The Odds Part 26

"No, darling, supper--any amount of it." Nan dropped a kiss upon his bald head in pa.s.sing. "I've been with Jerry," she said, "on the lake the whole day long. We watched the moon rise. It was so romantic."

The Colonel grunted.

"More rheumatic than romantic I should have thought. Better have a gla.s.s of grog."

Nan screwed up her bright face with a laugh.

"Heaven forbid, dad! And on a night like this. Oh, bother! Is that a letter for me?"

Colonel Everard was pointing to an envelope on the mantelpiece. She crossed the hall without eagerness, and picked it up.

"I've had one, too," said the Colonel, after a brief pause, speaking with a jerk as if the words insisted upon being uttered in spite of him.

"You!" Nan paused with one finger already inserted in the flap. "What for?"

Her father was staring steadily at the end of his cigar, or he might have seen a hint of panic in her dark eyes.

"You will see for yourself," he said, still in that uncomfortable, jerky style. "He seems to think--Well, I must say it sounds reasonable enough since he can't get back at present; but you will see for yourself."

A little tremor went through Nan as she opened the letter. With frowning brows she perused it.

It did not take long to read. The thick, upright writing was almost arrogantly distinct, recalling the writer with startling vividness.

He had written with his accustomed brevity, but there was much more than usual in his letter. He saw no prospect, so he told her, of being able to leave the country for some time to come. Affairs were unsettled, and likely to remain so. At the same time, there was no reason, now that her health was restored, that she should not join him, and he was writing to ask her father to take her out to him. He would meet them at Cape Town, and if the Colonel cared to do so he would be very pleased if he would spend a few months with them.

The plan was expressed concisely but with absolute kindness. Nevertheless there was about the letter a certain tone of mastery which gave Nan very clearly to understand that the writer thereof did not expect to be disappointed. It was emphatically the letter of a husband to his wife, not of a lover to his beloved.

She looked up from it with a very blank face.

"My dear dad!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "What can he be thinking of?"

Colonel Everard smiled somewhat ruefully.

"You, apparently," he said, with an effort to speak lightly. "What shall we say to him--eh, Nan? You'll like to go on the spree with your old dad to take care of you."

"Spree!" exclaimed Nan. And again in a lower key, with a still finer disdain: "Spree! Well"--tearing the letter across impulsively, with the action of a pa.s.sionate child--"you can go on the spree if you like, dad, but I'm going to stay at home. I'm not going to run after him to the ends of the earth if he is my husband. It wasn't in the bargain, and I won't do it!"

She stamped like a little fury, scattering fragments of the torn letter in all directions.

Her father attempted a feeble remonstrance, but she overrode him instantly.

"I won't listen to you, dad!" she declared fiercely. "I tell you I won't do it! The man isn't living who shall order me to do this or that as if I were his slave. You can write and tell him so if you like. When I married him, he gave me to understand that we should only be out there for a few months at most, and then we were to settle in England. You see what a different story he tells now. But I won't be treated in that way. I won't be inveigled out there, and made to wait on his royal pleasure. He chose to go without me. I wasn't important enough to keep him in England, and now it's my turn. He isn't important enough to drag me out there. No, be quiet, daddy! I tell you I won't go! I won't go, I swear it!"

"My dear child," protested the Colonel, making himself heard at length in her pause for breath. "No one wants you to go anywhere or do anything against your will. Piet Cradock isn't so unreasonable as that, if he is a Dutchman. Now don't distress yourself. There isn't the smallest necessity for that. I thought it just possible that you might like the idea as I was to be with you. But as you don't--well, there's an end of it. We will say no more."

Nan's arm was around his neck as he ended, her cheek against his forehead.

"Dear, dear daddy, don't think I'm cross with you. You're just the sweetest old darling in the world, and I'd go to Kamschatka with you gladly--in fact, anywhere--anywhere--except South Africa. Can't we go somewhere together, just you and I? Let's go to Jamaica. I'm sure I can afford it."

"No, no, no!" protested the Colonel. "Get away with you, you baggage!

What are you thinking of? Miss the cubbing season? Not I. And not you either, if I know you. There! Run along to bed, and take my blessing with you. I'll send a line to Piet, if you like, and tell him you don't object to waiting for him a bit longer under your old father's roof. Come, be off with you! I'm going to lock up."

He hoisted himself out of his chair with the words, looked at her fondly for a moment, took her pretty face between his hands, and kissed her twice.

"She's the worst pickle of the lot," he declared softly.

