It was one of those rather incomprehensible happenings of life that she had been left still blooming on her virgin stem. It would have been difficult to guess her exact age. She owned to thirty-four, and a decade ago, when she had first joined her father in India, she must have possessed a certain elfish prettiness of her own. Now, thanks to those years spent under a tropical sun, she was a trifle faded and pa.s.see-looking.

Following upon the advent of Roger and his cousin the conversation became general for a few minutes, then Lady Gertrude drew her son towards a French window opening on to the garden--a garden immaculately laid out, with flower-beds breaking the expanse of lawn at just the correct intervals--and eventually she and Roger pa.s.sed out of the room to discuss with immense seriousness the shortcomings of the gardener as exemplified in the shape of one of the geranium beds.

"_You_ won't like it here!" observed Isobel Carson rather bluntly, when the two girls were left alone.

"Why shouldn't I?" Nan smiled.

"Because you won't fit in at all. You'll be like a rocket battering about in the middle of a set piece."

Isobel lacked neither brains nor observation, though she had been wise enough to conceal both these facts from Lady Gertrude.

"Don't you like it here, then?"

Isobel regarded her thoughtfully, as though speculating how far she dared be frank.

"Of course I like it. But it's Hobson's choice with me," she replied rather grimly. "When my father died I was left with very little money and no special training. Result--I spent a hateful year as nursery governess to a couple of detestable brats. Then Aunt Gertrude invited me here on a visit--and that visit has prolonged itself up till the present moment. She finds me very useful, you know," she added cynically.

"Yes, I suppose she does," answered Nan, with some embarra.s.sment. She felt no particular desire to hear a resume of Miss Carson's past life.

There was something in the girl which repelled her.

As though she sensed the other's distaste to the trend the conversation had taken, Miss Carson switched briskly off to something else, and by the time Lady Gertrude returned with Roger, suggesting that they should go in to lunch, Nan had forgotten that odd feeling of repulsion which Isobel had first aroused in her, and had come to regard her as "quite a nice little thing who had had rather a rotten time."

This was the impression Lady Gertrude's niece contrived to make on most people. It suited her very well and secured her many gifts and pleasures which would not otherwise have come her way. She had accepted her aunt's invitation to stay at Trenby Hall rather guardedly in the first instance, but when, as the visit drew towards its end, Lady Gertrude had proposed that she should make her home there altogether, she had jumped at the offer.

She speedily discovered that she and Trenby had many tastes in common, and with the sharp instinct of a woman who has tried hard to achieve a successful marriage and failed, there appeared to her no reason why in this instance "something should not come of it"--to use the time-honoured phrase which so delicately conveys so much. And but for the fact that Nan Davenant was staying at Mallow, something might have come of it! Since community of tastes is responsible for many a happy and contented marriage.

Throughout the time she had lived at Trenby Hall, Isobel had contrived to make herself almost indispensable to Roger. If a "d.a.m.ned b.u.t.ton"

flew off his coat, she was always at hand with needle and thread, and a quaint carved ivory thimble crowning one small finger, to sew it on again. Or should his dress tie decline to adorn his collar in precisely the proper manner, those nimble, claw-like little fingers could always produce a well-tied bow in next to no time. It was Isobel who found all the things which, manlike, he so constantly mislaid, who tramped over the fields with him, interesting herself in all the outdoor side of his life, and she was almost as good at landing a trout as he himself.

There seemed small likelihood of Roger's going far afield in search of a wife, so that Isobel had not apprehended much danger to her hopes--more especially as she had a shrewd idea that Lady Gertrude would look upon the marriage with the selfish approval of a woman who gains a daughter without losing the services of a niece who is "used to her ways."

Such a union need not even upset existing arrangements. Isobel had learned by long experience how to "get on" amicably with her autocratic relative, and the latter could remain--as her niece knew very well she would wish to remain at Trenby Hall, still nominally its chatelaine.

