthunder. Nan shivered a little. Her face was still hidden in herhands. She was struggling with herself--trying to force from her lipsthe lie which would send the man's reeling faith in her crashing toearth and drive him from her for ever. She knew if he went from herlike that, believing she had ceased to care, he would never come backagain. He would wipe her out utterly from his thoughts--out of hisheart. Henceforward she would be only a dead memory to him--the symbolof a
shattered faith.
It was more than she could bear. She could not give up that--Peter'sfaith in her! It was all she had to cling to--to carry her throughlife.
She stretched out her arms to him, crying brokenly:
"Oh, Peter--Peter--"
At the sound, of her low, shaken voice, with its infinite appeal forunderstanding, the iron control he had been forcing on himself snappedasunder, and he caught her in his arms, kissing her with the fiercehunger of a man who has been starved of love.
She leaned against him, physically unable to resist, and deep down inher heart glad that she could not. For the moment everything was sweptaway in an anguish of happiness--in the ecstasy of burning kissescrushed against her mouth and throat and the strained clasp of armslocked round her.
"My woman!" he muttered unsteadily. "My woman!"
She could feel the hard beating of his heart, and her slender bodytrembled in his arms with an answering passion that sprang from thedepths of her being. Forgetful of everything, save only of each otherand their great love, their lips clung together.
Presently he tilted her head back. Her face was white, the shadowedeyes like two dark stains on the ivory bloom of a magnolia.
"Beloved! . . . Nan, say that you love me--let me hear you say it!"
"You know!" Her voice shook uncontrollably. "You don't need to askme, Peter. It--it _hurts_ to love anyone as I love you."
His hold tightened round her.
"You're mine . . . mine out of all the world . . . my beloved. . . ."
A flare of lightning and again the menacing roll of thunder. Then,sudden as the swoop of a bat, the electric burners quivered and wentout, leaving only the glow of the fire to pierce the gloom. In the dimlight she could see his face bent over her--the face of her man, theman she loved, and all that was woman and lover within her leaped toanswer the call of her mate--the infinite, imperious demand of humanlove that has waited and hungered through empty days and nights till atlast it shall be answered by the loved one.
For a moment she lay unresisting in his arms, helpless in the grip ofthe passion of love which had engulfed them both. Then the memory ofthe shadows--the sentinels with drawn swords--came back to her. Theswords flashed, cleaving the dividing line afresh before her eyes.
Slowly she leaned away from his breast, her face suddenly drawn andtortured.
"Peter, I must go back--"
"Back? To Trenby?" Then, savagely: "You can't. I want you!"
He stooped his head and she felt his mouth on hers.
A glimmer of pale firelight searched out the two tense faces; theshadowy room seemed listening, waiting--waiting--
"I want you!" he reiterated hoarsely. "I can't live without you anylonger. Nan . . . come with me . . ."
A tremulous flicker of lightning shivered across the darkness. Thedead electric burners leaped into golden globes of light once more, andin the garish, shattering glare the man and woman sprang apart andstood staring at each other, trembling, with passion-strickenfaces. . . .
The long silence was broken at last, broken by a little inarticulatesound--half-sigh, half-sob--from Nan.
Peter raised his head and looked at her. His face was grey.
"God!" he muttered. "Where were we going?"
He stumbled to the chimneypiece, and, leaning his arms on it, buriedhis face against them.
Presently she spoke to him, timidly.
"Peter?" she said. "Peter?"
At the sound of her voice he turned towards her, and the look in hiseyes hurt her like a physical blow.
"Oh, my dear . . . my dear!" she cried, trembling towards him. "Don'tlook like that . . . Ah! don't look like that!"
And her hands went fluttering out in the mother-yearning that everywoman feels for her man in trouble.
"Forgive me, Nan . . . I'm sorry."
She hardly recognised the low, toneless voice.
Her eyes were shining. "Sorry for loving me?" she said.
