For the rest of the afternoon the house was still as the grave, each
member of the little party preserving a rigorous silence for the sake of
those others who were presumably asleep, but with the exception of
Cassandra sleep was conspicuous by its absence. The Squire retired to a
distant corner of the garden, and practised putting by himself,
reflecting ruefully on his interrupted game. Martin sat by Grizel's
couch, mentally abusing himself for the morning's desertion. Grizel had
asked him to join the picnic, and he had preferred to go off on his own
devices. Probably if he had been present, the accident would have
happened just the same, but he would have been beside her to help and
support. Excuse himself as he might, the fact remained that Grizel had
gone through an appalling experience alone. The thought filled him with
a passion of tenderness and remorse, and even in the depths of her
mental and physical exhaustion, Grizel luxuriated in the consciousness,
and lured him on with tender wiles. It was all the rest she wanted,
just to lie still, holding Martin's hand, to feel his touch on her
forehead. The unconsciousness of sleep would have been poor in
comparison, for her heart needed healing more than her body. A few
hours, a few days at most, and even Cassandra herself would have
surmounted the physical strain of the morning, but what of the hidden
danger from which the veil had been torn aside? Now that it had been
revealed--what was to happen to those three young lives?
Grizel had given her husband a detailed account of the accident, but she
had refrained from telling him of Dane's mad words. Whether or not she
would ever tell him, would depend on future events. He had a right to
know everything that concerned herself, but she would have felt it to be
a disloyalty to her friends to have betrayed the new complication which
had come into their lives. It was for them to work out their own
salvation; for her, as the onlooker, to be silent, and wait.
As for Martin, he was too much absorbed in his wife to display undue
curiosity, and his eyes had discovered nothing mysterious in the
condition of either Teresa or Dane himself.
"The fellow is played out. He must have been half crazed to do what he
did. No man would have the strength in a normal condition. In the
great moments of life we draw drafts on our reserve forces, and no
effort seems too great. But we have to pay up. Peignton condensed the
energy of months into three or four minutes, and for the moment he is
bankrupt. It must have been a blood-curdling sight for you, my
darling,--and that poor girl, Teresa! She seemed the calmest of the
party, by the way."
"Calmness is comparative--everything is comparative. It's impossible to
know how much people feel... Oh, Beloved, there are so many sorts, and
if they don't feel _our_ way, it may be just as bad to them! Martin!
we've been married six months, we know each other six hundred times
better than when we began, and there's this virtue about me--I don't
pretend! You know the worst of me, as well as the best. Honestly--on
your solemnest oath,--have you _ever_ been sorry?"
Martin did not reply. He smiled a smile of ineffable content. Grizel
tilted her head on the cushion, and smiled back. "I _knew_ you haven't.
That's why I asked. If there had been the faintest doubt, I couldn't
have faced it to-day. But there are so many months--life is so long.
Martin! you might change!"
Martin's face sobered. His thoughts flew back to the girl wife who, for
a few short months, had shared his life; at whose death life itself had
seemed to end. He had been but twenty-five at the time, and he had
suffered with all the fierce intensity of youth. If Juliet had made a
similar suggestion in those far-off days, he would have refuted it with
scorn, yet he _had_ changed; the young image had faded, and a living
woman now filled his heart. Was it the remembrance of Juliet, which
made Grizel doubt?
"So long as you live, Grizel, it isn't possible that I could change. A
man who had once loved you could never be satisfied with an ordinary
woman. And I am a man now, not a boy. Even--even if I were alone
again--"
She leant forward in a quick caress.
"You are not going to be alone! I am not going to leave you, Honey! If
I were, I should not ask for promises. It's because I intend to live on
to eighty or ninety, that I'm anxious. I couldn't bear it if you grew
cool and cold. I wouldn't _try_ to bear it! Prosaic matrimony would
drive me to the devil. I can't tell you what sort of devil,--there
might be several, but a devil it would certainly be. But if you'll love
me, dear, I'll grow nearer the angels!"
He laid his head beside hers on the cushion, and they sat silently,
through blessed moments of communion. In heart and love they were at
one, but their thoughts carried them on different voyages. When he
spoke again, it was to say in tones of kindly toleration:
"Don't be too hard on the poor Squire. He's a good fellow, and, as you
say, there are all sorts. Presumably she loved that sort. She chose
him, you know."
"Unfortunately she didn't. She chose a waking man, who fell asleep the
moment he'd got her, and has slept on steadily ever since. He was in
love, you see, and love galvanised him into a show of life, and poor,
dear Cassandra saw the miracle, and believed it was going to last.
