Part 39 (2/2)
He wheeled round and went back to his room, and Ca.s.sandra dragged wearily upstairs. Twenty-five minutes--in twenty-five minutes' time Dane would be awaiting her in the summer-house, and she herself would be leaving the house, leaving the neighbourhood, travelling down to the wilds of Devon, there to remain for goodness knew how long, out of sight, out of touch,--a prisoner, when of all times in her life she most longed to be free.
Wild impulses flocked into her mind, an impulse to turn back, make her escape into the shrubbery, and fly to keep her tryst. If Dane were waiting, would it be possible to reach him, to explain, feel for one moment the grip of his arms, and get back in time to change her dress, and be ready for the car? No, it was impossible. Moreover, what if Dane had not yet arrived? When she had gone so far, would she have courage to drag herself from the spot, where at any moment she might behold him approaching? She knew she had not, and for one wild moment wondered if she could dare still further; deliberately disappear, deliberately _stay_ away until Bernard was forced to depart alone, but even while one by one the questions raced through her brain she continued to drag wearily up the great staircase. Here was an ill.u.s.tration of the greater struggle on a lesser plane. Her heart was vagrant, panting to escape, but the chains of duty held. Bernard was her husband; he was in trouble; he demanded her help; at whatever cost to herself that help must be given.
Ca.s.sandra gave instructions to her maid, and retired to her boudoir to send a telephone message to the one person in Chumley who would come to her aid. Grizel was at home, and her voice came over the wire clear and distinct.
”Yes, it's me. I'm alone. What is it?”
Ca.s.sandra's words came haltingly. Her proud spirit had difficulty in framing that message.
”This is Wednesday... Wednesday afternoon. You remember what was to happen on Wednesday afternoon?... Bernard has just had a wire to say that his mother has had a stroke. He is going to her at once--we are both going. He says I am to nurse her... We leave in--er--in a quarter of an hour... Grizel! I... I was just starting for the summer-house, when he met me with this news. There is no time for--anything... Will _you_ explain?”
Grizel's voice came back in instant rea.s.surement.
”Ca.s.sandra, I will! Leave it to me... Ca.s.sandra, darling, _how_ long are you to be away?”
”I don't know. How should I? Goodness knows!” cried Ca.s.sandra bitterly.
Like a faint, sweet echo came back the words in Grizel's deepest tones:
”Goodness knows!”
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.
FAREWELL!
The old Mater was not unconscious. The mysterious physical lightning had smitten the left side of the body, left a drawn, disfigured face, and a helpless arm and leg, but the spirit within was untouched. By the time that her son arrived, the old Mater had realised what had happened to her, and was seething with bitterness and rebellion. It was a terrible sight to see the blaze of the living eye in the dead face; a piteous thing to listen to the mumbled words which proceeded from the twisted lips.
The tears came into the Squire's eyes as he stood by his mother's bed, he knelt on the floor beside her, and stroked her brow with his big sunburnt hand; with extraordinary sharpness he divined the meaning of her m.u.f.fled speech. Throughout that evening, and for hours at a time throughout the days which followed, he sat by her bedside, ministering to her wants with clumsy eagerness. Ca.s.sandra was for the time being too intensely absorbed with the tragedy of her own life to feel any active interest in what was pa.s.sing before her eyes, but subconsciously the various pictures photographed themselves on her mind. Bernard smiling, indifferent to snubs, persuading his mother to eat, to swallow her medicine; Bernard, suppressing yawns, sitting up to the small hours to be ”at hand”; Bernard holding the cold hand between his own warm palms, and by force of his strong electric current soothing the patient to sleep. He was not _trying_ to be patient; he _was_ patient, out of pure loving kindness and compa.s.sion. Slowly, gradually, the knowledge penetrated into Ca.s.sandra's brain, and she asked herself sadly wherein she had failed, that this quality of tenderness was so lacking towards herself! For some months after their marriage Bernard had been the most ardent of lovers, then pa.s.sion waned, and with no appreciable second stage, neglect had taken its place. She had been bitterly surprised, bitterly wounded, but what had she done to recapture her husband's love, and turn it into a more enduring form? Had she once realised, as Grizel Beverley had realised in the midst of her bridal joy, that love is a tender plant, which can only preserve its fragrance when tended with unremitting care? Ca.s.sandra looked back and saw herself retiring into a chilly reserve, meeting neglect with neglect, indifference with indifference, disdaining to invite a love which was not voluntarily bestowed. It had seemed, at the time, the only way of preserving her dignity, but as she watched her husband by his mother's bedside, there came a sudden realisation that if she had thought less of pride, and more of love, the barrenness of their joint lives might have been averted. If she had used her woman's wiles,--smiled, cajoled, even in those early days, wept a few,--just a few, pretty, becoming tears, to enforce her need, the barrier would never have grown so high: Ca.s.sandra had been accustomed to put all the blame on her husband's shoulders, and to congratulate herself on being immaculately free from blame; never till this moment had she realised that to a man of the Squire's temperament, her att.i.tude of chill detachment, and smiling indifference, was of all things the most exasperating. If she had blazed in anger, even to the extent of facing an occasional battle royal, the corroding bitterness would have found a vent, and reconciliation opened the way to fresh tenderness.
