CHAPTER IX
A SKIRMISH WITH DEATH
It was a soft, misty day when Trenby called to drive Nan over to theTrevithick Kennels--one of those veiled mornings which break about nooninto a glory of blue sky and golden sunlight.
As she stepped into the waiting car, Roger stopped her abruptly.
"Go back and put on something thicker," he commanded. "It'll be chillydriving in this mist."
"But it's going to be hot later on," protested Nan.
"Yes, only it happens to be now that we're driving--and it will be coolagain, in the evening when I bring you back."
Nan laughed.
"Nonsense!" she said and put her foot on the step of the car. Trenby,standing by to help her in, closed his hand firmly round her arm andheld her back. His hawk's eyes flashed a little.
"I shan't take you unless you do as I say," he observed.
She stared at him in astonishment. Then she turned away as though tore-enter the house.
"Oh, very well," she replied airily.
Roger bit his lip, then followed her rapidly. He did not in the leastlike yielding his point.
"Come back, then--and catch a cold if you like!" he said ungraciously.
Nan paused and looked up at him.
"Do you think I should catch cold?"
"It's ten to one you would."
"Then I'll do as I'm bid and get an extra coat."
She went into the house, leaving Trenby rather taken aback by hersudden submission. But it pleased him, nevertheless. He liked a womanto be malleable. It seemed, to him a truly womanly quality--certainlya wifely one! Moreover, almost any man experiences a pleasant feelingof complacency when he thinks he has dominated a woman, even over sosmall a matter as to whether she shall wear an extra coat ornot--although he generally fails to guess the origin of that attractivesurrender and comfortably regards it as a tribute to his strong,masculine will-power. Few women are foolish enough to undeceive him.
"Will I do now?" asked Nan, reappearing and stepping lightly into thecar.
Roger smiled approvingly and proceeded to tuck the rugs well round her.Then he started the engine and soon they were spinning down the drivewhich ran to the left of Mallow Court gardens towards the village.They flashed through St. Wennys and turned inland along the great whiteroad that swept away in the direction of Trenby Hall, ten milesdistant. The kennels themselves lay a further four miles beyond theHall.
"Oh, how gorgeous it is!" exclaimed Nan, as their road cut through awild piece of open country where, with the sea and the tall cliffsbehind them, vista after vista of wooded hills and graciously slopingvalleys unfolded in front of them.
"Yes, you get some fine scenery inland," replied Trenby. "And theroads are good for motoring. I suppose you don't ride?" he added.
"Why should you suppose that?"
"Well"--a trifle awkwardly--"one doesn't expect a Londoner to know muchabout country pursuits."
Nan smiled.
"Are you imagining I've spent all my life in a Seven Dials slum?" sheasked serenely.
"No, no, of course not. But--"
"But country people take a very limited view of a Londoner. We _do_sometimes get out of town, you know--and some of us can ride and playgames quite nicely! As a matter of fact I hunted when I was about six."
Roger's face lightened, eagerly.
"Oh, then I hope you're staying at Mallow till the hunting seasonstarts? I've a lovely mare I could lend you if you'd let me."
Nan shook her head and made a hasty gesture of dissent.
"Oh, no, no. Quite honestly, I've not ridden for years--and even if Itook up riding once more I should never hunt again. I think"--sheshrank a little--"it's too cruel."
Trenby regarded her with ingenuous amazement.
"Cruel!" he exclaimed. "Why, it's sport!"
"Magic word!" Nan's lips curled a little. "You say it's 'sport' asthough that made it all right."
"So it does," answered Trenby contentedly.
"It may--for the sportsman. But as far as the fox is concerned, it'ssheer cruelty."
Trenby drove on without speaking for a short time. Then he said slowly:
"Well, in a way I suppose you're right. But, all the same, it's thesporting instinct--the cultivated sporting instinct--which has made theEnglishman what he is. It's that which won the war, you know."
"It's a big price to pay. Couldn't you"--a sudden charming smilecurving her lips--"couldn't you do it--I mean cultivate the sportinginstinct--by polo and things like that?"
"It's not the same." Trenby shook his head. "You don't understand.It's the desire to find your quarry, to go through anything rather thanto let him beat you--no matter how done or tired you feel."
"It may be very good for you," allowed Nan. "But it's very bad luck onthe fox. I wouldn't mind so much if he had fair play. But even if hesucceeds in getting away from you--beating _you_, in fact--and runs toearth, you proceed to dig him out. I call that _mean_."
