"Yes," she answered at last, very quietly. "It was Peter." With a sudden shudder she bent forward and covered her face with her hands.

"And I can't forget," she said hoa.r.s.ely.

A long, heavy silence fell between them.

"Then why--" began Lord St. John.

Nan lifted her head.

"Why did I promise Roger?" she broke in. "Because it seemed the only way. I--I was afraid! And then there was Penelope--and Ralph. . . .

Oh, it was a ghastly mistake. I know now. But--but there's Roger . . . he cares . . ."

"Yes. There's Roger," he said gravely. "And you've given him your word. You can't draw back now." There was a note of sternness in the old man's voice--the sternness of a man who has a high creed of honour and who has always lived up to it, no matter what it cost.

"Remember, Nan, no Davenant was ever a coward in the face of difficulties. They always pulled through somehow."

"Or ran away--like Angele de Varincourt."

"She only ran from one difficulty into the arms of a hundred others.

No wrong can be righted by another wrong."

"Can any wrong ever be really righted?" she demanded bitterly.

"We have to pay for our mistakes--each in our turn." He himself had paid to the uttermost farthing. "Is it a very heavy price, Nan?"

She turned her face away a little.

"It will be . . . higher than I expected," she acknowledged slowly.

"Well, then, pay up. Don't make--Roger--pay for your blunder. You have other things--your music, for instance. Many people have to go through life with only their work for company. . . . Whereas you are Roger's whole world."

With the New Year Lord St. John returned to town. Nan missed him every minute of the day, but she had drawn new strength and steadfastness from his kindly counsels. He understood both the big tragedies of life--which often hold some brief, perfect memory to make them bearable--and those incessant, gnat-like irritations which uncongenial fellowship involves.

Somehow he had the faculty of relegating small personal vexations to their proper place in the scheme of things--thrusting them far into the background. It was as though someone drew you to the window and, ignoring the small, man-made flower-beds of the garden with their insistent crop of weeds, the circ.u.mscribed lawns, and the foolish, twisting paths that led to nowhere, pointed you to the distant landscape where the big breadths of light and shadow, the broad draughtmanship of G.o.d, stretched right away to the dim blue line of the horizon.

CHAPTER XX

THE CAGE DOOR

For the first few days succeeding Lord St. John's departure from Trenby Hall, matters progressed comparatively smoothly. Then, as his influence waned with absence, the usual difficulties reappeared, the old hostilities--hostilities of outlook and generation--arising once more betwixt Nan and Lady Gertrude. Mutual understanding is impossible between two people whose sense of values is fundamentally opposed, and music, the one thing that had counted all through Nan's life, was a matter of supreme unimportance to the older woman. She regarded it--or, indeed, any other form of art, for that matter--as amongst the immaterial fripperies of life, something to be put aside at any moment in favour of social or domestic duties. It signified even less to her than it did to Eliza McBain, to whom it at least represented one of the lures of Satan--and for this reason could not be entirely discounted.

Since Sandy's stimulating visit Nan had devoted considerable time to the composition of her concerto, working at it with a recrudescence of her old enthusiasm, and the work had been good for her. It had carried her out of herself, preventing her from dwelling continually upon the past. Unfortunately, however, the hours she spent in the seclusion of the West Parlour were not allowed to pa.s.s without comment.

"It seems to take you a long time to compose a new piece," remarked Isobel at dinner one day, the trite expression "new piece" very evidently culled from her school-day memories.

Nan smiled across at her.

"A concerto's a pretty big undertaking, you see," she explained.

"Rather an unnecessary one, I should have thought, as you are so soon to be married." Lady Gertrude spoke with her usual acid brevity. "It certainly prevents our enjoying as much of your society as we should wish."

Nan flushed scarlet at the implied slur on her behaviour as a guest in the house, even though she recognised the injustice of it. An awkward pause ensued. Isobel, having started the ball rolling, seemed content to let things take their course without interference, while Roger's s.h.a.ggy brows drew together in a heavy frown--though whether he were displeased by his mother's comment, or by Nan's having given her cause for it, it was impossible to say.

"This afternoon, for instance," pursued Lady Gertrude, "Isobel and I paid several calls in the neighbourhood, and in each case your absence was a disappointment to our friends--very naturally."

"I--I'm sorry," stammered Nan. She found it utterly incomprehensible that anyone should expect her to break off in the middle of an afternoon's inspiration in order to pay a duty call upon some absolute strangers--whose disappointment was probably solely due to baulked curiosity concerning Roger's future wife.

Isobel laughed lightly and let fly one of her little two-edged shafts.

"I expect you think we're a lot of very commonplace people, Nan," she commented. "Own up, now!" challengingly.

Lady Gertrude's eyes flashed like steel.

"Hardly that, I hope," she said coldly.

"Well, we're none of us in the least artistic," persisted her niece, perfectly aware that her small thrusts were as irritating to Lady Gertrude and Roger as the picador's darts to the bull in the arena.

"So of course we must appear rather Philistine compared with Nan's set in London."

Roger levelled a keen glance at Nan. There was suppressed anger and a searching, almost fierce enquiry in his eyes beneath which she shrank.

That imperious temper of his was not difficult to rouse, as she had discovered on more than one occasion since she had come to Trenby Hall, and she felt intensely annoyed with Isobel, who was apparently unable to see that her ill-timed observations were goading the pride of both Roger and his mother.

"Silence evidently gives consent," laughed Isobel, as Nan, absorbed in her own reflections for the moment, vouchsafed no contradiction to her last remark.

Nan met the other's mocking glance defiantly. With a sudden wilfulness, born of the incessant opposition she encountered, she determined to let Miss Carson's second challenge go unanswered. She had tried--tried desperately--to win the affection, or even the bare liking, of Roger's women-kind, and she had failed. It was all just so much useless effort. Henceforward they might think of her what they chose.

The remainder of the meal pa.s.sed in a strained and uncomfortable manner. Lady Gertrude and Isobel discussed various matters pertaining to the village Welfare Club, while Roger preserved an impenetrable silence, and though Nan made a valiant pretence at eating, lest Lady Gertrude's gimlet eyes should observe her lack of appet.i.te and her thin, disdainful voice comment on the fact, she felt all the time as though the next mouthful must inevitably choke her.

The long, formal meal came to an end at last, and she rose from the table with a sigh of relief and accompanied the other two women out of the room, leaving Roger to smoke his pipe alone as usual. An instant later, to her surprise, she heard his footstep and found that he had followed them into the hall and was standing on the threshold of the library.

"Come in here, Nan," he said briefly.

Somewhat reluctantly she followed him into the room. He closed the door behind her, then swung round on his heel so that they stood fronting one another.

At the sight of his face she recoiled a step in sheer nervous astonishment. It was a curious ashen-white, and from beneath drawn brows his hawk's eyes seemed positively to blaze at her.

"Roger," she stammered, "what--what is it?"

"Is it true?" he demanded, ignoring her halting question, and fixing her with a glance that seemed to penetrate right through her.

"Is--is what true?" she faltered.

"Is it true--what Isobel said--that you look down on us because we're countrified, that you're still hankering after that precious artistic crew of yours in London?"

He spoke violently--so violently that it roused Nan's spirit. She turned away from him.