Chapter Seven.
Stolen Hours.
Driving home in the car Cassandra was conscious of contending emotions which carried her back to nursery days; pleasure, excitement, an underlying gnawing of guilt. So had she felt, stealthily playing in a corner with a toy purloined from a sister’s store, and yet, as she assured herself, there was no need for compunction. She had invited both Teresa and Dane; it was not her fault if the girl chose to refuse; not her fault if the man was ungallant enough to accept. Yet the feeling of guilt persisted. She looked curiously at Peignton to see if he shared her discomfort, but never did a man look more serene and unperturbed. Happy too! The thrill of pleasurable excitement which in her case was a real, though secondary sensation, was, to judge by appearance, all-pervading in his case. His eyes shone, the tired-out look had disappeared; his lips smiled.
“What a good thing a good car is! I used to swear by walking, but the time has come when I find it very agreeable to slip into a cushioned seat, and be whirled where I would go. There’s something mysteriously fatiguing about decorating churches; haven’t you found it so? Perhaps it is the necessity of keeping quiet and forbearing from expressing oneself as one otherwise would, when one is unexpectedly scratched or bruised. In any case, I am tired. And hungry! It is good of you to offer to feed me.”
Cassandra smiled with the comfortable assurance of one who takes perfect meals as a matter of course. There was no consciousness of cold mutton, no fear of a heavy pudding, to mar her enjoyment of an unexpected guest, but having never experienced a housekeeper’s anxiety, she failed to appreciate the relief.
“I hope they will give you something fit to eat!”
“And afterwards... Will you show me your garden?”
“I have no special garden. I do nothing myself. I’m always making up my mind to take over a little corner, but it takes a long time to make up my mind. I don’t want to dig and delve. I enjoy the flowers better when I get them without any trouble. It would be simply an effort to try to find an interest.—Do you believe in troubling to find an interest, when it doesn’t come naturally?”
“Yes,” Dane said simply, and Cassandra stared at him with a feeling of check. She had not expected that quiet “yes”; it carried with it a finality which put an end to argument.
“I have had to do it, you see!” he added. “The thing which did interest me became impossible, so I was obliged to find something else to fill the gap.”
Cassandra lay back against the cushions with an exaggerated sigh of resignation.
“Oh, dear! here we are back at our Second Bests! I hate Second Bests, and makeshifts of every description, and I don’t recognise any obligation to adopt them. If I can gain an interest only at the cost of something it doesn’t interest me to do, how can it be an interest at all? I’m talking nonsense, but it’s your fault... You are so painfully philosophic... Does a land agency really fill the gap left by the old regiment, and its associations?”
“Nothing near it. But it helps. It is several degrees better than nothing.” Peignton spoke resolutely, but his face twitched, and Cassandra was smitten with compunction.
“Ah! I shouldn’t have said it. It was mean of me. When you are so brave...” Her voice sank to a tenderness of which she was unaware, as she asked the next question: “What was it? I never heard more than just that you had a breakdown!”
“Lungs,” he said simply. “I had a cough, and it stuck to me, and I lost weight, but I never dreamt of anything serious. It was a bit of a—jar! I was packed off home to a sanatorium, and came out at the end of six months with a clean bill of health. I’ve been up to be vetted every few months since. The last time it was a new fellow, and he could not spot the weak place, so I’m all right, you see; it has just made me physically a few years older than I really am. Given care, and an outdoor life, I have as good a chance as another man.”
“Oh, of course. So many people... It’s nothing now, compared with what it used to be,” Cassandra assented hurriedly. That was the reason of the subtly appealing look which had puzzled her from her first meeting with this man! He had looked death in the face; had left the mimic playing at arms, to fight a hand-to-hand battle with that grim spectre through weary weeks and months. Such an experience could not fail to leave its mark, however resolutely it might be ignored. She was silent for some minutes, staring dreamily out of the window, while Dane in his turn studied her face, and wondered in masculine innocence why every woman did not wear chinchilla.
“How do you take it when such blows come?” she asked slowly at last. “Do you rage or sulk? I suppose with ordinary human creatures it comes down to one of the two. Only the saints are resigned, and I don’t fancy you—”
“No, indeed. Very far from it!” He laughed, then sobered quickly. “I suppose I,—sulked! I got the credit for taking it uncommonly well, but that was because I was too proud to fuss. Pity hurt. For my own selfish sake it was easier to bluff it out, and pretend to be hopeful. But inside—I went through a pretty fair imitation of hell in those first few weeks!”