Trenby was silent again for a moment. Then he asked suddenly:
"What would you do if your husband hunted?"
"Put up with it, I suppose, just as I should put up with his otherfaults--if I loved him."
Roger made no answer but quickened the speed of the car, letting herrace over the level surface of the road, and when next he spoke it wason some quite other topic.
Half an hour later a solid-looking grey house, built in the substantialGeorgian fashion and surrounded by trees, came into view. Roger slowedup as the car passed the gates which guarded the entrance to the drive.
"That's Trenby Hall," he said. And Nan was conscious of an impishlyamused feeling that just so might Noah, when the Flood began, haveannounced: "That's my Ark.'"
"You've never been over yet," continued Roger. "But I want you to comeone day. I should like you to meet my mother."
A queer little dart of fear shot through her as he spoke.
She felt as though she were being gradually hemmed in.
"It looks a beautiful place," she answered conventionally, thoughinwardly thinking how she would loathe to live in a solid, squaremansion of that type, prosaically dull and shut away from the world byenclosing woods.
Roger looked pleased.
"Yes, it's a fine old place," he said. "Now for the kennels."
Nan breathed a sigh of relief. She had had one instant of anxiety lesthe should suggest that, instead of lunching, as arranged, from thepicnic basket safely bestowed in the back of the car, they should lunchat the Hall.
Another fifteen minutes brought them to the kennels, Denman, the firstwhip, meeting them at the gates. He touched his hat and threw a keenglance at Nan. The Master of the Trevithick was not in the habit ofbringing ladies to see the kennels, and the whip and his wife haddiscussed the matter very fully over their supper the previous evening,trying to guess what it might portend. "A new mistress up at the 'All,I shouldn't wonder," asserted Mrs. Denman confidently.
"Hounds all fit, Denman?" asked Trenby in quick, authoritative tones.
"Yes, sir. All 'cept 'Wrangler there--'e's still a bit stiff on thatnear hind leg he sprained."
As he spoke, he held open the gate for Nan to pass in, and she glancedround with lively interest. A flagged path ran straight ahead,dividing the large paved enclosure reserved for youngsters from theiron-fenced yards inhabited by the older hounds of the pack; while atthe back of each enclosure lay the sleeping quarters of roofed andsheltered benches. At the further end of the kennels stood a couple ofcottages, where the whips and kennelman lived.
"How beautifully clean it all is!" exclaimed Nan.
The whip smiled with obvious delight.
"If you keep 'ounds, miss, you must keep 'em clean--or they won't be'ealthy and fit to do their day's work. An' a day's hunting is a day'swork for 'ounds, an' no mistake."
"How like a woman to remark about cleanliness first of all!" laughedRoger. "A man would have gone straight to look at the hounds beforeany
thing else!"
"I'm going now," replied Nan, approaching the bars of one of theenclosures.
It seemed to her as though she were looking at a perfect sea of whiteand tan bodies with slowly waving sterns, while at intervals from thebig throats came a murmurous sound, rising now and again into a lowgrowl, or the sharp snap of powerful jaws and a whine of rage as acouple or more hounds scuffled together over some private disagreement.At Nan's appearance, drawn by curiosity, some of them approached hergingerly, half-suspicious, half as though anxious to make friends, and,knowing no fear of animals, she thrust her hand through the bars andstroked the great heads and necks.
"Can't we go in? They're such dear things!" she begged.
"Better not," answered Roger. "They don't always like strangers."
"I'm not afraid," she replied mutinously. "Do just open the gate,anyway--_please_!"
Trenby hesitated.
"Well--" He yielded unwillingly, but Nan's eyes were rather difficultto resist when they appealed. "Open the gate, then, Denman."
He stood close behind her when the gate was opened, watching the houndsnarrowly, and now and again uttering an imperative, "Down, Victor! Getdown, Marquis!" when one or other of the great beasts playfully leaptup against Nan's side, pawing at her in friendly fashion. MeanwhileDenman had quietly disappeared, and when he returned he carried along-lashed hunting-crop in his hand.
Nan was smoothing first one tan head, then another, receiving eagercaresses from rough, pink tongues in return, and insensibly she hadmoved step by step further into the yard to reach this or that hound asit caught her attention.
"Come back!" called Trenby hastily. "Don't go any further."
Perhaps the wind carried his voice away from her, or perhaps she was sopreoccupied with the hounds that the meaning of his words hardlypenetrated her mind. Whichever it may have been, with a low cry of,"Oh, you beauty!" she stepped quickly towards Vengeance, one of thebest hounds in the pack, a fierce-looking beast with a handsome headand sullen month, who had been standing apart, showing no dispositionto join the clamorous, slobbering throng at the gate.