He did not add that she was also his darling of them all, but this was a perfectly open secret between them, and had been such as long as Nan could remember. She laughed up at him with tender impudence in recognition of the fact.

CHAPTER V

The letter from Piet Cradock was not again referred to by either Nan or her father. The latter answered it in his own way after the lapse of a few weeks. He was of a peaceable, easy-going nature himself, and he did not antic.i.p.ate any trouble with Nan's husband. After all, the child's reluctance to leave her home was perfectly natural. He, for his part, had never fully understood the attraction which his son-in-law had exercised upon her. He had been glad enough to have his favourite daughter provided for, but the actual parting with her had been a serious trouble to him, the most serious he had known for years, and he had been very far from desiring to quarrel with the Fate that had restored her to him.

He was comfortably convinced that Piet would understand all this.

Moreover, the fellow was clearly very busy. All his energies seemed to be fully occupied. He would have but little time to spare for his wife, even if he had her at his side. No, on the whole, the Colonel was of opinion that Nan's decision was a wise one, and it seemed to him that, upon reflection, his son-in-law could scarcely fail to agree with him.

Something of this he expressed in his letter when he eventually roused himself to reply to Piet's invitation, and therewith he dismissed all further thought upon the subject from his mind. His darling had pleased herself all her life, and naturally she would continue to do so.

His letter went into silence, but there was nothing surprising in this fact. Piet was, of course, too busy to have any leisure for private affairs. The whole matter slid into the past with the utmost ease. No doubt he would come home some day, but very possibly not for years, and the Colonel was quite content with this vague prospect.

As for Nan, she flicked the matter from her with the utmost nonchalance.

Since her father had undertaken to explain things, she did not even trouble herself to write an answer to her husband's letter. That letter had, in fact, very deeply wounded her pride. It had been a command, and Nan was not accustomed to such treatment. Never, in all her unruly life, had she yielded obedience to any. No discipline had ever tamed her. She had been free, free as air, and she had not the vaguest intention of submitting herself to the authority of anyone. The bare idea was unthinkably repugnant to her, foreign to her whole nature.

So, with a fierce disgust, she cast from her all memory of that brief message that had come to her from the man who called himself her husband, who had actually dared to treat her as one having the right to control her actions. She could be a thousand times more arrogant than he when occasion served, and she had not the faintest intention of allowing herself to be fettered by any man's tyranny.

Swiftly the days of that splendid summer flew by. She scarcely knew how she spent them, but she was always in the open air, and almost invariably with Jerry. She missed him considerably when he returned to Oxford, but the hunting season was at hand, and soon engrossed all her thoughts. Old Squire Grimshaw was the master, and Nan and her father followed his hounds three days in every week. People had long since come to acquiesce in the absence of Nan's husband. Many of them had almost forgotten that the girl was married, since Nan herself so persistently ignored the fact.

Gossip upon the subject had died down for lack of nourishment. And Nan pursued her reckless way untrammelled as of yore.

The week before Christmas saw Jerry once more at the Hall. He was as ardent a follower of the hounds as was Nan, and many were the breakneck gallops in which they indulged before a spell of frost put an end to this giddy pastime. Christmas came and went, leaving the lake frozen to a thickness of several inches, leaving Nan and the ever-faithful Jerry cutting figures of extraordinary elaboration on the ice.

The Hunt Ball had been fixed to take place on the sixth of January, and, in preparation for this event, Nan and some of her sisters were busily engaged beforehand in decking the Town Hall of the neighbourhood with evergreens and bunting. Jerry's a.s.sistance in this matter was, of course, invaluable, and when the important day arrived, he and Nan spent the whole afternoon in sliding about the floor to improve the surface.

So absorbing was this occupation that the pa.s.sage of time was quite unnoticed by either of them till Nan at length discovered to her dismay that she had missed the train by which she had meant to return.

To walk back meant a trudge of five miles. To drive was out of the question, for all the carriages in the place had been requisitioned.

"What in the world shall I do?" she cried. "If I walk back, I shall never have time to dress. Oh, why haven't I got a motor?"

Jerry slapped his leg with a yell of triumph.

"My dear girl, you have! The very thing! I'll be your motor and chauffeur rolled into one. My bicycle is here. Come along, and I'll take you home on the step."

The idea was worthy of them both. Nan fell in with it with a gay chuckle.

It was not the first time that she had indulged in this species of gymnastics with Jerry's co-operation, though, to be sure, some years had elapsed since the last occasion on which she had performed the feat.