You're a man, my dear, and you're an author, and you write very clever
books, but you don't realise for a moment how intoxicating it is for a
woman to hold the reins in her own hands, while a lord of creation
kneels trembling at her feet! It's the one little time of her life when
she is master, and it goes to her head. He tells her that she is the
sun, and the moon, and the eleven stars, and that his only object in
life is to adore her for evermore, and that if she won't have him he'll
pine away and die on Wednesday week, and the poor dear thing believes
every word, and is so touched to find herself of such importance after
being just an ordinary, superfluous girl, that she will promise anything
he likes to ask. I am talking, of course," said Grizel markedly, "of
_country_ girls! Girls like Cassandra, shut up in moated granges a
dozen miles from the nearest anywhere. _Not_ of myself! It was _no_
novelty to me to have men squirming!"
"What a very undignified word! Don't dare to apply it to me. I'll
kneel, as much as you like, but I refuse to squirm!" Martin stretched
himself, and rose to his feet. Grizel was better, beginning to talk in
her natural vein, and his conscience began to prick him about his guest.
"Do you think you could manage to get a little deep now! I really
ought to look after poor old Raynor."
Grizel accorded a gracious permission, and submitted meekly to an
irritating process which Martin called "making her comfortable." When
the door was closed behind him, she deftly rearranged all the
accessories which he had misplaced, and composed herself for the
long-deferred rest, but it was not to be. In less than five minutes a
knock sounded at the door, and after a moment's pause was repeated in a
more insistent fashion.
"Come in!" cried Grizel clearly, and Teresa's head peeped enquiringly
round the corner of the door.
"You are alone?" she asked. "I hoped you would be. I couldn't rest,
and I knew you couldn't either. Do you mind if I sit down and talk a
few minutes?"
"Do, dear; I'd like it," Grizel said kindly, her eyes fixed on the
girl's figure, with an astonished admiration. Teresa had taken off her
dress, and put on a plainly made blue cashmere dressing-gown, the loose
folds of which disguised the somewhat ungainly lines of her figure, and
gave to it an effect of dignity and height. Her hair had been unloosed
and hung in two heavy plaits to her waist, giving a Gretchen-like
expression to the fair, blue-eyed face. Teresa had prepared herself for
her siesta with characteristic thoroughness, but apparently without
avail. She seated herself beside Grizel's couch, folded her hands on
her knee, and asked a level question:
"I wanted to know. Have you told your husband everything that
happened?"
"Everything about the accident itself. Nothing more, Teresa."
For a moment the blue eyes lightened with gratitude.
"I _thought_ you wouldn't. But most women would. Thank you. I'd
rather no one was told."
"No one shall hear anything from me. It is not my business. I shall
forget it, Teresa!"
The girl shook her head.
"You can't do that. I don't think I want you to forget. It's a help to
have someone who understands. Mrs Beverley--do you think he _meant_
it?"
Grizel sat upright on the sofa, her small hands locked on her knee, and
for a long silent minute blue eyes and hazel met in a steady gaze.
There were no secrets between the two women at the end of that minute.
"Yes, Teresa," said Grizel unsteadily. "I think he did."
"You know he did," corrected Teresa gravely. She was silent for another
moment, sitting motionless with downcast eyes, then deliberately raised
them again and continued:
"At the time he did mean it... She is so beautiful, and fascinating.
Everyone admires her. And it was terrible to watch her choking before
one's eyes. It wrung one's heart. What he said at the time should not
be counted. He was not sane. I am thinking of the time before.--Do
you,--do you think he meant it _before_?"
Grizel did not speak. To her impetuous ardent nature, the girl's
composure seemed terrible and unnatural. It affected her more strongly
than the most violent hysteria. She sat crunched up into the corner of
the sofa, looking white and scared, and helpless, flinching before the
steady scrutiny of the blue eyes.
"_Please tell me_."
"Teresa, I--wondered! It troubled me. Lately I felt sure. I was sorry
it had been arranged to come here together. I tried to alter it; you
know I tried... Did _you_ never suspect?"
Teresa hesitated. The colour had faded from her cheek, but she was
still calm and collected.
"Not--_that_! I knew he admired her--that was of course. I knew he
liked to be with her whenever he could. Once or twice I felt--lonely!
But she was married.--I never dreamt of this. I have read of men
falling in love with married women, but I have never known it in real
life. I did not think he was that sort." Scorn spoke in her voice, a
youthful intolerance and contempt. It was not only on her own account
that she was suffering. Peignton had been to her the ideal man, and the
ideal had fallen. The whole structure of life seemed shaken under her
feet.
Grizel looked at her, with a saddened glance.
