It was dark when we stopped (at this time of year there is not light for tennis after five) and by the time we had changed and entered the clubroom all signs of tea had disappeared and the tables were ready for bridge.
It was only when I entered the room that I had any idea that anything was wrong. Somehow there was a strange atmosphere about the familiar clubroom. Something strange, yet familiar! faintly unpleasant, yet reminiscent of old delight. I looked round the room for Constance, and when my eye found her I saw something which explained everything—something which made me halt in my stride and sent the blood pulsing in my throat with a sick feeling of disaster. The lights seemed suddenly to go dim; Constance seemed a million miles away; I felt I would have cheerfully accepted a chance to die quietly on the spot. For seated at the table as were Constance and her young man was Somebody out of my Past.
Years since I had seen her—longer years still since I had wanted to see her, yet still she seemed the same. She leaned forward with her elbows on the bridge-table, and I could mark the well-remembered turn of the full white throat, and the flash of the too-numerous rings on the plump white hands, and the saccharine smile as she talked to Constance, leaning toward her, smiling vivaciously, gesticulating with restless fingers. The sight turned me sick with fear. I wondered what she was saying; whether she was telling Constance anything about me, although goodness knows that there were lots of things she could tell Constance which I would not have her hear, even though they were not in the least about me. Constance saw me across the room, and beckoned to me. I walked thither like a man to the scaffold.
“Hullo, Trevor, old man,” said the very young man, “been waitin’ hours for you. Your wife wouldn’t start bridge till you came.”
I paid no attention to him; that in itself was sympathetic, as generally I will kill with a look any of that band of juveniles if they have the cheek to call me “old man.” I was too busy scanning Constance’s face and Mrs. Cookson’s.
“We’d nearly given you up, old thing,” said Constance. “Do you know Mrs.—er Cookson?”
“Oh, Mr. Trevor and I are old friends,” said Mrs. Cookson, tendering one of those fat hands, “aren’t we, Mr. Trevor?”
I mumbled a reply and sat down clumsily.
“You a new member, or something?” I asked awkwardly.
“Oh, no, just a visitor. I came with Mr. Humphreys. Such a delightful man, don’t you think?”
Personally, I did not think that any virtue of Mr. Humphrey’s could counterbalance the crime of having introduced Messalina Cookson into the club; if he had brought her, why the devil didn’t he look after her instead of letting her stray round talking to Constance?
She condescended to explain.
“Mr. Humphreys was called away to the telephone or something,” she said, “and he left me with Mrs. Trevor, and when I found that she was your wife I just had to stop and talk to her. You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Trevor.”
There was something to be thankful for, after all. She did call me Mr. Trevor. There was another name she used to have for me, which I would not for worlds have Constance know about. But the feeling of thankfulness departed speedily enough when old Humphreys reappeared and was waved away by Messalina with one of her old imperial gestures.
“I don’t want to be taken away yet, Mr. Humphreys. Can’t you find some one else to play bridge with. I’ve just met an old friend, and I’m so interested.”
I gathered from the look with which old Humphreys favored me that he was anything but pleased to hear it, and it was also clear that he had not the slightest idea that Mrs. Cookson’s nickname among the initiated was Messalina, and that it was most appropriate. I heaved a sigh of compassion for him. If he didn’t know that, and he felt as he did about her, she would soon be Messalina Humphreys instead of Messalina Cookson, and a ten-years’ war-widowhood would end. Poor devil!
“What about bridge?” demanded the young man, lovingly mauling a pack of cards in his bony fingers, which were red where they were not stained yellow with cigarette smoking. Bridge it was, and by the mercy of Providence Constance and I cut as partners.
Generally a man needs to have all his wits about him when he has Constance as his partner at bridge. If one could knock about twenty-five per cent. off her calls, and about the same amount off the unnecessary risks she runs when she is playing the hands, Constance would be a good bridge player. As it is, however, she displays a confidence in the effectiveness of a suit of five to the knave which is perfectly pathetic, and she looks upon a call from her opponents which is beyond her capacity to overcall as a personal insult only to be wiped out by doubling. The consequence is that the wise man who partners Constance indulges freely in pre-emptive bidding—not to shut his opponents out, but to keep Constance quiet. And when a pre-emptive bid is impossible he has to be on the qui vive in order to distinguish between one of Constance’s calls on five to the knave and an outside queen and one made on seven to the four top honors with an outside ace king.
Yet on this particular evening I was utterly incapable of any of the mental gymnastics necessary to save my pockets. I was too much bothered by the flash of the rings on Messalina’s fingers as she dealt, and by the thought of how much those plump white hands knew. There was something in her eye which worried me, a look which I had good reason to remember. All her gestures and her attitudes and her turns of speech worried me to distraction. They grew so sickeningly familiar to me.
The calling began.
“One heart,” said Mrs. Cookson.
“One spade,” said Constance.
“Two hearts,” said the very young man.
“Three hearts,” said I.
There was a deathly silence. Then Constance fixed me with her eye.
“Are you quite well, dear?” she asked.
I slowly realized that I had made a mistake.
