Lady Cassandra Part 16

"Never." Grizel shook her head. "I should not have suspected if I'd met them a hundred times. She is not all the kind of girl I should have expected--"

Mrs Evans was seized with a small, tickling cough, and Grizel, looking at her, met a glance of warning. She hesitated, and compromised.

"I hardly know her, of course. She must be nice if he likes her. He is a charming man."

Mrs Gardiner allowed herself the relief of a phantom sniff. Mrs Beverley she considered was putting on "side." She had known Dane and Teresa for precisely the same length of time, yet she spoke of one as a friend, of the other as the merest acquaintance. It was but another example of county _versus_ town, and as such to be personally resented.

"I am very much attached to Teresa Mallison. She is a very nice, well-brought-up girl. She will make him an excellent wife. I think he is very much to be congratulated," she said stiffly, and the little speech was memorable, inasmuch as it was the only one delivered in the High Street that day, in which Dane himself was singled out for congratulation!

"Are you walking towards home, Mrs Beverley? Perhaps we might go so far together," said the Vicar's wife, as Mrs Gardiner nodded adieu, and entered the grocer's shop, and the two women turned into a side street, composed of those dreary stucco-faced little villas which seem the special abode of insurance agents and dressmakers. The houses continued but a short way, and then gave place to nursery gardens, and scattered habitations of a better type. Grizel hated the mean little houses, not for any sympathy for the inconvenience which they must cause to their inhabitants, but because she herself was bound to pa.s.s them on her way to the High Street. She amused herself by planning wholesale fires, in which entire terraces would be devoured, and in a hazy, indefinite fas.h.i.+on had decided that such a catastrophe would be profitable for the insurance agents, as well as for herself. Trying for the dressmakers, of course, but then dressmakers spent their lives in being trying to other people. Let them take their turn!

This morning, however, Grizel was oblivious of the villas, she was peering into Mrs Evans's large face, and saying tentatively:

"You stopped me... Why shouldn't I say it? If I don't think Miss Mallison _is_ the right girl, why mayn't I--"

"These things get repeated. One can't be too careful. I make it a rule to be silent, if I find myself unable to say what is agreeable."

"How dull you would be! I say _would_, because it isn't true. You're scolding me now, and I'm sure that's not agreeable! Dear Mrs Evans, do you think it is a suitable engagement?"

"Dear Mrs Beverley, how can I judge? Can anyone in the world decide whom a man or a woman will choose?"

"They can't, but they can guess pretty well whom they _won't_! You know them both, Captain Peignton and Miss Mallison; can you imagine them living together, and being satisfied all their lives?"

The older woman looked at the bride in silence. Hundreds of couples had she seen kneeling hand in hand in the chancel of the church, cheerfully plighting a troth which bound them together till death should them part, and of how many could it be said that they were satisfied! She knew too well into what a prosaic compromise the lives of many of these lovers degenerated, but she would have felt it a sacrilege to say as much to this bride of the happy eyes, and the gay, unclouded heart.

"My dear," she said slowly, "if they think so themselves, it's not my place to judge. It often puzzles one to understand why people choose one another, but I am a strong believer in nature! Nature is always working out her own great plan, and she dictates for the good of the race. You see it all around--the dark chooses the light, the tall chooses the short, the fat chooses the thin, the brilliant woman marries a sportsman, the man of letters a gentle house-frau. Nature has dictated in this case. Captain Peignton is not too strong, and his nerves have been taxed: Teresa doesn't know what nerves are. I never knew a more healthy, normal girl."

"Mrs Evans, you have known her for ages. Do _you_ think she is interesting?"

But Mrs Evans was not to be trapped into personal expressions of feeling.

"It is quite immaterial what _I_ think. I have known Teresa Mallison all her life, but, my dear, I know nothing about the Teresa whom Captain Peignton sees. He in his turn knows very little about the Teresa who will be his wife at the end of the first two or three years of married life."

Grizel's hazel eyes widened with a look of fear.

"Does one inevitably change so much?"

"One _grows_!" Mrs Evans said. "How could it be otherwise? Marriage for a girl means a shouldering of responsibility for the first time in her life, facing a money strain, a health strain, a curtailment of liberty. There is more joy one hopes, but there is certainly more discipline. Troubles must come--"

Grizel threw out a protesting hand. Her thoughts had slipped instinctively from the newly engaged couple, to the more enthralling subject of Martin and herself, and the prophecy hurt.

"Why must they, if they aren't needed? Suppose people can be disciplined by happiness, why need they have the trials? _I_ am disciplined by happiness. It suits me; it makes me good. It does _not_ make me selfish and unkind. And I _am_ grateful. I go about that little house, and there's something inside me singing 'Thank you!'

'Thank you!' all day long. I'm so br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with love and charity that it's all I can do not to kiss the cook on her cross old face, and press a diamond brooch into her hand. Anything to make her cheerful!

