The Moon out of Reach Part 62

The words grew fainter, vaguer, trailing off into a regular pulsation that beat against her ears.

"_Honour_!" She thought she said it very loudly.

But all that Kitty and Roger heard was a little moan as Nan slipped to the ground in a dead faint.

CHAPTER XXVIII

GOOD-BYE!

A chesterfield couch had been pulled well into the bay window of one of Kitty's big rooms so that Nan, from the nest of cus.h.i.+ons amid which she lay, could see all that was pa.s.sing in the street below. The warm May suns.h.i.+ne poured into the room, revealing with painful clarity the changes which the last three months had wrought in her. Never at any time robust in appearance, she seemed the slenderest, frailest thing as she lay there, the delicate angles of her face sharpened by fever and weakness, her cheeks so hollowed that the violet-blue eyes looked almost amazingly big and wide-open in her small face.

Kitty was sitting near her, a half-knitted jumper lying across her knees, the inevitable cigarette in her hand, while Barry, who had returned from Cannes some weeks ago--entirely unperturbed at finding his new system a complete "wash-out"--leaned, big and debonair, against the window.

"When are we going to Mallow?" asked Nan fretfully. "I'm so tired of staring at those houses across the way."

Barry turned his head and regarded the houses opposite reflectively.

"They're not inspiring, I admit," he answered, "even though many of them _are_ the London habitations of belted earls and marquises."

"We'll go to Mallow as soon as you like," interposed Kitty. "I think you're quite fit to stand the journey now."

"Fit? Of course I'm fit. Only"--Nan's face clouded--"it will mean your leaving town just when the season's in full swing. I shan't like dragging you away."

"Season?" scoffed Kitty. "Season be blowed! The only thing that matters is whether you're strong enough to travel."

She regarded Nan affectionately. The latter had no idea how dangerously ill she had been. She remembered Roger's visit to the flat perfectly clearly. But everything which followed had been more or less a blank, with blurred intervals of doubtful clarity, until one day she found herself lying in a bed with Kitty standing at its foot and Peter sitting beside it. She recollected quite well observing:

"Why, Peter, you've got some grey hairs! I never noticed them before."

Peter had laughed and made some silly reply about old age creeping on, and presently it seemed to her that Kitty, crying blindly, had led him out of the room while she herself was taken charge of by a cheerful, smiling person in a starched frock, whose pretty, curling hair insisted on escaping from beneath the white cap which coifed it.

Unknown to Nan, those were the first rational words she had spoken since the night on which she had fainted, after refusing to return to Trenby Hall with Roger. Moved by some inexplicable premonition of impending illness, Kitty had insisted on driving her, carefully pillowed and swaddled in rugs, to her house in Green Street that same evening.

"If she's going to be ill," she remarked practically, "it will be much easier to nurse her at my place than at the flat."

Results had justified her. During the attack of brain fever which followed, it had required all the skill of doctors and nurses to hold Nan back from the gates of death. The fever burnt up her strength like a fire, and at first it had seemed as though nothing could check the delirium. All the strain and misery of the last few months poured itself out in terrified imaginings. Wildly she besought those who watched beside her to keep Roger away from her, and when the fear of Roger was not present, the whole burden of her speech had been a pitiful, incessant crying out for Peter--Peter!

Nothing would soothe her, and at last, in desperation, Kitty had gone to Mallory and begged him to come. His first impulse had been to refuse, not realising the danger of Nan's illness. Then, when it was made clear to him that her sole chance of life lay in his hands, he had stifled his own feelings and consented at once.

But when he came Nan did not even recognise him. Instead, she gazed at him with dry, feverishly brilliant eyes and plucked at his coat-sleeve with restless fingers.

"Oh, you _look_ kind!" she had exclaimed piteously. "Will you bring Peter back to me? n.o.body here"--she indicated Kitty and one of the nurses standing a little apart--"n.o.body here will let him come to me. . . . I'm sure he'd come if he knew how much I wanted him!"

Mallory had been rather wonderful with her.