“You’re not my partner now, you know,” said Messalina. That was an unnecessary comment, seeing that I had not been her partner at all that evening, so that necessarily she must have been referring to some past time. I sat and gibbered.
“We’ll let him take that call back, shall we, partner?” asked Mrs. Cookson, with honeyed sweetness. “He’s an absent-minded old thing, you know.”
“Not a bit of it,” interposed Constance, with some show of heat. “Let’s play to the rules. The call stands.”
“Very well, dear, if you feel like that about it,” said Messalina. “No bid.”
“Three spades,” said Constance, on the instant.
“No bid,” said the very young man gloomily. Mrs. Cookson and myself said the same.
Constance made her three spades. It was an achievement which savored of the miraculous, for I had felt in my bones when she made her initial bid that it was one of her pet light ones, and my suspicion proved correct. And I had laid down as dummy a hand with one knave and a couple of tens. But a bold finesse on Constance’s part won a trick with that knave, and enabled her to lead twice through the overpowering strength in Mrs. Cookson’s hand. Helplessly Mrs. Cookson and her partner watched their beautiful hands falling away to impotence while Constance gathered in the tricks.
“Twenty-seven in the first game and simple honors,” said Constance, jotting down the score.
That was the beginning of it. From that point onward the game resolved itself into a duel to the death between Constance and Mrs. Cookson. All the good cards seemed to find their way to their two hands. The very young man sat in ever-increasing gloom with consistent Yarboroughs. Happily on every desirable occasion my hands, although weak, were always short in the suit called by our opponents, enabling Constance when she played the hand, to make one or two invaluable small trumps in the early tricks before clearing trumps. And when Constance was not playing the hand, but instead defending, with my assistance (for what it was worth) against some heavy call by Mrs. Cookson, she always managed to hold four useful trumps and a long suit which she established in the nick of time. It was not often that p
oor Messalina escaped undoubled, and when she did contrive to get a call home it was never sufficient to make game. At the end of two rubbers, the young man, looking appalled at the score sheet, suggested cutting afresh for partners.
“Not a bit of it,” said Constance, in a flash. “It would only mean that one of you was bound to lose. If you stay together you’ll have a chance of both of you making up for what you’ve lost. Mrs. Cookson’s had hard luck up to the present.”
Now what exactly did Constance mean by that? More than she said, evidently.
The game proceeded on the same lines. Constance was having one of those evenings which bring joy to the heart of the facile flagflyer, and which tend to confirm the said flagflyer in his risky habits. Everything she did came right. Every call she made always found in my hand the one particular card she needed to get home, even though there had been no indication in the calling that I held it. Whenever she doubled her speculative lead of a singleton found the ace of that suit in my hand, so that on my returning the lead she could make her small trump. And at each reverse Mrs. Cookson grew sweeter in demeanor—in demeanor. She began to interlard the calling with attempts at conversation, mainly directed at me, and the proprietorial air she assumed reduced me to the lowest depths of confusion (if I had not already attained them).
“And how have you been getting along all this long time without me?” she would say to me.
“Three no Trumps.”
Then Constance would cut in like lightning with “Double,” so that I did not have to expose my gibbering idiocy of mind, for a call of three no trumps doubled would distract any one. Mrs. Cookson would then fail dismally to complete her contract, mainly through some incredibly rash but startlingly successful lead of Constance’s.
And as time went on my mind became more and more a jumbled inferno of memories I would have given much to be free from. Memories of opulent arms and shoulders, of a sweet voice murmuring in the darkness things so honeysweet that it was torture for a boy to listen to them. For I was only a boy at the time when I found that Mrs. Cookson’s appropriate nom de guerre was Messalina. Memories of excruiating delights, of mad, furious moments when the world spun round in a universe drowsy with the scent of Messalina’s rich flesh. They were not the most useful memories to possess one while playing bridge. And they were certainly not the sort of memory to be cherished by a happily married man. Yet they seized on me and left me helpless while the game proceeded, and the score mounted to dizzy heights.
They kept my mouth shut, and gave Constance a free hand. The practise of years enabled me to make automatically the correct leads when I was not dummy. When Mrs. Cookson made a call she failed to make good her contract. When she did not, Constance made game. Rubber followed rubber quicker than lightning. The very young man, exasperated by fate, plunged into the business and tried to take a hand in the shaping of his destiny by these two women, but bad fortune gave him poor tools to do it with. He had not the same luck with five to the knave as had Constance. There was a hint of asperity in Mrs. Cookson’s voice when he failed by two tricks to make good his call—a call made and passed by her in good faith when she held practically a game hand in another suit. I would have felt sorry for him if I had had any thoughts on the subject at all.
In the end old Humphreys came back, and Mrs. Cookson rose in despair.
“It’s hateful having to leave without a chance of winning back,” she said, “but if I must, I suppose I must. What’s the damage?”
“Three thousand four fifty-two,” said Constance, and even she could not keep a hint of triumph out of her voice at the discovery that had she gained three fewer points she would have been sixpence poorer. “That’ll be seventeen and six.”
The very young man dived for his pocketbook, and Mrs. Cookson fumbled in her bag.
“No, you pay my husband,” said Constance, as the young man offered her a note. She took Mrs. Cookson’s pound and gave her half a crown in return.
