As it turned out, the personal charm was a matter of opinion. Jennings had the brightest eyes and the reddest lips ever seen on a man. He was youngish, and looked more like a soldier than a doctor. Long ago some Ralston girl had married a Jennings; consequently, the cousinship, distant as it was. But though you can't associate Spain with a "Jennings," there was Spanish blood in the man's veins. If you had met him in Madrid, he would have looked more at home than as a doctor in a Devonshire village. Not that he had stuck permanently to the village since taking up practice there. He had gone to the Front, and brought back a decoration. Also he had brought back a French wife, said to have been an actress.
I heard some of these things from Murray, some from Jennings himself on the day of the wedding. And they made me more curious about the man than I should have been otherwise. Why, for instance, the Parisian wife? Do Parisian women, especially actresses, marry obscure English doctors in country villages which are hardly on the map?
No. There must be a very special reason for such a match; and I sought for it when I met Paul Jennings. But his personality, though attractive to many women, no doubt, wasn't quite enough to account for the marriage. I resolved to look for something further when I got to Devonshire and met Mrs. Jennings.
You wouldn't believe that a wedding ceremony in a private sitting room of an old-fashioned hotel, with the bridegroom stretched on a sofa, could be the prettiest sight imaginable; but it was. I never saw so charming or so pathetic a picture!
Jim and I had sent quantities of flowers, and Doctor Jennings had sent some, too. Rosemary and I arranged them, for there was no conventional nonsense about this bride keeping herself in seclusion till the last minute! Her wish was to be with the man she loved as often as she could, and to belong to him with as little delay as possible.
We transformed the room into a pink-and-white bower, and then taxied back to the Savoy to dress. There had been no time for Rosemary to have a gown made, and as she had several white frocks I advised her to wear one which Murray hadn't seen. But no! She wouldn't do that. She must be married in something new; in fact, everything new, nothing she'd ever worn before. The girl seemed superstitious about this: and her pent-up emotion was so intense that the least opposition would have reduced her to tears.
Luckily she found in a Bond Street shop an exquisite model gown just over from Paris. It was pale dove-colour and silver, and there was an adorable hat to match. The faint gray, which had a delicate suggestion of rose in its shadows, enhanced the pearly tints of the bride's complexion, the coral of her lips, and the gold of her ash-blonde hair. She was a vision when I brought her back to her lover, just in time to be at his side before the clergyman in his surplice appeared from the next room.
To see her kneeling by Murray's sofa with her hand in his sent the tears stinging to my eyes, but I wouldn't let them fall. She looked like an angel of sweetness and light, and I reproached myself bitterly because I had half suspected her of mercenary plans.
Once during the ceremony I glanced at Doctor Jennings. He was gazing at the bride as I had gazed, fixedly, absorbedly, with his brilliant eyes. So intent was his look that I wondered its magnetism did not call Rosemary's eyes to his; but she was as unconscious of his stare as he of mine. He must have admired her; yet there was something deeper than admiration; and I would have given a good deal to know what it was—whether benevolent or otherwise. His expression, however, told no tale beyond its intense interest.