"I'm sure he would," he said gently, though his heart was wrung at the sight of her flushed face and bright, unrecognising eyes. "Now will you try to rest a little before I fetch him? See, I'll put my arm round you--so, and if you'll go to sleep I'll send for him. He'll be here when you wake."

He had gathered her into his arms as he spoke, and his very touch seemed to soothe and quiet her.

"You're . . . rather like . . . Peter," she said, staring at him with a troubled frown on her face.

Holding that burningly bright gaze with his own steady one, he answered quietly:

"I _am_ Peter. They said you wanted me, so of course I came. You knew I would."

"Peter? Peter?" she whispered. Then, shaking her head: "No. You can't be Peter. He's dead, I think. . . . I know he went away somewhere--right away from me."

Mallory's arms closed firmly round her and she yielded pa.s.sively to his embrace. Perhaps behind the distraught and weary mind which could not recognise him, the soul that loved him felt his presence and was vaguely comforted. She lay very still for some time, and presently one of the nurses, leaning over her, signed to Peter that she was asleep.

"Don't move," she urged in a low voice. "This sleep may be the saving of her."

So, hour after hour, Peter had knelt there, hardly daring to change his position in the slightest, with Nan's head lying against his shoulder, and her hand in his. Now and again one of the nurses fed him with milk and brandy, and after a time the intolerable torture of his cramped arms and legs dulled into a deadly numbness.

Once, watching from the foot of the bed, Kitty asked him softly:

"Can you stand it, Peter?"

He looked up at her and smiled.

"Of course," he answered, as though there were no question in the matter.

It was only when the early dawn was peering in at the window that at last Nan stirred in his arms and opened her eyes--eyes which held once more the blessed light of reason. Then in a voice hardly audible for weakness, but from which the wild, delirious note had gone, she had spoken.

"Why, Peter, you've got some grey hairs!"

And Peter, forcing a smile to his drawn lips, had answered with his joking remark about old age creeping on. Then, letting the nurse take her from his arms, he had toppled over on to the floor, lying p.r.o.ne while the second nurse rubbed his limbs and the agony of returning life coursed like a blazing fire through his veins. Afterwards, with the tears running down her face, Kitty had helped him out of the room.

Nan's recovery had been slow, and Peter had been compelled to abandon his intention to see no more of her. She seemed restless and uneasy if he failed to visit her at least once a day, and throughout those long weeks of convalescence he had learned anew the same self-sacrifice and chivalry of spirit which had carried him forward to the utter renunciation he had made that summer night in King Arthur's Castle.

There was little enough in the fragile figure, lying day after day on a couch, to rouse a man's pa.s.sion. Rather, Nan's utter weakness called forth all the solicitude and ineffable tenderness of which Peter was capable--such tenderness--almost maternal in its selfless, protective quality, as is only found in a strong man--never in a weak one.

At last, with the May warmth and suns.h.i.+ne, she had begun to pick up strength, and now she was actually on the high road to recovery and demanding for the third or fourth time when they might go to Mallow.

Inwardly she was conscious of an intense craving for the sea, with its salt, invigorating breath, for the towering cliffs of the Cornish coast, and the wide expanse of downland that stretched away to landward till it met and mingled with the tender blue of the sky.

"Strong enough to stand the journey?" she exclaimed in answer to Kitty's remark. "I should think I am strong enough! I was outdoors for a couple of hours this morning, and I don't feel the least bit tired. I'm only lying here"--indicating the Chesterfield with a humorous little smile that faintly recalled the Nan of former days--"because I find it so extremely comfortable."

"That may be a slight exaggeration," returned Kitty. "Still, I think you could travel now. And your coming down to Mallow will rather ease things."

"Ease things? What things?"

"Your meeting with Lady Gertrude, for one. You may have forgotten--though you can be sure she hasn't!--that you left Trenby Hall rather unceremoniously! And then your illness immediately afterwards prevented your making your peace with her."

Nan's face changed. The light seemed to die out of her eyes.

"I'd almost forgotten Lady Gertrude," she said painfully.