Lady Cassandra Part 34

It was quite true. Dane as a world-traveller had found amus.e.m.e.nt in the country-bred girl's primitive ideas of sightseeing, and had occupied occasional spare hours in sketching out programmes of imaginary tours.

The remembrance came back to him with the remoteness of a childish dream, from which years had sapped the savour. Then he had been interested, amused; it had seemed a goodly task to act as Teresa's guide; now the prospect filled him with dreary dread. He saw a mental picture of himself walking the sunlit streets, with a leaden heart, dragging through interminable lengths of galleries, sitting over _tete-a-tete_ meals in crowded restaurants, obliged to talk, obliged to smile, and act the bridegroom's part. With a wince of pain he saw himself and Teresa ensconced in a dream-like hotel on a dream-like Italian lake, watching happy lovers wander about a garden of almost unearthly beauty. Oh G.o.d, that beauty! How it would intensify every longing; how hopelessly, maddeningly wretched a man might be, alone, in Eden!

He did not speak, but his face spoke for him, and Teresa flushed and winced. She had humbled her pride to the dust, but it was impossible any longer to blind herself to the fact that for the time being her influence over Dane was dead. He had no feeling left but the kindly pity which was but another stab to her heart. Mind and heart alike were so filled by another image that there was no loophole by which she could enter in. For a bitter moment Teresa digested the fact, and faced the truth. She had done her utmost and she had failed, there remained to her but one hope--time! Given time and separation from the temptation her chance might return, but for the present she must stand aside. One more argument remained to her, and that she had hoped need not be made.

She braced herself now to deliver it.

"For Lady Ca.s.sandra's sake, it would be better if our engagement were not broken off now, when we are staying in the same house. People have noticed that you admire her. They might talk."

He looked up quickly, and stretched out an impetuous hand.

"That's good of you--to think of that! I wouldn't for the whole world drag her name into it. They've no right to talk; I've given them no cause, but if there's any fear... _Thank_ you, Teresa!"

His hand gripped hers, but for the first time the girl's fingers remained limp and irresponsive in his grasp. She was horribly sore, horribly wounded, her endurance was at an end, she wanted to get away to her own room, and hide her head and cry. She rose and faced him with a grave young dignity.

"I want you to understand that if she, Lady Ca.s.sandra, were free, I would give you back your promise at once! You would not have needed to ask me, I should have spoken myself; but if I set you free because you love a married woman, I am helping you to--sin! I won't do it. You are engaged to me, and I shall keep you to your promise. It isn't nice for a girl to have to force herself upon a man. If I didn't love you I couldn't do it, but I do love you, and I know that some day you will understand, and be grateful to me."

She turned without allowing him time for a reply, and marched stiffly across the lawn towards the house.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

THE CHAIN HOLDS.

The next day Ca.s.sandra was still confined to bed. Grizel said that it would probably be some time before she was able to be about, and announced her own intention of acting as nurse, while her husband played golf with the Squire. So plain an intimation that visitors would be _de trop_ went beyond a hint, and in truth Dane had already made up his mind to return home by the first possible train. That being so, it was obvious that Teresa must return with him, since it had been solely on his account that she had been invited at all. Peignton looked across the breakfast table around which the little party were seated, and Teresa met his eye, and said instantly as though she had been waiting for the sign:

"I think, Dane, it would be better if you and I went home this morning!

I am afraid we can do nothing to help, and shall only be in the way.

Could I have the carriage for the eleven o'clock train, Mrs Beverley?"

"I will come with you, of course," Dane added, and Grizel shrugged her shoulders, and held out her hands with an eloquent little gesture of appeal.

"Dear people, it's most inhospitable and horrid, but I think so too! I shan't have a moment to spare. I expect we shall be rushing home ourselves by the end of the week."

The Squire and Martin looked uncomfortable, but said nothing. Plainly they also thought that the lovers would be better away, so Teresa excused herself and went upstairs to pack her box, an operation which she could not be persuaded to leave to a maid. With care and contrivance she could contrive to give the effect of a wardrobe that was sufficient, though not in any degree to be compared to those of her two hostesses, but the gimlet-like eyes of a lady's maid would speedily discover and despise the little contrivances inevitable to small means.

Teresa had the true middle-cla.s.s dread of what servants would "think."

She had discussed with other Chumley girls the horror of staying in houses where a maid "poked about." One friend in especial had recounted a thrilling incident which had befallen her on a recent visit. For the purpose of impressing the maid she had borrowed from a married sister her very smartest "nightie," a cobweb confection of lawn and lace, which, discreetly crumpled, was hung over a chair in the morning, the while the utility flannelette was locked in a drawer. All went well, until one fateful morning, when, on the arrival of early tea, drowsiness overcame discretion, and the flanneletted figure had reared upright in the bed.

"My dear," concluded the sufferer tragically, "I could have _died_!...

After that her manner entirely changed."

It was a sorry task, refilling that box which had been packed with such high hopes. As she folded ribbons, and stuffed tissue paper into the sleeves of dresses, Teresa could recall the exact sentiments which had been in her mind as she had gone through the same process a few days before. Dane liked blue, so she had decided to wear the new blue dress on the first evening. The new sports coat was green, which suited her fairness almost as well as blue. She would wear that when they went out walking together, and he would slip his hand through her arm. There was a filmy white scarf which she had intended to throw over her shoulders when they escaped together into the garden after dinner. That scarf had never been taken out of its wrappings. It had never been required. The visit to which she had looked forward, as she had looked forward to nothing else in her life, had ended in tragedy and upheaval.

