Lady Cassandra Part 36

Peignton bowed his head.

"Yes. Both. There was no disguise. There was only one thing in the world for me at that moment, and that was you. Heaven knows what I said, but it was enough. Fate has been against us all the way. If it had not been for that accident, no one need have known.--I could have kept it to myself."

"Oh, Dane, would that have been better? Do you think that would have helped me?" Ca.s.sandra asked pitifully. "There is only one thing that makes life endurable at this moment, and that is that I _do_ know. It's wicked; it's selfish; but it's true! I was starving with loneliness.

All those dreadful days at the sea when she was there, and I saw you together, I was longing to die. It seemed as if I could not endure to go on with life, but when death really came near, I was frightened.

It's terrible to feel your breath go. I think for a few moments I must have lost consciousness, for I remember nothing after you seized hold of me, until I was lying--like this--with my head on your shoulder, and you were saying--saying..."

Peignton's breath came in a groan.

"Did I say it? I mean, am I more responsible than for the breath I drew? What I said to you then, Ca.s.sandra, _said itself_. If I had been in my sane senses, I would have killed myself rather than have said them then--before her!"

Ca.s.sandra lifted her fringed eyelids in a questioning gaze.

"For my own sake I am glad; but it was hard for her. Poor Teresa! Was she--did she... What has happened between you, Dane?"

"Nothing has happened. We had it out, of course. The next day. Before we came home I wanted to set her free, but she refused."

"Refused! But how could she? When she _knew! Why_ did she refuse?"

Dane flushed in miserable discomfort.

"If you had been free, she would have broken the engagement herself, but she believes that it would make things harder for--for us both, if she stood aside. She thinks we might be tempted to--to--"

"What _are_ we going to do, Dane?" Ca.s.sandra asked simply. "Isn't it strange how one comes up against problems in life, and how different they are in reality from what one has imagined? I've heard of married women falling in love with other men, and meeting them, as we have met now. It seemed so despicable and mean. I felt nothing but contempt, but we are not contemptible; we have done no wrong. We needed each other, and all the barriers in the world couldn't keep us apart. We are sitting--like this!--but I don't feel that I am doing wrong. It helps me. If I could meet you here--not often--just now and then for half an hour, a quarter of an hour, and could put my head on your shoulder, and feel your arms holding me tight--I could go on... I could be better--"

Peignton shook his head, and a dreary travesty of a smile pa.s.sed over his face. He was marvelling for the hundredth time at the extraordinary difference between a woman's sense of honour, and that of a man. He could have set his teeth and stolen his friend's wife, carrying her off boldly in the face of the world, prepared to pay the price, but it would have been impossible for him to continue a series of clandestine meetings, however innocent, and still hold out the hand of friends.h.i.+p.

Ca.s.sandra was not the type of woman to desert her home and child. She had made a vow, and she would keep it, yet she could declare that she would be the stronger for such meetings. Poor darling! she meant it in all sincerity. He would never allow her the misery of discovering her mistake.

"No," he said firmly. "Never that, Ca.s.sandra. It has to be all or nothing. There's no midway course possible for you and me. I love you; there's nothing in the wide world that counts with me, beside you. If you could trust yourself to me, I would swear to serve you until my death, and it would be joy, the truest joy I could know. It is for you to order, Ca.s.sandra, and I shall obey..."

He felt her shrink in his arms; her voice trembled, but she forced herself to speak.

"What do you mean? Say it plainly, Dane, please, quite plainly. Let me understand!"

"If you will come with me, Ca.s.sandra, we'll go abroad. I'll take a villa in some quiet spot, out of the tourist beat. We could stay there, together, until... He would divorce you; he is not the kind of man to s.h.i.+rk that. The case would be undefended, so you would not have to appear... In less than a year we could be legally married."

"But--but--_my boy_!" cried Ca.s.sandra, trembling. She pa.s.sed her right hand against Peignton's shoulder, the hand with the emerald ring, and raised herself from his embrace. There was a look in her eyes which he had not seen before, the mother-look on guard for her young. It was not of the stolid, freckled-faced schoolboy that Ca.s.sandra was thinking at that moment, but of the small, soft-breathing thing which had been the reward of her anguish, which she had greeted with such a pa.s.sion of joy.

"Dane! have you forgotten my boy?"

"No. I have forgotten nothing. Is the boy more to you than I am, Ca.s.sandra?"