Lady Gertrude and Isobel had never been frequent visitors at Mallow, and it had so happened that neither they, nor Roger on the rare occasions when he was home on leave from the Front, had chanced to meet Nan Davenant during her former visits to Mallow Court.

Now that she had seen her, Isobel's ideas were altogether bouleversee.

Never for a single instant would she have imagined that a woman of Nan's type--artistic, emotional, elusive--could attract a man like Roger Trenby. The fact remained, however, that Nan had succeeded where hitherto she herself had failed, and Isobel's dreams of a secure future had come tumbling about her ears. She realised bitterly that love is like quicksilver, running this way or that at its own sweet will--and rarely into the channel we have ordained for it.

CHAPTER XV

KING ARTHUR'S CASTLE

The first person whom Nan encountered on her return from Trenby Hall was Mrs. Seymour. The latter's eyebrows lifted quizzically.

"Well?" she asked. "How did it go?"

"It didn't 'go' at all!" answered Nan. "I was enveloped in an atmosphere of severe disapproval. In fact, I think Lady Gertrude considers I require quite a long course of training before I'm fitted to be Roger's wife."

"Nonsense!" Kitty smiled broadly.

"Seriously"--nodding. "Apparently the kind of wife she really wants for him is a combination of the doormat and fetch-and-carry person who always stays at home, and performs her wifely and domestic duties in a spirit of due subservience."

"She'll live and learn, then, my dear, when she has you for a daughter-in-law," commented Kitty drily.

"I think I'm a bit fed up with 'in-laws,'" returned Nan a trifle wearily. "I'll go out and walk it off. Or, better still, lend me your bike, Kitty, and I'll just do a spin to Tintagel. By the time I've climbed up to King Arthur's Castle, I'll feel different. It always makes me feel good to get to the top of anywhere."

"But, my dear, it's five o'clock already! You won't have time to go there before dinner."

"Yes, I shall," persisted Nan. "Half an hour to get there--easily! An hour for the castle, half an hour for coming back, and then just time enough to skip into a dinner-frock. . . . I must go, really, Kitten,"

she went on with a note of urgency in her voice. "That appalling drawing-room at Trenby and almost equally appalling dining-room have got into my system, and I want to blow the germs away." She gesticulated expressively.

"All right, you ridiculous person, take my bicycle then," replied Kitty good-humouredly. "But what will you do when you have to _live_ in those rooms?"

"Why, I shall alter them completely, of course. I foresee myself making the Hall 'livable in' throughout the first decade of my married existence!"--with a small grimace of disgust.

A few minutes later Nan was speeding along the road to Tintagel, the cool air, salt with brine from the incoming tide, tingling against her face.

In less than the stipulated half-hour she had reached the village--that bleak, depressing-looking village, with its miscellany of dull little houses, through which one must pa.s.s, as through some dreary gateway, to reach the wild, sea-girt beauty of the coast itself. Leaving her cycle in charge at a cottage, Nan set out briskly on foot down the steep hill that led to the sh.o.r.e. She was conscious of an imperative need for movement. She must either cycle, or walk, or climb, in order to keep at bay the nervous dread with which her visit to Trenby had inspired her. It had given her a picture of Roger's home and surroundings--a brief, enlightening glimpse as to the kind of life she might look forward to when she had married him.

It was all very different from what she had antic.i.p.ated. Even Roger himself seemed different in the environment of his home--less spontaneous, less the adoring lover. Lady Gertrude's influence appeared to dominate the whole house and everyone in it. But, as Nan realised, she had given her promise to Roger, and too much hung on that promise for her to break it now--Penelope's happiness, and her own craving to shut herself away in safety, to bind herself so that she could never again break free.

Her unexpected meeting with Peter the previous evening had shown her once and for all the imperative need for this. The clasp of his hand, the strong hold of his arms about her as he bore her across the stream, the touch of his lips against her hair--the memory of these things had been with her all night. She had tried to thrust them from her, but they refused to be dismissed. More than once she had buried her hot face in the coolness of the pillows, conscious of a sudden tremulous thrill that ran like fire through all her veins.

