Читать книгу The Moon out of Reach - Margaret Pedler - Страница 13

"Nan, may I introduce Mr. Mallory?"

It was the evening of Kitty's little dinner—a cosy gathering of sympathetic souls, the majority of whom were more or less intimately known to each other.

"As you both have French blood in your veins, you can chant the Marseillaise in unison." And with a nod and smile Kitty passed on to where her husband was chatting with Ralph Fenton, the well-known baritone, and a couple of members of Parliament. Each of them had cut a niche of his own in the world, for Kitty was discriminating in her taste, and the receptions at her house in Green Street were always duly seasoned with the spice of brains and talent.

As Nan looked up into the face of the man whose acquaintance she had already made in such curious fashion, the thought flashed through her mind that here, in his partly French blood was the explanation of his unusual colouring—black brows and lashes contrasting so oddly with the kinky fair hair which, despite the barber's periodical shearing and the fervent use of a stiff-bristled hair-brush, still insisted on springing into crisp waves over his head and refused to lie flat.

"What luck!" he exclaimed boyishly. "I must be in the Fates' good books to-night. What virtuous deed can I have done to deserve it?"

"Playing the part of Good Samaritan might have counted," suggested Nan, smiling. "Unless you can recall any particularly good action which you've performed in the interval."

"I don't think I've been guilty of a solitary one," he replied seriously. "May I?" He offered his arm as the guests began trooping in to dinner—Penelope appropriately paired off with Fenton, whom she had come to know fairly well in the course of her professional work. Although, as she was wont to remark, "Ralph Fenton's a big fish and I'm only a little one." They were chattering happily together of songs and singers.

"So France has a partial claim, on you, too?" remarked Mallory, unfolding his napkin.

"Yes—a great-grandmother. I let her take the burden of all my sins."

"Not a very heavy one, I imagine," he returned, smiling.

"I don't know. Sometimes"—Nan's eyes grew suddenly pensive—"sometimes I feel that one day I shall do something which will make the burden too heavy to be shunted on to great-grandmamma! Then I'll have to bear it myself, I suppose."

"There'll be a pal or two around, to give you a hand with it, I expect," answered Mallory.

"I don't know if there will even be that," she answered dreamily. "Do you know, I've always had the idea that sometime or other I shall get myself into an awful hole and that there won't be a single soul in the world to get me out of it."

She spoke with an odd note of prescience in her voice. It was so pronounced that the sense of foreboding communicated itself to Mallory.

"Don't talk like that. If you think it, you'll be carried forward to just such disaster on the current of the thought. Be sure—quite, quite sure—that there will be someone at hand, even if it's only me"—quaintly.

"The Good Samaritan again? But you mightn't know I was in a difficulty," she protested.

"I think I should always know if you were in trouble," he said quietly.

There was a new quality in the familiar lazy drawl—something that was very strong and steady. Although he had laid no stress on the word "you," yet Nan was conscious in every nerve of her that there was an emphatic individual significance in the brief words he had just uttered. She shied away from it like a frightened colt.

"Still you mightn't come to the rescue, even if I were struggling in the quicksands," she answered.

"I should come," he said deliberately, "whether you wanted me to come or not."

Followed a brief pause, charged with a curious emotional tensity. Then

Mallory remarked lightly:

"I enjoyed the Charity Concert at Exeter."

"Were you there?" exclaimed Nan in surprise.

"Certainly I was there. When I was as near as Abbencombe, you don't suppose I was going to miss the chance of hearing you play, do you?"

"I never thought of your being there," she answered.

"And now that I know you've French blood in your veins, I can understand what always puzzled me in your playing."

"What was that?"

"The un-English element in it."

Nan smiled.

"Am I too unreserved then?" she shot at him.

His grey-blue eyes smiled back at her.

"One doesn't ask reserve of a musician. He must give himself—as you do."

She flushed a little. The man's perception was unerring.

"As no Englishwoman could," he pursued. "We English aren't dramatic—it's bad form, you know."

"'We' English?" repeated Nan. "That hardly applies to you, does it?"

"My mother is French. But I'm very English in most ways," he returned quickly. Adding, with a good-humoured laugh: "I'm a disappointment to my mother."

Nan laughed with him out of sheer friendly enjoyment.

"Oh, surely not?" she dissented.

"But yes!" A foreign turn of phrase occasionally betrayed his half-French nationality. "But yes—I'm too English to please her. It's an example of the charming inconsistency of women. My mother loves the English; she chooses an Englishman for her husband. But she desires her son to be a good Frenchman! … She is delightful, my mother."

Dinner proceeded leisurely. Nan noticed that her companion drank very little and exhibited a most unmasculine lack of interest in the inspirations of the chef. Yet she knew intuitively that he was alertly conscious of the quiet perfection of it all. She dropped into a brief reverie of which the man beside her was the subject and from which his voice presently recalled her.