"No. No," she turned to him with eager penitence. "Not so much; not so much; but he is mine; I am responsible. And he is growing so big--in a few years he would understand. ... Even now the other boys--I have done very little for him in his life. I have been allowed to do so little, and he isn't affectionate. It isn't me personally that he would miss...

a new gun, or a pony would more than make up _now_! But he _would_ care!... The time would come when he would be ashamed.--I couldn't bear my own little son to be ashamed of me, Dane!"

There was no answer to be made to that protest. Dane stared at the ground, miserably conscious of the hopelessness of the situation. He was determined to keep to his resolution that it should be all or nothing between Ca.s.sandra and himself, yet the prospect of parting was intolerable.

"Are you thinking entirely of the boy?" he asked slowly, after a pause.

"Your husband? Doesn't he enter into your calculations?"

Ca.s.sandra's face hardened.

"No," she said coldly. "I am not thinking of Bernard. If there were only Bernard to consider, it would be different. Bernard has not kept his promise to love and cherish me all his life. I am a live woman, and he treats me like a machine. A man like that has no right to a wife.

If I left him, it would open his eyes to his own selfishness, and do him good. He would marry again, and his second wife would reap the benefit.

You need me more than Bernard needs me, and I need you... But there's the boy--"

"And," said Peignton heavily, "Teresa!"

Ca.s.sandra glanced at him swiftly, and into her eyes came fear.

"Dane... will you, can you,--marry her _new_?"

"I have told her that it's impossible, but she insisted on keeping on the engagement. I stood out, but she said that possibly your name might be dragged in if the engagement were broken off just now, after our visit to you.--I could not stand the risk of that, so--it was left!"

"And you are engaged to her still?"

"Nominally. Yes. She is very considerate. She makes it as easy for me as she can... That's a hateful thing to say! I hate myself for saying it. If it's hard for us, it's harder for her. She's the one left out.

She might have made things unbearable. Can you imagine what it would have been if she had blurted out the whole tale,--told it to her own people, to have it handed round the neighbourhood, with a hundred exaggerations within twenty-four hours? A girl might so easily have lost her head under the circ.u.mstances, but she--I don't think she reproached me once! She seemed all the way through to think of me more than herself.--I never saw her more sweet!"

A vision of Teresa had come into his mind as with flus.h.i.+ng cheeks she had said, "There might be children!" Many times over had he recalled that moment, and always with the same tenderness and pain. Ca.s.sandra recognised the note in his voice, and felt a very human pang of jealousy.

"What did she say about _Me_?"

"You and I count as one. We must do. There's no considering us apart.

She fears that if I were free, it would be one barrier removed, and we should be the more tempted.--By holding me to my word, she is doing all that is in her power to prevent--"

Ca.s.sandra's short upper lip curved with a touch of scorn. It touched her pride that insignificant Teresa Mallison should presume to lay down rules for her guidance. It had pleased her to admit the girl to a certain amount of intimacy, but always it had been she who had condescended, Teresa who gratefully received. Ca.s.sandra was not a sn.o.b, but she was an Earl's daughter, and the consciousness of her birth was very present at that moment.

"It seems," she said coldly, "that we are in Teresa's hands! She has given you her orders, and you have obeyed."

Then Peignton looked at her, and she quailed before the pa.s.sion in his eyes.

"Give me _your_ orders," he said thickly, "and she goes, everything goes! I'll throw over the whole thing to-night, work, honour, friends-- everything there is, if you will give me yourself--if you'll come to me to-night, and let me take you away--Oh, my Beautiful, if you only would..."

"Dane! Dane!" cried Ca.s.sandra sharply, "_I want to_!" She covered her face with her hands, and he wrapped her close to his heart. "Am I wicked? Am I wicked? I've always called a woman wicked who felt like this, but it seems now as if it would be so right, so natural: so much more natural than saying good-bye! But I can't--I can't do it. I'm bound with chains. It's the boy's home..."

They clung together in silence. On this point at least there was nothing more to be said, and each realised as much. The chains might tear Ca.s.sandra's heart, but they would not give way, for they were forged out of the strongest sentiment of the human heart. The mother in her would not stain her boy's home. In the midst of his misery, Peignton loved her the more for her loyalty.

Presently she spoke again in a low, exhausted voice:

"Dane--what shall you do?"

"I? I don't know. Leave Chumley as soon as possible. Go somewhere else. It doesn't matter where. Nothing matters. But I must clear out of this."

"Is it necessary? If we meet very seldom? Never, if you think it better, in private! Would it really be easier if you never saw me? I don't feel as if I can live if I lose you altogether. Even to see you driving past in the street--"

Peignton shook his head.