Part 39 (1/2)
Would he care? Would he really care? Guiltily she allowed her mind to wander down the forbidden path. He would hear nothing. Bernard would keep everything from him until--the divorce. The case would be undefended, no savoury morsels would appear in the newspaper to whet the appet.i.tes of the unclean, the vast majority of readers would not notice its presence. Eventually, of course, something would have to be said.
Ca.s.sandra winced as she imagined Bernard's bluff words to his son: ”Look here, boy, never speak of your mother again. She's not coming back.
Some day you'll understand; until then do as you're told, and keep your mouth shut. She's dead. D'you understand that? Dead and buried so far as concerns us. Never speak of her again.”
Bernard would not abuse a mother to her son, his sense of fair play was too strong; he would simply shut her out from his life, and leave the boy to form his own judgment later on. But with the sharpness of dawning adolescence Bernard junior would sense something wrong, something shameful, flush unhappily beneath the servants' gaze, and return to school miserably dreading that the fellows had heard!
No! Ca.s.sandra could not do it. She could not shame her child. She could not step down from the pedestal on which the most prosaic of sons instinctively places a mother. Every fresh struggle ended in the same most piteous, most womanly cry: ”I can't. I can't. But oh, Dane, Dane, I _want to_!”
During these three days Ca.s.sandra stayed entirely within the grounds and denied herself to visitors, but she had a constant terror that Teresa would call and force an interview. The girl must suspect some such meeting as had taken place in the summer-house; must realise that her own fate hung in the balance. What more natural than that she should want to plead her own cause? Ca.s.sandra stiffened in antic.i.p.ation.
Nothing, she knew, would induce such a reckless disregard of duty as to hear it advocated from Teresa's lips. For Heaven's sake, for her _own_ sake, let the girl keep away!
But the days slipped past, and Teresa did not appear, and a new terror dawned in Ca.s.sandra's heart. Suppose instead of coming to herself, the girl went to Bernard and warned him of the threatened danger to his house! Every time that her husband entered the room afresh, Ca.s.sandra glanced at his face with an eager scrutiny, and every time Bernard smiled with unruffled cheerfulness and said, ”Feeling better, old girl?
Had your tonic?”
Grizel had laid down strict injunctions as to the treatment of her patient on her return to the Court, and had perjured herself by giving the Squire a highly pessimistic opinion of his wife's health, the result of which had been a certain amount of bluff kindliness and unfailing enquiries as to the consumption of tonics. Ca.s.sandra detested the idea of Bernard's hearing the truth from Teresa's lips, but there were occasions when she burned to tell him herself, occasions when it would have been the greatest relief in the world to say, ”I am not ill. I am not suffering from shock. I am in love. I want to elope with your friend Dane Peignton. I am breaking my heart because it's my duty to stay.”
Imagination pictured his face as he stood and listened. The steely eyes, the glint of teeth, the ruddy colour surging up over the thick throat, the large clean-shaven face, up to the roots of the short sandy hair. ”You can look me in the face,” he would say, ”and _dare_ to say such a thing? Have you no shame?”
”Why should I have shame?” she could hear herself answer. ”I have done no wrong. I am breaking my heart to do what is right. I am not ashamed, but I am dreadfully, dreadfully unhappy!” But Bernard would have no compa.s.sion. He would make no distinctions. She would henceforth be contemptible in his eyes. To the end of their life together he would regard her with suspicion; enquiring into her every action, reading guilt into the simplest friends.h.i.+p. The horror of that suspicion sealed Ca.s.sandra's lips.
The days pa.s.sed by, Wednesday arrived, and Teresa had not moved.
Ca.s.sandra vouchsafed a grudging admiration. There was--as Grizel had said--something fine about the girl's restraint. What was she thinking, what was she doing all these days, when of a certainty Dane must be standing aloof, waiting for the message which never came? How could she bear it, caged in that tiny house, with the terrible mother probing for explanations? Ca.s.sandra recalled how Mary had declared that it was impossible even to cry without attracting curious rappings at the door.
