"Straighten the edges ..." (she carefully cut all round the dough on the stone with the handle of the fork); "bang it with your hand and it will come straight" (she banged the dough with the palm of her hand); "then spread a little water over it ... and there!" She sighed and took a fresh mouthful of hair.

"Well, I shall just make a pudding like that," said Poppy determinedly.

The gentle slurring of a silk petticoat was heard on the dry gra.s.s, and Mrs. Cap.r.o.n joined them, smiling mischievously.

"The committee meeting is over," she said, "and Clem has gone to see Lady Mostyn off on _The Scot_ and taken Miss Allendner with her. She hopes she will be back for lunch, but is not sure; if not, we are to go on without her. She gave me leave to come and look for you two in the garden, so you can't very well kick me out, even if you don't want me.

Hyacinthie, your nurse is walking about with two baked bananas smothered in cream, asking everyone if they've seen you."

"Ooh!" Cinthie slashed the hair out of her mouth in antic.i.p.ation of her favourite eleven-o'clock lunch. "Mind my babies!" she commanded Poppy with a menacing eye, and sped up the lawn, disappearing into the trees surrounding the house. The two women looked after her with entirely different emotions in their eyes. Mrs. Cap.r.o.n sighed.

"Fleet of foot, but, alas! that one should have to say it of Clem's child--flat of foot also." She seated herself daintily upon the rock which had served for Cinthie's kitchen-table; her eyes fastened themselves upon the emerald ring. She had never seen a ring on Poppy's hand before.

"Her feet are scarcely formed yet," said the latter; "and Clem has perhaps let her wear sandals too long."

Mrs. Cap.r.o.n withdrew her fascinated eyes from the ring and shook her head sadly.

"She will grow up ugly in every way; and it is just as well. If she had Clem's temperament and charm and Bill's beauty she might wreck the world."

"Oh, no--only herself," said Poppy, with a tinge of bitterness. "The world goes gaily on, whatever befalls. But I don't agree with you at all about Cinthie's looks!"

"Most people do. Someone was saying to me the other day--I forget who--Mr. Abinger, perhaps--that Cinthie looks like the incarnation of all the deviltries Clem and Bill have left undone, all the wickedness they have kept under."

"Mr. Abinger is a better judge of deviltries than of good women," said Poppy drily.

"He is a rip, of course. But, then, rips always unerringly recognise other rips," smiled Mary Cap.r.o.n, and Poppy smiled too, though she was not extremely amused.

"Are you accusing Clem of being a rip?"

"Of course not, though Bill is so charming he must have been one some time, don't you think?"

"I think he is nearly nice enough to be Clem's husband," said Poppy curtly, "and too entirely nice for any other woman." It was an old suspicion of hers that Mary Cap.r.o.n was not as real as she pretended to be in her friendship for Clem.

"You are a very loyal friend, Miss Chard; and I hope you don't think that I am _not_, just because I find it intensely interesting to talk about the people I care for?" Mrs. Cap.r.o.n spoke with a quiet sincerity that made Poppy feel ashamed of her thought, for, of course, most women do find it interesting to talk of people they care for. The best of friends do it. After all, Mrs. Cap.r.o.n had said nothing that a friend might not lightly say.

"I would never talk about her to anyone but you," continued Mrs. Cap.r.o.n, "and I know that you love her as much as I do. But I see that you think I am wrong."

"I think, Mrs. Cap.r.o.n, that one would be a stock or a stone to know Clem, and yet not be intensely interested in her husband, her child, and everything that concerns her," Poppy answered warmly. "I could sit all day and watch her face, wondering how she came to know so much about life without being old, or bitter, or uncharitable about anything in the world."

"She will tell you that the deep lines she has on her face are only little mementos of Africa--that Africa always puts her marks on the faces of those who love her. But"--Mary Cap.r.o.n's voice was very gentle and sad--"I happen to know that she has been _pounded in the mortar_."

Poppy sat silent, thinking how great must be a nature that could be pounded in the mortar of life, and come out with nothing but a few beautiful marks on the face. Further, her thought was that if Mary Cap.r.o.n knew Clem's sorrows, Clem must love her very much indeed, and she must be worthy of that love.

She determined that she would never again allow herself to feel jealous of the bond of friendship existing between the two women. Mary Cap.r.o.n spoke again in a very low voice.

"What I am terribly afraid is that her suffering is not over, but only beginning."

Poppy stared at her startled, and saw that the beautiful brown eyes were filled with tears.

"Sorrow has her elect!" said the girl gently. "Dear Mrs. Cap.r.o.n, do not let your sympathy for Clem beguile you into telling me anything that she would not wish me to know; I believe you have her confidence. I wish I had too. But I would rather not hear anything ... of her inward life ...

from anyone but herself." Poppy began falteringly, but she ended firmly, for she was convinced that she was right. She had laid her whole life bare to Clem, and if Clem had wished to give her confidence in return, she had had endless opportunities to do so in their intimate talks. She felt that she was right in stopping Mrs. Cap.r.o.n from saying anything further. But already Mrs. Cap.r.o.n had gone further.

"_Once_ I have seen her in the ashes of misery and despair. I would rather die than witness it again."