In Cassandra’s low croon of sympathy sounded all the warmth of her Irish heart; her eyes were liquid with sympathy.
“And then? Afterwards... How soon did you—”
“Pull myself together? Oh, I dunno! As soon as I—began to pull round, I suppose!” He shrugged his shoulders. “Not much credit in that, was there? I sulked, as you put it, so long as everything seemed over, but when I saw I was going to live on, I was obliged to rouse myself to see what could be done. That’s natural! The more one has lost, the more important it is to make the most of what remains. I couldn’t enjoy my life in the way I intended, but I was determined to enjoy it all the same.”
“And have you?”
“Rather! Look at me now. Having a rattling time. I’ve never enjoyed things more in my life than during the last few weeks.”
“Church decorations included!” Cassandra enquired with malice prepense. She wanted to see if he would look self-conscious at what was meant to be a veiled reference to his connection with Teresa, but he looked at her with the frankest of smiles and said: “Yes; didn’t you?” and it was she, not he, who suffered from embarrassment.
At lunch Bernard was unaffectedly pleased to see the unexpected guest, and throughout its course talked to him persistently on topics which left Cassandra out in the cold. She was evidently accustomed to be thus ignored, for her dreamy eyes showed that her thoughts were far away, and she replied so absently to Dane’s tentative attempts to draw her into the conversation, that he was not encouraged to persevere. She awoke to sudden sharp consciousness, however, when Bernard began making suggestions for the afternoon, taking for granted that his guest was ready to accompany him wherever he should suggest to go. “I’ve been wanting to drive round Boxley for some time. You come along and give me your advice,” he said finally, and again Cassandra knew a revival of youthful days in the tingle of anger, the incredulous load of disappointment, which like a real physical weight pressed upon her heart. It was ridiculous, it was absurd, it was quite ludicrously out of proportion, to feel so torn about so small a thing, but she was torn. It was in her at that moment to blaze into anger, to speak loud protesting words, to push aside her plate and dash from the room. All the different impulses which had torn the girl Cassandra when defrauded of a promised treat of the nursery surged up suddenly in the breast of the woman who sat in silent dignity at the head of her table, smiling her unruffled, society smile.
Bernard, of course—Bernard never took her into consideration; but,—What would Peignton say?
What he said was the easiest, most natural of explanations.
“Thanks very much. Another time I’d be delighted, but this afternoon Lady Cassandra has promised to show me the gardens. Perhaps we could fix a day for next week?”
The Squire knitted his eyebrows, and looked from his guest to his wife, back again from his wife to his guest. Plainly he was concerned, plainly also he was concerned for his guest’s sake, not that of his wife.
“That’s very good of you,” he said slowly, “but er—the whole afternoon? Rather a fag, isn’t it? You could have a walk round after lunch, and we’d start at three.”
“Thanks, but it’s against my principles to divide good things. We’ll do Boxley next week, if you’ll give me the chance.”
The Squire looked at his wife again and smiled, a good-natured smile. He was obviously content that she should be amused, provided that he himself had no trouble in the matter.
“That’s all right, then,” he said. “We’ll leave it at that. Cass will be quite pleased to have someone to talk to. Won’t you, Cass?”
“Very pleased!” said Cassandra gravely. It was beyond her at that moment to make pretence, but the earnestness of her face had the effect of launching her husband on an old grievance.
“It’s your own fault, you know; your own fault! I’m always talking to you about it. She won’t make friends, Peignton! Lived within a couple of miles of Chumley all these years, and hasn’t a single friend. Says there’s no one to know. Rubbish! Don’t tell me... Lots of ’em, if she took the trouble to find out. Too proud, that’s the size of it, and they know it, and it gets ’em on the raw. She’s made herself jolly unpopular, that’s what she’s done. You can’t deny that you have made yourself unpopular!”
“I am quite the most unpopular woman in the neighbourhood,” Cassandra said, with the sideways tilt of the chin which Dane was beginning to recognise. “It’s humiliating, but I can’t see that I am to blame. I bore the Chumley people, and they bore me, and if I’m to be bored at all, I so very much prefer to do it for myself. I don’t complain of being alone.”
