Teresa, however, was not at all self-congratulatory on the subject of her gown. If she had had a day’s notice,—even half a day, she could have dashed up to town, and equipped herself in something newer, and more worthy of the occasion. She was miserably conscious that the blue dress was past its freshness, and had already paid several visits to the Court.
The dinner which followed was lengthy and stately. It was also undeniably dull! At one end of the table Grizel chatted and leant her elbows on the table, and kept the Squire in complacent chuckles of laughter, but their gaiety, instead of spreading, seemed to throw into greater contrast the forced conversations of the other guests. With the exception of Teresa Mallison they were all elderly people, who had driven over many miles of country to perform a social duty, and neither expected nor received any pleasure in its execution. They all knew each other, met at intervals, and discoursed together on the same well-worn topics. Lady Rose talked garden, and was an expert on bulbs. Sir George Everley, her partner, described all bulbs vaguely as daffodils, lived simply and solely for “huntin’,” and would in all probability die for it another day. The Vicar’s partner lived for bridge, and his wife had fallen to the share of an old general who looked upon food and drink as the events of the moment, and had no intention of losing a good chance. Long years of dining out had made him an expert at the game of starting his partner on a hobby during an interval between courses, and then giving her her head until the next stop. “Well! and what is the latest good work in the parish, Mrs Evans, eh, what?” he enquired genially, as he waited the advent of fish, and then with the help of a, “Did you though? God bless my soul! Pine work! fine work!” he was left free to enjoy his fare, and make mental notes on the flavouring of the sauce, until such time as he had leisure to give Mrs Evans another lead on the vexed question of the choir.
Lord Kew sat on Cassandra’s left side, and threw depressed crumbs of conversation to his companion, the stout wife of the huntin’ squire. It was said of Lord Kew that he could not talk for five minutes together without bringing in the German invasion, and his conviction that England was galloping headlong to the dogs. He prophesied as much to the squire’s wife in less than the prescribed time, and she said that “something ought to be done,” and seizing on the word “dog” introduced to his notice her two pet Chows. From time to time also Cassandra helped her along with a few words, leaving Martin to make the acquaintance of his right-hand neighbour, who had heard of his books, and really must get them from the library. “Do you write under your own name?”
Teresa sat like a poker, still and silent, vouchsafing monosyllabic replies to the formalities of a county magnate, about whom she knew everything, but who had got it firmly impressed into his sluggish brain that she was someone else, and accordingly insisted upon referring to people and incidents of whom she had never heard. Now and then came a happy moment when Peignton gave her his attention, and smiled encouragement into her eyes, but he was working hard to rouse a chilly lady to animation, and even on occasion throwing an occasional bold challenge across the table, where a couple seemed settling down into permanent silence.
Teresa had the impression that Dane was putting aside his own amusement as something entirely subservient to the general good. It was almost as though he felt a responsibility, and was working for a reward. She never suspected that the reward came more than once in a glance from Cassandra’s eyes, and a smile of appreciation flashed down the length of table. Cassandra’s head and neck rose above the banked-up flowers, her cheeks were flushed, the stars of emeralds on her throat sent out green flames of light, she looked brilliant and beautiful, a fitting chatelaine for the stately old house, but it was not her beauty which appealed to Peignton’s heart; it was the subtle want which mysteriously he felt able to supply. He did not trouble himself to enquire into the nature of this strong mutual sympathy, for he was a practical man accustomed to do the next thing, and not trouble about the future.
To-night Cassandra was a hostess struggling with an unusually depressing set of guests, and he expended himself to help her. Looking up the length of table, Grizel’s face was like a flowering shrub in an avenue of cedars. Peignton looked at her and felt a pang of something like anger. She was content enough! She had everything she wanted. Things were cursedly unfair...
In the drawing-room Grizel as the bride was handed round for five-minute conversations, and being in an amiable mood exerted herself to be all things to all women. She talked “huntin’” and she talked bridge, she asked advice concerning her garden, she listened sweetly to details of May Meetings, and vouchsafed copious and entirely untrue descriptions of an author at home; only with the Vicar’s wife did she allow herself the privilege of being natural, and saying what she really meant.
Mrs Evans was elderly and stout, parochial and intensely proper. Grizel was young and unconventional to an extreme, yet beneath the dissimilarity there existed a sympathy between the two women which both divined, and both failed equally to understand.
Grizel knew that Mrs Evans’s brain viewed her with suspicion, but she was complacently aware that Mrs Evans’s heart was not in sympathy with her brain. Was it not exactly the same in her own case? Mentally she had pronounced the Vicar’s wife a parochial bore, the type of middle-aged orthodox, prudish woman whom her soul abhorred, but, as a matter of fact, she did not abhor her at all, for the eyes of the soul saw down beneath the stiffness and the propriety, and recognised a connecting link.
“If I were in trouble, I’d like to put my head down on her nice broad shoulder, and,—she’d like to have me there!”