It was a pretty sight to see Cassandra Raynor play bridge. When dummy
fell to her turn, she had a trick of stretching out her right hand, and
softly tapping the table, during a moment's deliberation, which gave the
onlookers an opportunity of admiring what is certainly one of the most
beautiful of created objects, an exquisitely made, exquisitely tended,
woman's hand. There was but one ring on the hand, a square-cut emerald,
surrounded by diamonds, and the milky whiteness of the skin, the flash
of the emerald against the dull green of the baize, were charming things
to behold. Peignton sent a keen glance of enquiry into Cassandra's
face, and felt relieved to behold its absorption. She was thinking
entirely of the game; the beauty of her hand was to her an accepted
fact; the gesture was actuated by no promptings of vanity. A few
minutes later when Teresa imitated the gesture, as she had fallen into
the habit of imitating Cassandra in a dozen small ways, Peignton stared
assiduously at his cards, but there was an extra empressment in the
voice in which he congratulated the girl at the end of the game. He
felt the same tender commiseration which a parent knows at the sight of
a blemish on a child. Rough luck on a girl to have such ugly hands!
Subconsciously his mind registered a vow never to give her emeralds.
During a term of service abroad Peignton had met few women, and those of
an uncongenial type, but now he wished to marry, and for some time past
had been consciously regarding every girl he met in the light of a
future wife. He was not romantic in his requirements--few men are, when
they deliberately set about such a search. He wanted a wife because he
was thirty-five, and not too strong, and if he ever settled down it was
time he did it, and a fellow felt lonely having no one to think of but
himself. He wanted a girl about twenty-five--not younger than that,--
healthy and cheerful, and fond of a country life, and, after eight
months' residence in Chumley, it appeared to him that Teresa Mallison
filled the bill. She was the prettiest and most sporting girl in the
neighbourhood; he met her on one excuse or another several times a week,
and considered complacently that he was falling in love. Teresa did not
consider at all,--she would have been hanged and quartered for him at
any moment of any day; she was prepared to do, what is far more
difficult--marry him on a minute income, keep house with insufficient
help, and rear a large family. Teresa's tastes were modern, but her
heart was Victorian. She looked up to Peignton as a god and hero, and
prayed daily to be permitted to serve him on her knees. Also, being
Victorian in modesty, she prayed with scarcely less fervour that "unless
he asked her" he might never suspect her love, and comported herself in
the spirit of that prayer. Therefore Peignton considered that she was
ignorant of his designs, and told himself that there was no hurry,--no
hurry. It was better to go slow.
This was the first informal occasion on which Peignton had visited the
Court and seen Cassandra in the intimacy of a _partie carree_, and
before the first hour was over he had found it necessary to readjust
many impressions concerning his hostess. First, she was younger than he
imagined. When she smiled, or made little grimaces of disgust at
incidents in the play, or lifted her eyebrows at him appealingly on the
commission of a fault, she was not a great lady any more, she was a
girl, like the girl by her side. Secondly, she was less beautiful. He
had seen her at stately dinner parties, gorgeously gowned, a tiara
flashing on her dark head, and had believed her to be faultless of
feature; but she was not faultless, her nose deviated noticeably from
the straight, her mouth was too large; on a nearer view the classical
beauty disappeared, but her place was taken by a woman infinitely more
alluring. He admired in especial the poise of the little head, and the
way in which she dressed her hair. It was parted in the middle, dipped
low on the forehead, and then swept upwards, and in some mysterious
fashion became a thick plait which encircled her head, like a victor's
crown. There seemed no beginning or end to that plait, so deftly was it
woven, and to the onlooker it appeared as if a Midas finger had laid a
gentle touch on each entwining braid, so brightly shone out the golden
tints in the brown, burnished hair. Peignton had never seen dark hair
show such brilliant lights; he thought that wreath-like plait with the
golden lights more beautiful than a hundred tiaras. Why did not all
women wear their hair like that?
And her figure too--there was something beguiling about her figure. The
softly swathed folds of silk suggested neither dressmaker nor
corsetiere, but a warm, living woman. Her neck was as white as her
hand...
"Steam ahead, Peignton. We're waiting for your declaration. What are
you dreaming about, man?"
"Don't ask me. I couldn't tell you," Peignton replied, truthfully
enough. He had been wondering how the deuce a woman like that had come
to marry Bernard Raynor!
Teresa played a good steady game, and forbore to chatter, a fact duly
appreciated by her host. Cassandra was alternately brilliant and
careless. At times looking across the table Peignton could see her eyes
grow absent and misty, and suspected thoughts far removed from the play.
Then he would wait with anticipated pleasure the deprecatory grimace,
the penitent, appealing glance.
At seven o'clock Miss Mallison's carriage was announced, and Teresa
exhibited a dutiful daughter's unwillingness "to keep the horse
waiting." In the great hall she slid her arms into a Burberry coat,
pulled a knitted cap over her head, and passing out of the porch sprang
lightly to the front seat of a shabby dog-cart. The coachman, shabby to
match, stood at the horse's head, and as Peignton took his place, looked
on with an impenetrability which denoted that this was not the first
time he had been superseded. Then he in his turn climbed to a back
seat, and the horse trotted off down the dark avenue.