She heaved a sigh of thankfulness for the blessing of s.p.a.ce.
Wednesday morning pa.s.sed by, lunch hour came bringing with it Bernard, and the inevitable enquiry _re_ tonics, two o'clock arrived, three o'clock. In another half-hour she would leave the house, take her way to the summer-house, meet Dane once more, look deep into his eyes, feel the clasp of his arms. All life seemed concentrated into those next few hours, the expectation had been in her heart since the moment when she had parted from him four days before; the near prospect of meeting had mitigated every pang. Now that that meeting was at hand every other feeling was merged in joy. The moment was hers, she seized it greedily, with no consciousness of guilt. She was going to do right, she was going to say goodbye,--surely even Teresa would not grudge her her short hour!
Ca.s.sandra put on a shady hat, and stood before the long mirror regarding her own reflection as a woman will who is about to meet her lover. The white dress fell in soft lines accentuating her long slimness, the hat was white also, a simple affair of straw, with a twisted scarf of _crepe_, the gold-flecked hair, the soft carmine of the cheeks, the blue, pathetic eyes gained an added beauty from the lack of colour.
Ca.s.sandra knew that she was beautiful at that moment, she also knew that that beauty would plant a sharper thorn in Dane's heart, but being a woman she rejoiced nevertheless. If she could have made herself more lovely, she would have done it unto ten times ten. She turned from the mirror, opened the door of her room, and crept quietly downstairs. It was her desire that no one should see her or know that she had left the house. Once the great hall was reached she would slip into the library, and thence through the open window to a side path giving access to a shrubbery, thereby avoiding observation from upstair windows or from the gardeners at work on the terrace beds. Then let what might happen, she would be undisturbed for the afternoon.
She had reached the lowest step, the library was but a few yards away, when fate shot her bolt. The door of Bernard's office opened, and he came towards her, telegram in hand. Many telegrams arrived at the Court. Ca.s.sandra was too much a woman of the world to share the fear with which many of her sisters regard the orange-coloured sheets, but she needed no words to tell her that this message was no mere business communication. At the mere sight her heart died within her. There was just one thing on earth which she lived for at that moment, and the telegram had come to block her way. She stood still and cold waiting Bernard's explanation.
”Look here, I say,--here's bad news! The old Mater. Taken worse this morning. Another stroke. The second this time, so it may mean the end.
Jevons has been looking up the trains.”
Ca.s.sandra did not speak. The old Mater was a venerable and disagreeable old lady whose bronchitic tendencies had made it necessary to abandon the dower house and make her abode in a more southern county. The necessity had been to the daughter-in-law a matter of continual thanksgiving, but to the Squire a real regret. His intensely conventional nature recognised the duty of honouring a parent, and he had a genuine and rather touching affection for the cross old woman, who rarely opened her mouth except to grumble and lament. To Ca.s.sandra the mother-in-law had been an unmitigated trial, and she could not affect to feel regret at the prospect of an end to a weary invalidism. The knife-like pang which rent her heart had no connection with the house of Raynor.
”You--you are going down at once?”
”What do you think! Of course we're going. I was just coming up to tell you to get ready.”
The pang of presentiment had been well founded. Ca.s.sandra felt the hopelessness of a trapped animal, but desperation nerved her to a feeble protest.
”Me? Bernard! _ought_ I to come? She'll be unconscious. I couldn't _do_ anything. I should only be another person in the house--giving more trouble.”
The blue eyes had their most steely glance as he turned upon her.
”More shame to you if you did! You can nurse her, can't you? Take your turn with the maid? She has a prejudice against hired nurses. Good heavens, have you no feeling? My mother ill--dying--and you talk of staying at home! What's the matter if she is unconscious? Your duty is to go and look after her, and I'll see that you do it.” He pulled out his watch and looked at it hastily. ”You have twenty-five minutes before the car comes round. Get Rogers to put a few things in a bag-- just what you want for to-night. She can bring along the boxes to-morrow. Goodness knows how long we may have to stay...”