Suddenly her spirits rose in triumph. There was a little path!
From a gap in the hedge, evidently an ancient secretive way, for the sticks that had been twisted across it had burst into leaf, right down to Nell’s very door, ran a narrow ribbon of brown soil dividing the expanse of barley.
Lady Ann hurried down this path, her skirts swishing against the growing corn, her parasol grasped tightly in her hand. The back door of the house was wide open and Nell’s great cat, the Marquis of Carabas, was fast asleep on the threshold. Cousin Ann with noiseless fingers unhooked a little wire gate which was there, and stepping over the ridges of William Hastings’s potatoes, approached the door.
The thrill of action, of any kind of action, had so quickened the pulses of her energetic spirit that, strange though it may sound, she felt happier at that moment than she had actually felt since she came back from Tollminster on her wedding night. A situation that would have appalled a different type of woman seemed to rouse some ancestral fighting spirit in Cousin Ann; seemed, in fact, to assuage, with a sort of sporting or hunting recklessness, the lodged and rooted trouble within her….
What was that?
She paused, listening, one hand pressed against the lintel of the door; the other stroking the Marquis with her parasol, as he rubbed his back against her ankles.
From within the little front dining room came the sound of the arranging of knives and forks, of plates and glasses; a sound which conveyed instantaneously to Cousin Ann’s mind the fact that whoever they might be who were to partake of that meal, the meal itself was not ready.
And then, all suddenly, she heard Nell begin to sing as she put the finishing touches to her luncheon table. She sang the famous song of the exiled courtier in “As You Like It”:
Who doth ambition shun
And loves to live i’ the sun,
Seeking the food he eats,
And pleased with what he gets,
Come hither, come hither, come hither
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
The girl had no power of voice and no very good ear. She sang in a careless and irresponsible way, but the jealous heart of the listener did not fail to catch the strain of thrilling feminine happiness that underlay the notes of the old song.
“She is alone and she is expecting Rook,” thought Lady Ann; and a sudden spasm of fierce anger took possession of her; an anger that caused the red parasol to tremble in her clutch as if it had been a deadly weapon.
Then in a flash it came over her what to do. In a far better trained and far richer voice than Nell’s she burst out into the melancholy Jaques’s bitter antiphony:
If it do come to pass
That any man turn ass,
Leaving his wealth and ease
A stubborn will to please,
Ducdame, ducdame, ducdame!
Here shall he see
Gross fools …
She did not get any further; for Nell, who had stood for a minute with a plate of almonds and raisins in her hand, frozen helpless with panic, now came hurrying down the passage, her cheeks white, her mouth grotesquely open.
“Lady Ann! How you did startle me! Is anything the matter?”
Cousin Ann made no movement to meet her, no movement to cross tibe threshold. She waited till the girl came quite close.
In one second Cousin Ann became as calm and collected as if the two of them were casually meeting at a garden party at Antiger House.
“I’d no idea you had a voice, Nell,” she said. “We must have you bring your songs up to the house one of these nights.”
Nell bit her lip. The tone of that “we must have you” was like the tone Lady Ann would have used to some pretty little girl in the village; to some child of Martin Pod or Mr. Twiney.
“Won’t you come in?” The words were uttered mechanically. She had meant to say something altogether different.
“Oh, no, no! On no account!” Cousin Ann responded. “I’m lunching at home. It was so nice of you to ask Rook to join you and your husband. By the way, could I see Mr. Hastings? I’ve got a message for him from my aunt.”
Nell’s mouth opened and shut and her eyes looked as frightened as a hedge sparrow’s when it hears the hunting call of the shrike.
“William isn’t here,” she murmured faintly. “He was suddenly called away and I thought — I thought it would be silly not to enjoy the pleasure of such an important guest. If I had had any one to send, I would have begged you to come, too; but I expect even then it would have been too hurried a notice. But now you are here, I do hope you will stay? And let me have the pleasure of getting a meal for you both?”
“My husband has not come yet, then?” enquired Lady Ann. Nell shook her head. “Well. Perhaps I will rest a little then, if I may?” And taking the other’s consent for granted, and carrying it off with so natural an air that it was impossible for Nell to resist her, she moved hurriedly down the passage and went straight into the dining room.
There lay, betrayed and revealed to those jealous eyes, a pathetic little love feast prepared by the young girl for the man she idealized.
The two places had been laid opposite each other in the curve of the bow window. A great bowl of blue violas, light and delicate as butterflies’ wings, more like wild flowers than garden flowers, stood in the middle of the table. At the side of one of the plates, evidently the one to be used by Rook, lay three pansies, a purple one, a yellow one, and a black one.
Lady Ann surveyed this spectacle with a sudden indrawing of her breath. So this was the way the sad, remorseful, preoccupied Rook was taking his diversion. And he had lied to her, with the worst kind of lie, the treacherous half-lie of a coward. He had duped her, under the guise of conscience-stricken remorse. What hypocrisy, what calculated cold-blooded hypocrisy. And she, too, in the state in which she was.
Her indignation blotted Nell completely out of the picture. Her one desire now was to meet Rook face to face.
“How prettily you have set the table,” she said with a smile. “I’m sure Mr. Ashover will be delighted when he sees what a charming welcome is awaiting him. Well, I must be off.”
She moved back to the kitchen door, quite oblivious now of her pretended need of resting.
Nell was too miserable and bewildered to say one word in answer to this. All she could do was just to follow her visitor meekly down the passage.
“What a lovely cat,” Cousin Ann now murmured, stooping down to stroke the Marquis of Carabas. “Oh, by the way, Nell, my aunt expects you to her picnic this afternoon. Will your husband’s engagement prevent his being there, too? What shall I say to Mrs. Ashover?”
“It’s very kind of you, Lady Ann, I’m sure. But William can’t possibly come, I’m afraid.”
“Well. Come yourself, anyway,” cried Cousin Ann, picking up her parasol and passing out. “You don’t happen to know from what direction Rook will descend upon you?” she added gaily as Nell waited in the doorway.
The girl shook her head.
“Because I’d like to ask him whether he intends to come to his mother’s little party. But never mind. My aunt and I will survive it, I daresay, even if we are the only people there. Good-bye.” And without waiting to see the closing of the door — the door that was no longer to be left open for intruders — she retraced her steps by the same path she had followed to reach the house.
She knew that Rook’s business that morning had taken him to the other side of Heron’s Ridge, and her only impulse now was to walk quickly enough so as to intercept him while he was still out of sight of the cottage.