His hackles rose at Nan's sudden movement towards him, and as shestretched out her hand to stroke him the sulky head lifted with athunderous growl. As though at a given signal the whole pack seemed togather round her.
Simultaneously Vengeance leaped, and Nan was only conscious of theripping of her garments, the sudden pressure of hot bodies round her,and of a blurred sound of hounds baying, the vicious cracking of awhip, and the voices of men shouting.
She sank almost to her knees, instinctively shielding her head andthroat with her arms, borne to the ground by the force of the greatpadded feet which had struck her. Open jaws, red like blood, andgleaming ivory fangs fenced her round. Instantaneously there flashedthrough her mind the recollection of something she had once beentold--that if one hound turns on you, the whole pack will turn withhim--like wolves.
This was death, then--death by those worrying, white-fanged mouths--thetearing of soft, warm flesh from her living limbs and afterwards thecrushing of her bones between those powerful jaws.
She struck out, struggling gamely to her feet, and visioned Denmancursing and slashing at the hounds as he drove them off. ButVengeance, the untamed, heedless of the lash which scored his back adozen times, caught at her ankle and she pitched head foremost into thestream of hot-breathed mouths and struggling bodies. She felt a hugeweight fling itself upon her--Vengeance, springing again at hisprey--and even as she waited for the agony of piercing fangs plungedinto her flesh, Trenby's voice roared in her ears as he caught the big,powerful brute by its throat and by sheer, immense physical strengthdragged the hound off her.
Meanwhile the second whip had rushed out from his cottage to renderassistance and the whistling of the long-lashed hunting-crops drovethrough the air, gradually forcing the yelping hounds into submission.In the midst of the shouting and commotion Nan felt herself lifted upby Roger as easily as though she were a baby, and at the same momentthe whirling lash of one of the men's hunting-crops cut her across thethroat and bosom. The red-hot agony of it was unbearable, and asTrenby bore her out of the yard he felt her body grow suddenly limp inhis arms and, glancing down, saw that she had lost consciousness.
When Nan came to herself again it was to find she was lying on a hardlittle horse-hair sofa, and the first object upon which her eyes restedwas a nightmare arrangement of wax flowers, carefully preserved fromrisk of damage by a glass shade.
She was feeling stiff and sore, and the strangeness of her surroundingsbewildered her--the sofa upholstered in slippery American cloth andhard as a board to her aching limbs, the waxen atrocity beneath itsglass shade standing on a rickety table at the foot of the couch, thesmallness of the room in which she found herself.
"Where am I?" she asked in a weak voice that was hardly more than awhisper.
Someone--a woman--said quickly: "Ah, she's coming round!" and bustled,out of the room. Then came Roger's voice:
"You're all right, Nan--all right." And she felt his big hands closeround her two slender ones reassuringly. "Don't be frightened."
She raised her head to find Roger kneeling beside the sofa on which shelay.
"I'm not frightened," she said. "Only--what's happened? . . . Oh, Iremember! I was in the yard with the hounds. Did one of them bite me?"
"Yes, Vengeance just caught your ankle. But we've bathed itthoroughly--luckily he's only torn the skin a bit--and now I'm going tobind it up for you. Mrs. Denman's just gone to fetch some stuff for meto bind it with. You'll be quite all right again to-morrow."
With some difficulty Nan raised herself to a sitting position andimmediately caught sight of a bowl on the ground filled with anominous-looking reddish-coloured liquid.
"Good gracious! Has my foot been bleeding like that?" she asked, goingrather white.
"Bless you, no, my dear!" Mrs. Denman, a cheery-faced countrywoman,had bustled in again, with some long strips of linen to serve as abandage. "Bless you, no! That's just a drop of Condy's fluid, thatis, so's your foot shouldn't get any poison in it."
"That's right, Mrs. Denman," said Roger. "Give me that linen stuffnow, and then get me some more hot water."
Nan watched him lift and skilfully bandage the slightly damaged foot.He held it carefully, as though it were something very precious, butdelicate as was his handling she could not help wincing once as thebandage accidentally brushed a rather badly scratched ankle. Trenbypaused almost breathlessly. The hand in which he held the white,blue-veined foot shook a little.