Poppy sat up and rested her hand on those of the trembling, troubled woman before her.

"Don't," she said soothingly; "don't fret--Clem is brave and strong enough to fight every imaginable trouble in the world; and _don't_ say anything more; I'm sure she would not wish it."

"But I _must_ ... I must tell you.... She is going to suffer again--_terribly_ ... and I want to save her if I can, and I want you to save her."

"Me!" faltered Poppy, listening in spite of herself. "What can I do?"

Mary Cap.r.o.n's tears were falling thick and fast now.

"Clem's sorrow is a terrible one," she said brokenly. "She loves a man with all the depth and pa.s.sion her nature is capable of--and the man is not her husband."

"Oh!" Poppy went white to the lips. She sat rigidly against the orange-tree and stared at the other woman. "Clem!... I'll never believe it ... _Clem!_" Afterwards she said burningly: "If it _could_ be true, how could you sit there and betray her?"

Mary Cap.r.o.n's eyes flamed at her through the tears.

"How dare you think I could do it idly?... You think no one feels love for her but yourself ... I hope you are prepared to show your love and prove it ... by saving her. If _I_ could do it, I would. Let me tell you, Rosalind Chard, that there is _nothing_ in this world that I would not give up for Clem, or do for her. And you? Can you say that too? Or is your love of the school-girl type--all marks of exclamation and admiration and--was it _condemnation_ that I heard in your voice?" She spoke scornfully, yet there was a wondrous, thrilling appeal in her words. "Would you condemn her, Rosalind? Do you know nothing of love, then? That it is always the best whom it attacks most violently--that no one can keep one's heart from straying ... that there are men in the world who when they call must always be answered ... whom no woman can fight successfully against...."

But Poppy could only whisper to herself: "Clem! Is there _any man in the world_ who could beguile Clem from the straight, clear way on which her feet are set ... away ... to the deep pits whence comes the wailing of ... transgressors! Is there _any man_ ... in the world?..." Suddenly she sat up straight and rigid, and her head struck the trunk of the orange-tree. A look of terror was in her face. She knew the answer.

_She knew what she was going to hear._

What came dully to her ears was something she had long known--long, long.

"--And when he went away to Borapota she was like a woman mad with grief ... I thought she would have died.... She besought me, _besought_ me to go as far as I could with him ... Nick and I ... in case he should sicken and die of fever.... He did get fever again ... was terribly ill at Borwezi ... and always his one cry was for her.... Nick would tell you ... he too knows ... it was always _Loraine_...."

"Ah!" The girl under the tree gave a cry and covered her smitten eyes with her hands.

"Always it was _Loraine_. That was his secret name for her.... I never knew till after I came back that it really is her name ... I asked her one day ... she only said it was her name, but that she never let anyone use it ... _he_ used it though ... he ... _he loved her_... Miss Chard, I believe that he loves her still ... it is not possible that a man could cease to love a woman like Clem ... a girl's face might attract him ... and draw him for a while ... but _Clem_ ... a man would always come back to her ... she is the kind that men come back to ... are faithful to for ever.... Oh, child! I believe I have hurt you bitterly ... deeply to-day ... forgive me ... it is for _her_ sake ... I love her ... do _you_ love her ... enough to spare her?"

When Poppy's hands fell away from her eyes, which were dull now, like the eyes of a dead woman, she was alone in the garden. She sat on--all through the morning, far into the afternoon hours, and no one disturbed her.

Indoors an odd thing had happened. The servants had laid lunch for five people, according to the after-breakfast instructions of their mistress.

But of the five people who were to sit down in the dining-room not one appeared. Mrs. Portal had telephoned up from the Point that she and Miss Allendner could not be back in time, and so would lunch on the ship with Lady Mostyn. Nurse had received the message on the telephone, but there was no one in the house to deliver it to. Mrs. Cap.r.o.n had come to the nursery window and informed nurse (just free from beguiling Cinthie off to her mid-day _siesta_), that she felt faint and ill, and had decided to take a rickshaw home instead of remaining for lunch. Then, Mr.

Portal, after sleeping badly all night and breakfasting in his room, had gone afterwards to lie in the garden, to see if he could sleep there.

But when Sarah went to seek him he was nowhere to be found. His book was open on the gra.s.s, and the cushion he had taken for his head had a dent in it, showing that it had been used. Both were lying by the Barbadoes-hedge, under an orange-tree that grew in the middle of it, but Mr. Portal had gone. Nurse, however, believed that from the nursery window she had seen him walking out of the garden with his hat pulled right down over his eyes.

"But then, again," she said to cook, "I really couldn't be sure, for he looked so strange, and walked so funny. If I didn't know that master doesn't drink, I should have said he'd had a drop too much. But there, he's not well--maybe, that's why he looked so queer!"

As for Miss Chard, no one thought about her; the servants supposed that she had gone with Mrs. Portal to the Point. If Sarah had thought of looking over the Barbadoes-hedge just at the place where Mr. Portal had been lying, she would have seen Miss Chard sitting there, sometimes staring vacantly before her, sometimes holding her face against the orange-tree as though for comfort.

CHAPTER x.x.xI