An ordinary girl would have a.s.suredly shed tears over such a packing, but Teresa was not given to tears; moreover, in another hour she would be starting on a _tete-a-tete_ journey with Dane, and a disfigured face would not help her cause. She recognised the fact, and set her lips, refusing to give way to the choky sensation in her throat, to the p.r.i.c.king at the back of her eyes. Tears were for those who had lost hope, and she had not yet come to that pa.s.s. If much was lost, a great deal remained. She would go on fighting.

Downstairs Teresa made her adieux with smiling composure. It was Grizel who cried, crumpling her tiny handkerchief into a ball, and dabbing at her eyes without an effort at concealment. The curse of a vivid imagination was presenting to her the inner tragedy of the journey ahead, when the two who were supposedly lovers were left alone together for leaden hours which should have been winged with joy. She envisaged the home-coming too, the flood of maternal questionings, the blankness of spirit which would descend upon the girl when she attempted to settle down. While Teresa had been packing her trunk Grizel had been with her in spirit, feeling the reflex of every pang, and now as the carriage drove from the door she cried unrestrainedly, to her husband's mingled bewilderment and concern.

"Are you sorry they are gone? You said you would have no time..."

"I haven't. I'm glad; but, oh, Martin, I _am_ Teresa at this moment, and it hurts! I know exactly how she suffers..."

"That's impossible. Teresa could never feel in your way, and besides, dearest, why should she suffer? She's not such a baby as to grouse over a few days' visit. Especially when she has her man."

Martin knew nothing of the awkwardness of the position, and Grizel realised that she must appear hysterical in his eyes, and longed to pour out the whole tale, but it would not do; for everyone's sake it would not do. There might come a time when his unconsciousness would be the greatest boon to all concerned.

"It's all the fault of my beastly imagination!" she sniffed ruefully.

"I'm always living through other people's dramas, and tearing my heart to fiddle-strings imagining how I should agonise and despair if I were in the same place. You said one day that it was easy to be philosophical about a neighbour's toothache, but it isn't easy to me. I feel the horrid thing leaping inside my own mouth, and stabbing up to my own ear, and taste the nasty chlorodyney cotton-wool in my own mouth.

I'm such a sensitive little thing!"

"You're a little goose," Martin said, laughing. "In nine cases out of ten, while you have been torturing yourself, the toothache has stopped, or the poor martyr has shaken off his troubles, and gone off to play golf. We can't carry other people's burdens for them, darling, they've got to struggle through by themselves. It's curious with your happy temperament, that you should have such a lurid imagination."

"No, it isn't! Not a bit curious."

"Isn't it? Why not? I'm interested to hear."

"Because I imagine happy things as well, stupid, and they come out top.

If I worry over other people's troubles, I glory in their joy. You can't do one without the other; if you don't feel one you can't feel the other. You may never shed a tear in your life over an imaginary woe, but _have_ you ever wakened in the morning and thanked G.o.d because the housemaid's young man had come home from abroad?--Have you ever felt your soul flooded with joy when you saw the sun shining in through pink and white curtains on to a brand-new wall-paper you had just chosen?

Did you feel as if you could have jumped over the moon, when the Czarina had a son?"

"I--I was very glad."

"Well, I wasn't! I cried with joy, and said my prayers all day long, and thought of her lying there, and hugged the thought of her happiness, the poor, beautiful, tragic thing! What _do_ you do, may I ask, if one of your own friends is in trouble, and doesn't see the way out?"

"I--er,--well, if I can help him, I invariably do. For my own sake, as well as his. I like helping. Take it all round, it is the most agreeable sensation one can have. If the other fellow feels as light-hearted and generally bucked up afterwards as I do myself, he is jolly well off. But if I can't--"

"Yes?"

"Well! I don't worry. What's the use? It would do him no good for me to be miserable as well as himself."

"The thought of him doesn't follow you wherever you go, like a nightmare, squeezing up your heart?"

"Don't mix your metaphors, darling. That squeezes. Certainly not. I should call it weakness. I dismiss it from my mind."

"Well, I think you are a callous wretch, and I like my own disposition a million times better than yours."

"There is no discussion on that point is there? because I most heartily agree."

"There you are, then!" cried Grizel triumphantly. "But you _will_ argue."

She shook out the damp ball of a handkerchief, and held it flag-ways to the breeze, tilting her head to look into her husband's face. "Do I look very plain?"

"Comparatively speaking--yes!" replied Martin, seizing on his revenge, whereupon Grizel proceeded to declaim in a loud, artificial voice:

... "'Teardrops still lingered on the long eyelashes; the lovely, mutinous face was wasted and ravaged with grief, yet never in her most queenly moments had she appeared to him more alluring and sweet. For weal or woe his life was in her hands.' ... Another fine instalment to be given in our next number!" She waved her hand and turned back to the house, while Martin, laughing, walked across the lawn to join the Squire.

Meantime Peignton and Teresa had reached the station, and he was unhappily facing a two hours' journey which might easily devolve itself into a _tete-a-tete_, since considerate travellers have a habit of avoiding carriages occupied by interesting-looking young couples. He was divided between a horror of a repet.i.tion of the scene in the garden the day before, and an overpowering sympathy for the girl whom he wished to avoid. Her set composure went to his heart when he recalled the radiance of the face which had beamed at him in the same place only a few days before. She had been so happy, poor girl, so fond, so unsuspicious; and now...

Teresa turned towards him hastily.