"No--not for loving you. God knows, I can't help that! But because Iwould have taken you and made you mine . . . you who are not mine atall."
"I'm all yours, really, Peter."
She came a few steps nearer to him, standing sweet and unafraid beforehim, her grave eyes shining with a kind of radiance.
"Dear," she went on simply, throwing out her hands in a littledefenceless gesture, "if you want me, I'll come to you. . . . Not--notsecretly . . . while I'm still pledged to Roger. But openly, beforeall the world. I'll go with you . . . if you'll take me."
She stood very still, waiting for his answer. Right or wrong, in thatmoment of utter sacrifice of self, she had risen to the best that wasin her. She was willing to lay all on love's altar--body, soul, andspirit, and that honour of the Davenants which she had been so schooledto keep untarnished. Her pledge to Roger, her uncle's faith inher--all these must be tossed into the fire to make her gift complete.But the agony in Peter's face when the mask had fallen from it hadtemporarily destroyed for her all values except the value of love.
Peter took the fluttering, outstretched fingers and laid his lipsagainst them. Then he relinquished them slowly, lingeringly. Passionhad died out of his face. His eyes held only a grave tenderness, andthe sternly sweet expression of his mouth recalled to Nan the man asshe had first known him, before love, terrible and beautiful, had comeinto their lives to destroy them.
"I should never take you, dear," he said at last. "A man doesn't hurtthe thing he loves--not in his right senses. What he'll do when themadness is on him--only his own soul knows."
She caught his arm impetuously.
"Peter, let me come! I'm not afraid of being hurt--not if we'retogether. It's only the hurt of being without you that I can'tbear. . . . Oh, I know what you're thinking"--as she read the negationin his face--"that I should regret it, that I should mind what peoplesaid. Dear, if I can give you happiness, things like that simplywouldn't count. . . . Ah, believe me, Peter!"
He looked down at her with the tenderness one accords a child,ignorantly pleading to have its way. He knew Nan's temperament--knewthat, in spite of all her courage, when the moment of exaltation hadpassed not even love itself could make up for the bitterness of itsprice, if bought at such a cost. He pictured her exposed to theslights of those whose position was still unassailable, waitingdrearily at Continental watering-places till the decree absolute shouldbe pronounced, and finally, restored to respectability in so far asmarriage with him could make it possible, but always liable to beunpleasantly reminded, as she went through life, that there had been atime when she had outraged convention. It was unthinkable! It wouldbreak her utterly.
"Even if that were all, it still wouldn't be possible," he said gently."You don't know what you would have to face. And I couldn't let youface it. But it isn't all. . . . There's honour, dear, andduty. . . ."
Her gaze met his in dreary interrogation.
"Then--then, you'll go away?" Her voice faltered, broke.
"Yes, I shall go away . . . out of your life."
He fell silent a moment. Then, with an effort, he went on:
"This is good-bye. We mustn't see each other again--"
"No, no," she broke in a little wildly. "Don't go, Peter, I can't bearit." She clung to him, repeating piteously: "Don't go . . . don't go!"
He stooped and pressed his lips to her hair, holding her in his arms.
"My dear!" he murmured. "My very dear!"
And so they remained for a little space.
Presently she lifted her face, white and strained, to his.
"_Must_ you go, Peter?"
"Heart's beloved, there is no other way. We may not love . . . and wecan't be together and not love. . . . So I must go."
She lay very still in his arms for a moment. Then he felt a long,shuddering sigh run through her body.
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes. . . . Peter, go very quickly. . . ."
He took her face between his hands and kissed her on the
mouth--notpassionately, but with the ineffably sad calmness of farewell.
"God keep you, dear," he said.
The door closed behind him, shutting him from her sight, and she stoodfor a few moments staring dazedly at its wooden panels. Then, with asudden desperate impulse, she tore it open again and peered out.
But there was only silence--silence and emptiness. He had gone.