Mrs Evans looked with concern upon the small, brilliantly coloured face under the fashionable hat. She noticed how little flesh there was on the finely modelled cheeks, how sharp cut was the bridge of the nose.

The girl looked delicate; she was too thin; taken in conjunction with the tired eyes, that exquisite flush could not be healthy. There was a motherliness in the good woman's manner which pierced through the crust of dignity as she put her hand through Ca.s.sandra's arm, and said kindly:

"You look tired, dear! I hope you didn't feel cold standing about on the terrace. It is exposed, and the wind is chill. Are you quite well, Ca.s.sandra?"

"I think so. Why? Don't I look well?" Ca.s.sandra felt a relief in the thought that her depression might be physical. "You know I am always unhappy at these functions. I am not a good hostess, and it worries me to know what to say. I'm so thankful I'm not a Vicar's wife! That must be even worse. Doesn't it bore you to extinction to be everlastingly two people,--yourself with your nice natural impulses--and the Vicar's wife who has no business to have impulses at all! Doesn't it bore you terribly to be always _ex officio_?"

Mrs Evans hesitated. She intensely wanted to say yes, but that highly trained article, her conscience, would not allow the deception. The colour deepened on her large, plain face as she said slowly:

"I _did_ find it a trial in early years. Of late the trial has come to me in another fashion. I am perhaps a little too ready to enjoy the importance of my position."

Ca.s.sandra's laugh rang out with sudden gaiety. She gripped the large arm, and said with a charming indulgence:

"Ah, but why shouldn't you? If you _do_ manage us, it's for our own good. It's sweet of you to take the trouble... Mrs Evans, Mary Mallison has been here to lunch, and I've been talking to her. Her mother is vastly excited about this windfall, but the girl herself does not seem capable of anything but relief at the thought of getting away from home. I'm afraid she's been rather desperately unhappy. It surprises me that she could suffer so much. I thought she was one of those dull women who are contented to jog along in any rut in which they are placed, and never demand anything for themselves."

"Do you think there are any such women, Ca.s.sandra?"

"Don't you?"

"I am quite sure there are not."

Ca.s.sandra knitted her brows and stared intently into the face of the woman, who was a virtual father confessor to the parish. If Mrs Evans were sure, what right had she to question; but the thought held a sting.

"But--if not, there must be so horribly many who are wretched!"

"There are," Mrs Evans said. A moment later: "Wretched is a strong word, Ca.s.sandra," she added, "perhaps it would be better to say 'disappointed.' There are very few women who get to my age who are not making a fight against some sort of disappointment. They are very brave about it, for the most part, and cover it up so successfully that the world does not suspect; but the fight goes on. I get many peeps behind the scenes; it's part of my work. Sickness comes or loss, and then it is a comfort to speak out and unburden the heart. I've been amazed at the number of hidden sorrows in the places where I least expected them.

I have looked down on a woman as frivolous and commonplace, and have come away after half an hour's confidences looking up to her as a heroine."

Ca.s.sandra turned her head and looked up and down the diverging paths.

Women everywhere, crowds of women, old and young, and heavily middle-aged, talking, smiling, bearing themselves with complacent airs.

It was a ghastly, a hideous thought that they were all suffering some inner smart! She had believed that she was an exception, but according to Mrs Evans it was not the sufferer who was the exception, but the child of the sunshine, who, like fortunate Grizel, was endowed with the gift of happiness.

"All of them?" cried Ca.s.sandra sharply. "Oh, not all! They look so calm and comfortable. I couldn't bear to think that under the mask they were all suffering!"

"They are not, my dear; they are forgetting! That's the lesson so many of us have to learn,--to forget the unattainable, and make the best of what remains. And every innocent distraction that comes along, like this party to-day, to see your beautiful flowers, helps a step along the road."

"Suppose," said Ca.s.sandra slowly, "one did not wish to forget?"

The Vicar's wife shook her head.

"One rarely does. It is easier to cling hold. But it's possible to ask oneself a straight question... Which is going to make life easier for myself, and the people around me,--to cling hold, or,--to let go? It saps one's vitality to grieve over the unattainable, and in most lives there _is_ an unattainable. There are not many women so fortunate as you, Ca.s.sandra!"