"I hope you're going to play to us this evening?"

"I expect so—if Kitty wishes it."

"That's sufficient command for most of those to whom she gives the privilege of friendship, isn't it?"

There was a quiet ring of sincerity in his voice as he spoke of Kitty, and Nan's heart warmed towards him.

"Yes," she assented eagerly. "One can't say 'no' to her. But I don't care for it—playing in a drawing-room after dinner."

"No." Again that quick comprehension of his. "The chosen few and the chosen moment are what you like."

"How do you know?" she asked impulsively.

"Because I think the 'how' and the 'where' of things influence you enormously."

"Don't they influence you, too?" she demanded.

"Oh, they count—decidedly. But I'm not a woman, nor an artiste, so

I'm not so much at the mercy of my temperament."

The man's insight was extraordinarily keen, but touched with a little insouciant tenderness that preserved it from being critical in any hostile sense. Nan heaved a small sigh of contentment at finding herself in such an atmosphere.

"How well you understand women," she commented with a smile.

"It's very nice of you to say so, though I haven't got the temerity to agree with you."

Then, looking down at her intently, he added:

"I'm not likely, however, to forget that you've said it. … Perhaps

I may remind you of it some day."

The abrupt intensity of his manner startled her. For the second time that evening the vivid personal note had been struck, suddenly and unforgettably.

The presidential uprising of the women at the end of dinner saved her from the necessity of a reply. Mallory drew her chair aside and, as he handed her the cambric web of a handkerchief she had let fall, she found him regarding her with a gently humorous expression in his eyes.

"This quaint English custom!" he said lightly. "All you women go into another room to gossip and we men are condemned to the society of one another! I'm afraid even I'm not British enough to appreciate such a droll arrangement. Especially this evening."

Nan passed out in the wake of the other women to while away in desultory small talk that awkward after-dinner interval which splits the evening into halves and involves a picking up of the threads—not always successfully accomplished—when the men at last rejoin the feminine portion of the party. And what is it, after all, but a barbarous relic of those times when a man must needs drink so much wine as to render himself unfit for the company of his womenkind?

"Well," demanded Kitty, "how do you like my lion?"

"Mr. Mallory? I didn't know he was a lion," responded Nan.

"Of course you didn't. You musicians never realise that the human Zoo boasts any other lions but yourselves."

Nan laughed.

"He didn't roar," she said apologetically, "so how could I know? You never told me about him."

"Well, he's just written what everyone says will be the book of the year—Lindley's Wife. It's made a tremendous hit."

"I thought that was by G. A. Petersen?"

"But Peter is G. A. Petersen. Only his intimate friends know it, though, as he detests publicity. So go don't give the fact away."

"I won't. You've read this new book, I suppose?"

"Yes. And you must. It's the finest study of a woman's temperament I've ever come across. … Goodness knows he's had opportunity enough to study the subject!"

Nan froze a little.

"Oh, is he a gay Lothario sort of person?" she asked coldly. "He didn't strike me in that light."

"No. He's not in the least like that. He's an ideal husband wasted."

Nan's eyes twinkled.

"Don't poach on preserved ground, Kitty. Marriages are made in heaven."

As she spoke the door opened to admit the men, and somebody claiming Kitty's attention at the moment she turned away without reply. For a few minutes the conversation became more general until, after a brief hum and stir, congenial spirits sought and found each other and settled down into little groups of twos and threes. Somewhat to Nan's surprise—and, although she would not have acknowledged it, to her annoyance—Peter Mallory ensconced himself next to Penelope, and Ralph Fenton, the singer, thus driven from the haven where he would be, came to anchor beside Nan.

"I've not seen you for a long time, Miss Davenant. How's the world been treating you?"

"Rather better than usual," she replied gaily. "More ha'pence than kicks for once in a way."

"You're booking up pretty deep for the winter, then, I suppose?"

Nan winced at the professional jargon. There was certain aspects of a musician's life which repelled her, more particularly the commercial side of it.

She responded indifferently.

"No. I haven't booked a single further engagement. The ha'pence are due to an avuncular relative who has a quite inexplicable penchant for an idle niece."

"My congratulations. Still, I hope this unexpected windfall isn't going to keep you off the concert platform altogether?"

"Not more than my own distaste for playing in public," she answered.

"I'd much rather write music than perform."

"I can hardly believe you really dislike the publicity? The fascination of it grows on most of us."

"I know it does. I suppose that accounts for the endless farewell concerts a declining singer generally treats us to."

There was an unwonted touch of sharpness in her voice, and Fenton glanced at her in some surprise. It was unlike her to give vent to such an acid little speech. He could not know, of course, that Kitty's light-hearted remark concerning Peter Mallory's facilities for studying the feminine temperament was still rankling somewhere at the back of her mind.

