Lady Cassandra Part 44

"Yes?"

"That was the lie! I told you the wrong date. They were married on the tenth,--twelve days ago. It is all over. The meeting is over, the ceremony is over, the honeymoon is nearly over too. They will soon be thinking of going home."

Ca.s.sandra looked at her, and the blood rushed over her face. A tremor pa.s.sed over it, of shock, of anguish, of incredulous surprise. Her lips quivered, and the fingers of her hands interlaced till the muscles showed white beneath skin. She asked no more questions, and Grizel stood by her side, watching in silence for the first sight of that which was to be her reward. She waited many minutes, but it came at last, s.h.i.+ning forth more and more strongly as the shock and the pain lost their keenness,--a look of relief!

Ca.s.sandra's shoulders heaved, she drew a long, fluttering breath, and her eyes grew moist with tears.

"Oh, thank G.o.d. _Over_! I have been dreading, how I have been dreading... Grizel, Grizel, if you only knew--"

"I _did_ know! Every minute of the day you would have been with them,-- following them, seeing, imagining, _hearing_, torturing yourself, squandering your strength! My dear, I am a woman too! I did know. So I lied, and the day pa.s.sed by in peace, here with the dear nuns, and you knew nothing--nothing!"

"Thank G.o.d!" cried Ca.s.sandra again. "It was a blessed lie. I shall be thankful to you all my life for what it spared me, Grizel. It's a weight rolled off."

She stood silent, with drawn brows, nerving herself to the new facts.

Dane married. Dane a husband. Dane happy with his girl wife. For he _would_ be happy. Ca.s.sandra realised that fact, and the acknowledgment brought with it, not joy, but at least a chastened relief. He would never altogether forget the woman who had been his ideal mate, but as a sane, honest man he would thrust the thought of her farther and farther into the background, while the tendrils of affection would twine more closely round wife and child. Teresa had been brave and patient; now she would have her reward. The husband of the future would be more her lover than the bridegroom of to-day.

Ca.s.sandra leant her arms on the low walls, and gazed over the country beneath. All was flat, and bare, and uninteresting, one square meadow succeeding another, divided by the same dwarfed line of hedgeway; a monotonous outlook, beautified only where the sun lent the glory of colour.

"And so," said Ca.s.sandra slowly, "it all ends! ... I waited for a big thing to fill my heart, and it came, and was more wonderful, more beautiful, than I had ever imagined... And it pa.s.sed, and I am left to go on. All my life is before me, but the big thing has pa.s.sed. Grizel!

it doesn't seem possible that it should all be over..."

"You are thirty-two, Ca.s.sandra. The big things of life are not all over at thirty-two."

Ca.s.sandra sighed sharply.

"So you say--so you say... You are thinking of the future, of long years ahead, but I have to face life to-day; to walk along a flat, dull road, and leave the suns.h.i.+ne behind." She flung out her arms towards the country below. "Look at it, Grizel! My lot lies there. And I've been on the heights!"

"You are thirty-two, Ca.s.sandra," Grizel said. "The heights are not all over at thirty-two."

But again Ca.s.sandra refused the comfort.

"Oh, of all the things that might have happened to me, this was the last that I expected--to have come through so much,--to have loved, and been loved, to have fought and won, and to be left with--_Nothing_! No change, no difference. That seems just the hardest ending of all! If there had been a big upheaval, and outside things had changed to match, even if it had been for the worse, it would be easier than to go back,-- a woman whose whole nature has been revolutionised,--and fit oneself into the same narrow groove, knowing that the page is turned for ever, and that there is no more hope."

"You are thirty-two, Ca.s.sandra," Grizel said a third time. "No pages are turned for ever at thirty-two."

"But, oh, Grizel, Grizel, when you read of these things happening to people in books, there is always _Something_ tangible to take hold of...

It may be tragedy, or it may be joy, but at least there is _Something_ to mark the difference, and I have nothing, but a memory which I must try to kill... There's no poetry in it, Grizel, there's no romance. It isn't even--fair!"

"No," sighed Grizel softly. "It's just--Life!"

The End.