The Moon out of Reach Part 67

In the hall she encountered Roger, who had ridden over, accompanied by a trio of dogs, and the sight of his big, tweed-clad figure, so solidly suggestive of normal, everyday things, filled her with an unexpected sense of relief. He might not be the man she loved, but he was, at any rate, a sheet-anchor in the midst of the emotional storms that were blowing up around her.

To-day, however, his face wore a clouded, sullen expression when he greeted her.

"What have you been doing with yourself?" he asked, his eyes fastening suspiciously on her flushed cheeks.

She answered him with a poor attempt at her usual nonchalance.

"Oh, Maryon came over this morning, so I've been sitting to him."

"All day? I don't like it too well." The look of displeasure deepened on his face. "People will talk. You know what country folks are like."

Nan's eyes flashed.

"Let them talk! I'm not going to regulate my conduct according to the villagers' standard of propriety," she replied indignantly.

"It isn't merely the villagers," pursued Roger. "Isobel said, only yesterday, she thought it was rather indiscreet."

"Isobel!" interrupted Nan scornfully. "It would be better if she kept her thoughts for home consumption. The neighbourhood might conceivably comment on the number of times you and she go 'farming' together."

Roger looked quickly at her, a half-smile on his lips.

"Why, Nan!" he said, a note of surprise, almost of satisfaction, in his voice. "I believe you're growing jealous?"

She laughed contemptuously. She was intensely angry that he should have quoted Isobel's opinion to her, and she struck back as hard as she could.

"My dear Roger, surely by this time it must be clear to you that I'm not very likely to be afflicted by--jealousy!"

The shaft went home, and in an instant the dawning smile on his face was replaced by an expression of bitter resentment.

"No, I suppose not," he returned sullenly.

He stared down at her, and something in the indifferent pose of her slim figure made him realise afresh for how little--how pitifully little--he counted in this woman's life.

He gripped her shoulder in sudden anger.

"But _I_ am jealous!"--vehemently. "Do you hear, Nan? Jealous of your reputation and your time--the time you give to Rooke."

She shrank away from him, and the movement seemed to rouse him to a white heat of fury. Instead of releasing her, he pulled her closer to him.

"Don't shrink like that!" he exclaimed savagely. "By G.o.d! Do you think I'll stand being treated as though I were a leper? You avoid me all you can--detest the sight of me, I suppose! But remember one thing--you're going to be my wife. Nothing can alter that, and you belong--to--me"--emphasising each word separately. "You mayn't give me your smiles--but I'm d.a.m.ned if you shall give them to any other man."

He thrust his face, distorted with anger, close to hers.

"_Now_ do you understand?"

She struggled in his grasp like a frightened bird, her eyes dilating with terror. She knew, only too well, what this big primitive-souled man could be like when the devil in him was roused, and his white, furious face and blazing eyes filled her with panic.

"Roger! Let me go!" she cried, her voice quick with fear. "Let me go!

You're hurting me!"

"Hurting you?" With an effort he mastered himself, slackening his grasp a little, but still holding her. "Hurting you? I wonder if you realise what a woman like you can do to a man? When I first met you I was just an ordinary decent man, and I loved and trusted you implicitly. But now, sometimes, I almost feel that I could kill you--to make sure of you!"

"But why should you distrust me? It's Isobel--Isobel Carson who's put these ideas into your head."

"Perhaps she's opened my eyes," he said grimly. "They've been shut too long."

"You've no right to distrust me--"

"Haven't I, Nan, haven't I?" He held her a little away from him and searched her face. "Answer me! Have I no right to doubt you?"

His big chest heaved under the soft fabric of his shirt as he stood looking down at her, waiting for her answer.

She would have given the world to be able to answer him with a simple "No." But her lips refused to shape the word. There was so much that lay between them, so much that was complicated and difficult to interpret.

Slowly her eyes fell before his.

"I utterly decline to answer such a question," she replied at last.

"It's an insult."

His hands fell from her shoulders.

"I think I'm answered," he said curtly, and, turning on his heel, he strode away, leaving Nan shaken and dismayed.

As far as Maryon was concerned, he refrained from making any allusion to what had taken place that day in the music-room, and gradually the sense of shocked dismay with which his proposal had filled Nan at the time, grew blurred and faded, skilfully obliterated by his unfailing tact. But the remembrance of it lingered, tucked away in a corner of her mind, offering a terrible solution of her difficulties.

He still demanded from her a large part of each day, on the plea that much yet remained to be done to the portrait, while Roger, into whose ears Isobel continued to drop small poisoned hints, became correspondingly more difficult and moody. The tension of the situation was only relieved by the comings and goings of Sandy McBain and the enforced cheerfulness a.s.sumed by the members of the Mallow household.

Neither Penelope nor Kitty sensed the imminence of any real danger.

But Sandy, in whose memory the recollection of the winter's happenings was still alive and vivid, felt disturbed and not a little anxious.

Nan's moods were an open book to him, and just now they were not very pleasant reading.

"What about the concerto?" he asked her one day. "Aren't you going to do anything with it?"

"Do anything with it?" she repeated vaguely.

"Yes, of course. Get it published--push it! You didn't write it just for fun, I suppose?"

A faintly mocking smile upturned the corners of her mouth.

"I think Roger considers I wrote it expressly to annoy him," she submitted.

"Rot!" he replied succinctly. "Just because he's not a trained musician you appear to imagine he's devoid of ordinary appreciation."

"He is," she returned. "He hates my music. Yes, he does"--as Sandy seemed about to protest. "He hates it!"

"Look here, Nan"--he became suddenly serious--"you're not playing fair with Trenby. He's quite a good sort, but because he isn't a scatter-brained artist like yourself, you're giving him a rotten time."

From the days when they had first known each other Sandy had taken it upon himself at appropriate seasons to lecture Nan upon the error of her ways, and it never occurred to her, even now, to resent it.

Instead, she answered him with unwonted meekness.