She was soon to know.

"Then, my dear child," said Lady Gertrude decidedly, "of course it would be quite impossible for you to go there."

"Why impossible?"

Lady Gertrude's brows lifted, superciliously.

"I should have thought it was obvious," she replied curtly. "Hasn't it occurred to you that it would be hardly the thing for a young unmarried girl to be staying alone in a flat in London?"

"No, it hasn't," returned Nan bluntly. "Penelope and I have each stayed there alone--heaps of times--when the other was away."

"Very possibly." There was an edge to Lady Gertrude's voice which it was impossible to misinterpret. "Professional musicians are very lax--I suppose _you_ would call it Bohemian--in their ideas. That I can quite believe. But you have someone else to consider now. Roger would hardly wish his future wife to be stopping alone at a flat in London."

Nan was silent. Ridiculous as it seemed, she had to admit that Lady Gertrude was speaking no more than the bare truth concerning Roger's point of view. She felt perfectly sure that he would object--very strenuously!

Lady Gertrude rose.

"I think there is no more to be said. You can put any idea of rushing off to London out of your head. Even if Roger were agreeable, I should not allow it while you are in my charge. Neither is it exactly complimentary to us that you should even suggest such a thing."

With this parting comment she quitted the room, leaving Nan staring stonily out of the window.

She felt helpless--helpless to withstand the thin, steel-eyed woman who was Roger's mother. Nominally free, she was to all intents and purposes a prisoner at Trenby Hall till Kitty or Penelope came home. Of course she could write to Lord St. John if she chose. But even if she did, he most certainly could not ask her to stay with him at his chambers in London. Besides, she didn't want to appeal to him. She knew he would think she was running away--playing the coward, and that it would be a bitter disappointment to him to find her falling short of the high standard which he had always set before her.

"_No Davenant was ever a coward in the face of difficulties_," he had told her. And she loved him far too much to hurt him as grievously as she knew it would hurt him if she ran away from them.

She stood there for a long time, staring dumbly out at the falling rain and dripping trees. She was thinking along the lines which St. John had laid down for her. "_Don't make Roger pay for your own blunder_." Was she doing that? Remembering all that had pa.s.sed between them last night she began to realise that this was just what she had been doing.

She had no love to give him, but she had been keeping him out of everything else as well. She had not even tried to make a comrade of him, to let him into her interests and to try and share his own.

Instead, she had shut herself away in the West Parlour with her music and her memories, and in his own blundering fashion Roger had realised it.

Probably he had even guessed that that other man who had loved her had been able to go with her into the temple of music, comprehending it all and loving it even as she did.

She understood Roger's strange and sudden jealousy now. Although she was to be his wife, he was jealous of those invisible bonds of mutual understanding which had linked her to Peter Mallory--bonds which, had they two been free to marry, would have made of their marriage a perfect thing--the beautiful mating of spirit, soul, and body.

The doors of her soul--that innermost sanctuary of all--would never be opened for any other to enter in. But surely there was something more that she might give Roger than she had yet done. She could stretch out a friendly hand and try to link their interests together, however slight the link must be.

All at once, a plan to accomplish this formulated itself in her mind. He had wanted to "smash the piano." Well, he should never want that again.

She would show him that her music was not going to stand between them--that she was willing to share it with him. She would talk to him about it, get him to understand something of what it meant to her, and when the concerto was quite finished, she would invite him into the West Parlour to listen to it. It was nearing completion--another week's work and what Sandy laughingly termed her "magnum opus" would be finished. Of course Roger wouldn't be able to give her a musician's understanding of it, but he would certainly appreciate the fact that she had played it to him first of anyone.

It would go far to heal that resentful jealousy if she "shared" the concerto with him. He would never again feel that she was keeping him outside the real interests of her life. Probably, later on, when it was performed by a big London orchestra, under the auspices of one of the best-known conductors of the day--who happened to be a particular friend of Nan's and a staunch believer in her capacity to do good work--Roger would even begin to take a quaint kind of pride in her musical achievements.

What she purposed would involve a good deal of pluck and sacrifice. For it takes both of these to reveal yourself, as any true musician must, to an audience of one with whom you are not utterly in sympathy. But if by this road she and Roger took one step towards a better understanding, towards that comradeship which was all that she could ever give him, then it would have been worth the sacrifice.

Gradually the stony look of despair lifted from her face, and a new spirit of resolution took possession of her. She was not the only person in the world who had to suffer. There were others, Peter amongst them, who were debarred by circ.u.mstances from finding happiness, and who went on doing their duty unflinchingly. It was only she who had failed--letting Roger bear the cost of her mistake. She had promised to marry him when it seemed the only way out of the difficulties which beset her, and now she was not honouring that promise. While Peter Mallory was still waiting quietly for the wife he no longer loved to come back to him--keeping the door of his house open to her whenever she should choose to claim fulfilment of the pledges he had given the day he married her.