“Oh, yes, you do. Not in words, perhaps. There are a jolly lot of ways in which a woman can rub it in,” cried the Squire with a shrewdness at which Cassandra laughed with unruffled good-nature.
“Poor Bernard! Have I rubbed it in? Never mind! Grizel Beverley is going to prove a host in herself, and Captain Peignton is giving me a whole afternoon, and I’ve been at the church for over an hour, decorating, and talking prettily to the other helpers. Things are looking up. Who knows! I may be quite sociable by the end of another year!”
But the Squire refused to be cajoled.
“Lots of ’em!” he repeated pugilistically. “Lots. All those houses, and a woman in each. Don’t tell me! What’s the matter with Mrs Mawson? What’s the matter with Miss Mawle? What’s the matter with the Baxters, or the Gardiners, or Mrs Evans?”
“I like Mrs Evans. I think I almost love the real Mrs Evans,” Cassandra said thoughtfully. “I have always a feeling that if I were in trouble the real Mrs Evans would understand. But one so seldom gets a glimpse of her!”
“Don’t understand what you are talking about. Who else do you get a glimpse of?”
“The Vicar’s wife,” said Cassandra, and rising from the table put an end to the discussion.
After lunch the two men sat together smoking and talking, but before the end of half an hour Peignton grew restless, and cast about in his mind for an excuse to escape. Would Lady Cassandra come for him, or was he supposed to search for Lady Cassandra? In any case the best of the day was passing, and it was folly to waste time indoors. He strolled to the window, caught sight of a woman’s figure among the bushes on the nearer lawn, and lost no time in following. It was Cassandra, as he had surmised, Cassandra in a knitted coat and cap of a soft rose colour which matched the flush on her cheeks; her hands were thrust into her pockets, and she nodded welcome to him with a girlish air. No girl could have looked younger, or fresher, or more free from care, and she felt as free as she looked. The guilty feeling of the morning had disappeared, she had forgotten Teresa Mallison, and her claims, while her husband’s scepticism of the fact that any man should choose to spend an afternoon with her for his own enjoyment, had stirred up latent founts of coquetry. Peignton should enjoy himself! She had not yet forgotten how to charm a man. She would charm him now so that his afternoon in the spring garden should be a time to be remembered. She need not have troubled. Grave or gay, nothing that she could have said or done could possibly have failed to charm Peignton. But of that fact she was, as yet, as ignorant as himself. The south windows of the Court opened on to a stone terrace from which two separate flights of steps gave access to a succession of gardens, sloping down to the wide stretch of park. At the head of each stairway, and against the house in the spaces between the windows stood stone vases filled with the gayest of spring flowers. The fragrance of them filled the air, their colours flared gloriously against the dull grey background, and threw into striking contrast the green severity of the Dutch garden immediately beneath. Here, later on in the year, the beds would exhibit gay specimens of the latest development in carpet gardening, but in the meantime they were bare, and the quaintly cut trees and shrubs had a grim, almost funereal austerity. Lower down came a rose garden, with pergolas leading in four separate avenues to a centre dome. In summer the rose garden was a fairyland of beauty, but its time was not yet. The gardeners were busy pruning and training, cleverly inserting new branches among the old. Peignton noticed that though Cassandra gave the men a pleasant greeting, she did not pause for any of the questioning, the propositions, the consultations as to how and where, which true garden lovers find irresistible under such circumstances. She led the way to the lily beds, the ferneries, the herbaceous borders, and the sunk garden, all slumbering in the promise of beauty to come, last of all to the rockery, already ablaze with the gold of alyssum and the purple of aubretia, the little pockets between the stones filled with every variety of spring bulb: daffodils of yellow, white, and orange, flaring tulips, early hyacinths, and many-coloured anemones.
After the unbroken greenery of the higher terraces, the rockery appeared a riot of colour, as if the very spirit of spring had chosen it for an abode. The air was sweet with fragrance, the sloping banks formed a protection against the breeze; it seemed an ideal position in which to pause and rest.
“Where,” Dane asked tentatively, “does one sit?”