Mrs Evans spoke in good faith. She had a sincere liking for the Squire, who as a patron was not only generous, but delightfully free from the dreaded vice of interference. When consulted on church matters, he would shrug his shoulders, and declare that it was all one to him. So long as the music was pa.s.sable, and the sermons kept within a ten minutes' limit, he could be relied upon to give liberally, and to make no complaints. Truly a patron in a hundred! Such a man could not fail to be a kind husband. Moreover, the touch of sn.o.bbishness in Mrs Evans's nature invested Ca.s.sandra's position in the county with a most satisfying importance, while the presence of the needful heir made the picture complete. Youth, beauty, wealth, a fine position, a kindly husband, a strong young son,--what more could a woman desire? "But you must be careful not to take cold!" she added remindfully.

Ca.s.sandra gave a short, mirthless laugh, but before she had time to speak her husband and Grizel turned the corner of the path, and Bernard, with his usual lack of ceremony, beckoned to her to approach. He looked flushed and worried, and with a word of apology to Mrs Evans, Ca.s.sandra hurried to meet him.

"Here you are at last! Been searching all over. Trust you to hide yourself out of sight. Look here! I want you at the house. There's been an accident. Peignton--"

Ca.s.sandra straightened herself hastily. The flower-beds with their blaze of colour whizzed round in kaleidoscopic fashion before her eyes.

She felt very cold, and faint. Grizel's voice sounded a long way off, speaking with a studied distinctness.

"A _slight_ accident! Only his ankle. He was doing something in the rockery, clambering over the big stones, and one turned over... The Squire sent for an old Bath chair in the stables, and he has been wheeled into the plant room. There is a terrific discussion going on as to what next. Can't you come and take away _some_ of Mrs Mallison?"

Ca.s.sandra turned homeward without a word, the Squire walking by her side, waving his hands in excitement.

"She wants to drag him home with her in that shandrydan! Says he'll be lonely at home, and would have Teresa. Hang Teresa! There's a time for all things,--a man can't be bothered with love-making when his foot is giving him blue lightnings. Shake him to pieces driving over those roads! Jevons can get him to bed here, and look after him properly.

I'll wire to that Swedish fellow to come down, and he'll have him on his feet in two or three days. We'll put him in the blue room, next to the Den, and he can wheel in on a sofa to-morrow. Now back me up!"

"What does Captain Peignton say? It is he who must decide. He may prefer--"

"Oh, rats!" The Squire waved impatiently. "He won't prefer. What man would? Teresa's a fine girl, but that mother is the limit. She'd drive Peignton daft, mewed up in that little house. I know what I'm talking about,--what you've got to do is to back me up! You're always so deuced ready with objections. He's hurt himself here, and he's going to stay here till he's better. I've made up my mind."

The Squire stormed on, repeating the same things over and over again until the house was reached, and he led the way through a doorway level with the ground into a large, bare room furnished with a couple of chairs, a few cupboards, and a long central table. It was a room used by the gardeners for the arrangement of flowers for the house, and had been chosen on the present occasion as offering the easiest access to the Bath chair. Ca.s.sandra's eyes darted past a group of female figures and rested on Peignton's face, pale and drawn, though resolutely composed. The realisation that he was suffering put an end to hesitation, and she swept forward, ignoring an opening chorus of explanations, and said firmly:

"His foot ought to be raised. It ought to be bathed at once. The shoe must be cut off."

Mrs Mallison was loud in a.s.sent.

"I said so, Lady Ca.s.sandra; I said so! I've been talking to him for the last ten minutes. _Folly_ to waste time! The trap is in the stable, and we could be home in half an hour. I want to take him home with me, Lady Ca.s.sandra. The best thing, isn't it? So dull for a man with a sprained ankle,... but he'd have Teresa. Teresa would amuse him. Do let me order the trap!"

"My dear madam, it's madness. The poor beggar can't stand a drive.