Nan leaned her head against the window-pane, realising that, whatever Roger's faults might he, she, too, had fallen short.

"Our troth, Nan. Hang on to it--_hard_, when life seems a bit more uphill than usual."

She could hear Peter's voice, steady and clear and rea.s.suring, almost as she had heard it that night on the headland at Tintagel. She felt her throat contract and a burning mist of tears blurred her vision. For a moment she fought desperately against her weakness. Then, with a little strangled cry, she buried her face against her arm and broke into a pa.s.sion of tears.

CHAPTER XXII

THE OFFERING OF FIRST-FRUITS

The concerto was finished! Finished, at least, as far as it was possible without rehearsing the effect with orchestra, and as Nan turned over the sheets of ma.n.u.script, thickly dotted with their medley of notes and rests and slurs, she was conscious of that glorious thrill of accomplishment which is the creative artist's recompense for long hours of work and sacrifice,--and for those black moments of discouragement and self-distrust which no true artist can escape.

She sat very quietly in the West Parlour, thinking of the concerto and of what she meant to do with it. She was longing to show it to Sandy McBain, who would have a musician's comprehension of every bar, and she knew he would rejoice with her whole-heartedly over it. But that would have to wait until after Roger had heard it. The first-fruits, as it were, were to be offered to him.

She had it all planned out in her mind. Roger was out hunting to-day, so that she had been able to add certain final touches to the concerto uninterrupted, and after dinner she proposed to carry him off to the West Parlour and play it to him. There would be only their two selves, alone together--for she had no intention of inviting Lady Gertrude and Isobel to attend this first performance.

She was nervously excited at the prospect, and when she heard the distant sound of a horseman trotting up the drive she jumped up and ran to the window, peering out into the dusk. It was Roger, and as horse and rider swung past the window she drew back suddenly into the fire-lit shadows of the room, letting the short window-curtains fall together.

Five minutes later she heard his footsteps as he came striding along the corridor on to which the West Parlour opened. Then the door-handle was turned with imperious eagerness, someone switched on the light, and he came in--splashed with mud, his face red from the lash of the wind, his hair beaded with moisture from the misty air. He looked just what he was--a typical big sporting Englishman--as he tramped into the room and made his way to the warmth of the blazing log fire.

Nan looked up and threw him a little smile of greeting.

"Hullo, darling, there you are!" He stooped and kissed her, and she forced herself to sit quiet and unshrinking while his lips sought and found her own.

"Have you had a good day?" she asked.

"Topping. Best run of the season. We found at once and went right away." And he launched out into an enthusiastic description of the day's sport.

Nan listened patiently. She wasn't in the least interested, really, but she had been trying very hard latterly not to let Roger pay for what had been her own blunder--not to let him pay even in the small things of daily life. So she feigned an interest she was far from feeling and discussed the day's hunting with s.n.a.t.c.hes of melody from the concerto running through her mind all the time.

The man and woman offered a curious contrast as they talked; he, big, virile, muddied with his day in the saddle, an aroma of mingled damp and leather exuding from his clothes as they steamed in front of the fire--she, slim, silken-clad, delicately wrought by nature and over-finely strung by reason of the high-pitched artist's life she had led.

Roger himself seemed suddenly struck by the contrast.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, surveying her rather ruefully. "We're a pretty fair example of beauty and the beast, aren't we?"

Nan looked back at him composedly--at the strong, ugly face and far-visioned eyes.

"Not in the least," she replied judicially. "We're--different, that's all. And"--smiling faintly--"you're rather grubby just at present."

"I suppose I am." He glanced ruefully down at his mud-bespattered coat. "I oughtn't to have come in here like this," he added with an awkward attempt at apology. "Only I couldn't wait to see you."

"Well, go and have your tub and a change," she said, with a small, indulgent laugh. "And by dinner time you'll have a better opinion of your outward man."

It was not until after dinner that she mentioned the concerto to him, s.n.a.t.c.hing an opportunity when they chanced to find themselves alone for a few minutes. Some distracted young married woman from the village had called to ask Lady Gertrude's advice as to how she should deal with a husband who seemed to find his chief entertainment in life in beating her with a broomstick and in threatening to "do her in" altogether if the application of the broomstick proved barren of wifely improvement.

Accordingly, Lady Gertrude, accompanied by her aide-de-camp, Isobel, were interviewing the poor, terrified creature with a view to ameliorating her lot.

"It's good, Roger," said Nan, when she had told him that the concerto was finished. "It's really good. And I want you to hear it first of anyone."

Roger smiled down at her. He was obviously pleased.

"Of course I must hear it first," he answered. "I'm your lawful lord and master, remember."