Lady Cassandra Part 11

"Church decorations included!" Ca.s.sandra 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 embarra.s.sment.

At lunch Bernard was unaffectedly pleased to see the unexpected guest, and throughout its course talked to him persistently on topics which left Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 f.a.g, 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. Ca.s.s will be quite pleased to have someone to talk to. Won't you, Ca.s.s?"

"Very pleased!" said Ca.s.sandra 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. Rubbis.h.!.+ 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," Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra 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,"

Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra, 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 Ca.s.sandra come for him, or was he supposed to search for Lady Ca.s.sandra? In any case the best of the day was pa.s.sing, 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 Ca.s.sandra, as he had surmised, Ca.s.sandra 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 s.p.a.ces 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 b.u.mpy stone within reach," Ca.s.sandra replied. She seated herself in ill.u.s.tration upon a boulder covered with a cus.h.i.+on 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 s.h.i.+ver, and say: 'Ca.s.s, you'll be ill!

What _will_ Mother say?' while I ate up her share."

"And were you ill?"

"I forget," said Ca.s.sandra, 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 s.h.i.+ning... 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--?"

Ca.s.sandra 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!"