"Did I hurt? I'm awfully sorry." His voice was gruff. "What hewanted to do was to crush the slim, bruised foot against his lips. Thevery touch of its satiny skin against his hand sent queer tremorsthrough every nerve of his big frame.
"There!" he said at last, gently letting her foot rest once more on thesofa. "Is that comfortable?"
"Quite, thanks." Then, turning to the whip's wife as she re-enteredthe room carrying a jug of hot water, she went on, with that inborninstinct of hers to charm and give pleasure: "What a nice, sunny roomyou have here, Mrs. Denman. I'm afraid I'm making a dreadful mess ofit. I'm so sorry."
"Don't mention it, miss. 'Tis only a drop of water to clear away, andit's God mercy you weren't killed, by they savage 'ounds."
Nan bestowed one of her delightful smiles upon the good woman, who,leaving the hot water in readiness; hurried out to tell her husbandthat if Miss Davenant was going to be mistress of the Hall, why, then,'twould be a lucky day for everyone concerned, for a nicer,pleasanter-spoken young lady--and she just come round from a faint andall!--she never wished to meet.
Nan put her hand up to her throat.
"Something hurts here," she said in a troubled voice. "Did one of thehounds leap up at my neck?"
"No," replied Trenby, frowning as his eyes rested on the long red wealstriping the white flesh disclosed by the Y-shaped neck of her frock."One of those dunder-headed fools cut you with h
is whip by mistake.I'd like to shoot him--and Vengeance too!"
With a wonderfully gentle touch he laid a cloth wrung out in hot wateracross the angry-looking streak, and repeated the process until some ofthe swelling went down. At last he desisted, wiping dry the softgirlish throat as tenderly as a nurse might wipe the throat of a baby.
More than a little touched, Nan smiled at him.
"You're making a great fuss of me," she said. "After all, I'm notseriously hurt, you know."
"No," he replied briefly. "But you might have been killed. For amoment I thought you _were_ going to be killed in front of my eyes."
"I don't know that it would have mattered, very much if I had been,"she responded indifferently.
"It would have mattered to me." His voice roughened again: "Nan--Nan--"
He broke off huskily and, casting a swift glance at his face, sherealised that the tide which had been gradually rising throughout theforegoing weeks of close companionship had suddenly come to its fulland that no puny effort of hers could now arrest and thrust it back.
Roger had risen to his feet. His face was rather white as he stoodlooking down at her, and the piercing eyes beneath the oddly sunburntbrows held a new light in them. They were no longer cold, but burneddown upon her with the fierce ardour of passion.
"What is it?" she whispered. The words seemed wrung from her againsther will.
For a moment he made no answer, and in the pulsing silence whichfollowed her low-breathed question Nan was aware of a swiftly gatheringfear. She would have to make a decision within the next fewmoments--and she was not ready for it.
"Do you know"--Roger spoke very slowly--"Do you know what it would havemeant to me if you had been killed just now?"
Nan shook her head.
"It would have meant the end of everything."
"Oh, I don't see why!" she responded quickly.
"Don't you?" He stooped over her and took her two slight wrists inhis. "Then I'll tell you. I love you and I want you for my wife. Ididn't intend to speak so soon--you know so little of me. But thislast hour! . . . I can't wait any longer. I want you, Nan, I want youso unutterably that I won't _take_ no."
She tried to rise from the sofa. But in an instant his arms were roundher, pressing her back, tenderly but determinedly, against the cushions.
"No, don't get up! See, I'll kneel here beside you. Tell me, Nan,when will you marry me?"
She was silent. What answer could she give him--she who had found oneman's love vain and betwixt whom and the man she really loved there wasa stern barrier set?
At her silence a swift fear seized him.
"Nan," he said, his voice a little hoarse. "Nan, is it--no good?"Then, as she still made no answer, he let his arms fall heavily to hisside.
"God!" he muttered. And his eyes held a blank, dazed look like thoseof a man who has just received a blow.
Nan caught him by the arm.
"No, no, Roger!" she cried quickly. "Don't look like that! I didn'tmean--"
The sudden expression of radiance that sprang into his face silencedthe remainder of the words upon her lips--the words of explanation thatshould have been spoken.
"Then you do care, after all! Nan, there's no one else, is there?"
"No," she said very low.
He stretched out his arms and drew her gently within them, and for amoment she had neither the heart nor the courage to wipe that look ofutter happiness from his face by telling him the truth, by sayingblankly: "I don't love you."
He turned her face up to his and, stooping, kissed her with suddenpassion.