"Poor, dear, little girl! It's hard for you, but you must try to
understand. You've lived in a very sheltered little corner, dear, where
the difficult things of life have been hidden away out of sight. It's
hard for you to be quite fair, and see the other point of view as well
as your own. But you must try. You mustn't condemn poor Dane. He was
engaged to you, and he has fallen in love with another woman. It sounds
bad enough on the face of it, but you and I who know him, and have
watched him these last months, know that there has been nothing
deliberate about it, nothing guilty or underhand. He was engaged to you
and he was faithful to you--in intent. He wanted to be faithful. The
other thing was just a great trial wave which overtook him and swept him
off his feet."
Teresa set her lips, her face hard and cold.
"It could not have swept him, if he had been firm! If he had been
faithful to me, he could not have noticed any other woman in that way.
I never noticed another man. I don't understand it."
Grizel sighed. The youthful arrogance of the girl was at once pitiful
and menacing. To her there existed but the two hard lines, a right and
a wrong, the maze of intersecting paths had no existence in her eyes.
Her judgment, like that of all young untried things, was relentlessly
hard.
Grizel sat looking at her, pondering what to say.
"When you first knew Cassandra you were fascinated by her. You felt a
longing to see her again. Every time you saw her, you admired her more.
You have told me about it, so often. In a feminine way you fell in
love with her yourself, Teresa. You _ought_ to understand."
"He was engaged to me!" echoed Teresa obstinately. Suddenly her face
quivered with pathos "And--I'm young--I'm pretty.--I loved him. _Why_?
Why? Why?"
"Oh, my poor child!" Grizel cried sharply, and the tears started to her
eyes. Poor, ignorant, complaisant Teresa fighting against the mysteries
of life, demanding explanation of the inexplicable,--what tenderness,
what forgiveness was to be expected from such an attitude?
"He chose me," she insisted. "It was his own doing. Nobody made him.
It was his own choice. And he had met her _before_ he asked me. We
used to talk about her together.--I was glad when he was enthusiastic...
She was my friend, and a married woman with a husband and--that big
boy! He is ten years old. She must be thirty at the least." All the
arrogance of the early twenties rang in Teresa's voice. "It's such
folly--such madness! It isn't as if she could ever--love him back."
Silence. Teresa looked up sharply, held Grizel's eyes in a hard,
enquiring stare and deliberately repeated the pronouncement.
"It isn't possible that she could care for him."
"Did you find it so difficult, Teresa?"
"Why do you compare her with me? It's different. You know it's
different."
"Yes, I do know. You were a free, happy girl with your life ahead.
_Her_ youth, the best part of her youth has gone, and she has never had
the joy that every woman needs. You know what I mean. We need not go
into it. Some men mean well, but they have no right to be husbands!
The women who have to live with them are slowly starved to death."
"She has her boy."
"Yes, she has her boy. For a few weeks in the year."
"He is her son all the year round."
"That's perfectly true, Teresa."
"A married woman with a son ought _not_ to love another man."
"That's perfectly true, Teresa. Do you never by any chance do anything
you should not? Can't you find the least scrap of pity in your heart
for other people who are more unhappy than yourself?"
"I am not sorry for people who do wrong. It's easy to talk, Mrs
Beverley. Suppose it was your own husband, and you had seen him, as I
did to-day, with another woman--with Cassandra herself. How would _you_
feel?"
Grizel's grimace was more expressive than words.
"My dear, I can't imagine it. I'd rather not. I should certainly not
be calm. I'm an impetuous person who is bound to let off steam, and
there would be a considerable amount of steam on that occasion, but I'm
older than you, and have seen more of the world, so that perhaps it
would come easier--after the first explosion--to be sorry for them as
well as myself."
"Why should one be sorry?"
"Because they _are_ in the wrong, and are bringing sorrow on others,
whereas you are the injured martyr, who is sinned against. There's
considerable balm in the position--for those who like it. How do you
suppose poor Dane will feel at the prospect of his next interview with
you?"
Teresa's face quivered again.
"He hasn't wanted many interviews lately. We've hardly been alone an
hour since we came here. I suppose I--should have suspected... but I
didn't. He has never been demonstrative, but he chose me, he said he
loved me. I _trusted_ him."
There was pathos in the lingering on those last words. Grizel made a
little crooning sound of tenderness, and stretched out a consoling hand,
but Teresa ignored it, and rose slowly to her feet.
"Thank you. You've told me all I wanted to know. And I'm grateful to
you for not telling your husband. Please don't mention anything to a
single person. The less that is said about it the easier it will be
to--"
"To--?" Grizel's eyes dilated. She sat upright on the sofa, her whole
body a-quiver with eagerness. "To _what_, Teresa?"
"To put things right," said Teresa, and marched stolidly from the room.