He'd better get off to bed upstairs, and I'll wire for the Swedish fellow who put me to rights last year. My man knows how to start operations, and he can begin right away. Marvellous how those Swedes treat sprains! I was laid up a solid six weeks with the same ankle ten years ago under a country G.P. Sprained it again last year, and called in this ma.s.seur fellow, and in four days--"

The Squire was safely launched on a favourite story, staring from one feminine hearer to the other, demanding full attention. Ca.s.sandra turned her head and looked steadily at Dane. She meant that look to be a question, and the question received its answer. If ever a man's eyes expressed appeal, Dane's expressed it at that moment. With all the intensity which eyes could express, he threw himself at her mercy.

"I think," said Ca.s.sandra clearly, "Captain Peignton had better stay.

It will be quicker in the end. Teresa must come up and amuse him here."

She laid her hand on the girl's arm with a kindly pressure. "You will stay and look after him now, till my husband finds Jevons. There is an old carrying chair in the box-room, which will get over the difficulty of the stairs. Mrs Mallison! shall we lead the way to tea?"

The next moment the room was empty save for the engaged pair. Teresa knew that the opportunity had been made, and knew that she ought to be grateful, but she was anxious and miserable, and more than a little wounded by her lover's unwillingness to accept her mother's invitation.

"I should have _liked_ to nurse you, Dane!" she said reproachfully, and Dane pressed his lips in a spasm of pain, and rejoined quietly:

"I know, dear. Thank you, but it's better as it is. I'll be confoundedly glad to get this shoe off, and try what sponging will do.

You'll come up?"

"Oh, yes!" Teresa said. She leant against the side of the Bath chair, and held out a tentative hand. "I wish it had been me! I'd rather bear it myself a dozen times. It _will_ help you, won't it, Dane, if I come and sit beside you? If I were ill, I'd want more than anything else just to see your face!"

"Bless you, Teresa! You're a dear girl," Dane said, smiling, but his eyes wandered wistfully to the doorway. The Squire was right. A man in pain has no zest for love-making. A woman would welcome it with her dying breath.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

REALISATION.

By nine o'clock in the evening the Swedish ma.s.seur had arrived, and begun his manipulations. He promised that his patient should walk by the end of five or six days, and at the Squire's request agreed to put up at the Court for that period, giving several treatments a day. His fee made Peignton grimace, but he had to admit that it was cheap in comparison with weeks of inactivity. A telephone message brought a couple of bags filled with his clothes and toilette accessories, and he settled down to rest with the satisfaction of a man relieved from pain, and agreeably expectant of the future. Raynor was a good fellow; no one could have been kinder, and it certainly was a comfort to have the services of a trained man at this point, and to be housed in a big establishment, where there were possibilities of moving from room to room on the same floor, or even of being carried up and downstairs without feeling oneself too intolerable a burden. There were always two or three lazy fellows hanging about, who would be the better for using their muscles. Peignton gave a little shudder of distaste at the thought of the fl.u.s.ter which would have accompanied every movement, if he had accepted Mrs Mallison's invitation to the Cottage. Teresa, dear girl! had offered to nurse him, but the thing was not possible.

Convention would have forbidden her attending him in bed, and how the deuce was he to get up with no one to help? He wondered between a laugh and a groan, if Mrs Mallison would have offered motherly services! And then he thought of Ca.s.sandra, standing slim and straight, the little deer-like head turned over her shoulder, looking at him with questioning eyes. What a picture she had made! Thinking of it conjured up other pictures. He envisaged them one by one, as he lay in the darkness.

Ca.s.sandra on the day of Grizel Beverley's reception seated beside him in the closed car, the softness of chinchilla beneath her chin; Ca.s.sandra playing bridge, tapping the green baize with the long, lovely hand on which the emerald flashed; Ca.s.sandra at the church decorations standing with upraised arms against a background of leaves; Ca.s.sandra looking at him down the length of her own dining-table, the bare slimness of her throat rising above the bank of flowers. Each picture seemed more beautiful, more appealing than the last. He wondered dreamily what it was which formed this quality of appeal. Was it the touch of physical fragility which underlaid her bloom, or a finer spiritual need which called to a force within his own breast, a force which recognised the call! Always in Ca.s.sandra's presence he had the consciousness of waiting for an opportunity to serve; always he had the consciousness of need. He told himself he would be a happier man if it were ever given to him to be of service to Ca.s.sandra Raynor.