“Wherever one can. On the least bumpy stone within reach,” Cassandra replied. She seated herself in illustration upon a boulder covered with a cushion of shaded moss, and immediately began snipping leaves from a shrub of scented verbena, the which she inhaled with languid enjoyment. “Just avoid stalks, and you are all right. Saxifrages like being sat on; they are even grateful if you stamp upon them with strong boots, so you need feel no scruples.” She held the lemon leaf poised in air, studying his face with curious eyes. “You are rather given to scruples, aren’t you? Your conscience is very active!”
“I’m afraid it is,” Dane said regretfully, as he in his turn selected an impromptu seat. “My people were all Friends, so it’s an inheritance. A Nonconformist conscience has a terrible persistence; there’s no living it down. It’s been a handicap to me many times, obtruding itself when it wasn’t wanted. One doesn’t seem to have much personal connection with one’s conscience. It seems so entirely independent of will, that there’s no kudos attached to having a lively one, or no blame if he’s quiescent. Mine happens to be of the persistent kind, and particularly long-lived. He was a worry to me in the nursery; he’s a worry to-day. I don’t think—” he paused for a moment, as if judicially weighing his words—“I don’t think I’ve ever been able to do wrong with any real satisfaction!”
They looked at each other and laughed, but Cassandra hastily lowered her eyes, affecting to bend over a further bed in search of a new fragrance. In reality she was afraid that her eyes might show the tenderness of her heart. The man’s expression as he looked at her had been so full of goodness and honesty that the hidden impulse had been to stretch out her own hand and touch his, to stroke it, and hold it close, and say such fond words as women will, when their hearts are touched. “You dear thing! You dear thing! what harm have you done? Your conscience may sit at ease!” ... With a fellow-woman one would have carried out the impulse, but convention forbade such sincerities between a man and a woman unconnected by blood. Convention decreed that genuine feeling should be disguised.
“Can’t you?” said Cassandra lightly. “Oh, I can! I sinned gloriously in short frocks, with never a thought of consequences. My chum sister was my partner in wickedness, we planned all our rebellions together, but when it came to the bit, she missed half the fun. I could bury everything in the joy of the moment, and forget there was such a thing as to-morrow... She had no sooner done the deed, than she began to be visited by qualms. I didn’t object as much as I might have done, for if the sin was edible—and it generally was.—there was so much the more left for me. She used to sit and shiver, and say: ‘Cass, you’ll be ill! What will Mother say?’ while I ate up her share.”
“And were you ill?”
“I forget,” said Cassandra, and looked at him with a rebel’s eyes. “But I ate my cake!”
Before he had time to answer, suddenly, impetuously she had sprung to her feet, and darted round a corner of the rockery to shelter behind a clump of shrubs. Peignton followed, alert but mystified, but the explanation came swiftly enough. From the raised path which curved through the park to the entrance of the house came a familiar whirr, and the next moment there sped into sight a large grey car carrying two men on the box, and within the tonneau one large, elderly dame. From the distance it was not possible to distinguish her face, but Cassandra recognised her all the same, and groaned aloud.
“Mrs Freune... from Bagton. What shall I do?”
“They’ll look for you?”
“She’ll make them. They’ll ask the gardeners. They’ll say I’m here.”
“Let’s run away!”
She looked at him and her eyes danced, but the instincts of hospitality put up a fight. “It’s a long drive! Twelve miles. She’ll want tea.”
“Does she stay long?”
“Hours. And talks politics into the bargain.”
“Lloyd George?”
“Yes. And the German Invasion. There’s no avoiding it.”
“But it’s a crime! On an afternoon like this, when the sun is shining... You can’t go...”
“She’s driven twelve miles.”
“Twelve miles in a good car! What’s that? She’ll enjoy her tea all the more for waiting... Couldn’t we—?”
Cassandra came a step nearer, her voice sank to the thrilling note in which of old she had concocted mischief in the schoolroom.
“Listen! ... there’s a summer-house near the north gate. It has a locked cupboard with things for tea. I keep them there for my especial use... If we ran down this path quickly... before she arrives—”
“We could have tea there together? For goodness’ sake, let’s fly!”
“But your conscience? The Nonconformist conscience? Are you sure you could enjoy—?”
“She’s your visitor, not mine. I have no scruples. Only give me the chance!”
“On your head be it!” cried Cassandra, and bending low, darted between the shrubs towards a winding path which led in the opposite direction from the house. Peignton followed with eager steps.