It hurts to see anyone less happy than myself. Don't, please, say I must have trouble, Mrs Evans. Let me stay in the sun!"

"Dear child!" said the Vicar's wife, and once again she felt the unwonted p.r.i.c.king sensation at the back of her eyes. She was used to sorrow, skilled in offering consolation and advice, but it was all too rare an experience to meet with joy. In the depths of her kind old heart she wondered if indeed Grizel were not right, but not for the world would she have allowed herself to express so unorthodox a feeling.

She walked in silence for some yards, and then, with a sudden change of subject, asked shortly, "How's Katrine?"

"Talking of love in the suns.h.i.+ne? Oh, Katrine's _well_! She's just returned from her honeymoon, and Captain Blair has had his old bungalow enlarged. They had a glorious time. She was married from her friend's house, and rode off to camp in the wilds. She shed her skirt as soon as she arrived at the camp, and never saw it again till her return. A honeymoon in leggings! What would Chumley say to that?"

"It sounds exceedingly--er--unlike Katrine!"

"Yes, doesn't it? Isn't it splendid? And she loved it. Her only worry was that _bits_ of her looked so nice, that she was longing all the time to see herself full length.--However, '_Jim_' has taken her photograph!"

"I hope he will make her happy. Katrine has a difficult nature, and it was such a very short acquaintance."

"Oh, well! but they knew a great deal of each other."

Grizel's smile was enigmatic, for the secret of Katrine Beverley's correspondence with her unknown lover was not divulged outside the family circle. She said good-bye to the Vicar's wife at the parting of the way, and turned in at the gate of her own domain.

Daffodils were nodding among the gra.s.s. A bed beneath the window was ablaze with many-coloured anemones, the s.h.i.+mmer of green was on the trees; and at the study window stood Martin watching for her return.

Grizel's heart swelled within her. Despite the enlargement made for her benefit, despite the general air of freshness and prosperity, it was after all but a modest establishment, ludicrously small when contrasted with her former homes, yet for Grizel all the riches and treasures of life were contained within those four walls. With the clanging of the gate the world was shut out, and she entered home as a sanctuary. Most of us are so occupied regretting past joys, and planning joys for the future, that it is only at rare moments that we realise the joy of the present. "I was so happy."

"I shall be so happy." These are expressions of daily use. The sound of "I _am_ happy," is so rare as to bring with it the effect of shock.

Grizel was one of the fortunate ones who continually realise the happiness of the present, but even she had her positives and superlatives. Since hearing the news of the hour she had been conscious of a weight of depression, but with the opening of the gate that weight disappeared. It seemed as if no joy that life could have to bestow could exceed that of home-coming, with the sight of Martin waiting for her return!

She smiled in answer to his waving hand, but his quick eye caught the sobered expression on her face, and he hurried to meet her, and drew her into the drawing-room.

"Anything the matter, my precious one? Anything troubling you?"

Grizel leant her head on his shoulder with a forgetfulness of coiffure which in itself would have raised his apprehension. Her hands clasped themselves round his arm, she drew a long trembling sigh.

"Oh, Martin, hold me close! Don't let anything happen!"

"What _has_ happened, dear, to upset you like this?"

"Nothing; but I'm afraid. Oh, if we are very good, and go on being thankful, and doing our best, need we have troubles to spoil it?

It's... it's _Paradise_, Martin, and I want it to last!"

Martin's face quivered above her bowed head. He had lived in Paradise before, and it had not lasted. He knew that it never did last, that sweet and dear as might be the after life, it was only for a brief period that human beings could remain in their Eden. He held her close, with a jealous touch.

"So long as we have each other, we can bear the rest. Honestly, dear, we shall have less to bear than most people, for the simple reason that we won't _let_ things trouble! When one has gained the big treasure, the gnats can't sting. It's not like you, Grizel, to be afraid!"

"I am hideously afraid, but it's your fault. It's loving you so much that has turned me into a coward. I'm afraid of everything where you are concerned,--draughts and drains, and accidents, and editors, and letters in blue envelopes, and perils by night and by day. Every day I bury you of a new disease. If you sneeze it's consumption, if you cough it's pneumonia, if you scratch your finger, it's blood-poisoning. You looked pale this morning, so it was pernicious anaemia." A little laugh came with the last words, and she raised her head to peer into his face.

"_Do_ you feel by any chance as if you had pernicious anaemia?"

Martin took her by the shoulders and led her to the door.

"I shall do, if you keep me waiting any longer for lunch. Go upstairs and take off your hat."

But Grizel lingered by the door.

"Do you about me?"

"Do I what about you?"

"Think of all the gruesome things that might happen? Lie awake at night imagining them.--Get in a panic every time I am five minutes late?"

"You were over five minutes late to-day, but my pulse was normal. I merely concluded that you had met a friend and were enjoying a gossip."