"There's a big element of pathos in those farewell concerts," he submitted gently. "You pianists have a great advantage over the singer, whose instrument must inevitably deteriorate with the passing years."

Nan's quick sympathies responded instantly.

"I think I must be getting soured in my old age," she answered remorsefully. "What you say is dreadfully true. It's the saddest part of a singer's career. And I always clap my hardest at a farewell concert. I do, really!"

Fenton smiled down at her.

"I shall count on you, then, when I give mine."

Nan laughed.

"It's a solemn pledge—provided I'm still cumbering the ground. And now, tell me, are you singing here this evening?"

"I promised Mrs. Seymour. Would you be good enough to accompany?"

"I should love it. What are you going to sing?"

"Miss Craig and I proposed to give a duet."

"And here comes Kitty—to claim your promise, I guess."

A few minutes later the two singers' voices were blending delightfully together, while Nan's slight, musician's fingers threaded their way through intricacies of the involved accompaniment.

She was a wonderful accompanist—rarest of gifts—and when, at the end of the song, the restrained, well-bred applause broke out, Peter Mallory's share of it was offered as much to the accompanist as to the singers themselves.

"Stay where you are, Nan," cried Kitty, as the girl half rose from the music-seat. "Stay where you are and play us something."

Knowing Nan's odd liking for a dim light, she switched off most of the burners as she spoke, leaving only one or two heavily shaded lights still glowing. Mallory crossed the room so that, as he stood leaning with one elbow on the chimney-piece, he faced the player, on whose aureole of dusky hair one of the lights still burning cast a glimmer. While he waited for her to begin, he was aware of a little unaccustomed thrill of excitement, as though he were on the verge of some discovery.

Hesitatingly Nan touched a chord or two. Then without further preamble she broke into the strange, suggestive music which Penelope had described as representing the murder of a soul. It opened joyously, the calm beginnings of a happy spirit; then came a note of warning, the first low muttering of impending woe. Gradually the simple melody began to lose itself in a chaos of calamity, bent and swayed by wailing minor cadences through whose torrent of hurrying sound it could be heard vainly and fitfully trying to assert itself again, only to be at last weighed down, crushed out, by a cataclysm of despairing chords. Then, after a long, pregnant pause—the culminating silence of defeat—the original melody stole out once more, repeated in a minor key, hollow and denuded.

As the music ceased the lights sprang up again and Nan, looking across the room, met Mallory's gaze intently bent upon her. In his expression she could discern that by a queer gift of intuition he had comprehended the whole inner meaning of what she had been playing. Most people would have thought that it was a magnificent bit of composition, particularly for so young a musician, but Mallory went deeper and knew it to be a wonderful piece of self-revelation—the fruit of a spirit sorely buffeted.

Almost instantaneously Nan realised that he had understood, and she was conscious of a fierce resentment. She felt as though an unwarrantable intrusion had been made upon her privacy, and her annoyance showed itself in the quick compression of her mouth. She was about to slip away under cover of the applause when Mallory laid a detaining hand upon her arm.

"Don't go," he said. "And forgive me for understanding!"

Nan, sorely against her will, looked, up and met his eyes—eyes that were irresistibly kind and friendly. She hesitated, still anxious to escape.

"Please," he begged. "Don't leave me"—his lips endeavouring not to smile—"in high dudgeon. It's always seemed such an awful thing to be left in—like boiling oil."

Suddenly she yielded to the man's whimsical charm and sank down again into her chair.

"That's better." He smiled and seated himself beside her. "I couldn't help it, you know," he said quaintly. "It was you yourself who told me."

"Told you what?"

"That the world hadn't been quite kind."

Nan felt a sudden reckless instinct to tempt fate. There was already a breach in her privacy; for this one evening she did not care if the wall were wholly battered down.

"Tell me," she queried with averted head, "how—how much did you understand?"

Mallory scrutinised her reflectively.

"You really wish it?"

"Yes, really."

He was silent a moment. Then he spoke slowly, as though choosing his words.

"Fate has given you one of her back-handers, I think, and you want the thing you can't have—want it rather badly. And just now—nothing seems quite worth while."

"Go on," she said very low.

He hesitated. Then, as if suddenly making up his mind to hit hard, as a surgeon might decide to use the knife, he spoke incisively:

"The man wasn't worth it."

Nan gave a faint, irrepressible start. Recovering herself quickly, she contrived a short laugh.

"You don't know him—" she began.

"But I know you."

"This is only our second meeting."

"What of that? I know you well enough to be sure—quite sure—that you wouldn't give unasked. You're too proud, too analytical, and—at present—too little passionate."

Nan's face whitened. It was true; she had not given unasked, for although Maryon Rooke had never actually asked her to marry him, his whole attitude had been that of the demanding lover.

"You're rather an uncanny person," she said at last, slowly. "You understand—too much."

