"I don"t think you"ll find it difficult to meet her again," replied Kitty. "Roger stopped in town all through the time you were really dangerously ill--"
"Did he?" interrupted Nan. "That was--rather nice of him, considering how I"d treated him."
"Do you still mean to marry the fellow?" asked Barry, bluntly.
"Yes." The monosyllable fell slowly but quite convincingly. "Why hasn"t he been to see me lately?" she added after a moment.
"Because I asked him not to," answered Kitty. "He stayed in London till you were out of danger. After that I bustled him off home, and told him I should only bring you down to Mallow if he could induce Lady Gertrude to behave decently to you."
"You seem to have ordered him about pretty considerably," remarked Nan with a faint smile.
"Oh, he was quite meek with me," returned Kitty. "He had to be. I told him his only chance was to keep away from you, to manage Lady Gertrude properly, and not to worry you with letters."
"So that"s why he hasn"t written? I"ve wondered, sometimes."
Nan was silent for a time. Then she said quietly:
"You"re a good pal, Kitten."
Followed a still longer pause. At last Kitty broke it reluctantly:
"I"ve something else to tell you."
Nan glanced up quickly, detecting some special significance in her tones.
"What is it?" she asked.
Kitty made a gesture to her husband that he should leave them alone.
When he had gone:
"It"s about Peter," she said, then paused unhappily.
"Yes. Go on. Peter and I are only friends now. We"ve--we"ve worked up quite a presentable sort of friendship since my illness, you know.
What is there to tell me?"
"You know that Celia, his wife, has been out in India for some years.
Well--"
Nan"s frail body stiffened suddenly.
"She"s coming home?" she said swiftly.
Kitty nodded.
"Yes. She"s been very ill with sunstroke. And she"s ordered home as soon as she is able to travel."
Nan made no answer for a moment. Then she said almost under her breath:
"Poor Peter!"
It was late in the afternoon when Peter came to pay his usual daily visit. Kitty brought him into the room and vanished hastily, leaving the two alone together.
"You know?" he said quietly.
Nan bent her head.
"Yes, I know," she answered. "Oh, Peter, I"m so sorry!" Adding, after a pause: "Must you have her with you?"
"I must, dear."
"You"d be happier alone."
"Less unhappy, perhaps." He corrected her gently. "But one can"t always consider one"s own personal wishes. I"ve a responsibility towards Celia. She"s my wife. And though she"s been foolish and treated life rather as though it were a game of battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k, she"s never done anything to unfit herself to be my wife.
Even if she had--well, I still shouldn"t consider I was absolved from my responsibility towards her. Marriage is "for better, for worse,"
and I can"t be coward enough to shirk if it turns out "for worse." If I did, anything might happen--anything! Celia"s a woman of no will-power--driven like a bit of fluff by every breeze that blows. So you see, beloved, I must be waiting to help her when she comes back."
Nan lifted her eyes to his face.
"I see that you"re just the best and bravest man I know--_preux chevalier_, as I once called you. . . . Oh, Peter! She"s the luckiest woman in the world to be your wife! And she doesn"t even know it!"
He drew her hands into his.
"Not really lucky to be my wife, Nan," he said quietly, "because I can give her so little. Everything that matters--my love, my utter faith, all my heart and soul--are yours, now and for ever."
Her hands quivered in his clasp. She dared not trust herself to speak, lest she should give way and by her own weakness try his strength too hard.
"Good-bye, dear," he said with infinite tenderness. Then, with a ghost of the old whimsical smile that reminded her sharply, cruelly, of the Peter of happier days: "We seem always to be saying good-bye, don"t we?
And then Fate steps in and brings us together again. But this time it is really good-bye--good-bye for always. When we meet again--if we do--I shall have Celia to care for, and you will be Roger"s wife."
He stooped his head and pressed his lips against first one soft palm and then the other. She heard him cross the room and the door close behind him. With a little cry she covered her face with her hands, crushing the palms where his kiss had lain against her shaking lips.
CHAPTER XXIX
ON THIN ICE
May had slipped away into the ranks of the dead months, and June--a June resplendent with sunshine and roses--had taken her place.
Nan, an open letter in her hand, sat perched on the low wall of the quadrangular court at Mallow, delicately sniffing the delicious salt tang which wafted up from the expanse of blue sea that stretched in front of her. Physically she felt a different being from the girl who had lain on a couch in London and grumbled fretfully at the houses opposite. A month at Mallow had practically restored her health. The good Cornish cream and b.u.t.ter had done much towards rounding the sharpened contours of her face, and to all outward appearance she was the same Nan who had stayed at Mallow almost a year ago.
But within herself she knew that a great gulf lay fixed between those insouciant, long-ago days and this golden, scented morning. The world had not altered. June was still vivid and sweet with the rapture of summer. It was she herself who had changed.
Looking backward, she almost wondered how she had endured the agony of love and suffering and sacrifice which had been compressed into a single year. She wished sometimes that they had let her die when she was so ill--let her slip easily out of the world while the delirium of fever still closed the door on conscious knowledge of all that she had lost. It seemed foolish to make so much effort to hold on to life when everything which had made it lovely and pleasant and desirable had gone out of it. Yet there were still moments, as to-day, when the sheer beauty of the earth so thrilled her that for the time being life was a thousand times worth living.
And behind it all--back of the tears and suffering which seemed so cruelly incomprehensible--there lay always the inscrutable and splendid purposes of G.o.d, and the Ultimate Light beyond. Lord St. John had taught her that. It had been his own courageous, unshakable belief.