“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.