“Good-by,” said Constance.
I think Mrs. Cookson tried to prolong the farewells, and I think that Constance cut them short by the simple process of stepping between me and her. She did not do it obviously—trust Constance for that—and I am in doubt as to whether it actually happened like that. I was rather too dazed to notice details.
“And now,” said Constance, turning to me, and looking positively dazzling, “you’re going to take me out to dinner.”
I was still rather mazed as we entered the restaurant and I found myself sitting opposite Constance with the band blaring in my ear and the waiter tendering me the menu. One reason for my bedazement, honestly, was Constance’s triumphant beauty. Her eyes were very bright and her cheeks were just sufficiently blushed to accentuate her brilliance to the completion of my confounding. I could only sit and gape at her across the table, while the saxophones hammered at my brain and the lights and the warmth and the chattering din round me did their best to beat me into insensibility. The arrival of the hors d’œuvres helped me a little.
What had amazed me most was the way in which Mrs. Cookson had been entirely eclipsed by Constance. For all practical purposes, save to me and my guilty conscience, she might as well not have been there at all. Yet Constance is not in the general way a beauty; there is nothing about Constance as she usually appears to catch and hold the eye to the exclusion of all else in the room. And to do that is an achievement dear to Mrs. Cookson’s heart, and one which she is frequently able to contrive. Nevertheless, during all that time in the clubroom, no one, not even the very young man, had paid Mrs. Cookson much attention. The very young man ought to have done so, at least. I know from bitter experience that young men fall to Mrs. Cookson before even they have a chance to realize that they have fallen. I grudgingly admitted to myself that the fact that this young attaché of Constance’s had shown no sigh of such a fall as some proof that he had a little sense—it was the first proof, too.
I was puzzled, too. I could not quite work out what it was that had caused Constance to call out those reserves of vivacity and personality. I know Constance well enough to be able to tell when she is being forceful of set purpose, and this was one of the occasions. She deliberately set out to put Mrs. Cookson in the shade, and she had succeeded. Of course, she had had marvelous luck in the run of the cards during the time we were playing bridge—but—but—it is a pet superstition of mine (which I am exceedingly unwilling to enunciate) that the good cards come to the player who is playing at his best. And in the calling and in the play of the hands Constance had shown as clearly as would be considered necessary in a court of law that she was making a dead set at Mrs. Cookson. Why? I wondered. Why? Surely not because—I would not let my thoughts dwell on that possibility. Hurriedly I pulled myself together and began talking feverishly about something else, drawing a red herring across the trail of Messalina Cookson in case some casual reference should start Constance upon it.
“Have any good play this afternoon?” I asked casually.
“Yes, thank you,” smiled Constance. “At least, there’s no need to thank you, seeing that you left me all alone all the afternoon.”
“Oh,” I said, uneasily (although I would far rather be taken to task on this subject than about Mrs. Cookson), “I saw you had young What’s-his-name with you, so I knew you’d be all right.”
Constance sniffed. “What’s the good of a husband if you can’t make him jealous?” she asked. “Other girls tell me how rotten it is to have a jealous husband, but at any rate they aren’t expected to amuse themselves for a whole afternoon while their husbands go off and play on their own.”
But I was not to be drawn. I could see that Constance bore me no malice for that—I had done my duty in the morning, and she was merely trying to draw me into an apology that would call up one of her smiles and leave her intensely gratified by its obvious effect. I was wary and alert by this time, and the goodly tomato soup that was beginning to circulate in my interior was giving life to my fainting personality.
“Indeed!” said Constance, bridling. “Very well, young man, I’ll pay you out for that, see if I don’t.”
“Six like you trying all together might succeed, but even then I doubt it,” said I.
The soup had gone the way of all soup, and the waiter brought our beef.
“Jolly good beef, this,” said I, falling to with the appetite engendered by a hard day’s tennis with nothing to eat save a club lunch since breakfast.
“Now let me see,” said Constance, meditatively, “was this Cookson woman your second or your third?”
I dropped my knife and fork into my plate with a clatter which aroused the attention of the neighboring tables, and gaped across at her dumfounded.
She was sitting there, as large as life and as calmly as if she had just asked me if it were beef or mutton, without a hint in her expression that she realized what an amazing thing she had just said. I continued to gape at her.
Of course, years ago, before we were married, I had told Constance that there were certain passages in my past life which would not bear inspection, and I had left her in no doubt as to the nature of them. It was only right and proper that I should, and one of the reasons for my intense admiration for Constance is that she accepted the fact mutely without questioning and without demonstrating to me her superiority in not claiming her right to similar experiences. But I had never dreamed that she knew any more than I had told her.
“Do stop playing at goldfish,” said Constance, and I shut my mouth with a guilty jerk. She was still smiling.
“I’m still waiting,” said Constance. And then, as Still I could utter no word, she went on—“What was that you were saying about six of me not being able to pay you out?”
I think Constance saw that that hurt me a little. She was all contrition at once, and leaned toward me appealingly.
“No, really, dear, that wasn’t why I asked you. I want to know, really.”
Love Lies Dreaming Page 10