"Tout comprendre—c'est tout pardonner," quoted Mallory gently.

Nan fenced.

"And do I need pardon?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered simply, "You're not the woman God meant you to be.

You're too critical, too cold—without passion."

"And I a musician?"—incredulously.

"Oh, it's in your music right enough. The artist in you has it. But the woman—so far, no. You're too introspective to surrender blindly. Artiste, analyst, critic first—only woman when those other three are satisfied."

Nan nodded.

"Yes," she said slowly. "I believe that's true."

"I think it is," he affirmed quietly. "And because men are what they are, and you are you, it's quite probable you'll fail to achieve the triumph of your womanhood." He paused, then added: "You're not one of those who would count the world well lost for love, you know—except on the impulse of an imaginative moment."

"No, I'm not," she answered reflectively. "I wonder why?"

"Why? Oh, you're a product of the times—the primeval instincts almost civilised out of you."

Nan sprang to her feet with a laugh.

"I won't stay here to be vivisected one moment longer!" she declared.

"People like you ought to be blindfolded."

"Anything you like—so long as I'm forgiven."

"I think you'll have to be forgiven—in remembrance of the day when you took up a passenger in Hyde Park!"—smiling.

Soon afterwards people began to take their departure, Nan and Penelope alone making no move to go, since Kitty had offered to send them home in her car "at any old time." Mallory paused as he was making his farewells to the two girls.

"And am I permitted—may I have the privilege of calling?" he asked with one of his odd lapses into a quaintly elaborate manner that was wholly un-English.

"Yes, do. We shall be delighted."

"My thanks." And with a slight bow he left them.

Later on, when everyone else had gone, the Seymours, together with

Penelope and Nan, drew round the fire for a final few minutes' yarn.

"Well, how do you like Kitty's latest lion?" asked Barry, lighting a cigarette.

"I think he's a dear," declared Penelope warmly. "I liked him immensely—what I saw of him."

"He's such an extraordinary faculty for reading people," chimed in

Kitty, puffing luxuriously at a tiny gold-tipped cigarette.

"Part of a writer's stock in trade, of course," replied Barry. "But he's a clever chap."

"Too clever, I think," said Nan. "He fills one with a desire to have one's soul carefully fitted up with frosted glass windows."

Penelope laughed.

"What nonsense! I think he's a delightful person."

"Possibly. But, all the same, I think I'm frightened of people who make me feel as if I'd no clothes on."

"Nan!"

"It's quite true. Your most dazzling get-up wouldn't make an atom of difference to his opinion of the real 'you' underneath it all. Why, one might just as well have no pretensions to good looks when talking to a man like that! It's sheer waste of good material."

"Well, he's rather likely to want to get at the real 'you' of anybody he meets," interpolated Barry. "He was badly taken in once. His wife was one of the prettiest women I've ever struck—and she was an absolute devil."

"He's a widower, then!" exclaimed Penelope.

Barry shook his head regretfully.

"No such luck! That's the skeleton in poor old Peter's cupboard. Celia Mallory is very much alive and having as good a time as she can squeeze out of India."

"They live apart," explained Kitty. "She's one of those restless, excitable women, always craving to be right in the limelight, and she simply couldn't stand Peter's literary work. She was frantically jealous of it—wanted him to be dancing attendance on her all day long. And when his work interfered with the process, as of course it was bound to do, she made endless rows. She has money of her own, and finally informed Peter that she was going to India, where she has relatives. Her uncle's a judge, and she's several Army cousins married out there."

"Do you mean she has never come back?" gasped Penelope.

"No. And I don't think she intends to if she can help it. She's the most thoroughly selfish little beast of a woman I know, and cares for nothing on earth except enjoyment. She's spoiled Peter's life for him"—Kitty's voice shook a little—"and through it all he's been as patient as one of God's saints."

"Still, they're better apart," commented Barry. "While she was living with him she made a bigger hash of his life than she can do when she's away. She was spoiling his work as well as his life. And old Peter's work means a lot to him. He's still got that left out of the wreckage."

"Yes," agreed Kitty, "and of course he's writing better than ever now.

Everyone says Lindley's Wife is a masterpiece."

Nan had been very silent during this revelation of Mallory's unfortunate domestic affairs. The discovery that he was already married came upon her as a shock. She felt stunned. Above all, she was conscious of a curious sense of loss, as though the Peter she had just began to know had suddenly receded a long way off from her and would never again be able to draw nearer.

When the Seymours' car at length bore the two girls back to Edenhall Mansions, Penelope found Nan an unwontedly silent companion. She responded to Penny's remarks in monosyllables and appeared to have nothing to say regarding the evening's happenings.

Mingled with the even throb of the engine, she could hear a constant iteration of the words:

"Married! Peter's married!"

And she was quite unconscious that in her mind he was already thinking of him as "Peter."