And that Peter, too, knew they stood on dangerous quicksands when they were alone together, she was sure. This morning, beyond a briefly-worded greeting at breakfast, he had hardly spoken to her, carefully avoiding her, though without seeming to do so, until her departure to Trenby Hall made it no longer necessary. She hoped he would not stay long at Mallow. It would be unbearable to meet him day after day--to feel his eyes resting upon her with the same cool gravity to which he had compelled them this morning, to pretend that he and she meant no more to one another than any two other chance guests at a country house.

Nan's thoughts drove her swiftly down the steep incline which descended towards the cove and, arriving at its foot, she stopped, as everyone must, to obtain the key of the castle from a near-by cottage. The old dame who gave her the key--accepting a shilling in exchange with voluble grat.i.tude--impressed upon her the urgent necessity for returning it on her way back.

"If you please, lady, I've lost more than one key with folks forgettin'

to return them," she explained.

"I won't forget," Nan a.s.sured her, and forthwith started to make her way to the top of the great promontory on which stands all that still remains of King Arthur's Castle--the fallen stones of an ancient chapel, and a ruined wall enclosing a gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce where sheep browse peacefully.

Quitting the cottage and turning to the left, she bent her steps towards a footbridge spanning a gap in the cliff side and, pausing at the bridge, let her eyes rest musingly on the great, mysterious opening picturesquely known as Merlin's Cave. The tide was coming in fast, and she could hear the waves boom hollowly as they slid over its stony floor, only to meet and fight the opposing rush of other waves from the further end--since what had once been the magician's cave was now a subterranean pa.s.sage, piercing right through the base of the headland.

For a while Nan loitered on the bridge, gazing at the wild beauty of the scene--the sombre cove where the inrushing waves broke in a smother of spume on the beach, and above, to the left, the wind-scarred, storm-beaten crag rising sheer and wonderful out of the turbulent sea and crowned by those ancient walls about which clung so much of legend and romance.

Perhaps the magic of old Merlin's enchantments still lingered there, for as Nan stood silently absorbing the mysterious glamour of the place, the petty annoyances of the day, the fret of Lady Gertrude's unwelcoming reception of her, seemed to dwindle into insignificance.

They were only external things, after all. They could not mar the loveliness of this mystic, legend-haunted corner of the world.

At length, with a faint sigh of regret, she crossed the bridge and walked slowly up a path which appeared to be little more than a rough track hewn out of the rocky side of the cliff itself, uneven and strewn with loose stones. Nan picked her steps gingerly. At the top of the track her way turned sharply at right angles to where a narrow ridge--so narrow that two people could not walk it abreast--led to Tintagel Head. It was the merest neck of land, very steep on either hand, like a slender bridge connecting what the Cornish folk generally speak of as "the Island" with the mainland.

Nan proceeded to cross the narrow ridge. She was particularly surefooted as a rule, her supple body balancing itself instinctively.

But to-day, for the first time, she felt suddenly nervous as she neared the crag and, glancing downward, caught sight of the sullen billows thundering far below on either side. Perhaps the events of the day had frayed her nerves more than she knew. It was only by an effort that she dismissed the unaccustomed sensation of malaise which had a.s.sailed her and determinedly began the ascent to the castle by way of a series of primitively rough-hewn steps. They were slippery and uneven, worn and polished by the tread of the many feet which had ascended and descended them, and guarded only by a light hand-rail that seemed almost to quiver in her grasp as, gripped by another unexpected rush of fear, Nan caught at it in feverish haste.

She stood quite still--suddenly panic-stricken. Here, half-way up the side of the steep promontory, the whole immensity of the surrounding height and depth came upon her in a terrifying flash of realisation.

From below rose the reiterated boom of the baulked waves, each thud against the base of the great crag seeming to shake her whole being, while, whichever way she looked, menacing headlands towered stark and pitiless above the sea. She felt like a fly on the wall of some abysmal depth--only without the fly's powers of adhesion.