"My dear!" he said, "my dear!" Then, after a moment:
"Oh, Nan, Nan, I can hardly believe that you really belong to me!"
Nan could hardly believe it either. It seemed just to have _happened_somehow, and her conscience smote her. For what had she to give inreturn for all the love he was offering her? Merely a little liking ofa lonely heart that wanted to warm itself at someone's hearth, andbeyond that a terrified longing to put something more betwixt herselfand Peter Mallory, to double the strength of the barrier which keptthem apart. It wasn't giving Trenby a fair deal!
"Roger," she said, at last, "I don't think I'd better belong to you.No, listen!"--as he made a sudden movement--"I must tell you. There_is_ someone else--only we can't ever be more than friends."
Roger stared, at her with the dawning of a new fear in his eyes. Whenhe spoke it was with a savage defiance.
"Then don't tell me! I don't want to hear. You're mine now, anyway."
"I think I ought--" she began weakly.
But he brushed her scruples aside.
"I'm not going to listen. You've said you'll marry me. I don't wantto hear anything about the other men who were. I'm the man who is.And I'm going to drive you straight back to Mallow and tell everybodyabout it. Then I'll feel sure of you."
Faced by the irrevocableness of her action, Nan was overtaken bydismay. How recklessly, on the impulse of the moment, she had barteredher freedom away! She felt as though she were caught in the meshes ofsome net from which there was no escaping. A voice inside her headkept urging: "_Time_! _Time_! _Give me time_!"
"Please, Roger," she began with unwonted humility. "I'd rather youdidn't tell people just yet."
But Trenby objected.
"I don't see that there's anything gained by waiting," he said doggedly.
"Time! . . . _Time_!" reiterated the voice inside Nan's head.
"To please me, Roger," she begged. "I want to think things over a bitfirst."
"It's too late to think things over," he answered jealously. "You'vegiven me your promise. You don't want to take it back again?"
"Perhaps, when you know everything, you'll want me to."
"Tell me 'everything' now, then," he said grimly, "and you'll soon seewhether I want you to or not."
Nan was fighting desperately to gain time. She needed it more thananything--time to think, time to weigh the pros and cons of the matter,time to decide. The past was pulling at her heart-strings, filling herwith a sudden terror of the promise she had just given Roger.
"I can't tell you anything now," she said rather breathlessly. "I didtry--a little while ago, and you wouldn't listen. You--you _must_ giveme a few days--you must! If you don't, I'll say 'no' now--at once!"her voice rising excitedly.
She was overwrought, strung up to such a pitch that she hardly knewwhat she was saying. She had been through a good deal in the last houror two and Trenby realised it. Suddenly that grim determination of histo force her promise, to bind her his here and now, yielded to anoverwhelming flood of tenderness.
"It shall be as you wish, Nan," he said very gently. "I know I'masking everything of you, and that you're frightened and upset to-day.I ought not to have spoken. And--and I'm a lot older than you."
"Oh, it isn't that," replied Nan hastily, fearing he might be feelingsore over the disparity in their respective ages. She did not want himto be hurt about things that would never have counted at all had sheloved him.
"Well, if I wait till Monday--that's four days--will that do?" he asked.
"Yes. I'll tell you then."
"Thank you"--very simply. He lifted her hands to his lips. "Andremember," he added desperately, "that I love you, Nan--you're my wholeworld."
He paced the short length of the room and back, and when he came to herside again, every trace of emotion was wiped out of his face.
"Now I'm going to take you back home. Mrs. Denman"--smilingfaintly--"says she'll put 'an 'assock' in the car for your damaged legto rest on, so with rugs and that coat you were so averse to bringing Ithink you'll be all right."
He went to the table and poured out something in a glass.
"Drink that," he said, holding it towards her. "It'll warm you up."
Nan sniffed at the liquid in the glass and tendered it back to him witha grimace.
"It's brandy," she said. "I hate the stuff."
"You'l
l drink it, though, won't you?"--persuasively.
"No," shaking her head. "I can't bear the taste of it."
"But it's good for you." He stood in front of her, glass in hand."Come, Nan, don't be foolish. You need something before we start.Drink it up."
He held it to her lips, and Nan, too proud to struggle or resist like achild, swallowed the obnoxious stuff. As Trenby drove her home she hadtime to reflect upon the fact that if she married him there would bemany a contest of wills between them. He roused a sense of rebellionin her, and he was unmistakably a man who meant to be obeyed.
Her thoughts went back to Peter Mallory. Somehow she did not think shewould ever have found it difficult to obey _him_.