”It's my fault as much as his!” Ca.s.sandra acknowledged, and the admission softened her heart.
The old Mater did not die. The critical days dragged slowly past, and she grimly held her own. In all human probability she would live on for months, for years, until the lightning fell for the third time. To Ca.s.sandra such a recovery seemed a piteous thing, but the Squire's rejoicings were whole-hearted, and the old Mater herself wore an air of triumph. Apparently life was dear to her still, and the prospect of lying in bed, with one half of her body already dead, held more attractions than the celestial choirs on which she pinned her faith.
There was a grim irony in hearing the twisted lips murmur fragments of her favourite hymn--”Oh, Lamb of G.o.d, I come!” and Ca.s.sandra's sense of humour could not resist the reflection that the old lady was exceedingly loath to go!
Grizel wrote that she had given Dane the necessary explanation, and after four days' incessant consideration, Ca.s.sandra wrote and despatched the following letter:
”I was coming to you, as I promised; I had counted every moment of every day as it pa.s.sed, longing for the time to arrive; in another minute I should have been on my way, and then,--what was it?--fate, chance, providence, G.o.d?--_Something_ intervened, and it became impossible for me to meet you, then, or later. I don't know how long we shall be here.
My husband's mother is recovering, but she cannot bear him out of her sight. He is an angel of goodness to her, and in some wonderful way seems to be able to lend her some of his own strength. We may be here for months; it will certainly be many weeks; so I can't come, Dane, I can't have the one joy I longed for... the one more hour together, before we said good-bye!
”It may be for the best. I may look back in years to come, and be thankful, but I'm not thankful now. It seems hard, and cruel, and unjust, that I could not have that little hour, and it made it harder, being so near. Oh, Dane, that journey! Can you for a moment imagine how desperately, achingly miserable I was, steaming farther and farther away with every moment; thinking of you sitting waiting! I wonder what you thought.--I wonder what you feared? But you must have been sure of one thing, at least,--that my heart was with you!
”Dane! I want you to burn this letter after you have read it. I must tell you all that is in my heart, but it is best for both of us that it should not be preserved. I was going to say, that you should forget it, but I know that will not be possible.
”I am going to stay at my post, Dane, and try to make more of it than I've done till now. I told you that in making my decision I had no consideration for Bernard, but that was a mistake. I _must_ consider him, for he is the princ.i.p.al person in life. He does not love me, but since coming here, I have begun to see that that is partly my own fault.
I was very young when we married, and I took it for granted that he would remain for ever an adoring lover. When he grew cool and careless--it was humiliatingly soon!--my miserable pride made me treat him as indifferently as he treated me, and so we have grown apart. I thought he was incapable of tenderness, but watching him with his mother, I wonder if it is simply that I have shown no need. Oh! I've made a failure of it all--with the boy too, it seems, though I _did_ love him; I did pour out my love... What is wrong with me, that the people who should love me _don't_, and when someone comes along who does, we must be parted?
”Did you think I should come to you that night? Now that it is past and over, I can tell you that I very nearly did! An impulse came over me about nine o'clock, so overwhelmingly strong, that it was all I could do not to rush out, as I was, and make my way to you, bareheaded, across the park. The effort to resist left me cold and faint.--I wondered if you were thinking of me, willing me to come! And once again, though never quite so violently, the impulse returned, but each time I resisted, and the end finds me here, tied in a sick room, doing my duty, and bidding you goodbye.
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