CHAPTER TWO.

WANTED--A WIFE.

It was a pretty sight to see Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra'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 Ca.s.sandra in a dozen small ways, Peignton stared a.s.siduously 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 G.o.d 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 cla.s.sical 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. Ca.s.sandra 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 pa.s.sing 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 ent.i.tled to complaisance.

"You played rattling well. You always do. I never knew a woman less miserly of trumps. Do you know Lady Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra 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 Ca.s.sandra'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 Ca.s.sandra? 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 Ca.s.sandra 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?

CHAPTER THREE.

HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

Marten Beverley and his wife Grizel confronted each other across the breakfast table. Only the night before they had returned from a protracted, wedding tour, to take possession of their new home. Each was superbly, gloriously happy, but there was a difference in their happiness. Martin was not tired of play, but the zest for work was making itself felt, and he looked forward with joy to the hours at his desk which would give extra delight to the play to follow. Grizel faced work also, but faced it with a grimace. How in the world to settle down, and to be practical, and keep house?

"Here beginneth the second volume!" she chanted dolefully across the breakfast table. "The happy couple return from their honeymoon, and settle down! ... Martin! I don't _want_ to settle down. Why should one? It's out of date, anyhow, to have a second volume. Nowadays people live at full pressure, and get it over in one. Let's go on being foolish, and irresponsible, and taking no thought for our dinner. It's the only sensible plan. And it would prevent so much disappointment!

I'm a daisy as a honeymoon wife, but I'm _not_ a typical British Matron."

"You don't look it!" said Martin, and thrusting his hands in his pockets, tilted back in his chair and sat staring across the table, his eyes alight with admiration. A fire blazed in the grate, but Grizel's morning robe suggested the height of summer. It was composed of some sort of white woollen material, which showed glimpses of a delicate pink lining. She wore a boudoir cap too, a concoction of lace and pink ribbon at once rakish and demure. Martin was certain that she looked a duck, what he was uncertain about was the suitability of such plumage for the mistress of a small _menage_. Had he not kept house for eight years with a sister who had visited the larder every morning, and kept a stern eye on stock-pot and bread-pan, clad in the triggest of blouses, and the shortest of plain serge skirts! His eyes twinkled with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Is it your intention to visit the scullery in those garments, may I ask?"

Grizel tilted in her turn, and returned his stare with an enchanting smile. She looked young and fresh, and adorably dainty; an ideal bride _deluxe_.

"In the first place," she said, dimpling, "what precisely is, and does-- a scullery?"

"A scullery, my child, is an apartment approximate to, and an accessory of, a kitchen. It is equipped with a sink, and is designed for the accommodation of pots and pans, brushes and brooms. Likewise boots, and er--uncooked vegetables. Every mistress of a small establishment visits the kitchen and scullery at least once in the twenty-four hours."

Grizel considered the subject, thoughtfully rubbing her nose.

"Why vegetables?"

"Why not?"

"_With_ brushes and boots?"