Teresa had looked forward with keenest anticipation to this moment when
she and Dane would sit quietly together in the friendly dark. There was
no expectation of love-making in her mind, far less of a formal
declaration; she was content just to sit by his side, and leaning back
in her seat be able to gaze her fill at the strong, dark form. On a
previous occasion he had given her the reins to hold while he lit a
cigarette, and the picture of his face illumined by the tiny flame of
the match would remain for life in her mental gallery. She hoped he
would light a cigarette to-night.
If the inchoate thoughts of the girl's mind could have been translated
into words at that moment, they would have made a poem, but Teresa had
not the gift of expression. She asked herself several times what she
should "talk about," before at last she broke the silence.
"You see it _did_ pay to discard from strength!"
Peignton laughed. The point had been disputed between the two times and
again, but he felt an amused admiration of the manner in which the girl
held to her point. To-night his remembrance of the game was hazy, but
Teresa as the victor was entitled to complaisance.
"You played rattling well. You always do. I never knew a woman less
miserly of trumps. Do you know Lady Cassandra well?"
"I--think so!" Doubt lingered in Teresa's voice. "They ask me fairly
often. She's very kind. Of course, we're not--intimate. She's so much
older."
"Is she?" Peignton asked, and was happily unaware of his companion's
flush of displeasure. "She looks very young. It must be lonely for her
in that big place. I'm glad she has you for a friend." His voice
softened as he spoke the last, words. He turned his head to cast a
smiling glance at the girl's figure, and the thought came to his mind
that just in this simple, unpretentious fashion would they drive back to
their joint home during the years to come. It would not run to more
than a cart, but she had not been used to luxury, and was quite content
in her Burberry and cap. It was not like marrying a society woman.
Heaven knows what fallals Lady Cassandra would don for a like occasion.
Peignton admired "fallals," meaning by the term dainty, feminine
accessories, as all men do, apart from the question of price. He could
not for his life have described Cassandra's costume that evening, but it
had left its impression as a mysterious floating thing, infinitely
removed from the garments of men. Teresa was essentially tailor-made.
A good thing too, for the wife of a poor man!
"I wonder what on earth made her many him!"
"Made her--" Teresa's blue eyes widened in astonishment. "Lady
Cassandra? Because she loved him, of course."
"Is it of course? Are there no other reasons for marriage, Miss
Teresa?"
"There ought not to be. There are not... in Chumley. But of course we
are not smart."
"No." Peignton was once more unconscious of offence. "Still, it's
sometimes difficult to fit the theory to individual cases! Do you never
look at the couples around you, and wonder how on earth they came to
fancy each other? I believe many of them wonder themselves before a
year is past. I can't imagine Lady Cassandra choosing Raynor!"
"Mr Raynor is very nice. He is a good landlord. People like him very
much."
"I like him myself. He's a very excellent specimen of his type. I'm
not depreciating Raynor as a man--only as a husband for one particular
wife. She's everything that is vivid and alive, he's everything
that's--slow! It's a mystery how she took him!"
"Perhaps," Teresa said shrewdly, "he wasn't so slow _then_! He was in
love with her, you see."
She used the past tense in placid acceptance of an obvious fact;
Peignton accepted it also, his curiosity concerning the Raynors eclipsed
by a tinge of jealousy aroused by the girl's words. She seemed to
understand a good deal of the behaviour of a man in love! How did she
come by her knowledge? He had thought the coast clear, but was it
possible that one of those local fellows--? Man-like, his interest was
quickened by the suspicion, and Teresa gained in value at the thought of
another man's admiration. There was unmistakable inflection in the tone
of his next words:
"When _I_ am married, I shall hope to remain in love with my wife!"
Teresa straightened herself, and forced a cough. She was in terror lest
the shabby groom might overhear the words, and repeat them for the
benefit of the maids in the kitchen.
"Oh, yes, of course!" she said lightly. "That is so nice... Then you
_will_ come, and help with the decorations? One needs a man to reach
the high places. The Vicar won't allow a single nail."
"Yes, I'll come. I'd like to!" Peignton said. He smiled to himself in
the dusk at the thought of standing before the altar in the old church,
side by side with Teresa Mallison, her hands heaped with white flowers.
He wondered if to her, as to him, would come the thought that there
might come another occasion when they would stand there for another
purpose. As the horse trotted up to the door of Major Mallison's house,
he was mentally seeing a picture of Teresa in her wedding robes, a gauzy
veil covering her head.
A moment later as they bade each other goodnight, the light through the
opened door fell full upon the face of the real Teresa in her Burberry
and knitted cap, and looking at her, Peignton felt a sudden stab of
disappointment. The familiar features seemed in mysterious fashion
other than those he had expected. Faults of which he had been happily
unconscious, obtruded themselves upon his notice. It was almost as if
he looked upon the face of a stranger. He walked down the deserted
street pondering the mystery, and like other unimaginative men, failed
to find an explanation.
How could it have been possible that he had dreamed of another face?