diff options
| author | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-22 01:27:25 -0800 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-22 01:27:25 -0800 |
| commit | b1ac2cb8fcc22a9f98d54b24b455816e5f0e8925 (patch) | |
| tree | a0df1e8f95af41e72b4568656e225082490d543f | |
| parent | 9b192b6f3f493fd83b19378c27195db5cc9d2d08 (diff) | |
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 4 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/67733-0.txt | 17317 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/67733-0.zip | bin | 345641 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/67733-h.zip | bin | 680825 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/67733-h/67733-h.htm | 17563 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/67733-h/images/ad1.jpg | bin | 98924 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/67733-h/images/ad2.jpg | bin | 99713 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/67733-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 71562 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/67733-h/images/logo.jpg | bin | 7964 -> 0 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/67733-h/images/title.jpg | bin | 43252 -> 0 bytes |
12 files changed, 17 insertions, 34880 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8fb9cc8 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #67733 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67733) diff --git a/old/67733-0.txt b/old/67733-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 0233240..0000000 --- a/old/67733-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,17317 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Girton Girl, by Annie Edwardes - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: A Girton Girl - -Author: Annie Edwardes - -Release Date: March 29, 2022 [eBook #67733] - -Language: English - -Produced by: MWS, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading - Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from - images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GIRTON GIRL *** - - -+-------------------------------------------------+ -|Transcriber’s note: | -| | -|Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | -| | -+-------------------------------------------------+ - - -A GIRTON GIRL - -BY - -ANNIE EDWARDES - -AUTHOR OF ‘ARCHIE LOVELL,’ ‘OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER?’ ETC. - - - O Women, Women! O our frail frail sex! - No wonder tragedies are made from us. - Always the same: nothing but loves and cradles’ - _The Revolt of the Women_ (ARISTOPHANES) - - -[Illustration: Logo] - -A NEW EDITION - -LONDON - -RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET - -Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen - -1886 - -_All rights reserved_ - - - - -CONTENTS - -CHAPTER PAGE - I. TRIANGULAR FRIENDSHIP 1 - - II. POKER TALK 11 - - III. HAS HE A WIFE? 32 - - IV. A TRINITY BALL 43 - - V. MARJORIE 58 - - VI. TWO IN ARCADIA 71 - - VII. ON THE BRINK OF A FLIRTATION 82 - - VIII. CROSS-STITCH 89 - - IX. HALF WAY TOWARDS LITTLE GO 99 - - X. ‘THEY SAY----’ 108 - - XI. ‘DODO’S DESPAIR’ 115 - - XII. YELLOW-BACKED NOVELS 123 - - XIII. THROUGH SMOKE-COLOURED SPECTACLES 135 - - XIV. BROUGHT UP BY THE JESUITS 143 - - XV. A LOVE-LETTER 158 - - XVI. A RASH RESOLVE 166 - - XVII. THE FIRST CRUMPLED ROSE-LEAF 172 - - XVIII. HOW DINAH SAID ‘YES’ 178 - - XIX. GASTON ARBUTHNOT’S PHILOSOPHY 194 - - XX. ‘JAMES LEE’S WIFE’ 204 - - XXI. ‘IS MY VIRGIL PASSABLE?’ 212 - - XXII. LINDA AS AN ART CRITIC 218 - - XXIII. A SWAGGER AND A SWORD 227 - - XXIV. REX BASIRE’S HUMOUR 238 - - XXV. YOU--AND I! 244 - - XXVI. CUT AND THRUST 252 - - XXVII. GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY 261 - - XXVIII. FOR AULD LANG SYNE 275 - - XXIX. MISSING 282 - - XXX. LINDA WARMS TO HER PART 290 - - XXXI. WIFE AND HUSBAND 300 - - XXXII. ROSE-WATER SOCIALISM 312 - - XXXIII. CLOSE TO PORT 320 - - XXXIV. DEAD ROSE PETALS 325 - - XXXV. A TRAITRESS 334 - - XXXVI. THE LAST OF ARCADIA 341 - - XXXVII. A STONE FOR BREAD 347 - -XXXVIII. TEMPTATION 362 - - XXXIX. THAT LITTLE DIVINITY 379 - - XL. AT THE BUNGALOW 389 - - XLI. ONE WORD 399 - - XLII. EMANCIPATION 407 - - XLIII. GEOFFREY CALLS TO BE PAID 416 - - XLIV. KISMET 428 - - XLV. LABELLED AND CORDED 438 - - XLVI. A BYE-TERM MAN 444 - - XLVII. BESIDE THE CRADLE 454 - - XLVIII. HAPPINESS 464 - -XLIX. FROM DINAH’S HAND 475 - - - - -A GIRTON GIRL - - - - -CHAPTER I - -TRIANGULAR FRIENDSHIP - - -‘The foundations of Newnham and of Girton may be deep,’ observed -Gaston Arbuthnot, in his pleasant, level, semi-American voice. ‘The -foundations of the Gogmagog Hills are deeper! Girl wranglers may come, -girl optimists may go. The heart of woman remains unchanged. And the -heart of woman----’ - -But a plate piled with luscious Guernsey strawberries happening to -be placed, by a jaunty Norman waitress, under Gaston’s nose, the -generalisation, for the moment, ended abruptly. - -Guernsey. Imagine that dot of granite washed round by such blue as our -western Channel shows in June; imagine carnation-smelling sunshine, -a friendly trio of young persons breakfasting, with appetite, on the -lime-shaded lawn of Miller’s Sarnian Hotel; imagine the flutter of a -muslin dress, the presence of a beautiful girl of two-and-twenty, and -the opening scene of this little drama lies before you. - -I may add that the friendship of the three persons was a paradox, as -the reader of the succeeding pages shall be brought to see. - -‘The heart of woman tends towards marriage. Well, a picturesque -revival of Lady-Jane-Greyism,’ went on Gaston Arbuthnot, as his plate -of strawberries subsided, ‘may be safe enough--to the Lady Jane Greys! -Especially in an age when women, young or old, are by no means given -to losing their heads. But let the Roger Aschams who bear them company -look to it! This young person whom you, Geoffrey, propose to coach is -probably neither worse nor better than her sisters. The man-hating -story I flatly disbelieve. Marjorie Bartrand may or may not go to -Girton. She is sure to prove herself a very woman in the end.’ - -‘Unfortunately, you flatly disbelieve so many things.’ As she spoke -Gaston’s wife transferred a monster strawberry from her own plate to -her husband’s. ‘You told me, only yesterday----’ - -‘Dinah, my love,’ interrupted Gaston, with good humour, ‘never remind a -man who has well dined or well breakfasted of what he said yesterday. -In what state were one’s nerves twenty-four hours ago? Was the wind -in the east? Had our perennial duns arrived from England? Had our -cousin Geoffrey been reading pauper statistics at us? Each or all of -these accidents may have engendered scepticism which at this moment is -replaced by the childlike faith born of idleness and a fine digestion.’ - -And Dinah’s strawberry, encrusted by sugar, delicately dipped in -Guernsey cream, was placed between Gaston’s white teeth, savoured and -swallowed. - -It was not part of Mr. Arbuthnot’s philosophy to refuse any little -choice morsel that the world, artistic, intellectual, or physical, -thought fit to offer him. - -He was a handsome man verging on his thirtieth year: tawny-bearded, -fair, with hands that Titian or Velasquez might have loved to paint, -and a profile of the type commonly known as Bourbon. (Although he may -not play the first part in this or any other drama, one has a feeling -that Gaston should advance to the footlights, make his bow, a good -minute before his fellow-actors leave the slips.) His eyes were shrewd -and near together, their colour and their expression alike prone to -shift if a stranger sought, too persistently, to investigate them. - -With a first look you felt sure that Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot bore a brain. -You felt equally sure, with a second, that the opinion was shared, even -to exaggeration, by Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot himself. - -In dress it was his pleasure to affect Bohemianism. On this particular -June morning Gaston wore a brown velveteen coat, a spun silk shirt, -a white sombrero hat--the well-tailored man becoming only more -conspicuous under the disguise. What smaller things shall be said of -him? That he had been brought up as a child in Paris, the only son of -a valetudinarian American widow, and spoke French to this hour with a -better accent than English, rolling his ‘r’s’ and clipping his vowels -like a born denizen of the boulevards. Item: that he had a fair English -girl for his wife; item: a loyal, rough-hewn Scottish cousin for his -friend--the Dinah and Geoffrey who, breakfasting with appetite although -their discourse was of sentiment, made up the paradoxical little group -under the lime trees at which we have glanced. - -Let us turn to Geoffrey next, leaving Dinah, as I see they leave the -first actress in the theatrical advertisements, for the bottom of the -list. - -The cousinship of the Arbuthnots might be divined at a glance, -although, reviewed feature by feature, the two men were notably unlike -in their likeness. Both were tall, both were wiry of build, both held -their heads high, going along life’s road as though the world, taken -from whichever point of view you liked, were decidedly a place worth -living in. Here the likeness ended. Gaston, indeed, would declare -that by virtue of his mother’s Yankee blood, and his own Parisian -instincts, they were less related, physically, than any ordinary -cousin-germans. - -One overwhelming difference between them was patent. Geoffrey was no -beauty-man! When he was the freshest of freshmen, five or six years -before the morning of this Guernsey breakfast, Geff went in, one -November night, for a little bit of guerilla fighting in the Cambridge -streets, which, without quenching the guerilla spirit, effectually left -a beauty-spoiling brand upon himself for the remainder of his life. - -It happened thus. Geoffrey, raw from school, had newly carried off one -of the scholarships best worth winning in the University. Although -brave, manly, impetuous, the lad’s hours were early, his habits sober. -He belonged, indeed, to a class which young gentlemen, fond of their -pleasure, and of modest mental gifts, are apt to label during their -first two terms of residence under the generic name of smug. Well, -with an old schoolmate, less versed in Greek than himself, Geff had -been drinking coffee and conning over such portions of Plato as would -be wanted by his friend for the coming Little Go. He was midway on his -way back to his scholar’s attic in John’s when, turning sharply round -a corner of Petty Cury, he found himself in the thick of a small but -classic ‘town and gown.’ A brace of undergraduates, raw as himself, -held a mob of roughs at bay; stones, oaths, and brickbats flew about -with Homeric profusion. A fine Cambridge drizzle gave atmosphere to the -scene. Police, bull-dogs, proctors, were beneath the horizon. - -With no other weapons than his fists and his Plato, Geff rushed to the -fore. In those early days he had neither the weight nor the staying -power which on many a well-contested football field have since made his -name a terror to the foe and a tower of strength to All England. He -had, however, the force born of will, of brain, of generous impulse. -Ere twenty seconds had sped Plato, with all the Platonic philosophy, -went to the winds, and the biggest, brawniest of the roughs, stoutly -gripped about the neck-cloth region, gave tokens of surrender. - -Unfortunately for Geff’s beauty, his antagonist’s left hand held a -broken stone bottle. As the ruffian felt himself reel to earth he swung -the missile, with dastard might, into the Scotch lad’s face, cutting -his nose and forehead very literally to the bone. There came a cry of -‘Proctor!’ There was the shuffle of departing feet. Then Geoffrey, -blinded, stunned, fell into a bull-dog’s arms and heard the usual -proctorial question as to name and college, addressed with the usual -calm proctorial courtesy to himself. - -It was a week before the Little Go exams.; and Geoffrey Arbuthnot, as -soon as the surgeons could strap his face into a grim resemblance of -humanity, went down. - -The incident in nowise lessened his Cambridge reputation. Although he -eventually came out eighth in the Classical Tripos, it is not known -that the most foolish tongue called Arbuthnot of John’s a smug again; -tacitly, he was recognised, even by pleasure-loving young gentlemen, -as one of that queer ‘good-all-round sort’ in whom the defects of -bookishness and staid living are condoned by certain sterling natural -virtues--glorious muscle, unconquerable pluck. ‘Virtues that a man -can’t help, don’t you know, if they are born in him!’ And which, -confusing to the pleasure-loving intelligence though such facts may be, -do certainly, in the long run, bring public credit to the Alma Mater. - -But the blow from his street antagonist had marred Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s -looks for life. - -Strength, loyalty, gentleness, were written large upon his face. His -dark, somewhat sunken eyes had in them the glow of an intellect high -above the level of his handsome cousin! His smile, though Geff did not -resemble the family of Bourbon, was finer, because sweeter, more wholly -human than Gaston’s. But his looks were marred. That rugged cicatrice -across nose and forehead could never wear out, and Geoffrey possessed -not the thousand little drawing-room graces that, in some women’s -sight, might go far towards rendering such a blemish ‘interesting.’ His -hands, however firm, lithe, adequate for a surgeon’s work, did neither -suggest Titian nor Velasquez to your mental eye. His dress bespoke the -student. His French was grotesque. Although a second Bayard in his -reverence for abstract Woman, he had no small attentions for concrete -idle ladies. - -Garden parties Geoffrey Arbuthnot evaded; dancing parties he abhorred. -In regard to matrimony he would shake his head, not holding it a state -meet for all men. - -Concerning this latest clause, however, the reader shall learn more -when we come to ask why the triangular friendship of the persons -breakfasting together under the shadow of Mr. Miller’s limes was -paradoxical. - -‘Yes,’ resumed Gaston Arbuthnot, tilting himself to the outside limit -of equilibrium on his garden-chair, and clasping his arms, with a -gesture admirably suggestive of habitual laziness, above his head, -‘look the position in the face for one moment, and you reduce it to an -absurdity. No girl of seventeen has ever yet been a man-hater; has she, -Dinah?’ - -‘I was not,’ admitted Mrs. Arbuthnot frankly, although she blushed. -‘But Miss Bartrand of Tintajeux, young though she is, has gone through -disappointment. Mrs. Miller told me so when I showed her the paper with -the advertisement. Miss Bartrand, more than a year ago, was engaged to -the major of some English regiment stationed in Guernsey.’ - -‘Is that a disappointment, my love?’ - -‘The major of the regiment proved a sorry character,’ said Dinah -gravely. ‘Miss Bartrand found out that he had broken the heart of some -poor girl at a former garrison town.’ - -‘And, from that hour forth, swore to look on all men as in the -conspiracy,’ interrupted Gaston. ‘What breadth of discrimination, what -knowledge of the world, these simple-seeming schoolgirls occasionally -show!’ - -‘When I was eighteen, that spring I went to stay with Aunt Susan at -Lesser Cheriton, I knew no more of the world’s ways than a baby, did I, -Geff?’ - -‘The philosophers are divided as to how much a baby does know,’ -answered Geoffrey, fixing his dark eyes with discrimination upon Mrs. -Gaston Arbuthnot’s face. - -‘There is an unexpected parry for you, my dear girl.’ Shifting his -chair away from the table, Dinah’s lord began to fold himself a loose, -or Spanish-modelled cigarette. Pipes and cigars of ordinary goodness -Gaston would no more smoke than he would swallow any of the popular -fluids known among Britons as wine. He had the virtue of facile -temperance, wore the blue ribbon of a fastidious taste. Unless his -small luxuries were of the choicest, he could at any time fill the -anchorite’s _rôle_ without effort. ‘You had better apply to your own -lawful husband, Dinah, than to Geff, when you want a compliment.’ - -‘I apply to Geoffrey when I want truth.’ - -Dinah made this answer unconscious of the slight irony her speech -conveyed. - -‘The truth! When a pretty woman talks of truth,’ cried Gaston, ‘she -means, “Give me the biggest, most sugared lump of praise that my moral -gullet will enable me to swallow.”’ - -Mrs. Arbuthnot had been married close upon four years. Yet was she so -much in love with Gaston still as to colour rosy red at the doubtful -flattery of this remark. - -She was a blonde, amply framed Devonshire girl, in the fresh summer -of her youth. ‘Not a lady,’ according to the traditions of small -social courts, the judgments of smaller feminine tribunals. Dinah’s -lips could scarcely unclose before ineradicable accents of the west -country working folk informed you that Gaston Arbuthnot, like so many -artists--poor dear impressionable fellows!--had married beneath him. -Not a lady, as far as the enunciation of certain vowels, the absence -of certain petty artificialities of female manner were concerned, but -with the purity of April dawn on her cheeks, the wholesome work-a-day -qualities of a long line of yeoman progenitors in her heart. - -About most women’s charms men are prone to hold contradictory opinions. -What world-renowned beauty but has at times felt the cold breath -of adverse criticism? A smile from Dinah’s pensive mouth, a gleam -from Dinah’s serious eyes, appealed to all beholders. Tottering old -gentlemen would turn, with spectacles hastily adjusted, to wonder; fine -ladies cast looks of despair after her from their carriages; young men -of every sort and condition would lose their peace, if Dinah did but -demurely walk along London pavement or provincial street. She was an -altogether unique specimen of our mixed and over-featured race: white -and rose of complexion; chiselled of profile, with English-coloured -hair (and this hair is neither gold nor flaxen nor chestnut, but a -subdued blending of the three); eyebrows and eyelashes that matched; -a nobly cut throat; and the slow, calm movements that belong in all -countries to the fair large Madonna-like women of her type. - -Madonna. The word in connection with poor Dinah must awaken instant -visions of sock-knitting and of pinafore-mending! Gaston’s wife was, in -truth, a very ideal of sweet and gracious motherhood. Gladly you would -have imagined her, girt round by a swarm of toddlers, with eyes and -cheeks like her own, to be bequeathed, a priceless heirloom, to future -generations. But Dinah had no living child. And round Dinah’s mouth -might be discerned lines that should certainly not have found their way -thither at two-and-twenty. And in Dinah’s low country voice there was -a lilt at times of unexpected sadness. Round some corner of her path -Dull Care, you felt, must lurk, stealthily watchful. At some point in -the outward and visible sunshine of her married life there must be a -blot of shadow. A woman like Dinah could be hit through her affections -only. Her affections were centred painfully--I had almost written -morbidly--on one subject. And that subject was Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, -her husband. - -‘If Miss Bartrand be a hater of men, a scorner of marriage, so much the -easier prospect for me,’ said Geoffrey. ‘At the present time I look -upon myself as an educational machine to be hired out at so much an -hour. I have no more mind to put on company manners for Miss Marjorie -Bartrand than for any thick-headed fresher I was vainly endeavouring to -get through Little Go.’ - -‘You? It depends, rather, on what Miss Marjorie Bartrand has a mind -for,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot, with the certainty born of larger -experience. - -‘Happily, the wording of the advertisement shows that Miss Bartrand -means work. We have it here.’ - -Geoffrey looked down the columns of a small, blue, badly-printed local -newspaper, half French, half English, that lay open on the breakfast -table. - -“Tutor wanted. I, Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux, need a coach -to prepare me for Girton. Classics and mathematics. Six hours a -week.--Apply, personally, at Tintajeux Manoir, after six P.M. An Oxford -or Cambridge man preferred.”’ - -‘Does any one know if Marjorie Bartrand is handsome?’ exclaimed Gaston, -with sudden animation. ‘Dinah, I adjure you to find out the truth in -this matter. The women of the hotel would at least repeat the popular -island beliefs. “An Oxford or Cambridge man preferred.” The crystalline -artfulness of the clause touches one, from a girl who makes pretence at -misanthropy.’ - -‘But surely, Gaston, you would not----’ - -‘I would do most things. My classics were unfairly judged of by my -college tutor. My mathematics,’ Gaston confessed, with his air of -unreliable fatuity, ‘never existed. Still, I kept all my terms, except, -of course, the hunting terms. And I succeeded--as far as I went! If I -passed no exams., I was at least never spun. I am as much a Cambridge -man as Geoffrey is. I feel more than disposed to apply to Miss Marjorie -Bartrand myself.’ - -The muscles about Dinah Arbuthnot’s delicately-carved mouth trembled. - -‘You would tire before the first lesson was over,’ said Geff, watching -Dinah, while he addressed Dinah’s husband. ‘You want my incentive, -Gaston, filthy lucre. My terms as a coach in Guernsey are five -shillings an hour. Five sixes are thirty. Yes, reading classics and -mathematics with Miss Bartrand will just pay half my weekly hotel bill, -supposing I am not lucky enough to get other work.’ - -‘And you don’t care a straw whether Marjorie Bartrand is pretty or -plain? My dear Geff, if ever fortune brings you to the stage, take the -part of Joseph Surface, for my sake. It would suit you to admiration.’ - - - - -CHAPTER II - -POKER TALK - - -Ere Geoffrey had had time to retaliate, a factor of no common -importance was destined to enter the difficult problem of Dinah -Arbuthnot’s happiness. Holding the corner of her apron before her lips, -the jaunty French waitress tripped up a pathway leading from the hotel -to the lime-shaded lawn, and placed a lady’s card between Gaston’s -hands. - -‘Une dame ... Mais, une petite dame qui demande Monsieur!’ - -And the serving-woman’s eyes took in the whole space of blue mid-heaven -at a glance. Obviously this Norman waitress, with acumen derived from -an older civilisation than ours, was mistress of the situation. - -In a second of time Dinah had glanced over her husband’s shoulder. - -‘Mrs. Thorne. Who is Mrs. Thorne? What is that written in pencil? -“_Née_ Linda Constantia Smythe.” Gaston, what is the meaning of -“_Née_?”’ - -I am bound to add that Dinah pronounced the monosyllable as ‘knee.’ And -a red spot showed on Gaston Arbuthnot’s cheek. - -From his precocious boyhood up, it had been a belief of Gaston’s -that lady-killing was an open accomplishment; the established means -of defence as much an art to be learnt as the means of attack. And -still, at the sight of those poor pencil-marks, at the thought of the -youthful evenings when Linda Constantia used to hand him cups of weak -tea, flavoured atrociously with cinnamon, in the salon of a remembered -Paris entresol, the conscience of the man was touched. - -As Dinah’s voice asked the meaning of the word ‘knee,’ he changed -colour. - -‘Linda Constantia Smythe. What an absurdly small world we inhabit! You -and I, my love, and Geoffrey, coming across poor Linda Constantia! -Faites entrer cette dame,’ he added, turning to the waitress. ‘An -absolutely forgotten acquaintance of a hundred years ago, Dinah--an -acquaintance of times before I had heard your name. Linda married--no, -did not marry; went out to India a spinster, and returned, poor soul! -the wife of a Doctor Thorne. They say, in these Channel Islands, a man -will run across every mortal he has known, or is fated to know, from -his cradle to his grave.’ - -‘You never told me of your acquaintance with any Linda Constantia -Smythe. I wonder you recollected her name so instantly, Gaston.’ - -‘Easier, perhaps, to recollect the name than the lady. Can it be -possible that this is she?’ A cream-coloured parasol, a great many -yards of cream-coloured cambric, were advancing with agitated flutter -across the lawn. ‘By Jupiter! how these meagre women age when they -once cross the line. Can this be the walk one has admired, I know not -how oft? Are those the shoulders?... My dear Mrs. Thorne,’--Gaston -Arbuthnot rose to meet his visitor, thoroughly warm, thoroughly natural -of manner; and Dinah, with a sensation of insignificance only too -familiar to her, sank into the background--‘this is too kind! Doctor -Thorne well, I hope? And your little daughter? You see I have watched -the first column of the _Times_. About your own health I need not ask. -And so you have really given up India--have made a settlement in -Guernsey! Dinah, my love, let me introduce you to one of my very early -Parisian friends. My wife--Mrs. Thorne.’ - -Dinah bowed with the staid gravity that in her case, as in that of -some other lowly-born people one has known, came so near to the -self-possession of breeding. Mrs. Thorne was effusive. - -Gaston felt an honest artistic satisfaction in watching the contrast -the two young women presented to each other. - -Linda Thorne’s figure was lithe, straight, thin; the sort of figure -that ever lends itself kindly to the setting forth of such anatomical -deformities as shall have received the last approving seal of Parisian -fashion. Her eight-buttoned long hands were pleasingly posed. She wore -a great deal of frizzled darkish hair on a forehead that, but for this -Cupid’s ambuscade, might have been overhigh. Traces of rice-powder, at -noon of a June day, were not absent from Mrs. Thorne’s India-bleached -cheeks. Her eyes were big, black-lashed, green. Her nose was flat, -giving somewhat the Egyptian Sphinx type to a personality which, -with all its demerits, was by no means void either of allurement or -distinction. - -If Linda had spoken perfect grammar, in a London tone, and with a -taught manner, you would have set her down, perhaps, as an actress from -one of our good theatres. Speaking, as she did, at utter grammatical -random, with the slightest little bit of Irish accent, and no manner at -all, imagination might suggest to you that Dr. Thorne’s wife belonged -to some lost tribe of nomad Lords or Honourables. And the suggestion -would be correct. Linda’s grandfather was an Irish earl; a hare-brained -gentleman not unknown to the newspaper editors of his day, but with -whose deeds, good or evil, with whose forfeited acres, domestic -relations, or political principles, our story has no concern. - -Linda grasped Mrs. Arbuthnot’s hands; drawing her towards herself with -such warmth that Dinah’s unsmiling face rose higher in the air. She -had an instinctive, a horrible dread that this old Parisian friend -of Gaston’s, this lady of the green eyes, rice-powdered cheeks, and -effusive manner, might be going to embrace her. - -‘A pleasure, and an immense surprise to meet like this!’ Mrs. Thorne -took in with one long look the blooming fairness of the girl Gaston -Arbuthnot had married, then dropping Dinah’s hands, she turned coolly -away. ‘I heard of your arrival here, Mr. Arbuthnot, from Colonel de -Gourmet.’ - -‘Colonel de Gourmet is----’ - -‘Our island authority in all matters of taste, from the dressing of a -salad to the delivery of a sermon. He said you looked like a man who -would understand the meaning of the word “dinner.” That is the highest -praise Colonel de Gourmet can give.’ - -‘I appreciate the compliment immensely.’ - -‘You must appreciate the Colonel by meeting him at our house. Somehow, -I fancied you were alone. I thought stupidly, you had come to Guernsey -for art reasons, and as a bachelor.’ - -So her visit was deliberately not intended for the wife; after such -a declaration, could not involve the necessity of the wife’s future -acquaintance! The keen blood quickened on Dinah’s cheek. Dinah’s -husband was unmoved. Should it be counted as strength or as weakness, -as fault or as virtue, that no small feminine by-thrust at his -lowly-born wife ever shook the outward composure of Gaston Arbuthnot? - -‘No, Dinah is with me. We are just starting on somewhat lengthy -travels. We mean to spend the early summer here, Mrs. Thorne. In autumn -we shall ramble leisurely on towards the South of France, and in winter -make a settlement of some kind in Florence. In Florence, greatly to my -wife’s satisfaction, I am pledged to do serious work.’ - -‘Yes! And is it true, then, that you are a sculptor by profession, that -you have become an artist to the exclusion of other aims! Of course -there is a way of looking at things which makes such a life seem the -most charming possible.’ Mrs. Thorne clasped her thin clever hands -as though entering some mysterious general protest against art and -its followers. ‘And still, one has regrets. I was foolishly ambitious -about you, if you remember, Mr. Arbuthnot. In our romantic boy-and-girl -Paris days, I quite thought you were to get into Parliament. To be the -people’s friend. A kind of second Mirabeau. To make a tremendous name.’ - -Gaston Arbuthnot’s face for a second betrayed sincere perplexity. When -was Linda Constantia ambitious in her hopes about his intellectual -future! At what period of that shallow flirtation, a decade of -years ago, could dreams of a seat in the House of Commons, and of -Parliamentary victories, have been possible to her? - -‘I am open to flattery, Mrs. Thorne. When does a mediocre man not glory -in the fine things which, according to his friends, he might have done? -Yet it seems to me I never held a political opinion in my life.’ - -‘You once held very strong ones. Why, in a letter you wrote me -after--after we had said good-bye in Paris, you were so nobly warm, I -remember, about the English lower classes! Our sisters and brothers -in the alleys, whose claims that dear, immortal Mrs. Browning so -beautifully reveals to us.’ - -Gaston Arbuthnot, at this mention of a letter, felt the ground grow -solid beneath his feet. - -‘I must have written to you from Cambridge; for the moment, perhaps, -had taken up some of Geff’s fads. Let me introduce my cousin, by the -bye. Geoffrey Arbuthnot--Mrs. Thorne.’ - -Mrs. Thorne, who knew that in Geoffrey Arbuthnot she would never have -a friend, smiled ambrosially. Geff rose. He gave the lady the lowest, -at the same time the coldest bow in the world. It was a true case of -elective dislike at first sight. - -‘Yes,’ went on Gaston, ‘I remember.’ He drew forward a garden-chair, -into which Mrs. Thorne--no unpleasing picture in her broad Leghorn hat, -her cambric morning gown, her eight-buttoned gloves, her cream-coloured -sunshade--sank gracefully. ‘I had taken up one of Geff’s fads. The -British Workman was an epidemic among all classes of Cambridge -undergraduates that term. Get hold of your poorer brother in his hour -of sobriety--that is to say, on a Friday afternoon. Present him with -a bookshelf of your own carving. Explain to him the newest thing out -in draining-pipes. Show him how to make a window-box of rough cork, -and present him with half a dozen slips of scarlet geranium. Humanise -him--always, of course, with the capital H. Humanise him!’ - -‘You call work so utterly noble as this “a fad”? I assure you, Mr. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot, I am wild myself about the working classes. At this -very moment I ought to be visiting among my district people.’ - -Mrs. Thorne’s eyes offered Geoffrey a glance of tentative sympathy. - -‘Different men come to the same end by different roads,’ said Gaston. -‘Your greatest English authority on culture declares that any man with -a dash of genius is the born elevator of others. I believe myself to -have a dash--a thin streak, rather--of genius. I believe myself to be a -born elevator, but it must be in my own way.’ - -‘And that is?’ asked Geoffrey. - -‘Well, remembering the atmosphere of Barnwell and Chesterton, the scene -of our early labours, one feels sure that the geraniums must have -choked for want of air. Remembering the clay soil, the neighbourhood of -that oozy river, the thick air, the black ugliness,’ Gaston shivered -unaffectedly, ‘one is sceptical even as to draining-pipes. My opinion -is--that the English must be regenerated by art, by sculpture notably, -owing to the low price of plaster casts. Sculpture can be best studied -in Italy, and I am on my road thither. But Geff and I may still be -fellow-labourers in the same cause.’ - -Gaston rattled forth this specimen of ‘poker talk’ lightly, his -sombrero pulled low on his forehead, his shrewd, thought-reading eyes -making observation the while of Linda--Linda whom, in long-dead Paris -days, he just liked too well to be ever, for one moment, in love with. -And the result of his study was that, in her Leghorn hat and cambric -gown and slim, eight-buttoned gloves, Linda Constantia Thorne looked -undeniably picturesque. - -Each attitude that she took had, he saw, been diligently learnt by -heart. It was Mrs. Thorne’s habit when in town to spend her nights -at the Lyceum, studying gracefulness, from the stalls, at so much an -hour. Her expression savoured rather of earth than heaven. Her figure -spoke of the Parisian deformity artist, not of nature. But these faults -were just _les défauts de ses qualités_. Gaston could never think -idiomatically save in French. A well-paying section of the art of 188- -required models of Linda Thorne’s type. And what artist, with pockets -poorly lined, can resist the prospect of a good unpaid model? - -If pure-faced Madonnas commanded the worship yielded to them of old, -no need to go farther than the exquisite brow and throat of his own -Dinah. But pure-faced Madonnas in the nineteenth century are for the -first-class sculptor. Gaston belonged to the dilettante third-rate men -who execute pretty conventionalities with readiness, get money for -them from the dealers, and are stirred neither by great expectation of -success nor by great disappointment in failure. - -In any case, so decided the quick brain under the sombrero, Linda -Thorne, during half a summer here in Guernsey, must be a resource, -personally, against stagnation. She had ripened into a kind of sub-acid -cleverness that pleased Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot’s taste. Her acquaintance -opened out a not unprofitable means of spending one’s hours between -work and dinner. On principle, he was in favour always of the brain -woman, as opposed to the sentiment woman. He chose the white rose -rather than the red--his only condition being that the white rose must -wear Jouvin’s gloves, get her dresses from Paris, abjure patchouli, -and be peremptorily certain that every inch of his, Gaston’s, heart -belonged to the somewhat neglected girl, with Juno face and Devonshire -accent, who waited for him at home. - -Before sixty seconds were over he had resolved upon soliciting Linda -Thorne to be his model. - -‘And while Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot chisels marble for the English pauper -in some delicious Florentine palace, you are thinking of Guernsey as an -abiding-place?’ - -Mrs. Thorne asked the question softly of Geoffrey. - -‘I? Certainly not, madam. After a few weeks’ holiday I am going back to -my medical work in Cambridge.’ - -‘Geoffrey won his academic honours long ago,’ said Gaston. ‘In my -cousin Geff you behold that melancholy specimen, Mrs. Thorne, a man of -genius resolutely bent on not getting on in the world. After passing -eighth in the Classical Tripos of his year----’ - -‘And finding that a Classical Tripos does not mean bread and cheese,’ -put in Geff with sturdy independence. - -‘My cousin went back to school, set up a skeleton, and began smelling -evil smells out of bottles, like a good little boy of sixteen. In -another year and a half he hopes to get some unpaid work in the East -End of London. The worse,’ added Gaston, with the hearty appreciation -of Geoffrey, which was the finest thing in his own character--‘the -worse for all the wretched men and women in Cambridge whose lives are -bettered by my cousin Geff’s labours among them.’ - -‘Re--ally? Dear, dear, it is all too noble! A veritable life-poem in -prose! My husband is a man of science, too. Only in his days, you know, -doctors believed in their own horrible medicines. Doctor Thorne will -be charmed to make Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s acquaintance. You are not -working quite _too dreadfully_ hard here in Guernsey, I hope?’ - -Geoffrey detested italics, even though he might tolerate a woman who -habitually employed them. Judge how he was affected by the italicised -enthusiasm, applied to himself, of Linda Thorne! - -‘My work in Guernsey will take the shape of pupils, if I am lucky -enough to get any. My terms are five shillings an hour, madam. My -tuition comprises Greek, Latin, arithmetic, a moderate quantity of -algebra, and, if required,’ said Geff, without the ghost of a smile, -‘the use of the globes. Perhaps you could recommend me?’ - -‘Oh, to be sure; I quite understand.’ Linda’s highly-wrought tones -went through a diminuendo of interest, well bred but rapid, at this -announcement of poverty. ‘Classics; the use of the globes; algebra; -pupils.’ - -‘Of whom we hope we have caught one,’ cried Gaston, watching her face, -gauging the extent of her sympathy for life-poems in prose. ‘You think, -do you not, Geff, that you have secured Miss Marjorie Bartrand of -Tintajeux?’ - -‘I have already offered myself in writing, and shall walk out to -Tintajeux, on approval, this evening. If Miss Bartrand thinks me -capable of teaching her arithmetic, also the rudiments of Greek and -Latin, at five shillings an hour, the bargain will be struck.’ - -‘Capable!’ - -The exclamation came from Dinah, who until now had maintained a staid -but not ungracious silence while the others talked. A certain light in -Dinah’s eyes betrayed the profound conviction of Geoffrey’s intellect -which was felt by her. - -Mrs. Thorne looked, without showing she looked, at the three Arbuthnots -in turn. - -‘You think Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot more than capable of guiding the -whole combined feminine intellect of our poor little Guernsey. Do you -not, Mrs. Arbuthnot?’ - -Linda asked this with the North Pole voice that puts the social -position of a feminine questioner at so vast a distance from the social -position of her questioned. - -‘I know nothing about intellect, except what I hear from Geoffrey and -my husband. I am quite uneducated myself.’ - -Dinah’s reply was accompanied by a large level glance from those -fearless, truthful Devonshire eyes of hers. And Mrs. Thorne’s eyes fell. - -Gaston Arbuthnot felt the heart within him rejoice. He would honestly -have liked to accord a ‘Brava!’ to his wife. - -‘A good many interpretations may be put upon the word “uneducated,”’ -observed Geoffrey. - -Mrs. Thorne had long known herself to be a clever woman. She felt that -she was a cleverer woman than usual at this moment. Yet not a suspicion -had she of the situation’s actual point, not an inkling of the delicate -friendship which bound Geoffrey to Dinah, and, at a somewhat lengthened -distance, to Gaston. - -‘Ah! When you have stayed longer in our Robinson Crusoe little -island---- And it _is_ charming, is it not?’ - -‘Quite too deliciously charming,’ answered Gaston, paraphrasing Linda’s -own style of speech. ‘And cheaper than any decently liveable place -this side Italy. For the daily consideration of two five-franc pieces -one gets such sunshine as cannot be bought in Great Britain, three -excellently cooked meals, and the advantage of living under the same -roof with members of the English aristocracy. You hear the domestic -gossip, Dinah. Does not a dowager countess, with a German lady’s -maid, a second husband, two pug dogs, and a wig, reside in some upper -apartment of Miller’s Hotel?’ - -‘But you will find that we are a little behindhand. Doctor Thorne -and myself are sensible that there is always the insular note. Our -friends are most kind, most hospitable, and of course there are the -military people to fall back upon. Still, remembering other days, the -intimacies of the soul, the freedom, the expansion of Indian society, -Robbie and I feel we are in exile. There is a constant danger of fatty -degeneration--I see Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot laughing at me--fatty -degeneration of the mind.’ - -‘Want of appreciation is the saddest thing in human life,’ murmured -Gaston, with a serious face. ‘I am taking my wife to Florence on the -outside chance that we may be recognised by the Florentines as persons -of distinction. In London we are nowhere.’ - -‘Yes. There is the insular note. Now, these Bartrands of Tintajeux. -Delightful people! Noble French family who emigrated a hundred years -ago to Guernsey--such of them, I mean, as were not guillotined--dropped -the “de” from before their name, and settled here. Well, it is very -wicked to awaken prejudice, but----’ - -‘Put aside all moral obligations,’ exclaimed Gaston Arbuthnot. ‘At a -pass like this, dear Mrs. Thorne, it is a matter of life or death to -some of us to have facts. Is Marjorie Bartrand pretty?’ - -With her long, gloved fingers Linda Thorne stroked down imaginary -creases in her dress. - -‘Marjorie ought to be pretty. I am a frank adorer of beauty, you -must know. I hate to see a girl with possibilities make the least of -herself. So I always contrive to give Marjorie a friendly lecture. If -she would only arrange her hair differently, as I tell her, and dress -like other people, and take a little reasonable care of her complexion, -she might be distinctly nice-looking. All to no purpose. Marjorie -is Marjorie still. Some people call her an original. I,’ said Linda -playfully, ‘go farther. I call her an aboriginal.’ - -‘I see her with my mind’s eye. Geoffrey, accept my condolences. All -these classico-mathematical girls,’ observed Gaston, ‘are the same. -Much nose, little hair, freckles, ankles. Let the conversation be -changed.’ - -‘Marjorie has too little rather than too much nose, and is certainly -too dark for freckles. It seems, Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, that you have -grown cynical in these latter days. If I were a girl again I should be -wild to become a pupil of Mr. Geoffrey’s--if he would have me. I should -adore classics and mathematics, a touch of science even! Positively, I -think one _ought_ to have a smattering of biology, just as one ought -to attend the ambulance classes. But we may cultivate the Graces also. -Now, Marjorie carries everything to extremes. Perhaps that is only -another way of saying Marjorie is a Bartrand.’ - -‘And the Bartrands, you hinted, are, as a race, handsome?’ - -Never was man surer of carrying his point, by oblique if not by direct -means, than Gaston Arbuthnot. - -‘Handsome, stiff-necked, unrelenting. I am not talking scandal against -Queen Elizabeth, mind. If I said this in their presence, both Marjorie -and her terrible grandfather would feel flattered. Something softer the -child may perhaps have inherited from her Spanish mother.’ - -(‘A Spanish mother!’ interpolated Gaston, in speculative parenthesis. -‘Southern eyes flashing at you from the handsome Bartrand face!’) - -‘But Marjorie has the true family temper. She knows too much. She -ascribes the worst motives to every one. She cannot forgive. About -a twelvemonth ago, when the girl really ought to have been in the -schoolroom, there was an unhappy little love story afloat in Guernsey.’ - -‘A lover who was unworthy of her, of course?’ - -‘That sort of thing happens to many of us,’ said Linda, examining the -stitching of her kerchief, ‘and yet we women manage to forget our -own wrongs and to tolerate humanity for the remainder of our lives. -Marjorie, reckoning pounds, shillings, and pence by our modest insular -standard, is an heiress. Well, she despises the very name of man now, -because a certain rather mercenary Major Tredennis sought to marry her -for her money.’ - -‘And intends to be revenged upon us from the awful heights of Plato -and conic sections! Geff, my boy, I don’t envy you as much as I did a -quarter of an hour ago.’ - -‘Oh, Mr. Geoffrey will be frightfully snubbed. It is only right to -prepare him beforehand.’ - -Mrs. Thorne raised her eyes--very fine and sparkling eyes they looked -just then--to Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s face. - -‘I shall like the sensation,’ remarked Geff. ‘To the usual forms of -feminine caprice one should be indifferent. Snubbing means sincerity.’ - -‘If you tell her she has worked out a proposition in Euclid right she -will resent it, think you are offering her an affront under the veil of -compliment.’ - -‘Then I will speak of the propositions only in which she fails.’ - -‘If you admire the flower she holds in her hand she will throw it away. -If you say the sky is fair, she will remark that, for her part, she -thinks it looks like rain. Once or twice,’ said Linda, ‘I have met -Marjorie Bartrand at some village treat or flower-show. The girl is not -out, or likely to come out. She possesses _one_ dress, I believe, the -orthodox length of other people’s! And each time I have pitied the -unfortunate young men who tried to make themselves agreeable to her.’ - -‘I am not an agreeable young man, Mrs. Thorne, either in fact or -intention. Your warnings are kind, but I think even a Bartrand and an -heiress will find it waste of time to snub me long.’ - -As Geoffrey spoke a side gate of the hotel garden opened. The figure of -a spare, wooden-structured old gentleman dressed in white nankeen, and -with a white umbrella, outspread, walked in. - -‘Why, there is Robbie! My dear good husband!’ exclaimed Mrs. Thorne, -impulsively. ‘What in the world----’ - -‘Allait-il faire dans cette galère?’ - -The quotation was put in by Gaston in an innocent voice. - -Now Dinah’s French studies had in her youth been conducted, for five -terms, in a small and remote Devonshire boarding-school. Consequently -she did not understand one word of the language as pronounced by -Gaston. Her heart sank as she watched an amused smile play round -Linda’s mouth. Already ideas were exchanged between these two -people--dear friends once--from which she must, perforce, remain shut -out. - -‘Doctor Tho--orne! Doctor Tho--orne!’ - -And with playful undulatory movements of her parasol Mrs. Linda strove -to arrest her husband’s attention. - -‘Linda! Bless my heart, my love, I thought you were district visiting -hours ago. Quite an unexpected pleasure.’ - -And, hat in hand, Doctor Thorne advanced up the path, dutifully -obedient to his Linda’s call, to be introduced to Linda’s friends. - -He was an ultra Indian-looking, ultra curry-coloured old Company’s -servant, considerably more than thirty years his wife’s senior, with a -snow-white military moustache, projecting white eyebrows, mild, tired -eyes, a very thick gold chain, a puggaree, and buff shoes. You could -never look at Doctor Thorne without a certain surprise that he did -not live in Cheltenham; so well was his appearance in tune with your -recollections of the Cheltenham promenade winter garden, Montpellier -lawn-tennis courts, and club windows blossoming over with generals, -admirals, and old Indians. - -But in Cheltenham Linda might have hunted! Quite early after their -return to Europe Doctor Thorne made the discovery that he and his wife -had two passions--Linda’s for horses, his own for living within his -pension. This decided him on choosing an island for his residence. - -‘Bless my heart, Linda! A positively unexpected pleasure,’ repeated -the Doctor, with urbane little bows discreetly given to no person in -particular. - -‘You dear, delicious Robbie, to turn up just when you are _so_ wanted!’ -cried Linda. ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot, let me introduce my husband.’ With a -careless wave of the hand that said, plainly enough, this part of the -ceremony might be cut as short as possible. ‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. Have -I not often told you, Robbie, of my old friendship for Gast--, I mean, -for Mr. Arbuthnot, in Paris? Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, a medical student -from Cambridge.’ - -Doctor Thorne was one of the most thorough believers extant in this -questioning, sceptical nineteenth-century world. He believed in his own -drugs, practising, on a small but murderous scale, here in Guernsey, -and holding the same pharmacopœial opinions that obtained half a -century earlier in Calcutta. He believed in the great political names -he had admired when he was a schoolboy; in the balance of power; in the -infallibility of Church, State, and the British Empire generally. He -believed in the extraordinary convenience of his house, in the fitness -of his furniture, in the talents of his Linda. Doctor Thorne, I -should add, had a mind--curiously small, thoroughly limited, but still -a mind--not badly stored with facts, of a dry and statistical order, -which he loved to impart to others. - -Fastening at once on Dinah--for Linda, moving a few paces distant, -began to lionise the adjacent islands for Gaston’s benefit, and Geff -contrived to vanish from the scene--fastening on poor Dinah for his -victim, Doctor Thorne at once opened a conversation with the airy -didactic grace in which old gentlemen would seem to have shone when the -story-books of our infancy were written. - -‘Your first visit to the island, Mrs. Arbuthnot I Then I trust you -and your worthy husband will accept my services as your cicerone. -There is much here, I can assure you, to stimulate the interest and -foster habits of observation. In the first place, you see, we have the -people themselves, whose habits of frugality contrast in a marked and -favourable manner with those of larger countries. You are not perhaps -acquainted with the statistics of savings-banks generally?’ - -‘I have never had anything to save in my life, sir.’ - -‘Well, then, I can give you a few important facts. Sit down, pray. Let -us protect our heads under the shadow of this delightful ash, or lime, -which is it? I can give you a few details, with the amount actually -saved by each person in this island over the age of fifteen. Studies -of this kind captivate the softer faculty of benevolence, while they -strengthen and enlarge the understanding.’ - -Dinah was well dowered by Nature with means of self-defence. She could -put down an impertinence--I am afraid could resent an injury, as well -as any fine London lady of them all. But in Dinah’s moral arsenal was -no weapon for demolishing a mild little prosy gentleman of sixty-seven, -with snow-white moustache, yellow shoes, and a tired smile. Some -intuition she could not have analysed made her almost feel a species of -pity for Linda’s husband. - -We do not easily experience two distinct kinds of pain at one moment. -It may be that Dinah’s heart was too sorely troubled for her to be -sensible of boredom, even at the hands of such a master in the art of -boring as the Doctor. - -‘That morsel of table-land in the south is Sark,’ observed Linda, -pointing to an outline of haze faintly towering above the dense blue of -the Channel. ‘And the streak nearer at hand--please don’t look at me, -but at the islands--the streak nearer at hand, with the sun shining on -its yellow patches, is Jetho; and nearer still, where the pale green -spaces mark the shallows, is Herm. I hope you are following my stage -directions, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ - -Mr. Arbuthnot was scrutinising her face; curiously, as one scrutinises -any waif or stray from the past suddenly brought back to one; but -tenderly, too. When does a man of Gaston’s character feel aught but -kindness towards the woman whose life has been a little embittered by -his own fascination? - -The kindness made itself felt in his voice and look when he answered -her: - -‘Almost the last time you and I saw each other we followed stage -directions side by side. Have you forgotten those New Year charades of -Madame Benjamin’s?’ - -‘I have forgotten nothing,’ exclaimed Mrs. Thorne, with a sharpish -accent. ‘I have remembered you, Mr. Arbuthnot; I have thought of you, -hoped for your happiness all these years. Now, at length, I am called -upon to witness it.’ - -She gave a glance at Dinah, patiently enduring the Doctor’s statistics, -then went on with a sort of effort: - -‘You must let me congratulate you. I am blunt, matter-of-fact--just as -I used to be.’ Certainly Linda Thorne was at no pains to modulate her -voice. ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot is simply beautiful. Those matchless lines of -profile! Those soft waves of gold above her brow!’ - -‘You like that way she has with her curls? I am answerable for it. It -took exactly fifteen months to convince Dinah that a woman may wear -short hair upon her forehead, yet save her soul alive.’ - -‘And the lips, the chin! I believe Mrs. Arbuthnot’s face is the first I -have ever seen without a flaw.’ - -Linda spoke as one might speak of a shell cameo, of a china vase, of a -lily modelled in wax. - -Gaston Arbuthnot mentally translated the chill distinct tone, with -edification to himself. - -‘Dinah’s is a nature laid on large lines. She is the best possible wife -for such a light-ballasted man as I.’ He made this confession of faith -with genuine earnestness, feeling, rather than acknowledging he felt, -that the speech set his conscience satisfactorily at rest ‘Goodness -matters a great deal more, does it not, Mrs. Thorne, than a beautiful -face?’ - -‘Possibly. I am ready to accept what you say. Tell me only you are -not offended by my outspoken admiration,’ she went on. ‘Surely I may -presume sufficiently on old--old acquaintance, to congratulate you on -your marriage, on the domestic sunshine of your life?’ - -‘It is delightful to feel that your heart is warm as ever! As a matter -of priority, congratulations, Mrs. Thorne, were due to you first. Dinah -and I have been married three years and three quarters, while you----’ - -‘Oh, it makes me too old a woman to be precise about dates,’ said -Linda, looking away from him. ‘My daughter, although she retains her -ayah and her spoilt Indian ways, is a big girl, almost four years old. -I hope you will visit The Bungalow soon for Rahnee’s sake.’ - -‘The Bungalow being----’ - -‘The straggling, white, one-storied place which you see low down under -the hill to the right. That is my home, built entirely from Doctor -Thorne’s own plans. The ugliest house, every honest person who sees it -admits, in Guernsey.’ - -‘Not in its interior. I am certain a house inhabited by you could not -be ugly.’ - -‘Prettily said. Why, pray, in the present æsthetic age, cut off’ as we -are from the poetic upholstery of London, should a house inhabited by -me not be a great deal uglier than other people’s?’ - -‘I decline, at this hour of the morning, to be logical. One has an -instinct in such things.’ - -‘Rahnee, at least, is not ugly. I am not afraid of your judgment on our -little Rahnee. Now, what is to-day?’ - -Gaston Arbuthnot believed it to be the fourteenth day of June, in the -year of grace 188--. - -‘Well, then’--Mrs. Thorne’s voice sank so as to be only half a tone -higher than a whisper--‘will you dine with us this evening, at -half-past seven? I believe,’ added Linda vaguely, ‘that one or two -of the artillery officers may be coming to us. We do not entertain. -I make a point of telling everybody that. Doctor Thorne and I do not -entertain. But if our friends care to drop in unexpectedly, to eat our -roast mutton with us, and smoke a cigarette with Robbie afterwards, -there we are.’ - -It was to be a bachelor party, then. Dinah might possibly have been -invited to eat roast mutton at Mrs. Thorne’s table. She could, under no -circumstances, be asked to smoke a cigarette with Robbie afterwards. -But Gaston accepted with frank cordiality. During the years of his -married life it had so grown to be a matter of course that Dinah, -dear good girl! should never go into the world, that even the form -of hesitation at leaving her had been dropped on the part of Dinah’s -husband. - -‘No dress coat, no white tie, _please_. In these long June evenings one -likes to stroll away as far from bricks and mortar as possible. There -will not be a moon to-night. Still, even in the darkness, it will be -enjoyable to breathe pure air and watch the light upon the Caskets from -the jetty yonder.’ - -‘And what do you think of my old friend?’ Gaston Arbuthnot asked his -wife when the Thornes had departed on their different roads--the Doctor -to visit a patient in Miller’s Hotel; Linda, her dress, a caviller -might say, scarce fitted to the work, to her poor dear brothers and -sisters in the alleys. ‘I have listened to Linda Thorne’s verdict on -you. Now for the reverse of the medal. What do you think of Linda -Thorne?’ - -‘I think her vulgar.’ - -It was the first time Gaston had heard judgment so harsh from Dinah’s -lips. Hers was the least condemnatory of human souls. She shrank with -a rare modesty from giving opinions on the people with whom Gaston -associated, was openly unashamed always of her own lowly origin, and of -her inability to discern the finer shades of a society to which she was -not born. - -A slight tinge of red kindled on Arbuthnot’s cheek. ‘Vulgar is a strong -word. Women are not always generous in their strictures upon each -other. Yet it happened that Mrs. Thorne was singularly generous in her -criticism of you. Linda thinks you beautiful, my dear. She said yours -was the first face she has ever seen without a flaw.’ - -‘Standing close beside me as you did, Mrs. Thorne would have shown -delicacy by not talking of me at all. Although I tried not to listen, I -heard too well what she said. It was those flatteries of Mrs. Thorne’s, -for of course I am no judge of manner, which made me think her vulgar. -A lady at heart would have known how you must wince on hearing me so -coarsely praised.’ - -For one moment Gaston Arbuthnot’s looks were threatening, then the -cloud passed. - -‘I believe you are half right, my dear girl,’ he observed, in his -sunniest voice, and picking up his wife’s hat from the spot where -it had fallen at her feet. ‘But people of the world are not as -transparently truthful as you, my Dinah. You shoot at the bull’s eye -when you do discharge an arrow, and seldom miss the mark. Now, let me -tie your hat strings! Lift your chin--so! Let us wander off to the sea -and forget all the insincerities, all the Linda Thornes in existence.’ - -The speech must have been uttered with some of the airy mental -reservation that Gaston Arbuthnot’s habit of ‘poker talk’ made easy to -him. He did not for one instant forget that he was engaged to dine that -evening at The Bungalow; engaged, although there was no moon, to enjoy -pure air and watch the light upon the Caskets from the jetty yonder. - - - - -CHAPTER III - -HAS HE A WIFE? - - -‘The battle is to the strong, Marjorie Bartrand; the race to the swift. -Women have been fatally handicapped since the world began. And Nature -understands her own intentions, depend upon it, better than we do.’ - -‘Does Nature intend one half of the human race to be ciphers?’ - -‘Nature intends men to have wives. There is no escaping that fact. When -I was a girl we got quite as much education as society required of us.’ - -‘Society!’ - -‘We learned modern languages, French and Italian, for of course German -was not in vogue, and I must say I think Italian much the more feminine -accomplishment.’ - -‘That is paying an exceedingly high compliment to German, ma’am!’ - -‘And we studied English literature, solidly, not out of little -green-backed handbooks. Never a day passed that I did not read -Addison, or some other fine Queen Anne writer, aloud to my father. -And we knew how to write a letter. And we coloured from Nature, for -the love of the thing, exceedingly well, some of us, though there was -no South Kensington, and we never called ourselves art students, and, -and--Marjorie Bartrand, how did this conversation begin?’ - -‘Apropos of Spain, did it not?’ - -‘To be sure. Apropos of your Girton scheme, your wish to see classics -and mathematics pushed into a country where women are still content to -be women, and very womanly ones. University teaching for girls is a -freak that will die out of itself, like coal-scuttle bonnets, bishops’ -sleeves, crinoline, or any other mode that is at once cumbersome and -unbeautiful.’ - -Afternoon sunshine was flooding the weather-beaten lichened walls of -Tintajeux Manoir. The Atlantic glittered, one vast field of diamonds, -until it melted into pallid sky along the southern horizon line. The -keen, cool ocean saltness mingled with and almost overbalanced the -fragrance of the pinks, heliotropes, and roses in the Reverend Andros -Bartrand’s old-fashioned borders. On a garden bench, at some short -distance from the house, were seated two ladies, fresh of face, both; -countrified of dress; fast friends, although more than forty years -stood between their ages. A cedar of Lebanon spread wide its layers of -odorous darkness above their heads. A grass plot, emerald green, close -shorn, was their carpet. - -‘If your wits were your fortune, child, such ambitions might be -pardonable.’ So, after a space, the enemy of progress resumed her -parable. ‘In families where the olive branches are in excess of the -exchequer, the governess, Heaven help her, is expected to “ground” -the boys, as they call it, in Latin grammar and Euclid. But with your -grandfather’s position, your own inheritance, putting the idea of your -marriage aside----’ - -‘As you know I have put it, for ever and ever!’ cried Marjorie -Bartrand, her whole face seeming abruptly transformed into a pair of -passionate eyes. ‘Did we not decide long ago, Miss Tighe, that the word -mar----, the word I detest so heartily, should never be spoken between -us. Allow that I may not be forced, for money, to ground small boys in -Latin grammar. Allow that my visions of raising Spanish girls above the -level of dolls are as laughable as you all seem to find them. May I not -want to bring myself, Marjorie Bartrand, up to the highest improvable -point as a human being? Great in mathematics I shall never be.’ - -‘I am thankful, indeed, to hear you say so,’ remarked Miss Tighe, with -an air of relief. - -‘But even the Seigneur is forced to confess I might become--a -fourth-rate classic! I know French and Spanish, Dogberry wise, by -nature. That must help me a long way on the road to Latin. And I -have learnt seventeen irregular Greek verbs--I’m not sure about the -aorists--and Mademoiselle le Patourel and I went straight through the -Apology of Plato, with Bohn’s crib.’ - -‘Poor Sophie le Patourel! You have outgrown her, at last, as you -outgrew all your previous dozen or more governesses.’ - -‘I don’t know about “outgrown.” Grandpapa ridiculed our attempting -Greek, from the first. You know the cruel way we Bartrands have of -ridiculing under cover of a compliment! Well, one day last week, -Mademoiselle le Patourel was reading the text of Plato aloud, not very -flowingly, poor good soul----’ - -‘Sophie le Patourel had better have kept to the millinery! Her mother -made up a cap like no woman in this island.’ - -‘And looking round she saw the Seigneur, outside the window, with a -wicked smile about that handsome old mouth of his as he listened. -Grandpapa made her the prettiest speech in the world about her -quantities, her fine classic tastes, and her pupil. And Mademoiselle le -Patourel never gave me another lesson.’ - -‘So now your scheme is to prepare for Girton by yourself. Ambitious, on -my word!’ - -‘My scheme,’ said Marjorie, lowering her voice and glancing over her -shoulder to make sure her terrible grandfather, Andros Bartrand, was -not within earshot--‘my scheme is to have a real University coach of my -own. A Cambridge B.A. at the present time residing in Guernsey.’ - -Cassandra Tighe started up from her seat. - -She was a spare, tall, conspicuous spinster, with a face all features, -a figure all angles, a manner all energy. Her hair was bleached, as -much by exposure to weather as by actual age. Her complexion was that -of a frosted apple. Her dress cost her fifteen pounds a year! - -Living alone with one woman-servant in a small Guernsey cottage, it may -be affirmed that Miss Tighe made as much of her life as any gentlewoman -of modest income, and more than sixty summers, in the British -dominions. Her intellectual resources were many. She was a thorough, an -inborn naturalist. She played the harp, and with no dilettante touch, -but as ladies early in the Victorian reign were wont to play that -instrument. She drew. On stormy evenings, when she knew her voice could -not penetrate the cottage window shutters, Cassandra confessed that she -sang--such songs as ‘I see them on their winding way,’ ‘The Captive -Knight,’ or ‘Zuleika.’ - -Her popularity and her influence were widespread. The figure of Miss -Tighe in her red fishing-cloak, with nets, hooks, jars, boxes, bottles, -overflowing from her village cart, was familiar throughout every nook -and corner of the island. If she had not had the sunniest of human -hearts you might have been tempted to dub her a gossip. That good old -English word, however, is associated in these days with a more than -doubtful spice of malice. And men and women who had known Cassandra -Tighe for thirty years averred that they had never heard an unkindly -judgment from her lips. She was simply a _raconteuse_--we lack the -English equivalent--a sympathiser in all the vivid varying doings -that constitute the lives of young and wholesomely happy people; a -chronicler of news; a delighter in love affairs. - -Simply this. And yet, not unfrequently, Cassandra Tighe made mischief. -Truthful, as far as conscious veracity went, to a fault, this excellent -lady’s memory was in a chronic state of jumble; so stored, it may be, -with polysyllabic names of plants, grubs, and fishes, that subsidiary -human details had to be packed in pell-mell, and take their chance -of coming out again untwisted. And, depend upon it, these tangled -well-meaners, not your deliberate villains, are the cause of half the -loves marred, the heartburnings, the jealousies, that make up the -actual dramas, the unwritten three-volume novels of this work-a-day -world! - -‘You are going to study with a tutor, Marjorie Bartrand! With a -Cambridge B.A.! With a MAN! What does your grandfather say?’ - -‘I have not told him the news, Miss Tighe. I grudge giving the Seigneur -such intense pleasure. “If you insist on learning Latin and Greek,” -grandpapa has always said, “learn them decently. Send these trashy -governesses to the winds. Be taught by a competent master.” Yes,’ cried -Marjorie, bringing down a very small hand with very great energy on her -knee, ‘I grudge grandpapa his triumph, but the truth must be told. Now -that I have caught him, I shall begin coaching with my B.A., my Cantab, -forthwith.’ - -Cassandra shook her head, mournfully incredulous. She was of an age -and of a disposition to which revolutionary ideas do not come with -ease. There was really no place in her mental fabric for the picture of -Marjorie Bartrand, here, inside the sacred walls of Tintajeux, reading -classics and mathematics with a University coach. - -‘I think it more than likely the plan will fall through. We have no -Cambridge tutors in the island, unless, indeed, you mean good old Mr. -Winkworth from the High Street Academy?’ - -‘I mean no one belonging to Guernsey. I mean a person who--ah, Miss -Tighe,’ the girl broke off, ‘I see that I must make full confession. -No knowing, as grandpapa says, when you once begin to speak the truth, -where the truth may land you. My B.A. is coming to arrange about terms -and hours this evening.’ - -‘And how did he--how did any stranger man hear of you?’ - -‘I put an advertisement in the _Chronique Guernésiaise_, three days -ago.’ - -‘Without consulting the Seigneur! Child--you did this thing? You gave -your name, unknown to your grandfather, in the public newspaper?’ - -‘I gave my name in the public newspaper, ma’am, and this afternoon I -got an answer to my advertisement. Wait one second and you shall hear -it.’ - -Marjorie drew a note from the breast of her frock, and with an air half -of mystery, half of triumph, began to read aloud:-- - - - ‘“Miller’s Hotel, Tuesday, June 14th. - - ‘“Geoffrey Arbuthnot, B.A., Cantab., is willing to read classics - and mathematics with Miss Bartrand. Terms, five shillings an hour. - Geoffrey Arbuthnot will call at Tintajeux Manoir, on approval, - between the hours of seven and eight this evening.”’ - - -‘Arbuthnot? Why, this is fatality.’ Cassandra discerned a special -providence, an inchoate stroke of destiny in most things. ‘I was -looking in at Miller’s Hotel last night. That reasonless creature, -Mrs. Miller, has one of her throats again, and I did so want her to -take some of my globules, but in vain. The ignorance of uneducated -people----’ - -‘And you saw my coach of the future,’ interrupted Marjorie, knowing -that when Miss Tighe got into such engrossing interests as throats and -globules, she must be brought back to her subject with a run. - -‘Yes, I saw Mr. Arbuthnot. A rough diamond, my dear, to speak truth.’ - -‘That is so much in his favour,’ said Marjorie, peeling, shred from -shred, the petals of a carnation that she held between her fingers. ‘I -want to do my work for Girton steadily, unvexed by the sight or thought -of that most irritating of God’s creatures--a beauty-man.’ - -Cassandra looked hard at the girl, remembering days, perhaps, when -a beauty-man, in the fullest sense of the contemptuous epithet, had -scathed rather than softened Marjorie Bartrand’s heart. - -‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, on the score of ugliness, will meet your -wishes, my dear. A rough-hewn Scotchman of the Carlyle stamp. A man -who looks as though he ought to do big things in the world. A man with -a scar--got, I am told, in a Quixotic pavement fight--traversing his -forehead.’ - -‘I like the sketch. Proceed.’ - -‘As regards Geoffrey Arbuthnot himself I have done. Walking at his -side, the evening light falling on her uncovered head and fair -face, was the loveliest sight these old eyes have beheld for many a -year--Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s wife.’ - -‘Geoffrey Arbuthnot--has he a wife?’ cried Marjorie in an altered -voice. ‘My Cambridge B.A.--married! I hope you are sure of your facts, -Miss Tighe. You know that sometimes--rarely, of course--mistakes occur -in our little bits of Sarnian intelligence. You are perfectly certain -that Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot is a married man?’ - -‘I have seen his wife. How can you ask me if I am certain? “A daughter -of the gods,”’ Cassandra quoted, “divinely tall,” fair-skinned, -large-eyed, with a look of repressed sadness about her mouth that makes -her bloom and youth the more noticeable. I was sitting in poor Mrs. -Miller’s parlour, endeavouring to argue the woman out of taking Doctor -Thorne’s drugs. As a human creature, a father, a husband, I have not -one word to say against Doctor Thorne----’ - -‘I have!’ exclaimed Marjorie Bartrand imperatively. ‘As a human -creature, a father, a husband--most especially as a husband--I have -everything imaginable to say against Doctor Thorne.’ - -‘As a physician I consider him a man-slaughterer. Yes,’ repeated -Cassandra, with pious warmth, ‘a man-slaughterer. Indeed, if I had sat -at the inquest on more than one of Doctor Thorne’s departed patients, -Heaven knows what verdict I should not have returned against him.’ - -‘But your story, Miss Tighe? The man like Carlyle; the beautiful wife. -Return, please, to the Arbuthnots.’ - -‘Well, just as I was trying to put reason into Mrs. Miller’s weak mind, -I was startled by the sight I told you of. This lovely young woman went -past the window, not two yards from where I sat.’ - -‘With her husband. Was she leaning on Mr. Arbuthnot’s arm?’ asked -Marjorie. ‘Did they look as if they had ever had a quarrel? Was she in -white--bridal looking? Did you hear them murmur to each other? Miss -Tighe, be dramatic! At Tintajeux we have not the joy, remember, of -eventful living.’ - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot was dressed in black. Her hair lay in short blonde -waves on her forehead. She wore not a flower, not an ornament about -her person. As they passed the window her husband remarked that he -considered the roast duck and peas of which they had partaken for -dinner were excellent.’ - -‘So much,’ said Marjorie, affecting cynicism, ‘for a chapter of married -romance.’ - -‘Ah, that has been. The key of our common life is C major--roast duck -and green peas--whatever accidental sharps and flats we may deviate -into occasionally. The romance has been. I was overcome by the young -woman’s singular beauty,’ went on Cassandra. ‘I asked her name, and was -rewarded by hearing such an account of them as warmed my heart. The -girl belonged to the humblest class of life--a gardener’s daughter, -or something of the kind; and Arbuthnot, while he was still an -undergraduate at Cambridge, married her.’ - -‘Geoffrey Arbuthnot?’ - -Marjorie repeated the name softly; a question in her tone rather than -in her words. - -‘Geoffrey, I presume; that is to say, most decidedly and beyond -question, Geoffrey,’ answered Cassandra, with the fatal certitude of -inaccuracy. ‘I am the more positive because I felt a kind of love -at first sight for the two young people, and made Mrs. Miller give -me details. A party of Cambridge men were staying in the hotel when -first the Arbuthnots arrived; and some of these men knew the husband -by sight. He is looked upon as rather eccentric among his fellows. I -am afraid, Marjorie, whenever a man leads a nobler life than other -people the tendency of the day is to call him eccentric. And Geoffrey -Arbuthnot’s life must be very noble.’ - -‘Because he had the courage of his opinions in choosing a wife?’ - -‘Not that only. Arbuthnot is a student still at the Cambridge medical -school, and gives such time as he has over from study to the most -miserable people in the Cambridge streets. Not proselytising, not -preaching--for my part I don’t believe much in a preaching young man,’ -said old Cassandra, whose opinions tended towards the broad; ‘simply -binding up their wounds as men and women. Doing the Master’s work, not -talking about it.’ - -‘And his beautiful wife helps him!’ exclaimed Marjorie, her sensitive -Southern face aglow. ‘Ah, Miss Tighe, thank you again and again for -your visit and for telling me this news. In my foolish, trivial, wasted -existence, what a splendid bit of good fortune that I should have the -chance of knowing two such people!’ - -Cassandra Tighe looked a little uncomfortable. She prided herself on -her freedom from the prejudices of her sex; within limits, really -did startle her friends, sometimes, by the free exercise of private -judgment. But the liberality of a white-haired lady, whose sixty years -of life have run in the safest, narrowest, conventional trammels, -may differ widely from the liberality of a hot head, an eager, -self-forgetting young heart like Marjorie Bartrand’s. - -‘It will be a fine thing for your Girton prospects, capital for your -Greek and Latin, to read with Mr. Arbuthnot. But I gathered--you must -take this as I mean it, Marjorie Bartrand; you have no mother to tell -you things--I gathered from different small hints that Mrs. Arbuthnot -is not exactly in society. That she is good and sweet and honest,’ said -Cassandra, ‘you have only to look in her face to know; still if I were -in Marjorie Bartrand’s place, I should wait to see what the island -ladies did in the matter of calling.’ - -Marjorie paled round the lips--sign infallible, throughout the Bartrand -race, of rising tempest. Cassandra, knowing the family storm-signals, -prepared to take a hasty departure. - -‘I forget time always under the Tintajeux cedars. And there is plenty -for me to do at home. To-morrow Annette and I are off to Sark for five -days’ shore-work. Our talk about your new tutor has been an interesting -one.’ - -‘Especially the clause that prohibits my calling on the new tutor’s -wife!’ - -‘There is no prohibition at all. The Seigneur might safely leave -his card on Mr. Arbuthnot. It would be a very pretty piece of -condescension, and of course a gentleman calling upon a gentleman can -lead to nothing,’ added Cassandra, rather ignobly temporising. - -‘Exactly. Thank you very much, Miss Tighe, for your advice. As you say, -I have no mother to enlighten me as to the dark mysteries of calling -or not calling. And as I consider the island ladies too frisky for -pioneers----’ - -‘Marjorie! Our archdeaconess, our irreproachable Guernsey matrons, -_frisky_?’ - -‘I shall just have to act for myself. As Mrs. Arbuthnot, you tell -me, has all good qualities written on her face, and knowing the fine -things we do know of her husband’s life, it must be a credit to any -woman--above all to an archdeaconess--to make their acquaintance.’ - -‘Still, if she is unused----’ - -‘Oh, I shall not put myself forward. If their merit is unrecognised, -if narrow-minded, irreproachable people hold back from calling on -them, I can understand that there may be shyness on my tutor’s part in -mentioning his wife. I shall simply bide his time. I shall be silent -until he chooses, himself, to speak to me of Mrs. Arbuthnot.’ - -‘That will be wise. Treat him, honest gentleman, as though one had not -heard of his marriage. Meantime we can find out if our leading ladies, -Madame Corbie especially, intend to notice her----’ - -‘But in my own self, I honour Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,’ interrupted -Marjorie, her face colouring like a rose at sunset. ‘I admire, honour, -_love_ him! I wish the world were full of such men. I hold out both -hands in fellowship to him at this moment.’ - -Cassandra, for once, showed prescience worthy of her name. Cassandra -argued no more. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -A TRINITY BALL - - -Geoffrey Arbuthnot was a man of whom none could say that Fortune had -been to him a too fond mistress. - -As a four-foot high boy, with shrewd observant Scottish eyes, with -a Scottish mind already beginning to hold its own ideas as to the -universe, he was sent, through the reluctant generosity of an uncle, to -a London public school. In those days sanitary and social reforms for -overtaxed city schoolboys were still inchoate. Each boy must look after -himself, make personal acquaintance with facts, with the cut and thrust -of human circumstance, take his recreation on the London pavements, -sink or swim as he listed. - -Geoffrey Arbuthnot, before he was ten had made acquaintance with a -great many facts, all hard ones. He had no pocket-money, no tips. -His holidays had to be paid for out of the same reluctant uncle’s -purse--father and mother sleeping in a Perthshire kirkyard ere Geff -could well remember aught--and were enjoyed under the roof of such -persons as endure homeless schoolboys, on systems of rigid economy, as -a business. - -Hard-working to excess, perhaps because in work he found a friend, -pushed into dead-language grooves because the masters sought to keep up -the dead-language reputation of the school, Geoffrey Arbuthnot awoke -one morning at the age of eighteen a fine classic. He was sent up to -compete for a Cambridge scholarship, won it, and, true to tradition, -began reading, his heart warmed by the unwonted feeling of success, for -his Classical Tripos. - -Considering that every aptitude he possessed lay in an opposite -direction to classical study, one can scarcely look on the nine -Cambridge terms that followed as fortunate. The square man did his best -to fill the round hole faithfully, his own squareness decreased not. -And then, in the midst of this Greek and Latin epoch, came his love -affairs--I retract the plural: his one overwhelming passion, ardent, -pure as was ever love felt by man for woman; a passion which paled, -ere he could well grasp it, into shadow, and which still--yes, in the -Guernsey sunshine of this June day--rendered his happiness paradoxical, -just at the age when happiness should be fullest, most complete. - -Geoffrey Arbuthnot had not been smiled on by Fortune. Nevertheless, -he possessed gifts which for the simple hourly manufacture of human -contentment are better worth than the bigger favours of the gods. -Life interested him. If he had had few artificial pleasures, he had -exhausted no pleasures at all. In regard of nature, his sensations were -vivid as a child’s. Walking forth to Tintajeux Manoir at an hour when -the crisp blue and gold of afternoon had reached declension, Geoffrey -felt youth run in his veins like wine. The hay and clover smells from -the newly-cut fields; the ‘kiss sweet! kiss sweet!’ of the thrushes; -the verdured hedges touched still by Spring’s immaturity, though the -flower of the May was past; the peeps at every turn of purple salt -water; the road-side ferns through which, knee-deep, he waded; the -yellowing honeysuckle sprays which brushed his face; the streamlets -slipping seaward away, through channels thick with cresses and -forget-me-nots; ay, even the whiffs of wood-smoke from the farmhouse -chimneys, the incomprehensible Froissart French in which he heard the -haymakers chattering to each other over their bread and cider,--all -the low, melodious notes of this homely landscape affected him with a -physical and keen delight. - -His life, since remotest baby-days, when he walked holding his mother’s -hand in blithe, fair Scotland, had been passed among streets and among -the human creatures who inhabit them. The pleasure of the Bethnal Green -arab who, at six years old, first handles a living daisy, differs, in -degree only, from Geoffrey’s as he trudged along through the Guernsey -lanes, his mind vaguely fixed on Tintajeux Manoir and on the chill -reception from his future pupil which there awaited him. - -Would Miss Bartrand’s thunder glances be discharged from black eyes -or blue ones? Geoffrey had reached a stretch of undulating rushy -common at the extreme western point of the island when this question -presented itself. Ahead was a vista of mouldering banks, gay in their -shroud of blue-flowered, ivy-leaved campanula, and with here and there -a jutting tip of granite, crimson, by reason of its glittering mica, -in the sunset. Above hovered a falcon, almost lost to view against the -largely-vaulted, bountifully-coloured evening sky. - -Interpreting Froissart French by such lights as he possessed, Geoffrey -learned from an ancient goat-tending peasant dame that a neighbouring -block of stone building, partially visible on the left through oak and -larch plantations, was Tintajeux Manoir. Would the girl who awaited -his visit there be blonde or dark? Something Mrs. Thorne had hinted -about a Spanish mother. According to all mournful human probabilities, -the heiress would be swarthy; a black-eyed, atrociously clever-looking -young person, he thought, with shining hair drawn tightly from her -forehead, with stiff linen collar and wristbands, with a dignified -manner and inkstained fingers. Also, despite her seventeen summers, -with a leaning towards stoutness. - -Geoffrey disrelished the picture projected before his mental sight -about as much as in his present buoyant physical state he could -disrelish anything. Consulting his watch, he found with relief that -he had reached the outskirts of Tintajeux five-and-twenty minutes too -early. There would be time, amidst this delicious wealth of atmosphere -and hue that flooded him around, for a quiet smoke before encountering -the terrible presence of Miss Marjorie Bartrand! - -A suspicion that the heiress’s peppery temper might be roused if one’s -jacket smelt of tobacco rather heightened the alacrity with which Geff -Arbuthnot threw himself down on the fragrant sward and produced his -pipe and pouch. The pipe was a black, ferociously Bohemian-looking -‘bulldog,’ the pouch a delicate mass of silk embroidery and velvet. As -he drew forth--alas! that I should have to say it, his strong-flavoured -cavendish, Geoffrey thought, as it was his custom to think four or five -times each day, of the tender friendly woman’s hand that worked this -pouch for him--Dinah’s! - -Poor Dinah! When he saw her last, an hour before, her hands were -clasped together with the half-apathetic gesture of a person to whom -moral suffering has become a habit. A basket of coloured wools stood -before her on the table, ready for her evening’s cross stitching. -Round the corners of her lips was the look of silent endurance which -had become so painfully familiar to Geoffrey’s sight. And all this -for what? There was no great sin, surely, in Gaston’s putting himself -at once under Mrs. Thorne’s easy guidance. The happiest households -one hears of, thought Geoffrey, striking a vesuvian, are those in -which the broadest law of liberty obtains. Does not an artist, more -than other men, want change, professionally? Dinah should know that a -creator, of the cheap popularity order, as Gaston with his pleasant -self-depreciation would say, must have a constant supply of straw for -his brickmaking; must have material, ‘stuff,’ must see brisk lights, -sharp shadows that the calm twilight of domestic happiness does not -yield. And yet.... - -It was that constant, unspoken ‘and yet’ in Geoffrey’s mind which, up -to the present point, had rendered the close friendship of the three -Arbuthnots a paradox. - -Leaning back against a little thyme-grown knoll, his hands clasped -behind his head, Geff looked, with eyes that had learned the secret -of most common things in Nature, at the moorland weeds around him. -Here were graceful quake grasses in plenty, and waving sedges, and -the poet’s wood-spurge, three cups in one. Close at his right hand -grew a stalk of rush crowned by four or five brownish insignificant -flowers, the least lovely outwardly of all the brilliant Guernsey -flora. Well, and it came to pass that the neighbourhood of these -degenerate, colourless petals altered Geff’s mood. He thought of the -inherited mysteries and dooms of human life. He called to mind the -sordid prose of the Cambridge outskirts, and the wretched men and -women, forced deserters from the army of progress, who lived in them. -He called to mind his own often despairing work, the struggles, hard -and single-handed, of his manhood, his youth. His youth--ah! and with -that the moorland scene faded. The years since he first saw Dinah -spread themselves out scrollwise, suddenly illuminated, before Geff -Arbuthnot’s mind. - -How well he remembered himself a lad of twenty! How well he remembered -the hawthorn-scented evening of their first meeting! He was walking -alone through the one street of Lesser Cheriton, had passed its -rectory, its seven public-houses, was honestly thinking of his -approaching ‘Mays’ and of nothing in the world beyond, when a cottage -casement window opened just above his head, and looking up he saw -her--unornamented, in russet gown and apron blue, a jug of water in her -white hand ready for the thirsty row of mignonette and geranium slips -in the window-box. - -He loved her, there and then. It was an old, a sacred story now, and -Geoffrey questioned no syllable of the text as he scanned it quickly -through. He took her picture back with him to his dark, book-strewn -scholar’s attic in John’s, and that night he dreamed of her. Next -morning he walked forth to Lesser Cheriton at the same hour, passed the -rectory, the seven public-houses, and again caught glimpses of Dinah’s -head as she sat, with a very fat old lady, alas! of a very humble -class, in a close little parlour sewing, the lamp lighted, the windows -fast shut, all the glories of the outside June night ignored. - -The same kind of mute worship went on the next evening and the next. -Towards the end of the week the old lady of a very humble class -accosted him. Geff could remember the thrill of that moment yet. Away -through the garden gloom did he not descry the flutter of a russet -dress, the outline of a girlish head downbent over a bush of opening -roses? The young gentleman would pardon her for taking such a liberty, -but as he seemed fond of the country he might care sometimes for a -bunch of cut flowers. She was a lone widow and lived too far off to -send in her garden stuff to the Cambridge market except in wall-fruit -time. If she could dispose, friendly like, of a few cut flowers it -would be a little profit to her. Some of the University gentlemen, she -had heard, dressed up their rooms, like a show, with flowers, and the -roses and carnations this term were coming on wonderful. If the young -gentleman would please to walk round the garden and see? - -The young gentleman walked round the garden. He bought as many flowers -as his arms could carry away. He learned that the girl’s name was Dinah -Thurston, that she was ‘apprenticed to the dressmaking,’ and had come -up all the way out of Devonshire to spend a month’s holiday with the -old lady, her father’s sister. The Devonshire burr in Dinah’s speech -disenchanted him no more than did an occasional lapse or two in Dinah’s -grammar. When is a stripling of his age disenchanted by anything save -frowns or rivals? Geoffrey held original ideas on more than one burning -social subject, had made up his mind--on the first evening he saw Dinah -Thurston--that it was a duty for him and for every man to marry young. - -And he cared not one straw either for want of money, or for plebeian -birth. - -Good, because healthy blood flowed in this girl’s veins, thought -Geff--the incipient physiologist. Sweet temper was on her lips. A -stainless woman’s soul looked forth from those fair eyes. She was -above, only too much above him in every excellence, inward or external. -What chance had he with his plain face, his shy student’s manner, of -winning such a jewel as Dinah Thurston’s love? What hope was there that -she would wait until the day, necessarily distant, when he would be -able to work for a wife’s support? - -He became a daily caller at the cottage, and it is hard to suppose -that both Dinah and Dinah’s protector were quite blind to the truth. -Garden stuff was ever Geff’s ostensible object. He wanted cut flowers -for himself, for an acquaintance who could not walk as far as Lesser -Cheriton. He wanted radishes, cresses,--so different, he declared, to -the stringy salad of College butteries! He wanted to know when the -strawberries were likely to ripen. - -He wanted some daily excuse for gazing on Dinah Thurston’s face. - -Hard, I repeat, to think that the feminine instinct, however -unsophisticated, would make no guess, as time went on, at the state -of the poor young undergraduate’s heart. But this is just the kind -of point at which good women, in every class, are prone to innocent -casuistry. At all events, Dinah Thurston and her aunt gave no outward -sign of intelligence. The old lady took her daily shillings and -sixpences with commercial gravity. Dinah cut the flowers or tied up -little hunches of cress and radishes in a convenient form for Geff to -carry. - -So, as in a new garden of Eden without a threat of the serpent’s -coming, matters progressed for yet another fortnight. - -Lesser Cheriton lies at a junction of rough Cambridgeshire lanes; -a village girt round by blossoming orchards in May, by sheets of -black water or blacker ice in December. In addition to its rectory -and seven public-houses, it contains a score or two of the thatched, -high-shouldered cottages common to this part of England. Being -untraversed by any of the Maid’s Causeways, Lesser Cheriton lies -somewhat out of the ordinary undergraduate track. Geoffrey had no -intimate friend in the University save Gaston Arbuthnot, whose time was -quite otherwise occupied than in watching the comings and goings of -his simple scholar cousin. He was known to be a hard-working man who -took his daily walk from duty and without companionship. But for an -after-dinner stupidity--a turning missed--the little love drama would -probably have unfolded itself with commonplace speed, and Geoffrey have -gained a wife, for I cannot think Dinah’s unoccupied fancy would, at -the age of eighteen, have been hard to win. The turning, however, _was_ -missed--thus. - -Just as Geff, his hands filled with flowers, was parting from the -girl, one hushed and radiant evening, there came a rush of wheels--he -could hear it now, dreaming over the past on this Guernsey moorland, -and the blood rose to Geff’s face at the remembrance--a rush of wheels -down the slumbering street of Lesser Cheriton. For a few seconds the -sound was muffled by the ivied churchyard wall where the road wound -abruptly. Then, at a slapping pace, trotted past a high-stepping bay, -of which Gaston Arbuthnot was for the moment the possessor, also Gaston -Arbuthnot, in his well-appointed cart, returning to Alma Mater, with a -brace of rich Jesus friends, after spending the afternoon at Ely. - -Lesser Cheriton does not lie on the road between Ely and Cambridge. -Lesser Cheriton, we may boldly say, lies on the road nowhere. But these -young gentlemen were in the adventure-seeking, after-dinner mood, when -a devious turning of any kind is taken with pleasant ease. And here, -on their wrong road, and in Lesser Cheriton’s one street, they found -themselves. - -There was daylight lingering still in the low fields of Cambridgeshire -sky. There was a young May moon, too, whose yellowish silver caused -the outlines of Dinah Thurston’s head and throat to stand out in waxen -relief against the dusky arbutus hedge that divided the cottage garden -and the road. - -Gaston Arbuthnot turned sharply round for an instant and saw her. -Shouting a cheery ‘Hullo!’ to his cousin, he drove on, giving a little -valedictory wave of his whip ere he disappeared. And Geff, the glory -shorn suddenly, unaccountably from his Eden, bade Dinah good-night, and -started on his four-mile trudge back to Cambridge. - -It was ten days before he again smelt the mignonette and roses of the -cottage, or slaked his soul’s thirst by gazing on Dinah’s face. By -early post next morning came a letter saying that the uncle to whose -reluctantly generous hand he owed the hard All of his life lay at the -point of death. The old man was sound of mind still, and desired his -nephew’s presence. A lawyer wrote the letter, and it was added that Mr. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot would well consult his worldly interests by obeying -the wishes of the dying man without delay. - -It was one of those crises when all our present and future good seems -to resolve itself into a desolate ‘perhaps.’ Geoffrey’s debts were few. -Still, he had debts. The possibility of remaining up his nine terms at -Cambridge might depend upon the will of this stern-hearted uncle who, -dying, craved his presence. And yet, in obeying the summons, might he -not be risking dearer things than worldly success--jeopardising hopes -which already threw a trembling light over his loveless life? - -He had spoken no syllable of his passion to Dinah, was too -self-distrustful to tell his secret by means so matter-of-fact as a -sheet of paper and the post. And so, like many another timid suitor, -Geoffrey Arbuthnot elected to play a losing game. With immense fidelity -in his breast, but without a word of explanation, he set off by noon of -that day to London--not ignorant that Gaston’s eyes and those of Dinah -Thurston had already met. - -A girl’s vanity, if not her heart, might well have been wounded by -such conduct. In after times Geoffrey Arbuthnot, musing over his lost -happiness, would apply such medicine to his sore spirit as the limited -pharmacopœia of disappointment can offer. If he had had a man’s metal, -if, instead of flying like a schoolboy, he had said to her, on that -evening when Gaston drove past them at the gate, ‘Take me or reject me, -but choose!’--had he thus spoken, Geoffrey used to think, he might have -won her. - -To-night, on the Guernsey waste-land, with heaven so broad above, with -earth so friendly, the past seemed to return to him without effort -of his own and without sting. The fortnight he passed in London, the -unknown relatives who beset the sick man’s bed, the scene amidst a -London churchyard’s gloom, wherein he, Geff, in hired crape, was chief -mourner, the reading of the will, the return to Cambridge--all this, at -first, floated before his vision in grey monotone, as scenes will do in -which one has played a spectator’s rather than an actor’s part. Then in -a moment (Geoffrey’s half-closed eyes scanning the moor’s horizon, the -soft airs blowing on his face) there came upon him a flash of light. -It was so intolerably clear that every leaf and flower and pebble of -a cottage garden in far-off Cambridgeshire stood out before him with -a vividness that was poignant, a vividness that had in it the stab of -sudden bodily pain. - -Springing to his feet, Geoffrey resolved to brood over the irrevocable -no longer. He emptied the ashes from his pipe, then replaced it, with -Dinah’s delicate morsel of handiwork, in his pocket. He took out his -watch. It was more than time for him to be off; and after a farewell -glance at the campanula-shrouded knolls, Geff started briskly in the -direction of Tintajeux Manoir. But the ghosts would not be laid. There -were yet two pictures, a garden scene, an interior, upon which, whether -he walked or remained still, Geoffrey Arbuthnot felt himself forced, in -the spirit, to look. - -The garden scene, first: time, seven of a June evening, sky and -atmosphere rosy as these that surrounded him now. Thirsting to see -Dinah’s face, Geoffrey walked straight away from Cambridge station, -he remembered, on his arrival from London. He was dusty and wearied -when he drew near the village. The rectory, the seven public-houses -of Lesser Cheriton, looked more blankly uninhabited than usual. Some -barn-door fowls, a few shining-necked pigeons, strutted up and down -the High Street, its only occupants. When he reached the cottage no -one answered his ring. The aunt was evidently absent. Dinah, thought -Geoffrey, would be busy among her flowers, or might have taken her -sewing to the orchard that lay at the bottom of the garden. He had been -told, on some former visit, to go round, if the bell was unanswered, -to a side entrance, lift the kitchen-latch, and if the door was -unbolted, enter. He did so now; passed through the kitchen, burnished -and neat as though it came out of a Dutch picture--through the tiny, -cool-smelling dairy, and out into the large shadows of the garden -beyond. - -Silence met him everywhere. - -The roses, only budding a fortnight ago, had now yearned into June’s -deep crimson. The fruit-tree leaves had grown long and grayish, forming -an impenetrable screen which shut out familiar perspectives, and gave -Geoffrey a sense of strangeness that he liked not. Under the south -wall, where the apricots already looked like yellowing, was a turf path -leading you fieldward, through the entire length of the garden. - -Along this path, with unintentionally muffled footsteps, Geoffrey -Arbuthnot trod. When he reached the hedge that formed the final -boundary between garden and orchard a man’s voice fell on his ear. He -stopped, transfixed, as one might do to whom the surgeon’s verdict of -‘No hope’ has been delivered with cruel unexpectedness. - -The voice was his cousin Gaston’s. - -Geoffrey had no need to advance farther. In his black clothes, among -the trees’ thick leafage, he was himself invisible, could see by the -slightest bending of his neck as much as the world in the way of -personal misery had on that summer evening to display to him. - -For there, at the entrance to the orchard, stood Dinah Thurston, the -glow that lingers after sunset throwing up the fresh beauty of her -head and figure, and there stood Gaston. They were face to face, hands -holding hands, eyes looking into eyes. And even as Geoffrey watched -them his cousin bent forward and kissed Dinah Thurston’s unresisting -lips. - -Youth, the possibility of every youthful joy, died out in that moment’s -anguish from Geff Arbuthnot’s heart. But the stuff the man was made of -showed itself. More potent than all juice of grape is pain for evoking -the best and the worst from human souls. Desolate, bemocked of fate, -he turned away, the door of his earthly Paradise shutting on him, -walked back to the scholar’s attic in John’s, whose full loneliness -he had never realised till now, and during two hours’ space gave way -to such abandonment as even the bravest men know under the wrench of -sudden and total loss. - -During two hours’ space! Then the lad gathered up his strength and -faced the position. As regarded himself, the path lay plain. He must -work up to the collar, hot and hard, leaving himself no time to feel -the parts that were galled and wrung. But the others? At the point -which all had reached, what was his, Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s, duty in -respect of them? It was his duty, he thought--after a somewhat blind -and confused fashion, doubtless--to stand like a brother by this woman -who did not love him. Stifling every baser feeling towards Gaston, it -was his duty to further, if he could, the happiness of them both. The -sun should not go down on his despair. He would see his rival, would -visit Dinah Thurston’s lover to-night. - -Gaston Arbuthnot, a man of means, which he considerably lived beyond, -occupied charmingly-furnished rooms in the first court of Jesus. -Peacock’s feathers and sunflowers had not, happily for saner England, -been then invented. A human creature could profess artistic leanings, -yet run no risk of being expected by his fellows to live up to a dado! -Gaston’s surroundings seemed rather the haphazard outcome of personal -taste than the orthodox result of a full purse and adherence to the -upholstery prophets. They had the negative merit of sincerity. - -Walking with quick steps towards Tintajeux, how distinctly those -rose-lit Jesus rooms, the last in the series of pictures, came back -upon Geoffrey’s sense! He remembered an unfinished sketch in clay -upon the mantelpiece; a Lilith, with languid eyes and limbs, with -faultless passionless mouth, with coils of loosened hair; charms how -unlike those of the demure Madonna in the cottage at Lesser Cheriton! -He remembered the smell of hothouse flowers, the like of which at all -seasons of the year was wont to hang about Gaston Arbuthnot’s rooms; -remembered a pile of yellow-backed French books on a writing-table, -also a framed photograph of the prettiest actress of the day exactly -fronting the easy-chair in which his cousin Gaston was pleased to -affirm that he ‘read.’ - -Geoffrey Arbuthnot had to wait some minutes alone, his cousin’s level, -self-contained voice informing him from an inner room that he, Gaston, -was dressing for the last ball of the term, given by Trinity. Would -Geff not have come to that Trinity ball, by the bye? Ah, no. Mourning, -weepers. Decent respect--cette chère Madame Grundy. And so the uncle -had cut up decently! Nothing for him, of course. Kind of wretch whom -uncles always would regard as belonging to the criminal classes. Had a -mind to dispute the will, ruin Geoffrey as well as himself by throwing -the whole thing into Chancery! - -Then Gaston’s airy step crossed the room to a waltz tune that he -whistled. A curtain was drawn back. The two men whose future relations -were to be one long paradox stood opposite each other. - -Gaston Arbuthnot was in evening dress; his white cravat tied to -perfection, a tiny moss rose in his button-hole; a pair of unfolded -lavender gloves were in his hand. His handsome ‘Bourbon’ face looked -its handsomest. No traces of perturbed conscience marred his gracious -and débonnaire mien. A man may surely find himself deep in a flirtation -with some soft-eyed village Phillis, and at the same time like to dance -with as many pretty girls in his own class of life as choose to smile -on him! - -He advanced with outstretched hand. - -‘I congratulate you, Geff.’ - -The uncle had left Geoffrey a sum that for the forwarding of the frugal -student’s worldly ambition was more than adequate--one thousand pounds. - -‘And I,’ said Geff, his ice-cold fingers returning his cousin’s grasp -firmly, ‘congratulate you!’ - -There must have been some modulation in his voice, some look on his -haggard face, that supplemented these four words, strongly. - -Gaston Arbuthnot changed colour. - -‘What, on Lilith?’ he asked, shifting away, and bending over his -unfinished sketch. ‘It is to be good, like all my things, some day. A -new block in the pavement of the road to Hades! At present this left -arm, above the elbow, is, as you see, a libel on anatomy.’ - -Geff followed him. He rested his hand on his cousin’s shoulder with -such emphasis that Gaston Arbuthnot had no choice but to look up. - -‘I congratulate you,’ he repeated very low, but with a concentrated -energy that infused meaning into each syllable ‘I congratulate you upon -your engagement to Dinah Thurston.’ - - -So these visions of the past stood out; not merely with rigid -correctness of form, but with colour, with fragrance, with the stir -of human passion, the ring of human voices, to give them vitality. -By the time the last one had vanished--the rose-shaded lamps, the -actress in her frame, the clay-sketched Lilith, the yellow-backed -novels dissolving into the actual grays and greens of this Guernsey -moorland--Geoffrey found himself ringing, with a somewhat quickened -pulse, despite his indifference to every form of feminine caprice, at -the front bell of Tintajeux Manoir. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -MARJORIE - - -The door was opened by a French serving-man, who bestowed on Geoffrey -a bow such as valets used to copy from their masters in days when the -first country in Europe possessed a manner. Had not Sylvestre made -the Grand Tour with the Reverend Andros Bartrand more than half a -century before the present time! He was clad in a faded livery of puce -and silver, wore long white locks that in this uncertain light gave -Geoffrey the notion of a pigtail and hair powder, and had a wrinkled -astute face, in which official decorum and a certain thin twinkle of -humour, if not of malice, contended together agreeably for precedence. - -‘Monsieur demands these ladies?’--from her earliest years Marjorie -Bartrand had received a kind of spurious chaperonage through this -plural phrase of Sylvestre’s. ‘Will Monsieur give himself then the -trouble to enter?’ - -The look of the old manoir was cheery; its atmosphere was sun-warmed. -And still the prospect of his approaching ordeal chilled Geoffrey’s -courage. The thought of standing before Miss Bartrand on approval -caused him to pass a bad five minutes, as he paused in the -drawing-room, whether Sylvestre had ushered him, for her coming. - -Could the initial letters of his terrible pupil’s character be -deciphered, as one constantly hears it asserted of women, through the -outward and visible presence of the house she inhabited? - -The Tintajeux drawing-room was over-vast for its height. It opened -towards the south, upon the cedar-shaded lawn; it communicated through -a double row of fluted pillars with a smaller apartment towards the -west. The uncarpeted floors were of oak, black from age, fragrantly -and honestly beeswaxed, as floors used to be when Sylvestre was a -boy. Nothing like your gray-headed butler for keeping up conservative -habits of industry among the servants of a younger generation! Over the -chimneypiece and doors were half moons, those graceful ‘lunettes’ of -a hundred years ago, carved in bas-relief and tinted in flesh colour. -The lace window draperies, looking as though they must fall to pieces -at a touch, were relieved by an occasional fold of rich-hued crimson -silk. Venetian mirrors hung at all available points along the tarnished -white and gold walls. On either side the mantelpiece were miniatures of -eighteenth-century Bartrands in velvets and brocades, no prefiguring -of destiny looking out from their unconcerned, half-closed patrician -eyes. In the centre stood a grand buhl clock, its design a band of -Cupids hurling down rose leaves on some unseen object (the guillotine, -perhaps) behind the dial. - -In each of the deeply bowed windows stood a Petit Trianon gilt basket. -They were full of odorous roses, pressed close together, as cunningly -set roses ought to be, and showing no green between their damask and -pink and faintly yellow petals. - -As Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s eyes took in one after another of these -details, the room seemed to him a piece of special pleading for the -whole past Bartrand race. He stood here in a world that knew no better! -He was amidst the shades of a generation which had heroically paid the -price of its misdeeds. And the fancy, true or false, predisposed him -towards the present owners of Tintajeux. They had at least, he felt, -the fascination of a pathetic background. Rare charm to an imaginative -man whose business has led him among the dusty tracks of our modern, -low-horizoned English life! - -Moving to a window, Geff looked forth across lawn, garden, orchard, -upon as fair a sweep of sapphire as ever gladdened human eyes; for here -in the heart of the Channel you got beyond the North Sea’s yellowish -green, and have real deep ocean blue. In the foreground, so near indeed -that Geff instinctively stepped back within shelter of the window’s -embrasure, a clerically-dressed tall man was slowly pacing to and fro -on the grass. Somewhat rakishly placed on one side his head was a black -velvet skull-cap. An after-dinner glow shone on Andros Bartrand’s -bronzed four-score-year-old face; between his lips was a cigar. A -couple of excellently-bred brindled terriers slunk at his heels. - - - ‘Ho, Œdipus, - Why thus delay our going?’ - - -Taking his cigar from his mouth, the Seigneur of Tintajeux recited a -passage from Sophocles in the Oxford Greek accents of sixty years ago, -looking about him with the leisurely physical enjoyment of the moment -that was more common, probably, at the time of his own youth--a time -when Göthe still walked upon the face of the earth--than it is now. - -Something towering, individual, audacious, was in the old figure. Geff -watched the Reverend Andros with admiration. A man so richly vitalised -that he could smoke an after-dinner cigar, declaim Greek verse for his -own pleasure at eighty--a man who had so proved himself superior to the -common shocks and reverses of human life--should be one worth knowing, -even though his fine moral equipoise must perforce be studied in the -murky and dubious atmosphere engendered by a girl’s temper. - -Tintajeux Manoir with its weather-bleached walls, its courtly, faded -drawing-room, its half lights, its rose scents, had already laid -hold of Geoffrey’s imagination. The Seigneur with his antiquated -Greek accent, his wise, subtly ironical old face, reciting Sophocles -under this late sky, had for him a personal interest. If only the one -jarring note need not be struck! If the capricious heiress were but a -full-fledged graduate, a resident M.A. say, within the distant walls of -St. Margaret’s Hall, or of Girton! - -Scarcely had the thought crossed Geff Arbuthnot’s mind when he heard -a door behind him open and close. Turning quickly, he saw, to his -pleasure, a child dressed in a white and red cotton frock, confined -by a bright-coloured ribbon round the slim waist, and who advanced to -him--a pair of brown, beautifully-carved small hands, outheld. - -‘You are ten minutes late, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’ The faintest -un-English accent was traceable in her voice. ‘But you are welcome, a -thousand times over, to Tintajeux.’ - -Now Geff was a veritable child lover, and if this young person had only -been two years younger than she looked, he would, likelier than not, -have finished several of his life’s best chances by lifting her in his -arms and kissing her on the spot. With a little princess of thirteen -or fourteen one must be on one’s guard--for the first five minutes, at -least, of acquaintance. - -He took her offered hands and held them, enjoying the arch vivacity of -that upturned face, brimful of sunshine as a water lily’s cup; a face -good as it was sweet. - -‘Poor Cambridge B.A. Poor abashed big coach!’ thought Marjorie -Bartrand. ‘The worthy man must be used to cold receptions, I should -say, on his wife’s account. Now, let me set him at his ease.’ - -Crossing to one of the Trianon baskets she softly signed to Geoffrey to -follow. - -‘Do you see that “Bon Espoir,” Mr. Arbuthnot?’ A hawk moth hovered, at -the moment, with poised vibrating wings above the mass of roses. ‘In -Spain we have a superstition about the “Bon Espoir” when he enters a -house. If he is powdered with black we say, Bad luck! If he is powdered -with gold, Good! Ah,’ clapping her hands, ‘and our “Bon Espoir” is -gold! We are to be lucky, sir, you and I, in our dealings. Now I shall -tell you another Spanish saying. “To begin a friendship with a gift is -a happy omen.” Take this rose from me.’ - -And with a movement of quick grace, most artless, most unconventional, -one of the finest roses in the basket was transferred by the pupil’s -hand to her future master’s button-hole. - -‘Grazias, muy Grazias,’ said Geff, hazarding the only two words of -Spanish he knew. - -Marjorie clasped her hands over her ears. - -‘You pronounce frightfully ill, though the words are true, Mr. -Arbuthnot. Decent people say the “z” in grazias sharp. They say -“mou-y.” Yes, sir,--and although you do teach me classics and -mathematics--Spanish and French are my natural languages, and I shall -always think myself free to give you a little lesson in pronunciation.’ - -‘Classics and mathematics!’ stammered Geoffrey Arbuthnot, reddening -as the unwelcome image of Miss Bartrand was brought back to him. ‘I -believed--I mean, my impression was----’ - -He stopped short. - -‘English University manners are not good,’ thought Marjorie, shaking -her head, pityingly. ‘But I like my poor B.A.--yes, just because -he is shy and rugged, and has that ugly scar across his forehead. -I respect him for his unpolished manner. I will call on his wife -to-morrow! My impression was,’ she remarked aloud, showing such a gleam -of ivory teeth in her smile, as rendered a large and rather square -mouth lovely--‘my impression was that I advertised in the _Chronique -Guernésiaise_ for some one good enough to help me in my attempts at -work, and that Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot offered to be that some one. I -hope, sir, you do not repent you of the offer already?’ - -So he stood in presence of the heiress; a little country girl with -sun-kissed hands, innocent of inkstains, a child’s fledgling figure, a -child’s delightful boldness, and not one barleycorn’s weight of dignity -in her composition. Should he, obeying first impulse, believe in her, -and so incur the fate of well-snubbed predecessors? Or should he arm -himself against the coquetry which this very frankness, this assumption -of simplicity in dress and speech, might mask? - -Long ago, in Gaston’s Cambridge rooms, Geff came across a French volume -entitled, ‘The Bad Things which Men have said of Woman.’ He extracted -therefrom, at more than one reading, such bitter nectar as his scanty -knowledge of the tongue allowed. Several of the maxims had slumbered -in his memory. They reawakened at this moment, and bade him play the -philosopher, remember at what price per hour the heiress was about to -hire him, and for what work. ‘Self-respect was in his keeping still,’ -cried half a dozen wicked old well-chosen French cynics in a breath. -‘Let him retain it.’ - -And Geff followed his own impulse. He looked on Marjorie’s unblemished -prettiness, and believed in her--with a circumspect belief. - -‘One or two things, I know, want explaining.’ A wave of Miss Bartrand’s -hand signalled to Geoffrey to take a chair. Then she seated herself -opposite him, the rosy western afterglow falling directly on her clear, -truth-telling face. - -‘You thought my advertisement bizarre, did you not?’ - -‘On the contrary, I thought it sensible and to the point.’ - -Geff’s answer was given with stiff courtesy. - -‘But too independent; for I had never consulted my grandfather, -understand! I never spoke to the Seigneur till an hour ago, about my -having a coach. Tell me, you don’t think the worse of me for this?’ - -Had he fallen asleep, lying among the blue-leaved campanulas on the -moor with the waving sedges at hand, with the falcon soaring high -overhead; was this drawing-room, with its mirrors and rose-scents and -Cupids, a dream? Could it be possible that Marjorie Bartrand, the -heiress, who never bestowed a civil word upon any man, should plead, in -sober reality, for his, Geff Arbuthnot’s, good opinion? - -‘I am obliged to think and act for myself. There is my defence. My -grandfather, whom you will see presently, is clever--oh, cleverer than -any man in Guernsey, perhaps in Spain! Mathematics, classics--_you_ -even could name no branch of learning, Mr. Arbuthnot, that grandpapa -has not.’ - -‘Of that I am sure, Miss Bartrand.’ - -‘He was known in Oxford sixty years ago. The revolution so disgusted my -great-grandfather with everything French that he turned Protestant out -of revenge. A mean action--say?’ - -‘That depends upon the manner of conversion.’ - -‘Well, he had come to be Seigneur of Tintajeux through the inheritance -of his Guernsey wife, and to be a proper Seigneur in this country you -should be a Reverend. How great-grandpapa got to be ordained I don’t -know. Andros, his son, was sent to Winchester and Oxford.’ - -‘The Seigneur I am about to see?’ - -‘Yes, and Andros became a fellow of his college. He was one of the -three best classics in Oxford. But he stands right away out of my -reach.’ Marjorie stretched up her slight arms as though pointing to the -inaccessible mental plane occupied by the Reverend Andros. ‘He lives -with the gifted people of sixty years ago. For me that is too old.’ - -‘Rather,’ said Geff, unable, though he would fain stand on his dignity, -to repress a smile. - -‘Grandpapa is an eighteenth-century man. He was just born early enough -to be able to make that his boast. And he has eighteenth-century ideas. -“Unless a woman be a Madame de Staël,” says the Seigneur, “let her keep -silent. If she be a Madame de Staël, let her keep a thousandfold more -silent.” Now I,’ cried small Marjorie, ‘mean to make my voice heard. I -want to know nineteenth-century life straight through. I want to learn -facts, at first hand. As a matter of lesser moment, I want a degree. Do -you think London University would be beyond me?’ - -‘I must know first,’ answered Geoffrey, ‘to what height of learning you -can reach on tiptoes.’ - -A flash of indignation swept over Marjorie’s face. The possibilities of -temper showed round that acute, square-cut mouth of hers. - -‘It is correct masculine taste to laugh at a girl’s ambition, I -know! The Seigneur, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,--all have the same fine -generosity! But why do we lose time? Perhaps, if you will come to -the schoolroom, you will look over my books, sir. It is too late, of -course, to do any work to-night?’ - -‘Not too late for me,’ answered Geoffrey, in his heart liking the girl -better and better. ‘I came out hoping we should begin to read at once. -My time is yours.’ - -Miss Bartrand led the way, her face held somewhat aloft, into a room -plainly furnished as a study, and strewed with books and papers, on the -west side of the inner drawing-room. As Geoffrey followed, every sense -tempered to a keener edge than usual, he could not help remarking with -what curious grace Marjorie’s raven-black tresses were braided. He had -been to a few, very few, London entertainments in his life, had glanced -at most varieties of our current female ‘heads;’ none tolerable to -him beside a certain recollection of soft gold worn in little waves, -that way poor Dinah had with her curls, upon a Madonna forehead. But -Marjorie’s ebon locks gathered high, in one thick coil, upon the summit -of her head, compelled his admiration. The style was too foreign, -altogether, for English taste. And the white and red dress, the gaudy -waist ribbon, were too evidently got up for effect, Geoffrey decided, -now that he could draw breath and criticise. The complexion, too, to a -man who for years had had a living ideal of snow and rose-bloom before -him, was certainly sallow. And those great black eyes.... - -Stopping short, Marjorie waited for her visitor on the schoolroom -threshold. At the moment he overtook her, she turned, looked up at him. -And behold! her eyes were blue; intensely blue as, I think, only Irish -or Spanish eyes ever are; with a sweep of jetty lash, with a hidden -laughter in them, although the possibilities of temper still lurked -round the corner of her lips. - -‘This is to be your torture chamber. From the time I was five I have -worked myself up to my present state of ignorance at that inky desk you -see, and under the rule of a long line of governesses, most of whom -gave me and themselves up in despair. Now put me to the test, if you -please, Mr. Arbuthnot. Don’t spare my feelings. Treat me as you would -treat any backward schoolboy.’ - -And Geff Arbuthnot obeyed the command to the letter. He did not spare -her feelings. - -Marjory Bartrand’s attainments were to the last degree patchy and -scrappy; the typical attainments to be looked for in a quick, -self-willed child, indifferently taught by a succession of teachers, -and whose faulty studies had been supplemented by an avid, -indiscriminate consumption of good books. - -‘Your classics are weak, Miss Bartrand.’ - -Geoffrey remarked this, pushing papers and books aside, and looking -kindly across the table into his pupil’s face. - -‘Oh! I never liked the subjects. I knew that you would say so.’ - -With an effort Marjorie Bartrand kept her voice under control. - -‘But your classics are stronger than your mathematics.’ - -‘Yes, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ - -‘You will have a great deal of work before you can bring either to--we -will not say a high, but an ordinary level.’ - -‘Yes, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ - -‘You spoke of a London degree. Let us look at London matriculation -first. Children are trained at high schools for about six years, I -understand, for London matriculation. And many--more than a third--of -the candidates fail.’ - -‘I spoke of London because London gives you letters after your name. -The older Universities would be more thought of in Spain. I have -grandpapa’s leave to go to Newnham or Girton when I am eighteen. The -first of all my governesses lives in Cambridge. So I should have _one_ -friend there.’ - -‘The Girton and Newnham work is on the same level as the other -colleges.’ - -‘And you think that work beyond my reach?’ - -Geff Arbuthnot thought that a girl with a head so graceful, with eyes -so blue, with soft brow gleaming under such a weight of dusky hair, -might be content amidst the flower-scents and cedar-shades of Tintajeux -Manoir, content to let Euclid and Greek particles go--to be a woman, to -accept the homely, happy paths wherein women may walk unguided by exact -science, or the philosophy of all the ancients. - -The opinions he knew were heterodox and not to be uttered, especially -by a man who, at five shillings an hour, had engaged himself to lighten -the thorny road that leads to knowledge. - -‘Memory will get one through most exams., Miss Bartrand. You have a -good memory?’ - -‘For all useless things, yes. In “Don Quixote,” for instance, you would -find it hard to puzzle me. You know a little Spanish?’ - -‘Five words at most.’ - -‘How deplorable! A person who has no Spanish is not quite in possession -of his faculties. If one had time to spare in these long summer days, -I----’ - -Marjorie broke off abruptly, colouring to the roots of her hair, as -she remembered the existence of her tutor’s wife. A girl not ignorant -of Spanish only; a girl who could just overcome the difficulties of -the Prayer-book and Lessons, perhaps, or write a letter without any -glaringly bad spelling, on a push. - -‘If one had time to spare in these long summer days, Miss Bartrand?’ - -Geoffrey Arbuthnot found a pleasure it had been hard to him to account -for in her confusion. - -‘I was going to say I would teach you Spanish. As if Spanish -mattered! As if there were not nobler, lovelier things in life than -book-learning. But that was a real Bartrand idea. We Bartrands, -mouldering among our owls in this old place, cannot see daylight clear. -We think too much of ourselves. Our minds are as narrow as our garden -paths. I teach you Spanish, indeed! I’ll tell you what I call that -proposal.’ She leaned across till her sweet bud of a face was close to -Geoffrey’s, and spoke with a suspension of the breath. ‘I call it a bit -of _devilish_ Bartrand pride and stiff-neckedness.’ - -Geff started, with a pantomime of horror, from the adjective italicised. - -‘You know the meaning of Tintajeux?--Tint-à-jeu in old Norman. You -English in Cornwall say Tintagel--the Devil’s castle. A fit abode for -us. Look at grandpapa! He quarrelled seven years ago with M. Noirmont, -the rector of our next parish, over a Latin quantity. Never in this -world will grandpapa speak again to that innocent old man.’ - -‘A wrong quantity is no jesting matter,’ observed Geoffrey Arbuthnot. - -‘Then he has three daughters, my aunts. Neither of the three has spoken -to the others or to him for five-and-twenty years. No vulgar quarrel -to start with. “We Bartrands wage war on a grand Napoleonic scale,” -says the Seigneur. “An exchange of reproachful epithets is sheer waste -of brain-power.” The marriage of each sister in succession wounded the -other sisters’ pride. All wounded grandpapa’s. It was quite simple.’ - -‘You colour highly, Miss Bartrand.’ - -‘I am giving you sketches from life. No colouring could be too high for -showing up our Bartrand traits, the little faults of our virtues, as -the French say, prettily.’ - -Geoffrey felt himself on the road to disenchantment. The girl might -have marvellous eyes, a wealth of dusky hair, tones of liquid music, -a sunburnt hand that was a poem. The heart within her was hard to -the core. Linda Thorne, by hidden affinity, perhaps, was not so very -far out in her judgments. Marjorie knew too much, had learned bitter -lessons in human nature, not from books, but from keen reading of the -men and women nighest to herself in blood. - -‘Yes, we think too highly of our small talents. I, with my shallowness, -to propose teaching a Bachelor of Arts anything! I ought to be grateful -to Mr. Arbuthnot for condescending to read with such a pupil. Now, -which three mornings in the week could you give me?’ - -He could give her Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. They gravely -arranged their hours. They talked over the work--say, a book of Cicero, -the two first books of Euclid--to be looked over before their first -lesson. Then Geoffrey Arbuthnot rose to his feet. Putting on a staid -and tuitional manner, he stated that his terms in Guernsey, would be -five shillings, _British currency_, per hour. - -Marjorie’s face grew one hot blaze of shame. - -‘Oh! of course--please do not speak of money. It is far too little. It -is an honour, I mean, for me to learn, and I am coming----’ - -She was just about to commit herself, and so considerably simplify -Geff’s position--just about to blurt out, ‘and I am coming to call upon -your wife,’ when a footstep, alert, though it had paced the earth for -more than eighty years, sounded on the garden path outside. The glass -door of the schoolroom was pushed open, and old Andros Bartrand walked -in. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -TWO IN ARCADIA - - -An atmosphere of fresh country air, blent with tobacco smoke, -surrounded him, as we like to think it surrounded Parson Adams. He -saluted Geff with that nice mixture of personal reserve and general -expansiveness which among a bygone generation was called breeding. He -bestowed a partial smile on Marjorie (‘those Bartrand company smiles,’ -as she used to bemoan, when she was a younger child. ‘Counters that -I must make believe are sixpences until the visit is over, until the -round game melts back into our grim duel at solitaire’). - -‘Mr. Arbuthnot, I presume? Welcome to Tintajeux, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ He -shook Geff’s hand with a distant affability. ‘Glad always to see a man -from the Alma Mater in our little island. Oxford is not the Oxford of -my days, still----’ - -‘Mr. Arbuthnot hails from Cambridge, grandpapa,’ shrieked Marjorie with -energy in the Seigneur’s deafer ear. - -‘Then, in one sense, Mr. Arbuthnot is to be congratulated, for -Cambridge is nearer to Newmarket. A bitter blow to the talent that -victory of Mademoiselle Ninette’s in the One Thousand, last April, was -it not?’ - -‘The proverbial uncertainty of fillies retaining their form,’ -said Geoffrey. ‘The usual reason for strong fielding. Still, the -performance of Maydew in the Two Thousand was so good that the odds -seemed legitimate.’ - -Geff Arbuthnot cared as much for horse-racing as for the native -industries of Japan. But the tastes of a man of fourscore must be -respected. And with a glance at the Seigneur of Tintajeux you could -detect the sporting element, softened, not ungracefully, through a -course of sixty years by the learning of the scholar and the quiet life -of the priest. - -‘You come over to England, of course, sir, for the big events of the -year?’ - -‘Not I, not I. When you arrive at the age of a hundred you will find -yourself content with newspaper reports of most human goings on, great -or small. I have my books about me here, my farm, my dogs, a horse or -two, and my cure of souls. Marjorie, small witch, where are you? Did -you not say Mr. Arbuthnot was to take Holy Orders?’ - -‘Mr. Arbuthnot is to cure bodies, not souls.’ - -Marjorie’s answer was given in a tone of _altissimo_ derision. - -Geff put himself through a little exercise of moral arithmetic; the -result required being the precise sum of dislike which a man of his -age could feel towards a scoffing girl of seventeen, a girl with -eyes like Marjorie’s, silken black hair, and exquisite hands. It was -not, perhaps, so large an amount as one might have looked for. ‘An -Æsculapius,’ observed the Reverend Andros. ‘You know the parable, Mr. -Arbuthnot? Two stalwart men, Nature and Disease, are fighting. A third -man, the Doctor, seizes his club and rushes into the _melée_, sometimes -hitting Disease and sometimes Nature. You are to be the man with the -club.’ - -‘I am to be the man with the club,’ answered Geff, relishing the old -Seigneur’s manner. ‘As long as I confine myself to the setting of -broken bones, sir, I hope to do as little harm as may be.’ - -‘The doctors kill us no quicker than they used,’ admitted Andros -Bartrand liberally. ‘When I was an undergraduate they relied on their -brains, as you do now on your finger-tips, and I believe killed us no -quicker. You are an honours’ man, of course? At a hundred years old one -is naturally ignorant as to the University regulations of the times. I -know next to nothing of your Cambridge Triposes. You won your laurels, -I assume, among bones and minerals?’ - -The Seigneur’s prejudices were mellow and crusted as his own port. -A born and passionate lover of classic literature, he regarded the -admission of natural science into the Universities as a mistake, a -sort of shuffle among examiners and Liberal Governments that enabled -lowly-born classes of men to take high degrees. - -‘Unfortunately for myself, I did not,’ said Geff. ‘When my real college -life was over I saw bread and cheese in a remote perspective, and -had to begin bones and minerals from their ABC. In my day I came out -eighth,’ and being exceedingly human, Geff’s face flushed a bit, ‘in -the Classical Tripos.’ - -The Seigneur put his hand within the young man’s arm. - -‘Come for a walk with me, Mr. Arbuthnot. Eighth in the Classical -Tripos--eh! I will point out the limits of my vast estate to you. -Marjorie, small witch, go and set ready the tea-table. Mr. Arbuthnot -will spend the remainder of the evening with us.’ - -The daylight by now had gone into odorous dew-freshened dusk; a big -solitary planet looked down upon the woods of Tintajeux. Geff felt -himself in a new world, a thousand miles removed from pale, work-a-day, -prosaic England. The affluence of air and sea, the largeness of sky, -took possession of him, played in his blood, evoked that precise -condition of mind and body which is so often at four-and-twenty the -prelude to human passion. - -The talk of Andros Bartrand accorded well with the scene and moment. -They spoke of men, measures, books--of books chiefly. - -‘I belong, really, to the eighteenth century,’ said the Seigneur, as, -with his hand on Geff’s arm, they paced the lawn’s goodly limits. Old -Andros had the vanity of his age in seeking to exaggerate it. He had -been known, or so Marjorie would affirm, to speak of himself as alive -at the dawn of the French Revolution. Perhaps you appreciated his -real age best when you reflected that the bride of his youth might -have been a contemporary of Emma Woodhouse! ‘I was born before moral -pulse-feeling came into fashion. This modern verse--“singing, maugre -the music”--don’t please me. I never mix my wines. I like to take my -verse and my philosophy separate. Hand-made paper, rough edges, vellum, -constitute poetry nowadays, don’t they!’ - -‘The æsthetic fever is on us still, sir, I fear.’ - -‘In regard to Church matters, I was middle-aged, mind, when Tract -90 decimated the country. Tractarian or Evangelical, Theist or -Pantheist--the Church went on quite as profitably before parsons began -calling each other by such a variety of names.’ - -‘Names that all mean the same thing,’ Geoffrey suggested, ‘if men had -temper enough to examine them coolly.’ - -‘Possibly. Let me direct your attention to my young wheat. You see it -in the enclosure, just between that red stable roof and the orchard. -I mean to cut my wheat with the Guernsey sickle, Mr. Arbuthnot, the -same pattern of sickle, it is believed, that was used under Louis XI. I -mean to get more for my wheat per quarter than any grower in England. -There is the advantage of being a Channel Island farmer. One may not -only be a Conservative, but, like certain great statesmen, make one’s -Conservatism pay.’ - -A resonant call from Marjorie summoned them before long to the -tea-table--a meal at which old Andros with his grand-seigneur air made -his guest pleasantly welcome. The dinner-hour at Tintajeux was five, -the ‘late dinner’ of Andros Bartrand’s youth. By half-past eight, in -this keen Atlantic air, broiled mullet, hot potato scones, with other -indigenous Guernsey dishes, were adjuncts to the tea-table which no -healthily-minded person could afford to despise. Afterwards came a -cigar smoked just inside the open French windows. ‘At a hundred years -old,’ the Seigneur apologised, ‘there was one thing a man might not -brave with impunity--night air.’ And then Geoffrey Arbuthnot prepared -to take his leave. - -Business-like, he reverted to pounds, shillings, and pence. It was -a settled thing that he should read classics and mathematics with -Miss Bartrand on three mornings of the week, at the sum (happily the -darkness veiled the blushes on Marjorie’s face) of six francs an hour. - -‘Classics and mathematics!’ cried old Andros, assenting to the money -part of the transaction with suave courtesy. ‘What will the little -witch do with classics and mathematics when she has got them?’ - -‘Enter Newnham or Girton with them, in the first place,’ answered -Marjorie unhesitatingly. - -‘Newnham or Girton!’ - -The unfavourable summing-up of all arguments that have been put forth -on the subject of woman’s higher education was in Andros Bartrand’s -enunciation of the words. - -‘Newnham and Girton send forth good men,’ remarked Geoffrey Arbuthnot. -‘In the future, sir, when the girls shall “make Greek Iambics, and the -boys black-currant jams,” we look forward confidently to seeing Girton -head of the river.’ - -‘At my age I am unmoved by new theories,’ said old Andros. ‘New facts -I am not likely to confront. There has never yet been a great woman -poet.’ - -‘Mrs. Browning, grandpapa.’ - -‘Nor a great woman painter.’ - -‘Rosa Bonheur.’ - -‘Nor a discoverer in science.’ - -‘Mrs. Somerville.’ - -‘Nor a solitary musical composer.’ - -The girl was silent. - -‘Yet all these fields have been as open to them as to men, have they -not, witch?’ - -Marjorie Bartrand had passed into the garden. She stood impatiently -tapping a slender foot on the turf and looking up, her arms folded, an -expression on her face curiously like that of old Andros, at a strip of -crescent moon that showed between the cedar branches. - -‘A new moon. I curtsey to her, twice, thrice, and I wish a wish!’ - -‘Did you hear my question, witch? In poetry, art, music, have women not -had just as ample chances as men?’ - -‘Spanish women have had no chances at all,’ cried Marjorie, raising her -tone, as she adroitly shifted her ground, after the manner of her sex. -‘For their sake I mean to work--yes, to get to the level of a B.A., -grandpapa, in spite of your most withering contempt.’ - -‘For the sake of Spain, benighted Spain!’ remarked the Seigneur -genially. ‘My granddaughter’s blood is half Spanish, Mr. Arbuthnot. -I had a son once--an only son----’ Could it really be that Andros -Bartrand’s firm voice for a second faltered? ‘When he was no longer -a young man he went to Cadiz, for health’s sake, and married, poor -fellow, a Spanish girl who died at the end of the year. Marjorie -has stayed a few times among her mother’s family, and has gone -Spain-crazed, as you will soon find out for yourself.’ - -‘Crazed!’ rang Marjorie’s tuneful voice through the night. ‘I want -to hold my hands out to my own people, yes, to teach, if I ever know -anything myself, among the girls of our poor benighted Spain. And I am -proud of my craziness. I thank you for the word, grandpapa. It is the -prettiest compliment.’ - -The complexion of the family talk was threatening; Geoffrey Arbuthnot -hastened his adieux. But Andros had still a farewell shot to discharge -against the little witch. - -‘Our poor benighted Spain is the one country in Europe with a decent -peasantry of its own. Get Mr. Arbuthnot, get anyone who understands -the matter, to talk to you about the English ploughman, and compare -the two pictures. The Spanish peasant’s wife sews, knits, embroiders, -reads her Mass-book and can cook a capital stew. Her drink is water. -Infanticide is unknown. The men are hospitable, courteous, dignified. -Among benighted people like these, Marjorie Bartrand proposes to preach -the benefits of a liberal pauper education as exhibited in England.’ - -By the time the Seigneur’s ironies came to an end Marjorie’s small -figure had vanished among the deepening shadows of the lawn. Fearful -of losing sight of her altogether--for, indeed, Marjorie Bartrand was -suggestive of something weird, sprite-like, and of a nature to take -other form at an hour when owls do fly--Geff bade his host a hasty -good-night and followed. - -The girl herself was invisible, but a clear childish voice chanted the -old ditty of Roland somewhere in the neighbourhood, ‘Like steel among -weapons, like wax among women.’ Or, as Marjorie sang with spirit: - - - ‘Fuerte qual azero entre armas, - Y qnal cera entre las damas.’ - - -‘I have found my gardening scissors, Mr. Arbuthnot,’ she cried, -emerging through the schoolroom window, a basket on her arm. ‘Flowers -smell sweetest that are cut with the dew on them. I mean to cut some -roses and cherry-pie for--for----’ - -‘Your wife,’ was on Marjorie’s lips, but she stopped herself abruptly, -all Cassandra Tighe’s warnings about Geoffrey’s domestic embarrassments -coming back to her. - -‘Let me help you,’ said Geoffrey. A minute later Marjorie, on tiptoe, -was vainly endeavouring to catch a bough of swaying yellow briar. ‘You -are just one foot too short to reach those roses, Miss Bartrand.’ - -Marjorie sprang up in air. She plunged with bold final grasp among the -thorns, and succeeded in getting scratches destined to mark her right -hand for some weeks to come; scratches that might, perhaps, recall -this moment to both of them in the pauses of some tough mathematical -problem, some arid point in Latin grammar or Greek delectus. - -‘The result of over-vaulting ambition.’ Thus from his calm altitude of -six-foot-one Geff moralised. ‘How many roses am I to pick?’ - -‘You are to pick three beauties!’ said Marjorie, somewhat crestfallen. -‘Won’t you have the scissors? These briars prick cruelly.’ - -But Geff wanted no scissors; his skin, so he told her, was of about the -same texture as a stout dog-skin glove. When the briar-roses were duly -laid in Marjorie’s basket he put on the grave manner of his profession. -It was his duty as a surgeon to make immediate inspection of her -injuries. - -‘You are losing a good deal of blood, Miss Bartrand.’ Taking both her -hands, he held them up, in the streak of moonlight, not very distant -from his lips. ‘But while there is life there is hope. Three, four, -deep wounds! For my sake, don’t faint, if you can help it.’ - -‘Faint!’ Marjorie’s laugh was a thing good to hear; a thing fresh as -the chatter of birds in April, pungent as the smell of new-turned -earth. ‘I wonder whether any of the old Bartrands ever fainted. I -mean, _before_ they were guillotined! Confess, we are queer specimens, -grandpapa and I, are we not, sir?’ Asking Geff this question, she -left her hands in his simply until he should choose to let them go. -The first ineffable coldness of girlhood was on her. She knew no more -of passion than did her own roses. ‘Not very pleasant people to live -with--say! in an out-of-the-way Guernsey manoir.’ - -‘So much must depend on the taste of him who survived the ordeal.’ -Geoffrey Arbuthnot quietly surrendered the slim hands resting -unresponsively in his. ‘At the present moment life in an out-of-the-way -Guernsey manoir seems to me--endurable.’ - -A stronger word was very near escaping Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s lips. - -‘You are taken in by our picturesqueness,’ said Marjorie with decision. -‘England must be an astonishing ugly country, judging from the effect -our bit of Channel rock appears to make upon English people. Now, to -me, who have seen Spain, it is all so cramped, so sea-weedy. Look -away to the left there--sea. To the right--sea. Move a little step -nearer--close here, don’t be afraid, and look where I point across the -moor--sea again. Let an out-and-out big wave come some day, and the -whole nation would be submerged, like Victor Hugo’s hero.’ - -The glimpse of silver-gray tranquil moor brought back before -Geoffrey the thyme-grown bank, the falcon high poised, the tuft of -wood-rush--associated with the last rose visions of the squalid -Barnwell pavements, of the men and women, forced deserters from the -army of progress, who dragged out their span of human existence there. - -‘I should like to know what you are thinking about,’ Marjorie asked, -noting with a child’s acumen the changed expression of his face. - -‘I am thinking about England, about the hard battles some English -men and women have to go through with. A night like this,’ said -Geff, ‘brings sharp thoughts before one of one’s own life, one’s own -uselessness.’ - -In an instant Marjorie was softened. Tears almost rushed to her eyes. -Her thoughts, true to her better self, followed Geoffrey’s as if by -instinct. Then the good impulse passed. It entered her wilful head that -this excellent young gentleman from Cambridge meant to sermonise her. -She resolved to shock him. - -‘I used to feel goody-goody myself, very long ago. You would not -believe it, sir, but as a child I was pious.’ - -‘I believe it thoroughly,’ answered Geff, grave of countenance. - -‘When I wanted my lettuce-seed to come up I would perform little acts -of propitiatory contrition to Pouchée, the poor old Pouchée who lives -in Cambridge now. When grandpapa went out shooting I carried his -game-bag, and used to offer fervent prayers, whenever the dogs came -to a point, that he might kill his bird. Facts undermined my faith. -Sometimes the point was false. Sometimes grandpapa missed his aim. -Chaffinches and slugs ate my lettuce-seed. I turned infidel. I have -remained one. Grandpapa says I have the hardest flint soul in, or out -of, Christendom. Still, that is one Bartrand judging of another.’ - -‘I am not a Bartrand,’ remarked Geff Arbuthnot. ‘I do not think you -have a hard flint soul. You believe in wishes addressed to a strip of -new moon, for instance?’ They were standing at the highest point of -Tintajeux; a small plateau, the approach to which was fashioned on the -exploded system of puzzle or maze. Long before Marjorie’s lifetime this -plateau--who shall say on what morning of youthful human hope--had been -christened Arcadia! The country-folk around Tintajeux called it Arcadia -still. Cool draughts of air were stirring from the moorland. They -brought fragrance of distant hayfields, honeyed whiffs of the syringa -hedges that formed the maze. Would Marjorie ever curtsey to future -moons without the scent of hay, the over-sweetness of blown syringa -returning on her senses? - -‘Some day,’ observed Geff, as she maintained a caustic silence, ‘I mean -you to tell me what you wished for, a quarter of an hour ago, under the -cedars.’ - -Marjorie Bartrand turned from him, the determination of a long lineage -of dead, high-tempered Bartrands on her face. To command, implied or -spoken, had she never yet bowed, during her seventeen years of life, -without asking the reason why. - -She asked nothing now. Her cheeks--happily, the starlight betrayed no -secrets--were glowing damask. For the girl knew, deep in her fiery -heart, what the wish was; a wish by no means unconnected with her -feelings towards Geoffrey Arbuthnot. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -ON THE BRINK OF A FLIRTATION - - -Meanwhile the solstice night grew at each instant more purple, more -mysterious. Geff felt himself in love with midsummer starlight, -with Guernsey, with Tintajeux. Marjorie he would fain have engaged -for a game of hide-and-seek among the neighbouring orchards, or of -follow-my-leader along the beach, white in the crescent moon’s shining. -For what was this poor small heiress but a child, with a child’s cold, -sweet, unopened heart, a child’s quick temper, a child’s readiness for -play, in whatever shape play might happen to be offered her! - -‘You will not tell me your wish to-night, Miss Bartrand. Never mind. -You will tell it me some day. To show you I bear no malice, you shall -hear mine. My present wish, as I must leave Tintajeux, is to return to -Miller’s Hotel by the longest road possible. You could point it out to -me?’ - -‘I should rather think so!’ cried Marjorie, brusquely. ‘If you don’t -mind a quarter of an hour’s nice hard scramble, your plan is to go up -the Gros Nez cliffs, about a mile from this, and so back to your hotel -along the edge of the steep. You are tolerably steady on the legs, I -suppose?’ - -Tolerably! A too shallow purse, a too well endowed brain had -combined to force Geoffrey Arbuthnot out of the ranks of the big and -world-renowned athletes. But ask the All England football team, ask -the men against whom the All England football team has played, if -Arbuthnot of John’s be tolerably steady on his legs! - -‘I don’t know that I am unusually feeble, Miss Bartrand. My weakness, -perhaps, is more of the nerves than the limbs. Point out some path to -me that you and the Seigneur are in the habit of treading, assure me, -on your honour, that you think that path safe, and perhaps I shall have -courage to attempt it.’ - -‘Well, when you get free of Tintajeux you must go straight across the -corner of the moor to Les Hüets. At the end of a few hundred yards you -will find four water-lanes meet. You must take the one that seems to -lead away from Petersport, and follow it until you get to Tibot. You -know Tibot, of course?’ - -‘I am shamefully ignorant, Miss Bartrand. I do not know Tibot.’ - -‘After that, a brisk two minutes’ walk down, down, through spongy wet -earth churning at every step over your ankles, brings you to the shore. -Right in face of you are the Gros Nez heights, and if you get to the -top all right (even in broad day it is not considered a very safe climb -for strangers), your road home will lie straight before you, along the -edge of the cliffs.’ - -Geff Arbuthnot clasped his forehead. - -‘When I get clear of Tintajeux I must go across the moor to an -unpronounceable place where four water-lanes meet. Of these I must -choose the one that looks least likely to lead anywhere. Then down, -down, through spongy wet earth churning up to my ankles at every step, -until I catch sight of the cliffs where I shall finally break my neck. -Miss Bartrand, will you allow me to ask a favour?’ - -‘Doubtless.’ A gleam of white teeth showed the heartiness of the girl’s -amusement. ‘It rests with me, though,’ she added maliciously, ‘to say -“yes” or “no” to it.’ - -‘Unfortunately it rests always with feminine caprice to say “yes” or -“no” to the proposals made by men.’ - -The hour, or the moonlight, or some curiously occult and unknown -influence must have been telling on Arbuthnot of John’s. He stood on -the brink of a flirtation. - -‘As you may have proved to your cost, sir,’ thought Marjorie, not quite -without a movement of pity. ‘As you may have proved in that hour--I -wonder how many years ago--when the Devonshire peasant girl decided on -becoming Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’ - -‘And my proposal is that you come with me, at least as far as the -unpronounceable meeting of the water-lanes; start me on my downward -spongy way to the sea, and then, unless I descend too quickly from the -Gros Nez cliffs, I shall have a fair chance of finding my road home.’ - -To an agonised wife! It might be--so mixed is human happiness, thought -Marjorie ironically--to the least little domestic lecture on the -subject of late hours. - -‘Feminine caprice,’ she observed gravely, ‘is in your favour for once, -Mr. Arbuthnot. I will look after your interests as far as Tibot. After -that, your fate will be in your own hands. On the outside chance of -your getting back alive to your hotel, I may as well present you with -some rather better flowers.’ - -She flitted about, moth-fashion, from one garden-plot to another, -ever rifling the choicest and sweetest bloom of each for her basket. -Afterwards, the lodge gates passed, she accompanied Geoffrey across a -strip of common land and down a few hundred yards of darksome lane to -the Hüets, from which point the trickle of a little moorland stream -guided them to Tibot. Here, emerging into such light as the young -moon yielded, the moment came for bidding good-night. And here an -exceedingly delicate question in social tactics presented itself with -force to Marjorie’s attention. What decorous but strictly indirect -message ought to accompany her gift of flowers to Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s -wife? - -‘You don’t mind carrying things, I hope, sir, as long as they are not -from the butcher’s, or done up in a brown paper parcel? Guernsey is not -Cambridge, you know. Grandpapa and I carry everything on the end of our -walking stick, from a conger eel downwards.’ - -‘I will carry a conger eel for you, any day, with delight,’ said -Geoffrey. - -‘I shall remember that speech. I shall present you with a conger eel -four feet long, in the market, and watch to see you carry him to your -hotel. To-night I only want you to take these flowers for me to--to -some one in the town,’ observed Marjorie, with staid composure. - -But she was in no courageous mood, really. She listened as though -she would ask counsel of it to the familiar little black-veined moor -stream, eddying away with chill clear voice to the sea. - -‘You have only to command me,’ said Geoffrey, with an absurd, a -reasonless sense of personal disappointment, ‘and I obey. The address -of your friend is----’ - -‘You will have no difficulty about the address. Indeed, I am afraid,’ -stammered Marjorie, ‘that at present, for another few days, I have -scarcely a right to speak of the person as my friend. The difficulty -is, sir, how will you carry the flowers? In your hands, you say! A -man who would climb Gros Nez cliffs must pretty nearly hang on by his -eyelashes, like the heroes in Jules Verne’s stories; at times he wants -as firm a grip, I can tell you, as all his ten fingers can give.’ - -‘If I surmount these terrific perils, if I reach Petersport safely, -your flowers will share my fate. Don’t be anxious about them, Miss -Bartrand.’ - -Marjorie paused, her face set and thoughtful. After a minute or -two, with the unconsciousness of self, the ignorance of possible -misconstruction which rendered her actions so absolutely the actions -of a child, she unloosened her waist ribbon. A length of twine lay in -her basket. With this she bound the flower stalks firmly together, then -knotting her ribbon, she attached it in a long loop to the bouquet. - -‘Before setting foot on the cliff’s you must pass the loop round your -neck--so.’ For Geffs better guidance she pantomimed her instructions -round her own girlish throat. ‘By that contrivance you leave your hands -free. And you must take care of my ribbon, if you please, sir, and -bring it back next lesson. It is a bit of real Spanish peasant ribbon -one of my cousins bought for me in Cadiz. A thing not to be replaced in -these parts of the world. Good-night, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ - -‘You have not said half enough. You have not even told me whom your -flowers are for.’ - -‘My flowers are for a person I hope, before long, to know and like -well.’ - -‘The description is tantalising. It would scarcely furnish me, I fear, -with the one name and address of the person wanted, among all the -narrow, twisting streets of Petersport.’ - -‘The flowers are, Mr. Arbuthnot, cannot you guess--for whom they are -meant?’ - -‘I am ill at originating ideas, Miss Bartrand. I can guess nothing.’ - -‘Because you cannot, or will not, which?’ - -‘Because I cannot, because I am blankly unimaginative.’ - -For a few moments Marjorie stood masterfully inactive. Then she flew -discreetly back into the shadow of the lane. On a slightly rising mound -she stopped. What light there was touched the upper half of her face, -and Geoffrey could see her eyes. He knew that her mood, for Marjorie -Bartrand, was a softened one. - -‘The flowers are for yourself, Mr. Arbuthnot,’ so her voice rang -through the sea-scented night. ‘For your better self, you understand. -Don’t lose my ribbon, and, if you can help it, don’t fall over the Gros -Nez cliffs. Good-night.’ - -And with a wave of her hand--though he was blankly unimaginative, -Geoffrey believed it might be with a wafted kiss from her finger -tips--she disappeared. - -Geff Arbuthnot’s first experience in snubbing had come to an end. - -Pondering over many things, most of all over the cruelties and caprices -of youthful woman, he ran lightly down the ankle-deep water-lane, then -across a miniature bay of argent, shell-strewn sands, to the base of -Gros Nez cliffs. The ridge rose sheer above his head, a dark wall of -over a hundred and fifty feet, polished as glass to the limit of the -breakers, but, above that line, fissured, lichened, rough. - -Miss Bartrand’s sarcasm had not exaggerated the gravity of the ascent. -The man who in an uncertain light should successfully scale Gros Nez -must have not only his hands and feet, but his wits thoroughly under -command. - -And here the loop of ribbon attached to Marjorie’s flowers proved of -great use. - -I have tried to represent in Geoffrey a man little moved by the -nicer shades of cultivated or hothouse feeling, a man more likely to -be wrapped up in one grim fact of the mortuary or dissecting-room -than in all the pretty uncertainties of sentiment put together. But -to-night a change had certainly passed over him. Before beginning his -climb he found a delicate pleasure in suspending Marjorie’s bouquet, -exactly in the mode her fingers had taught him, round his neck. He -found a pleasure--the cliff’s dizzy height hardly won--in unknotting -her ribbon, smoothing it out from its creases with a hand unversed -in millinery tasks, finally in hiding it away, jealously, in the -breast-pocket of his jacket. - -Concerning this jealousy he asked himself neither why nor wherefore. In -transitional moments like these an old tender image fading even as a -new one rises above the horizon, few of us in our inmost thoughts care -to be motive-seekers. Geoffrey knew that he would not for an empire -have let Dinah see that ribbon to-night, or any other night. He knew -that between him and the little girl with carved sweet lips and ebon -hair there existed a secret. He knew that tutoring was a far pleasanter -business than he had bargained for, also that the flowers Marjorie had -given him, and which he carried in his hand, smelt of Tintajeux. - -But he took out his embroidered tobacco pouch, his short black briar, -notwithstanding. He smoked his cavendish vigorously as he trudged -back to Petersport. Arbuthnot of John’s might stand on the brink of a -flirtation. He was not as yet in a state that need occasion a man’s -staunchest bachelor friends anxiety. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - -CROSS-STITCH - - -Dinah was still busied over her embroidery frame when Geoffrey’s -entrance brought the coolness of the night, the wholesome odour of -heliotropes and roses, into the chronically dinner-oppressed atmosphere -of Miller’s Hotel. - -Her blonde youthful face looked weary. The lightless, far-away -expression, which you may always observe as a result of unshed tears, -was in the glance she lifted to Geff. - -‘What, you are up still! Do you know that it is past eleven, Mrs. -Arbuthnot?’ - -Four years ago, when Geoffrey first saw Gaston and Dinah in the bloom -of wedded happiness not two months old, it was decreed by Gaston, least -jealous of men, that his wife and cousin should call each other by -their Christian names. - -Upon Dinah’s joyous lips Geoffrey, without an effort, became at once a -familiar household word--dear good old Geff, through whom, obliquely, -her introduction to the husband she passionately loved had come about! - -But Geoffrey, after a few stammering, painful efforts, abandoned the -calling of Dinah by her Christian name for ever. - -He could and did call her so to Gaston only. He intended to stand by -her heroically, absent, or in her presence; intended, God helping him, -to be the good brotherly influence of her life and of her husband’s. -Looking upon the eyes that met his with such cruel self-possession, -upon the lips which he had once madly coveted to press, Geoffrey -Arbuthnot realised that he could never feel towards Dinah as a brother -feels. He resolved that his speech, knowingly, should not play traitor -to his heart. Gaston’s wife must, for him, be coldly, stiffly, -conventionally, ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ until his life’s end. - -‘Yes, I am up still, Geff. There’s no chance of seeing Gaston till long -past midnight. A lady like Mrs. Thorne, accustomed to India and Indian -military society,’ said Dinah, ‘would be sure to keep late hours. So -I thought I would shade my poppies straight through. I must wait for -daylight to put in the pinks and scarlets.’ - -Crossing to the table where Dinah was laboriously stitching, Geoffrey -seated himself at her side. He looked attentively down at her work with -those acute, deep-browed gray eyes of his. - -‘Your embroidery is very----’ he was about to say ‘beautiful,’ but -checked himself. The star-strewn night, the hay-scents along the -cliffs, the roses of Tintajeux were in his soul, lifting it above -sympathy with poor Dinah’s wool-work. ‘Your embroidery is very delicate -and smooth,’ he went on truthfully. ‘And how quick you are about it! -You only began the top yellow rose when I stayed with you and Gaston, I -recollect, last Easter.’ - -Dinah’s pieces of work were on a scale that carried one back to -the female industry of the Middle Ages, yet was their ultimate use -nebulous. Vast ottomans, vast cushions, yards of curtain border, imply -a mansion. And the Arbuthnot’s mansion at present existed not. But on -what else should a childless woman, cut off from household duties, not -over fond of books, forlornly destitute of acquaintance, and with an -ever-absent husband, employ herself? - -Once, long ago, the poor girl made Gaston a set of shirts, as a -birthday surprise. These shirts were lovingly, exquisitely stitched, as -Dinah Thurston had been taught to stitch in her childhood. They were -also a consummate failure. As a monument of patience, he observed, they -were beyond praise. As a fit--‘Well,’ said Gaston, kissing her cheek in -careless gratitude, ‘it is not a case of Eureka.’ - -He never wore them, never knew on what day, in what manner, his wife, -fired by sharp disappointment, got them out of existence. Simply, the -shirts did not adjust themselves well round his, Gaston Arbuthnot’s, -shapely throat. It was not a case of Eureka. The subject interested him -no farther. - -Plain sewing for grown men and women, Dinah promptly decided, was -fruitless labour. Of dressmaking proper Gaston would never (excusably, -perhaps) suffer a trace in his rooms. And so, the sweet fashioning of -tiny children’s clothes not belonging to her lot, Dinah Arbuthnot it -would seem had no choice, no refuge on the planet she inhabited, but -cross-stitch. - -At moments of more than common loneliness she would feel that her life -was being recorded--mournfully, for a life of two-and-twenty--in these -large and not artistic embroideries. It seemed as though she stitched -with a double thread, as though a dull strand of autobiography for ever -intertwined itself among the flaunting roses, the impossible auriculas -and poppies that grew beneath her hands. - -The piece at which she now worked was begun in London, at a time when -Gaston used to dine out regularly every night of his life, and when -his days, from various art callings, were, perforce, spent apart from -her. As Geoffrey spoke, she could see her St. John’s Wood lodging, her -afternoon walks in the Regent’s Park, worked gloomily in with every -shade of those topmost yellow roses. After London came a short stay at -Weymouth. Here Gaston had a ‘convict study’ to make, on order, and with -his usual good luck discovered he knew several capital fellows in the -regiment quartered at Portland. The capital fellows naturally delighted -in having the versatile artist at mess, and Dinah passed almost as many -lonely evenings as she had done in London. It was in Weymouth, she -remembered, that her auriculas, her impossible auriculas, began to take -colour and shape. And now, in Guernsey.... - -The heavy drops gathered in Dinah Arbuthnot’s eyes; pushing her work -frame away, she turned to Geoffrey. The lamp shone on her full. The -delicate outlines of her cheek and throat stood out before him in -startling whiteness. - -‘And so you have come back from your coaching, Geff.’ Her tone was -quiet. Long practice had taught Dinah to repress that sound detested by -Gaston--as by all husbands--tears in the voice. ‘How do you like the -sensation of being snubbed by an heiress?’ - -‘Pretty well, I thank you,’ said Geff. ‘Snubbing, as you know, Mrs. -Arbuthnot, is a sensation I got used to in my youth.’ - -‘Was the heiress very bad? Did she make you feel miserably -uncomfortable?’ - -‘No, I cannot go so far as that. I cannot say that I felt miserably -uncomfortable.’ - -‘But you don’t care for her? If you keep the work on, it will not be -for pleasure?’ - -Dinah’s heart was fuller than it could hold with love for her husband. -Geoffrey was nothing to her, except the best friend that she and Gaston -possessed. Yet she asked this question quickly, with interest. In her -secret consciousness it was an accepted fear, perhaps, though Dinah -knew it not, that Geoffrey would never care, as men care who mean to -marry, for any girl. - -‘Work that is to be decently done must always be done for pleasure.’ - -It was Geff Arbuthnot who uttered the aphorism. - -‘And your evening, snubbing and all, has been passed pleasantly?’ - -‘I have breathed ampler air,’ Geoffrey made evasive apology, man-like. -‘I have seen more blue sea and sky than ever in my life before. Miss -Bartrand’s snubbing was--not beyond my strength. The Seigneur of -Tintajeux is a specimen of the old scholarly, high-and-dry parson, -worth walking any number of Guernsey miles to see. Some day, Mrs. -Arbuthnot, I shall take you with me to Tintajeux.’ - -‘To come in for my share of snubbing too?’ - -Dinah asked the question, faintly colouring. - -‘Marjorie is a frank, generous-hearted child. You cannot think of her -in the light of a grown-up woman. She is a Bartrand, with the faults -and virtues of her inheritance, the faults--pride and temper--visibly -on the surface. I am very sure,’ added Geff, bending his head, as -though to examine the intricate shading of Dinah’s poppies, ‘that you -and Marjorie Bartrand might be fast friends, if you chose.’ - -‘I have no friends,’ said Dinah, ‘except my own people, down home,’ of -whom, in truth, Gaston allowed her to see little enough,’and--and you, -Geff.’ - -The voice was unfaltering, the full good mouth was steady. Dinah -made the admission, not as a matter of complaint, but of fact, and -Geoffrey’s heart fired. - -‘That “friendlessness” is the one huge mistake of your life,’ he -exclaimed. ‘Gaston is not selfish, would not be selfish, unless your -unselfishness forced him into being so. You should never have allowed -this morbid love of solitude to grow on you. You ought to assert -yourself, to go into the world at Gaston’s side, whether you like it or -not.’ - -‘I should not like it now. When I was a girl, when we first married, -my heart was light, against what it is now. It was the end of the -London season, you remember. No, I don’t suppose you do?’ - -Did he not, though--that late July time when, after seeing the marriage -ceremony over, he went back to his scholar’s attic in John’s; that Long -Vacation when the skies were brazen to him, when day and night alike -were one feverish pain! - -‘It was the end of the London season, and when Gaston took me to the -Opera and twice down to dinner at Richmond I did feel,’ confessed Dinah -with humility, ‘that I had it in me to be fond of junketing,--oh, -Geff, there’s one of my country words! luckily Gaston can’t hear -it--of pleasure, I mean, and society. But the taste has died.’ Of what -lingering, cruel death, who should know better than Geoffrey? ‘Ladies -of my husband’s class have not called upon me. I have neither rank, -talent, nor a million. Without these, Gaston says, no woman can make -her way in the English world.’ - -Hot words were ready to rush from Geoffrey’s lips, but he kept them -back. To remain on equal terms with husband and wife in this strange -triangular friendship did sorely tax his powers of self-repression at -times. - -‘Gaston would rejoice in knowing that your life was cheerfuller, no -matter how the cheerfulness was brought about. He has told me so, -often. Now, here, in Guernsey, eight sea-going hours removed,’ said -Geff lightly, ‘from English Philistinism, what should hinder you from -joining in any little bit of “junketing” that may offer itself?’ - -‘The hindrance of having no introduction to the Guernsey ladies.’ - -‘Mrs. Thorne has called on you.’ - -‘On Gaston. He is dining with them now. He will dine with them four -evenings a week. Yes,’ Dinah’s voice fell, ‘I know, at a glance, the -kind of clever person who will amuse my husband. Mrs. Thorne is one of -them. She is magnetic.’ - -‘With the magnetism that repels rather than attracts,’ remarked Geff. - -‘That is your feeling about her. You and Gaston would be safe not to -admire the same woman.’ - -Geoffrey Arbuthnot was mute. Although his face was too sunburnt to -admit of visible deepening in hue, it may be that just then Geoffrey -Arbuthnot blushed. - -‘You have no change in your character. You could be content (a happy -thing for your wife, whenever Mrs. Geoffrey appears on the scene) with -one mood, one voice, one face, day after day, before you for forty -years. Is not that true?’ - -‘I am not an artist,’ said Geff, after a pause. ‘For a humdrum -man, prosaically occupied, the one face, Mrs. Arbuthnot, the one -voice,’--ah, fool that he was! his own voice trembled--‘might -constitute as much happiness as we are likely to taste, any of us, this -side death.’ - -‘And Gaston is an artist in every fibre.’ Poor Dinah’s estimate of Mr. -Gaston Arbuthnot was invariably Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot’s, except that she -believed in him a vast deal more than he believed in himself. ‘I ought -to know that my dull days, my silent evenings, are matters of course. -It is not Gaston’s fault that he can only get inspiration through -change. Some day, when the world is bowing down before a really great -work of his, my hour of triumph will come. Who knows, Geff, if Gaston -had married in his own class, if he and his wife had led just the usual -life of people in society--it may be his genius would not have fared so -well!’ - -Dinah never looked more perilously lovely than when, with flushed -cheeks and kindling eyes, she spoke aloud of her ambitions for her -husband. The poor girl’s whole life lay in her one, passionate, -oft-bruised affection. More than common beauty, a look of divine, -all-hoping, all-forgiving love, shone on her face at this instant. - -Geff Arbuthnot recollected it wanted only ten seconds to midnight, -and that he must fly. Had not long habit trained him to recognise the -moment when flight was his surest, his only wisdom! - -‘You and Gaston understand each other, as no third person can hope to -do, Mrs. Arbuthnot. I consider you the two happiest mortals alive, -though perhaps you do not know the extent of your own happiness.’ - -‘And you are off to your pillow, to dream of the heiress who has not -snubbed you,’ said Dinah, as he moved from her side. ‘Why, Geff!’ For -the first time she caught sight of the bouquet, somewhat cunningly held -in shadow hitherto. ‘What roses, what jasmines, what heliotropes? I -have been wondering all this time what made the room so sweet.’ - -And speaking thus, she stretched forth her hand for Marjorie Bartrand’s -flowers. - -During nearly four years, a portentously large slice of life under -five-and-twenty, it had been one long case of give-and-take between -Geoffrey and Dinah--the ‘take’ invariably on Dinah’s side. She took his -heart from him to start with. She took the happiness out of his youth. -Silently, unrecognised, Geoffrey constituted himself her knight-errant -in the hour of his own sharpest pain. (Till her death Dinah could never -know the part played by Geoffrey at the time of her engagement and -marriage.) In a hundred ways he had since steadied her husband in the -path of right. By a hundred unselfish actions he had smoothed nascent -domestic discontents, any one of which might have worked mortal havoc -with Dinah’s peace. - -She had received all his devotion--a prevalent weakness, it is to be -feared, among gentle, unimaginative women of her type--as the simplest -thing in the world! - -If Dinah, as once there was promise, had had children, doubt not that -her moral nature must have widened. But this was not to be. A tiny, -dying creature held between weak arms for half a day; some yellowing, -never-used baby-clothes, jealously hidden out of Gaston’s sight; a kiss -stolen, when her husband was not by to see, from any fair cottage babe -she might chance to come across in her walk--this much, and no more, -was Dinah to know of motherhood. - -And the love blindly centred on Gaston had in it an element which, -although the word is hard, must in justice be called selfishness. - -‘Nothing Gaston likes so well as the smell of flowers on his breakfast -table.’ And Dinah still carelessly held out her hand in a receptive -attitude. ‘He says his brain must be like the brains of dogs or -deer--smell colours all his thoughts. You will see, Geff! Those -heliotropes and roses will just set him kneading some new idea into -clay to-morrow morning.’ - -But the heliotropes and the roses did not quit Geoffrey’s hand. - -In this moment, ay, while Dinah was speaking, a current of new, keen, -healthful life had swept through him. He felt more thoroughly master of -himself than he had done since that May evening when he first blindly -surrendered his will, with his heart, to a blonde girl watering flowers -through a casement window at Lesser Cheriton. Marjorie’s roses, fresh -from her pure touch, a friendly gift from the world-scorning child -who, somehow, looked upon her tutor as out of the scope of scorn, were -his. If Gaston needed inspiration from flower-scents, Doctor Thorne’s -garden, any other garden than that of the Seigneur of Tintajeux, must -supply the inspiration. - -He made a dexterous exit, rushed away, boy-fashion, light of spirit, -three steps at a time, to his own room. And before half a minute was -over Dinah Arbuthnot had forgotten him. Poor old faithful Geff, his -lesson-giving, his heiress, his bouquet--what were these, nay, what -were the alien concerns of the universe to a pathetically tender soul, -quick smarting under its own immediate and narrow pain! - -Had Linda Thorne the power of holding an artist’s restless fancy -captive, the genius of making time pass swiftly, the talent of clever -talk, of giving genial little dinners, of dressing perfectly? Above -all, was she a woman to expect nothing whatever in return for her -devotion? A woman strong enough to be philosophical, even, towards a -rival who should vanquish her, in her own world, with her own weapons? -If she were thus gifted--Dinah moved to the window and looked out -across the hotel garden to a point between an opening in the trees -where the sea showed blue and foamless--if Linda Thorne were thus -gifted, then might to-night be taken as a foretaste of what the next -six weeks, the bloom and glory of a mid-Channel summer, had in store -for herself. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - -HALF WAY TOWARDS LITTLE GO - - -‘Sixties’ and ‘forties’ are traditions, happily, of the past. -Although Sarnian spinsters may still go out to tea with a maid and a -hand-lanthorn, the number of their candles is no longer a rigorous type -of their social condition. - -But the society of an island, twelve miles long by four broad, must -always be cousin-german to the society of a ship. Wherever choice is -circumscribed, human nature tends to eclecticism. Sixties and forties -may have had their day. A stranger is amazed, still, at the number of -island families who do not visit other island families, seemingly from -hereditary topographical reasons. The Eastern people have not much to -say to those of the West. The country districts hold scanty intercourse -with the townsfolk. - -At the time I write of the remote little peninsula of Tintajeux was -probably the most exclusive parish in the island. - -‘While we were on terms with the Rector of Noirmont we had four people -in our set,’ Marjorie would say. ‘The Rector of Noirmont, his wife, -the Seigneur of Tintajeux, Marjorie Bartrand. Since grandpapa and -M. Noirmont had their big Latin fight we have split up into further -faction. Our set consists of the Seigneur of Tintajeux and Marjorie -Bartrand. We are a nation of two.’ - -Of the things done and left undone by the Petersport inhabitants, -this nation of two was ofttimes as ignorant as though some dark -continent divided them. The dances, picnics, military bands, garden -parties, and general gossip of urban life, concerned the Bartrands -languidly. Old Andros had his farming, his dogs, his classic authors, -and a curiously mixed performance which he called parochial work, to -occupy him. Marjorie had her study, a boat, fishing-tackle, gardening -tools; in days not so very far distant, had a carpenter’s bench; -all the wholesome outdoor interests of a country-nurtured child. If -Cassandra Tighe chanced occasionally to rattle round in her village -cart and communicate to them the last town news, they heard it; rarely, -otherwise. - -It thus happened, Cassandra remaining away with her nets and her -sea-monsters in Sark, that the comedy in course of rehearsal between -Geff and Marjorie went on for several days without interruption. The -master and pupil met seldom, save during the hours of work, when Geff, -professionally severe, discouraged idle conversation. It did not become -easier to Marjorie than it had seemed on the first night of their -acquaintance to say the words, Your wife. The terms on which they met -were frank; slightly stiffer, perhaps, under the broad sun of noon than -they had been among the syringa blossoms by starlight! They stood, on -the outside, at least, in the position of any commonly dense freshman, -and of a coach, conscientiously minded to get his man, if possible, -through Previous. - -On the outside. Growing to know Marjorie’s transparent nature better -and better, deriving keen refreshment from the badly-trained, fine -intelligence which might have risen so high above the commonly dense -freshman’s level, Geoffrey grew, hourly, more sensible that their -seasons for meeting were ’ower lang o’ comin’,’ that each intervening -day was a space of time to be lived through! At this point stood Geff. -Secure, she was fain to think contented, in the knowledge of a Mrs. -Arbuthnot’s existence, Marjorie worked with an unstinted zeal, a vivid -delight, such as the whole defunct race of governesses, morning or -resident, had failed to awaken in her. - -So things progressed through half a dozen lessons. Then, one sunless -afternoon, sky and sea and speck of island painted in half-tones, -misty, dubious as the happiness of human life, came the rattle as of -a score of chained captives along the avenue of Tintajeux. Marjorie, -pacing up and down the schoolroom as she boldly struggled with the -irregularities of a Greek verb, recognised the sound of Cassandra’s -cart-wheels. Pushing Delectus and exercise books aside, she ran forth -joyfully to meet her friend. Had not important news to be told? Our -Cambridge B.A. thinking good things possible in the direction of -Girton, the emancipation of those benighted Spanish women, who only -know how to manage their house or fold their mantilla gracefully, a few -prospective inches advanced! - -‘You are inkier than ever, Marjorie Bartrand.’ - -This was Miss Tighe’s first personal observation, thrown back over her -shoulder as she knotted Midge, the unkempt Brittany pony, to a rail, -with one of the sundry odds and ends of rope stowed away in readiness -within that all-containing cart of hers. - -‘Only about the wrists,’ Marjorie pleaded, holding out the sleeve of -her holland pinafore. - -‘But I don’t see that University teaching puts flesh on your bones. -You are growing too much like that picture of your mother. Eyes are -all very well, especially handsome ones, but one wants something more -than eyes in a face. You would have done much better’--who shall say -Cassandra was not right--‘much better to come with Annette and me to -Sark, jelly-fish hunting.’ - -The speech gave an impression of being double-shotted. But Marjorie, -with unwonted meekness, made no retort until she and her visitor were -within shelter of the drawing-room. There, in the familiar presence of -the buhl Cupids, of the miniature Bartrands, who had danced, loved or -hated each other, and gone to the guillotine with such easy grace, the -girl felt herself protected--oh, Marjorie, from what dim vision of a -sin could that white soul need protection? She began the story of her -days, and of her intercourse with Geff Arbuthnot, bravely. - -‘I feel half way towards Little Go, Miss Tighe. I get my six hours’ -teaching a week, and----’ - -‘You have always had teaching in abundance,’ remarked Cassandra, -wilfully misinterpreting her. ‘Since you were twelve, you have had -Madame Briquebec six hours a week.’ - -‘Madame Briquebec--a music mistress!’ - -‘Six hours’ lessons, and twelve hours’ practice. It would require a -Cambridge mathematician,’ observed Cassandra, ‘to reckon how many -years’ solid capital, out of a lifetime, are given by young women to -such an instrument as the piano!’ - -‘I am not talking of the piano, as you know, Miss Tighe,’ cried -Marjorie, the heart within her rallying at the scent of coming strife. -‘I never practised less for poor old Madame Briquebec than I do now. I -talk of my six hours’ solid reading with Mr. Arbuthnot.’ - -‘Ah! I trust you find Mr. Arbuthnot solidly satisfactory? - -‘My tutor thinks well of my staying power. Mr. Arbuthnot sees no reason -why, if I gave my life up to it for four years, I should not, some day, -come out low in a Tripos.’ - -‘Mr. Arbuthnot, like the rest of the world, knows perhaps upon which -side his bread is buttered.’ - -The suggestion was Cassandra’s. - -‘Bread--buttered! Let me tell you, ma’am, I think that a most harsh -speech! Yes!’ cried Marjorie Bartrand, her face aflame, ‘and verging -on spiteful. A speech most unworthy of Cassandra Tighe.’ - -‘To my mind the subject scarcely necessitates so much indignation, -Marjorie.’ - -‘And to mine, it does. If you implied anything, it must be that Mr. -Arbuthnot flatters me from motives of self-interest, which is vile.’ - -Old Cassandra took off her leather driving gloves; she pressed out -their folds slowly. Then she examined a signet-ring, masculine in size -and device, which was always worn by her on the third finger of the -left hand. - -‘Mr. Arbuthnot comes to visit you, professionally, three days a week.’ -Speaking thus she did not lift her eyes to the young girl’s face. ‘He -comes to Tintajeux at other times, naturally?’ - -‘He came on that first evening when we engaged him--I mean, when Mr. -Arbuthnot was good enough to promise to read with me. It was fine -warm weather, you must remember--the night before you left for Sark. -Grandpapa invited Mr. Arbuthnot to drink tea with us, and afterwards I -walked as far as the Hüets, to put him on the right track for getting -home by Gros Nez.’ - -‘He speaks to you, frequently, of the poor, stay-at-home Griselda wife, -I make no doubt.’ - -The blood rose up, less at the question than at Cassandra’s way of -putting it, to Marjorie’s cheeks. - -‘My tutor has never spoken to me of Mrs. Arbuthnot. You decided, Miss -Tighe, that day when we talked it over under the cedars, that there -might be an indelicacy in my mentioning her too abruptly. And during -our hours of reading we work, and work hard. I think,’ said Marjorie, -lifting her small face aloft, ‘that as regards the learning of classics -and Euclid, it matters nothing to me whether Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot -stay at home or walk abroad.’ - -‘Mrs. _Geoffrey_!’ repeated Cassandra. ‘Oh, that certainly is not the -name. I may have led you wrong in the first instance. Geoffrey is not -the name of the man people talk so much about.’ - -Marjorie walked off to the schoolroom, from whence she presently -returned with Geoffrey’s card, one that he had enclosed in his first -stiff business note to the heiress of Tintajeux. - -‘Samson, Samuel, Cyril. I am nearly sure of Samson,’ mused Cassandra. -‘Accuracy as to names and dates was a kind of heirloom in our family.’ - -‘The name of my coach is Geoffrey,’ said Marjorie Bartrand. ‘Behold it, -Miss Tighe, in black and white--Geoffrey Arbuthnot, B.A., Cantab.’ - -‘I cannot make this out at all. The whole thing is so fresh in my -memory. Coming up from the harbour I called in at Miller’s. It was -but human to ask that poor, weak, unreliable woman about her throat. -Well, although she has swallowed Dr. Thorne’s drugs, Marjorie, she is -recovering. Nature is so perverse in these chronic invalids.’ - -‘Recovering sufficiently to retail a fruity bit of gossip, which -Miss Tighe enjoyed. I wonder whether the world was as scandal-loving -in _your_ days?’ said Marjorie, addressing the calm-eyed group of -Bartrands beside the chimneypiece. ‘You were not a moral generation. -Perhaps when glass heads were universal, stone-throwing was less in -vogue.’ - -‘Poor Mrs. Miller threw no stones. She told me plain and sad facts -about these young Arbuthnot people. The husband for ever philandering -in the train of certain idle ladies belonging to our island society, -the wife watching up for him till all hours of the morning, people, -very naturally, speculating right and left----’ - -But Cassandra Tighe stopped short. Like an arrow from a bow Marjorie’s -slip of a figure had shot across the drawing-room. She stood at her old -friend’s knee. A pair of eyes glowing with all the force of strong, -fiery, yet most generous temper, looked down upon Cassandra’s face. - -‘I hate the speculations of malicious tongues, Miss Tighe. I will -never believe that Geoffrey Arbuthnot “philanders,” whatever the -term means, or treats his wife neglectfully. I know him to be manly, -straightforward, true. I think Griselda ought to be happy, oh! happy -quite beyond the common lot.’ - -The last words were not uttered without a quiver of Marjorie Bartrand’s -lip. - -Miss Tighe finished, we may well believe, with the theme of love and -lovers some thirty-five or forty years before the present time. Was -the subject ever of vital personal moment to her? A jealously worn -signet-ring, the portrait of a scarlet-coated, dark-eyed lad that -hung in her drawing-room, were the only evidence to warrant intimate -friends in hazarding a tentative ‘yes.’ Her present interests, said -the people of a young and irreverent generation, were of fish, fishy. -Are fibres discernible under the microscope in a dogfish’s brain? Can -a mollusc see, or only distinguish, between light and darkness? One -thing was certain. In Cassandra Tighe’s breast lingered all tender, all -womanly sympathy in the troubles of humanity at large. And something -in Marjorie’s voice touched her, not to distrust, but compassion. She -looked, with the pain that is half foreboding, at the young girl’s -ardent, indignant face. - -‘Marjorie Bartrand, we are old friends. You always take the lectures I -give you in good part.’ - -‘I may do so occasionally, Miss Tighe, very occasionally. Let us keep -to facts.’ - -‘I hope you will take a little lecture in good part now. Drive to -Petersport to-morrow, and call on Mrs. Samson Arbuthnot.’ - -‘Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot. With so many fables afloat, let us snatch, -ma’am, pray, at whatever truth we may.’ - -‘Mrs. Geoffrey, if you choose. Although my conviction is unshaken. -Drive in to Petersport to-morrow. Call upon your tutor’s wife. Remember -her want of birth and education, imagine a little excusable jealousy. -Put yourself, in short, in her place, and I am sure your good heart----’ - -‘I have no heart. Grandpapa, the whole of my governesses have impressed -that upon me often.’ - -‘Your good common sense, then, will teach you how you can best befriend -her. That is my lecture.’ - -Marjorie moved away into the nearest window. She looked out, athwart -garden, orchard, moor, towards the Atlantic, gray, sullen, as though -the season had gone back from June to December. A sense of deeply -wounded pride, of cruel, inexplicable disappointment mingled in the -girl’s heart. - -‘I ought to have done the right thing,’ so she communed with herself. -‘I ought to have done it at once. I have just drifted into meanness. -As though it could matter to us Bartrands if every woman in the island -declined to call on Mrs. Arbuthnot. It was you, Miss Tighe,’ she turned -round incisively on Cassandra, ‘who preached to me the gospel of -Mammon.’ - -‘And one hears such nice things said of her, poor dear. The faults are -so obviously the husband’s. Really, if I could have known all one knows -now, my wisest advice would have been--keep clear of them both! In -these prickly affairs, in anything connected with a _mésalliance_, you -are pretty sure to get your hand stung, whichever way you grasp your -nettle.’ - -‘Too late in the day for pensive regrets, Miss Tighe. I have not kept -clear of Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’ - -‘The more the pity. As matters stand, Marjorie, I know that your -conduct will be full of the sweetest tact. We have a few old-fashioned -rules,’ said good, well-meaning Cassandra, ‘to guide us in our -perplexities. The first is, to do unto others as we would they should -do unto us.’ - -‘To-day is not Sunday.’ Marjorie’s foot tapped a quick little tune on -the polished floor. ‘Please don’t let us have Sunday talk.’ - -‘How should we feel if we were Mrs. Arbuthnot? If you were Mrs. -Arbuthnot, how would you wish Marjorie Bartrand should do unto you?’ - -Cassandra’s tone was plaintively sentimental, infalliblest tone of all -to stir up mischief, never far from the surface, in Marjorie Bartrand’s -heart. - -‘How should I feel if I were Mrs. Arbuthnot? Wish that I had my -precious liberty back, of course, and envy every girl I met hers--the -natural feelings, one would hope, of all well-conducted, sensible -married women. Ah,’ ejaculated Marjorie, folding her lithe arms, and -with darkness like that of a swiftly-gathered thunder-cloud on her -Southern face, ‘and to hear people talk as though such things as -roaming husbands and weeping wives were _necessities_, as though the -doom of the serpent was laid upon every son and daughter of Adam. _A -Dieu ne plaise_ that it should be so! There is one girl,’ striking her -breast emphatically, ‘in Her British Majesty’s dominions who will shed -tears for no man while she lives!’ - -‘We will hope so, Marjorie,’ said Cassandra, as she put on her driving -gloves. ‘A good many of us have held the same opinions at seventeen, -and yet had occasion to modify them later on.’ - - - - -CHAPTER X - -‘THEY SAY----’ - - -But the thunder-shower soon broke, the blue sky showed beyond. -Tears, Marjorie Bartrand shed none. What sorrows had she of her own, -what sweetheart, philandering or otherwise, to weep for? In regard -of Geoffrey’s unknown wife, her brief-lived cynicism shifted, ere -Cassandra had been gone an hour, into most genuine, most girl-like -pity. After an outburst of temper, however scornful or unjust, there -was ever in Marjorie’s heart a pungent and fiery fidelity which led her -back, straight as magnet to steel, to her better self. - -That she should be disappointed in Geoffrey’s character was, she told -herself, inevitable. What is there in any man that one should not, on -close acquaintance, be disappointed in him? She had thought, judging -from frank and plainly given confidences, that she knew, to a minute, -how her tutor’s time was passed here in Guernsey. A little hospital -work daily, Geff having met an old college friend in the house surgeon; -a little study for his next Cambridge exam.; a good deal of boating; a -good many walks round the island; three days a week, his reading with -herself at Tintajeux. The picture had been a clear, a pleasant one in -Marjorie’s sight. And now matter so alien as this of fashionable fine -ladies, midnight domestic scenes, idlers speculating right and left, -must come, unwelcome and ugly blots, on the canvas. - -She was disappointed in Geoffrey, personally. She felt, with the -certainty of her age, that she could not work under him again with the -bright unblemished interest of the past days. The change of feeling -should be made up, Marjorie determined, by kindness shown to his wife. -On Mrs. Arbuthnot she pledged herself to call to-morrow. Meantime, yes, -during the forenoon lesson, she would assume a sterner manner towards -this recreant husband, this sober-mannered student who, after all one -hoped of him, was so little raised at heart above the pitiful vanities -of his sex. - -And in the first place her own waist-ribbon must be summarily returned. -This was Marjorie’s resolve when her head rested on its pillow. The -waist-ribbon which, for fear of wounding Geoffrey’s feelings (his -wife’s, perhaps, vicariously), she had suffered her tutor to keep, -must be returned. Looking upon him in this new--alas! to Marjorie’s -experienced mind, this too familiar--character of a philanderer, she -could imagine him, married though he was, exhibiting that bit of ribbon -among his companions as a trophy. ‘A gift, don’t you know, bestowed on -one by a fair hand that shall be nameless.’ Or he might show it among -the idle fine ladies--oh, the hot shame at Marjorie’s sleepy heart--the -idle ladies in whose train he followed, while his wife, ignorant of -Euclid or Greek, but not _devoid of human nature_, shed tears, not one -single drop whereof the man was worthy, at home. - -Marjorie Bartrand fell asleep in a state of the most pointed and -virtuous indignation. Morning brought her back, as it brings back all -of us, not to accidental emotion, but to the common habit of life. -Her habit was to rise, the moment her eyes unclosed, open her window, -and gladly welcome the new day. She did so now. Standing in her white -night-dress, the elastic air blowing on her face, she looked across a -corner of the orchard to the spot where Geoffrey, the crescent moon -shining, plucked the briar roses above her reach. Away in the distant -fields she saw the Reverend Andros, as he walked to and fro with firm -slow step among his men. On her dressing-table lay an algebra paper, -always her hardest work, which she intended resolutely to ‘floor’ -before her tutor’s coming. - -How sweet life was, thought the little girl, how full of fine things -that no man’s hand can take from us! Might it not be wisdom, even in a -Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, as she had committed the error of marriage, to -make the best of it--enjoy the sun that shone, the wind that blew, by -day, and look upon sleep, not weeping, as the state for which nature -designs our race at midnight! - -After a swim in the bay, a brisk run up to the manoir, Marjorie, -with hunger befitting her years, kept her grandfather in excellent -countenance at his breakfast, a solid country meal at which broiled -fish, ham and eggs from the farmyard, home-made rolls and Guernsey -buttered cake predominated. Then she went to the schoolroom, and, long -before a figure she watched for rose above the moor’s horizon, had got -the better of her paper. - -Her wits were at their brightest this morning. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, for -the first time since they had known each other, threw out a few crumbs -of praise when the reading closed. Crumbs of plain household bread, be -it understood--no sugar, no spice--but that caused Marjorie’s heart to -beat, the blood to leap swiftly into her mobile, all-confessing face. - -Geff watched her with admiration he sought not to hide. They had been -working under the cedars, as was their custom in these fair summer -forenoons. A solitary beam of sunlight pierced the thick and odorous -shade. It fell full on Marjorie, looking more like a child than usual -in an unadorned cotton frock, and with her silky raven hair spread out -to dry, unconfined by comb or ribbon, over her shoulders. - -‘The endowments of life certainly don’t go to those who need them -most.’ Geff gave utterance to the truism with the want of preface that -was his habit. ‘Many a pale-faced, hard-working village schoolmistress -would have her path smoothened by possessing a tenth part of your -brains. While for you----’ - -The words were leaving his lips in blunt fidelity. They were not well -considered words, perhaps. Which of us can stand on mental tiptoe -every hour of the twenty-four? But they were about as innocent of -premeditated flattery as was ever speech offered by man to civilised -woman. - -Marjorie interrupted him shortly; dormant indignation against poor -Geff as a frequenter of idle society, a midnight reveller, a careless -husband, flaming forth on him, lightning wise. - -‘For me, Marjorie Bartrand, living on rose leaves in Tintajeux -Manoir--oh! I should be equally charming with brains or without them, -should not I? Thank you immensely for the compliment, sir. If I could -change places I would rather be the village schoolmistress, plainly -doing her day’s work for her day’s wages, than live idly on all the -rose leaves, all the flatteries, the world could heap together.’ Then -lifting her eyes, a look in them to pierce a guilty man’s soul, ‘At -what time should I be likely to find Mrs. Arbuthnot at home?’ she asked -him with cold directness. ‘I shall drive in to Miller’s Hotel. I shall -call on Mrs. Arbuthnot this afternoon.’ - -A flush of undisguised pleasure went over Geoffrey’s face. All these -days he had hoped that some offer of the kind would come from Marjorie, -not doubting that in this small island rumours of Dinah’s beauty, -perhaps of Dinah’s troubles, must have reached as far as Tintajeux. - -‘I am afraid Mrs. Arbuthnot is to be found at home at most hours.’ - -‘So I am told.’ - -‘Dinah goes out too little in this fine June weather.’ - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot must amend her ways. To-day is our Guernsey rose show. -There will be military bands playing, dandies promenading,’ said Miss -Bartrand witheringly, as she glanced at Geff’s undandified figure, -‘fine ladies thinking and talking of everything under God’s sun save -the roses. Some of Mrs. Arbuthnot’s friends will surely tempt her to -join the gay crowd in the Arsenal?’ - -‘Dinah has no friends. I mean, we have been too short a time in -Guernsey to look for many callers. In the matter of visiting-cards, -ladies, I am told, are prone to be sequacious.’ - -So did Geff, with single-minded good-will, seek to round off the edges -of Dinah Arbuthnot’s isolation, of Gaston’s neglect. - -‘And yet they say,’ cried Marjorie, her heart palpitating well-nigh to -pain, ‘that Mrs. Arbuthnot’s husband has acquaintance without stint.’ - -‘You must not believe half “they” say, when men and women’s domestic -concerns are the theme of conversation. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s husband -chanced to meet accidentally with a Doctor and Mrs. Thorne here. The -lady was a friend of former student days in Paris. It was the kind of -meeting,’ added Geff apologetically, ‘in which a man has no choice but -to renew an acquaintance, and----’ - -‘And Linda Thorne, of course, has called upon Mrs. Arbuthnot?’ - -The question came like a sword-thrust from Marjorie Bartrand. - -‘I ... I am afraid ... not yet,’ answered Geoffrey, with hesitation. - -Gaston’s careless conduct in regard of Dinah was just the one subject -that could occasion straightforward Geoffrey’s tongue to stammer. - -‘Ah! Linda Thorne has not called on Mrs. Arbuthnot. That lowers one’s -opinion,’ mused Marjorie, ‘not too high at any time, of Linda Thorne.’ - -‘When you meet Dinah you will see that she is a woman to care little -for the common run of morning callers.’ - -‘I shall endeavour, just the same, to make her care for me.’ - -Marjorie’s tones were icy, a swell of curiously mixed feeling was in -her breast. - -‘Endeavour will not be needed. I never made too sure,’ said Geff -modestly, ‘that you would pay this visit. But I know that Dinah, in her -heart, is more than prepared to bid you welcome.’ - -He rose, visibly reluctant, from the cool greensward. Then, with a -sense that some subtle, intangible change had crept into his relations -with his pupil, Geff prepared to take his leave. - -But perilous stuff had yet to be dislodged from Marjorie Bartrand’s -conscience. She would not call upon the wife while that bit of Spanish -ribbon, a loan made in a moment of foolish high spirits, remained -unchallenged in the husband’s possession. - -‘I hope you have taken care of something I lent you, sir. A piece of -coloured ribbon tied round those flowers I sent, the first evening -grandpapa and I had the pleasure of knowing you, to Mrs. Arbuthnot.’ - -‘To Mrs. Arbuthnot! This is rough on a man,’ cried Geff. ‘Why, Miss -Bartrand, you must have forgotten. Those flowers were given to me.’ - -‘Don’t make too certain of that.’ - -‘But I am certain. I can see you as you stood in the strip of moonlight -by the water-lane, wishing me good-night. Your last words were, “the -flowers are for yourself--your better self.”’ - -‘The ribbon, at least, was given to no one,’ retorted Marjorie, -changing colour under his gaze. ‘It was lent to hinder you from -breaking your neck. You meant to climb the Gros Nez cliffs if you -could. To do that a real good Guernsey man needs his hands, both of -them, and I thought it a pity----’ - -‘The real good Guernsey night should be disfigured by a stupid stranger -leaving the world too tragically. I thank you heartily,’ went on Geff, -as the girl blushed deeper and deeper. ‘I measured the extent of your -sympathy to an inch at the time.’ - -A ring of absolute independence was in his voice; a suspicion lurked -there, too, of hardly restrained laughter. For the situation was taking -hold of him. Let us see, thought Geoffrey, in this feather-light matter -of keeping or not keeping a morsel of sash ribbon, how far the small -shrew could be tamed? Let us see which of the two should fitly, in the -end, be styled conqueror? - -So he thought: by no means forecasting that this feather-light matter -of keeping a morsel of sash ribbon might be the pivot on which his -life’s fortunes should one day turn. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - -‘DODO’S DESPAIR’ - - -‘My sympathy, I believe, was rightly bestowed,’ said Marjorie frigidly. -‘I would not see the poorest wandering pedlar start for the Gros Nez -cliffs without helping him to the extent I helped you. Even a pedlar -might have a wife at home, sir. A foolish, fond creature, shedding -tears of anxiety for him in his absence.’ - -The side-thrust did not seem to scathe Geoffrey’s conscience as it -should have done. - -‘Would you make it a special point that this married pedlar should -return you your ribbon, Miss Bartrand?’ - -‘I make it a point that Mr. Arbuthnot shall do so.’ Marjorie delivered -her ultimatum unflinchingly. ‘The ribbon is worthless, except as a -memento of some happy days I spent in Cadiz once, totally worthless to -any living person but me.’ - -‘And why should it not be a memento of happy days spent in Guernsey by -myself?’ - -She looked him straight between the eyes, too hotly, dangerously irate -to make immediate answer. - -‘Suppose, leading a prosaic life in the thick of bricks and mortar, -that length of ribbon could act as a kind of talisman.’ - -‘I don’t understand you in the least.’ - -‘A charm bringing back to one’s tired eyes and heart the blue summer -night, the smell of moon-coloured hayfields, the whole moment when it -was given to me.’ - -‘I will suppose nothing of the sort. It was not given. This is vapid, -sentimental talk,’ said Marjorie, concentrating her thoughts firmly on -absent Dinah. ‘And I abhor sentiment.’ - -‘On that solitary point we agree.’ - -‘The ribbon I lent you to tie round Mrs. Arbuthnot’s flowers is just a -yard of woven, parti-coloured silk. Buy the best match you can find to -it in the nearest mercer’s shop. It will be as good a talisman.’ - -‘Are you a materialist, Miss Bartrand? Would you say that the ragged -colours of one of the Duke’s regiments, the pennants of one of Nelson’s -ships, were so much woven silk, more or less stained and weather torn?’ - -‘I do not see that my sash ribbon can or should be of the smallest -interest to Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,’ observed Marjorie, the blood -leaping, more swiftly than it had done under his praise, to her cheek. - -In this moment she was a woman, the childish cotton frock, the hair -hung out to dry, the slim immature figure notwithstanding. A dawning -of her sex’s shame burned at her heart as she turned her looks away -from him. In this moment, were it possible to assign place and date -to matter so intangible, I should say that Geff Arbuthnot first, -distinctly, began to fall in love. - -‘And suppose _I_ feel that your sash can and ought to be of the -greatest possible interest to me?’ he urged. - -Marjorie found no answer to her hand. If she had been reared under a -different rule to Andros Bartrand’s, if she had associated more with -girls, had frequented afternoon-teas and garden-parties, she would, -doubtless, even in innocent little Sarnia, have learned the formula -by which a married man, hazarding idle speeches, ought mildly and -effectually to be crushed. - -Marjorie knew no more of flirtation or of its dialects than she did -of Sanscrit. She had gone through an engagement, once, during a brief -uncomfortable fortnight; an experience which took the taste for -lovers and lovers’ vows most adequately out of her young mouth. And -now--oh, now she never meant to marry! She had her Greek and Latin in -the present, a large outlook for herself and others in the future. Of -flirtation she knew nothing, of engagements she knew too much! And she -liked Geff Arbuthnot, and did not like the duties of repressing his -frivolity, or of ranging herself against him in the civil wars of his -home life. Yet to the utmost of her strength should both these duties -be fulfilled. - -‘Your interests were appropriated long before you ever saw me,’ she -replied at last. ‘What hour, this afternoon, would it be convenient, -pray, for me to visit Mrs. Arbuthnot?’ - -Her tone, her look, might for a moment have suggested to Geoffrey -that the secret of his youth had made unto itself wings and flown to -Tintajeux. Only the very supposition were wild! Gaston, Dinah herself -had never suspected the passionate madness which, in the May twilight -of long ago, used to draw him night after night to the little thatched, -rose-covered cottage at Lesser Cheriton. - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot? For anything I know to the contrary, Dinah will be at -home between three and four o’clock.’ - -‘And at our next reading, sir, you will bring back my ribbon.’ - -‘I made no promise.’ - -‘Of what mortal use can a bit of ribbon be to you, Mr. Arbuthnot?’ - -‘I have had thoughts of turning this particular ribbon into a -book-marker,’ said Geff, boldly imaginative. - -‘A book-marker! I ask you--do you think it honest to keep property that -belongs to other people?’ - -‘My conscience, I must confess, does not prick me.’ - -‘If I order, will you obey?’ - -Marjorie had turned abruptly pale. Her mouth quivered. - -‘If you order, I submit,’ said Geff, watching her gravely. ‘I will -never go against your smallest wish while I live. You shall have your -ribbon before our next lesson, Miss Bartrand, I promise.’ - -The shadow of a quarrel was between them when they bade good-bye. And -at the thought of this shadow Marjorie’s illogical spirit was sore -vexed. But I think Geff Arbuthnot walked back to town with a lighter -spirit in his breast than had reigned there since the moment when he -first saw Dinah and Gaston as lovers, hand clasping hand, in the little -Cambridgeshire orchard. - -His knowledge of young girls, their instability, their hot and cold -fits, their tempers, their fluctuating emotions, had been derived -from books. So his theories on the subject were mainly worthless. But -men who in after days rival neither Thackeray nor Balzac, do often, -during one phase of their own experience, make keen enough guesses as -to the source of female weakness. Geoffrey felt, with an instinct’s -force, that Marjorie Bartrand’s blanched cheeks, her quivering lip, -her passionate tones, were not the outcome of childish anger. He felt, -with an instinct’s force, that the girl herself was a child no longer. -Whither must this altered state of things tend? - -The question was complex; and Geoffrey willingly let it rest. As he -walked the warm air was briar-scented, the birds murmured lazy midday -nothings to each other amidst the lush hedges, the voice of Marjorie -Bartrand filled his heart. What need to hope or fear for the future -when one is twenty-four years old, and the actual living hour has a -hold, delicious as this, upon the senses! - - -Dinah and her husband were alone together, a quiet little picture of -domestic still life, when Geff reached the hotel. - -A vine-trellised slip of courtyard lay outside the north window of -Mrs. Arbuthnot’s sitting-room. Here, during the sunny forenoons, -Gaston, picturesquely bloused, found it pleasant to work, when he was -sufficiently in the vein to work at all. He wore his blouse, was in the -vein, now. That which two days ago was a mass of rough clay, showed the -airy outlines of a baby-girl, seated on a Brobdingnagian shell, one -small foot neatly shoed and socked, the other clasped, naked, between -her dimpled hands, in an attitude of inimitable, three-year-old dismay. - -‘We label this work of genius “The Lost Shoe,” or “Dodo’s Despair,” or -some equally pathetic and unhackneyed title,’ remarked the sculptor as -Geff entered upon the scene. ‘We get our so many guineas for it, from -our masters, and solicit further orders, do we not, Dinah?’ - -‘You should have no master but your art,’ was Dinah’s answer. - -‘That is easily said. My wife, as usual, Geff, is urging upon me to -fulfil my mission, to deliver messages, to begin big and serious work. -But I fancy I gauge my own depths justly. I have no messages whatever -to deliver to anybody. These trickeries of Philistine sentiment,’ -Gaston pointed with a shapely clay-stained hand to his model, ‘are -always a success. In the first place, they draw tears from Mr. and Mrs. -Prud’homme. In the second, the dealers approve them. What more can an -artist’s heart desire?’ - -‘Everything,’ replied Dinah. - -But she spoke in parenthesis, and under her breath. - -‘Am I anatomical, Geoffrey? This must always be important, whether a -man work with or without a mission. How about this bend in the left -knee-joint? Are my muscles right?’ - -Geoffrey offered one or two strictly professional criticisms; then -after admiring the grace, the charm of the little clay sketch, gave his -uncompromising moral support to Dinah. - -Whoever possesses genius--well, talent, no need to fight over -words--lies under the behest of duty. Gaston’s duty, the one straight -and unmistakable road that lay before him, was to abandon conventional -prettiness, to go in for the expression of the highest thoughts that -were in him. - -‘I am destitute of high thoughts,’ said Gaston, his refined, -intellectual face belying the assertion. ‘I have not the prophet’s -_rôle_. If I tried to soar, I should immediately afterwards have to -climb down. I have no original ideas to embody----’ - -‘Gaston!’ broke, with an accent of denial, from Dinah’s lips. - -‘And the dealers, Farrago in Pall Mall especially, are my masters. -Before I left town Farrago’s advice was memorable. “The market demands -nothing classic in statuettes, Mr. Arbuthnot. Nothing romantic. Above -all, nothing to make us think. The market demands trifles, sir, -trifles. Objects for the smoke-room or boudoir. Domestic amenities, as -you agreeably say, for Monsieur and Madame Prud’homme! And, for wider -sections of society, ‘flavour.’ In any case, trifles. Nothing, if you -please, to make us think.”’ - -‘Instead of obeying,’ exclaimed Dinah, ‘you ought to say, “I, Gaston -Arbuthnot, must do such and such work, no other. Let Mr. Farrago take -my statuettes or leave them, as he likes.”’ - -‘That style of talk is for giants, my dear child--putting aside the -fact that I am bound to Farrago for another six months. Carlyle talked -so to the Edinburgh Reviewers. Viewed by the light of after success his -talk may sound grand. If Carlyle had not speedily written the “French -Revolution” it would have been called “tall.”’ - -‘But I want you to write your “French Revolution” in clay,’ Dinah -persisted. ‘Here, in Guernsey, you know, you planned to make studies, -always studies, for the great work you will set about in Florence. But -then,’ a piece of embroidery was between Dinah’s hands; she lifted her -eyes from her wools and silks at this juncture, and fixed them, full of -earnest reproach, on Gaston, ‘there have been unfortunate throw-backs.’ - -‘Throw-backs! As how?’ Gaston Arbuthnot applied himself to the -correction of one of the points anatomically criticised by Geoffrey. -‘As long as I am bound to Farrago, even feminine morality, my love, -will allow that I should be honest. Every saleable thing I do must -pass, as per contract, through Farrago’s hands. Taking one day with -another, I have got through rather more work than the average, here in -Guernsey.’ - -‘Have you put your own thoughts into form, Gaston? This model, when it -is finished’--she glanced somewhat coldly at ‘Dodo’s Despair’--‘will be -a portrait of Rahnee Thorne simply.’ - -‘Rahnee Thorne idealised!’ Gaston’s rejoinder was made with the -unruffled temper that characterised him. ‘My clay infant has flesh upon -her bones, and an infant’s face. Rahnee, though I love the child, is -but a poor little wizened Bengalee, at her best.’ - -‘Will the portrait of Rahnee’s mamma, the model you have on hand at The -Bungalow, need to be idealised also?’ - -‘Dinah, you should be magnanimous.’ And with a movement that in a less -composed man might have been a shrug of the shoulders, Mr. Arbuthnot -prepared to clean the clay from his hands. ‘A pretty woman--well, if -you shake your head, an exceedingly beautiful woman--need never utter a -sarcasm about a plain one.’ - -At the negative compliment a colour, soft as the pure pink veining of -a shell cameo, stained Dinah’s face. Her breast throbbed. And all the -time the speech, delicious in sound, signified nothing. Gaston had -been engaged for days past to escort plain Mrs. Linda to the rose-show, -and felt not the smallest temptation to break his engagement. Dinah -must be magnanimous! Dinah’s husband, after two or three hours’ facile -work on ‘Dodo’s Despair,’ needed relaxation, and would have it. - -‘You ought to take me to the show, Geff,’ she pleaded, turning round -half jestingly, half in earnest, to Geoffrey. ‘What would Linda Thorne, -what would Gaston think, if I suddenly made my appearance among all the -fine ladies of Guernsey?’ - -‘Linda Thorne might have her own views,’ said Gaston. ‘When Dinah -Arbuthnot shows her face, every fine lady, in Guernsey, or elsewhere, -must be on the spot eclipsed.’ - -Whatever Dinah thought, Geff knew that a certain insincerity underlay -the speech, and controlled a pungent remark with effort. The friendship -of the Arbuthnot trio was never more sharply paradoxical than at this -moment. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - -YELLOW-BACKED NOVELS - - -The June rose-show stands second only to Her Majesty’s Birthday among -the big events of the Channel Islands’ calendar. - -By three o’clock the road between Petersport and the Arsenal plateau -was filled with a growing stream of men and women. Simple rose -lovers many of them, but some lovers of another kind. And some roses -themselves! What buoyant young figures fluttered past the window -whence Dinah Arbuthnot, shrouded from view, undreaming of her own -future, watched the crowd! What ruddy fine complexions were here, what -well-shapen noses and mouths, what dark Norman eyes! Why, you might -scour half a dozen English counties before you could bring together as -many handsome girls as would soon be within the Guernsey Arsenal’s four -walls. Must not excuse be made--the thought was Dinah’s--for an artist -who should long to stock his brain’s tablets with so much beauty, even -though an idle tear or two, a little discontent in some one left at -home, must be the price of his experience? - -She strove her best to be magnanimous, to give a valiant ‘yes’ to this -self-propounded question. Then, even as she made the effort, a group -of persons drew nigh from the direction of Petersport, at the sight of -whom poor Dinah’s magnanimity and the wifely heart that beat in her -breast stood instantly at variance. Her hands turned cold and rigid. A -prophecy, rather than an actual living look of jealous anger, swept all -the youthful gentleness from her face. - -A group of four persons: Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, Mrs. Thorne, the small -daughter Rahnee, and a native nurse. Dazzling was Mrs. Linda in -whatever furbelows and head gear local Parisian milliners had impressed -on the feminine Sarnian mind as the ‘last thing out.’ Overdecked in -embroidery and ribbons was Rahnee, a sorrowfully thin little child, -with dark-ringed eyes, sallow cheeks, bangles on wrist. A typical -Indian child, perverse, sickly, unruled, and who at the present moment -was dancing, knowingly and deliberately, on her mother’s fragile -flounces at every second step. - -‘I am sure one ought to reform her.’ Thus Linda would make confession -among her matron friends. ‘But what is to be done as long as you -keep an ayah? You must reform the ayah first. That is just the one -enthusiasm of humanity which is outside my reach, to reform an ayah.’ - -Rahnee, I repeat, danced persistently and with effect on her mother’s -cobweb furbelows, as she capered and twisted herself along the street. -Linda’s expression was as little honeyed as the expression of a -coquette can ever be in the presence of a man she seeks to charm. The -ayah vainly gesticulated, vainly uttered expostulations in unknown -Eastern tongues from the rear. Breakdown and rout of one or other of -the forces seemed imminent. Suddenly, just as they were passing the -hotel--perhaps it was this incident stabbed Dinah’s unreasoning heart -to the quick--Gaston came to the fore as mediator. Holding out both -hands, Gaston Arbuthnot offered small Rahnee a place on his shoulder. -Dinah could hear his pleasant voice, indicative of a mind content with -its surroundings, as he began some sage nursery talk, all-engrossing, -it would seem, to Rahnee’s soul. The thin arms closed round his neck, -the tiny primrose-gloved fingers played with his hair. Mrs. Linda, -a restored picture of amiable maternity, trotted behind. The ayah -followed after; her black orbs pantomiming unspeakable things to such -portions of the Guernsey world as had been chance witnesses of the -scene. Then, domestic-wise, the group of four persons went their way. - -A choking, hysterical lump rose in Dinah’s throat. With a vague sense -of her own worthiness, a suspicion that if Dinah Arbuthnot was out of -keeping with sunshine and flowers and little children, Dinah Arbuthnot -herself must be to blame, she watched Gaston and his friends until they -had turned the corner towards the Arsenal. Barely was the final shimmer -of Linda’s flounces lost to view, when a clatter of hoofs approached -rapidly along the Petersport road. A miniature phaeton with a girl -driver, and drawn by a pair of small black ponies, came in sight. -A minute later, and Marjorie Bartrand, who had drawn up before the -portico of the hotel, was inquiring--yes, there could be no mistake; -through the open windows the sound of her own name reached Dinah -distinctly--‘If Mrs. Arbuthnot was at home?’ - -Dinah had not received one morning visitor in Guernsey. How many -morning visitors (upon Mrs., not Mr., Arbuthnot) had Dinah received -since her marriage? The unexpected respectability of the event--for our -Tintajeux Bartrands, mind you, with all their eccentricity, stand on -the topmost rung of the social insular ladder--moved Mr. Miller’s mind. -A man of tact and discrimination, the host proceeded himself to usher -Marjorie in. - -The Arbuthnots’ parlour door was thrown open with an air. ‘Miss -Bartrand of Tintajeux’ was announced in Miller’s most professional -voice. Then came the meeting to which Marjorie had looked forward with -resolute conscience, perhaps with lurking doubts as to the cordiality -of the reception that should await her. - -‘This is very good of you.’ Dinah spoke in her usual voice. She came -forward with the simplicity that draws so near to De Vere repose. -‘Geoffrey never warned me I was to look for such a pleasure. I take it -very kind of you to come, Miss Bartrand.’ - -Dinah’s trouble had just reached that level when the smallest act of -good will, from friend or stranger, may cause the cup to overflow. Her -eyes suffused, her colour heightened. - -‘Mr. Arbuthnot thought I should be likely to find you at home this -afternoon. I wanted to see you long ago!’ cried Marjorie, her gaze -fixed on the face whose delicate beauty so far overpassed her -expectations. ‘But I waited--I thought,’ stammered the girl, for the -first time since she could remember feeling an excuse needed for her -conduct ‘I thought, of course, Mr. Arbuthnot might ask me to call.’ - -‘Who--Geff?’ answered Dinah, with a fleeting, shy smile. ‘No, indeed, -Miss Bartrand. Geoffrey would not make so bold. He knows too well that -I live retired.’ - -Dinah’s phrases were certainly not those of the educated world. But -Marjorie, looking open-eyed at the mouth and throat and golden hair, -was in no mood to be critical. - -‘I have lived retired pretty well from the time I married. My husband -does whatever visiting is required of us.’ - -‘That is unfair to the world at large!’ cried Marjorie Bartrand, -drawing up a chair to the table, where wools and silks lay heaped -beside Dinah’s patiently progressing canvas. ‘Whatever hermit rules you -observe elsewhere we shall make you break through them in Guernsey. -I may look at your work? What intricate shading!’ She scanned the -pathetic mass of Dinah’s stitches. ‘What a labour of love embroidery -must be to you!’ - -‘It helps pass the time,’ said Dinah Arbuthnot. Wool-work fills up long -hours that must else be empty. For I am not a scholar like you, Miss -Bartrand, or like Geoffrey. And I only learnt the piano for two years -at boarding school, not enough to play well.’ - -‘Still, you do play?’ - -Marjorie glanced across at a piano that stood open. A goodly heap of -music scores lay on a neighbouring ottoman. - -‘Not in such a public place as an hotel. The notes you see there are my -husband’s. Mr. Arbuthnot sings, as I dare say you know. He was thought, -once on a time, to have the best tenor voice in Cambridge. Some day,’ -said Dinah doubtfully, ‘I may play just well enough to accompany him. -Unfortunately for me, the most beautiful of his songs are in French.’ - -Marjorie bethought her of Geoffrey’s accent, and was silent. - -‘You will have good opportunities of learning French in Guernsey, Mrs. -Arbuthnot.’ - -‘Geff wants me to take lessons. We have a French waitress here in the -hotel, but she speaks too quick for me, so do my husband and--and Mrs. -Thorne. I only understand the sort of French we learned at boarding -school--the sort of French the girls talked together,’ said poor Dinah -modestly. - -No books, no languages, no music; only cross-stitch, the counting of -canvas threads, to fill one’s existence and one’s heart. And for life -companion, thought Marjorie, a husband who frequented afternoon teas, -who warbled ‘beautiful’ French ditties, in a bad accent, to audiences -of women on the level of Linda Thorne! - -This vision of Geoffrey, as a singer, added the crowning touch to -the girl’s disappointment in his character. Throughout the brief, -bitter-tasting epoch when her unwilling hand wore an engagement-ring, -she was accustomed to hear French sentiment in an English accent, -and an English tenor voice, during at least three hours out of each -twenty-four. At this moment the tinkling burthen of one frequent song -came back, with a sense of repulsion that was pain, upon her heart. - - - ‘Si vous n’avez rien à me dire - Pourquoi passez-vous par ici?’ - - -She remembered how the white hands of Major Tredennis used to rattle -out the accompaniment of that song. She remembered the flower -Major Tredennis wore at his button-hole the last day he visited -Tintajeux--remembered, when she got knowledge of his treachery, how -instant and far-reaching was her scorn. - -With what honesty did she now scorn all human creatures of the -Tredennis stamp! How loyally would she put herself forward as Dinah’s -friend; yes, although she must forfeit the reading of mathematics and -classics with Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot as her reward! - -‘You have not been here long enough to see much of the island. Of -course you are fond of the country?’ - -‘Well, I was country born and bred. Real country folk, my husband says, -set less store upon green fields and hedgerows than the town people.’ - -‘But you like being out of doors? You will walk or drive with me -sometimes? I have a pair of Welsh ponies, capital at scrambling up and -down our Guernsey lanes.’ - -‘You are very kind, Miss Bartrand, but I can’t quite give an answer. -You see I should have to speak to Mr. Arbuthnot.’ - -Poor Dinah coloured with actual shame at the proposal. - -‘Now, to-day. Why are you not enjoying yourself with the rest of the -world at the show? Guernsey roses, I can tell you, are worth looking -at.’ - -‘I asked Geff, in joke, of course, to take me,’ Dinah answered. ‘But he -was not polite enough to say “Yes.”’ - -‘Will you come with me?’ cried Marjorie. ‘As I drove in from Tintajeux -I was getting my courage up all the way to ask you this. I have no -chaperon, and now that I am seventeen, nearly a grown-up woman, the old -ladies tell my grandfather it is improper I should go about without -one. I, who know the island like a cat! You would be doing an act of -charity by coming with me to the Arsenal.’ - -Dinah’s face grew irresolute at this piece of special pleading. She -crossed to the window, and looked with wistful eyes up the street. She -recalled the group which had passed along a quarter of an hour before. -She heard Gaston’s voice again, saw the tiny primrose hands clasped -round his throat. She thought of Linda Thorne’s rainbow-coloured -flounces, and of Linda Thorne herself. - -‘I should like to go.’ The truth broke from her after a minute more -of hesitation. ‘I was feeling duller than usual when you came, Miss -Bartrand, and I do like a flower-show above all things. We used to go -to the Tiverton shows when my sister and I were girls. Uncle William, -who lived bailiff at Lord Lufton’s, would take us when the gentlepeople -were gone. But that,’ Dinah interrupted herself hastily, ‘was -different. We were with Uncle William, we were in our place. I should -not be in my place with you. Perhaps you are too young, Miss Bartrand, -to see this. My husband is at the Arsenal with his friends, and----’ - -‘Wherever a husband goes is a place for his wife, according to my -ideas of matrimony,’ said Marjorie, in a careless tone, but with her -veracious face aflame. ‘I will not hear another excuse. It will be a -curiously pleasant surprise for Mr. Arbuthnot when he sees you in my -society.’ - -‘The ladies are dressed so elegantly,’ objected Dinah, at the same time -moving towards the door. ‘And I never wear smart things.’ - -‘Neither do I.’ In truth, Marjorie wore one of the plain washed frocks, -the sunburnt straw hat, that she wore on the moor at Tintajeux. ‘What -do smart things or smart people matter to you and me? Dress as you -choose, Mrs. Arbuthnot. You will look better than every woman in the -Arsenal.’ - -‘I had best put on black. My husband, fortunately, has lovely taste, -even in ladies’ dress. He tells me black is always the safest thing for -me to wear.’ (‘Black cachemire and silence.’ Dinah remembered those -were the requisites Gaston advocated, obliquely--the hint concealed by -charming flowers of speech--on the solitary occasion when he introduced -her to some female members of his family in London.) ‘I shall ask you -to tell me, Miss Bartrand, about my gloves and ribbons.’ - -Thus speaking, Dinah passed away through a side door into her own -chamber. For Gaston, with his knack of organising daily life after -the manner that best suited himself, had taken a compact little suite -of apartments on Mr. Miller’s ground floor. And Marjorie, left to her -meditations, glanced around the parlour--in writing of Guernsey, and -of Dinah, the old-fashioned word must be excused--for land-marks that -should point out its present possessor’s tastes. - -Dinah was not a woman whose affections tended towards ornament, in art -or in dress. Had they done so, Dinah’s life had probably been happier. -Her work-basket, with its outlying heaps of silk and wool, was the only -sign Marjorie could detect of feminine occupation. What of Dinah’s -husband? Pipes and cigarette-holders of varying patterns were ranged on -either side the mantelpiece. A tobacco jar stood in unabashed evidence -on a table. An odour not to be mistaken clung round the draperies of -the windows. So this man smoked, thought Marjorie irefully--_smoked_ in -his beautiful, refined wife’s living-room! Yellow-backed French novels -abounded (French novels, I must confess, were an abiding inspiration -of Gaston’s genius). The neighbourhood of the piano was strewn with -French songs. A volume of Greek poetry, lent to Geoffrey by old -Andros Bartrand, lay on a bookshelf. In a corner by the door Marjorie -discerned a rough briar walking-stick, which she recognised as her -tutor’s property. - -As she looked around the room her impulse was to burst into tears. -It was but an inn’s best parlour. You could not expect the perfume, -the grace of Tintajeux under good Mr. Miller’s roof. But it was not -Louis Seize furniture, or Pompadour cabinets, or Trianon rose-baskets, -that Marjorie missed. To pipes and tobacco smoke her life with the -Seigneur had accustomed her. Yellow-backed novels did not disturb her -conscience. Within limits she could endure French songs. The room -repulsed her because it destroyed every dream she had had of Geoffrey! -Without the Greek volume, she thought, without the briar stick even, -her disenchantment had been less vivid. She had not been forced to -remember him, to admit the lapse into bathos of her own ridiculously -high-pitched ideal. - -But so the facts stood. ‘One may be made a fool twice,’ the girl told -herself. ‘First by a sweetheart, secondly by a friend. Happily Dinah -Arbuthnot, not Marjorie Bartrand, must this time pay the reckoning.’ - -And the tears were in her eyes still. In spite of all disillusionment, -her liking for Geff lingered obstinately. She thought she could never -again be glad of heart as on that mid-summer night when she curtsied to -the moon and wished a wish by her tutor’s side on the lawn at Tintajeux. - -It took Dinah Arbuthnot fifteen minutes--a real ‘quarter of an hour of -Rabelais’ for Marjorie--to put on hat and gown; fifteen minutes ere she -could be sure her appearance would pass muster in the eyes of Linda -Thorne. The best and simplest women infrequently dress for the other -sex, or for the world at large, or for themselves. They dress for each -other, oftenest of all for one especial feminine criticism which they -have reason to fear. - -‘Shall I do, Miss Bartrand?’ Dinah peeped, her exquisite face aflush, -through the half-opened door, then she crossed the room to Marjorie; -instinct, true as a child’s, informing her that in Geoffrey’s pupil -she had found a friend. ‘I want you to pick me to pieces, find as much -fault with me as you can. Shall I do?’ - -‘Do!’ repeated Marjorie. - -And a volume of hearty admiration was in the monosyllable. - -Dinah Thurston, in her girlhood, had learnt dressmaking as a trade. Of -dress as a difficult social art Dinah Arbuthnot knew not the initial -letters. Here her husband was an unfailing monitor. Gaston had an -artist’s knowledge of colour and effect. He had the sense of fitness -belonging to a man of the world. Dinah’s apparel might not accurately -follow the fashion books. It bore the seal of distinction at all times. - -Thus the ‘safe’ black dress was absolutely perfect of its kind; plain -of make, as was meet for such a bust, such shoulders as Dinah’s, -but draped by a Parisian hand that knew its cunning. A ruffle of -Mechlin lace enhanced the sweet whiteness of the wearer’s throat. -A velvet-lined hat threw up the outline of the head, the waves of -short-cut English-coloured hair in rich relief. - -‘You are lovelier than any picture!’ cried Marjorie, looking at Dinah -Arbuthnot with as generous a pleasure, surely, as ever woman felt in -the beauty of another. - -‘Advise me about my gloves.’ Dinah blushed and drew back at the girl’s -frank praise. ‘Here are cream-coloured ones, you see, the same shade -as my ruffle, and here is a box of long black silk gloves. My husband -had them sent from Paris with the gown. Of course, the cream-coloured -are the dressiest.’ The tone of Dinah’s voice betrayed her own leaning. -‘Mr. Arbuthnot warns me generally against light gloves. My hands, he -says, are half a size too large. Still for a flower-show----’ - -‘You must wear the black gloves, Mrs. Arbuthnot. No shadow of doubt -about it! As you see, I don’t go in for dandy dress myself,’ said -Marjorie, ‘but one can’t help hearing the whispers of the milliners. -These long silk gloves are at present the one righteous thing to wear -in London and in Paris.’ - -‘And no ribbons, no ornament? I have a gold necklace that looks nice on -black, and----’ - -‘You want no ornament at all. You must take our little world by storm -just as you stand at this moment. Miller has some crimson roses in his -garden. We will cut one as we pass. The black of your hat would be -better for a single spot of colour.’ - -By the time Marjorie’s fiery Welsh ponies had rushed up to the Arsenal -four o’clock was striking. The rose-show festivities were, for the weak -and frivolous, at their culminating point. It was the hour when staid -flower-lovers--sensible souls who came to see the real, not the human -roses--were leaving, Cassandra Tighe among them. - -‘I am starting off to Tintajeux,’ she told Marjorie, as they passed -each other at the entrance. ‘The Seigneur’s “Duc de Rohan” has taken -a prize, and I must be first to carry the news to the Manoir.’ Then, -with a kindly glance at Dinah, ‘You have done the right thing, have -paid your visit,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t see the necessity of mixing -yourself up with it all in public. Linda Thorne presides at the -refreshment tent, and that wretched man is simply infatuated in his -attentions. But the error is generous. Being a Bartrand, you can, I -suppose, do nothing by halves.’ - -‘I consider myself honoured by appearing with Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ returned -Marjorie, very low. ‘I want to judge of that wretched man’s conduct at -first hand, see facts alive, and extract their meaning by the light of -my own common sense.’ - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - -THROUGH SMOKE-COLOURED SPECTACLES - - -The refreshment tent was pitched at the most conspicuous point of the -Arsenal, just within the gates. Here Linda Thorne, assisted by three or -four white-muslined aides-de-camp, dispensed strawberries, ices, and -tea, liberal of smiles, but most illiberal in charges to the crowd. - -Gaston Arbuthnot hovered near, not engaging Mrs. Thorne’s attention, -but with the air of a man whose freedom is nominal--of a prisoner on -parole. The ayah had vanished. Small Rahnee, in a corner, was busily -laying up a week’s trouble for her tropical digestion over a plate of -stolen macaroons. A swarm of well-gloved, well-set-up young gentlemen, -subalterns, for the most part, of the Maltshire Royals, newly returned -from Africa, clustered ornamentally around. - -‘Lord Rex,’ cried Linda, in a playful voice appealing to a youth who -stood behind her chair, a plain but ultra-dandified youth, with a -sun-scorched face, sandy hair and eyelashes, and who wore his left arm -in a sling. ‘My dear Lord Rex, where are your thoughts to-day? For -the third and last time of asking, will you run across to Madame the -Archdeaconess, and press her to drink a second cup of tea?’ - -For Linda, a clever politician, never allowed the present to divert her -mindfulness from the future. Belonging--_sub silentio_--to the extreme -left of any society in which she found herself, Mrs. Thorne kept a -firm grip, here in European coteries, as formerly in Indian stations, -on whatever Conservative mainstay might be within her reach. Her -Guernsey mainstay was the Archdeacon’s wife. Linda was a member, under -Madame Corbie, of cutting-out clubs, district-visiting corps, societies -for persuading members of all denominations to change places with each -other, and similar intricate philanthropies of the hour and place. If, -occasionally, serious circles looked with misgiving upon some little -new escapade, some unaccustomed outbreak of vivacity at The Bungalow, -Linda’s usefulness floated her. There was such a fund of sterling -worth in Linda Thorne! So some old lady would say at whose house Linda -perhaps, on the preceding evening, demure as a mouse, had been painting -Christmas cards for the Caribbee Islanders. Such energy, such zeal -for the weaker brethren! Such a genius for collecting subscriptions, -or organising fancy bazaars! And then one must not forget the stock -she came of. One must always remember what our dear flighty Linda’s -grandpapa _was_! - -Hence, perhaps, the leniency of the judgments. The old Sarnian ladies -never forgot that our dear flighty Linda’s grandpapa was an earl. - -‘Madame Corbie--tea!’ echoed Lord Rex Basire, the sun-scorched dandy, -absently. ‘Ah, there she goes again! The prettiest girl, yes, by Jove! -the out-and-outest girl, every way, I have seen in Guernsey. Golden -hair, a complexion, a figure.... Let me take the Venerable her cheering -cup at once, and set me free to fly after my Dulcinea.’ - -‘A new Dulcinea?’ asked Linda, with a glance as sweet as the cup she -had prepared for Madame Corbie. ‘I thought Lord Rex Basire had flown -after every Dulcinea in the Channel Islands a long time since.’ - -Lord Rex broke away without reply, causing a good deal of the -Venerable’s tea to overflow by reason of his impetuous movements. But -he was not set free again as quickly as he desired. - -Madame Corbie was what the Scottish bailie called ‘a fine respectit -half-worn sort of woman.’ Her set of immediate worshippers, poorer -cousins for the most part, would speak of her beneath their breath as -so superior! Madame Corbie never smiled. Madame Corbie never retracted -a step once taken. It was her harmless boast that she had never read -a novel in her life--as one would say he had never cut a throat, or -picked a pocket. She would wear no black satin that cost less than -ten shillings and sixpence (Guernsey currency) per yard. And she -surveyed the moral, as she did the physical, world through a pair of -smoke-coloured spectacles. - -Even the Archdeaconess, however, had her little stock of human vanities -and foibles. Persons of title, though they exist in adequate number on -the British mainland, are scarce and prized, like the pink flowering -hydrangea, on these smaller islets. With the rectors’ wives from -half a dozen country parishes sitting around, neglected, it was a -distinctly soothing sensation for good Madame Corbie’s unworldly heart -to have Lord Rex Basire, the fifth son of a very impoverished duke, in -attendance upon her. - -A second cup of tea? Why, Lord Rex and dear Linda were certainly -conspiring to spoil us all! And might she, the Archdeaconess, ask if -there was such a thing to be had as a macaroon? - -‘Too late, Madame Corbie! Lost your chance,’ cried Lord Rex. ‘That -young limb, Rahnee, has been beforehand with you. I saw her devouring -the last three macaroons at a gulp just as Linda sent me off with your -tea.’ - -Lord Rex was forced to shout these words into Madame Corbie’s ear, -for the band of the Maltshire Royals were playing a forcible, much -kettle-drummed polka not twenty feet distant, so his attentions, -even to the obtuse perceptions of country rectors’ wives, must be -unmistakably marked. - -‘Sadly unwholesome diet, to be sure. But poor Linda Thorne is so -indiscreet in minor matters. You agree with me, do you not, Lord Rex? -Nothing more sadly indigestible for a young child’s stomach than -macaroons?’ - -Lord Rex Basire heard her not. It may be doubted whether Lord Rex heard -the horns and kettle-drums as they echoed resonantly from the Arsenal -walls. He was absorbed in the vision of a distant lovely head, poised -flowerlike on a white throat, its waves of amber hair set off against -the soft velvet of a Rubens hat. No other interest existed on our -planet at that moment for Lord Rex Basire. - -He was a man who from his birth upward had followed the desire of -the hour, for evil or for good; mainly, not for good. His desire now -was to become acquainted with the exquisitely pretty girl whom his -eyes pursued. Bluntly abandoning the question (from a physiological -side) of macaroons, he addressed himself to the Archdeaconess. Did -Madame Corbie--the polka by now had stopped, Lord Rex could ask his -question without a shout--did Madame Corbie know the name of the girl -who was walking with Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux? ‘Golden-haired -girl--straight features, the loveliest complexion in the world,’ added -Lord Rex, with the frankness of a momentarily real feeling. - -‘It will be my husband’s cousin once removed, Ella Corbie of La -Hauterive,’ observed Madame Corbie blandly. ‘The Hauterive yellow roses -are fine this year. I have not a word to say against their “Celine -Forestier.” But, in my poor opinion, the Archdeacon’s “Maréchal Niel” -ought to have taken the prize. Yes, yes,’--Madame Corbie gazed through -her smoked spectacles into the perspective of history--‘Ella Corbie -is still nice looking. I remember her, dressed for her first evening -party, more than a dozen years ago, and now----’ - -‘My dear Madame Corbie! I beg a thousand pardons, your cup is -empty--allow me to set it down,’ interrupted Lord Rex Basire. - -For at this precise moment the perfect features, the lovely complexion, -were again setting towards him in the crowd. - -But Madame Corbie, the head of our local society, rose to the occasion, -and to her feet. - -‘Let me have a good look, Lord Rex, and if it is my cousin Ella, I will -introduce you to her. A young lady walking, you say, with Marjorie -Bartrand? That is certainly most unlike Ella! The Hauterive family keep -so exclusively to themselves. Still----’ - -‘There they are--coming this way, by Jove!’ cried Lord Rex -breathlessly. ‘You see the girl I mean? Splendid girl in black--lace -ruffle--a red rose lying on her hair?’ - -Madame Corbie looked through her smoke-coloured glasses straight. Then -she looked through her smoke-coloured glasses obliquely. Then she -pushed them high away on her ample forehead, and gazed stoically upward -in the broad light of the merry June day. - -‘The person,’ she pronounced, with awful solemnity, ‘who is walking -with Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux _does not belong to this island_.’ - -And so speaking, and with the folds of her satin doing credit to the -price paid for them, Madame Corbie there, in full presence of the -inferior clergy’s wives, sat down. - -‘Ah! I thought not. Thought I had never seen such a pretty woman in the -place,’ observed Lord Rex, addressing his own consciousness, rather -than the ill-pleased ears of the Archdeaconess. ‘What are the odds -I don’t get properly introduced and properly snubbed before another -quarter of an hour is over!’ - -As a preliminary step Lord Rex rushed back to the refreshment tent, -Madame Corbie’s tea-cup his ostensible excuse. He threw himself on -Linda Thorne’s ambiguous sympathy. - -‘Mrs. Thorne, you know all about every one, by fine natural -discernment. I’ve heard you say so a hundred times. Who is this -wonderful girl in black that Marjorie Bartrand is walking about with?’ - -A suppressed smile lurked round Linda Thorne’s thin lips. - -‘Let us give Mr. Arbuthnot the task of learning her pedigree. It is an -act of charity always to find work for idle men. Mr. Arbuthnot,’ she -turned to Gaston, ‘I want you to find out something for the peace of -Lord Rex Basire’s mind and of my own existence. Who is this wonderful -girl in black who is walking about the Arsenal grounds with Marjorie -Bartrand?’ - -‘If I were of a brave disposition I would go myself,’ said Lord Rex, -when Gaston had sauntered placidly off on his mission. ‘But I am not. -I am a coward down to the ground. Peace at any price is my motto, -politically and otherwise. To-day I am feeling more than usually -nervous--not half “go” enough in me to stand up under one of Marjorie -Bartrand’s snubbings.’ - -‘I cannot say your modesty makes itself known to the world by outward -and visible signs.’ - -‘Modesty--no! I understand you, madam. A man may have forward manners -but a faint heart.’ - -Lord Rex Basire’s arm, in justice let it be spoken, got a bullet -through it in hot warfare. This dandified boy was in the thick of more -than one African fight when clouds gathered dark above the English -colours, was all but drowned on a never-to-be-forgotten night while -attempting to carry succour to the wounded, left with their solitary -gallant surgeon, on an abandoned position. - -‘I tried once, at a militia review or something, to talk to Marjorie, -just in the usual way one talks, not without success you know, to girls -of her age.’ - -‘And the result was?’ asked Linda. - -‘She looked at me coolly--grand Spanish eyes of hers those are, bar the -temper in them! “You are fresh from Eton, are you not?” she observed. I -confessed that Eton had known me in my youth. “Talk about Eton, then,” -struck out Miss Bartrand, straight from the shoulder. “Talk about -cricket, football, boating, Latin grammar, if you learnt any. I will -not,” with a murderous flash from her big eyes, “listen to foolishness -from any man.”’ - -By the time Lord Rex finished this characteristic anecdote Gaston -Arbuthnot, with his usual expression of genial impenetrability, had -sauntered back to the refreshment tent. Picking up Rahnee, he asked the -child what ailed her? For Rahnee’s face, sickly at all times, wore a -look and hue forlornly out of keeping with the bravery of her attire. - -‘What in the world has befallen the infant, Mrs. Thorne? Her complexion -is of the lively arsenic green the doctors forbid us to use in wall -papers.’ - -‘Rahnee! mamma’s own darling pet, what is the matter?’ cried Linda, -suddenly recalled to the fact of her darling’s existence. - -‘Me eat matazoons. Bad matazoons!’ whimpered Rahnee, with the tender -conscience, the quick physical repentance of her age. - -‘That is a wise little Rahnee,’ said Gaston Arbuthnot, kissing her. -‘Right morality. Pitch into our pleasures the moment our pleasures -begin to pitch into us.’ - -‘Have you seen her?’ exclaimed Lord Rex. ‘This kind of trifling, -remember, may be fun to all of you. It’s stretched high above a joke to -me. A tall fair girl, dressed in black----’ - -‘With a crimson rose in her hair,’ added Linda, ‘and walking with -Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux.’ - -‘Well, yes,’ Gaston admitted in the lapses of whispered consolation to -poor Rahnee, ‘I have seen her.’ - -‘And who is she?’ exclaimed Linda Thorne. ‘I am almost as curious as -Lord Rex. Have you discovered this new Dulcinea’s name?’ - -‘Her name is Dinah Arbuthnot,’ replied Gaston cheerfully. ‘Yes, Mrs. -Thorne, incredulous though I know you feel, the wonderful girl in -black, and who is walking with Miss Bartrand of Tintajeux, is--my wife.’ - -Lord Rex sank in an attitude of despair, half mock, half genuine, upon -the nearest bench. - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - -BROUGHT UP BY THE JESUITS - - -Dinah Arbuthnot had been more than woman could she have run the -gauntlet of this Guernsey rose-show unconscious of her success. - -But admiration to Dinah was no new thing. As a girl she never went -through that chrysalis or ugly-duckling stage, the remembrance of which -to many women puts an edge on after triumphs. Heads were turning after -her to-day, she saw, just as heads used to turn when she was a baby -toddling along the Devonshire lanes, or a slim maid walking in the -procession of ‘young ladies’ from Tiverton boarding-school. She had -known since she knew anything that she was beautiful, and rated beauty -at a pathetically low standard. - -Thanks to roseleaf tint or well-cut features, a sweetheart’s fancy can -easily be won. Who should say that cleverness, knowledge of the world, -tact, are not the solid gifts that bring happiness, the qualities -that might chain a husband--wearied, say, after modelling from hired -beauty--to his own fireside? - -‘If you do not object, Miss Bartrand, I would like to find some -place where we could rest, away from the crowd, a little.’ Bent upon -displaying their friendship before the Sarnian world, Marjorie had -by this time paraded her companion bravely throughout the length and -breadth of the Arsenal. ‘My husband has seen me. He is in the tent -near the entrance--the tent where Mrs. Thorne is serving refreshments. -As Mr. Arbuthnot does not come forward to meet us, I am afraid he is -displeased.’ - -‘Displeased! That is a great idea,’ cried headstrong Marjorie. ‘Put all -the blame on me. I think I shall be strong enough to bear the brunt of -Mr. Arbuthnot’s wrath if I rest myself well first.’ - -They succeeded in finding a bench, withdrawn somewhat from the crowd, -yet within sight of the stall at which Linda presided. Here Dinah could -pluck up her drooping courage, while Marjorie communed scornfully in -her heart as to the pitiful weakness of married women in general, and -of this most neglected, most mistaken married woman in particular. -Their seclusion lasted for two or three minutes only. Then a blush -started up into Dinah’s cheek, vivid, bashful, such as a girl’s face -might wear on catching sight unexpectedly of her lover, for she saw -Gaston approaching. At his side was a very dandily dressed, sun-tanned -youth, his arm in a sling; a youth whom as yet Dinah Arbuthnot knew not. - -‘He is coming! Miss Bartrand, I look to you to smooth things over. Just -say you pressed me to come to the show, and I refused at first, and----’ - -‘I will say everything that can decently be compressed into one act of -contrition.’ Marjorie’s tone was fraught with ironical seriousness. -‘But your eyes are better than mine, Mrs. Arbuthnot. A guilty -conscience perhaps sharpens the external senses. I am looking with the -best of my seeing power over the whole Arsenal. I see no Mr. Arbuthnot.’ - -‘Then his companion must stand in the way--the light-haired gentleman -with a plain-like, reddish face,’ whispered Dinah, ‘and who wears his -left arm in a sling.’ - -‘That is our popular hero, Lord Rex Basire, newly returned from South -African fighting, and as proud of his gunshot wound as a foolish girl -might be of her first conquest.’ - -‘Well, and there is my husband walking with him.’ - -‘Your husband! Mrs. Arbuthnot?’ - -Marjorie’s world was reeling. A possibility--she knew not of what--a -wild and passionate hope trembled on the outside edge of her thoughts. - -‘Perhaps I am not a fair judge,’ murmured Dinah, the two young men -having been arrested on their road by that incorrigible button-seizer, -Doctor Thorne, ‘but, to my mind, Gaston must always be the most -noticeable man in any company he enters, no matter how high that -company may be.’ - -‘Gaston?’ - -Marjorie Bartrand was in a state of such bewilderment that the echoing -of Dinah Arbuthnot’s words seemed about as great originality in the way -of speech as she was mistress of. - -‘Geoffrey must have sounded my husband’s praises to you pretty often. -That is a right good point of poor Geff’s, his love and admiration for -Gaston. At Cambridge he was called the handsome American. I know it,’ -said Dinah, with earnestness which became those sweet lips of hers -mightily, ‘because Aunt Susan had relations in the town, on Market -Hill, you know. Before my marriage we used to hear something flattering -of Gaston every day. It is the same in London. The tailors will give -him any credit. I believe they would make his coats gratis so long as -they got his promise to wear them.’ - -‘And Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot?’ It cost Marjorie no small effort just -then to force Geff’s name from her lips. ‘What relationship is there -between him and you?’ - -‘Geoffrey is our first cousin. His father and my husband’s died, -both of them, when their children were young. Gaston has always been -Geoffrey’s good genius.’ In saying this Dinah believed herself to be -enunciating truth, clear as crystal. ‘They did not meet as boys. -Geoffrey spent his young years in a gloomy city school. My husband -was brought up--you can tell it, they say, by his accent--in Paris. -When they came together in Cambridge nothing could be more different -than their positions. Poor Geff, a scholar at John’s, was forced to -work without amusements, almost without friends, for his Tripos, while -Gaston----’ - -‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot had livelier things than work to think about,’ -suggested Marjorie, as Gaston’s wife paused. - -‘He was clever enough to come out first in any Tripos he had read for. -But his friends would not let him read. He was sought after, popular,’ -said Dinah, with a sigh, ‘just as you see him now. However, that made -no difference for Geff. Gaston treated him like a younger brother -always. He does so now. I have grown myself to think of Geoffrey as of -a brother.’ - -She stopped short, for Gaston Arbuthnot and Lord Rex Basire were now -within hearing distance; Doctor Thorne, adhesive as goose-grass, -addressing them by turns as he followed, with his nimble limp, in their -steps. - -‘Yes, Mr. Arbuthnot, you must grant me my postulate.’ Doctor Thorne -packed up all of nature or of books--chiefly of books--that came within -his reach in little, neatly-labelled comprehensible forms, dilettante -demonstrations of the universe ready for his own daily use and the -misery of his fellows. ‘Grant, as a postulate, that the magnitudes -we call molecules are realities, and the rest follows as a necessary -deduction. Let us look around us at this moment. Evolution teaches us -that these bright blooms we behold actually come into being through the -colour-sense of insects; and, and----Lord Rex Basire! you, I am sure, -are fascinated by the subject!’ - -Lord Rex had not heard a syllable. Breaking away from Doctor Thorne, -Lord Rex stood still, his eyes pointedly avoiding Dinah’s face. Gaston, -meanwhile, his hat held low, after the fashion of Broadway or the -Boulevards, was saluting the two ladies, making Marjorie Bartrand’s -acquaintance, and jesting amicably with Dinah as to the march she had -stolen upon himself and an unexpectant Sarnian world. - -When two or three minutes had passed Lord Rex gave evidence of his -presence. Coming forward, he delivered a set little compliment to -Marjorie Bartrand on the Seigneur’s roses. It was a source of agreeable -satisfaction to Lord Rex Basire that the ‘Duc de Rohan’ should have -taken a first prize. He would like---- - -‘The Seigneur’s dark roses have taken a prize every June show for the -last quarter of a century,’ Marjorie interrupted him cruelly. ‘When -once we islanders, flower-show judges included, get into a safe groove, -we keep there.’ - -‘What an improving place Guernsey must be to live in!’ Gaston Arbuthnot -remarked. ‘I have been trying vainly through the best years of my life -to keep in safe grooves.’ - -‘To _keep_ in safe grooves!’ repeated Marjorie, with rather stinging -emphasis. ‘You would need to get into them first, would you not?’ - -‘You are severe, Miss Bartrand.’ Gaston came over to the girl’s side. -‘And I like it. Severity gives me a new sensation. Now, I am going to -ask a favour which I can tell beforehand you will grant. I want you to -show me these conquering Tintajeux roses. Tintajeux is not an unknown -name to us.’ - -Gaston added this last clause in a lower key, then watched to note how -much the colour would vary on her ever-varying face. - -Under any other circumstances than the present ones Marjorie would, -I think, have selected Gaston Arbuthnot as the type of human -creature least to be encouraged under heaven. Was he not obtrusively -good-looking, a popularity man, a dandy for whom Bond Street tailors -would be content, as a flesh-and-blood block, a living advertisement, -to stitch gratis? Was he not a coolly neglectful husband, a -pleasure-seeker, a frequenter of the afternoon teas of frivolous, -attention-loving women? - -But in her rush of joyous surprise, of contradictory relief, in her -gratitude to him for not being Geoffrey, the girl was ready to extend -a hand of hearty friendship to Dinah’s husband--during the first half -hour of their acquaintance, at all events. - -‘You wish to see the Tintajeux roses? Come, then, and let me play -show-woman. Unfortunately,’ Marjorie added, ‘I don’t know in which -quarter of the globe the “Duc de Rohan” lives.’ - -‘I believe I can guide you. I know the whereabouts of every stall in -the Arsenal.’ - -And Lord Rex neatly affixed himself to the party as Marjorie and Dinah -rose. - -Dinah’s breath came short. She knew instinctively how the eyes of this -pale-haired, sun-burnt youth avoided her face, and in that avoidance -read the fact of his admiration. She divined that Lord Rex’s intention -was to walk at her side. She foresaw, with terror, the necessity of -conversation. - -Gaston Arbuthnot gave his wife a quick, comprehensive look--Lord -Chesterfield embodied in a glance! Then he went through a brief, -informal word of introduction. - -‘Lord Rex Basire--my wife. I fancied, Dinah, that you and Basire had -met already. Now, Miss Bartrand, let us make an exploring tour of the -Arsenal. We shall reach the Seigneur’s dark roses, sooner or later. I -look to you,’ Gaston added, ‘for enlightenment as to some of the human -elements of the show.’ - -Marjorie’s mood was abundantly bright; the ‘enlightenment’ was not -slow of coming. Her prattle, with its brisk bitterish flavour, amused -Gaston as he would have thought it impossible to be amused by any -classico-mathematical girl extant. As they passed the bench that still -supported Madame the Archdeaconess’s sacerdotal weight, Marjorie -broke into a laugh--that hearty, human, unmistakable laugh of hers. -For Doctor Thorne stood beside the great female pillar of the Church, -delivering an oration in his most verbose little manner, to which not -only the Archdeaconess, but the wives of the inferior clergy, listened -with respect. And Marjorie’s quick ear had caught his text. - -‘One ought not to laugh at our betters, Mr. Arbuthnot, ought one?’ - -Asking this, Marjorie looked gravely up in Gaston’s face. - -‘It is so written in the copy-books, Miss Bartrand. For my part, -I think the greatest good a man ever does his fellows is when he -furnishes them, consciously or unconsciously, with materials for farce.’ - -‘At least, one should not laugh loud enough to be heard?’ - -‘I think you ought to laugh very often, and loud enough for all the -world to hear,’ replied Gaston. - -‘Doctor Thorne is too much for me; I have an old “Sandford and Merton” -among my books, and when I hear him talk, I think of Mr. Barlow -moralising at Tommy. Mr. Barlow turned scientist. “Grant as a postulate -that the magnitudes we call molecules are realities ...” “Evolution -teaches us that these bright blooms ...” etc. Dr. Thorne’s flower-show -speech! We had it last autumn with the dahlias. We had it in the spring -with the tulips. I heard him addressing it just now to that poor small -boy, Lord Rex. Mrs. Corbie is orthodox to the core. I suppose he will -make a big jump, as they do over the words in plays, when he gets to -anything so brimstony as “evolution.”’ - -The crowd, as it happened, was setting in the direction of the -Tintajeux roses. By the time Gaston and Marjorie had made their way -into front places before the stand, they discovered that Dinah and -Lord Rex Basire had parted company from them in the crowd. - -‘I brought Mrs. Arbuthnot here. It was through my persuasion she laid -down her cross-stitch,’ cried Marjorie, ‘and now we have let her fall -victim to Lord Rex. How wearied she will be of him!’ - -‘I am not so sure of that. My wife has the old-fashioned weaknesses of -the sex. The sight of a wounded soldier is dear to her. All women, at -heart, are thoroughgoing Jingoites.’ - -‘I am not! I am an ultra, red-hot Radical,’ exclaimed Marjorie. ‘As to -Lord Rex--I believe his wound was well long ago. He wears his arm in a -sling to get up sympathy.’ - -‘It will secure Mrs. Arbuthnot’s,’ said Gaston. Then: ‘What a world -of good it will do my wife to have been here,’ he added warmly. ‘That -is just what poor Dinah needs, to come out more, mix more with her -fellow-creatures, brighten up her ideas; to lay down her cross-stitch, -in short. That hits the nail on the head--to lay down her cross-stitch! -It was charming of you to call on us, Miss Bartrand! I take it for -granted, you see, that you have called. You heard of our existence -probably from Geff?’ - -‘I heard from Mr. Geoffrey that Mrs. Arbuthnot was staying at Miller’s -Hotel.’ - -But Marjorie’s voice faltered. Her soul clothed itself in sackcloth and -ashes as she thought of her own error, of the _generous_, _delicate_ -motives which had prompted her--Pharisee that she was!--to call on -Dinah. - -‘Whatever Geff does comes to good. He cannot take a mile-long walk -without some man or woman being the better for it. Geff has a kind of -genius for bringing about the welfare of other people.’ - -At the mention of Geoffrey every artificial trace left Gaston’s -manner. The best of the man showed always, no matter how trifling the -occasion, in the honest regard he bore his cousin. - -‘Now, look, Miss Bartrand, at the way Geff is spending his time in this -island!’ - -Where Marjorie had suspected him of easy-going callousness, of -philandering in the train of idle, fine ladies, of singing French -songs, of putting himself on the social and intellectual plane of a -Major Tredennis. - -‘Six hours a week must, I own, be grudged to him--the hours he spends -at Tintajeux Manoir.’ - -‘Spare yourself the trouble of being polite, Mr. Arbuthnot. If you knew -how I detest politeness!’ - -‘But remember all his other hours.’ The art of thought-reading was -certainly to be reckoned among Gaston’s accomplishments. Within ten -minutes of his introduction to this little classico-mathematical -girl, behold him discoursing with cunning naturalness on the subject -likeliest to interest her in the world--Geff’s virtues! ‘Remember how -his days, often his nights, are really passed.’ - -‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot reads, does he not?’ - -Marjorie gazed into the heart of a glorious Duc de Rohan with interest. - -‘Geoffrey reads as I,’ said Gaston, passing into a lighter strain, -‘meant to read, once. You look sceptical, Miss Bartrand! There was -a time when I had bookish ambition. Yes, I talked, like many a fool -before me, of going in for two Triposes, and left Cambridge without a -degree. But Geff has a gigantic physique, a real hunger for hard work. -He simply does not know the meaning of taking a holiday. - -As they chatted Gaston’s eyes dwelt with artistic satisfaction on -the girl’s slender figure and hands, on the chiselled Southern face -overkissed by sea and sun for some English tastes, but pure, fresh, as -the wine-dark roses over which she bent. - -‘I am a sculptor by trade,’ he went on. ‘It might be truer to say a -poor manufacturer of statuettes for the London market. Geff has told -you how we get our daily bread, has he not?’ - -‘My tutor speaks of little--beyond my reading,’ stammered Marjorie, -still without meeting the penetrating glance of Gaston Arbuthnot. - -‘Well, even after work as light as mine, I find,’ said Gaston, with -a clear conscience, ‘that amusement, varied in kind and ample of -quantity, is needful. The heartiness of one’s work seems determined to -a nicety by the heartiness of one’s play. Geoffrey takes his recreation -just now in the wards of the Guernsey hospital. There was a bad quarry -accident the day after our arrival here----’ - -‘I know,’ exclaimed Marjorie, paling. ‘The worst accident we have ever -had at St. Sampson’s.’ - -‘Geoffrey, I need not say, went to the fore as a volunteer. Between the -poor lads in hospital and those who lie still in the houses to which -they were carried from the quarry his hands are full. That is the way -Geff recreates himself.’ - -For a good many seconds Marjorie was speechless. Could it be that -conscious weakness--weakness in her, a Bartrand--hindered the girl from -trusting her own voice? Then, giving Gaston her profile still, she -turned brusquely aside from the Tintajeux roses and from the discussion -of Geoffrey’s qualities. She remembered her grandfather’s dinner-hour. -The sun was getting low. It would be only human to search for Mrs. -Arbuthnot, and deliver her out of the hands of Lord Rex. - -‘We shall find them perfectly happy, and eating ices,’ said Gaston. -‘Dinah’s is not such a critical spirit as yours, Miss Bartrand. Let us -bend our steps to the refreshment tent.’ - - -Dinah and Lord Rex were all this time advancing, haltingly, -monosyllabically, towards acquaintanceship. Gaston’s happy -many-sidedness, his power of adapting himself, without effort, to the -tastes and moods of others, were gifts in no manner shared by Lord Rex -Basire. Dinah’s intelligence differed about as widely from Marjorie -Bartrand’s as does placid English moonlight from a flash of tropical -lightning. - -Thus,--starting, as a cleverer man might do, along beaten tracks, the -first remark made by Lord Rex was meteorological: - -‘Splendid day this, isn’t it, for a rose-show?’ - -‘Certainly.’ - -The chilling assent was not spoken for some seconds, Dinah’s education -having failed to inform her that the smallest platitude uttered by men -and women when they meet in the world needs instant answer. - -‘As a rule, you see, one gets beastly weather for this sort of thing.’ - -Silence. - -‘Festive gatherings, I mean, _und so weiter_. Speech-day at Eton was -always the wettest day of the three hundred and sixty-five.’ - -‘Was it indeed, Lord Rex Basire?’ - -Dinah’s gentle nature prompted her to be civil to all created beings. -She would be civil, kindly even, to this plain and sun-scorched boy -who had elected to walk beside her, and whose eyes took so many -covert glances of admiration at her face. In the heart of Eve’s -simplest daughter were such glances, one short quarter of an hour -after introduction, ever registered as crime? Not only would Dinah -be civil,--knowing little of titles, and less as to their modes of -application, she would fain give Lord Rex Basire the fullest benefit of -his. - -He paused, and doing so looked with a straighter gaze than heretofore -at Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife. She was surpassingly beautiful, fairer -than any woman he had seen with his fleshly eyes or dreamed about in -such soul as he possessed. Was she stupid? Not one whit for the higher -feminine intelligence or the higher feminine culture did Lord Rex care. -In society he held it Woman’s duty to supply him, Rex Basire, with -straw for his conversational brick-making; hooks and eyes, don’t you -know! gleanings from the comic papers, hints at politics, easy openings -for unsentimental sentiment. A distinctly stupid woman frightened him. -‘Makes one feel like being on one’s legs for a speech,’ Lord Rex Basire -would say. - -‘You are looking forward to a long stay in the island, I _hope_, Mrs. -Arbuthnot.’ - -At the italicised verb Dinah’s eyes turned on her companion with a -vague distrust. Then she changed colour. A rose-flush, vivid as sunset -on snow, overspread her face. For she thought of Gaston. - -‘If you are a friend of my husband’s, I can understand your wishing to -keep us here.’ - -There was a smile on her lips. The stiffness of her manner began -visibly to relax. - -Lord Rex for a moment was taken aback. Then he plucked up heart of -grace. To see a married woman blush like a school-girl at the mention -of her husband’s name was a new and puzzling spectacle to him. He -could scarcely flatter his vanity that he, personally, was receiving -encouragement. Still, Dinah had smiled. And with the burthen of -conversation-making resting heavily on him, he was glad enough to -follow any cue that might present itself. - -‘Friend? I should think so! Best fellow in the world, Arbuthnot--and a -man of genius, too; good-all-round sort of man. Never heard a Briton -sing French songs as he does. Rather proud of my own accent.’ As Lord -Rex progressed in confidence his speech grew more and more elliptic. -‘Sent to Paris in my infancy. Brought up by the Jesuits--there were -Jesuits in those days, you know--till I went to Eton. But Arbuthnot -puts me in the shade, ra-_ther_.’ - -‘Your lordship was brought up by the Jesuits!’ - -Side by side with many wholesomer qualities, Dinah had inherited not -a few of her yeoman forefathers’ prejudices. At the word ‘Jesuit’ she -regarded Lord Rex with an interest that had in it almost the tenderer -element of pity. - -‘I was. You look doubtful, you don’t think the fathers could give one -such a Parisian roll of the “r” as your husband’s?’ - -‘Of that I’m ignorant, my lord. I am no French scholar. I thought of -the Jesuits’ fearful underminded dealings.’ Dinah gave a half shudder -in the warm sunshine. ‘I thought of the doctrines they must have -instilled into you.’ - -Underminded! From what sect or denomination could Arbuthnot have taken -his handsome wife? That Dinah was a rustic ‘mixed up with the great -bucolic interests,’ Lord Rex felt certain. The Devonshire burr, the -staid, shy, village manner betrayed her. What were her tenets? What -sort of conscience had she? A Puritanical conscience, of course, but of -what shade, what dimensions? - -He harked warily back upon the safe subject of Gaston’s songs. - -‘Arbuthnot was singing to us magnificently last night. He was in his -best form. Faure himself could never have given “A vingt ans” in -grander style. And then he was so well accompanied. The accompaniment -is half the battle in “A vingt ans.’” - -Gaston Arbuthnot, it should be explained, dined on the preceding -night at the mess of the Maltshire Royals. He had dined at mess often -of late, and on each occasion Dinah’s heart felt that it had got a -reprieve. Dinah believed that dining at the mess of the Maltshire -Royals meant, for one evening at least, seeing nothing of The Bungalow, -and of Doctor and Mrs. Thorne. - -‘You have good musicians among you, no doubt. I know,’ she observed, -remembering long and not successful practising of her own, ‘that the -accompaniment of this song is hard. But it has become the fashion for -young men to play the piano lately.’ - -‘We can most of us get through a polka, played with one finger, or -Malbrook. When I am alone,’ said Lord Rex, ‘I execute the Marseillaise, -with chords. No man in the regiment could play a true accompaniment to -“A vingt ans.”’ - -‘No? My husband played it for himself, then?’ asked Dinah, -unaccountably persistent. - -‘Not a bit of it! A singer never sings his best unless he stand, head -up, chest expanded.’ Lord Rex dramatised the operatic attitude as they -walked. ‘Mrs. Thorne accompanied Arbuthnot--deliciously, as she always -does.’ - -It was seldom Dinah’s policy to discover her feelings by speech. So -much worldly wisdom she had learnt, through most unworldly forbearance -towards Gaston. Her complexion showed one of its over-quick changes, -her mouth fell. But she spoke not. That there must be deviation -from truth somewhere, she divined, with a bitter personal sense of -humiliation. But where? She shrank from the possible answer to this -question. - -A good-humoured epitome of the dinner-party had been given by Gaston, -over this morning’s breakfast-table, for her own and Geoffrey’s -benefit. ‘The usual guest-night at mess. Curious how precisely -alike all mess dinners are. The Engineer Colonel’s never finished -commencement, “When we were in the lines before Sebastopol;” the -Major’s tiger-slaying adventures in Bengal; the elderly Captain’s -diatribes against Liberal Governments and enforced retirements, “A -man in the very prime--no, sir, a man before he is in the prime of -life put on the shelf.” And the Irishman’s story. And the subaltern’s -witticisms.’ Gaston, I say, had enlivened the breakfast-table with his -lively putting together of these oft-used materials. He had made no -reference to the singing of French songs, or to Linda Thorne. - -Then Lord Rex Basire’s memory must be at fault. - -‘You cannot mean last night. You must be thinking of some former time. -Mr. Arbuthnot dined with you at mess yesterday.’ - -‘Of course he did. After dinner we adjourned--we, the favoured few--as -our manner is, to The Bungalow.’ - -‘Where Mrs. Thorne played accompaniments for Gaston.’ - -Dinah made the observation with mechanical self-control, hardly knowing -what cold repetition of words this was that escaped her. - -‘Yes; we had quite a chamber concert. A lot of rehearsing that -accompanying business seems to want! Hardly ever drop in at The -Bungalow of an afternoon without finding them at the piano.’ - -Dinah knew a moment’s cruel pain. There was a proud, hurt expression on -her face. She stopped short, involuntarily. Then: ‘It would take much -rehearsal,’ she said, ‘before I should play well enough to accompany -Mr. Arbuthnot in public. But Mrs. Thorne seems clever nearly in -everything. I wish I had her talents.’ - -And she resumed her walk, and began to speak--the village shyness -thawing fast away--about the flowers, and the music, and the people. - -It became clear as daylight to Lord Rex Basire that his society was -duly valued. - - - - -CHAPTER XV - -A LOVE-LETTER - - -When Gaston and Marjorie approached the refreshment stall they saw a -picture which many a genre artist, in ink or oils, might have been glad -to study. - -For there outside the tent stood Dinah Arbuthnot, fair and flushed. She -and Lord Rex were eating ices, as Gaston, the materialist, predicted. -The western light shone on Dinah’s bright hair. It touched the rose -she wore, and the outline of her lips and chin. Lord Rex, dutifully -attentive, held her sunshade. An Archdeaconess with surroundings of -inferior female clergy loomed large on the horizon. Nearer at hand was -Linda Thorne, patiently enduring long stories of the tiger-slaying -Major’s, while her eyes and ears were elsewhere. Sarnian society -generally, in dubious groups of twos and threes, looked on. It was -Dinah’s first step across the border of a new world. - -Gaston Arbuthnot seized the points of the situation at a glance. He -played the part that fell to him with acumen. Towards Dinah his manner -was simply irreproachable. So thought Marjorie, no over-lenient judge; -so, from afar, thought Linda Thorne. It were premature to hint at -any forecasting of storm in Dinah’s own hot heart! He insisted upon -supporting his wife’s plate while she finished her ice. He contrived to -bring her and Linda so far into friendly juxtaposition that at parting -a chilly handshake was exchanged between these ladies. But he also -was true to his colours. He had come to the rose-show in Mrs. Thorne’s -society; in her society he remained. The last glimpse Marjorie got of -her new friends revealed a perspective of Linda with sprightly energy -pointing out distant roses to Mr. Arbuthnot, while Dinah walked slowly -homeward from the Arsenal gates, Lord Rex at her side. - -Had the afternoon been one of unmixed good? Had her interference with -the Arbuthnot trio brought about good at all? Marjorie asked herself -these questions as she urged her ponies to a gallop along the Tintajeux -high road. That she had discovered a foolish error appositely might be -matter for congratulation so far as pride went! Had she performed a -very generous or delicate action in bringing untaught Dinah from her -cross-stitch, pushing her into the glare of public notice, obliging her -to tolerate the attention of a man like Rex Basire? If, unprompted by -the Bartrand thirst for governing, she had left destiny to itself, had -been content, as in old times, to help in the hayfield, or the dairy at -home, might not her day’s work have been fruitfuller? - -Dinner had waited long when she reached Tintajeux, and the Seigneur -was in the disposition most dreaded of Marjorie throughout the meal. -He talked more than his custom, displayed a genial and grandpaternal -interest in her doings at the Arsenal. Tintajeux had taken a first -prize, of course. And how did the Duc de Rohan look among the baser -herd? Was he well placed? In sun or in shadow? Marjorie, the Seigneur -_supposed_, had scarce found time, among her numerous friends, to give -a glance that way. - -‘I looked more at our roses than at any in the show,’ said Marjorie -truthfully. Were not her eyes fixed downcast on the Duc de Rohan when -Gaston Arbuthnot talked to her of Geff? ‘Would you believe, sir, that -the Hauterive Corbies have taken a prize? I think the Archdeaconess -would sooner have been cut out by any farmer in the island than by her -husband’s cousin.’ - -‘No need to tell me the local tittle-tattle. On that head Cassandra -Tighe has been a more than sufficient oracle. By the bye, witch,’ with -the memory of over-boiled fish strong upon him the Seigneur turned his -piercing old gaze towards his granddaughter, ‘Cassandra informs me that -Mrs. Arbuthnot is an extraordinarily pretty woman; good, too, as she is -pretty. Your tutor shows poor taste in dancing attendance on anything -so vapidly commonplace as Doctor Thorne’s Indian wife.’ - -Marjorie Bartrand, who, three weeks ago, had never changed colour -before mortal, was conscious, at this moment, of blushing furiously -before the Reverend Andros. Still more did she quail under the eyes of -Sylvestre, who stood, in his faded puce and silver, listening, with the -unabashed frankness that characterises servants of his age and nation, -to their talk. From her grandfather all she need fear was a little -searching banter, directed towards herself. Let the dramatic instincts -of Sylvestre be aroused, and he was capable of waylaying Geoffrey -Arbuthnot--yes, and of inviting confidence respecting the most intimate -family concerns at Geff’s next visit. It needs personal acquaintance -with a Frenchman of Sylvestre’s type to realise how the passion for -scandalettes, smouldering through long years of solitude and disuse, -would be ready at the first handful of fuel supplied to break forth -anew! - -‘Doctor and Mrs. Thorne were at the rose-show. The proceeds of the -refreshment stall go, this June, to some sort of charity, so Mrs. -Thorne, of course, presided there. But Mrs. Thorne is one of the people -I never can find two words to say to.’ - -‘Our solemn-eyed Cantab finds a great many more than two words, it -would appear. Let me help you to a merry-thought, witch. You have -nothing but bones on your plate.’ - -Marjorie picked her merry-thought, as she finished her dinner, in -silence. Over dessert, however--Sylvestre’s inquisitive face fairly -vanished from the scene--she plucked up courage and spoke: - -‘We have been making nimble but ridiculous conjectures, sir. One could -not well speak of this before Sylvestre. Miss Tighe made sure of the -Arbuthnot family history, you know, and----’ - -‘Avoid expletives. I know nothing, until it is your pleasure to inform -my ignorance.’ - -‘I mean Cassandra believed, from whispers she heard in Petersport, that -Mrs. Arbuthnot was kept too much in the background. It would be a right -and kindly thing, we thought, for me to call on her, and so--and so----’ - -‘Take your time, Marjorie; slur over nothing. We have a long evening -before us.’ - -‘Well, sir,’ desperately, ‘I called. And our solemn-eyed Cantab is not -a married man at all. The name of the Mr. Arbuthnot who dances attend -... who visits at Dr. Thorne’s house, is Gaston. He is a cousin of -Geff’s, I--I mean of my tutor’s.’ - -The Seigneur looked deliberately at his granddaughter’s face. Then, as -though politely reluctant to take further notice of her embarrassment, -he lifted his gaze to a full-length portrait in pastels of some -bewigged and powdered Bartrand on the opposite wall. - -‘And why should we not speak of Miss Tighe’s mistake, of Mr. Geoffrey -Arbuthnot’s celibacy, before Sylvestre? Remember the rascal’s Gallican -blood--Sylvestre requires an occasional bit of comedy more than any of -us. And so you have been acting a charade, my love, solemn-eyed tutor -and all. A very pretty charade, upon my word! - -The Reverend Andros Bartrand laughed drily. It was about the first time -on record that he had addressed his granddaughter as ‘my love,’ and -Marjorie was prompt to recognise latent sarcasm under the endearment. -How terrible to reach old age, thought the child of seventeen--to read, -to think, and yet outlive the power of loving; intellect surviving -heart by many a year, as bodily strength in the end must survive all. -What had she ever been to him but a plaything! From the hour she -arrived at Tintajeux with her tempers, her four-year-old tongue, her -foreign ways, the necessity of keeping a kitten to gambol before the -Seigneur’s study fire had possibly been done away with. Just that! She -had diverted him. At the present day she might be picturesque, shed the -pleasing charm of youth upon his lawn and dinner-table. She understood -the arrangement of his books. She could dust his library to admiration. -And she was not afraid of him! (Marjorie omitted this, the leading -clause, from her mental summing-up of personal virtues.) She was not -afraid of him! When did fearlessness fail of carrying weight with a -cold, strong nature like the Seigneur’s? Though her colour went and -came, though her lips quivered under his irony, the girl was not afraid -of him at this moment. - -‘I might have known, sir, that if I was distressed it would furnish you -with amusement. That is our amiable Bartrand spirit, our way of showing -sympathy with others.’ - -‘Distressed? You astonish me. Distressed at finding that an -intelligent, studious young man is in possession of his freedom? The -charade, we may almost call it the Arbuthnot drama, grows mightily -puzzling to me, a spectator. Let our worthy Cantab be bachelor or -Benedict. What concern is it of ours?’ - -Marjorie rose from the table, with difficulty choking back her tears. -‘I love gossip as little as any one,’ she said, coldly. ‘You introduced -the Arbuthnots’ name, sir, so I chose to mention that the Thornes’ -friend and my tutor are two distinct persons. And I have no interest -in Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s concerns! And if a drama is being acted, -let me tell you, grandpapa, that I, for one, play no part in it. Like -yourself, I am a spectator only.’ - -Her tone was high, but when she reached the schoolroom--friendly -sanctuary in many a dumb pain of her childhood--when she looked at the -ink-stained desk, the piles of books, the window through which the -China roses peeped, her humour changed. Marjorie stood a self-convicted -impostor in her own sight. For she knew that she was not a spectator -only in the Arbuthnot drama, that she was not unmoved by the discovery -of Geoffrey’s freedom. ‘Bachelor or Benedict, what concern is it of -ours?’ She knew, also, that under the Seigneur’s irony lurked wholesome -truth. Pluming herself on her own strength, on the Bartrand immunity -from vulgar human error, she had drifted into a position from which -the pride of any simple village maiden must recoil. She remembered her -airs of easy patronage towards Geoffrey, from the first evening when -he walked out to Tintajeux on approval, until this morning. What could -she have seemed like in his sight? Had he rated her as an over-forward -Miss-in-her-teens, a hoyden wearing her heart--ah, shame!--upon her -sleeve? Or had he doubted her, worse humiliation still, as every honest -man must doubt a girl who, under the convenient shield of Greek and -Euclid, could lend herself to the small meanness of coquetry? - -She walked to the window, buried her face amongst the cold, -swift-falling rose-petals, then looked out on the landscape. Something -strange had crept into its familiarity. There trotted Sylvestre, rake -in hand, his livery exchanged for a fustian jacket, to the clover -field. There were the farm buildings, there was the row of poplars, -showing distinct against the sunset. The China roses gave out their -faint evanescent odour; the big vault of Northern sky was stainless. -And here was Marjorie Bartrand, to all outward seeming the same -Marjorie Bartrand as yesterday, but out of tune, for some queer -reason, with her surroundings. The dew-smelling roses, the poplars, -the farm buildings, yes, old Sylvestre himself, had been her friends -through her whole span of childish life. With the new life that was -awakening, with the stir of alien emotion in her breast, they were -unsympathetic. Geoffrey Arbuthnot--what Geoffrey thought of her, -what Geoffrey felt towards her--these were the questions burning in -Marjorie’s soul, transforming her, as no lengthening of skirts or -plaiting of hair had ever done, from a child to a woman. - -Suddenly a man’s quick step advanced along the gravel road that led -from the side lodge to the Manoir. The step stopped; Marjorie heard her -grandfather’s voice. She put her head forth through the window, hoping, -dreading that Geff, repentant after their half quarrel of the forenoon, -might have walked out to Tintajeux--to be forgiven. In lieu of Geff’s -stalwart outline, the diminutive figure of the country postman met her -sight. The Seigneur, ready always as a boy for the moment’s amusement, -was overlooking the contents of the village letter bag. - -‘A letter for you, witch.’ Clear, resonant, rang the old voice, as -Andros Bartrand caught sight of Marjorie. ‘A letter, and a bulky one. -The address is written in a hand that savours of the Alma Mater. The -postmark is “Local.” I am to open it for you, of course?’ - -‘If you do I start for Spain to-night--this moment!’ cried Marjorie, -with fine, Bartrand presence of temper; her grandfather meanwhile -proceeding, in pantomime, to carry out his suggestion. ‘If you do, -sir----’ - -But the sequel of the threat remained unspoken. Away flew Marjorie -through the low schoolroom window, away, without drawing breath, over -flower border, over lawn, till she reached the Seigneur. A few seconds -later her letter--her first love-letter, whispered a voice in the white -and girlish conscience--lay with seal unbroken between her hands. - -She could not read it here, under this open largeness of air and -sky, with her grandfather’s searching eyes fixed on her face. She -must heighten her pleasure, as not so many summers back she was wont -to heighten the coveted flavour of peach or nectarine, by eked-out -anticipation. Not here, not in the schoolroom, peopled by commonplace -remembrances of Sophie le Patourel and all the long train of Sophie’s -predecessors. In this ineffable moment (are not our mistakes the -sweetest things we taste on earth?) she must be alone, must know that -a bolt was drawn between her happiness and the world. She entered the -house with eager limbs, sped up the stairs, light still with the brief -flicker that comes between sunset and dusk. She sought the shelter of -her own room; a little white-draped room, where fragrant alder-blooms, -flecks of foam on a deep green sea of foliage, brushed the casement, -where you could feel the coolness from the orchards, where only the -tired evening call of the cuckoo, the murmur of late bees, still awork -in blossom dust, broke silence. - -‘Miss Marjorie Bartrand, Tintajeux Manoir, Guernsey.’ - -Prolonging her suspense to the utmost, Marjorie ran over aloud each -syllable that Geff Arbuthnot’s hand had traced. Then, with fast-beating -pulse, she opened the envelope, drew forth its contents, and prepared, -delightedly, to read. - -The love-letter was written upon blue, most unloverlike foolscap, and -consisted of three words: ‘Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s compliments.’ Within, -carefully folded, lay Marjorie’s waist-belt, intact, as when she looped -it to his bunch of roses and heliotropes in the moonlight. - -So she had won obedience. Even in the light matter of keeping or not -keeping a bit of ribbon she had had her way. And her breast swelled -with disappointment, the hot tears rushed to her eyes. In this moment -Marjorie Bartrand’s illogical heart owned Geoffrey as its master. - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - -A RASH RESOLVE - - -The strength, the delicacy of Geff Arbuthnot’s character were never -better shown than in his present relations to Dinah. - -Weaker men pay allegiance readily enough to the passion under whose -sway they happen to rest. Geff was loyal, with a fine, a rare fidelity -to the love that had passed away. He was Dinah’s brother always. And -the story of Saturday’s rose-show told him, late that evening, by -Dinah’s lips, sufficed to fill him with a more than vague misgiving. - -He had wished often, thinking over the difficult question of her -welfare in his rough-and-ready way, that Dinah could be forcibly saved -from solitude and cross-stitch. Lo! the rescuer was at hand. But that -rescuer, Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s common sense informed him, should be -a very different Galahad to Lord Rex Basire. Acting on the moment’s -impulse, Marjorie Bartrand had made a tentative effort at lifting -Gaston’s wife into the fellowship of her kind. And the experiment was -too successful. Dinah, so Geff divined, had scarcely taken one step in -public, before the little hero of a lesser hour, the most popular man -in his regiment, the most sought-after partner at the island balls, -thought fit, the world looking on, to throw himself at her feet. - -‘And did you find pleasure in it all? Did you for a single moment feel -amused to-day?’ - -Something in Geoffrey’s voice suggested a sharper note of interrogation -than was supplied by his words. - -Dinah and Geff stood together on the same spot of lawn where we first -heard the Arbuthnot trio talking of sentiment while they breakfasted. -Gaston was dining out, whether at the Fort-William mess or at Doctor -Thorne’s house Dinah had not sought to know. Of what avail to ask for -truth when you have once been answered with a fable, no matter how -prettily that fable was illustrated? - -‘I was pleased for a time. Gaston showed no anger at my coming. It -amused me to hear Lord Rex Basire talking down, as he thought, to my -rustic understanding. Then without warning,’ Dinah turned away; she -looked at the pale horizon line of sea, ‘I had a few moments’ horrible -pain.’ - -‘You were ill!’ exclaimed Geoffrey, uncertain of her drift. - -‘No, Geff, no. I don’t mean such pain as people consult the doctors -for. The pain was at my heart--a sickening doubt of every one--a -feeling that I stood on one side and all the rest of the world on the -other--a sudden despair of life! Geoffrey,’ she went on, ‘with the gay -people walking about, and the flowers smelling sweet, and the music -playing, it did seem to me for a few seconds’ space that my heart must -break.’ - -‘And on which side did you range me in your thoughts? Was I with you or -with all the rest of the world?’ asked Geoffrey Arbuthnot. - -These half confessions of Dinah’s were no new experience to him. She -never uttered an ungenerous suspicion of Gaston, never made a complaint -as to her own neglected life. And still a kind of moral moan had of -late been constantly in poor Dinah’s talk. The warm woman’s heart, ill -at rest, jealous, with no wholesome work or interest to keep emotion -subordinate, was always, unconsciously, on the brink of betraying its -secret. - -He looked with pity that could never tire at her averted face. - -‘You, Geff?’ she cried, putting on a brighter tone. ‘Why, you were on -my side, of course. You do everything good that is done for me in this -world. Through you, for certain, Miss Bartrand came all the way from -Tintajeux to call on me.’ - -‘Don’t give me credit on that score. Marjorie Bartrand’s doings are -guided by no living person save Marjorie Bartrand. She had made up her -mind to know you; had heard, doubtless, about you and Gaston among -the islanders, and of her own free will sought you out. Count me -for nothing,’ said Geoffrey Arbuthnot, ‘in any action or caprice of -Marjorie Bartrand’s.’ - -‘Had heard about me and Gaston!’ Dinah repeated his words with the -preoccupation of morbidly strained feeling. ‘I think one may know -pretty well what that means. No wonder so many people turned round to -look at me at Saturday’s rose-show.’ - -‘People turn to look at you generally, do they not, Mrs. Arbuthnot? -There is as much human nature, depend upon it, in the heart of the -Channel as in Hyde Park or Piccadilly.’ - -‘That is more like a speech of Lord Rex Basire’s than of yours!’ cried -Dinah, with a laugh unlike her own. ‘Throw in a lisp, varnished shoes, -a waistcoat, and a double eyeglass, and I could believe it was his -lordship, not Geff Arbuthnot, who was condescending to talk to me.’ - -‘You must have put forth all your charity, have exercised a great deal -of wasted patience, in allowing his lordship to condescend at all.’ - -Chiefly through Gaston’s spirited character sketches over the breakfast -table, Geoffrey had long ago known with certainty what manner of man -Lord Rex Basire was. Instead of answering, Dinah stooped above a head -of garden lilies, the dense white of whose petals showed waxen and -spotless through the gloom. - -‘I like the smell of lilies better than of all other flowers that -blow,’ so after a minute her rich low voice came to Geoffrey; ‘I can -never smell them, nor yet lavender, without thinking of Aunt Susan’s -garden at Lesser Cheriton.’ - -Where Geff first saw her! The garden amidst whose crowding summer -verdure he stood at the moment when his youth went from him, when Dinah -and Gaston, hand clasped in hand, bent towards each other in the level -sunlight. At this hour, with the whispers of a new love stirring in his -heart, Geoffrey Arbuthnot could not hear that distant time spoken of, -above all by Dinah’s lips, without a thrill of the old passion, the old -maddened, blinding sense of loss overcoming him. - -‘It might have been well for some of us,’ he began, ‘if we had never -heard the name of Lesser Cheriton----’ - -But Dinah interrupted him quickly: - -‘No, Geoffrey, I can never believe that. If it means anything, it must -mean I had better not have married Gaston. I should have no hope, no -religion--I should be a woman ready for any desperate action--if I -thought that my life, just as I have it, was not the one God had cut -out for me as best. The fact is, you know, I have been too narrow,’ -she went on hurriedly. ‘Something has been running in my mind all this -evening--some idle talk of Lord Rex Basire’s that I may repeat to you -another time; and I begin to see my conduct in a new light. From the -day Gaston married me I have been too narrow, far.’ - -‘In what way? Give me one or two specimens of your overnarrowness.’ - -‘I have tried to make the sayings of one class fit in with the doings -of another. I have thought that right and wrong must be the same -everywhere. This was my ignorance. If I had taken up--well, with -Gaston’s sort of opinions,’ she added, making an unsuccessful attempt -at gaiety, ‘it might be better for me and for him, too, now.’ - -‘I differ from you,’ said Geff, somewhat coldly. ‘Right and wrong are -the same in every class. It would be an excellent thing for your health -and spirits to get more change, more society. Stop there! Remain for -ever,’ added Geff warmly, ‘in such ignorance as yours.’ And indeed the -thought crossed him that, at this hour, what Dinah needed was safer -anchorage, not wider ship-room. ‘Your happiness and Gaston’s would be -wrecked if you attempted to rule life by any other “sayings” than your -own.’ - -But there was a goodly alloy of mild obstinacy in Dinah Arbuthnot’s -character. A given idea started, and she was slow to part with it. The -recesses of her mind would seem to shut, with pertinacious closeness, -over any decided impression, once made, and the key for opening these -recesses could not always be found, even by Dinah herself. - -From whatever source the sudden conviction of her narrowness arose, -another four-and-twenty hours showed Geoffrey that the conviction was -genuine. Dinah had made some kind of compact with herself, not only in -the matter of opinions but of conduct. On the following day, Sunday, -it happened that Lord Rex walked home with Mrs. Arbuthnot from morning -service at the town church. Invited by Gaston, whose easy hospitality -extended itself to most men, Lord Rex remained to lunch. He stayed on, -long after Gaston’s afternoon engagements had taken him elsewhere. And -Dinah, although her cheeks flushed, her spirit chafed, endured this, -her first experience in the difficult duties of a hostess, without -complaint. - -‘Lord Rex Basire kept his Sabbath, it seems, in Miller’s Hotel,’ -observed Geff, when the Arbuthnot cousins were smoking, one his short -briar pipe, the other a delicately-flavoured cigarette after dinner. -Geoffrey’s own Sabbath had been kept in the wards of the hospital, full -to overflowing with the survivors of the quarry accident. ‘No wonder -Dinah confesses to a headache. That lad’s talk, a nice mixture of slang -and assurance, judging from the specimens he gave us at lunch, would -scarcely be of the nature Dinah loves.’ - -‘Oh, I don’t know. Basire can be very fair company when he likes,’ said -Gaston, with philosophic optimism. ‘He is not a giant, intellectually. -But in their heart of hearts, Geff, however unflattering this may be -to you and me, women don’t care a straw for intellectual men--until -they have been authoritatively labelled. The island ladies, from Madame -the Archdeaconess downwards, delight in Lord Rex, title, disabled arm, -slang, assurance--all.’ - -‘Imagine five hours of him at a stretch. That is about what your wife -had to live through to-day.’ - -‘Dinah is rousing herself, I hope and believe. It will do her all the -good in the world to live through being bored.’ This was said with -amiable imperturbability by Dinah’s husband. ‘I trust, for her own -sake, poor girl, she is learning reason, beginning to discover there -may be other music in the spheres besides that of the eternal domestic -duo without accompaniment.’ - -Geoffrey Arbuthnot puffed away at his pipe in silence. - -‘It was a great thing getting her to the rose-show. For that, Geff, I -suspect, I must thank you.’ Gaston gave a penetrating glance at his -cousin’s face. ‘Miss Bartrand would certainly not have called on us but -at your instigation, and through Miss Bartrand my poor Dinah has been -introduced--well, to Lord Rex Basire, an Open Sesame! let us trust, to -the strictly guarded gates of insular society.’ - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - -THE FIRST CRUMPLED ROSE-LEAF - - -Rex Basire showed no disposition to let his newly-made acquaintance -with Dinah Arbuthnot cool. Long before the hour for visitors on Monday -afternoon, Louise, the French waitress, entered the Arbuthnots’ -parlour. She placed before Dinah a card, also a bouquet made up -entirely of white and costly hothouse flowers. Just like the bouquet -Gaston gave her on her wedding morning! thought Dinah, with a rush of -bitter-sweet recollection. - -‘The Monsieur who was here yesterday, le petit Milor au moustache -blond, demanded news of Madame. Was Madame visible? Should she, Louise, -pray Milor to enter?’ - -Dinah glanced with indifference at card and flowers alike, then she -rose from her work-table. Gaston Arbuthnot, it happened, was at home, -putting the finishing touches to ‘Dodo’s Despair’ in his improvised -studio. Walking quickly to the open window, Dinah, in a whisper, -appealed to her husband. - -‘Gaston, how shall I get rid of Lord Rex Basire? He has sent in his -card and some flowers, as if flowers from a stranger could give one -pleasure! He demands news of me, the French girl says, but that is too -senseless. Tell me the civil way to--to----’ - -‘Shut the door in his face,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot, looking up -from his model as Dinah hesitated. ‘Why shut the door at all? The poor -boy will be better off talking to you than he would be making useless -purchases for young ladies in the Petersport shops.’ - -‘But I am at work. I am counting off stitches for the forget-me-nots -round Aunt Susan’s ottoman, and then I shall come outside. I want no -company but yours.’ - -‘Basire will help you to count forget-me-nots. The very employment he -would delight in!’ - -And, raising his voice, Gaston Arbuthnot called cheerily to the servant -that Madame was visible. There was no time for Dinah to escape. In -another minute Lord Rex had followed his hothouse bouquet, his card, -and the French waitress into her presence. - -She suffered him to possess her hand for one chill, unwilling instant. -Determined, after a somewhat confused and halting fashion, to amend the -error of her ways, to instruct herself, as in a book, in the usages -of Gaston’s world, poor Dinah shrank like a child from the initiatory -chapter of her lesson. She had endured Lord Rex, yesterday, in the -spirit of martyrdom. But to-day, to-morrow! Over what space between the -present time and September was her endurance to last? - -‘I was afraid if I waited till the afternoon you would be out, Mrs. -Arbuthnot. And I have a weighty matter to put into your hands; -I--I--mean an awfully great favour to ask of you.’ - -Rex Basire, as garrison society knew him, was a youth weighted by no -undue modesty, no obsolete chivalrous deference in his manner towards -Woman. He really shone, little though Dinah might appreciate such -shining, as he stood, hesitating--for a moment half abashed--before the -calm coldness of her face. - -‘You will forgive me for calling at this unholy hour?’ he proceeded as -she remained silent. - -Dinah Arbuthnot glanced towards the flood of sunshine that rested on -the flower-bright borders of Mr. Miller’s garden. - -‘Why is the hour unholy?’ she inquired, with slow gravity. - -‘I mean an hour when you were certain to be busy,’ said Lord Rex, -approaching her work-table. ‘Now I can see I am interrupting you, Mrs. -Arbuthnot, am I not?’ - -He drew forward a chair for Dinah; then, after standing for some -appreciable time, and finding that she neither spoke to him nor looked -at him, he seated himself, uninvited. - -‘Awful shame, isn’t it, to interrupt you like this?’ - -‘It does not matter much, my lord. My time was occupied in nothing more -important than counting stitches for a border--that dreariest form of -feminine arithmetic,’ Dinah’s lips relaxed, ‘as my husband calls it.’ - -‘Does your husband say so really? Just what one might expect. All -husbands are alike.’ - -Modelling his clay outside, Mr. Arbuthnot smiled good-humouredly to -himself at the remark. - -‘Now, to me--you mustn’t mind my saying so--lovely woman is never so -lovely as when she is absolutely a woman! Dead against the higher -education business--girl graduates--platform females--you know the -style of thing I mean. Only one out of my tribe of sisters, Vic, the -eldest, works at her needle--my favourite sister from my cradle.’ - -Rex Basire felt that he threw a shade of discriminative, yet -unmistakable flattery into this avowal of family preference. Dinah held -her peace, having in her possession none of those useful colloquial -counters which less uninformed persons have agreed to accept as coin. -Rex Basire’s generalisation about husbands lingered in her mind with -unpleasant, with personal significance. Was it possible that Gaston’s -coolness towards her had become matter of comment in the idle little -world to which Linda Thorne and Lord Rex Basire both belonged? - -‘I work at my needle,’ she remarked presently, ‘because I am not gifted -enough to do better things. If I had talent, a tenth part of talent -like Gaston’s, I should not spend my time counting threads of canvas.’ - -So the discriminative flattery had fallen through. Lord Rex tapped -his exceedingly white teeth with the top of his cane. He searched -diligently throughout the length and breadth of his brain for -subject-matter, and found the land naked. His want of inspiration must, -he began to think, be Mrs. Arbuthnot’s fault. These constant allusions -to the absent husband were crushingly unsuggestive; tended, indeed, -towards irksomeness. Arbuthnot was a well-looking man enough, of the -usual American type, clever, possibly, in his way,--could knead up -clay into droll little figures, and sing French songs without accent! -It was distinctly not to listen to Gaston Arbuthnot’s praises that -Lord Rex had toiled under a hot sun, and at this ‘unholy hour,’ from -Fort-William Barracks up to Miller’s Sarnian Hotel. - -He asked himself if Dinah were really as beautiful as during the past -two days and nights she had appeared before him in his dreams? With a -world full of charming women, most of them disposed, thought Lord Rex, -to value one adequately, were this particular woman’s good graces high -enough stakes to be worth playing for? - -Was she really, if one watched her dispassionately, so beautiful? - -Dinah set up her frame, and, leaning over it, began, or went through -the semblance of beginning, to count her stitches. In doing so the line -of down-bent golden head, the sweep of lash on the pink cheek, the -outline of throat and shoulder, were given with full unconscious effect -to Lord Rex. And the young man’s heresy left him. Whatever his other -scepticisms, he felt, while he lived he could never doubt more on one -subject, the flawlessness of Dinah Arbuthnot’s beauty. - -‘Please let me help you in your dreary arithmetic, Mrs. Arbuthnot. -Lend me a needle, at least, and give me a trial. I have only one hand -to use, but I have been shown, often, how worsted-work stitches are -counted.’ And, indeed, Rex Basire had had a pretty wide training in -most unprofitable pursuits. ‘Each little painted square of the pattern -goes for two threads, does it not?’ - -‘I am sure I did not know gentlemen understood about cross-stitch!’ -And Dinah reluctantly surrendered her canvas to his outstretched hand. -‘Your lordship,’ she added, ‘will never make out the different shades -of blue. This forget-me-not border is the most heart-breaking pattern I -have worked.’ - -Your lordship--your lordship! Gaston’s face assumed an unwonted -liveliness of colour as his wife’s voice reached him. Would Dinah never -leave off talking as the young ladies talk behind the counters in glove -shops, he asked himself? Would she never learn the common everyday -titles by which men and women address each other in the world? - -The clay was no longer plastic under Mr. Arbuthnot’s touch. He moved -without sound to the window. He took a discerning glance at the two -people seated beside the table--Lord Rex with masculine awkward fingers -solemnly parcelling out canvas forget-me-nots, as though his commission -depended on his accuracy; Dinah, a look of shy amusement on her face, -demurely watching him. - -Gaston Arbuthnot took one glance. Then he put aside his tools, wrapped -a wet cloth hastily around ‘Dodo’s Despair,’ and with a manner not -devoid of a certain impatience, prepared to quit his studio. Could it -be--the question presented itself unbidden--that a shadow of coming -distrust had fallen on him? The thought was absurd. He, Gaston -Arbuthnot, distrustful of the gentle, home-staying girl, whose devotion -to himself had at times--poor Dinah--amounted to something worse than a -fault, an inconvenience! That to-morrow’s sun should rise in the east -was not a surer fact than that his wife’s Griselda-like fidelity should -endure to the end. - -And still, in the inmost conscience of him, Gaston Arbuthnot was -uncomfortable. - -He had spent nearly four years of absolute trust--four golden years of -youth, of love, with the sweetest companion that ever blest the lot -of erring man. In this moment he realised the sensation of the first -crumpled rose-leaf. Commonly jealous he could not be. His temperament, -the circumstances of his lot, forbade ignoble feeling. He knew that for -a man like Rex Basire toleration must be the kindliest sentiment that -Dinah, with difficulty, could bring herself to entertain. - -It was not jealousy, not distrust; it was simply the reversal of all -past experience that disconcerted Gaston’s mind. It was the whole -abnormal picture--the diverted look on Dinah’s face, her embroidery -needle and canvas--_hers_--between Rex Basire’s fingers, that was so -blankly unwelcome in his sight. - -If Gaston Arbuthnot ever in his life was an actor in a similar bit of -drawing-room comedy, you may be sure the _rôle_ chosen by him had been -the one now played by Lord Rex. Some other fellow-mortal in a blouse, -and with clay-stained hands, may have watched from the slips. It was -Gaston who counted the stitches! - -He was not cut out by Nature to take subordinate parts; and this his -first little taste of abdicated power had a singularly insipid flavour -to his palate. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - -HOW DINAH SAID ‘YES’ - - -Rex Basire, meanwhile, counted manfully on. A hundred-and-ten from -the corner scroll to the first line of blue; and seventy-six, either -way, of grounding. Emboldened by success, he insisted upon filling -in the yellow heart of a single forget-me-not. ‘Just as a souvenir!’ -he pleaded, contriving to get through the task cleverly enough. A -twelvemonth hence, when half the world lay between them, he thought -Mrs. Arbuthnot might look at the centre of this forget-me-not, and -remember to-day! - -‘I shall remember a length of filoselle wasted. Your lordship’s -stitches must be picked out at once--they are worked the wrong way of -the silk.’ Taking back the needle and canvas, Dinah began to put her -threat into instant execution. ‘A twelvemonth hence,’ she added, ‘I -hope to be looking at something more interesting than wool-work. Most -of my pieces get stored away, for no one in particular. This ottoman is -for my Aunt Susan in Cambridgeshire. It will be a great set-off to her -front parlour,’--Dinah admitted this with a tinge of artist’s pride; -‘but I am not likely to see it there. We have not been to Cheriton for -four years, and----’ - -‘Happy Aunt Susan!’ exclaimed Lord Rex, who was wont to be a little -impudent without awakening anger. ‘What would I give to have--not an -ottoman for my front parlour--but something modest, a kettle-holder -with an appropriate motto, say, worked for me by fair and charitable -fingers!’ - -‘By your favourite sister’s, perhaps.’ - -Dinah’s voice was cold and clear as ice as she offered the suggestion. - -‘You are in an unkind mood, Mrs. Arbuthnot. So unkind,’ Lord Rex took -up a pair of scissors, and regarded them solemnly, as though they had -been the shears of fate, ‘that I feel, beforehand, you mean to say “No” -to everything I ask. I told you, did I not, that I had come to put a -weighty matter into your hands?’ - -‘Do nothing of the kind, my lord. I am unused to receiving favours from -a stranger. Your flowers are very beautiful’--with a touch Dinah placed -the bouquet two or three inches farther from her--‘and I daresay your -lordship meant it kindly to bring them. That is enough! I live quite -retired, and----’ - -Stopping short, Dinah coloured violently. At this moment she heard -Gaston’s tread as he ran down the outer stone staircase. She knew that -she was left alone with Rex Basire for just as long as Rex Basire might -think fit to stay. - -‘But we hope to win a favour from _you_. The subalterns of the regiment -are getting up a party for Wednesday, and we want to know if you will -condescend to play hostess for us? We mean to be original,’ Lord Rex -hurried on, not giving Dinah time to speak and refuse. ‘Instead of -having a humdrum dance or dinner on terra-firma, we mean to charter a -yacht--the _Princess_, now lying in Guernsey harbour--and carry all the -nicest-looking people in the island out to sea.’ - -Dinah’s eyes gave him a look of momentary but severe disapproval. - -‘For this a hostess is imperatively needed. Chaperonage, in its most -venerable form, we can command. I’ve been spending the forenoon, I give -you my word I have, in paying court to old ladies. Miss Tighe smiles on -our project. The Archdeaconess does not frown. Of course we have Mrs. -Verschoyle. But we want a great deal more than venerable chaperons. -We want a young and charming lady to do the honours for us. Mrs. -Arbuthnot, we want you!’ - -Now Dinah’s nature held as little commonplace vanity as could well -fall to woman’s share: through commonplace vanity had Lord Rex never, -at this juncture, won her to say ‘Yes.’ From pleasure, so-called, she -had shrunk, more than ever, since the taste she got of pleasure at the -rose-show--yes, during the very hours when, with rash strategy, she had -been planning to act a part in Gaston Arbuthnot’s world, among Gaston’s -friends. - -But every human being, given a wide enough scope, must end by -justifying the cynic’s aphorism. The resisting powers of the best man, -of the best woman living, have their price, so far as insignificant -mundane matters are concerned. - -No need to seek far for poor sore-hearted Dinah’s price! - -Whispers of the projected yachting party had, for several days past, -reached her, chiefly in fragments of talk between her husband and the -other boarders in Miller’s Hotel. She knew that Gaston was an invited -guest. She had an impression, based on air, and yet, like many a -jealous fear, not all foundationless, that Linda Thorne was to be the -quasi-hostess, the graceful presiding influence of the hour. - -‘Me!--you ask me?’ she faltered, sensible of a blinding rush of -temptation, and not lifting her eyes from the canvas where she had now -effaced the last trace of Lord Rex’s handiwork. ‘I should think others -would be more suitable. I should think,’ the blood forsook her lips as -she suggested the name, ‘that Mrs. Thorne----’ - -‘Oh, we have decided, all of us, against Linda,’ said Lord Rex, with -his usual cool sincerity. ‘Mrs. Thorne is the nicest woman going, on -shore.’ - -‘Of that I am convinced.’ - -‘And she has been kind enough to murmur an experimental “Yes,” though -no one acknowledges to having asked her. (A suspicion goes about that -it was Arbuthnot!) But Mrs. Thorne’s qualities are not sea-going. She -has not the marine foot, as your husband would say. She and the Doctor -will be of our party, of course, but Linda could never play the part -of hostess for us. Oscar Jones took her and the de Carteret girls out -sand-eeling--you know little Oscar, the one handsome fellow in the -regiment?--and Mrs. Linda was sea-sick straight through the jolliest -night of May moonlight. You like the ocean, I am sure, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’ - -‘Yes, I like it. Years ago, when we had not long been married, Mr. -Arbuthnot hired a little cutter yacht. We spent four weeks at sea off -the coast of Scotland. They were the happiest weeks of my life.’ - -Dinah said this with her accustomed quiet reserve. Yet, had Lord Rex -known her better, he might have discerned a tremor in her voice as she -recalled those far-off days--days when neither mistrust nor coldness -had marred the first ineffable joy of her love for Gaston Arbuthnot. - -‘That is all right; I am a second Byron myself. The sea is my passion. -It would have been a sort of blow--I hope you understand me when I say -that it would have been a sort of blow--to hear you say you were a bad -sailor.’ - -Dinah, who never helped out a flattering speech, direct or implied, -looked away from him. - -‘A suspicion goes about that it was Arbuthnot.’ The words rang in her -ears; light words, heedlessly spoken, yet destined to swell the total -with which Gaston Arbuthnot was already too heavily credited on the -balance-sheet of his wife’s heart. - -‘We may count upon you, may we not? Arbuthnot has accepted for himself. -Now we want your promise. If the weather continues like this we may -rely upon seeing you on board the _Princess_ next Wednesday?’ - -‘You have not explained what seeing me on board the _Princess_ means.’ -Dinah’s tone was evasive. Probably, thought Lord Rex, the puritanical -conscience required time to collect itself! ‘I don’t know, at my staid -age,’ she added, ‘that I should countenance you. What did you say about -carrying all the nice-looking people in Guernsey out to sea?’ - -Upon this slight whisper of encouragement Rex Basire entered -voluminously into details. The proprieties--to begin, he declared, -solemn of face, with the facts of greatest significance--the -proprieties were set at rest. An undeniable Archdeaconess, a Cassandra -Tighe (minus nothing but her harp), were secured. The de Carteret -girls, and Rosie Verschoyle, four of the Guernsey beauties regnant, -had accepted. It would be a high spring tide on Wednesday, and the -_Princess_ must start early to reach the Race of Alderney before the -ebb. Afternoon would find them anchored off Langrune, in Normandy. -‘Where we shall land, observe the manners and customs of the natives, -eat a French dinner, take our little whirl, perhaps, in the casino -ball-room,’ said Lord Rex, ‘and so back, à la Pepys, to our virtuous -homes.’ - -‘The scheme is too gay for me,’ cried Dinah, with an uneasy dread -of Gaston’s disapproval. ‘I never danced in my life. I hope--no, I -am sure, my lord, that I shall never set foot inside the walls of a -casino.’ - -‘Not of a French casino, Mrs. Arbuthnot?’ Lord Rex argued warily, still -mindful of the puritanical note. - -‘Certainly not. A French casino! Why, that only makes it worse.’ - -‘A French casino is an innocent kind of sea-side dancing school. Papas -and mammas of families sit around. Small boys and girls exhibit their -steps. Papa drinks his little glass of absinthe, mamma her tumbler of -sugar-water. We go back to our hotel, hand-in-hand with the babies, -at ten o’clock. Except the Zoological Gardens on week days, I know no -human form of dissipation so mild as a French casino.’ - -‘I should have to meet too many strangers on board. I should be alone -among them all. The only lady in Guernsey who has called on me is -Geff’s pupil, Miss Bartrand of Tintajeux.’ - -‘Who will be invited to come, under your charge.’ Lord Rex adroitly -left more delicate social questions untouched. ‘Marjorie Bartrand would -be rough on a chaperon, I should think. Difficult to say whom the -Girtonian of the future would not be rough on! But you, Mrs. Arbuthnot, -seem to have stepped into her favour.’ - -‘And is Geoffrey to be asked?’ - -‘Geoffrey? Ah, to be sure--your cousin. Senior wrangler, was he not?’ - -‘Geoffrey took his honours in classics.’ - -‘Frightfully “boss” man, any way. Does not look as if he cared about -frivolous amusements in general, still----’ - -Lord Rex hesitated. Some finer prophetic sense informed him that -Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s might be a name as well omitted from the programme -of pleasure he was chalking out with such zealous trouble for next -Wednesday. - -‘But is the party to be frivolous? I hardly understood that. No one -loves the sea better than Geff. He will go, I’m sure, if I go.’ - -This was said by Dinah with conviction. Through long habit she had come -to regard Geoffrey’s obedience to her smallest wish as an accomplished -fact. - -‘Notes shall be despatched to Miss Bartrand and to your cousin without -an hour’s delay. I am awfully indebted to you, Mrs. Arbuthnot. You -can’t think what a load of moral obligation you have taken off my mind -by saying “Yes.”’ - -And when Lord Rex left Miller’s Hotel he was radiant; a possibility of -Geoffrey Arbuthnot saying ‘Yes’ also, the one little shadow of a cloud -that obscured next Wednesday’s horizon. - -On his return to Fort-William, later on in the day, his road took him -past the garden gate of Doctor Thorne’s Bungalow. The gate stood open, -and Lord Rex sauntered in, as it was the habit of unoccupied insular -youth to do, during the afternoon hours of tea and gossip. - -Small Rahnee and her ayah were picturesquely grouped upon a bright -square of Persian carpet on the lawn. A macaw and two tame parrots -gave a local, or eastern, colour to the scene as they screeched from -their perches among the garden shrubs. Within one of the drawing-room -windows--bay windows opening to the ground--reposed Linda. Her dress -was of embroidered Indian muslin, not absolutely innocent of darns, -perhaps, for the Doctor retained so much of old bachelor habit as to be -his own housekeeper, and poor Linda must practise many a humiliating -economy in her lot of _femme incomprise_. Bangles, similar to Rahnee’s, -concealed the outline of the lady’s thin wrists. Her black hair, -worn in a single coil, revealed sharply the outline of her head, -Linda’s one incontestably good point. The cunningly arranged shadow -of a rose-coloured window awning, if it did not hide, at least threw -possible defects of complexion, suspicions of coming crow’s-feet, into -uncertainty. - -Linda Thorne was not a pretty woman. Lord Rex, his eyes still dazzled -by Dinah’s wild rose face, felt more than usually cognisant of the -fact. And still, with Rahnee and the turbaned ayah, with the macaws and -parrots, the embroidered Indian dress, the Indian-looking bungalow, -Linda ‘composed’ well. She formed the central figure of a Benjamin -Constant picture, right pleasant to behold. - -A hum of animated voices was in the air. Three or four young and pretty -girls were distributed, spots of agreeable colour, about Linda’s -sober-hued drawing-room. The prettiest of them all presided over a -miniature tea-table drawn close beside the hostess at the open window. -And the burthen of everybody’s talk, the clashing point of everybody’s -opinions, was next Wednesday’s yachting-party. - -‘We are to start at seven. Mamma heard it from Captain Ozanne himself.’ - -‘At midnight of Tuesday. The _Princess_ will be away twenty-four hours.’ - -‘A week, at least, Rosie! And Madame Corbie is to be chaperon.’ - -‘I heard--Cassandra Tighe.’ - -‘There are to be no chaperons worth speaking of, for of course--don’t -be offended, Linda--we cannot look upon you as one, so----’ - -‘So you are quite wrong, all of you,’ exclaimed Lord Rex, his head -peeping up suddenly across Linda Thorne’s shoulder. ‘Miss Verschoyle, -will you give me a cup of tea if I promise to set you right in a few of -your guesses? A cup of tea, and your protection, for I am certain to be -well attacked.’ - -‘This stimulates our curiosity to the proper point,’ the young lady -answered, with a doubtful smile, but making place for Lord Rex at -her side. ‘At the same time, it is an admission you have been doing -something rather less wise than usual. Do you take six or seven lumps -of sugar in your tea, Lord Rex? I never remember the precise number.’ - -Rosie Verschoyle was a bright-complexioned, dimpled girl of nineteen, -with an exactly proportioned waist (of society), an exactly correct -profile, the exact mass of nut-brown hair that fashion requires -descending to her brows, and a pair of large, nut-brown, somewhat -spaniel-like eyes. Until Dinah’s advent Lord Rex thought Rosie the -fairest among the beauties regnant, and was openly her slave at all -the picnics and garden-parties going. Miss Verschoyle had not the -air of encouraging these attentions. She seldom lost a chance of -making Rex Basire’s vanity smart, and had been known to say that she -positively disliked that plain, forward boy who managed to scare away -really pleasant partners and monopolise one’s best dances. And still, -throughout the whole island society, among Rosie’s more intimate -girl-friends notably, there had been a growing suspicion for some time -past that Miss Verschoyle would, one day, marry Lord Rex Basire. - -‘I take as many lumps as Miss Verschoyle chooses to give me.’ He -received the cup with mock humility from her plump, white, inexpressive -hands. ‘The sweets and bitters as they come.’ - -‘Bitters--in tea!’ echoed Rosie, opening her brown eyes wide. ‘Steer -clear of metaphors, Lord Rex. They really do not suit your style of -eloquence.’ - -‘Rosie, Rosie! While you two children spar, the rest of us are dying of -curiosity.’ The admonition was made in Linda’s smoothest voice. ‘Lord -Rex, recollect your promise. You know, you are to set us all right. -What are the plans for Wednesday? Why are we certain, when we have -heard these plans, to attack you? Come here, and make confession.’ - -Lord Rex perched himself, obediently, on a stool near Mrs. Thorne’s -feet. Then, sipping the tea sweetened for him by Rosie Verschoyle, with -more trepidation of spirit, so he afterwards owned, than he ever felt -before the fire of an enemy, he thus began his shrift: - -‘We have made due inquiry from the harbour-master, and find the -_Princess_ must clear out as soon as the first English steamer is -signalled. Will seven o’clock be too early for you all?’ - -A chorus of cheerfully acquiescent voices answered, ‘No.’ - -‘We have also invited Madame Corbie and the Archdeacon. It seems, -for an expedition of the kind, one ought to have a real substantial -chaperon or two. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Thorne, but----’ - -‘Oh, don’t apologise,’ cried Linda, with good humour, willing, like -most of her sex, to condone the accusation of over-youth. - -‘And Madame Corbie accepts, conditionally. I have been paying my court -to aged ladies half the morning! So, unconditionally, does Miss Tighe. -As regards chaperonage, one may say really--really----’ hesitated -Lord Rex, feeling in his guilty soul how red he grew, ‘one may say, -Mrs. Thorne, that, in the matter of chaperons, there will be an -embarrassment of riches.’ - -‘Especially as mamma never allows me to go anywhere without herself. -Was it about the superabundance of chaperons that you knew we should -attack you?’ - -Rosie Verschoyle asked the question in her gay, thin little voice, her -unpremeditated manner, yet with a directness of aim that poor Lord Rex -had not the cleverness to parry. - -‘Attack me? Why, that was only a foolish joke, don’t you know! -Yes, we--we have Mrs. Verschoyle and the Archdeaconess as -chaperons-in-chief. Only, poor Mrs. Verschoyle, the moment the -_Princess_ moves, will be in the cabin, and the Archdeaconess----’ - -‘Try not to look so conscious. The Archdeaconess?’ - -‘If the wind veers between this and Wednesday, will not start at all. -And so, as we must have a married lady to do hostess for us, and as -you, Mrs. Thorne, are also not a first-rate sailor, I have asked Mrs. -Arbuthnot.’ - -A heavy silence followed upon this announcement. Linda Thorne was the -first to break it. - -‘And Mrs. Arbuthnot has accepted? I need hardly ask the question.’ - -‘Yes,’ returned Lord Rex, staunchly enough, ‘I am glad to say that Mrs. -Arbuthnot has accepted.’ - -Rosie Verschoyle turned over and examined a band of silver on her round -white wrist. - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot? Surely that is the same person we saw with Marjorie -Bartrand at the rose-show? How wonderfully handsome she is! Mamma has -talked of nothing else. One will be quite too glad to see her near. In -these democratic days we must all bow unquestioningly before Beauty. -The capital B renders it abstract.’ - -Lord Rex felt the speech to be ungenerous. Vague questionings that -he had once or twice held within himself, as to whether he might or -might not be in danger of liking Miss Verschoyle too well, received an -impromptu solution at this moment. He was in no danger at all: held -the local estimate of her good looks, even, to be overstrained. As -she stood before him, in her fulness of youthful grace, the delicate -profile held aloft, the little cruel sentences escaping, one by one, -from her pouting red lips, Rosie’s prettiness seemed changed to Rex -Basire as though the wand of some malignant fairy godmother had -secretly touched her. - -‘My political opinions outstep democracy, Miss Verschoyle. But if I -were as starched a Tory as--as my own father, by Jove! I should think -Mrs. Arbuthnot’s society an honour. I don’t understand that sort of -thing, the tone people put on in speaking of a woman whose only crime -is her beauty.’ - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot, if she needs a defender, is fortunate in possessing so -warm a one.’ - -The remark was made by Rosie Verschoyle with unwise readiness. - -‘But one could never imagine her, poor dear, needing anything of the -kind.’ It was Linda Thorne who spoke. ‘I have been introduced to Mrs. -Arbuthnot by her husband. I have heard about her, also from him, and I -am sure she is quite the most harmless of individuals. Not naturally -bright! Like too many other gifted creatures, Mr. Arbuthnot may know -the want of household sympathy----’ - -‘Gets along capitally without it,’ interrupted Lord Rex. ‘Never saw any -man better satisfied with himself and with his life than Arbuthnot.’ - -‘Not naturally bright, and lacking the education which, in more -fortunate people, serves as a varnish to poorness of ability. If they -stay here long enough I shall persuade Mr. Arbuthnot, as a duty, to -make his wife take lessons--in music, riding, calisthenics, anything to -beguile her from that patient, that perpetual cross-stitch.’ - -Lord Rex gave a searching look at Linda Thorne’s face. His was no -very high or luminous character, as will be seen in the after course -of this history. Yet were his failings chiefly those of his age and -circumstances. When he erred it was without premeditation, walking -along tracks trodden hard by others. His virtues were his own, and -among these was the virtue of thorough straightforwardness. It trembled -on Lord Rex’s tongue to ask Linda a crucial question relative to -Gaston Arbuthnot’s ‘duty,’ when approaching footsteps made themselves -heard along the gravel drive. There came a shrill shout of welcome -in Rahnee’s voice, a torrent of pigeon English, presumably from the -ayah, in which the words ‘Missy ’Butnot’ might be distinguished. Linda -Thorne’s Indian-bleached cheeks assumed a just perceptible shade of red. - -‘Talk of angels,’ she observed, raising her finger to her lips, -‘and straightway we hear the flutter of their wings! It would be -wise to choose a rather less invidious theme than the demerits of -cross-stitch.’ - -And then, almost before she finished speaking, Gaston Arbuthnot, with -the quiet air of a man certain of the reception that awaits him, -entered upon the scene. - -Next Wednesday’s yachting expedition continued to be the subject of -talk among Linda’s visitors. But it was talk with a difference; the -character of Ophelia cut, by desire, from the play. Hard to bewail the -lot of gifted creatures, or discuss the necessity, in these democratic -days, of bowing down to Beauty, with Dinah’s husband taking part in -one’s conversation! When the party had dispersed, however,--Lord Rex, -in spite of his disenchantment, escorting Rosie Verschoyle home,--when -Linda Thorne was left alone with Gaston Arbuthnot, she spoke her mind. -And her tone was one which all her social knowledge, all her powers of -self-command and self-effacement, failed to render sweet. - -Now it was a peculiarity belonging to Gaston Arbuthnot’s character -that he was apt to mystify every human creature, his cousin Geoffrey -excepted, with whom his relations were near. The more intimate you -became with this man the less firm seemed the moral grip by which -you held him. Dinah’s over-diffident heart perpetually doubted the -stability of his love. She was unhappy with him, dreading lest, in her -society, he were not enough amused. She was unhappy away from him, -dreading lest in her absence he were amused too well! Linda Thorne was -equally at fault as to the texture of his friendship. Long years ago, -Gaston Arbuthnot’s boyish good looks--perhaps it must be owned, Gaston -Arbuthnot’s devoted attentions--won all of tender sentiment that Linda, -then a neglected, overworked governess, had to give. She had been to -India in the interval. She had learnt the market worth of sentiment. -There was Dr. Thorne ... Rahnee! There were her duties, real and -histrionic, to fill her life. And the days of her youth had reached the -flickering hour before twilight. - -But Linda had not forgiven Gaston Arbuthnot. She had not forgotten -how near she once came to loving him. And she was sorely, unreasonably -wounded, through vanity rather than through feeling, by Dinah’s fresh -and girlish charm. - -An anomalous position; perhaps, a commoner one than some young wives, -morbidly sensitive as to alien influence over their husbands, may -suspect. - -‘So there has been a small imbroglio about Wednesday’s arrangements! I -cannot tell you how glad I am to be relieved from a weight of sea-going -responsibility. Mrs. Arbuthnot, I am sure, will enact hostess for our -young subalterns so much more gracefully than I could. She is a good -sailor, doubtless?’ - -Gaston had taken up a morsel of drawing-paper and some red chalk--every -kind of artistic appliance had found its way, of late, into Mrs. -Thorne’s drawing-room--some ideal woman’s face with beauty, with anger -on it, was growing into life under his hand. He finished, in a few -delicate, subtle touches, the shadow between a low Greek brow and -eyelid ere he spoke. - -‘Dinah is a famous sailor. We look back to a little Scottish yachting -tour we made, soon after our marriage, as about the best time of our -lives.’ - -Linda Thorne, a fair decipherer of surface feeling in general, could -gather absolutely nothing from Gaston’s level tone. He raised his eyes, -during a steady second or two, from his paper; he met her interrogative -glance with one of strict neutrality. - -‘I am relieved and at the same time stupidly inquisitive. Now, why -in the name of all things truthful, did you not mention that Mrs. -Arbuthnot meant to go with us on Wednesday?’ - -Gaston was silent; too absorbed perhaps in his creation, slight chalk -sketch though it was, to give heed to matter so unimportant as this -which Linda pressed upon him. - -‘Possibly you were not aware that Mrs. Arbuthnot _was_ going!’ - -Linda Thorne hazarded the remark with a suspicion of innocent malice. - -‘That really is the truth.’ Taking a folding-book from his breast, -Gaston stored away his sketch carefully between its leaves. ‘You must -excuse me, Mrs. Thorne. An idea struck me just now, suggested by a look -I surprised on the face of Miss Verschoyle, and I hastened forthwith -to make my memorandum. Dinah to enact hostess for the subalterns on -Wednesday, do you say? Surely not. I could almost wish that it were to -be so. But my wife, as you know, keeps to her own quiet way of life.’ - -‘We have Lord Rex Basire’s word for it. According to Lord Rex, Mrs. -Arbuthnot has most decidedly accepted their invitation.’ - -‘Dinah does not mean to go. Lord Rex deceives himself.’ - -Gaston Arbuthnot spoke with sincerity. He had told Geoffrey, as a jest, -that Dinah was turning over a new leaf, beginning to discover, poor -girl, that there might be other music in the spheres besides that of -the eternal domestic duo without accompaniment. Of Dinah’s profoundly -changed mood, her resolve of gaining wider views by frequenting a world -which as yet she knew not, he was ignorant. - -Linda Thorne watched him sceptically. - -‘Pray do not dash my hopes. I trust and I believe that Mrs. Arbuthnot -will play hostess to us all next Wednesday. Come!’ she added, with -rather forced playfulness. ‘Will you make me a bet about it? I will -give you any amount of odds you like in Jouvin’s best.’ - -‘It is against my principles to bet on a certainty, Mrs. Thorne. I am -as certain that Dinah has not pledged herself for Wednesday’s picnic -as that I have pledged myself to dine with Dr. and Mrs. Thorne this -evening.’ - -But, in spite of his assured voice, a shade of restlessness was to -be traced in Gaston Arbuthnot’s manner. He would not remain, as it -had become his habit to do, at The Bungalow, singing, or drawing, -or chatting away the two hours between afternoon tea and dinner, in -Linda’s society. Even Rahnee (to Gaston’s mind the first attraction -in the house) must forego her usual game of hide-and-seek with ‘Missy -’Butnot.’ Even Rahnee threw her thin, bangled arms round her playmate’s -neck in vain. Frankly, so, at last, he was brought, to make confession, -he had forgotten to tell Dinah of his engagement, must hurry back, -forthwith, to Miller’s Hotel to set Dinah’s heart at rest. Unnecessary? -‘Ah, Mrs. Thorne,’ and as he spoke Gaston’s eyes looked straight into -the lady’s soul, ‘that question of necessity just depends upon the -state of one’s domestic legislation. Regarding these small matters, -my wife and I, fortunately for ourselves, are in our honeymoon stage -still.’ - -This was always Gaston’s tone in speaking of Dinah at The Bungalow. He -painted truth in truth’s brightest colours whenever he afforded Linda -Thorne a glimpse of his own household happiness. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - -GASTON ARBUTHNOT’S PHILOSOPHY - - -The first dressing-bell was ringing by the time he reached the -hotel. Dinah’s parlour was empty; her embroidery frame--silver paper -shrouding its impossible forget-me-nots and auriculas from the light -of heaven--stood on her work-table. Passing into the adjoining room -without knocking, Mr. Arbuthnot beheld a sight not new to him, save as -regarded the hour of the day--Dinah on her knees beside her bed, her -head bowed, her face hidden between her hands. - -She rose up hurriedly at the sound of her husband’s entrance. She -brushed away some tell-tale tears, not, however, before Gaston’s quick -glance had had opportunity to detect them. - -All men dislike the sight of a wife in tears. A small minority may -dislike the sight of a wife on her knees. Gaston Arbuthnot shared both -prejudices. He concealed his irritation under a kiss--cold, mechanical, -the recipient felt those kisses to be--bestowed on each of Dinah’s -flushing cheeks. - -‘I beg a thousand pardons for disturbing you at your prayers, my dear, -but----’ - -‘I was not praying. I wish I had been,’ interrupted Dinah promptly. ‘To -pray, one’s heart must be at rest.’ - -Now Gaston Arbuthnot looked upon all strong and unpleasant emotion -with a feeling bordering on actual repugnance. And Dinah’s voice had -that in it which threatened storm. His irritation grew. - -‘I beg your pardon for interrupting a mood not calm enough for prayer -(although it required a prayerful attitude), yet sad enough for tears. -That terrible habit of weeping will wear away even your good looks in -time, Dinah.’ - -A time far distant, surely! Never had she been fairer in Gaston’s sight -than at this moment, in her fresh cambric dinner dress, with her hair -like a nimbus of gold around her forehead, with a colour vermeil as any -Italian dawn on the cheeks his lips had newly touched. - -‘I should like to keep my good looks till I am fifty years old, if good -looks were only faithful servants, if they brought one only a taste of -real happiness. As it is----’ - -‘My dear girl, although you chance to be a little out of temper with -life, don’t forget you have a husband. I am a vain man--so you and Geff -tell me--and the chief of all my vanities is, that I am blest with a -handsome wife.’ - -‘Out of temper with life? I think not, Gaston. Life has been sent me, -the rugged with the smooth, and I must learn to fit myself to both. If -I had been clever I should have learnt my lesson long ago. I must shape -myself to things as they are, not want to shape them according to my -poor village notions. I was trying to reason about it all just now.’ - -‘In an attitude that I misunderstood,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot. - -‘I go on my knees when I need to think, clearly and humbly. I would not -dare to say at such times that I pray.’ - -Talk like this was beneath, or above, Gaston Arbuthnot’s level. He told -her so plainly. - -‘My afternoon has been passed in a thoroughly mundane and grovelling -manner, Dinah. I left this house at about three, just when you were -giving Lord Rex Basire a lesson in cross-stitch! Since then I have been -spending my time, not in solemn thoughts that required genuflexion, -but in listening to the last little version of the last little bit -of island gossip. It seems you mean, after all, to go into the world -where, as I have often told you, so many more sink than swim. You have -accepted Rex Basire’s invitation for the picnic next Wednesday?’ - -The accusation, if it were one, came with a sharpness of ring foreign -to Gaston Arbuthnot’s modulated voice. Dinah’s colour deepened. - -‘I have accepted Lord Rex Basire’s invitation for Wednesday--yes.’ - -‘You cannot, I think, mean to go. The picnic will be a helter-skelter -kind of affair. It was got up by these young men, in the first -instance, more as a frolic than anything else, and----’ - -‘You are going yourself, are you not, Gaston?’ - -‘That is uncertain. I believe I did give a conditional consent over the -dinner-table, before it was at all sure the thing would come off.’ - -‘And Mrs. Thorne is going?’ - -‘Oh, Linda goes everywhere. There is a legend that she and the Doctor -dined one night at mess.’ - -‘And Madame Corbie? Don’t you think a party that is staid enough for an -Archdeacon’s wife must be safe for me?’ - -It was Dinah who spoke; yet the tone, the words, were curiously unlike -Dinah’s. Some other woman, surely, stood in the place of her who during -four years had been as wax to every careless turn of Gaston Arbuthnot’s -will! - -‘I can see that you have made up your mind--confess, Dinah, you have -run already to Madame Voisin’s and ordered your dress for Wednesday?’ - -She turned away, impatiently, at the question. - -‘Well, I will not be unwise enough to argue. At least persuade Geoffrey -to go too, get Geoffrey to take care of you. Had I been consulted,’ -remarked Gaston drily, ‘I should have advised you to “come out” -anywhere rather than on a yacht hired, in this kind of way, by Lord Rex -Basire and his brother subs.’ - -‘Gaston!’ - -‘Oh, not because of the right or wrong of the thing. I don’t,’ said -Gaston, ‘go in for transcendental attitudes, morally or physically. My -advice would have been simply offered on a matter of taste. You, my -love, are doubtless the best judge. What time is it--seven? Then I have -scarcely half-an-hour left to dress.’ - -‘To dress!’ faltered Dinah. ‘And my briar roses, our walk to Roscoff -Common? I have been looking forward to it for days. Did you not promise -to draw me some real briar roses for the finish of my border?’ - -‘Of course, I promised, and of course I shall fulfil, my dear child. -The Roscoff roses will keep.’ - -‘And you are going out to dinner again, Gaston?’ - -‘Only to The Bungalow.’ Mr. Arbuthnot made a move towards the door of -his dressing-room. ‘Mrs. Thorne is amiable enough generally to condone -a morning-coat. To-night, I believe, there will be more of a party than -usual.’ - -Dinah rested her hand upon her husband’s shoulder, but not with the -clinging, imploring touch to which Gaston Arbuthnot was accustomed. - -‘If I could have an answer to one question I should be content,’ she -exclaimed, almost with passion. ‘It is an answer you can give. What -are Mrs. Thorne’s gifts? What is the cleverness which draws a man as -difficult to please as you five days a week to her house?’ - -The situation had become critical. A feverish colour burned on Dinah’s -face, her question was trenchant and desperately to the point. But it -was just the hardest thing imaginable to get Gaston Arbuthnot into a -tiptoe posture. The drama of his life, so he himself avowed, consisted, -a good nine-tenths of it, of carpenter’s scenes. If he were forced to -declaim some passage of high and tragic blank-verse it would inevitably -sound like a bit of genteel comedy from his lips! - -A husband of warmer temper, it would be unjust to say of warmer heart, -must have kindled at the daring of Dinah’s words, the ardent eagerness -of her face. - -Gaston Arbuthnot was interested rather than moved. He answered with the -chill candour of an impartial judge: - -‘Linda’s gifts? First on the list we must place the cardinal one of -vocal silence. Mrs. Thorne does not sing.’ - -‘She can accompany other people who do,’ said Dinah, with imprudent -significance. - -‘And can accompany them well. Have I ever told you, Dinah, how and -where I first saw the lady who is now Doctor Thorne’s wife?’ - -‘You have not. You have never spoken to me about Mrs. Thorne’s life, -past or present.’ - -Dinah’s tone was as nearly acrid as her full and rounded quality of -voice permitted. She felt intuitively that Gaston would parry her -question, as he had so often done before, by apposite narrative which -yet led no whither; felt that though every word he spoke might be true -to the letter, the one truth of vital moment to herself would be in the -words left unspoken. - -‘It was in Paris, my love, in long past days before I went to -Cambridge, and when I was much less of an Englishman than I am now. -My mother, with a wholesome dread of my artist friends, and of the -Quartier Latin, cultivated what she called occasions of family life for -me. One such occasion came to her hand. Under the same roof with us, -but on a lower floor, as befitted their purse, lived a rich Jew family, -with a bevy of young daughters and an English governess----’ - -‘Linda Thorne?’ - -‘At that time Linda Smythe. Yes, Linda Constantia was seated at a -piano the first evening my mother forced me down to Madame Benjamin’s -salon. I think I see her now, poor soul, playing accompaniments to the -singing--the terrible operatic singing of Papa Benjamin. By and by -we danced in a round, “Have you seen the baker’s girl?” “Mary, soak -thy bread in wine,” and other mild dances of the unmarried French -_mees_. The governess remained at the piano still. ‘Our good Smeet! -she knows so well to efface herself,’ said Madame Benjamin, giving me -a tumbler of sugar-water to present to my countrywoman. I might almost -answer your question, Dinah, in Madame Benjamin’s words--Linda Thorne -understands perfectly the difficult social art of effacing oneself.’ - -‘Was she effaced at Saturday’s rose-show?’ - -‘She was a _locum tenens_, good-naturedly presiding over the -refreshment stall for some friend with a sprained ankle.’ - -‘With an affection of the throat, Gaston. So the story ran, when you -first told it me.’ - -‘You are severe, Dinah. If a pretty woman could possibly be tempted -into feeling bitterly towards a plain one, I should say that you were -bitter towards Linda Thorne.’ - -Dinah was unsoftened by the compliment. - -‘To efface oneself,’ she repeated. ‘That means--in homely, plain -English, such as I talk and understand?’ - -‘To keep gracefully in the background while others fill the prominent -parts,’ said Gaston, with a laugh. ‘If you knew Linda Thorne better, if -you could see her at one of her own charming little parties, you would -appreciate the knack she has of not shining. She is quite the least -selfish, least self-absorbed creature in the world.’ - -Straight, warm, living, flew a denial from Dinah’s lips. - -‘Mrs. Thorne is wrapt in selfishness! If she was a good, true woman, -she must guess how the hearts of other women, other wives, bleed, -only at a thought of neglect! I can’t cope with her, Gaston, for -conversation. She was born and educated a lady, and I belong to the -working people, less taught when I was a child than they are now. But -that should make her generous. She is rich in good things--has she not -got little Rahnee? And I have but the hope, weak that hope grows at -times, of keeping your love.’ - -A flush of annoyance overspread Gaston Arbuthnot’s handsome face. - -‘If you would only take life in a quieter spirit, Dinah, content -yourself with the moment’s common happiness, like the rest of us! I -speak in kindness, my dear girl.’ Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot here fell to -examining his signet-ring closely, perhaps because he did not wish -to meet his wife’s eyes. ‘If you would care for any mortal thing, in -addition to that somewhat unworthy person, Gaston Arbuthnot, it would -be better for us both.’ - -Dinah turned deadly white. - -‘If the child had lived!’ she uttered. ‘If we had her now, nearly the -age of Rahnee, my heart would not be so athirst for love. It would -come to me naturally. Just as I am, no cleverer, or brighter, or more -original, you might find my company sufficient, if we had the child.’ - -‘We cannot cut out our lives by our own pattern,’ said Gaston, with -irrefragable philosophy. ‘The disappointment, God knows, was bitterly -keen to both of us at the time. Looking round the world now, I am -disposed to wonder sometimes if the possession of a child be an unmixed -blessing.’ - -‘It would have been so to me.’ The wound had never so thoroughly healed -that Dinah could bear a careless touch on the cicatrice. ‘But I have no -right to complain,’--she said this through her tears,--‘God gave, and -took away. Who am I to question His wisdom?’ - -During several seconds Mr. Arbuthnot seemed to grow more and more -absorbed in the contemplation of his ring; then, by an alert side -movement, he contrived to reach the door of his dressing-room. - -‘You are going? You intend really to dine with the Thornes this -evening?’ - -Dinah brushed her hand hastily across her eyes. - -‘Certainly, I intend to keep my engagement,’ answered Gaston Arbuthnot. - -‘You would not break it, if I asked you?’ - -‘I would do any conceivable thing you asked me--with sufficient cause. -I have too much opinion of your good taste to dread your ever placing -yourself, or me, in a ridiculous position.’ - -‘If you would, I should give up all this plan for Wednesday. We would -go back’--a soft far-off look stole over Dinah’s face as though for -a moment she indulged in the retrospect of some too-dear dream--‘go -back--ah! fool that I am--to the early days--days when you said the -best dinner-party in London could not tempt you to leave me for an -evening.’ - -While she was speaking she had followed him. Her hand rested on his -sleeve. Her eyes, with piteous, imploring earnestness, sought to read -his face. - -‘There is no returning to old days,’ said Gaston Arbuthnot. ‘People -of our age should have sense enough to realise this. The exclusive -boy-and-girl idolatry of one year of life would be rank absurdity in a -dignified Darby and Joan of our standing.’ - -Dinah shrank away from him. Perhaps it occurred to her that exclusive -idolatry had never existed at all on Gaston’s side. How long, in truth, -did he keep to the declaration, made in his honeymoon, of preferring -quiet evenings with her to the best dinner-parties in London? - -‘When I came in just now, Dinah, I interrupted you at some spiritual -exercise, not high enough to be called prayer, yet that required -a kneeling attitude. It is a pity,’ said Mr. Arbuthnot, looking -disagreeable, ‘that the self-communings of good people so seldom lead -them to charity--I don’t mean almsgiving--I mean a broader, more -charitable frame of mind. If you could only recognise one fact, that -there is a great variety of human nature about you in the world, it -would be something gained.’ - -‘I know it, Gaston. What I want is to be lifted out of my own narrow -ignorance.’ - -‘Take Geoffrey, for instance. In Geoffrey we have a man sound to the -core. No caprice, no vanity in our cousin, none of the discontent -and levity, and thirst for amusement which disfigure some characters -that might be named. For contrast,’ Gaston Arbuthnot’s eyes rested -discerningly on his wife, ‘look at Rex Basire--an empty-skulled little -tailor’s block, doubtless, yet with a brave soldier’s heart in him -all the same! By the bye, my dear, I need not exhort you,’ he added -lightly, ‘to be charitable to Lord Rex. If women would only be as -fair towards each other as they are towards us! I really admired the -philosophy with which you gave that young gentleman his lesson in -cross-stitch to-day.’ - -The careless tone of banter brought back Dinah’s accustomed -self-control. Nothing so effectually checks emotion as the absence of -emotion in our fellow-actors. - -‘Lord Rex was bent upon working three or four stitches in my ottoman. -It cost me the trouble only of unpicking them, and when he asked my -leave I was ignorant--I always am ignorant--about the politeness of -saying “No.” That is what I must learn.’ - -‘The art of saying “No,”’ observed Mr. Arbuthnot, not in a very hearty -voice. - -‘The art of speaking and acting--well, as Mrs. Thorne, as every woman -of your world, would do! There’s no going back to old days, Gaston. -You are right there. I must shape myself to things as they are, not -to try to shape them to my needs. That is chiefly why I accepted the -invitation for Wednesday. I mean to learn from the example of others. I -mean to turn over a new leaf from to-day.’ - -‘Keep true to your own transparent self, child. Be what you have been -always, and I, for one, shall be contented.’ - - - - -CHAPTER XX - -‘JAMES LEE’S WIFE’ - - -The speech was really the best chosen, prettiest thing that a somewhat -errant husband could have found to say. In every moral encounter that -befel Gaston Arbuthnot, and whether his antagonist floundered in the -mud or no, Gaston seemed invariably to find himself, at the last, in -a graceful attitude. But Dinah’s heart was no more warmed by honeyed -little phrases than by the reconciliatory kiss her husband bestowed -on her ere he started to his dinner-party. She was reaching--nay, had -reached--the miserable stage when honeyed phrases and reconciliatory -kisses are in themselves matters of distrust? How, her lonely dinner -over, would she get through the evening hours--long counted-on -hours--when she was to have walked, her hand within Gaston’s arm, to -distant Roscoff Common for her briar roses. - -For a space Dinah looked listlessly forth at the garden. It was full of -people who knew each other, who talked together in friendly voices--the -boarders of the hotel, with whom Gaston mixed, with whom Gaston was -popular. Then she seated herself before her embroidery frame. But -recollections of Lord Rex Basire, of the effaced stitches, of Gaston’s -commentaries on her ‘patience,’ made the thought of work repugnant to -her. If she could only read, she thought! Not after her dull, country -pattern, repeating each word to herself as a child cons his task ere -he can take in its meaning. If she could read for pleasure, as she had -watched Geoffrey read--quickly, easily, with hearty human interest, -like one bent on receiving counsel from some well-beloved friend! - -A book of Geff’s lay on the mantelshelf. Dinah rose, crossed the -room with languid steps, and took it in her hand. Then, as readers -invariably do, to whom the shell of a book matters more than the -kernel, she fell to a careful examination of the text, binding, -title-page. - -‘The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. Vol. VI. _Dramatis Personæ_.’ - -Well, four years ago, during the brief fortnight of Geoffrey’s madness, -it chanced one evening that he walked out to Lesser Cheriton with this -very book in his pocket. (Did some ineffaceable rose odour of that dead -June cling to the pages still, rendering Vol. VI. dearer in Geff’s -imagination than its fellows?) He read ‘James Lee’s Wife’ aloud to -Dinah Thurston--a poem totally outside the girl’s comprehension--and -during the recital of which her decently suppressed yawns must have -rebuffed any man less blindly in love than was Geoffrey Arbuthnot. - -At ‘James Lee’s Wife’ the book opened now. - - - ‘_Ah, Love, but a day,_ - _And the world has changed!_’ - - -Dinah read through the first stanzas untouched. Pretty love-warblings, -the cry of a happy woman’s heart,--what had they to say to her, Dinah -Arbuthnot? In the last stanza of ‘By the Fireside’ her pulse gave a -leap. - - - ‘_Did a woman ever--would I knew!--_ - _Watch the man----_’ - - -Dinah went back to the window, the volume in her hand. She returned -to the beginning of the poem, pored over it, line by line, stanza by -stanza, in the fading light. - - - ‘_Yet this turns now to a fault--there! there!_ - _That I do love, watch too long,_ - _And wait too well, and weary and wear;_ - _And ’tis all an old story, and my despair_ - _Fit subject for some new song._’ - - -And when she had got thus far, the clouds of her ignorance lightened. -She began to understand. - -Shortly before ten o’clock, entered Geoffrey. The parlour lamps were -not lit. Dinah’s figure was in dense shadow as she leaned, absorbed -in her own thoughts, beside the open window. Geoffrey, believing the -room empty, sang under his breath, as he groped his way across to the -mantelshelf; no very distinguishable tune--an ear for music was not -among Geff’s gifts--but with sufficient of a quick, triplet measure in -it to recall a Spanish Barcadero that Marjorie Bartrand was fond of -singing to herself. - -To Dinah’s sick heart the song was consciously wounding. - -She had been so long used to Geff’s undivided homage, that sense of -power had, little by little, grown into tyranny, gentle rose-leaf -tyranny, whose weight Geoffrey’s broad shoulders bore without effort, -and yet having in its nature one of tyranny’s inalienable qualities, -lack of justice. - -‘Always in spirits, Geoffrey!’ The reproach came to him through the -gloom. ‘It is good to think, whether the day is dark or shining, our -cousin Geoffrey can always sing.’ - -Geoffrey was at her side in a moment. - -‘It is cruel to speak of my horrible groanings as singing, Mrs. -Arbuthnot; crueller still to hint of them as betokening good spirits. -Where is Gaston? You are back earlier than I expected from your walk to -Roscoff.’ - -‘The walk fell through. I shall have to border my work with a rose -pattern bought in the shops. Gaston was obliged to dine at Dr. -Thorne’s. He made the engagement, of course, without thinking of our -walk. I ought never to have counted on those Roscoff wild roses. I----’ - -Dinah’s voice lapsed, brokenly, into silence. - -‘If you would like the roses, you can have them by breakfast -to-morrow,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Few things I should enjoy better than a -six-mile trudge in the early morning.’ - -‘No, Geoffrey, no. Gaston always tells me that my bought patterns are -atrocious, and the walk was planned by him, and he was to have sketched -from the fresh briars by lamplight. My heart in it all is over. The -Roscoff roses may go!’ - -As so much of weightier delight had been allowed to go, negligently, -irrevocably, out of Dinah Arbuthnot’s life. Dinah herself might not -suggest the thought, but to Geoffrey’s mind it was a vivid, a pathetic -one. - -‘And why should you not take my escort? You know I am never burthened -with engagements. Let us go to Roscoff to-morrow. You owe Miss Bartrand -a visit. Well, we will take Tintajeux on our road, and make Marjorie -show us the way to Roscoff Common.’ - -‘Miss Bartrand will not expect me to return her visit. She came here -because--because you, dear Geff, with or without words, bade her come! -I should never have courage to face the grandfather. Gaston would be -the right person to call on the Seigneur of Tintajeux.’ - -‘The Seigneur of Tintajeux might think otherwise,’ Geoffrey laughed. -‘Old Andros Bartrand made minute inquiries about Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot -the last time I saw him.’ - -‘About me--always the same story!’ cried Dinah, uneasily. ‘Why should -people talk of us? What is there in my life, or in Gaston’s, that need -arouse so much curiosity?’ - -‘Shall I answer as your friend, Lord Rex, would do?’ - -‘Answer truly, Geff, not like Lord Rex Basire, but like yourself.’ - -‘Why should the good people of Guernsey talk about you, do you ask? -Because, Mrs. Arbuthnot, even in this country of fair faces, yours may -have gained the reputation of being the fairest.’ - -The speech would have fitted Lord Rex better. Geff was sensible in the -darkness that his cheek reddened. - -‘The fairest!’ echoed poor Dinah, petulantly. ‘Oh, I sicken of the -very word “fair.” Shades of hair or of eyes, a white skin, a straight -profile, how can people think twice of these trivial things? The woman -best worth speaking about in Guernsey or elsewhere should be she, not -with the fairest, but the happiest face.’ - -Her own, certainly, was not happy to-night. Growing accustomed to the -parlour’s darkness, fitfully broken by a reflected light from one -of the garden lamps outside, Geff could note her exceeding pallor. -He could note, also, that Dinah Arbuthnot’s eyes revealed no trace -of tear-shedding, that a look rather of newly-stirred interest, of -awakening excitement, was in their depths. - -‘And you have spent your evening not only without Gaston, but without -cross-stitch? It is a fresh experience,’ he told her gravely, ‘for you -to be idle.’ - -‘I read until the light went--don’t you see--I have got hold of a book -of yours? A book of verses that I did not understand when you tried to -read it aloud to me at Lesser Cheriton.’ - -Ah, how the old name, spoken by her tongue, stabbed him always! -Geoffrey Arbuthnot bent his face above the volume in Dinah’s hand. - -‘“Robert Browning.” But for my bad reading, you ought to have liked -these poems four years ago.’ - -‘I think not, Geff. Uneducated people can like only where they feel. -And in those young days’--oh, unconsciously cruel Dinah!--‘I felt -so little. But I have an object now in learning. I want to learn on -all subjects, out of books as well as from life. That reminds me of -something I had to say to you, Geff. Lord Rex Basire was calling on me -this afternoon.’ - -‘Lord Rex Basire was calling on you the greater part of yesterday.’ - -‘And I took upon myself to accept an invitation for you. There will -be a picnic party on Wednesday. It is some yachting expedition to the -French coast, got up by the officers of the regiment, to which you will -be asked----’ - -‘But to which I shall certainly not go. I can get as far out to sea as -I like with the fisher people. Wednesday is one of my busiest days.’ - -‘Miss Bartrand will be invited, too, if you are thinking of her.’ - -‘Miss Bartrand can do as she chooses. I have more important work than -my two hours’ reading at Tintajeux.’ - -‘If I ask you, Geff, will you refuse?’ - -‘I refuse, unconditionally. I hate gay parties. What mortal interest -could I have in the society of men like Lord Rex Basire and his brother -officers?’ - -‘Only that I am going, that Gaston ... I mean, I looked upon it as a -matter of course you would accept, and----’ - -The words died on Dinah’s lips. She had an unreasoning sensation that -her firmest safety ground was at this moment cut abruptly from her feet. - -As she stood, faltering, uncertain, Geoffrey took the volume of -Browning from her. It opened at page 58. - - - ‘_Little girl with the poor coarse hand._’ - - -There was just sufficient light for him to make out the letters of the -first line. - -‘Is this the poem you have been reading, Mrs. Arbuthnot? Why, I -distinctly remember your pronouncing “James Lee’s Wife” to be -meaningless.’ - -‘I have my lesson--shall understand,’ said Dinah. ‘“James Lee’s Wife” -is the story of a woman whose heart is broken.’ - -And she turned from him. Geoffrey could only see her face in extreme -profile. The cheek with its drawn oval, the exquisite, sad lips, showed -in strong relief, like a cheek, like lips of marble, against the night -sky. - -He first broke silence. - -‘Do you care, seriously--do you care a fraction, one way or the -other--about my accepting this invitation of Basire’s for Wednesday?’ -he asked her. ‘Is it possible my going could be of help to you?’ - -A big lump in poor Dinah’s throat kept her, during some moments, from -speaking. Then with trembling eagerness her answer broke forth. She -cared more seriously than she could say ‘about Geoffrey’s not forsaking -her.’ Gaston, of course, would be of the party, but then Gaston was -so popular, so sure to be unapproachable! She would never, never want -Geoffrey to martyrise himself again. It was the first great favour she -had asked him. When she was once launched in the world, said Dinah, -rallying with effort, she would know what to say and do and look, -unhelped by a prompter. - -And all Geff’s hatred for gay parties, and for men like Lord Rex Basire -and his brother officers, went to the winds. That Dinah was beginning -to anatomise her pain unhelped by suggestion from without, that Dinah -had grasped the subtle meaning of ‘James Lee’s Wife,’ were facts that -could not be lightly put aside. Her cry to himself, Geoffrey thought, -was that of a child who seeks succour, from instinct, rather than from -knowledge of his danger. - -‘The martyrdom would not last long,’ urged Dinah, misjudging his -intention. ‘To any one so fond of the sea as you, Geff, twelve or -fifteen hours on board a steamer are not much. We are to leave early in -the morning and be back in Guernsey the following night. If you know -what a kindness you would be doing me!’ - -‘I mean to go,’ said Geff Arbuthnot shortly. - -Twelve hours! He felt, just then, that he would pass twelve weeks, or -months, on a steamer, if by so doing he could lighten one ounce of -Dinah’s burthens to her! - -‘And Gaston’s conscience will be at rest,’ she exclaimed. ‘The truth -is, you see, Gaston was not well pleased at my accepting at all. He -bade me ask you, Geoffrey, to look after me.’ - -To a more sophisticated mind than Geff’s it might have occurred that -the most fitting man to look after Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife would -be--Gaston Arbuthnot himself. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - -‘IS MY VIRGIL PASSABLE?’ - - -I have written that, in a softened and remorseful moment Marjorie -Bartrand’s heart owned Geoffrey for its master. - -In a character like Marjorie’s, softened and remorseful moods are apt, -however, to be intermittent. On the evening of Saturday her pride had -melted, ay, to such a point that, holding her tutor’s ‘love-letter’ -between her hands, she went into a storm of penitent tears--she, -Marjorie Bartrand, whose boast had been that there was one woman in -Her British Majesty’s domain who would shed tears for no man while she -lived! - -Looking back upon these things from the cool and bracing heights of a -Tintajeux Sunday, the girl’s stout spirit recoiled with derision from -the image of her own weakness. The Seigneur’s after-dinner sarcasm, she -felt, with tingling cheek, was true of aim. She _had_ played a part, -unknowingly, in the Arbuthnot drama: thanks to Cassandra Tighe, had -no doubt treated Geoffrey with kindness not his due for the imaginary -wife’s sake! Now would everything be on a frigidly proper footing. Her -tutor had shown very good sense in returning property that had wrongly -fallen into his keeping. Whatever small halo of romance hung around his -life was dispelled. The construction of Latin prose, the working out -of mathematical problems, would henceforth go on with dignified and -scholarlike serenity. - -But, as a first step, Geoffrey Arbuthnot should hear the truth! - -Old Andros happened to give a longer sermon than usual on this Sunday -morning of June 26--a sermon wearing a French garb now, but which was -first preached fifty years ago before the University of Oxford, and -whose polished sentences breathed the safe and sleepy theology of its -day. The whole of the congregation slept, save one; the gentlemanly -optimism of eighteen hundred and thirty appealing moderately to hearers -who in the evening would revive beneath the burning eloquence of -some neighbouring Bethesda or Zion. Marjorie, only, was awake: keen, -restless, preternaturally stirred to mundane thoughts and desires -as she had ever found herself, from her rebellious babyhood upward, -under the inspiration of a high oak pew and monumental slabs. She -thought over all her hours with Geoffrey from the first evening when -she saw him in the Tintajeux drawing-room until their half quarrel on -Saturday. She thought of her visit to Dinah, of the disillusionment -wrought in her by the vision of French songbooks and yellow-backed -novels. She thought of the moment when she rescued her letter from the -Seigneur’s hands! Happily, the comedy of errors approached its finish! -Geoffrey Arbuthnot should hear the truth, should have his masculine -vanity soothed by no further misinterpretation of her conduct. Into a -debateable land where a mature woman, her heart already touched, had -shrunk from venturing, Marjorie, with the madcap courage of seventeen, -resolved to rush. - -As a first step, Geoffrey Arbuthnot should hear the truth! - -And this resolution, formed in the dim religious light of the Tintajeux -family pew, did not melt away, like too many excellent Sunday purposes, -under the secular warmth of work-a-day open air. When Geoffrey walked -into Marjorie’s schoolroom on Tuesday morning he found Grim Fate, in a -pink chintz frock, with blossoming maidenly face, ready to place him in -the outer cold for ever. - -‘Good-day to you, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ The girl held herself stiffly -upright, with smileless lips, with hands safely embedded in the pockets -of her pinafore. ‘I was much obliged to you for returning my ribbon on -Saturday, but I need not have put you to the trouble, to the expense of -postage! I could have waited until to-day.’ - -Geoffrey, a backward interpreter always of feminine petulancy, sought -for no latent meaning in her words. Marjorie Bartrand had never looked -sweeter to him than now, in her fresh summer frock, with a livelier -damask than usual on her cheeks, and with her hands cruelly holding -back from their wonted friendly greeting. He had it not in his heart, -on this June morning, to find a fault in her, inheritress of all the -sins of all the Bartrands though she might be. - -‘My poverty is heinous, Miss Bartrand, but I could just afford the -penny stamp required for the postage of your waist-belt. After the -lecture you read me on Saturday morning,’ went on Geff good humouredly, -‘I really dared not face you with that morsel of ribbon still in my -possession.’ - -Marjorie’s lips lost their firmness. Taking her place at the schoolroom -table, she cleared her throat twice. Then she pushed across a pile of -copy-books in Geoffrey’s direction. She signed to him to be seated, -presented him with a bundle of pens, drew forward the inkstand. -Finally, intrenched, as it were, behind the implements which defined -their social relationship, she delivered herself of the following -singular confession: - -‘When my lecture, as you please to call it, was given I did not know -that _you_ existed, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’ - -‘Miss Bartrand!’ - -‘The lecture was meant, in good faith, for another person. If an -apology is needed, there you have it! I--I had listened to idle -gossip,’ said Marjorie, taking desperate courage at the sound of her -own voice, ‘and so--I must say it out, little though I like such -subjects--I thought you were a married man, sir. I thought so from the -first evening you came here. I thought so until the hour when I saw Mr. -Gaston Arbuthnot at the rose-show.’ - -‘And your motives--when you called on Dinah?’ exclaimed Geoffrey, -thrown off his guard. - -‘When I called on Mrs. Arbuthnot I believed her to be my tutor’s wife. -I had heard a great deal about her goodness and her beauty. And I had -almost grown to hate you,’ added Marjorie, with one of her terrible -bursts of outspokenness, ‘for leaving such a woman as Dinah at home, -neglected, while you amused yourself.’ - -Then she lifted her eyes. She was startled to see how Geoffrey -Arbuthnot’s face had paled; paled under the incivility, so Marjorie -supposed, of her speech. - -‘As a fact, of course, I never hated you at all.’ Her voice shook a -little. ‘That gentle, beautiful Mrs. Arbuthnot is not your wife.’ - -‘Not my wife,’ echoed poor Geoffrey absently. - -His tone was chill. Dipping a pen in the ink, he began to trace -meaningless curves and lines on the cover of the exercise-book nearest -his hand. During a few seconds he was obviously unmindful of his -pupil’s presence. - -‘Her lips, with their sad expression, haunt me,’ remarked Marjorie -presently. ‘Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot, I should think, must be the most -beautiful woman in the world.’ - -‘As she is certainly the truest and best.’ Geff had got back his -self-possession. He spoke his credo as valiantly as though Marjorie -Bartrand’s eyes were not fixed upon him. ‘And so,’ he found voice to -say, ‘you could actually believe, on hearsay evidence, that a girl like -Dinah would have chosen me for her husband, and I--have neglected her?’ - - -Geoffrey laughed, not very joyously; then, taking up another copy-book, -he glanced with mechanical show of attention over a sentence or two -of Marjorie’s Latin translation. He held the page upside down--a fact -which her memory, in after times, might recall as significant. - -‘I honestly believed you to be married. Have you forgotten the first -evening you walked out to Tintajeux--that evening when I told you the -Bon Espoir was a good omen for our friendship?’ - -‘A fortnight ago to-day. I have not forgotten it.’ - -‘I looked upon you as my friend before I saw you. I had heard your -history--the history, it would seem, of your cousin Gaston! I honoured -a man who had had the courage of his opinions. I respected, I drew to -you on account of the wife you had chosen. And now, Mr. Arbuthnot,’ -exclaimed Marjorie hotly, ‘the comedy of errors is finished. I have -learned my mistake, you see. And I trust that my apology has been -sufficient.’ - -This time Geoffrey broke into a fit of wholesome, unconstrained -laughter. - -‘I am afraid I see through everything, Miss Bartrand. Your apologies -say too much. I have been treated with humanity by accident, and may -count upon dark days for the future. That I am not married is my -misfortune,’ he added, watching her face,--‘a misfortune which, if I -could only thereby re-establish myself in your favour, I would gladly -remedy.’ - -‘Would you?... do you mean ...’ - -And then, looking up into her tutor’s eyes, Marjorie knew that they -were both of them talking unwisdom, were trenching as nearly on the -forbidden ground of sentiment as a young man and woman who had met for -the hard study of classics and mathematics could well do. - -‘I believe I got through some fair work yesterday,’ she remarked, with -an air of cold business. ‘As to-morrow is to be wasted on folly, -we may as well lose no time now. It is your system never to praise, -sir,--a good one, doubtless. Yet I hope you will think my Virgil -passable. I _promise_ you it was done without the crib.’ - -Geff read the halting translation aloud, no longer holding the -manuscript upside down. He did not think Marjorie’s Virgil passable, -and put the copy-book aside without a word of comment. He showed -himself severer than usual over Greek aorists, was stringent, to -cruelty, in regard of Marjorie’s shakiest point--her mathematics. But -at last, when the professional work was over, when he had risen to take -leave, Geoffrey Arbuthnot extended his hand to his pupil as the girl’s -heart knew he had never done before. - -‘You have tolerated me hitherto,’ he observed, ‘for my imaginary wife’s -sake. Do you think you can tolerate me, in future, for my own?’ - -With his eyes fixed on her face, her small fingers crushed in his -grasp, Marjorie’s cheeks turned the colour of a pomegranate. - -‘You know ... you ought to have been the other Arbuthnot cousin,’ she -stammered, glancing up under her long lashes, then drawing her hand -away warily. - -‘I ought, you think, to have been Gaston? He would never have pleaded, -as I plead, for toleration. Every woman living would tolerate Gaston of -her own free will.’ - -‘Save Marjorie Bartrand! Pray make one exception to your rule. I come -of an arbitrary and stiff-necked race. We--we Tintajeux people belong -to minorities. We like, in most cases dislike, where we can.’ - - -‘Give me credit, for a short time longer, of being the other Arbuthnot -cousin,’ Geoffrey whispered as he left her. ‘Dislike me only as -much as you did on that first evening when you gathered roses and -heliotropes--for my wife!’ - - - - -CHAPTER XXII - -LINDA AS AN ART CRITIC - - -Wednesday morning’s sun rose cloudless. A few persistent fog wreaths -lay, even as the day advanced, to leeward of the islands. There was an -undue ground-swell, although the surface of the water glistened, smooth -as oil, when the high spring tide began to flow in from the Atlantic. -None but an inveterate croaker could, however, prophesy actual mischief -from signs so trivial. Lord Rex Basire declared aloud--certain of his -guests arriving not as the time for departure drew nigh--that the day -must have been manufactured expressly for the subaltern’s picnic. No -wind, no sea, a nicely-tempered sun above one’s head, a favourable -tide--‘What more,’ asked Lord Rex, ‘especially if one add the item of a -powerful steamer, could the never satisfied heart of woman require?’ - -The heart of the most Venerable woman in the island required that there -should be neither ground-swell nor fog-bank. At the eleventh hour -came an excuse, on the score of weather, from Madame Corbie. The post -of chaperon-in-chief stood vacant. Happily for the youthful hosts, -Rosie Verschoyle’s mother was faithful--a little white passive lady, -accustomed to the iron rule of grown-up daughters, who only stipulated -that she should lie down, within reach of smelling-salts, before -leaving Guernsey harbour, and neither be spoken to nor looked at until -they arrived in smooth water off the coast of France. Old Cassandra, -in her scarlet cloak, was to the fore, with cans for fish, with crooks -for sea-weed, with a butterfly-net, with stoppered bottles--Cassandra, -burthened by a sole regret--that she had left her harp behind. If -these young people had wished, in mid ocean, to dance, how willingly -would Cassandra have harped to them! Doctor Thorne and his Linda were -punctual; so were the trio of pretty de Carteret sisters whom poor Mrs. -Verschoyle, according to a trite figure of speech, was to ‘look after.’ -And still Rex Basire glanced vainly along the harbour road for the only -guests concerning whose advent he cared. The steam was up; the skipper -stood ready on the bridge. In another ten minutes the _Princess_ of -necessity must quit her moorings, and still the sunshine of Dinah -Arbuthnot’s face was wanting. - -‘You look frightfully careworn, Lord Rex,’ said Rosie Verschoyle with -malicious intonation, as she followed the direction of his glances. -Pray, has your lobster salad not arrived? Is your ice melting? Or does -some anxiety even yet more tragic disturb your peace?’ - -‘There they are--no, by Jove! only the men. Twelve feet two of the -Arbuthnot cousins!’ exclaimed Lord Rex, with frank disrespect of -Rosie’s sympathy. ‘Is it possible Mrs. Arbuthnot can have thrown us -over? The thought is too atrocious!’ - -The tall figures of Gaston and Geoffrey--twelve feet two of the -Arbuthnot cousins--were descending by quick strides the stepway that -forms a short cut from the High Town of Petersport to the quay. -Before Rex Basire’s disappointment had had time to formulate itself -more coherently a clatter of ponies’ hoofs, a rush of wheels, made -themselves heard round the corner of the adjacent harbour road. A few -instants later and the welcomest sight the world could, just then, have -offered to Lord Rex was before him: Marjorie Bartrand, in her pony -carriage, and at Marjorie’s side, fairer than all summer mornings that -ever dawned, the blushing lovely face of Dinah Arbuthnot. - -‘Have we to apologise? Are we really behind our time?’ cried Gaston, -as Lord Rex came forward to welcome them at the gangway. ‘It has been -a case of the fox and the goose and the bunch of grapes. My wife would -not start without Miss Bartrand; Geff would not start without my wife. -I was not allowed to start alone. The most delightful weather!--and -the most delightful party,’ added Gaston, looking at the sunlit world -around him with his pleasantest expression. ‘Miss Verschoyle, the Miss -de Carterets--Marjorie Bartrand! Why, all the pretty faces in Guernsey -are assembled on board the _Princess_!’ - -The four or five hours that followed were hours destined to be marked -with a red letter in the calendar of Dinah’s life. She felt the youth -at her heart, enjoyed the salt freshness of the morning, entered into -the mirth and spirit of the expedition like a child. Gaston’s conduct -was unexceptionable. Before they had quitted the harbour he took his -place beside his wife--jotting down each new effect of sky or wave -or passing fishing-boat in his note-book. He remained beside her -throughout the voyage. The pretty island girls, capital sailors all of -them, chatted in picturesque twos and threes with their bachelor hosts. -Lord Rex Basire devoted himself, with a show of perfect impartiality, -to every one. - -If this was growing used to the perils of a factitious world, the first -plunge into a social vortex where more neophytes sink than swim, Dinah -found the process distinctly pleasant. And I am afraid the thought -of Linda, effaced for once, in grim earnestness, by all-effacing -sea-sickness down below, failed to take the edge off Mrs. Gaston -Arbuthnot’s enjoyment. - -Herm, with its fringe of shell-spangled sands, was soon left behind. -The high table-land of Sark became a fairy-like vision, hanging -suspended, as on Mahomet’s thread, between heaven and sea, ere it -vanished out of ken. After an hour’s steady steaming Alderney’s tall -cliffs were sighted through the haze; and then, shortly before one, -the south-west swell gave signs of lessening. The _Princess_ was to -leeward of the Point of Barfleur, and lunch, served after a desultory -and scrambling fashion, began to find hearty welcome among the watchers -on deck. - -At the cheery whizzing of champagne corks old Doctor Thorne aroused -himself from a comfortable siesta he had been enjoying in the bows, and -came aft. The sight of Linda’s husband, a tumbler of Moet in his hand, -his puggareed hat pushed back from his sun-shrivelled Indian visage, -brought back the thought of Linda Thorne to the general mind. - -‘Mrs. Thorne! Shall Mrs. Thorne not have champagne sent to her?’ cried -Gaston, who was reclining, a picture of virtuous contentment, beside -his wife. ‘Or, better still, now that we have a smooth deck, Doctor, -shall Mrs. Thorne not come up into the light of day?’ - -The old Doctor shook his head as he accepted a goodly plate of lobster -salad from the steward’s boy. - -‘Poor girl! My poor dear Lin! A typically severe case of _mal de -mer_ always. Stop a bit--no hurry--just give me a trifle more of the -dressing. I have collected a mass of data about sea-sick persons,’ -observed the Doctor, draining down his champagne, with relish, ‘and I -am wholly against any attempt at nourishing them. Quite a mistake to -administer stimulants. (Thank you, Lord Rex, you may give me another -quarter of a tumbler of your excellent Moet.) A mistake to imagine -persons as sea-sick as my poor wife can digest anything.’ - -‘I think you are disgracefully heartless, Doctor,’ cried Rosie -Verschoyle, in her thin, gay accents. ‘Mrs. Thorne and dear mamma -must require wine much more than all we well people. I declare it is -positively shameful to think how we have been enjoying the voyage while -they were in misery. Now, who will help me carry something to our poor -martyrs below?’ - -‘Who,’ of course, meant Lord Rex Basire. Following the airy flutter -of Rosie Verschoyle’s dress, Lord Rex dutifully assisted in conveying -biscuits, champagne, and sympathetic messages to the martyrs--as far -as the cabin door. Though the deck was smooth, Linda showed coyness as -to returning thither. Her belief in human nature, especially in Gaston -Arbuthnot’s human nature, was, I fear, frailish. The livid cheeks, -pale lips, and sunken eyes of recent sea-sickness were tests to which -Linda, under no conditions, would have dreamt of exposing a sentimental -friendship! - -‘Mrs. Thorne is quite too good--the dearest, most unselfish creature -living!’ Rosie Verschoyle announced these little facts before all -hearers, on her return to upper air. ‘Doctor Thorne, I hope you are -listening to my praises of your wife. Mrs. Thorne is not ill, not very -ill herself, but she will not leave my poor frightened mother for a -moment. I call that real, quiet heroism. In glorious weather like this -to remain shut up in the cabin of a steamer for another person’s sake!’ - -‘Our good Smeet! She knows so well to efface herself.’ - -There was a twinkle in Gaston Arbuthnot’s shrewd eyes. Possibly, as -Rosie Verschoyle spoke, the words of Madame Benjamin’s eulogy came back -to him. - -A league or two beyond Barfleur a French pilot was signalled for, the -pilotage from the Point to Langrune being tortuous and difficult. Does -the reader know the fairness of that little-visited strip of Norman -coast? Fairness at its zenith, perhaps, in April, when the orchards -bordering the shore are heavy with white pear, or rose-pink apple -bloom; when the black-thorn blossoms so lavishly that, if the wind -be south, you may distinguish whiffs of the wild, half-bitter aroma -far out at sea. But exquisite, too, on a late June day like this, the -yellow colza in full harvest, the barley-fields ready for the sickle, -the Caen-stone spires and homesteads standing out in white relief -against the level horizon-line of sky. - -A French pilot was signalled for. After his coming the _Princess_ -steamed slower and ever slower eastward. By and by--Langrune already -visible across the expanse of yellowish sea--it became observable that -the vessel’s movement could scarce be felt by those on board. The -skipper stood consulting with the pilot on the bridge, the figures of -the men at the wheel were motionless. There was a simultaneous hush in -everybody’s talk, a momentary tension of the breath at the thought of -something happening! And then came the blank, unmistakable order, ‘Stop -her!’ Before leaving Petersport wrong reckoning had been made as to the -difference between the hour of ebb in Guernsey and along the coast of -France; the skipper had no choice but to anchor. Would the passengers -await the turn of the tide and deeper water, or land, by help of the -boats, on some rocks within easy reach, and trust to getting ashore -across a tract of wide wet sand as best they might? - -The stout-nerved Guernsey girls, accustomed to scores of bigger -adventures at sand-eeling parties and conger expeditions, laughed at -the horrors of the position. With Cassandra Tighe as leader, these -young women announced their determination of reaching the shore -forthwith, though not dry-footed. Among the chaperons arose murmurs of -contumacy. Poor Mrs. Verschoyle, a ghastly figure, emerging tremulously -from the cabin, observed that she looked on all voluntary sea-going -excursions as a tempting of Providence. With a spot like L’Ancresse -Common, not three miles from Petersport--L’Ancresse Common, where one -could have had the society of our excellent Archdeacon and of Madame -Corbie--_why_, said Mrs. Verschoyle, with the acerbity of mortal -digestive revolt--why put one’s self at the mercy of tides and pilots -at all? - -Old Dr. Thorne was flatly rebellious. There was good champagne on board -the _Princess_, thought the Doctor. There were Burmese cheroots--a warm -sun. There was the ultimate certainty of floating up with the tide. - -‘If any one be at a loss how to pass the afternoon hours let him take a -siesta, or inquire if the skipper have a pack of cards stowed away. You -see the wisdom of my remarks, I am sure, Lin, do you not?’ - -‘I see the wisdom of them for you and me, my dear,’ said Lin, -graciously. Under cover of a doubly-folded gauze veil, protected by -rice powder, a parasol, a well-adjusted Indian shawl, Linda Thorne had -at length committed herself to the cruel eye of noon. ‘My own election -is to abide by Mrs. Verschoyle, whatever happens. I am afraid we shall -hardly win over the young ones, Robbie, to our staid philosophy.’ - -‘If Rosie and the Miss de Carterets land I shall land,’ said Mrs. -Verschoyle, with dreary resignation. - -The poor little lady’s elder daughters were married. She had three -girls in the schoolroom still. She had also boys. Chaperonage at -balls and picnics, nursing of measles or scarlatina, love affairs, -school bills, breakages, all came to Mrs. Verschoyle as the burthens -of her widowed, many childrened lot--heavy burthens to be borne under -sorrowful protest. ‘If the picnic had only been at L’Ancresse Common,’ -she repeated, ‘we should have the Archdeacon and Madame Corbie with us, -and need never have got wet shoes at all.’ - -A consultation with the skipper resulted in a general lowering of the -boats. A quarter of an hour later the whole of the party, save the -Doctor, were landed on the Smaller Cancale, a reef of rock separated -by a mile of treacherous sands from terra firma, and upon whose -limited area a crowd of Parisians of both sexes were fishing--no, were -following ‘_la pêche_’ (the terms are not convertible)--after the guise -and in the vestments sacred to the Parisian heart. - -Mrs. Verschoyle sank down on the first slippery point of rock that -presented itself, vainly wishing, little though she loved the -steamer, that her maternal duties had allowed her to remain there -with the Doctor and the sailors. Cassandra Tighe started off, the -lightest-hearted of the party, perhaps, to hunt for zoophytes and -molluscs among the tide pools. The younger people, all, pronounced -themselves in favour of an exploring walk inland before dinner--all -except Mrs. Thorne. - -‘I mean to look after your mother, Rosie,’ said Linda, removing her -double folds of gauze, as she took her place at the elder lady’s side. -‘Please let me indulge my Indian laziness. Some one, positively, ought -to stay with dear Mrs. Verschoyle, and I like to be that some one. It -makes me remember my queer old governess days to find myself among -Parisians.’ Linda was prone to these little bursts of retrospective -humility. ‘And then, there is my husband! Robbie, no doubt, will -eventually drift up with the tide. Quite too charming to leave all us, -sober elders, together.’ - -‘Sober elders’--so Dinah realised, with a contracting heart--was a -sufficiently elastic term to embrace Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. Before -landing from the boats, Gaston, with keen artistic vision, had descried -some marvellously pretty fisher-girl among the crowd of French people -on the rocks. Not a real red-handed, rough-haired fisher-girl, but the -latest Worth idea of a duly got-up _pêcheuse_, the very subject, Gaston -declared, for his own meretricious pencil. He must make a stealthy -study of her forthwith. And indeed, at this present moment, not many -paces distant from Mrs. Verschoyle and her devoted friend, Gaston -Arbuthnot, sketch-book in hand, was already at work. - -Dinah lingered aimlessly. The desire of her heart was to stay beside -her husband. Her pleasure would have been to watch his quick, clever -pencil, to hear him discourse, in his light strain, about these -foreigners, whose theatrical manners and dress, overwhelming to her in -her ignorance, must to him be familiar. She felt that the brightness -of her day would be clouded if she left Gaston! And yet, mused Dinah, -troubled of spirit, _do_ wives, in society, hang jealously at their -husband’s elbow, or watch their pencil, or listen to their talk with -delight? Would she expose herself--far worse, would she expose Gaston -to ridicule, by shirking the walking party? - -An expressive glance, shot from Mr. Arbuthnot’s eyes, set these -questionings only too sharply at rest. - -‘Look carefully in through the cottage windows, Dinah.’ He bestowed on -her a little valedictory wave of two fingers. ‘Capital bits of ware are -still to be unearthed in these parts of the world. If you see a likely -cup or saucer, get Geoffrey to talk French for you.’ Gaston Arbuthnot -was a dabbler in most branches of _bric-à-brac_, and up to the present -date had never lost money by his dealings. ‘Mrs. Thorne, when we have -got rid of these young people, I want you to criticise me. My beautiful -fishing-girl grows too much like a figure from the mode-books.’ - -Linda Thorne, promptly obedient, took up her position at the artist’s -side. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIII - -A SWAGGER AND A SWORD - - -It was the hottest, most deserted hour of the day when the walking -party reached Langrune plage, an hour when such of the young Parisians -as do not follow _la pêche_ drive donkey-carts--those wonderful, -springless, seatless, Langrune carts--along the country roads, or -start, by rail, to distant Trouville for toilettes and distraction. -Here and there were elderly ladies at work before the doors of their -canvas bathing-sheds. In the road two portly fathers of families were -solemnly sending up ‘messengers’ to a very small Japanese kite some -fifty or sixty feet above their heads. Two other middle-aged gentlemen -played at battledore and shuttlecock. A few irrepressible boulevard -lovers sat over their cards or dominoes outside the restaurant windows -of the principal hotel. The shrill sounds from a fish auction, held -on the monster slab of rough granite which constitutes the Langrune -market-place, alone broke the stillness. - -Before one had thought it possible that dress or speech could have -betrayed the nationality of the new-comers, up ran a brown-legged, -tattered sand-imp, holding out a bunch of shore-flowers. He announced -his name, with some pride of birth, as Jean Jacques la Ferté of these -parts, offering his services as cicerone to the English strangers. - -‘The gentlemen, without doubt, make a pilgrimage to La Delivrande, -half a league away up the country? At La Delivrande is the church -and the altar where the miracles are wrought. There are the little -ships of the sailors, the crutches left by the cripples who get back -use of their legs. And for the ladies there are the stalls with the -relics. Every one in the country,’ ran on the child, with voluble -distinctness--Jean Jacques, a source of revenue to his parents, was -trained to speak good French with the visitors--‘every one in the -country who is sick gets cured. Every one who has a _grand espoir_ goes -to La Delivrande, and, if he has faith, attains it. Or so the curé -says,’ added Jean Jacques, with a roll of his black eyes and a knowing -shrug of the shoulders. - -At seven years of age even sand-imps, in these advanced French days, -like to show we are no longer bound by the priestly superstitions that -were well enough for our grandmothers. - -Lord Rex made a free paraphrase of the child’s narrative in English, -and was witty thereupon. ‘Every one who is sick gets cured. Every -one who has a _grand espoir_ goes to La Delivrande, and, if he have -faith, obtains it. Miss Verschoyle, what do you say? Have you a _grand -espoir_? Have you faith? Shall we make our pilgrimage, confess our -little peccadilloes, and get cured together?’ - -Miss Verschoyle rebuked his flippancy, but with lips less severe -than her words. For Rosie’s mood was a lenient one. Had not Lord Rex -throughout the day conducted himself as well, really, as though that -poor Mrs. Arbuthnot were non-existent? It was decided that every one -had unfulfilled hopes, that every one stood in need of cure, and -that a general confession of peccadilloes would be the best possible -employment of the afternoon! In another five minutes the pilgrims were -on their road, ragged Jean Jacques leading the way, towards the distant -white twin spires of La Delivrande. - -The plage, I have said, was deserted; not so the lane, with quaint -wooden houses on either side, which forms the High Street of Langrune. -Here were bare-limbed, dark-faced fisher-lads, busily mending their -nets; clear-starchers plying their delicate craft in the open air; -housewives roasting coffee; pedlars chaffering over their outspread -goods. Huge cats, with sleepy, watchful eyes, the sun shining -comfortably on their ebon-barred coats, reposed on the window-sills. -Lace-makers were at work, their headgear antiquated as their faces, -their bobbins twirling in and out the pins, unerringly, as though they -were the very threads of fate itself. Everywhere was the din of voices. -Everywhere were open doors, open windows; and within, such plentitude -of frugal cleanliness, such polished oak cupboards, such well-scoured -cooking-pans, such snow-white bed draperies, such balsams and geraniums -in brilliant scarlet pots, as might have put a Dutch village to shame. - -Marjorie Bartrand and Dinah paused beside one of the lace-makers’ -chairs, allowing the more ardent of the pilgrims to get on ahead. A -distinct shade of constraint was holding Marjorie and Geff Arbuthnot -aloof to-day. They had not met since yesterday’s friendly parting. No -further misunderstanding in respect of Geff’s celibacy was possible -between them. But a change had come across Marjorie’s manner towards -her tutor. Geoffrey was sensible that she answered him with pungent -and monosyllabic curtness during the whole of their outward voyage. -And--seeing that among the knot of pretty Sarnian girls excellent -temper reigned supreme, also that Geoffrey had joined the party for -other motives than his own pleasure--one can scarcely wonder that -this philosopher of four-and-twenty suffered himself, without over -difficulty, to be consoled. - -At the present moment, disappearing in the perspective of Langrune -village, Geoffrey walked, to all outward seeming, well content, beside -the prettiest and least wise of the three Miss de Carterets. Of which -fact Marjorie took a brief and scornful note in her heart. - -‘One can imagine a man’s becoming a senior wrangler.’ She made the -remark to Dinah as they watched the everlasting bobbins whirl. ‘Yes, -even I, with my halting Euclid and weak algebra (of which, no doubt, -Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot has spoken), can imagine a man’s becoming a -senior wrangler. I can no more conceive of bobbin-turning than I could -of a world in which two and two shall make five.’ - -Dinah’s slower brain needed time for reflection. ‘There could not be a -world where two and two make five,’ she observed with certainty. ‘And -lace-making, once you have served your time, steadily, is easy enough. -Two of my cousins, down Honiton way, are lace-makers, and I learned a -little of it when I was a child. The number of threads looks hard to -strangers, Miss Bartrand, but it just gets to one twirl of the bobbins -in time. Many of the workers keep to the same pattern for life, when -they know it well. After a bit, your fingers work without your eyes.’ - -‘How horrible! One twirl of the bobbins, one pattern, for life! And to -think that lace-makers do not commit suicide by scores!’ - -‘I don’t know that there’s much difference between lacework, or -wool-work, or plain sewing,’ said Dinah Arbuthnot. ‘We have, all of us, -to go through with our day’s task, whatever the stitch may be.’ - -The speech came so naturally, was so fraught with unconscious womanly -humility, that Marjorie felt abashed. What real heroism, of an -incomprehensible kind, must not Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife possess? This -girl of two-and-twenty who worked perpetual cross-stitch, who kept -her tongue and spirit calm, who loved, with soul and might, yonder -_débonnaire_ gentleman, of the handsome eyes and decorative smile, -sketching charming Parisian fisher-girls on the beach--under Linda -Thorne’s criticism! - -‘If I speak hotly against needlework, it is that I am thinking of -Spain, my mother’s country. In Spain, you must know, the miserable -girls, to this hour, scarcely learn more than embroidery in their -schools and convents, with reading enough, perhaps, to stumble -through the announcement of a bull-fight, or decipher a love-letter. -Of course,’ admitted Marjorie Bartrand coldly, ‘it is said that when -a woman marries, in England or in Spain, she must do as her husband -wills. I never see the force of that “must.” I think a woman should do -what is right for herself, with large trust in Providence as to the -rest! The question is not one that concerns me. Still, Mrs. Arbuthnot, -one cannot help feeling indignant about all very crushed people. I am -dead against slavery, especially when slavery puts on a domestic garb.’ - -By this time they had passed the last straggling houses of Langrune. -Fair level country, the fields already on the edge of harvest, spread -around their road. Along the wayside path was a very mosaic of -brilliantly blended hues, the corn-flowers blue and purple, the scarlet -poppies, the white and gold of the wild camomile making up the purest -chord of colour. A slight south-west wind, dry and elastic after its -transit over so many a league of sunny land, was invigorating as wine. - -‘How the spirit rises the moment one treads real solid earth!’ cried -Marjorie Bartrand. ‘I feel at this moment like walking straight off to -Spain, the country I love and where my life will be spent! Why, with -twenty francs apiece in our pockets, and camping out by night under -stacks or hedges, you and I might easily reach the Peninsula on foot, -Mrs. Arbuthnot.’ - -Dinah’s geography did not embolden her to hazard a contradiction. -Something in Marjorie Bartrand’s tone jarred on her reasonlessly. It -were hard to believe that she considered Geff a man likely to fall in -love. Had not the conditions of her life for years put speculations -as to Geoffrey’s future happiness on one side? And still, a true -daughter of Eve in every weakness belonging to the passion, Dinah was -an inchoate match-maker. She would fain have seen the whole world blest -with such fireside beatitude as constituted her own ideal of highest -good. With firm and true perception she had noticed a dozen trivial -things of late, all proving Geff’s imagination, if not his heart, to -be in his teaching of Latin and Greek at Tintajeux Manoir. She had -hoped that the notice taken of herself by Marjorie was an earnest of -the pupil’s liking for her master, had furtively and with misgiving dug -the foundations of many an air-castle that Marjorie and Geff, at some -far-off day, might jointly inhabit. - -The girl’s diatribes against domestic slavery, her open avowal of love -for Spain and of her hopes of spending her life among Spanish people, -caused a troubled look to come on Dinah’s face. - -‘Your plans don’t point towards an English home, Miss Bartrand. Yet I -think Geoffrey has told me you mean to study at Girton?’ - -‘To fit myself for my future work--yes. The Spanish school-boards -are just as conservative as English ones. A young woman armed with -Cambridge certificates would have more chance of coming to the front -than another, equally strong-minded, who should rely on her own merits.’ - -‘Strong-minded!’ Dinah ejaculated with horror. ‘At your age, with all -the sweet happiness of life still to come, you talk, as though you -approved such things, of being strong-minded?’ - -Marjorie swept off the heads from a cluster of wayside camomile flowers -with the stick of her sunshade. An expression of will which yet was -neither unlovely nor unfeminine glowed upon her girlish face. - -‘Let us understand each other better, Mrs. Arbuthnot. It may well be -that our notions of “sweet happiness” are not the same.’ - -Dinah looked uneasy, and kept silent. - -‘Power--I will make a confession to you such as I never made -before--power is my ideal of happiness. I want to rule, we will hope -for good; in any case, to rule, to be needed on all sides, sought -after, distinguished--to see my name in print! That is the truth, no -matter how I may wrap truth up in fine-sounding words,’ said Marjorie -Bartrand. ‘That is the secret of my enthusiasm for humanity, and of -my personal ambition. To lead others, _to command_, is my ideal of -happiness.’ - -‘And mine,’ exclaimed Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife unhesitatingly, ‘is--to -obey. For a woman to look up to another stronger life, to be ruled -by a stronger will, gladly to take all little household worries on -herself--I speak badly, Miss Bartrand, but you guess my meaning--and -feel more than paid by one kind look or word in return, to know that -as much as she wants of the world is safe between four lowly walls, -to have her hours filled with the care of others, to keep her parlour -bright and cheerful, to hear the voices of the children----’ - -Dinah’s own voice broke; and Marjorie, who had watched her with looks -of lofty compassion, softened involuntarily. - -‘So far from speaking badly, Mrs. Arbuthnot, you speak with very pretty -eloquence. You draw a picture of constant giving up, which, if one -could believe it to be from life, would, I confess, be attractive. It -is drawn from life, perhaps?’ - -‘Oh--no; I said only that would be my ideal of happiness,’ faltered -Dinah, with a pang. - -‘Fancied or real, such an existence would never do for me. I have not -much taste for obedience. I have none at all for household worries. -Babies I bar.’ - -‘Miss Bartrand!’ - -‘Yes, I do. Grandpapa and I visit about in our Pagan way among the -Guernsey country people, and I know that I absolutely bar babies of -every shade and degree. I am not sure I would go so far as to _injure_ -one,’ said Marjorie, stealing a glance at her companion’s shocked face; -‘but I feel that they are safest kept out of my sight. I tell the -mothers so.’ - -‘You are too young to know what you feel, Miss Bartrand.’ There was a -standstill of some moments ere Dinah recovered herself enough to speak. -‘Long before you are my age you’ll begin to see things differently. -Young girls are a bit hard, I’ve sometimes thought, in all classes of -life, until the time comes.’ - -‘What time, may I ask?’ - -‘The time for having a sweetheart and getting married,’ said Dinah -Arbuthnot. - -From any other lips Marjorie would have regarded such a suggestion -as an indignity. Dinah was so true a woman, had a soul so whitely -delicate, that the speech carried with it no possible suspicion of -offence. It was homely common sense, kindly and simply uttered. - -‘What you say might be true of most girls of my age. If I am hard, it -is not because of my youth, or my inexperience. I have had’--Marjorie’s -face flamed to the hue of the poppies in the corn--‘what the world is -pleased to call a sweetheart. But for the interposition of Providence -(I remember that interposition, night and morning, on my knees) I -should be married now.’ - -‘Unless he loved you above everything, you are best as you are, Miss -Bartrand. In marriage it is all or nothing. I mean--I mean,’ Dinah -hesitated, ‘no wife could be happy with half a heart bestowed on her.’ - -‘Half! What do you say to a quarter, a fraction?’ exclaimed Marjorie, -hotly. ‘What do you say to a creature stuffed as the dolls are, with -sawdust, in lieu of a human heart at all? A creature well set up as -regards shoulders, six feet in measurement, with fine white teeth, blue -eyes, yellow moustache, a swagger and a sword? His would scarcely be -the larger soul, Mrs. Arbuthnot, the stronger will which it should be a -woman’s crown of honour to obey!’ - -Down went another head of clustering camomile, felled by a well-aimed -stroke from Marjorie’s hand. Her eyes flashed fire. - -‘And yet a wayward girl, scarcely past sixteen, and with no mother to -give her counsel, might for two or three weeks, you know, be hurried -into thinking such a man a hero. I was that girl, Mrs. Arbuthnot. -Vanity blinded me, or the love of power, or something stronger than -either. At all events, when Major Tredennis asked me, one fine morning, -to be engaged to him, I said “Yes.”’ - -‘And the Seigneur of Tintajeux?’ asked Dinah, looking round at the -dimpled, indignant face of seventeen. - -‘“Major Tredennis comes of a race of gentlemen,” said grandpapa. “If -Major Tredennis can make adequate settlements, and my granddaughter -elects to spend her life with a popinjay, she may do so.”’ - -‘And, with no better advice than that, you were engaged?’ - -‘I was engaged. Major Tredennis used to write me foolish notes. He -gave me a ring I never wore. He gave me chocolate creams, and a setter -puppy. He sang French songs to me in an English accent. Looking back at -it all now, I think the chocolate creams were the best part of that bad -time, except, of course, the setter, _whom I loved_. When it was all -broken off--for the owner of the white teeth and the sword was a right -wicked craven, and should have married a girl in England who cared for -him, without once looking at me;--when it was all broken off, and I -had to send Jock back, I did weep, scalding tears, at parting from -him. The only tears I have ever shed, or shall shed, in connection with -love-matters.’ - -‘Wait!’ was Dinah Arbuthnot’s answer. ‘If I see you, as I hope to do, -two or three years hence, it may be you will tell a different story.’ - -Marjorie glanced at the yachting party, sauntering contentedly, a -hundred yards or so in front, among the lights and shadows of the -orchard-bordered road. There was Lord Rex, outrageously devoted -in manner to Rosie Verschoyle, with whom he loitered apart. And -there, a little divided also from the rest, was Geff Arbuthnot, well -entertained, one must surmise, by the shallow talk, fascinated by the -pink-and-white charms of Ada, the most soulless and the prettiest of -the de Carteret family. - -‘If such a revolution takes place, a dozen years hence, that I marry,’ -she observed, after consideration, ‘the husband I choose shall be -a head-and-shoulders taller than myself, morally. No singer of -ballad sentiment, no popinjay, with yellow moustache, and a sword, -and uniform, next time. If I take to myself a master, he shall be a -man--with a temper, a will, a purpose in life, all nobler than my own.’ - -Such a husband as Geoffrey would be! The thought obeyed the wish in -Dinah’s heart. - -‘And I must be first--first in his affection. I would have no rivals, -past or present. If Bayard himself walked the earth and wished to -marry me, Marjorie Bartrand, I would ask him if I was first. Yes, Mrs. -Arbuthnot, I would ask Chevalier Bayard himself if he had looked at -any other woman before he loved me; and if he had, and though my heart -broke for it, I would refuse him.’ - -A red light broke on Marjorie’s cheeks, her eyes dilated. The likeness -to old Andros, which came out in every moment of strong emotion, was -never more marked than now. - -‘If we ask too much we may lose all,’ said Dinah, not perhaps without a -pang of dread as visions of Geoffrey’s youth rose before her. ‘I never -heard anything about this gentleman.’ - -‘Chevalier Bayard? the first gentleman the world has known!’ - -‘But if he was put upon his word, yes, and though he stood with his -bride before the altar, I think Chevalier Bayard might have to confess -to some foolish fancy in the past.’ - -‘I spoke of love, not of foolishness,’ exclaimed Marjorie Bartrand. -Then, as though quickly repenting of her warmth: ‘We have talked more -than enough,’ she cried, ‘about a peradventure that will never become -fact. Let us forget, with all speed, that so much nonsense has been -spoken.’ - -But the conversation was one which neither of these young women could, -by any means, forget while she lived. - - - - -CHAPTER XXIV - -REX BASIRE’S HUMOUR - - -A rough-paved village square; green-shuttered houses, sweltering in the -afternoon sun; a pair of openwork spires, delicate as lace, dazzlingly -white as Caen stone could make them, silhouetted against the burning -sky; tattered children with mercenary hands full of wild flowers; a -knot of British pilgrims, irreverently loquacious outside the church’s -western door; gruesome beggars making exhibition of wounds; honest -peasant people; dishonest relic sellers--such were the salient features -of La Delivrande at the moment when Marjorie and Dinah descended into -its closer air out of the field-smelling, wind-blown road that brought -them hither from the coast. - -‘We will ask Mrs. Arbuthnot’s opinion, and abide by it,’ cried Lord -Rex, coming forward a few paces to meet them. ‘She will be far better -versed in this kind of thing than the rest of us. Ought we to carry -candles in our hands, Mrs. Arbuthnot, when we seek our cure? There is a -candle-stall conveniently opposite, and Miss Verschoyle and I will head -the procession as penitents-in-chief.’ - -‘Please help to keep Lord Rex in order, Mrs. Arbuthnot. He is really -doing and saying the absurdest things!’ Rosie Verschoyle must have -been, surely, at the zenith of good temper when she thus addressed that -poor Mrs. Arbuthnot! ‘Now, Lord Rex, I command you to drop this talk -about candles instantly. Of course the whole business is a ridiculous -piece of Popish superstition, still,’ observed Rosie, with a certain -largeness, ‘one has one’s ideas. A church is a church. Positively, I -will not speak another word to you to-day unless you behave yourself -with decorum when we are inside.’ - -The awfulness of the threat appeared, for the moment, to check Lord -Rex Basire’s playful spirits. He made no purchase of candles. Save -that he affected a sudden and very marked lameness of gait, he behaved -no worse than his companions on entering the church. Guided by ragged -Jean Jacques, the English people walked up to a fretted stone screen -dividing the choir from the nave. In a small side altar on the left was -a doll, clothed in woven gold, unlovely of face, with eyes ‘dreadfully -staring,’ with a crown of paper lilies, with a score of rushlights -burning before her in a row--La Delivrande. - -Who that has travelled in primitive French districts can fail of -knowing these little miracle chapels, their atmosphere, their votive -offerings, their sincerity, their tinsel, their pathos? At least a -hundred graven memorials on the wall beside the Virgin told the story -of simple human hearts that had suffered, believed, of anguished -human hopes that had here found fulfilment. Dinah Arbuthnot’s cheeks -paled as Marjorie, in a whisper, translated the meaning of the -inscriptions. Here a mother recorded her gratitude for her child, a -wife for her husband, a daughter for her parent. Here the names were -graven in full, here in initials. Occasionally there was one word only, -‘_Reconnaissance_,’ and a date. Dinah’s cheeks paled, her eyes filled. -If she were alone, Dinah felt--puritan, heretic, though she were--she -would gladly kneel and make her confession, lay bare her sorrow, on the -spot where so many stricken and weary human souls had cast away the sad -garment of repression before her! - -Lord Rex Basire’s view of the place and situation continued -irresistibly comic. And the faces of his companions, the rose-pink face -of Miss Verschoyle not excepted, failed to condemn him for his levity. - -A heap of pious gifts, testimonials, in kind, from the cured, lay, -incongruously, as they had been offered, before the altar of the -Virgin. There were crutches, big and small, a child’s reclining -carriage, models of ships innumerable, a wooden leg--the stoutest faith -might long for an explanation of that wooden leg! Well, reader, with -the fair church solemn and hushed, five or six black-clad women telling -their beads before the different altars, its only Catholic inmates, -Lord Rex, it must be concluded, found the temptation towards practical -jocularity too strong for him. Hobbling up to the altar, this humorous -little lord stood, with bowed head, with contrite manner, in front -of the lily-crowned figure for some minutes’ space. Slowly ascending -a step, he next deposited his crutch, a silver and ebony toy, upon -the heap of worn and dusty peasant offerings; then walked away with -tripping, resonant step, with head joyfully erect, down the western -aisle, as who should say, ‘Behold me--a believer, cured.’ - -Ragged Jean Jacques held his mouth between two sun-blackened hands, -showily pantomiming his appreciation of the Englishman’s costly -waggishness. The subalterns of the Maltshire Royals tittered aloud. -Alas! in a marching regiment, as elsewhere, has not human nature its -weaker side? Is not a duke’s son, with two inches of brain, and wit in -proportion, a duke’s son, even when he jests? The young ladies with one -exception looked about as frigid as Italian snow looks under the kisses -of an April sun. The exception was Marjorie Bartrand. - -Away out of the church flew Marjorie, brushing against Rex Basire’s -elbow in her exit. She waited in the porch outside, eager beggars -pressing forward with their wounds, children with their half-dead -wild-flowers, relic-mongers with their chaplets and rosaries--blest, -ay, to the last bead, blest, ‘_tout bonnement_,’ by his Holiness, away -in Rome. By and by, when the last of the loud-talking, merry-spirited -knot of idlers had issued forth from the church, Marjorie fastened upon -the offender-in-chief. With luminous eyes, with drawn breath, with -hands tightly clenched in her hot indignation, she scathed him, thus: - -‘You have played a delicate bit of comedy, have you not, Lord Rex? -It was the finest stroke of humour to scandalise a few poor peasant -women, saying prayers for their dead?... For me,’ looking one by one -round the group, ‘I felt ashamed--more ashamed than ever I was in my -life before--of belonging to the same nation as you all! I read once,’ -said Marjorie, ‘in a wise book: “Where we are ignorant, let us show -reverence.” The ignorance only has been shown to-day.’ - -Dinah Arbuthnot and Geoffrey, who had lingered behind the others -in the church, arrived on the scene just in time to hear the last -accents of this denunciation. Then, ere the culprits could utter a -word in self-defence, away shot Marjorie’s arrowy figure along a -shadowed by-street, away, neither stopping nor hesitating, along the -old chaussée that leads from La Delivrande Paris-wards, in an exactly -opposite direction to the Langrune road. - -‘By Jupiter! I was never so frightened in my life.’ Rex Basire’s limbs -collapsed under him in well-dramatised alarm. ‘Have all Girton girls -got dynamite in their eyes? Does their speech invariably bristle with -torpedoes? Is Marjorie Bartrand Protestant, or Catholic, or what?’ - -‘Ah, what!’ repeated Rosie Verschoyle, ever ready with a little amiable -platitude. ‘A hundred years ago the Bartrands were Papists, remember. -It is a moot question among the people who know them best what the -Tintajeux religion is at the present day.’ - -‘I know one thing,’ cried Geoffrey’s friend, Ada de Carteret. ‘All -through Tintajeux parish the Seigneur is looked upon as more learned -than canny. When the country folk come near old Andros after dark, -declaiming Greek, and with a couple of black dogs at his heels, they -will run a mile round sooner than meet him.’ - -‘The Seigneur’s term of endearment for Marjorie is witch, when they -happen to be on speaking terms at all,’ said another voice. ‘Poor girl! -In spite of her temper one cannot help liking her extremely. Who was it -said of Marjorie that she had such an olive-like flavour?’ - -‘You always feel there must be a fund of goodness in the dear -child--somewhere.’ This finishing note was given in Miss Verschoyle’s -thin voice. ‘As to the lecture you came in for, Lord Rex, you deserved -it richly. It is quite too--in saying this, I mean it--quite! to laugh -at other people’s beliefs, even when they are most ridiculous.’ - -And then they all sauntered off to the stalls, where Lord Rex, we may -be sure, found ample scope for his veiled yet poignant irony among -the crosses, medals, rosaries, and relics that had been blest, ‘_tout -bonnement_,’ away in Rome, by his Holiness! - -Marjorie, meanwhile, pursued her way through shadow and sunshine, -unconscious in which direction the fiery haste of her steps was bearing -her. When her temper had burnt out--in the space, say, of two minutes -and a half--she perceived that she was once more in open country, -alone among colza stacks and fields of ripening barley, but on a less -frequented road, amidst a landscape with wider horizons than the road -and landscape she and Dinah had traversed in coming to Langrune from -the sea. - -How good it was to breathe this wild, well-oxygenised air! With what -glad senses Marjorie gazed about her across the plains, rippling, -as the sun lowered, in lucent amber waves, and shaded deliciously -at intervals by rows of pearly, smoke-coloured poplar! A family of -peasant farmers drove by in one of their old-world Norman harvest -waggons--coeval, perhaps, with Andros Bartrand’s sickle! Friendly nods, -gleaming smiles from sunburnt faces, were bestowed on the little girl -as the homely cartload jolted on. She watched with wistful eyes until -the waggon lessened, was lost to sight in the long perspective of -white road. Seating herself beside a ditch, under shadow of a solitary -pollard willow, a sudden vision of vines and olives and Spanish sierras -arose, with all the strength of inherited nostalgia, in Marjorie’s -breast. If the harvesters would only have carried her a league or two -onward with them! She had nothing of value in her possession but a -watch. How many francs could one raise upon a watch, Marjorie Bartrand -wondered, in some primitive, unsuspecting Norman town? Enough, surely, -living among peasant people, and eking means out by an occasional -day’s work at onion-weeding or colza stacking, to carry one down to -the frontier, the cherished land of dreams. A letter could be sent to -relieve the Seigneur’s mind, and.... - -And then, glancing back along the chaussée, Marjorie saw a man’s -figure advancing towards her with steady quickness; a figure she knew -over-well, darkly outlined against the chrome yellow of the sky. So -Ada de Carteret was forsaken. Her heart went pit-a-pat. She would have -given a fortune to fly, yet stirred not! One minute later and her -nostalgia was cured. Longings for vine and olive and Spanish sierra -had vanished, all, before the unromantic English presence of Geoffrey -Arbuthnot. - - - - -CHAPTER XXV - -YOU--AND I! - - -‘You have found out a right pleasant spot.’ Geff settled himself coolly -into repose among the long wayside grasses that clothed the opposite or -field side of the ditch. ‘Our friends, when they have bought themselves -each a cross and medal, are going down to watch the Parisians return -from fishing. You and I will have the best of it among the barley here.’ - -‘You--and I!’ - -‘You--and I! Does the expression displease you, Miss Bartrand?’ - -‘If you have any intention of remaining, you had better take out your -pipe at once, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ - -‘Why?’ - -‘Because an idle man, his feet dangling over a ditch, and not smoking, -would be a spectacle too wretched to contemplate.’ - -‘The description may be worse than the fact. I am idle. My feet dangle -over a ditch. I am not smoking. I was never less wretched in my life.’ - -‘I spoke of such a person as an object of painful contemplation.’ - -‘Is the spectacle painful to you at this moment? Speak frankly.’ - -‘I--I only wished to let you know that you might smoke, if you chose.’ - -‘Thanks! I would rather do nothing to alter my present state of -feeling.’ - -And then they came to a full stop: a rather marked one. - -Marjorie spoke first. ‘The charm of a spot like this’--she brought out -each word with incision--‘is its solitude.’ - -‘_Solitude à deux._ The French have such an expression, have they not?’ - -Geff Arbuthnot asked the question, pronouncing his _eu_ vilely. - -‘“Solitude a-doo!” I am hopelessly stupid,’ said Marjorie, holding her -head aloft. ‘“A-doo!” Is it meant for a farewell, or what? I really do -not see the drift of the idiom--a quotation, perhaps, from one of the -classic authors?’ - -Geoffrey was sensible that she had never been more dangerous than at -this juncture, mutinous pride struggling with merriment on her clear -girlish face, as she turned his terrible French accent into ridicule. -He was sensible, also, of a new, an unexpected pleasure in being -laughed at by her. - -‘Were you enjoying your solitude (without the “doo”) truly, and -thoroughly, when I disturbed you?’ - -‘Thoroughly, no. I had not got the flavour of folly enough out of my -mouth for that. You relished, I hope, the exquisite wit we English -people showed in the church, Mr. Arbuthnot? You appreciated the fun of -wounding simple beliefs by depositing our Oxford Street finery among -the real piteous crutches before La Delivrande? And to think that young -women,’ exclaimed Marjorie, waxing warm, ‘are stigmatised, in masses, -as frivolous! How can they be anything _but_ frivolous with such -examples before them?’ - -‘Let us cast up both columns of the account. Would a man--no, as we are -talking of Lord Rex Basire, let us say would a foolish youth--display -his foolishness among a bevy of pretty girls, unless they were ready -to give him smiles as an encouragement?’ - -‘I am sure Mrs. Arbuthnot would not be among the smilers. Her beautiful -face looked so good and calm, when the rest of us stood giggling there -before the altar.’ - -‘My cousin is serious--a little over-serious always.’ Geoffrey -Arbuthnot gazed attentively at the horizon as he made this remark. - -‘It would do your cousin a vast deal of good to run away from that -feather-weight husband of hers. Look shocked, if you choose; I am in -earnest. I consider,’ said Marjorie, displaying her worldly wisdom with -gravity, ‘that Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot’s character is thoroughly spoilt. -He is a charming fellow, doubtless. Still, everybody need not remind -him of his charm to his face.’ - -‘And you believe in retributive morality? You think the curative -treatment for a charming fellow is--that his wife should run away from -him?’ - -‘My experience of charming fellows would incline me towards heroic -treatment. As we walked up from Langrune I asked Mrs. Arbuthnot to -start with me on foot for Spain. With twenty francs in our pocket, I -told her, and doing a day’s work on the road whenever our resources ran -low, we might get down safe to the frontier in time. But Mrs. Arbuthnot -did not seem to see it.’ - -‘Dinah’s is not an adventurous spirit. If you would accept a -substitute, Miss Bartrand, perhaps I----’ - -‘Go on, pray.’ - -‘Might be allowed to follow, with a thick stick, at a distance.’ - -‘Keep your stick for England! I would not be afraid on the loneliest -road between this and Barcelona.’ - -‘Without the stick, then--shall we start?’ - -Marjorie shifted her posture a little. She became suddenly interested -in a plant of marshmallow at her side. - -‘When next I enter Spain, Mr. Arbuthnot, it shall be with dignity. -When I meet my mother’s people I hope to be armed with degrees, -certificates--whatever the English universities will confer on me.’ - -‘Don’t go until your name has been bracketed high on the list of -wranglers.’ - -As Geoffrey made this venture on thin ice he watched his pupil -narrowly. One of the storm-flashes that lit Marjorie Bartrand’s face -into such frequent, such perilous beauty, was his reward. - -‘You mean--never go at all! Do you feel a pleasure, Mr. Arbuthnot, in -throwing cold water over my dearest hopes and ambitions?’ - -‘An enormous pleasure, Miss Bartrand. I have felt it from that first -evening when you were good enough to hire me as your teacher at -Tintajeux.’ - -The girl looked away from him, her colour changing. - -‘That evening, when I had to receive you in state, to make formal -speeches and curtsies, all my great-aunts and uncles looking on through -their Bartrand eyelids! Do you remember our Bon Espoir? He was an omen -of better temper, perhaps, than has prevailed between us since. Were -you taken aback? Was I quite unlike what you expected?’ - -She asked these momentous questions with the keen curiosity -characteristic of the passion in its earlier days. But all the time she -shrank from encountering Geff Arbuthnot’s glance. - -‘You really desire to know?’ - -‘Yes.’ - -‘I will tell you, on one condition. What was your wish when you -curtsied under the cedars to the new moon?’ - -‘My wish?’ turning farther and farther away from him. ‘Why, folly -unrepeatable--the sort of nonsense my nurses taught me to say when I -was little. Your memory is inconveniently good.’ - -‘Accurate to the smallest detail! How clearly one can see the meeting -of those four water-lanes, and the flowers you gave me, as I know -now, alas! for Mrs. Arbuthnot, and the ribbon you tied them with--the -ribbon,’ said Geff coolly, ‘which you will some day send me back for -a book-marker! Yes, the fairest summer evening of my life was the one -when I first saw Tintajeux Manoir--and you.’ - -And he believed his own words. Sure sign that the heart within him was -sound--healthiest life at its core. Guessing at the confessions of that -ingenuous maidenly face as Marjorie, half blushes, half wilfulness, -persistently gave him her profile, Geoffrey Arbuthnot had clean -forgotten Lesser Cheriton, ay, and a drama played out there in which he -took a not unimportant part. - -‘I think this Norman evening is to the full as fair,’ said Marjorie. -‘There are bigger sweeps of outline, there is more quality in the air -than falls to our lot in the Channel Islands.’ - -Then, again, there came a pause, broken softly by the occasional hum of -an insect on the wing, by the swaying of stalks, the whispers of the -ripe and restless grain, by the chirp of the hedge crickets, by the -solitary treble of a lark lost somewhere, pouring its heart out in the -sea-blue vault above. - -Marjorie could not be silent long. - -‘To begin at the beginning, what did you think of me when you got my -first note--the two lines I sent in answer to yours? Nothing very good, -or you would not be so reluctant to tell it.’ - -‘I thought,’ said Geff, ‘that you required my services as a coach, that -there was a little affectation about your Greek “e’s,” and that your -name was Marjorie D. Bartrand.’ - -‘That terrible signature of mine--the one bearable name I possess -reduced to a D! You know, Mr. Arbuthnot, I hope, what D. stands for?’ - -‘Dorcas?’ suggested Geoffrey, ‘or perhaps Deborah? We have a number of -fine old Hebrew names beginning with D.’ - -‘But I am not a fine old Hebrew. I am a Spanish woman, heart and soul, -and I bear my mother’s name, Dolores. Grandpapa and I met an American -in Paris, when I was younger, who used to call me “Miss Dollars.” -The thought of that pronunciation always makes me shy of bringing my -beautiful Spanish name to the fore.’ - -‘Dollars is more beautiful than Dolores.’ Saying this, Geoffrey took -studious care to imitate her accent. ‘Dollars is at least suggestive -of human activity, of the market-place, not the graveyard. Why should -a child, with all the good chances of life open, have such a name as -Grief imposed upon her by worldly-wise godfathers and godmothers?’ - -‘I speak of Dolores, not Grief, and--and you have no poetry in you, Mr. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot! You don’t know all that a word says to us southern -people. Think of plain Marjorie Bartrand--nothing but “ar, ar!” If I -could only change Bartrand for a name with no “ar” in it, I----’ - -The supposition was rushing forth with velocity. Then, in a trice, -Marjorie stopped. She coloured to the roots of her hair. And then -she and Geoffrey laughed so loud that the stilly air rang with their -laughter. If these two young people did not actually tread the primrose -path, they were within a stone’s-throw of it, ignorant though both -might be of the route which lay so near them. - -‘That “ar” is the worst of all your cruelties,’ said Geff presently. -‘To show my greatness of mind I will return evil for good. I will -tell you what you wish to know. As I walked out for the first time to -Tintajeux, I had you constantly before my mind’s eye, Miss Bartrand. I -saw you, with the vision of the spirit, every inch an heiress.’ - -‘Every inch an heiress!’ repeated Marjorie, abashed. - -‘With rigid manners, hair drawn back, Chinese fashion, and -overwhelming dignity. Whenever people are of more than common volume--I -fancy that is the euphemistic term, is it not?--dignity!’ - -‘And you found me--a scarecrow.’ She measured, mentally, and with -self-abasement, the leanness of her unfledged figure. ‘What did you -think when a lank country child, in a cotton gown, and without either -dignity or manner, appeared before you?’ - -‘I felt it was my duty to accept facts as they came. I summoned up -courage, and mastered my disappointment with tolerable ease,’ said -Geoffrey Arbuthnot. - -His face supplied a postscript to the admission which caused Marjorie’s -heart to beat faster. - -‘We must not stop here all day!’ she cried, springing promptly to her -feet. ‘Although, if one had something to eat, it might be pleasant to -do so. Yonder, to the left, is Courseulles spire. We saw it--no, you -were hemmed in by sunshades--I saw it from the steamer. If we take this -footpath through the cornfields, we might visit Courseulles and make a -small turn round the country before going back to our company and our -dinner at Langrune.’ - -But Geoffrey did not move. - -‘I will have my bond,’ he uttered with tragic emphasis. ‘I will never -stir from this spot until you tell me what your wish was when you -curtsied to the moon.’ - -‘I would rather not say. You have the right to insist, of course--it -was a bargain. But, please, let me off. Why should I repeat such -puerility here, in the wise and sober light of day?’ - -‘I will have my bond,’ repeated Geoffrey Arbuthnot tenaciously. ‘I have -made my confession in full. Now, do you make yours. What was your wish?’ - -A flood of shame by this time suffused Marjorie’s cheeks. But Geoffrey -was stubborn. He exacted his pound of flesh to the uttermost. - -‘I curtsied, as the children do, thrice ... and each time, while you -were talking solemnly to grandpapa, I said, quite in a whisper----’ - -‘Don’t mind punctuation, Miss Bartrand. It will be the sooner over.’ - -‘“I like my coach--may my coach like me!”’ cried Marjorie, nearly in -tears, but giving to the refrain the true sing-song of the nursery. -‘Remember, sir, when I was so inane I had only known you two hours, -and--and I believed you to be the other Mr. Arbuthnot.’ - -Geoffrey slipped down to his feet. As Marjorie was standing on the -bank, it thus happened that their faces were on a level, and very near -each other. Geoffrey observed, more closely than he had done before, -the texture of her skin--delicate, in spite of sunburn, as perfect -health and Guernsey air could render it. He looked into the depths of -her gray eyes, even in their quietest expression touched with fire. -He admired the character, so superior to all mere prettiness, of her -serious large mouth. - -‘The wish has come true,’ he whispered, in a tone never to be forgotten -by Marjorie Bartrand, ‘although I have the misfortune of being myself, -not Gaston. Let me help you.’ - -He held out his hands, but Marjorie, with her agile young strength, -had cleared the ditch almost before his assistance was proffered. -They paused a moment or two irresolute, they discussed a little as to -latitude and longitude, and then away the two started, in the direction -of Courseulles, across the cornfields. - -A third figure, dove-winged, golden-quivered, walked with them, -although they might not discern his presence. - - - - -CHAPTER XXVI - -CUT AND THRUST - - -Never was a man surer of tumbling into little unlooked-for -sociabilities than Gaston Arbuthnot. Had he been shipwrecked on a South -Sea island I believe Gaston would have chanced upon an acquaintance -there, some vanished shade from London Club or Paris café would have -seized him by the button-hole before the day was out! - -He was button-holed in Langrune-sur-Mer. When the pilgrimage returned -from La Delivrande, Linda and her Robbie were found seated with -Mrs. Verschoyle on a trio of hired chairs before the hotel, taking -their pleasure rather mournfully. Cassandra Tighe, her scarlet cloak -conspicuous from afar, was dredging--happy Cassandra--among such rocks -as the tide still left uncovered. - -Gaston Arbuthnot was invisible. - -‘A real case of forcible abduction,’ cried Linda Thorne, addressing -herself to Dinah. ‘You are not a foolishly nervous wife, I am sure, -Mrs. Arbuthnot? You could philosophically listen to a story of how two -pretty French girls carried away an English artist against his will.’ - -Dinah assented with one of her rare smiles. The knowledge that Gaston -was finding amusement otherwise than in the half-clever talk, the too -ready, too flattering sympathy of Linda herself, cast retrospective -brightness upon the afternoon that his absence had clouded. - -From jealousy of a selfish or little kind Dinah’s heart had never bled. -Earlier in their married life, when Gaston still affected dancing, and -as a matter of course went to balls without his wife, it was her usual -next morning’s pleasure to scan his programmes, enjoy his sketches -of his partners, his repetitions of their small-talk--all without a -shade of hurt feeling. Once or twice she hinted that she would fain -accompany him as a looker-on. ‘Nobody looks on long in this wicked -world,’ was Gaston’s answer. ‘You do not dance, you do not play whist. -You have a brain under your yellow locks, and you are too young to talk -scandal. Ball-room atmosphere is unwholesome. I would not hear of such -a sacrifice.’ And as it was not Dinah’s habit to pose as martyr, she -obeyed, trusting in him always. - -Beautiful, pure of soul herself, she simply honoured the beauty, -believed in the purity of soul of other women. Gaston was popular, -spoilt; an artist with an artist’s--more than this, with an American -temperament. A degree of youthful immaturity seemed ever to lurk amidst -his astute knowledge of life and of men. He had but a half-share, as -he would tell her, of the fibres derived from long lines of bored -ancestors. He sought diversion for diversion’s sake. She had made no -quarrel with the inexorable facts of her husband’s existence or of her -own. If only she had been his equal, intellectually! If she could have -supplied him with the mental companionship he needed, or interested him -in his childless fireside! Ah, could she thus have risen to his level, -Gaston’s heart had been in her keeping still. Hence came the morbid -unrest of her present life; hence the dread, increasing daily, hourly, -strive with it as she might, of Linda’s influence. - -‘I am afraid one gets used to most things, Mrs. Thorne. I have seen -Gaston run away with so often that I am not much moved by the thought -of these pretty French girls.’ - -Linda Thorne rose. She rested her hand confidentially within Dinah’s -arm, much to Dinah’s chagrin, and proposed that they should walk -together along the sands to look for Mr. Arbuthnot. - -‘Yes, I must positively tell you the whole story. Your husband had -finished his sketch of the lovely fisher-girl. The young person was not -at all lovely, in fact. But she was striking. She had distinct genre. -Artists care for genre, you know, much more than for beauty.’ - -Dinah resolved to question Gaston as to the truth of this. She resolved -to cultivate distinct genre in herself for the remainder of her days. - -‘Striking--that word sums up all. The big cobalt-blue eyes, that say -about as much, in reality, as a china tea-saucer, and are supposed -by imaginative men to say everything--blonde hair worn in a pigtail, -palpably not original, to her heels; complexion carefully toned to -a shade one point short of freckles; bare arms, akimbo--excellently -shaped arms, of course; a native prawn basket, and a fishing-dress from -Worth’s. I got to know the type so well,’ said Linda, ‘in my governess -days, during one summer, especially, when the Benjamin sent me to -Houlgate with her children.’ - -Dinah, who, as we have seen, had no genius for supplying the hooks and -eyes of conversation, remained chillingly silent. - -‘Your husband had finished his sketch of her--an admirably idealised -one. I have it here.’ And Dinah, for the first time, perceived that -Mrs. Thorne held possession of Gaston’s sketch-book. ‘Let us look at -it together!’ impulsively, ‘or are you--no doubt you are--blasée about -sketches? Well, well, it may be natural. Married to an artist, if one -has no real, strong, natural talent for art----’ - -‘I have no real, strong, natural talent for anything,’ interrupted poor -Dinah petulantly. - -‘Oh--naughty! You must not say such things. I will not allow you to be -modest. Mr. Arbuthnot tells me your needlework is’--Linda looked about -her as though an encomium were hard to find--‘most elaborate! In these -days needlework ranks among the fine arts. Of course you are wild about -this exquisite new stitch from Vienna?’ - -‘I have not seen it. The only wool-work I do is old-fashioned -cross-stitch.’ - -‘Just fancy! And Mr. Arbuthnot, I am convinced, spends his time--half -his time--in designing quite lovely patterns for you?’ - -Dinah’s breast swelled as a vision of the Roscoff wild roses overcame -her. She made no attempt at a parry. - -‘If I had married an artist I would never have gone to the shops for -patterns. Or rather, if I had married an artist I would never have -embroidered at all. I should have thrown myself into his ambitions, his -work--have spent my life so utterly at his side.’ - -Dinah stooped to pick up a little pink shell from the strand, by this -action freeing herself from Linda Thorne. She put the shell inside her -glove, thinking she would keep it as a memento of Langrune and of this -summer day that had passed so nearly without a cloud. So nearly--but -the summer day was not over yet! - -‘All this time I am not accounting to you for your husband’s -disappearance, am I? My dear creature, it was really the drollest -thing! Robbie had not as yet floated up with the tide, and Mrs. -Verschoyle and I, your husband with us, had made our slippery way -across the rocks to mainland. Well, just as Gast ... I mean, as Mr. -Arbuthnot was putting a last touch to his sketch, up ran a little -Frenchman, full dress, a rose-and-white daughter in each hand, and an -enormously stout wife, with a bouquet, following. He threw his arms -round your husband’s neck, and but for Mr. Arbuthnot’s presence of -mind would certainly have kissed him.’ - -‘Kissed!’ - -‘Of course. Have you never lived among French people? It was some old -artist companion of Gast ... of your husband’s bachelor life. You -can imagine the recollections of former joyous days spent in Paris -as students together, the inquiries for mutual friends, now dead or -married, the history each had to give of his marriage and present -happiness!’ - -‘I cannot. I am not imaginative.’ - -It must be confessed that a tinge of displeasure was audible in Dinah’s -voice. Every syllable of Mrs. Thorne’s unpremeditated chatter had -wounded her like a stiletto prick. - -‘Ah--and I am imaginative to my finger tips. We seem the very -antithesis of each other, in character, as we are in looks.’ Linda -had really a very graceful way of admitting her own plainness, when -occasion offered. ‘I can assure you I filled up a dozen little blanks -in our Benedicts’ exchange of confidences. I traced out a full and -rounded whole most satisfactorily. People may slur over half a dozen -years in as many words. If nature has endowed you with imagination, -you read between the lines. The barest outline suggests the finished -picture.’ - -Something in her tone would seem to imply that Gaston Arbuthnot’s -married life had been a spoiled life, or so it seemed to Dinah’s -irritated heart. Dinah felt that the half dozen words must have yielded -latent hints of her own intellectual shortcomings, hints which Linda -Thorne’s talent for filling up blanks had developed into certainty. - -‘The next part of the ceremony was the introduction to Madame de Camors -and the children--two small Parisian coquettes, about the age of my -Rahnee, who fell in love with Mr. Arbuthnot on the spot.’ - -‘Little children fall in love with Gaston always,’ said Dinah hastily. - -‘The family party was taking its departure, it seemed, under the -broiling sun, to a children’s ball at Luc Casino. At a word from -papa the small imps seized a hand each of Gas ..., of Mr. Arbuthnot, -and dragged him away _nolens volens_. All children are tyrants,’ -generalised Linda, with a dismal yawn, occasioned probably by the -recollection of her virtuously spent afternoon, ‘but these terrible -French children are the worst of all. Perhaps it is in imitation of the -Americans. I consider the way American infants are brought forward in -public places is a disgrace to the century.’ - -‘You think children without exception should be kept in their -nurseries’?’ - -Dinah called to mind a group of four that passed her window on their -road to the rose-show. She remembered a small figure dancing with -exultation on rainbow-hued flounces. - -‘My dear soul! Fancy putting such a question to me, a mother! Of course -I make an exception of my own daughter. She is a good quiet little -monkey,’ added Linda; ‘although Mr. Arbuthnot is positively spoiling -her fast--I hope I impose her on no one. Children, as a rule, I look -upon from the governess point of view. You know how my bread was earned -when I was young?’ - -‘Mr. Arbuthnot has told me that he first met you in Paris.’ - -‘Yes, in the domestic service of Madame Moïse Benjamin. I got twenty -pounds a year and my washing. I had to sleep under the roof, to play -dance music, to remodel Madame’s dresses, to teach English to the three -girl Benjamins and a boy--ah, that boy!’ said Linda, between her teeth. -‘If you think me like Becky Sharpe ... confess now, you _do_ think me -like Becky Sharpe?’ - -‘I do not, indeed.’ Dinah’s manner grew colder and colder. ‘I never -heard of Becky Sharpe before.’ - -‘Well, if you had,’ said Linda, in high good humour, and storing up -all the little scene against future dramatisation--‘if you had heard -of Becky Sharpe, and had thought me like her, where would be the -wonder? I was brought up just as Becky was, to live by my wits. My -mamma--I connect her hazily with sofa cushions, much white embroidery, -an Italian greyhound, doctors, and the smell of ether--my mamma died -when I was four years old. She lies in Brussels cemetery,’ ran on -Linda, drawing a hasty outline of a tombstone on the sand, ‘with Lady -Constantia Smythe, and more than one side allusion to the peerage -graven above her head. At the time she died we had not very definite -daily bread. Still, my grandfather was an earl, and poor papa found one -of his few consolations in making much of our nobility.’ - -Frankness, it would seem, was Linda Thorne’s strong point, but Dinah -was unmoved by it. The earldom dazzled Gaston Arbuthnot’s lowly-born -wife no more than Linda’s personal confidences propitiated her. Dinah -had a child’s instinct for friends and for enemies. She liked, she -disliked, unerringly, and was too transparently honest to mask her -feelings. - -Stooping down, she picked up another shell from the sea’s smooth -edge. She sought once more to widen the space between herself and her -companion. Linda Thorne’s quick brain observed the movement, divined -the intention. - -‘Excellent, stupid, well-meaning, ill-acting young woman. And I have -not a reprehensible sentiment at all towards her!’ Thoughts like this -shot through Linda’s mind--Linda who really had it not in her to know -sterner passion than a drawing-room malignity. ‘With her youth, her -goodness, her complexion, her upper lip, to be jealous of poor, plain, -cynical, elderly me! She needs a pretty sharp lesson. Children who cry -for the moon deserve to get something worth crying for.’ Then, sweetly, -‘You seem interested in shells, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ she observed -aloud. ‘You study conchology as a science, perhaps, under the Platonic -auspices of that severe-looking cousin of yours, Geoffrey Arbuthnot of -John’s.’ - -‘I study nothing, unfortunately for myself. I am quite ignorant,’ said -Dinah, lifting her face and meeting her tormentor’s eyes full. ‘I am -picking up a shell or two,’ she added, ‘to keep as a remembrance of my -day in Langrune.’ - -‘I should say you would remember Langrune without any tangible -memento,’ remarked Linda. ‘Rather ungrateful, you know, if you did not.’ - -‘How, ungrateful?’ - -‘Well, because the picnic was given unconditionally in honour of -you----’ - -‘I do not understand you,’ interrupted Dinah, with ill-judged warmth. -‘The party was planned before any one in Guernsey knew of my existence. -I was asked accidentally--because I could be of use. Four or five girls -had promised these young officers to come, and they wanted a married -woman as a chaperon. This was what Lord Rex Basire said when he invited -me on Monday.’ - -‘And you believed him? You accepted out of pure kindness to faire -tapisserie! Mrs. Arbuthnot, you are too amiable.’ - -By this time Dinah Arbuthnot’s face blazed from brow to chin. Her -conscience, over-sensitive in the lightest matter, smote her sore. Was -not a selfish longing for widened experience--nay, was not a certain -distrust of Gaston, a contemptible sense of triumph over Linda--at the -bottom of her acquiescence? - -‘What unusually correct taste Dame Nature displays in her colouring -this evening.’ Mrs. Thorne gazed with decent vacuity at the sky, and -away from Dinah’s face. ‘Soft primrose, fading into pearly-green, with -just those few vivid touches of deep crimson. It suggests thoughts for -a ball dress. And still, beautiful though the effect is, I would rather -not see that sort of shimmer on the water. If we come in for fog-banks -somewhere about the Race of Alderney, it will matter little whether the -picnic originated for the chaperons, or the chaperons for the picnic! -How atrociously hungry this sort of thing makes one! Surely dinner-time -must be drawing nigh.’ - - - - -CHAPTER XXVII - -GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY - - -‘In two words, you have amused yourself, my dear.’ Under cover of the -friendly twilight, Gaston Arbuthnot pressed his wife’s hand as it -rested, a little shyly, on his arm. ‘A good sign for the future. You -must enter into the world more, Dinah. You must cultivate this faculty -for being amused; I desire nothing better.’ - -Though fog-banks and disaster might lie in ambush about the Race of -Alderney, nothing could be tranquiller than the fair summer evening -here, on the coast of France. - -After an excellent dinner, vraie cuisine Normande, served in the -quaint, red-tiled salle of the Hôtel Chateaubriand, the collected -yachting party were now progressing along the pleasant sweep of road -that leads to Luc. Luc alone, among this group of villages, has a -jetty, and off Luc the _Princess_ lay moored. Daylight’s last flicker -was dying from the sky. Already deep fissures of shade intersected -the white sand dunes bordering the shore. The sea lay motionless, a -vague iridescence far away, northward, the only foreboding of coming -change. Cassandra Tighe, a bold spot of colour in the gloaming, had -exchanged her dredging net for some amphibious structure of green gauze -and whalebone. She flitted hither and thither among the bushes that -skirted the path, moth-hunting. The younger members of the expedition, -in groups of two, loitered slowly along their way, for it was an hour -when girlish faces look their fairest, when men’s voices are apt to -soften, involuntarily! - -Dinah Arbuthnot, after a good deal of strategy, had contrived not -merely to get possession of her husband, but to hold him, strongly -guarded, and at safe distance from the rest. Linda Thorne herself (and -Linda had, at will, a longer or a shorter sight than other people) -could scarce do more than guess at the outlines of the two figures. -The little lover-like fact that this sober couple, this Darby and Joan -of four years’ standing, walked arm in arm, could be known only to -themselves. - -‘Yes, Gaston, I was amused at sea, for you were there. And I was -amused differently by Miss Bartrand. I wish you had been with us at La -Delivrande. It was the first time I ever went inside a Popish church,’ -said Dinah, gravely. ‘And yet, Popish though it was, I could scarce -help saying my prayers as we stood before the altar. The tears came in -my eyes as I remembered--I mean as I looked at the heap of offerings, -and thought of the sad hearts that had brought their troubles there.’ - -‘Was the smell very detestable--a smell one could sketch? Had you -beggars? Had the beggars wounds? Of course, votive churches and such -things have to be done, in one’s youth. I am too old,’ said Mr. -Arbuthnot; ‘my digestion is too touchy for me to run the risk of -physical horrors of my own free will.’ - -‘I thought an artist should seek out every kind of experience.’ - -Gaston had so often insisted upon the duty of pursuing inspiration -among all sorts and conditions of men--still more of women--that the -remark from Dinah’s lips had a savour of mischief. - -‘Every sort of agreeable experience, my dear child. The disgusting -is for the great masters. Mine is pocket art--a branch that the -critics discreetly label as decadent, although lucrative. Besides,’ -said Gaston, ‘I have sold my soul to the dealers. And the dealers -have sold theirs, if they have any, to a puerility-loving public. An -honest manufacturer of paper weights and clock stands needs nothing -but prettiness,--I won’t say beauty,--the prettiness of a Parisian, -masquerading as a fisher-girl!’ - -‘Or of Parisian children dancing at an afternoon ball. Mrs. Thorne told -me about your meeting with some old student acquaintance, and how his -daughters led you away captive.’ - -‘Small tyrants! I had to dance four dances with each of them, and then -be told I was “un Monsieur très paresseux” for my reward. And so Mrs. -Thorne and you are becoming better friends,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot, -looking hard through the veil of twilight at his wife’s reluctant -face. ‘She is a dear good soul, is she not? So bright, so spontaneous! -Really, I think that is Mrs. Thorne’s crowning charm--her spontaneity.’ - -‘I am no friend of hers.’ Dinah’s voice had become cold. ‘I did not -like Mrs. Thorne at first. I dislike her now.’ - -‘Impossible, Dinah--impossible. A woman with your face should dislike -no created thing.’ - -‘I dislike her because her words sting even when they sound softest, -because she will never look at one straight. I dislike her,’ said -Dinah, feeling her cheeks burn with shame and indignation, ‘because she -calls you “Gaston” when she speaks of you.’ - -At this terrible climax Mr. Arbuthnot laughed, so heartily that the -quiet undulating sandhills echoed again. Far ahead Mrs. Linda might -perhaps have caught the ring of his voice, have marvelled what subject -people who had been married four mortal years could find to laugh about. - -‘This is a black accusation. Happily, whatever her sins in my absence, -Mrs. Thorne does not call me “Gaston” to my face.’ - -Dinah was silent. Gaston’s assurances had never carried the same weight -with her since Saturday’s rose-show, the occasion when she learned of -midnight adjournments to Dr. Thorne’s house, and of the singing of -French songs after a certain mess dinner. Her own conscience was rigid. -To suppress a truth was, according to Dinah’s code, precisely the same -as to utter an untruth. She allowed no margin for her husband’s offhand -histories--as a woman of larger mind would possibly have done. She -could not see that carelessness, a quick imagination, and an intense -love of peace, were factors sufficiently strong to account for any -little inconsistencies that might now and again creep into Gaston -Arbuthnot’s domestic confidences. - -‘Of that I cannot judge. I suppose I ought not to care what Mrs. Thorne -does or says in _my_ absence.’ - -‘Of course you ought not. The speech is worthy of your thorough -common-sense, Dinah.’ - -‘But Mrs. Thorne calls you “Gaston” to me, and I think it a very -wretched, unkind thing to do. I think it mean.’ - -‘You ought not to think of it at all. Artist people are called by the -first name that comes to hand.’ - -‘Mrs. Thorne is not an artist.’ - -‘She remembers me, in the old days when I knew Camors, as a budding -one.’ - -‘And she corrects herself with over-care. Having once said “Gaston,” it -would be better not to go back to “Mr. Arbuthnot.”’ - -‘Ah, there, my dear girl, you are too strong. If Linda Thorne -excuses she accuses herself, although I must confess I don’t see the -heinousness of her crime. You are becoming a casuist, Dinah.’ - -‘Am I? It seems to me that I am remaining what I always was.’ - -They walked on, after this, mutually taciturn. The interest seemed -to have gone from their talk. At last, just as they neared the first -lights of Luc village, Dinah’s fingers closed with significant -tightness on her husband’s arm. - -‘I have an important word to say to you, Gaston. All through our walk I -have been wishing to bring it out, but I had not the courage.’ - -‘Some one else calls me by my Christian name, perhaps? Or are we only -to discuss more enormities of Linda Thorne’s?’ - -There was a threat of impatience in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice. This -little running accompaniment of domesticity gave a quite new character, -he decided, to picnics, viewed as a means of social pleasure. - -‘I was not thinking of Linda Thorne. I wanted to ask--Gaston, forgive -me--if you would keep nearer to me till we get back to Guernsey?’ - -‘_Nearer!_ Will not everybody be near everybody else on board the -steamer? Don’t, I beg, ask me to do anything absurd,’ he added, with -emphasis. ‘You have no idea how ready one’s best friends are to laugh -at one under given circumstances.’ - -‘But if you were just to stop at my side on board--I mean, so that no -one else could come near me.’ - -‘I will do nothing of the kind. You have no perception of the -ridiculous, Dinah. It is a want in your nature. A woman with the -slightest sense of humour would never wish her husband to be -demonstrative before an audience.’ - -‘Demonstrative?’ - -‘Jealous might be nearer the mark. A variety of reasons could be given -as to the miserable wretch’s motives in such a position. Jealous--of -little Rex Basire, probably!’ - -Gaston Arbuthnot laughed. This time his laughter had no very hearty -sound. - -‘You must learn to be self-reliant,’ he went on presently. ‘Your first -lesson in worldliness was to be taken to-day, remember. Well, you must -go through with it! I was not especially anxious for you to join the -party.’ - -‘You were not. I came to please myself only.’ - -‘And you have pleased yourself and me. You are the most charming -woman present; and let me tell you these handsome Guernsey girls are -formidable rivals. I am proud of you. The opening page of the lesson is -a success. Don’t spoil it, Dinah, by picking a childish quarrel with me -now.’ - -‘I am proud of you!’ The unexpected praise sent a thrill through -Dinah’s heart. - -Her petition to Gaston to keep near her was made in a very different -spirit to that of childish quarrelling. On the road back from La -Delivrande to Langrune it had come to pass that the walking party, -following a natural law, broke up into couples, and that Dinah, -unprotected by Marjorie or by Geff, found herself alone with Lord Rex -Basire. Being, for his age, a very thorough man of the world, Lord Rex -uttered no word at which Mrs. Arbuthnot, or any sensible woman, could -take umbrage. But his manner, his tones, his looks, were eloquent with -a feeling which, to her straightforward, rustic perception of things, -constituted an offence. - -In the matter of admiration, Dinah, as I have said, was neither prude -nor Puritan. She knew the greatness of her gift. It was an everyday -experience to see heads turn wherever she walked upon the earth, and, -being a quite natural and single-hearted daughter of the common Mother, -such acknowledgment of her beauty had never yet been repugnant to her. -But the admiration covertly expressed by Rex Basire as they sauntered -slowly through chequered light and shadow back to Langrune, was of -another nature. Instinct warned Dinah that, if she were an unmarried -girl, she might well read on this foolish young man’s face and in his -manner signs of love. - -And the warning, to Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife, was, in itself, a -humiliation. - -She was unacquainted with the weapons by means of which differently -nurtured women parry equivocal attention. Save from Linda Thorne’s -lips to-night she had never heard the term ‘Platonic.’ Geoffrey was -her only friend. Of men like Lord Rex Basire she knew nothing. To gaze -and hint and sigh after this tormenting fashion might, she thought, -be a received habit among young officers of his rank. And the torment -would soon be over--if Gaston would only keep near her on board the -_Princess_! Once safely back in Guernsey, and Dinah felt she could -take absolute care of herself for the future. There should be no more -lingering afternoon visits, no more instruction in wool-work for Lord -Rex Basire. Of the lesson learnt to-day, one paragraph, at least, was -clear, should be reduced to practice before another twenty-four hours -went by. If Gaston would only keep near her in the interval! - -But at Gaston’s praise she forgot everything. In the sweetness of that -unlooked-for avowal, ‘_I am proud of you_,’ all dread of the future, -all unpleasant recollections of the past, were swept clean away out of -Dinah’s brain. She would not risk the moment’s happiness by another -word. Her hand trembled, as though they had gone back to the old -romantic days at Lesser Cheriton, as it rested on Gaston’s arm. - -‘Proud of me! Ah, my love,’ she whispered, ‘I hope that you and I will -never have a worse quarrel than this while we live.’ - -And when the pair of married sweethearts emerged into the glare of -lamps outside Luc Casino, Dinah’s face was radiant. Lord Rex, devotedly -attentive at the moment to pretty Rosie Verschoyle, saw, and felt -mystified. Decidedly, the Methodistic heart, like the Methodistic -conscience, was a book wherein Rex Basire might not read. - -Linda Thorne approached at once; a tall figure, diaphanous, graceful, -in the lamplight. An Indian shawl was on Linda’s arm, one of those -exquisite dull-hued cachemires capable of investing the plainest woman -with ephemeral poetry. Her hand held a bunch of wild flowers; a long -trail of bindweed was twined, by fingers not unversed in millinery, -round her hat. - -‘I hope you approve my ball attire?’ She asked this with a little -curtsey, her eyes addressing Gaston rather than Gaston’s wife. ‘Our -hosts tell us that we have all free entrance to the Casino, the result, -I suspect, of some liberal bribe to the Administration. Really, the -way our subalterns have preconcerted every detail of their picnic has -quite a Monte Christo flavour. You are engaged to me, remember, Mr. -Arbuthnot, for your first waltz.’ - -‘There will be neither first nor last, Mrs. Thorne. I exhausted the -very small dancing power that is in me on Hortense and Eulalie this -afternoon. I have not waltzed with a partner over seven for years,’ -added Gaston. ‘My step dates from the days of Louis Philippe.’ - -Nevertheless he moved away from Dinah; he followed whithersoever Mrs. -Thorne might choose to lead. - -She chose the Luc dunes--that broad belt of wind-blown sand, held -together by coarse grasses or sea thistles, which stretches the entire -length of the straggling village, and forms a welcome contrast to the -burnt-up turf terrace, with burnt-up geraniums, mildewed urns, and -peeling stucco goddesses of loftier watering-places. - -This evening Luc was merry-making. There were fireworks, there was a -procession of torches--one of those ever-recurring processions by which -the hearts of Parisian children, big and little, are gladdened at the -seaside. Tiny figures marched, two and two, with Chinese lamps along -the village causeway. A band of small boys evoked martial melody from -drum and fife. Catherine-wheels rotated, rockets scurried up into -space. By and by an artfully constructed bonfire of colza stalks flared -up in the centre of the plage. Hand linked in hand the children danced -around it. - - - ‘Nous irons aux bois, - Les lauriers sont coupés.’ - - -Their shrill voices rang across the dunes. Gaston Arbuthnot could -descry his friends, Hortense and Eulalie, wildly circling around the -red flames with the rest. As he did so, he thought involuntarily of his -sketch-book, forgotten from the moment when the children laid violent -hands upon him, hours ago, until this instant. - -‘Oh, I know! Your sketch-book is gone,’ cried Linda, as he felt in -pocket after pocket. ‘This is the Nemesis that falls on creatures of -impulse, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ - -‘But it is no joking matter. Every memorandum I have made during the -last month--gone!’ - -For once Gaston’s voice was tragic. He knew full well the market value -of those rough notes of his. - -‘Every memorandum--from your first bit of Sarnian still life, an old -market-woman dozing, knitting-pins in hand, at her stall, down to -our fisher-girl of the Boulevards. Taking into account the studies -of Rahnee and of myself, there must be literally scores of valuable -jottings in that book.’ - -‘You are laughing at me? No, I divine! You have taken care of my book, -Mrs. Thorne, like the dear good----’ - -Fortunately, Gaston Arbuthnot broke off. Would Mrs. Thorne, would -any woman, still conscious of youth and charm, forgive the man who, -in exuberance of gratitude, should say to her, ‘like the dear good -creature I know you to be’? - -‘I have taken care of your sketches,’ she answered, drawing the book -forth from beneath her cachemire. ‘I have done more. You ask sometimes -why I always carry a housewife in my pocket. You shall see the part -my housewife has played to-day. While I sat quietly with Robbie and -Mrs. Verschoyle (the young people, _very rightly_, enjoying themselves -elsewhere) I sewed all your ragged leaves together for you--thus.’ - -Linda Thorne was a notably clever worker. Perhaps the length of her -stitches, the breadth of her hems, were not always in accordance -with the orthodox feminine standard. She could effect things with -her needle--such as fine-drawing a rent in cloth, or improvising an -anchorage for a buttonless collar--which might be the despair of many a -mistress of the craft. She did her stitching with brains. - -At an out-of-the way Indian station, so the legend ran, Mrs. Linda, -under stress of some unlooked-for gaiety, once manufactured an evening -waistcoat for her Robbie, and a pair of neat white satin boots for -herself at a sitting. - -‘This is capital!’ cried Arbuthnot, joyfully recovering possession of -his sketches. ‘Each page hinged on with a splendid contrivance of red -silk to the dislocated remains of back. I have often wanted Dinah to -devise some sort of surgery for my veteran sketch-books. She must take -a lesson by this.’ - -‘Oh, no, no! Mrs. Arbuthnot is a far better needlewoman than I am. -When I sew anything tolerably,’ said Linda, ‘it is by accident. I -must have a motive for what I do. If I lived with--I mean, now, if -dear Robbie were an artist, it would be my passion to help him in all -the mechanical part of his work. If I were staying with you--and Mrs. -Arbuthnot--you would discover that I can, really, in my way be useful. -Michael Angelo himself must have had a poor obscure some one to grind -his paints for him.’ - -The pathetic image of Robbie as an artist made Gaston laugh inwardly. -He was not struck by the humour of hearing his own name coupled with -Michael Angelo’s. Nay, it might be well, he thought, if Dinah felt -this passion of unselfish helpfulness; well, if Dinah occasionally -gave him the kind of praise he got from Linda Thorne. For Dinah never -flattered. Her words of encouragement, unlettered country girl though -she was, were full of soundest criticism. There was no honey in them. -True love has its intuitions. Dinah knew that to feed this man on -constantly sugared words was to poison him. She would gladly have -seen in Gaston a noble discontent, gladly have listened to less frank -avowals that he had found his level, and got on pretty well, there! -Dinah, in short, was not a delightful acquaintance, but a steadfast, -loyal wife. And her praise, in common with that of other steadfast -wives, was apt to take the wholesome bitterness, the slightly sub-acid -flavour of a tonic. - -‘Michael Angelo! My dear Mrs. Thorne, how much, how very much you -over-estimate me! If you spoke of me as imitating, from afar, the -little affected prettinesses of a Greuze, the compliment would be too -high.’ - -‘I fixed my standard for you, years ago, Mr. Arbuthnot. In the days -when you used to thank me--_me_, a governess--for playing dance-music -at Madame Benjamin’s, I had my convictions as to the place you would -one day occupy in Art.’ - -At other times--on the morning, for instance, when we first saw the -Arbuthnot trio in the garden of Miller’s Hotel--Linda remembered her -aspirations as to the place her friend would, one day, hold in the -House of Commons. But Gaston, if he noted the discrepancy, passed it -generously over. Hard for a man to believe a charming woman insincere -simply because she a little over-estimates his own genius! - -‘Those light-hearted salad days! When I was with de Camors this -afternoon----’ - -‘The effusive little Frenchman who so nearly kissed you?’ - -‘As long as I forgot the children, and the twelve stone of mamma, and -the fact that de Camors himself is growing bald, I could have believed -he and I were six-and-thirty again. Six-and-thirty used to be the sum -of our joint ages.’ - -‘Do not talk of age. It is a subject about which a man may jest, while -a woman just breaks her heart.’ - -And Linda extended towards him her thin adroit hands, clasped in a pose -that she had studied, not unsuccessfully, as one of pained entreaty. - -‘Women are younger, relatively, than men,’ answered Gaston, with the -sincerity of his sex. ‘When I was two-and-twenty, Dinah’s age, I knew -more of the world than I know now. Whereas my wife----’ - -‘Ah! your wife,’ interrupted Linda Thorne, the mask for a moment -dropping, the voice hardening. ‘I was thinking of living, palpitating, -flesh-and-blood women--inhabitants of a world where nothing is -faultless save over-faultless perfection. I--I mean,’ she went on, -rapidly recovering her self-control, ‘that at thirty (and I am past -thirty, alas! who looks at me under broad daylight but must see -it?)--at thirty a man is scarcely in the noonday sun--a woman already -feels the breath of evening. Her one chill hope is--to grow old -gracefully. Mrs. Arbuthnot is a girl still.’ - -‘And you--were a child when I first knew you in Paris,’ observed -Gaston, cleverly quitting the dangerous territory across whose borders -he has been betrayed. ‘How natural it seems, Mrs. Thorne, that we -should be walking together, you and I, in the old country, with the old -language round us again! Do you hear what the children are singing down -on the sands yonder?’ - -Linda set herself to listen, her expressive hands clasped, her face -bowed. - - - ‘Nous irons aux bois, - Les lauriers sont coupés’-- - - -shouted the shrill young Gallican voices in the distance. - -Mr. Arbuthnot repeated the nursery rhyme as Murger wove it into his -delightful ‘Letter to a Cousin.’ - - - ‘Nous n’irons plus aux bois. Les lauriers sont coupés. - Nous n’irons plus aux bois, oh, ma cousine Angèle!’ - - -The lady at his side bowed her face lower, and believed, in all -integrity, that she was about to be overtaken by tears. Mrs. Linda, to -do her justice, was not of a lachrymose temperament. At the zenith of -their boy and girl flirtation, years ago, she had never shed a tear for -Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot; until he appeared with his beautiful wife, had, -indeed, clean forgotten her youthful weakness and his existence. But -she possessed considerable imagination, a gloss of surface sentiment. -She was also an insatiate novel reader, and had fallen into the habit -of perennial strong emotion, leading nowhere. She could realise how a -woman who had loved ought to feel, as she recalled past happiness with -the lover of the past--both married, and one, alas! fast nearing an age -when the most pathetic drama turns, without help from the burlesque -writers, into parody. - -Linda Thorne believed herself to be on the brink of tears. Gaston -Arbuthnot believed so, too, and his heart could not but soften over -the poor thing’s impressibility. So widely different in effect are -tears shed in bitter earnest by one’s wife, and tears shed in pretty -make-believe by the wife of another man. - -‘Do you hear, Mr. Arbuthnot--the dancers have changed their tune?’ She -asked this as the children, eddying like spirit-figures in an opera -scene round the fire, broke into a new measure, ‘_Marie, soak thy -bread in wine!_’--universal refrain of all French children from the -Pyrenees to the Channel. ‘“_Marie, soak thy bread!_” How that foolish -rhyme brings back the Benjamins’ salon, and my place behind the piano, -and you, Mr. Arbuthnot, handing round refreshments with the small -slave-driver, Moïse! “Marie, soak thy bread”.... Alas!’--Mrs. Thorne’s -utterances grew mystic--‘We women have to soak our bread in sour -enough wine, have we not?’ - -‘The Benjamin refreshments--sugar-water, orgeat,’ mused Gaston -Arbuthnot, keeping safely to the practical. ‘Yes, those were charming -evenings, especially when Papa Moïse did not sing. I remember, as -though ’twere yesterday, how my poor mother used to suspect Madame -Benjamin of putting bad almonds in the orgeat.’ - - - - -CHAPTER XXVIII - -FOR AULD LANG SYNE - - -Meantime, whilst this mature pair of sentimentalists recalled the past -under the starlight, the younger people, sound of heart and limb, were -making the most of the present inside the walls of Luc Casino. Fine -weather for their voyage, an excellent French dinner, and now a ball, -with distractingly pretty girls for partners, what further enjoyment -could hearts as light as the hearts of the subaltern hosts desire? - -Lord Rex, only, played spectator. While Rosie Verschoyle danced waltz, -polka, American, to outward seeming in gayer spirits than her wont, -Lord Rex remained fixed in his attendance on Mrs. Arbuthnot, beside one -of the open ball-room doors. Dinah was curiously staunch of purpose, -about trifles as about serious things. She clung to ‘first principles.’ -It was a first principle with her never to enter a casino, English or -French, and Rex Basire vainly expended his best special pleading in -seeking to change her. - -Mrs. Arbuthnot objected, perhaps, to waltz with a one-armed man? Would -she give him a polka, then? Would she ‘rush’ an American quadrille? It -made it ever so much more diverting if one did not know the figures of -an American. Well, if she would not dance at all, would she take his -arm and walk round the rooms? ‘Simply to put them in their place, Mrs. -Arbuthnot. I have my British vanity. I want these bragging Frenchmen, -accustomed to nothing handsomer than lay figures out of the pattern -books, to see _you_.’ - -All in vain. Dinah wished neither to dance nor to dazzle. Only, if Lord -Rex pleased--thus, after a space, she admonished him--it would be wise -for his lordship to join the rest of his party. Miss Verschoyle was -standing out; there could not be a likelier time than the present for -him to secure Miss Verschoyle’s hand. - -His lordship, however, did not please. And so, when Gaston and Linda -Thorne returned, later on, from their walk, the first fact patent to -both on entering the ball-room was Dinah’s absence. With a quick look -around, Linda discerned Rosie Verschoyle standing at her mother’s side, -partnerless. - -‘Rosie Verschoyle a wall-flower? Oh, this is too bad! What can Lord Rex -be thinking of?’ exclaimed Linda, ingenuously. ‘Mr. Arbuthnot, I insist -upon your asking poor little Rosie to dance at once.’ - -‘I thought you and I were to take pity on each other, Mrs. Thorne, for -auld lang syne?’ - -‘Think of Rosie, not me. It is positively wicked for old married women -to monopolise the dancing men while girls stand out.’ - -‘Are you sure Miss Verschoyle would care to have a man with deposited -affections for her partner? a veteran whose waltz step dates from the -reign of Louis Philippe?’ - -‘Try her. In my young days girls would sooner dance with anybody than -remain partnerless.’ - -‘That “anybody” gives me confidence. It is good to know the exact -compartment in which one is pigeon-holed.’ - -Gaston crossed the room. He made his bow before Rosie, who moved -forward graciously. Now that Mr. Arbuthnot had asked her, said the -girl, in her thin staccato, she would have the enjoyment of one really -good waltz. Something in Gaston’s looks made her certain that he was -a splendid dancer. Louis Philippe? Mr. Arbuthnot’s step dated from -the days of Louis Philippe? ‘Why, that,’ cried Rosie, ‘was before we -were all born!’ She confessed to never remembering about those ‘horrid -French Revolution people,’ but had a notion Louis Philippe came next -to the king who got his head cut off. Or was he Egalité, the man who -insisted upon dying in his boots?’ - -‘Louis Philippe came next to the king who got his head cut off,’ said -Gaston, as his arm clasped her well-rounded waist. ‘I had no idea, Miss -Verschoyle, that you were such a profound historian.’ - -Linda Thorne took the chair left vacant beside Rosie’s mother. - -‘Your dear child is looking her best, Mrs. Verschoyle. I think our -Guernsey roses do us national credit. We ought to produce an effect -upon the foreign mind.’ - -‘The young people are too much flushed, every one of them. A day like -this may lay the seeds of lifelong malady. I know, as a fact, Mrs. -Thorne, that Rosie is dancing in wet shoes.’ - -‘Better dance than sit still in them,’ remarked Linda, cheerfully. ‘You -never catch cold while you are amused.’ - -‘Could we not have been amused at a quarter the cost? I have been -trying in my own mind to reckon up the expenses of the expedition. -Putting everything at the lowest, I bring it to something -fabulous--fabulous! If these young subalterns, sons, no doubt, of -needy men, had only given us a tea-drinking on L’Ancresse Common! When -Colonel Verschoyle was in command----’ - -The time when her colonel commanded a regiment in Guernsey was Mrs. -Verschoyle’s one unchequered recollection, the standard by which all -subsequent mortal events must be judged! - -‘When poor Colonel Verschoyle was in command, that is what the -officers used to do. Give us a tea-drinking at L’Ancresse and a -dance for the young people afterwards. No show. Very little expense. -Everybody pleased. Then, of course, if you got your shoes wet you could -change them.’ - -The advantages of L’Ancresse over Langrune as a spot whereat to change -your shoes seemed to touch Mrs. Verschoyle nearly. Her eyes filled. - -‘The money that has gone on all this,’ she mourned; ‘not to speak of -the doctors’ bills we may have to pay hereafter! When first the plan -was chalked out I foresaw how everything would end. I entreated Rosie -to reason with Lord Rex. Unfortunately I can never get my children to -listen to me.’ - -‘You should have gained over Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ said Linda, with a spice -of malice. ‘As the picnic was got up for her, no doubt she could have -amended the programme.’ - -Mrs. Verschoyle looked more like a little bewildered white mouse -than usual, as this newly propounded idea made its way slowly to her -intelligence. - -‘It is a most unprecedented thing! To get up a party of pleasure for -a married lady without daughters! Mrs. Arbuthnot, I believe, has no -daughters?--at all events not of an age to be introduced. Well, she -is a very sweet-looking young woman,’ said the meek, motherly soul, -through whose lips no breath of scandal ever passed. ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot -has just that fair, placid, large look that used to be so much admired -in my Flo. But the complexion is too transparent for health. Did -I tell you Flo’s husband was ordered to Malta? His regiment is on -this season’s reliefs, and Flo talks of coming over to me with the -children--four babies, and a native nurse. I suppose I shall be able to -take them all in?’ - -‘Easily. You have only to give up your own room and sleep in the -conservatory. When Rahnee is married and offers to come home, with -four babies and a native nurse, sleeping in the conservatory,’ observed -Linda, ‘is just the kind of sacrifice I shall be prepared to make.’ - -‘You would have the old jungle ague back upon you in twenty-four hours -if you did. Neither you nor Doctor Thorne are people who should take -liberties with yourselves. Indeed, I think you have both been looking -sadly this spring. Rosie, my dear, come here.’ For the waltz had ended. -Gaston Arbuthnot was walking past, English fashion, his partner on his -arm. ‘Come and sit down by me out of the draught. I do hope this is the -last dance we shall stay for, Mr. Arbuthnot?’ - -‘No, indeed, mamma. We are to stay for the next. It is another waltz, -and I am engaged for it to Lord Rex;’ Rosie glanced, a little ruefully, -towards the door where Dinah and Lord Rex still stood. ‘Thank you so -much, Mr. Arbuthnot, for our beautiful waltz. I hope,’ said Rosie -Verschoyle, ‘all my partners, as long as I live, will have taken -dancing lessons in the reign of Louis Philippe.’ - -When the opening bars of the waltz sounded, Lord Rex, with no very -great alacrity, came across the room to claim Rosie’s hand. Gaston -Arbuthnot bent over Linda. - -‘“For auld lang syne.” Is this to be our dance, Mrs. Thorne?’ - -Linda Thorne was not a pretty, not by natural gift a graceful, woman. -She was a perfect dancer. Poor Dinah, from her hiding-place, had found -a genuine pleasure in watching Gaston waltz with dimpled, smiling Rosie -Verschoyle. For Dinah, like all wholesome-minded mortals, had unmixed -sympathy with the spirits and enjoyment of light-hearted girlhood. She -looked with very different perceptions at Linda Thorne, looked at her -with something of the feeling a true but unpopular artist might know on -watching the facile successes of meretricious talent. This tinselled, -pleasure-loving Linda, with her clinging draperies, her Indian -perfumes--this wife whose heart was not with her husband, this mother -who contentedly could leave her child to servants--was so far below the -ideal towards which, since her marriage, Dinah Arbuthnot had faithfully -striven. - -Below an ideal standard. And yet, in such vital points as talking -amusing talk, in dancing, dressing, dinner-giving, in the all-important -matter of pleasing men difficult to please like Gaston Arbuthnot, -how immeasurably was Linda her superior! Dinah’s heart contracted. -She was just going to shift away into deeper shadow, when a hand -touched her arm with friendly purpose. Turning, she saw Marjorie -Bartrand--Cassandra Tighe, laden with nets and specimen boxes, in the -rear. - -Marjorie’s face glowed damask. ‘A pity you were not with us, Mrs. -Arbuthnot. We have been having a glorious time, moth-hunting in the -Luc lanes, Miss Tighe and I, and--and--every now and then Mr. Geoffrey -Arbuthnot condescended to join when the chase got warm. What are you -all about here?’ Marjorie ascended a step; she took a smiting glance -round the ball-room. ‘Well, this is as good as a sermon. Miss Tighe, -come and be edified. Is it not fine to see middle-aged couples waltzing -for the public good?’ - -With a little scornful gesture of the head Marjorie indicated Gaston -and-his partner. - -‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot may be doing his steps from personal motives, -perhaps because he has the “artistic temperament,” whatever,’ said -Marjorie, ‘that elastic term may mean. Nothing but severe principles, -the determination to point a moral, could make Linda Thorne go through -violent exercise on a night like this.’ - -‘Linda Thorne is considered the best waltzer in Guernsey,’ said -Cassandra. ‘Your tongue is over-sharp. You speak before you think, -Marjorie Bartrand.’ - -‘I feel before I do either,’ whispered the girl, her hand stealing -back, with half-shy kindness, to Dinah’s arm. - -‘If Mrs. Arbuthnot had been with us,’ said Cassandra, ‘she would have -witnessed a sight worth laughing at. Marjorie scoffs at middle-aged -partners. What would you think, Mrs. Arbuthnot, of a white-haired woman -flying across hedges and ditches--breathless with excitement, over the -capture of a butterfly? Scarce a dozen specimens of _Pontia Daplidice_ -have been seen in Northern Europe during the last twenty years,’ went -on old Cassandra, flushed still with victory. ‘And of these six only -were netted, like mine, on the wing. Why, it would be worth staying a -week here--a week, a month, on the outside chance of sighting a second -_Pontia Daplidice!_’ - - - - -CHAPTER XXIX - -MISSING - - -All this time the _Princess_, lying well outside the Luc rocks, was -getting up her steam. Before the waltz had ended a red light, hung from -the vessel’s bows, gave the signal for those on shore to hurry their -departure. There was a flutter of airy dresses as the English party -emerged from the ball-room into darkness, a ripple of talk as they -filed, Indian fashion, hand steadying hand, down the narrow path that -led from the casino to the little fishing slip or jetty. - -And then unexpectedly came the first misadventure that had arisen to -mar this day of calm and sunshine. When the party had embarked in two -of the unwieldy flat-bottomed boats of the country, it occurred to Lord -Rex, as commander-in-chief, that their number should be counted. And -soon the cry arose that one was wanting! Seventeen human souls left -Guernsey that morning--on this point all were confident. Sixteen human -souls only were forthcoming now. And no efforts of memory, individual -or collective, could hit upon the defaulter’s name. - -Mrs. Verschoyle exclaimed in a hollow voice that it was a most -uncomfortable omen. She would be sorry to depress the younger people’s -spirits, but, for her part, she would sooner set sail in the teeth of -a hurricane than have had this thing occur. ‘Let the counting be more -systematic,’ said the poor lady, jumping to her feet, and for once in -her life launching into independent action. ‘Let me repeat each name -slowly, beginning with the youngest of the gentlemen, and let each -person answer as he is called. Mr. Smith? Brown? Jones? Lord Rex? The -two Mr. Arbuthnots? Doctor Thorne?’ - -After Doctor Thorne’s name there was a moment’s silence. Then Linda, -tragic of accent, ejaculated, ‘Robbie! Of course!’ And then, I regret -to say, most of the younger people began to laugh. ‘But it may be a -matter of life and death,’ cried Mrs. Thorne. ‘If you please, Lord Rex, -I will go on shore at once. The _Princess_ may start, probably will -start, without me. My duty is to look for Robbie. Oh, I am most uneasy! -It is all my selfishness. Robbie ought never to have been brought on -such an expedition. I am certain something has happened to him! I shall -never forgive myself while I live.’ - -These amiable anxieties were the exact sentiments suited to the -occasion. Mrs. Thorne expressed them with agitated dignity, and, of -course, no one laughed again. Consolations, even, were forthcoming. -Dr. Thorne had been seen, in the flesh, outside Luc Casino; or, if -not the Doctor, some old gentleman exactly like him, with a puggaree, -sand-shoes, a white umbrella, and smoking an enormous cigar, just like -the cigar poor dear Doctor Thorne always used to smoke. It was the -prettiest, least wise, of the De Carteret sisters who offered this -bit of evidence. The gentleman was observed to look in for a while at -the dancing, and then to walk away in the direction, Ada de Carteret -believed, of the sea. - -‘The sea! And who can tell that the sea has not surrounded him! In -out-of-the-way French places the tide always swells up with a circuit.’ -Tears were in Linda’s voice as she proclaimed this maritime fact. -‘I am most uneasy.’ She adjusted her Indian shawl with grace round -her shoulders, then skipped lightly to land. ‘Robbie ought never to -have been brought--it was all my selfishness--I am torn in pieces by -remorse.’ - -The young ladies, with the exception of one flint soul, cried, -‘No, no,’ in chorus. Mrs. Thorne positively must not say these -dreadful things, when every one knew she had such a _character_ for -unselfishness! Mrs. Verschoyle felt for her smelling-salts, then -settled herself gloomily down, prepared for the worst. Mrs. Verschoyle -felt within her the courage of a prophet whose own dark sayings are on -the eve of fulfilment. - -Gaston Arbuthnot, in his quiet, unmoved manner, rose. Stepping on -shore, Gaston volunteered to go in search of the missing Doctor. - -These were just the scenes wherein Linda so infinitely diverted -him,--Frenchman as he was in three-fourths of his nature,--little -scenes in which, on the boards of domestic life, she played such -admirable farce without knowing it! - -‘I shall walk straight back to Langrune, Mrs. Thorne. Notwithstanding -your solemn tone, in spite of Miss de Carteret’s evidence, I believe -the Doctor has never missed any of us, and at this moment is smoking -his cigar, possibly sipping his “little glass,” at the Hotel -Chateaubriand.’ - -‘Unless you are here in a quarter of an hour, sharp, we shall leave you -behind,’ called out Lord Rex, when Gaston had proceeded some paces on -his errand. ‘The _Princess_ is chartered until to-morrow only. Whatever -the rest of us do, the skipper will take care not to lose his tide.’ - -Linda Thorne, by this time, in her agitation, and her Indian shawl, was -at Gaston’s side. So the exordium might be taken as addressed to them -both. - -‘All right,’ answered Mr. Arbuthnot leisurely. Langrune is not the end -of the earth. If by the time we secure the Doctor, the steamer has -weighed anchor, we must all get back to Guernsey _viâ_ Cherbourg. That -would fit in very well. The _Lady of the Isles_ crosses from Cherbourg -to-morrow,’ went on Gaston, raising his voice as he looked back over -his shoulder towards the boats. ‘We should just have time to visit the -dockyard before starting.’ - -And then the two figures sped onward, side by side. They were watched -with keen speculative interest by the occupants of the boats. No one, -save simple Mrs. Verschoyle, felt disturbed as to the Doctor’s ultimate -fate. Was an old gentleman who had taken admirable care of himself for -forty years in India a likely subject to be spirited away on the sands, -between Luc and Langrune? But the situation had a dramatic piquancy -that stirred even the unimaginative minds of the Miss de Carterets -and their attendant subalterns. For there was Dinah! Impossible to -forget that Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot, that lowly-born young woman with the -beautiful eyes, and set, sad mouth, was also watching the two figures -as they disappeared in the darkness. - -‘A quarter of an hour. By Jove! ten minutes of that quarter must be -nearly gone.’ - -And taking out his watch, Lord Rex struck a vesuvian in order to learn -the time. It was exactly eight minutes to nine, and at nine, sharp, the -_Princess_ was to weigh her anchor. The moment for action had come. -Now, what was the wisest thing to do? One point seemed certain--it -was useless for both boats to wait longer. Let the smaller boat, at -the head of the jetty, start for the steamer at once, let the captain -be told what had happened, and asked to put off his departure as long -as practicable. If Gaston Arbuthnot and the Thornes arrived in time, -the second boat would bring them off. If not--why, common sense could -really dictate no better plan than Gaston’s own. Langrune was not the -end of the world A railway to Cherbourg existed. The _Lady of the -Isles_ would no doubt bring the lost sheep comfortably back to their -respective folds to-morrow. - -Dinah as it happened was, with Ada de Carteret and the elder ladies, -in the boat at the head of the jetty. And soon before Dinah’s eyes, -as before the eyes of one who dreams, the reflections of the Casino -lamps, the children’s Chinese lanterns, were dancing with fairy-like -brightness across the moving water. She realised that her day of -pleasure was over, that every one--yes, she could catch the voices of -Marjorie and of Geff, holding merry talk in the other boat--every one -took the adventure jestingly, and that her heart felt like lead, that -her hands were ice-cold, that each breath she drew was a conscious and -painful effort. Well--if she had enough bodily strength to act her part -out, she thought, say no word to betray her plebeian emotions, and so -bring down ridicule on her husband or herself, she must be content! -Once on board the steamer she could hide herself in the cabin, away -from sight, and there wait, until the comedy (or tragedy) had reached -its next act. This one wretched comfort remained to her. She would be -able to screen herself, for a while at least, from observation--to be -alone! - -But a new and still more diverting incident was about to be woven into -the text of the play. - -‘If I were not in such a nervous state,’ cried Mrs. Verschoyle, when -the boat was within three or four lengths of the _Princess_, ‘if I were -not so morally shaken that I distrust my own senses, I should say our -good Doctor was on board. There came a flash of light just now beside -the wheel, the lighting, perhaps, of a fusee, and for a second it -seemed to me that I saw Doctor Thorne’s figure distinctly. A pity some -reliable person was not looking!’ - -And Mrs. Verschoyle, to her own surprise, had seen correctly. The -Doctor it proved to be--the Doctor smoking one of the ship’s best -cheroots, and enjoying the summer night with unruffled innocence. He -advanced gallantly to assist the ladies in their embarkation, and heard -with gusto the story of his own supposed fate. Surrounded by the tide? -Tut, tut! Linda might have known, had she exercised her reason, whither -he had betaken himself. ‘Only you ladies never do reason,’ said the -Doctor, addressing Mrs. Verschoyle. ‘It was growing damp on shore--and -let me give you a bit of advice, my dear madam: whenever you feel that -clinging kind of chill, after gun-fire, get on board ship, if you have -the chance. Get an honest plank, instead of the abominable miasmal -emanations of Mother Earth, under your feet. Yes, yes,’ went on the -Doctor comfortably, ‘I hailed one of the _Princess’s_ boats and came on -board two hours ago, have drunk my cup of coffee, and beaten Ozanne at -his own game, cribbage.’ - -‘And your wife’s anxiety?’ - -‘My dear Mrs. Verschoyle, I am penitent! Only my wife, you see, might -have reasoned. It would have deprived you all, no doubt, of a harmless -excitement; but Linda, I think, might have reasoned. Any way, it is -better to be drowned by one’s friends’ imaginations than run the risk, -in earnest, of a pair of damp shoes.’ - -To this Mrs. Verschoyle gave a qualified assent. The mention of damp -shoes affected her. Still, she was not a little shocked at Doctor -Thorne’s levity--‘At his advanced age,’ thought poor Mrs. Verschoyle, -perturbedly, ‘and after the awful narrowness of his escape!’ - -‘The fear is, Doctor, that Mrs. Thorne will be left behind,’ cried Ada -de Carteret, with meaning. ‘At the first word of danger Linda started -off along the Langrune road to look for you.’ - -‘Linda ought to have reasoned----’ - -‘And Lord Rex declares the captain must weigh anchor at nine, sharp! It -is like a scene in a novel--the last scene but one, with everything in -a delicious tangle still. Why, Doctor, you are the hero of the day!’ - -‘I feel enormously flattered,’ said the old Doctor. ‘It is a very long -time since a charming young lady has said anything so pretty to me.’ - -‘But your wife, Doctor Thorne!’ expostulated Cassandra Tighe, who with -her nets and cases had been the last to leave the boat. ‘Do you realise -that if Ozanne saves his tide--if we return to Guernsey to-night--Mrs. -Thorne will remain in France?’ - -‘I cannot believe it. Ozanne would not surely be so ungallant. (Allow -me, Miss Tighe, to help you with a few of your packages.) No, no. -The skipper would not be so ungallant. And then my dear Linda is the -most famous traveller! Surely I have told you what wonderful presence -of mind she showed once in the Nilgiri Hills? Lost, actually lost, -for four entire days! If, by mischance, Linda should be left alone, -she will make her way home to-morrow, _viâ_ Cherbourg, and enjoy the -adventure.’ - -‘And Mrs. Thorne is not alone,’ cried Ada de Carteret, clapping -her hands, and no doubt feeling that the position grew more and -more deliciously tangled. ‘Mr. Arbuthnot is with her--not Marjorie -Bartrand’s coach, but the other one: the singing, flirting, -good-looking Mr. Arbuthnot,’ added this vivacious young lady, -profoundly forgetful that the good-looking Mr. Arbuthnot’s wife stood -within three yards of her elbow. - -‘Then my fears are set at rest,’ observed the Doctor genially. ‘If -my friend Arbuthnot is there my fears are set thoroughly at rest. -Meanwhile, I may as well speak to the skipper. The tide, of course, -must be saved. Still, it would be only right to let Ozanne know how -affairs stand.’ - -And Dinah had listened to it all--youthful jest, aged philosophy, all! -And standing among the others, with a queer sensation that she had -suddenly oldened by a dozen years, some pallid ghost of a smile rose to -her lips. Here was a grand opportunity, verily, of learning a lesson at -first hand, a chance in a thousand for readjusting one’s standard, for -observing the nicer little shades of feeling and usage which prevail in -the world to which one would fain belong. - -A smile, I say, rose to Dinah’s lips. Which of us does not remember -how, in sharp mental stress, he has found himself looking on at the -trivial accessories of his pain, as a stranger might, derisively! In -the poor girl’s heart was death. - -She knew that for Gaston to have set at naught her pleadings, for -Gaston to have quitted her thus, might render to-night a bitter crisis -in the lives of both. - - - - -CHAPTER XXX - -LINDA WARMS TO HER PART - - -But Dinah was not unobserved, not uncared for. - -If Cassandra Tighe’s taste for piquant situation once in a hundred -times led her astray, the ninety-nine good offices performed by the -kindly old maid in the interval were sufficient, surely, to atone for -the single blunder. - -Cassandra’s heart went out towards Dinah at the first moment when -the fair sad face passed before her in the garden of Miller’s Hotel. -She had listened with regret to stories of Gaston’s fickleness--even -while her talents as a narrator assisted in giving such stories wider -currency--had felt remorse, sharp and hard, for her own unwitting -share in the ‘Arbuthnot drama.’ At this hour of which I write, Dinah -standing mute, wan, beside her, Cassandra’s breast kindled with renewed -compassion towards the simple unbefriended country girl, a compassion -none the less genuine in that it went somewhat wide of Dinah’s actual -and present trouble. - -‘You look thoroughly done up, my dear Mrs. Arbuthnot. I am afraid -to-day’s gadding about has been too much for you. Let us see,’ said -Cassandra, in a whisper, ‘if we cannot find some quiet corner, you and -I, where we may settle down and rest.’ - -Dinah turned on her a look of blank, unanswering pain. She wanted -neither sympathy nor support, wanted only to creep below, out of -sight, to avoid all temptation to disobedience, all possibility of -bringing down ridicule--on Gaston! - -‘I feel chilled--nothing, that is, to speak of. You are very good, Miss -Tighe, but I had rather go down to the saloon alone, please. I am used -to being alone, and--and I have a cloak which I must look for.’ - -A note of suppressed passion was in her voice. It betrayed emotion -curiously at variance with the commonplace words, the staid reserved -manner. And, in a moment, Cassandra Tighe’s valorous spirit had armed -itself for action. - -‘Dr. Thorne, will you stop that Luc boat, if you please? Never mind -my nets, they can go anywhere. Attendez, matelots! Attendez moi,’ -cried Cassandra in her own peculiar French, and signalling with her -handkerchief to the boat, already a few lengths distant from the -steamer. ‘It would scarcely do, Doctor, to let matters shape themselves -with such very slight rough-hewing! Some one must go ashore without -delay. Think of Linda’s anxiety if the _Princess_ should leave before -she had been assured of your safety!’ - -‘I think of many things,’ said Dr. Thorne, with humour, ‘the dampness -of the night pre-eminently. Of course, I must go. Still, Linda might -have exercised her reason--such reason as Providence bestows on the -sex. Linda is not a child. What possible good could come from this kind -of wild-goose chase?’ - -And the old Doctor moved an inch or two, exceedingly crusty of mien, in -the direction of the companion ladder. - -But this was not the plan of Cassandra Tighe’s campaign. - -‘You will just stay comfortably where you are; you will keep a dry -plank under your feet, Dr. Thorne, and give me carte blanche to look -after your wife. If the _Princess_ starts without us, Linda and I must -find our way back to Guernsey. I have a purse in my pocket, Linda has a -brain in her head. We both know how to travel. To you, Mrs. Arbuthnot, -I confide my treasure.’ Turning round she gave Dinah a little chip -box, clasping the girl’s cold hands for an instant as she did so. ‘Take -care of _Pontia Daplidice_, my dear, and take care of yourself. Look -for your cloak by all means. Doctor Thorne, do you persuade Ozanne to -give us every possible moment’s law. I have a presentiment that all -will come right, that your good wife’s over-anxiety will not lead her -into mischief.’ - -The unwieldy Luc boat was by this time swaying to and fro at the bottom -of the ladder. A Luc fisherman stood, with bare brawny arms extended, -for Cassandra’s reception. A few seconds later Cassandra and boat, -alike, had become a dark spot on the water, luminous now with the -quick-moving facets of the rising tide. Dinah was alone, indeed! - -She stood, for a time, mechanically watching the row of lights on -shore, mechanically listening to the steam as it puffed, with energy -unmistakable, from the funnels of the _Princess_. Then, uncertain of -tread, heavy of limb as of heart, she groped her way below, resolved, -silently, to endure whatever fate the coming half-hour might have in -store for her. - -The cabin lamps were as yet unlighted. Dinah entered the ladies’ -saloon, at hazard. She sank down on the couch nearest the door. Then, -burying her face between her hands, she strove, with might, to collect -her thoughts, to stifle the resentment against Gaston which conscience, -sternly just, already condemned as paltry--ungenerous. - -It was of her own perverse will that she accepted Rex Basire’s -invitation. How often had Gaston warned her that, with her temper, -her opinions, she would find ‘society’ a dangerous experiment; a game -in which she would be likely to stake gold against other players’ -counters! She had come here to-day to please herself. She had no right -of control over her husband’s actions. Gaston lived according to the -light of his own conscience, not hers. He was courteous by temperament, -fond of little unforeseen deviations from any laid-down programme, -prompt, always, in putting his time, his energy, himself, at the -service of his friends. - -‘Langrune is not the end of the earth.’ She recalled his cheery, -amused tone, as he was vanishing with Linda across the dunes. ‘If the -_Princess_ should start without us, we must get back by Cherbourg -to-morrow. It will fit in very well.’ She remembered Doctor Thorne--his -self-possession, his confidence in Gaston. ‘If my friend Arbuthnot is -there, one’s fears are set at rest.’ She could imagine Linda’s witty -reproduction of the whole too delicious accident when they should get -back to Guernsey. Oh, let her gain mastery over herself--mastery! Let -to-day’s lesson be a deeper one than can be gained by nice observance -of tone, or look, or manner. Let her have learned to conquer small -jealousies, to be wary of quick judgments, to construe the actions, the -intentions of others, nobly. - -Dinah resolved in the spirit to be strong. Meanwhile, she realised, -with growing certitude, that she was weak, exceedingly, in the flesh. -Her breath came with greater effort, her hands grew colder and more -clammy. Rising with difficulty, she set herself to search for her cloak -among a pyramid of wraps that lay, disordered, on a neighbouring couch, -dimly discernible by aid of a newly-lighted lamp from the main cabin. -Dinah Arbuthnot’s cloak lay (can Fate not be ironical even in the -disposition of a heap of shawls?) immediately above a soft, long Indian -scarf belonging to Mrs. Thorne. As she lifted it, the subtle Eastern -perfume, associated always with Linda’s presence, seemed to Dinah, in -a second, to fill the cabin. A feeling of sickness, a sudden access of -keen personal repulsion, took hold of her--all-powerful hold; for, this -time, it was instinct, not reason, that moved her anger. She flung down -her cloak, with a childish sense of disgust at having handled it. She -sank back, passively, upon the sofa.... - -A few minutes later came in the steward to light the centre lamp. -Seeing one of the guests alone, and deathly white, he took the -commonsense, or steward’s view of the situation. Feeling queer, -already? Let him get the lady a brandy-and-soda, a glass of wine, -then? Settle the system before they got into rough water--though, for -the matter of that, they would have a splendid passage. Sea like a -millpond, tide favourable. Nothing but running into one of these here -Channel fogs to be feared. - -‘I will take some soda-water, if you please.’ Odd and far away Dinah’s -voice sounded to herself. ‘I am a good sailor in general. I would -rather have a rough sea than a smooth one. But this evening I am a -little tired. I feel thirsty.’ - -She drank the soda-water with a sense of refreshment. ‘The wretchedest -preparation, without the B., that could be made for a voyage,’ thought -the steward, as he stood, salver in hand, waiting for her glass. Then, -when the man had again left her alone, she crept back into her place, -held her hands tight to her throat to relieve the cruel sensation that -well-nigh choked her, and waited. - -Waited--how long she knew not--perhaps, a short ten minutes only. In -recalling the whole scene, later--the swell of the rising water, the -murmur of voices in the adjacent cabin, the clinging, overpowering -Indian perfume--in summing up, I say, each external detail of that -miserable evening, it would afterwards seem to Dinah Arbuthnot that no -year of her life ever took so much hard living through as those mortal -minutes. - -At length they came to an end. Doubt was to be set at rest, or turned -into yet sharper certainty. For she could tell, first by the muffled -thud of rowlocks, then by the splash of oar blades in the water, that -the second boat was arriving. She could distinguish Geoffrey’s voice, -Lord Rex Basire’s, old Doctor Thorne’s--very loud this last, and -didactic, but yielding Dinah’s heart no consolation. Would not Doctor -Thorne talk loud and didactically whether his Linda had returned from -her quest of him or not? - -After a time the voices began to disperse. There came the measured -yoy-a-hoy of the sailors, the shuffle of feet, the fall of cable on -deck. Then Dinah heard the steward saying to one of the boys that they -had weighed anchor. And not a moment too soon. With the air so thick, -and the glass nohow, the skipper ought to have started, on this badly -buoyed coast, a couple of hours ago. A French pilot might be all very -well, but to his, the steward’s mind, English daylight was better. - -Dinah knelt upon a sofa, inclined her face to the cool air of an open -porthole, and watched the receding French coast. There lay the villages -of Luc and Langrune, a line of lights flickering, misty and irregular, -above the shimmer of the sea. Far away in the distance rose one larger -light, the signal lantern in the tower of La Delivrande. Dinah watched, -automatically. She noted scarcely more than a playgoer, carried away by -excitement, notes the scene-painting at the most thrilling situation of -a drama. To her, as to a child, the whole world was concentrated under -the passion that governed herself. Had Gaston come back? She longed to -know this with a longing which one must call to mind her narrow past -life, her more than girlish simplicity, rightly to understand. And -still she did not attempt to leave the cabin. Her strength, moral and -physical, seemed paralysed. How should she make her way, alone, up on -deck, search in the darkness for Gaston, ask questions, parry, with a -jest, such airy explanation of her husband’s disappearance as might, on -all sides, be offered her? - -A voice, close at her elbow, made her start guiltily. - -‘No one in the ladies’ saloon? Well, then, Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot -must have tumbled overboard. Her husband and I have vainly searched -the _Princess_ for her.’ Oh, kindly Cassandra! Was no small bit of -embroidery tacked on, just at this juncture, over the bare truth? ‘So -much for trusting valuable entomological specimens out of one’s own -hands!’ - -‘Miss Tighe, I am here. I have been trying to get a little warm. Your -moth is safe,’ stammered Dinah. - -She scarcely knew in what fashion the words left her dry and trembling -lips. - -‘Moth? A country-bred girl like you not to know that a speckled -white, although, by luck, we caught him out of hours, is a butterfly! -Well, I have brought back our other pair of butterflies, safe and -sound.’ Before saying this Cassandra had put on her spectacles and -carried her box beneath the doorway lamp. She made a great show of -examining its contents, critically, thus allowing Dinah to recover her -self-possession, unnoticed. ‘From certain murmurings I overheard among -the sailors I believe we, all three, narrowly escaped being abandoned -to our fate.’ - -‘Mrs. Thorne had begun to think that her husband was on board?’ - -Dinah’s constrained tone was one of doubt rather than inquiry. - -‘My dear, nobody ever knows what Mrs. Thorne thinks. Linda is a -charming woman, the pleasantest companion, when she chooses, in the -world. But, as the Doctor says, Linda might reason. These electric -transitions, from gay to grave, and back to gay again, are embarrassing -in a world where the rest of us walk by rule. Linda Thorne is all -impulse.’ - -‘Ah!’ - -‘At the first word of the Doctor’s disappearance, to run off, -helter-skelter, like a schoolgirl ... yes, Linda Thorne,’ cried -Cassandra, peering round at some person or persons across her shoulder, -‘I am talking of you. Come down and hear all the wicked things I have -to say. At the first word of the Doctor’s disappearance to run off -like a schoolgirl, taking somebody else’s husband with her! It was -atrocious! Who is that behind you, Linda? Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. Tell -Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, from me, that everything worth looking after on -board the _Princess_ is found.’ - -As Cassandra Tighe scored her point, not without a little air of -triumph, Linda tripped gaily down into the cabin. - -‘We are to have the very finest weather, Miss Tighe, and all the world -means to remain on deck. Only, of course, one wants shawls. What! Mrs. -Arbuthnot?’ - -Pausing in her search among the heap of wraps, it would seem that Linda -recognised Dinah’s presence with amiable surprise. But Dinah was coldly -silent. - -‘Surely you, of all people, are not going to become a cabin passenger? -My dear creature, I have just escaped the quaintest little adventure -in the world! But for Miss Tighe’s advent, I should have eloped, yes, -run clean, straight away, with your husband. We were planning it all -out, from a commercial standpoint, as we flew, frantically, along the -sandhills after Robbie. Were we not, Miss Tighe?’ - -‘I leave these matters to your own conscience,’ was the dry answer. -Possibly, Cassandra recollected that the butterflies were not flying -very frantically at the moment when she captured them on the starlit -dunes. ‘If you had run away with Mrs. Arbuthnot’s husband, I should -have taken good care to run with you. I warned the Doctor of my -intentions before I left the _Princess_.’ - -‘It was quite too unselfish, Miss Tighe, and, pecuniarily, most -àpropos. I possessed five sous in copper (Guernsey currency); Mr. -Arbuthnot was worth something under twenty francs. We should have had -to leave our watches at the Mont de Piété, for me, alas! no novel -experience, the moment we reached Cherbourg. Things have turned out, -under Providence, for the best. Only, I think, I _think_,’ admitted -Linda, with arch frankness, ‘the Doctor rather regrets having to retire -into insignificance. If I had not come back, Robbie would have remained -the hero of the situation.’ - -Mrs. Thorne ran through all this in her accustomed little tired, -inconsequential way of talking, winding up, finally, with a long and -earnest yawn. She then danced up to a strip of mirror at the best -lighted end of the cabin and settled herself to the contemplation of -her own image with interest. She dabbed her cheeks first with rice -powder, then with eau-de-cologne, then with powder again, producing -these cosmetics without a show of disguise from a tiny gilt case that -hung at her waist-belt. She arranged the folds of her cachemire scarf -above her sleek head in a certain Gitana mode, which, like all good -art, gave an idea of unpremeditation, and became her mightily; she -pinned a knot of feathery grass, a memento, doubtless, of the starlit -dunes, in her breast. - -Easy to predict that Linda Thorne would not be sea-sick to-night! She -was warming to the situation, intended to work up her part--everything -in human life was a part to Linda Thorne--with spirit. - -‘Come up on deck, Mrs. Arbuthnot, will you not? Surely, with your -splendid sea-going qualities, you are not going to stop down in this -Black Hole of Calcutta?’ - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot will come up when I do,’ cried Cassandra, who, with an -added pair of spectacles on her nose, was pinning out insects under a -lamp. ‘Go your ways, Linda Thorne, wise ones if you can, and leave Mrs. -Arbuthnot and me to follow ours.’ - -‘I would not be wise if I might,’ said Linda, giving an expressive -backward glance across her shoulder. ‘If I were wise ... I should see -myself as other people see me.’ - -And having uttered this, the acutest speech that ever left her lips, -away floated Mrs. Thorne, with her powdered cheeks, her cachemires, and -her Indian fragrance, from the cabin. - -Dinah could hear the languid accents, the little stage laugh (learnt -from the stalls), for a good many seconds later. She could distinguish -the voices, too, of Gaston, and of Rosie Verschoyle. How heart-whole -they all seemed. How frequent was their laughter! What a light time the -past hours had been to every one of the party but herself! Gaston’s -philosophy, thought Dinah, taking an unconscious downward step, might -be the true one after all, then. Live while we live! What had she -profited by a strain of feeling too tall for the occasion, by the -tiptoe attitude, by throwing away gold where a more reasonable member -of society would have quietly staked counters? - -‘Any admittance here?’ exclaimed a masculine voice, as an impatient -hand pushed back the cabin door. ‘Why, Mrs. Arbuthnot, I have been -searching for you everywhere. I want you to come up on deck at once, -please, and see a comet. Not a comet really, you know,’ Lord Rex went -on, looking hard at Dinah’s white face. ‘Some kind of Japanese fire -balloon sent up by the French people. However, it does just as well as -one.’ - -‘Yes, my dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, go,’ cried old Cassandra, glancing up, -over her double spectacles, from her pinning. ‘It will take me an -hour’s work to bring all my specimens straight. And your colour shows -you want oxygen. You are right, Lord Rex. Take Mrs. Arbuthnot on deck -to see this comet which is not a comet. I shall follow by and by.’ - -And Dinah Arbuthnot obeyed. She did more. Dinah allowed the tips of her -cold fingers to rest within Rex Basire’s hand as he pioneered her up -the cabin stairs into the semi-darkness of the night. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXI - -WIFE AND HUSBAND - - -The outlook continued promising overhead. The tide was at the right ebb -for making Barfleur Point. At an earlier hour than had been hoped for, -the friendly Casket lights showed, at intervals, above the starboard -bow of the _Princess_. The skipper, cheerful of voice, promised his -passengers that in forty minutes more--tide and weather remaining -favourable--the vessel would be lying well to leeward of Alderney. - -All this time Dinah had found no opportunity for exchanging a -conciliatory word with her husband. She felt that Gaston did not so -much avoid as ignore her. He always contrived to be deep in talk with -some other person when his wife sought to draw near him. He did not -address her, did not recognise her presence. At length, abruptly, just -as Dinah was nerving herself to make some desperate first advance, Mr. -Arbuthnot crossed the deck. He came up to the spot where she and Rex -Basire stood together. With the pleasantest air imaginable he put his -hand under Dinah’s arm. - -‘Suppose you take a turn with me, wife?’ Mr. Arbuthnot made the -proposal in his lightest tone, Rex Basire listening. ‘Do you see that -revolving beacon? No, my dear, no! Neither aloft on the funnel, nor in -my face, but away, far as you can look, to the right. That beacon marks -the Casket Rocks. And there, straight ahead, but without any lights -showing, as yet, we are to believe is Alderney. Let us make our way to -the forecastle. We shall have a better view.’ - -The fore part of the deck was deserted, save by two or three knots of -sailors, talking low together in patois French as they watched the -horizon. Gaston and Dinah were practically alone. She felt the heart -within her throb uneasily. An icy politeness lay beneath the surface -geniality of Gaston Arbuthnot’s manner. Dinah was prompt to recognise -it. - -‘What a long day this has been, Gaston. I shall want no wider -experience in respect of yachting picnics.’ - -‘You are changeable, Dinah. As we walked from Langrune to Luc, it was -agreed between us that the day should be considered a success.’ - -‘A great deal has happened since then,’ exclaimed Dinah, under her -breath. - -‘Nothing very notable, surely. If I recollect right, I did my duty to -the extent of two waltzes in the Luc ball-room, and you, my dear child, -had a long, a most amusing and intellectual conversation, I cannot -doubt, with Lord Rex Basire, in one of the doorways.’ - -‘Lord Rex Basire is never amusing when he talks to me.’ - -‘Then I congratulate you on your proficiency in seeming amused. It -ranks high as a difficult social art, even among veterans.’ - -‘Gaston!’ she exclaimed, a new and poignant doubt making itself felt. - -‘Dinah.’ - -‘I don’t know what to think of your tone. Why have you never said a -word, never looked at me during all these hours? Are you offended?’ - -‘On the contrary,’ retorted Gaston. They were now out of sight, out of -earshot of everybody. As he spoke, Arbuthnot withdrew his hand from -his wife’s arm. ‘I am thoroughly your debtor. It was the sense of my -indebtedness that made me bring you here. I wished to thank you without -an audience, quietly.’ - -‘To thank _me_,’ stammered Dinah, in a sort of breathless way. -‘For--for----’ she broke off, reddening violently. - -Gaston watched her. ‘For your solicitude, your kindly tact! That idea -of despatching the old lady in the scarlet cloak to chaperon me was -boldly original, a fine intuition of wifely vigilance----’ - -‘Gaston! I never----’ - -‘Yet scarcely the sort of vigilance that passes current in a -commonplace and scoffing world. If you had the smallest spark of -humour, Dinah--that missing sense! that one little flaw in your -character!--you would see things as the commonplace scoffing world sees -them.’ - -‘Should I?’ - -‘You would divine that, under no possible circumstances--really it -would be well to remember this for the rest of our mortal lives--under -no circumstances can I require an old lady, with or without a scarlet -cloak, as my chaperon.’ - -A different woman to Dinah might here have turned the tables on Gaston -Arbuthnot, have stoutly, truthfully disavowed responsibility as to -Cassandra Tighe’s movements. Dinah was too transparently honest to -defend herself as to the letter, knowing that she had been an accessory -in the spirit. - -‘When the time was so short--ten minutes more, Gaston, and the -_Princess_ would have started without you--I felt that my heart must -stop. Miss Tighe, any one, could have seen on my face what I suffered.’ - -‘I have no doubt that “any one” could, and did see it,’ said Gaston -Arbuthnot, with grave displeasure. ‘It would not occur to you to -make an effort at decent self-control, whatever ridicule you might -be bringing upon others. Does it never strike you, Dinah,’ he went -on, unjustly, ‘that other women have human sensibilities as well as -yourself--Linda Thorne, for instance? She rushed off, poor thing, -in the greatest agitation at the first whisper of the Doctor’s -disappearance, fearing nothing from Mrs. Grundy, fearing all things for -her husband. Was it generous, charitable, do you think, to let your -disapprobation be written, so that he who ran might read, upon your -face?’ - -‘I think,’ said Dinah, faithfully, ‘that Mrs. Thorne felt no agitation -whatsoever.’ - -Gaston also thought so. It was a point he would not commit himself to -argue out. - -‘There are feelings one must take for granted. Mrs. Thorne did the -right thing in refusing to start without her husband. I acted as I -judged best in determining to remain by her. That ought to have been -enough for you.’ - -‘Yes. It ought to have been enough.’ - -Dinah gazed before her at the purplish streak faintly dividing the -sea-line from the sky. It grew blurred and tremulous. Her eyes had -filled with tears. - -‘You had plenty of people to bear you company--Geoffrey, Miss Bartrand. -It is unbecoming in you, Dinah, to act like a wayward girl. However -matters had turned out about Doctor and Mrs. Thorne, what hardship -would there have been in your returning to Guernsey with Geoffrey and -without me?’ - -‘None, none! I was wrong from first to last. All this is my lesson, -remember. One cannot get a lesson by heart without a little trouble.’ - -‘One might learn it without making everybody else absurd,’ persisted -Gaston. ‘You asked me why I had never addressed a word to you, never -looked in your direction, since we put out to sea. I will tell you why, -my dear. I considered you dangerous. I was afraid.’ - -Dinah lifted up her face. She fixed her truthful and transparent gaze -full on Gaston Arbuthnot. - -‘I don’t understand you, Gaston. You know I never can understand when -you speak with a double meaning.’ - -‘Well, there was a certain electric look about you, a look prophetic of -lightning or thunder showers, for neither of which I am in the mood. -You ought to have chosen a husband of more heroic mould, Dinah. There -is the truth. A man, like the hero of a lady’s novel,’ observed Mr. -Arbuthnot, wittily, ‘always equal to a strained attitude. A man fond of -the big primeval human passions--love, hatred, jealousy. But you have -married me, and I am afraid you must take me as I am. You must also, as -often as you can--remember this, Dinah--as often as you can, endeavour -not to render me ridiculous.’ - -When Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot re-emerged out of the darkness, Gaston’s -hand was resting on his wife’s shoulder, Dinah’s face had recovered its -calm. It would have taken a keen observer of countenance to guess that -a breeze so stiff as the one we know of had just stirred the surface of -these two persons’ lives. Was Linda Thorne such an observer? - -Linda was standing alone in the gangway, her attitude one of -deliberation, when Gaston and his wife came aft. She kept her position, -speaking to no one, until Lord Rex, companionless, like herself, had -managed to find his way to Dinah’s elbow. Then Linda Thorne made -a move. She crossed to the vessel’s side. Resting her hand on the -bulwarks, she gazed heavenward. Such good lines as her throat and -shoulders possessed were well outlined against the pallid background of -sky. - -Gaston Arbuthnot followed her before long. - -‘We are fortunate, after all our misadventures, are we not? The mate -tells me that we have sighted Alderney. It seems likely that we shall -get back to Petersport without fog.’ - -‘And what, may I ask, do you mean by our misadventure?’ - -There was a ring of sharpness in Linda Thorne’s tone. - -‘Ah--what! The moment,’ said Gaston, ‘when gleams of a scarlet -cloak first flashed upon one along the sand-dunes seems, to my own -consciousness, about the most serious of them.’ - -‘You are singularly insincere, Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot!’ - -‘I cannot agree with you, Mrs. Thorne. My worst enemies, on the -contrary, have the grace to credit me with a sort of brutal frankness.’ - -‘And, supposing no scarlet cloak had appeared? You would willingly have -been left, a second Robinson Crusoe, on the desert shores of Luc?’ - -‘The cases are not parallel. Robinson Crusoe had only the society of -his man Friday.’ - -‘And there were no beaux yeux to weep for him! So many years,’ observed -Linda, ‘stand between me and the literature of my childhood that I am -uncertain about details. But I don’t think one ever heard of a Mrs. -Crusoe!’ - -Gaston knew that he was being laughed at. He kept his temper charmingly. - -‘And there is, very decidedly, a Mrs. Arbuthnot. When I think of Dinah, -I cannot call Miss Tighe’s advent a misadventure. Poor Dinah has a -child’s quick capacity for unhappiness. Her imagination would have -conjured up a dozen possible horrors, by sea and land, if I had not -returned to her.’ - -‘That is all so very, very pretty, is it not?’ Linda stooped, as if -watching the rush of the sea; Gaston Arbuthnot could not catch the -expression of her face. ‘We professional old travellers are toughened -and sun-baked out of all rose-water nervousness. Robbie has told -you--whom does he not tell?--the story of my being lost, actually lost, -in the Nilgiris? If I were to be mislaid for a fortnight, I really -don’t believe the Doctor would suffer a moment’s uneasiness.’ - -‘And yet you were so cruelly upset by _his_ disappearance. The -superiority,’ apostrophised Gaston, ‘of the unselfish sex over ours.’ - -‘I was not only upset by his disappearance,’ said Linda, still taking -an interest in the waves, ‘I am disturbed about him, in my conscience, -still. If Doctor Thorne takes the slightest chill to-night, we shall be -having the old jungle fever back upon him.’ - -Gaston sympathised as to this contingency, not, as yet, perceiving the -drift of Linda’s alarms. - -‘At Robbie’s age one cannot be too prudent. To run into one of these -cold Channel fogs might end in something quite too serious. And, -although the stars make a pretence at shining,’ Linda raised her head -with tentative playfulness, ‘the enemy is at hand. I feel fog in the -air.’ - -‘The air is clearer than it has been all day. In another three or four -hours the sun will have risen. We shall be in Guernsey----’ - -‘In another twenty minutes we shall be outside Alderney harbour. I was -talking matters over, some minutes ago, with Ozanne.’ Linda inspected -the white hand, resting on the bulwark, with attention. ‘And he has -most good-naturedly consented to let me and Robbie land. By signalling -promptly for a boat we shall not detain you _Princess_ people five -minutes. There is the dearest little primitive hotel in Alderney, close -to Maxwell Grimsby’s diggings. You remember my telling you about it?’ - -Gaston remembered Mrs. Thorne’s telling him about the dearest little -primitive hotel. - -‘The Doctor will have a good night’s rest to recruit his strength, and -to-morrow afternoon, if the day is warm, we shall make our way back to -our home and infant by the Cherbourg steamer.’ - -Now Maxwell Grimsby, a gunner by profession, a painter by love, was -one of Gaston Arbuthnot’s best artist friends--best, too, in the -higher acceptation of the elastic word. Grimsby was no manufacturer -of prettiness, no amateur idler. Did not a series of beach studies -bearing the well-known initials ‘M. G.’ testify to the world how -diligently this very summer’s enforced imprisonment in Alderney was -put to use? During the past fortnight Gaston had constantly vacillated -in his intention of looking up his friend, for ever declaring how -much better work a man might do on the grand old rock, yonder, than -disturbed by the hundred distractions of pleasant, idle, sociable, -little Sarnia--never starting, for ever wishing he were gone! Here was -occasion to his hand, a chance of looking up Grimsby without even the -preliminary trouble of packing one’s portmanteau! - -‘Of course you could not come with us,’ asserted Linda, in her little -undertone of mockery. ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot is such a child! She would -conjure up a dozen possible horrors if you were to be absent from her -so long.’ - -‘I am not sure that deserting the _Princess_ would be a courteous -action to our hosts,’ said Gaston Arbuthnot, hesitating under the first -touch of temptation. - -‘You are made of poorer stuff than your cousin,’ thought Linda, -glancing, for a second, at his handsome face. ‘To gain a victory -over Monsieur Geoffrey would be to gain a victory indeed.’ Then, -aloud--‘If we were to carry away any of the younger people I should -feel it treason to desert the _Princess_,’ she observed. ‘I would not -go, indeed, if Robbie and I were wanted as chaperons. Considering the -existence of Mrs. Verschoyle and Miss Tighe--in talking of chaperons, -Mr. Arbuthnot, you and I must never forget Miss Tighe--I think Doctor -and Mrs. Thorne may very well be spared. For you it is different.’ - -‘In what way?’ asked Gaston, wincing inwardly under her sarcasms. - -‘Oh, different, altogether. Too much depends upon your presence. Pray -do not think of such a revolutionary proceeding as taking flight. -You would never be allow--I mean, I am sure you would not find it -advantageous to run away. What messages do you send to Mr. Grimsby?’ - -‘None.’ - -‘That is severe. You do not believe in my delivering them intact?’ - -‘I mean to deliver them myself.’ - -Linda Thorne laughed incredulously. ‘I wish I could make an enormous -wager at this thrilling juncture,’ she remarked with persistence. -‘Come, Mr. Arbuthnot. Will you bet me a single pair of gloves that you -will be ... that you will quit the _Princess_ when we do?’ - -‘It would be betting on a certainty,’ said Gaston. ‘My mind is made up. -I am really glad of the chance of seeing old Max.’ - -‘You have told me something of the kind already. You refused a wager I -offered you last Monday afternoon, because it would have been “betting -on a certainty.” And yet, as the event proved, I should have won.’ - -‘The event will prove that you do not win now.’ - -There was more than a threat of impatience in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice. - -‘And you do accept my bet, then? You do stake a pair of gloves that you -are--that you will land at Alderney with Robbie and myself?’ - -‘If you are bent upon giving me a pair of gloves, Mrs. -Thorne,--iron-gray, seven and a half,--I shall accept them with -pleasure.’ - -‘Done! The bargain is concluded. My number, as you know, is six and a -quarter, Jouvin’s best. I wear eight buttons. And now,’ added Linda, -preparing to move away, ‘I must find our hosts, and make excuses. Had I -not better offer them on your behalf, too?’ - -‘You are too kind to me, Mrs. Thorne. I think I have just courage -enough to pull through the emergency, unassisted.’ - -Lord Rex was still lingering in Dinah’s neighbourhood when Linda -tripped airily across to the gangway, Gaston Arbuthnot following her. - -‘Doctor Thorne and I have to thank you, all, for quite one of the -most perfect excursions in the world. I shall put a mark against the -subaltern’s picnic,’ said Linda, diplomatically. ‘It has been one of -the true red-letter days of my life.’ - -‘Don’t talk of the picnic as over, Mrs. Thorne. The subalterns look -forward to some hours more of your society, even without the promised -fog.’ - -‘Ah, that terrible fog! I must confess, the word makes me nervous, for -the Doctor’s sake. A fog, you know, means damp--that constant bugbear -to us old East Indians.’ - -‘But the voyage is half over. Here we are, almost, in Alderney harbour.’ - -‘And here, I am afraid, my husband and I ought to bid you all -good-night. Captain Ozanne has offered to signal for a boat. We should -not delay the _Princess_ five minutes. Really and truly, Lord Rex, I -think the wisest course will be for Doctor Thorne to land.’ - -‘Doctor Thorne to land? Another mysterious disappearance! And shall -you, Mrs. Thorne, immediately follow suit, as you did at Luc?’ - -‘Of course I shall! The whole Luc comedy will be repeated.’ And here -Linda’s voice grew intentionally clear and resonant. ‘The Luc comedy, -with the original cast and decorations, for everybody’s amusement.’ - -It was a wantonly cruel speech--Dinah Arbuthnot stood within hearing! -Yet Linda Thorne’s conscience was void of offence. She belonged by -temperament to the irresponsible class of mortals who can never resist -the temptation of histrionic effect. For what, save histrionic effect, -had she cajoled the skipper, the old Doctor, Gaston, into this freak of -midnight disembarkation? And when once a woman’s tongue and actions are -ruled by the eternal desire for smart dramatic point, it must be clear -that other women’s sufferings will pay the price of her success. - -Dinah’s heart froze. She divined, without going through any distinct -process of reason, what announcement she was likely to hear next. - -‘If the Luc scene is to be repeated, I conclude you, too, are going to -desert us?’ - -Lord Rex Basire addressed himself to Gaston Arbuthnot. - -‘Well, it has been borne in upon one during the last fortnight that it -was a duty to look up old Grimsby,’ began Gaston. ‘And this----’ - -‘And this is duty made easy. Go, my dear fellow, if you have had enough -of us,’ cried Lord Rex, lightly. ‘But go on one condition--that you do -not take Mrs. Arbuthnot. Mrs. Arbuthnot is our chaperon-in-chief. We -cannot spare her.’ - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot has Miss Bartrand under her charge--have you not, -Dinah? I am afraid you could scarcely----’ - -‘I should, under no circumstances, think of landing at Alderney,’ said -Dinah, in a voice uncomfortably strange to Gaston’s ear. ‘I am not -afraid of fog. I do not wish to see Mr. Maxwell Grimsby. Why should I -leave the _Princess_?’ - -‘Where your presence is the life of the whole party,’ pleaded Lord Rex. -‘You must not let your husband persuade you into throwing us over, Mrs. -Arbuthnot.’ - -Quietly, firmly, came Dinah’s answer: - -‘You need not be afraid. There is no risk of my being persuaded, Lord -Rex. I am a great deal too wise,’ she added, ‘to go away from people -who care to have me.’ - -And no further word of explanation or of farewell was exchanged -between Dinah and her husband. Into the irrevocable mistakes of life is -it not singular how men and women constantly drift after this blind, -automatic fashion? - -Only at the last moment, when the _Princess_ had slackened speed, when -the boat that had been signalled for was fast approaching from Alderney -harbour--only at this last moment, I say, Gaston addressed a remark to -Geff which Dinah felt might be taken by her, if she chose. - -‘I shall be back to-morrow, unless anything very unforeseen happens. If -it does, I can telegraph for my portmanteau, and----’ - -Geoffrey whispered a word or two in his cousin’s ear. ‘Of course, of -course. I have every intention of coming back. I merely said “if.” You -will have a magnificent passage,’ added Gaston, shaking hands heartily -with Lord Rex. ‘Duty takes me to old Max. Inclination would have kept -me with my hosts on board the _Princess_.’ - -Despite the neat turning of this speech, away Mr. Arbuthnot and the -Thornes went,--Linda, with her cachemires, her bouquets of wild -flowers, her fears for Robbie, her wafted kisses to her friends, -creating little theatrical sensations to the last. The boat was visible -for a few seconds only, so swiftly did the _Princess_ again get under -way. There was a profuse waving of handkerchiefs. ‘Good-night, every -one!’ rang cheerily across the water in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice. And -then Dinah awakened to the knowledge that she was forsaken, this time -by no accident, but of cold-blooded, determined forethought--forsaken, -with all the world to see, with Lord Rex Basire persistently talking, -as though nothing of moment had happened, at her elbow. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXII - -ROSE-WATER SOCIALISM - - -Dinah did not turn from him. Nay, although her brain was in a whirl, -although her voice was not under command, although her heart was -bursting, Dinah’s lips smiled. She was monosyllabic, Lord Rex felt, but -monosyllabic with a difference. And eager to improve the scantiest, -most meagre encouragement, he began instantly to ransack such memory -and imagination as were his for pertinent subject-matter. - -Frothy small-talk, personal compliments, local gossip, were little -relished, as he had proved, by Dinah Arbuthnot. She did not read -newspaper trials, had never opened a society journal, knew nothing -about actors or actresses, or novels, or prime ministers, or popular -divines. You could not get her even to talk about herself. But -then, that face of hers! If one might, quietly, stand gazing at her -surpassing fairness as one does at a canvas or a marble, Lord Rex -Basire, on this summer night, would have asked nothing more. His duties -as a host, however, the sense that others might construe his silence -into deficiency of wit, forced upon him articulate speech. - -‘Awful hole, Alderney, for an idle man! Now I was stationed there for -three months and got through an awful lot of work. No good letting -circumstances beat you. I coloured a meerschaum first rate--worked at -it, morning, noon, and night. I taught two of my terriers to march on -hind legs, while I whistled the “Marseillaise.” Favourite tune of mine, -the “Marseillaise.”’ - -‘So your lordship has told me.’ - -Dinah thought of their first conversation at the rose-show. - -‘I loathe classic music--loathe everything, in art and literature, but -what I can understand. Ever seen Maxwell Grimsby’s Alderney sketches, -by the bye? Dab of greenish-gray for the sea. Dab of bluish-gray for -the clouds--Storms, Sunsets, Whirlwinds, things you may as well frame -upside down as straight, if you choose.’ - -No, Dinah had never seen them. - -‘Maxwell Grimsby’s an old friend, isn’t he, of Arbuthnot’s? That -accounts for your husband throwing over all us people on board the -_Princess_.’ - -To this there was no answer. The balls had, certainly, not broken -well as regarded Alderney. Clearing his throat twice, after a more -redoubtable pause than heretofore, Lord Rex at length sought a wild -and sudden refuge in English politics. He had never in his life talked -politics to a pretty woman, reserving his views, which were of the -rose-water socialistic school, for after-dinner eloquence among his -brother subs. So desperately new an experience as Dinah required -desperate measures! To talk well above this young person’s head, -thought Lord Rex, who held no mean opinion of his own intellect, might -awe her into appreciation. And the subject he chose for his experiment -was that of class inequality. - -The emptiness of all titles, the folly of all social preeminence, -were themes on which Lord Rex waxed hot, exceedingly. Perhaps he was -sincere. Rose-water socialism, I must admit, did not sit without a -certain grace on this sunburnt little dandy, a grace to which his -slinged arm, shot through in the forlorn defence of English Empire, -gave the added zest of piquancy. - -Dinah unthawed at once. She broke into talk. In the matter of class -differences, Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife held fixed opinions, and could -express them incisively. But her ideas were not Lord Rex Basire’s -ideas. Lord Rex had got a vast deal of rabid rhetoric by heart, very -picturesque rhetoric in its way, and coming from the lips of a duke’s -son; Dinah had sharp, clear knowledge, gained at first hand, through -the vicissitudes of her own marriage. To Lord Rex social inequality was -a party question--kind of thing, don’t you know, that, vehemently taken -up, may sometimes land a man, with a following, in the House! To Dinah -it was the hidden enemy, the impalpable barrier that stood between her -and her husband’s heart. Lord Rex had learnt pages of showy axioms to -demonstrate that social inequality should never exist. Dinah’s life was -one long, irrefragable, stubborn proof that it existed. - -‘Your remarks have a terribly Conservative flavour, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’ -When they had talked for some considerable time he told her this. -‘Impossible you can be a Conservative in reality?’ - -‘Gaston calls me an old-fashioned Whig. I don’t know the meaning of the -word. I only pretend to understand these things in the humblest way, -from my own standpoint.’ - -‘But you are in favour of the nationalisation of the land? You -would do away with the laws of primogeniture? You don’t think a few -thousand loiterers, slave-drivers, should hold big estates--for their -pheasants--because each elder son, let him be fool, knave, or coward, -is heir to them?’ - -‘Without such laws where would our English families be, my lord, our -barons, and earls, and great dukes, like your father?’ - -‘Oh, where they came from,’ said Lord Rex, disposing of the question -jauntily. ‘Labour was the original purchase-money paid for all things. -You believe that much, at least, Mrs. Arbuthnot?’ - -‘If the succession law was swept away we might lose more than we can -afford along with it.’ Dinah had heard ultra-revolutionary notions -freely aired at times among Gaston’s friends, and, in her one-sided -feminine way, had striven, over her cross-stitch, to think them out. -‘I, for one, should not like to see any church or chapel in England -turned into a lecture place for these new unbelievers.’ - -‘Unbelievers! Oh, that is quite a different story. We began by talking -about the folly of class differences.’ - -Dinah was silent awhile. Then: ‘It would be impossible for you and -me to think alike on all this,’ she told her companion, with a grave -smile. ‘You have seen so much of the world, Lord Rex, perhaps have -heard the debates in the Houses of Parliament!’ - -Lord Rex confessed that this intellectual advantage had befallen him. - -‘And I have just watched the lives, the manners of a few more or less -troubled men and women. Class differences, as you call them, may be -folly. They are the hardest facts I know, the....’ - -Dinah saved herself, just in time, from adding, ‘the cruellest.’ - -‘Beauty is the universal leveller,’ observed Lord Rex, with presence of -mind. ‘A perfectly beautiful woman would grace the steps of any throne -in Europe.’ - -‘Leave thrones alone, Lord Rex Basire! If the beautiful woman wanted to -make others happy, she would have most chance to do so in her own class -of life.’ - -‘And suppose the beautiful woman wanted to be happy herself, Mrs. -Arbuthnot?’ - -‘Happiness comes naturally if you see it on the faces of the people -round you.’ - -Their politics had not taken the turn Lord Rex desired. He harked back, -a little abruptly, upon his first premises. - -‘Yes, I am for absolute equality, Gardener Adam and his wife, and that -style of thing. I would make the shopkeeping capitalist, just as much -as the bloated aristocrat, turn over a fresh leaf. If I ever marry,’ -said Lord Rex Basire--‘don’t feel at all like marrying at present, but -if I ever do--I hope to get for my wife some simple little village -barbarian who has never been to a ball, never heard an opera, never -seen a racecourse in her life!’ - -‘A village barbarian--of what station?’ asked Dinah Arbuthnot. - -‘Matter of blank indifference. I should marry the girl, not her -station.’ - -‘And afterwards? Would the barbarian be accepted by your family? Or -would you accept hers? Or would you, both, give up society?’ - -‘That would suit me best! Give up society. United to the woman one -adored,’ said Lord Rex with fervour, ‘what could one want with -artificial pleasures, with the eternal bore of dinners and dances?’ - -Dinah gave a chill laugh. She remembered the days when Gaston Arbuthnot -was wont to use the like phrases, as a preface (so, in her present -jealous misery, she thought) to returning to the world and its -pleasures, unhampered by a wife. - -‘When you marry, my lord,’ she observed, distantly, ‘you will, if you -act wisely, choose some duke’s or earl’s daughter for your wife. Give -up that notion of the village barbarian. As time wore on, and ... and -the truth of things grew clear, the duke’s daughter would, at least, -understand you. There could be no discoveries for her to make.’ - -Lord Rex turned and faced Dinah Arbuthnot, good-humouredly ignoring the -coldness of her bearing towards himself. - -‘Your opinions are desperately mixed, Mrs. Arbuthnot. You may be -Conservative in theory--you would be a staunch Republican in practice! -I am afraid, now, that a man with the misfortune--I mean, you know,’ -stammered Lord Rex, lowering his voice, ‘that you could never bring -yourself to care, ever so little, for a man with any wretched sort of -handle to his name.’ - -‘I beg your pardon, my lord?’ - -‘A man belonging to the most useless class of all--the class that so -many of us who are in it would gladly see done away with! Such a man -would never find favour in your sight?’ - -‘Would have found, do you mean, when I was a girl of seventeen?’ Dinah -asked, in tones of ice. ‘I can give no answer to that. Girls’ hearts -are moved by such trifles--a title, even, might turn the balance. But -I and my sisters lived in a little Devonshire village. We saw nothing -whatever of high folks, and----’ - -‘I am not talking of Devonshire villages!’ exclaimed Lord Rex, -interrupting her hastily, but dropping his voice still lower. ‘I am not -talking of the time when you were seventeen--I mean now.’ - -Dinah recoiled from him on the instant. Idle compliments had moved -her, at length, to an extent Lord Rex dreamed not of. For she could -not forget that this was all part of her lesson, that her companion -was making speeches such as better born women, careless mothers, wives -of the type of Linda Thorne, might just listen lightly to, parry, and -forget. With the thought came a thought of Gaston. A flood of shame -tingled in her cheeks. - -‘You ask me questions beyond my understanding, Lord Rex.’ So after a -strong effort of will she brought herself to speak. ‘My choice was -made, happily, long ago. How could any man but Gaston find favour in my -sight?’ - -Now Lord Rex Basire, his tender years notwithstanding, had seen plenty -of good feminine acting, of the kind which dispenses with footlights -and the critics, the acting required in the large shifting comedy -of human life. Although his own delicacy was not extreme, or his -perception sensitive, some unspoiled fibre in his heart vibrated, -responsive to the honesty of Dinah’s voice. This woman acted not, could -never act! Her fealty to her light, neglectful husband was part of -herself. Duty and happiness for Dinah were simply exchangeable terms. -She could taste of the one only in the fulfilment of the other. - -‘That was very charmingly expressed, Mrs. Arbuthnot. I hope, when I -marry, my wife will say the same pretty things of me, if I deserve -them, which I shall not! Characters like mine don’t reform.’ - -‘There will be more chance of reformation if you marry than if you -don’t--especially if you choose the duke’s daughter,’ added Dinah, -stiffly, ‘not the barbarian.’ - -‘And without any marrying at all! If some woman, as good as she is -fair, would hold out her hand to me in friendship, would let me think -that I held a place rather lower than a favourite dog or horse would -hold in her regard! If--if--ah, Mrs. Arbuthnot! if _you_----’ - -But Lord Rex speedily discovered that he was apostrophising the waves -and the stars. At the moment when his eloquence waxed warmest, Dinah -Arbuthnot, village barbarian that she was, had walked away, without one -syllable of excuse, from his lordship’s side. - -He watched the outlines of her figure as long as they were discernible -through the gloom; then, drawing forth his vesuvians and tobacco pouch, -prepared to smoke a lonely pipe of wisdom on the bridge. Lord Rex was -in a fever of perplexity. Until the last five days he had never cared -for living mortal but himself. His brief fealties to the prettiest -face of the hour, Rosie Verschoyle’s among the number, had been so -many offerings at the shrine of small personal vanity. All this was -over. His surrender to Dinah’s nobler beauty, his recognition of -Dinah’s pure and upright nature, had roused him thoroughly out of self, -made him look searchingly at the aims, the pleasures of life, and -acknowledge that there were human affections, human fidelities, high -above the range of his own light and worldly experience. Did happiness -thrive in that loftier, chill atmosphere? Was Gaston Arbuthnot to be -congratulated, wholly, on his lot? - -One thing was certain--so Rex Basire decided, as he betook himself -gloomily to the bridge. However this drama of domestic life might end, -it would be monstrous, impossible, that he, Rex Basire, should be -peremptorily dismissed therefrom, dismissed as one occasionally sees -the frustrated stage villain, long before the final falling of the -curtain! - -‘And even if it is so,’ mused Lord Rex, half aloud, and drawing upon -reminiscences of Nap. in his ill-humour, ‘if no choice lies before one -but to “accept misery,” misery let it be! The man who goes blue does -not invariably find himself in the worst position at the end of the -game.’ - -But the lad’s philosophy was lip-deep only. Lord Rex Basire had never -felt less cynically indifferent to loss and gain than in this hour. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIII - -CLOSE TO PORT - - -The short June night drew to its close, and still the weather continued -fair. The sky was full of stars, a solitary lambent planet quivered in -the east. By the time the moon had sunk, with pale metallic glow, above -the motionless Channel, a welcome point of fire was visible over the -starboard bow of the vessel--the beacon of Castle Cornet lighthouse. - -A little flutter ran through the groups of expectant people keeping -watch together upon the deck of the _Princess_. It was well to have got -back safely, and without fog. And still, whispered the younger ones -regretfully, the most delightful picnic in the world had come to an -end, all too soon! Even Mrs. Verschoyle, emerging with salts-bottle, -with chattering teeth, from the cabin, conceded that, for a yachting -expedition, and although L’Ancresse Common would have been a thousand -times more reasonable, their misadventures had been few. How -comforting, murmured the poor lady, with a shudder, if it were not for -the cold--this curiously increasing cold--to keep one’s eyes on the -familiar harbour light, to realise that in another hour-and-a-half at -latest, they would be all warm and asleep in their beds! - -But the cold increased still, and, for a midsummer night, was, -undoubtedly, no common cold. It found its way through plaids and -waterproofs, it got down throats, it caused fingers to become numbed. -The mate was seen to button up his pilot jacket as he made his way with -precipitate haste to the men on watch, the skipper moved from one foot -to the other as he stood consulting his compass. Both skipper and mate -glanced anxiously ahead, towards the west, where no horizon showed. - -‘One would, scarcely have expected the stars to set so suddenly,’ -observed Mrs. Verschoyle. In this lady’s youth it is probable that -schoolgirls did not, as now, learn the exact sciences. ‘But depend upon -it, the captain knows his way. The sailors are taking precautions, I -heard the steward say so downstairs, by using the lead. And I remarked -that they were seeing most attentively to the small boats. Besides, I -have heard more than one gun fired. No sound so reassuring at sea as -the report of a gun! A skilled old mariner like Ozanne would not be -dependent on anything so chancy as the stars.’ - -‘But, mamma, the harbour lighthouse has set, too,’ cried Rosie -Verschoyle, who stood shivering at her mother’s side. ‘Everything is -setting. I don’t see our own funnel. I don’t see the flower in your -bonnet as clearly as I did two minutes ago.’ - -‘I wish you would talk soberly, child. You know how much I dislike -this kind of ill-timed chaff. Who ever heard of a lighthouse setting?’ -observed Mrs. Verschoyle, with melancholy commonsense, ‘and why does -the _Princess_ go so slow? The skipper, no doubt, has his reasons, -still he might remember we are not all as fond of the sea as he is. -I was never less nervous in my life, and--Sailor! Sailor!’ Mrs. -Verschoyle flung herself before a figure, wrapped up in tarpaulin, -crowned by a sou’-wester which loomed with gigantic proportions through -the thick air. ‘Would you say, if you please, why the steamer goes so -slow? And are we in danger--off our track or anything? And why does -one seem all at once to lose sight of Castle Cornet lighthouse?’ - -The sailor was a weatherbeaten old Guernseyman, possessing about twelve -words of Anglo-Saxon in his vocabulary. Mrs. Verschoyle, however, -in her agonised desire for truth, stretched her arms forth in the -direction of the vanished red light. She also articulated the words -Castle Cornet with tolerable distinctness. Her meaning had made itself -clear. - -The answer, proceeding from the depths of a gruff, tobaccoey throat, -was incisive: - -‘_Brouillard!_’ - -And _brouillard_ it proved, clammy, ice-cold, yellow, after the -manner of all mid-Channel fogs. At first every one affected to take -this reverse of fortune as a jest, the little bit of mock danger that -was needed to point a moral to the preceding day’s enjoyment. So -providential, said the ladies, in pious but quavering chorus, that the -_Princess_ lay close on shore before the fog grew thick. The skipper’s -duty, clearly, was to make straight for St. Peter’s harbour and land -them. Only, why lose time? Why steam so slowly? What object could -Captain Ozanne have in exposing them to this mortal cold a moment -longer than was needful? - -Mrs. Verschoyle, after a few minutes’ suspense, voted for independent -action. She had, indeed, broached a project of creeping up to the men -at the wheel and imploring them to ‘turn faster,’ when there came a -general stir among the crew, followed by a rattling sound which most -of the party had sufficient sea-going experience to recognise. The -_Princess_ was about to cast her anchor. - -Just at this juncture appeared Lord Rex, fresh from hurried -consultations with Ozanne and the boatswain. A suspicious unconcern was -on Lord Rex Basire’s face, a note of forced cheerfulness in his tone. - -‘Lucky we have got so near home, is it not, Mrs. Verschoyle? We are -about two miles from shore, they say,--Ozanne, of course, knows every -yard of water,--just within or without the _Grunes_, whatever the -_Grunes_ may mean. We shall only have to ride half an hour or so at -anchor--awfully jolly sensation, I can tell you, with a south-west -swell. And then, as the mist rises, we shall steam clean into -Petersport.’ - -But this show of jauntiness misled no one. The De Carterets, Cassandra -Tighe, Marjorie Bartrand, all understood their position better than did -Lord Rex. And it was a position of the utmost gravity. The _Princess_ -was lying in dense fog, surrounded by shoals, across the very highway -of the Channel night steamers. For an old and wary seaman like Ozanne -to have been forced to anchor at such a strait did but render the fact -of his helplessness more pointed. - -‘What does it all mean? Are we not close to port, madam?’ - -The ladies were pressing together in groups. Dinah whispered the -question across Cassandra Tighe’s shoulder. - -‘Close to port--of one kind or another,’ answered Cassandra, vaguely -unorthodox to the last. ‘As long as nothing runs into us we may do well -enough. And dawn is at hand. At sunrise the fog may lift. Your husband -ought to be here with you,’ she added, misinterpreting a certain -vibration of Dinah’s voice. - -‘I thank God that he is not! Alone, there is nothing to be frightened -about. I thank God that Gaston is safe--warmly housed, away in -Alderney!’ - -And, in truth, a reasonless, half-pleasurable excitement, the reaction -after so much dull pain, had arisen in Dinah’s heart. - -That a dark ‘Perhaps’ lay straight and immediately before them, became -at each moment more plain. The continued firing of guns gave token -that other vessels were in the same plight as the _Princess_--once, -indeed, a steamer drifted so close that they could see the faint -reflection of her signal lamps, could hear the beating of her gong. The -dreary sound of the fog-horn, the muffled tramp of the men on watch, -the lights burning aloft in the ship’s rigging, the partially lowered -boats, the solemn faces of the skipper and the crew, all combined into -one unspoken word--Danger. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIV - -DEAD ROSE PETALS - - -Dinah Arbuthnot thought over the few quarrels, the many -misunderstandings of her married life, grown little, all, before the -hour’s largeness. She thought how, in five or six minutes more--a -collision, in weather like this, would be over briefly--in five or six -minutes more she and Gaston might be parted, with never another kiss -from his lips to hers. He would cherish the thought of her to his last -breath, if she were lost to-night. She recognised the true metal in the -man, was sure enough of that. Possibly, the remembrance of her, calm -and untroubled in her grave, might prove a stronger influence over him -for good, a keener stimulus to his genius, than her restless, jealous -life had ever been! - -On such terms, she asked herself, was death a thing to be met with -craven fear? - -Most of the party, obeying simple bodily wretchedness, crept, one after -another, below--poor frightened, frozen Mrs. Verschoyle at length -confessing that she would sooner be drowned comfortably in the cabin -than stand up longer against the sickening roll of the anchored vessel -on deck. Marjorie Bartrand, Dinah, and Miss Tighe lingered, Lord Rex -and Geoffrey Arbuthnot (forced into comradeship for once) keeping up -their spirits with cheerful talk, with stories well remembered or well -invented, until a pale forecast of daylight began slowly, uncertainly, -to filter through the fog. Then came a new untoward event to crown -this night of misfortune. A lad on the forecastle had stumbled in -the darkness over a coil of chain, and a cry quickly arose that the -surgeon’s hand was wanted. The poor fellow lay in agony, with a twisted -or broken ankle. Was there not some doctor on board among the gentlemen -who could help him? - -Away sped Geoffrey Arbuthnot on the instant, bestowing no consolatory -word--Marjorie’s heart honoured him for the omission--on the ladies -thus abandoned to their terrors and their fate. - -‘And now,’ said old Cassandra Tighe, hollow and far-away her voice -sounded through the blanket of fog, ‘I think we women folk will do well -to betake ourselves elsewhere. Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot has set us an -example of duty. You have been a pattern host,’ she added, addressing -Lord Rex, ‘and it is right you should be set free. We must take our -chance with the others in the cabin. You hear me, Marjorie Bartrand?’ - -Marjorie heard, but was stoutly recalcitrant. It was her duty, she -said, to die hard, and according to Act of Parliament. She would in no -wise give up her chance of the boats, should a collision befall the -_Princess_; could swim like a sea-gull if the worst came to the worst. -Lord Rex, of course, must be considered off duty. For herself, if Mrs. -Arbuthnot would stay with her under one of the covered seats, she asked -nothing better than to stop on deck and watch for sunrise. Cold? How -would it be possible to take cold at midsummer--swathed, too, in all -these wraps, and with the excitement of a first-class adventure to -maintain the circulation of one’s blood. - -And indeed, there burned a flame in Marjorie’s breast that kept her -whole being warm, a flame, pure and delicate, the like of which kindles -in these poor hearts of ours once only, perhaps, between our cradle and -our shroud. - -‘We are dismissed, Miss Tighe,’ said Lord Rex, gallantly offering his -unwounded arm, as Cassandra tottered to her feet. ‘Cling to me like -grim death. Don’t mind appearances. If Mrs. Arbuthnot and Miss Bartrand -have the courage to freeze, we must leave them to become icicles. I -want to see what can be done for our poor terrified ladies down below.’ - -Lord Rex must have seen to the terrified ladies expeditiously. Five -minutes later he was at his post again, no rug, no greatcoat about his -shoulders,--with feminine appreciation of detail, Dinah was prompt to -mark this sign of self-forgetfulness,--simply hovering near, ready, -she reluctantly acknowledged, to buy her life with his own should the -moment of peril really come. - -And Gaston Arbuthnot, all this time, was taking his rest, quietly -irresponsible, away in Alderney! Dinah, being a just woman, did not -credit her neglectful husband with the density of the fog. Still, in -danger, as in safety, the master passion possessed her heart. Her -thoughts, at one moment tender, at the next reproachful, were of -Gaston always. And her lips kept silence. Marjorie Bartrand also was -disinclined for talk. In Marjorie’s mind thrilled a remembrance so -sweet, so new, that she was glad passively to rest under it, as we -rest under the influence of a good and wholesome dream--a remembrance -of the half confession made to her in the Langrune lane, whose flower -smells and swaying yellow corn lingered in her senses still. And thus, -happiness being a far likelier narcotic than pain, it came to pass ere -long that while Dinah Arbuthnot watched with ever-increasing vigilance, -the young girl’s eyes grew heavy. The sound of the fog-horn at each -interval roused her up less effectually, her head dropped upon her -companion’s shoulder. ‘Your wish has come true, although I have the -misfortune to be myself, not Gaston.’ The cold and darkness vanished, -blessed sunshine began to shine around her, the fog-horn changed -to the note of the cricket among the ripening cornfields. Marjorie -Bartrand slept. - -By this time, Dinah judged, the sun must be close upon rising. It -seemed to her that the different objects on board were growing a very -little clearer. Moving with difficulty from her position, she rolled -up a pillow out of one of the plaids, and slipped it under Marjorie’s -sleeping head. She enveloped the girl’s whole figure in the thickest of -their rugs, then began to pace, as sharply as her stiffened limbs would -allow, up and down a short portion of the deck. - -‘We are not to say “ta-ta” to the wicked world this time, Mrs. -Arbuthnot.’ The wise remark was Lord Rex Basire’s. He had been absent -during the last quarter of an hour, and now reappeared bearing a salver -on which stood a cup of smoking coffee. (Looking back in after hours -on the shifting scenes of this night, Dinah often felt, remorsefully, -that her most fragrant and excellent coffee was prepared by Lord Rex’s -own hand.) ‘I overheard the steward talking with the mate just now, and -they prophesy a change of wind. If this comes true the fog will lift in -half an hour. See, I have brought you some coffee.’ - -Dinah glanced towards Marjorie. - -‘Oh, Miss Bartrand is fast asleep, dreaming of triposes and Girton! I -watched her nodding before I went below. It would be cruelty to wake -her.’ - -‘I must say the coffee smells tempting,’ Dinah admitted. Then, swayed -by quick impulse: ‘Lord Rex, you are very unselfish!’ she exclaimed. -‘You have thought of nothing but other people, and their troubles, all -this night.’ - -‘On the contrary, I have thought of myself. I have had a capital -time, Mrs. Arbuthnot--for I have been near you.’ Dinah never looked -more nobly handsome than at this moment. A cold night, passed without -sleep, a greenish-yellow fog, must be fatal adversaries, at 3 A.M., -to all mere prettiness. Dinah’s beauty could stand alone, without -colouring, without animation. The lines of her head and throat, the -full calm eyelids, the lips, the chin, could be no more shorn of their -fair proportions than would those of the Venus Clytie--should the Venus -Clytie chance to be exposed to the mercy of a Channel fog. - -‘You have been near a very stupid person, my lord. I have had too -much heaviness on my heart to talk,’ confessed Dinah. ‘I have scarce -exchanged a dozen words even with Miss Bartrand.’ - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot, have you forgiven me?--do, please, drink your coffee -before it is cold--don’t make me feel that I am in your way--boring -you as usual; have you forgiven a horribly foolish speech I made, just -before you disappeared in the darkness, you know?’ - -‘Which foolish speech?’ asked Dinah Arbuthnot, laconically, but -innocent of sarcasm. - -‘Ah, which? I am glad you are good-naturedly inexact. And still,’ went -on Lord Rex, with characteristic straightforwardness, ‘foolish or not, -I meant every word I said. If the woman I loved was free, would look -at me, I should be a changed man, would make my start in the world -to-morrow.’ - -‘Make your start?’ repeated Dinah, off her guard. - -‘Yes. Look after sheep in New Zealand, plant canes, or whatever they -do plant, in South America, and feel that with her, and for her, I was -leading a man’s life.’ - -And for a moment Dinah Arbuthnot’s pity verged on softness. - -Listening to the genuine emotion in Rex Basire’s tone, glancing at -the lad, in his thin drenched jacket, as he stood, holding the salver -ready for her coffee cup, his devotion--by reason, perhaps, of an -unacknowledged contrast--touched her. For a moment, only. Then she -stood, self-accused, filled with a sickening detestation of her own -weakness. That she was more than indifferent, personally, to Rex -Basire, that he would have been distasteful to her in the days when -she was fancy free, the girlish days before she first saw Gaston, -extenuated nothing to Dinah’s sensitive conscience. She had tacitly -condoned the folly of Rex Basire’s talk! Latent in her heart there -must be the same vanity, the same small openness to flattery, which -she had, without stint, condemned in women like Linda Thorne. Was this -self-knowledge a necessary sequel to the abundantly bitter lessons -which the last twenty-four hours had taught her? - -‘Do you forgive me, Mrs. Arbuthnot? Speak one word, only. I should -be the most miserable wretch living if I thought I had offended you, -consciously or unconsciously.’ - -‘I have nothing to forgive.’ But the tone was unlike Dinah’s. She, -herself, could detect its artificial ring. ‘On the contrary, you have -done me a service. You have given me hot coffee when I was perishing -with cold.’ - -A smile touched her lips, and, seeing this, and led away by her evasive -answer, Lord Rex took courage. - -‘Whatever evil luck the future may hold in store,’ he exclaimed, ‘I -shall have this moment to look back upon. “Just once,” I shall be able -to say, “on board a Channel steamer in a fog, the most beautiful of her -sex----”’ - -‘Beg pardon, sir,’ cried a hearty voice, close at hand. ‘If you and the -young lady’ll just step aside from this rope, here! Beg pardon, little -Miss.’ A stalwart, rough-handed sailor touched Marjorie’s shoulder as -though he were touching a bird. ‘Trouble you all to move a bit out of -this, ladies! Captain’s just a-going to heave anchor. We want a clear -passage down the ship.’ - -And as they moved, and while Marjorie was still rubbing the sleep from -her heavy eyes, began one of those gorgeous transformation pageants, -only to be witnessed in the fog districts of Europe. Through the -uncertain twilight, a violet streak that might be taken for coast, was -already visible on the port bow. Anon, to eastward, came a glow, felt -rather than seen by the eager watchers on board the _Princess_. A tint -of pinkish-yellow began to filter through the driving mists. Then the -wind strengthened. In another minute an enchantment of solemn flame and -amber rose over the distant table-land of Sark, a sensation of warmth -tingled in the air. The fog wreaths sank, as if drawn down by magic -hands into the waters, and Petersport, its windows twinkling, its red -roofs bathed in purest sunshine, lay disclosed. - -A quarter of an hour later the _Princess_ was in harbour. Not a -carriage, not a luggage truck stood on the deserted quays. One -conveyance only was to be seen, Cassandra Tighe’s village cart. Her -faithful old factotum, Annette, stood at the pony’s head. Among the -smart, Anglicised young island servants it was the fashion to call -Annette a little weak-headed. Tears of joy streamed down the honest -creature’s cheeks--symptoms, one would say, of a strong heart rather -than a weak head--as Cassandra, scarlet cloak, nets, boxes, and all, -crossed the gangway. Mistress and serving-woman kissed each other on -the cheeks. Then arose the question of transport. How many souls could -one tiny village cart be made to carry? - -‘Mrs. Verschoyle, of course, and Mrs. Arbuthnot. Oh, from Mrs. -Arbuthnot,’ cried Cassandra, ‘I will receive no denial. Miller’s Hotel -lies on the way to Mrs. Verschoyle’s house, and we would not for -worlds’--Cassandra glanced obliquely at Lord Rex Basire--‘take any of -our tired hosts out of their way. The young ladies can walk safely home -together in a band--a case of mutual chaperonage. All but Marjorie -Bartrand. You, Marjorie,’ said Miss Tighe, ‘are my bad sixpence. I -don’t know how to get you off my hands.’ - -Lord Rex rather faintly suggested that he should conduct Miss Bartrand -to the Manoir. But Marjorie laughed at the idea of wanting an escort. - -‘I would walk, alone, from the pier to Tintajeux, any dark midnight in -December, and enjoy the walk. Many thanks, Lord Rex, but I prefer my -own company. I--I---- - -She hesitated, stopped short. Geoffrey Arbuthnot had joined them. -His patient was going on well, would be carried by his mates to the -hospital as soon as the hospital doors were opened, some two hours -hence. ‘And I am free,’ added Geff. ‘Just in time, I hope, Miss -Bartrand, to walk out with you to Tintajeux?’ - -‘Oh, no, Mr. Arbuthnot. Miss Bartrand would prefer her own company,’ -cried a quartette of mischievous girls’ voices in chorus. - -But Marjorie had generally the courage of her opinions. Geff Arbuthnot -got one glance from beneath a sweep of jetty lashes which told him he -was not rejected. - -Away started the village cart, Annette urging the pony to a gallop over -the rough Guernsey quays. In less than ten minutes’ time Dinah had -bidden good-bye to Mrs. Verschoyle and Cassandra, and with nerveless -touch was pushing back the garden gate of Miller’s Hotel. - -Mindful of Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot’s possible return, the servants had -left unbolted an unconspicuous side-door by which Gaston usually came -in when he was out late. Through this door Dinah entered. With weary -steps she made her way to her sitting-room. Then, drawing up the blind, -she looked round her, almost as one might look who, for the first time -after a death, stands face to face with the familiar objects of his -ruined life. Something had, for ever, died since she left this room. -Gaston’s sketch-books, some of his modelling tools, his chalks, were -scattered on a table. A white rose she gave him before they started, -yesterday, lay withered on the window-seat. Dinah took the flower -in her hand mechanically. Its indefinable, delicate aroma, Gaston’s -favourite scent, unlocked a thousand poignant associations in the poor -girl’s brain. Their days of courtship, their first married happiness, -nay, her own perfect unswerving loyalty, seemed all to have become as -falsehood to her. She had learnt her lesson over-well, had eaten of the -tree of knowledge, would walk in Eden, at her lover’s side, no more. - -It was a moment of such blank surrender, such total sense of loss, as -comes but once in a lifetime. - -Fortunately, the world’s average of hope remains constant, poor -consolation though an acquaintance with the law may be to the hopeless. -At this moment rapid steps approached along the pavement. There was the -sound of hearty youthful laughter. Looking forth, the rose crushed with -passion between her hands, Dinah beheld a young girl and a man pass the -window. It was Marjorie and Geff, starting away, with buoyant pace, in -the direction of Tintajeux. A prophecy of all the joint to-morrows of -their lives shone brightly on the faces of both. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXV - -A TRAITRESS - - -But their speech betrayed them not. Roseate stage of the passion when -unacknowledged lovers are conscious each of the other’s secret, yet -talk upon commonplace subjects, look celibacy, stoutly, in the face, -still. If that hour only lasted! If the clover would not lose its first -honeyed sweetness, if the gold would stop on the wheat-fields, if the -thrushes would sing love-ditties till September, instead of becoming -respectable heads of families in June! - -‘You put forth to sea as a martyr, so I will not ask if you have -enjoyed yourself, Mr. Arbuthnot. I have. Without giving up a prejudice -against military folk in general,’ said Marjorie Bartrand, ‘I pronounce -the subalterns’ picnic to have been a success.’ - -‘Success--looked at from whose focus, Miss Bartrand? Poor Jack, with -his twisted ankle, scarcely appreciated the cleverness with which we -managed to kill a day and night of our existence, depend upon it.’ - -‘Nor did Mrs. Verschoyle. “If we had only been drinking tea,” so I -heard her make moan through the fog--“drinking tea as we used on -L’Ancresse Common, when the Colonel was in command!”’ - -‘Miss Tighe, at least, enjoyed herself. Other conquests may have been -made,’ observed Geoffrey, a little inappositely. ‘Miss Tighe captured a -new butterfly! A human being with a hobby possesses a joy that all the -sorrows and passions of our common nature cannot rob him of.’ - -But neither Mrs. Verschoyle nor Cassandra served to open out wider -interests. The conversation flagged sensibly, and Marjorie’s pace -quickened. For the first time since she began to read with Geff, -Marjorie felt that she was at a loss for subjects in talking to her -tutor. - -‘I am afraid your cousin, Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot, did not take much -pleasure out of the day.’ - -She made the remark after some deliberation, and without looking round -at Geoffrey’s face. - -‘It was a mistake for Dinah to go,’ Geoffrey answered, keeping his gaze -very straight before him. ‘Dinah’s life is a dull one. The kind of -Bohemian wandering existence which suits Gaston as an artist robs his -wife of the household tasks in which she could take honest heart. If I -were not so mortally afraid of you, Miss Bartrand----’ - -‘_Of me?_’ - -‘I should use a French phrase.’ - -‘Please do! I delight in your command of modern languages.’ - -‘I should call Dinah desœuvrée.’ Geff, you may be sure, pronounced the -word atrociously. ‘But she will never find compensation by frequenting -Gaston’s world. At this moment poor Dinah, I know, feels heavier in -spirit than if she had stayed quietly at home with her book and her -cross-stitch. - -‘She is beautiful beyond praise. In these regions one gets tired of -mere pink and white prettiness. It is a thing of the climate. Every -girl in the Channel Islands has her day of good looks. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s -is a face of which you could never grow tired.’ - -‘I believe I am no judge of beauty. Gaston tells me frequently to -admire people who to my taste are horrible monsters--“type Rubens,” -I think he calls them. It requires an education to admire the “type -Rubens.” One does not like a face, or one does like it--too much, -perhaps, for one’s own peace.’ - -Geff spoke in a tone that brought the blood into Marjorie’s cheeks. The -girl had blushed with other feelings could she have guessed--she, who -would accept second love from no man--that at this moment his thoughts -had wandered to a remote Cambridgeshire village, and to the peace of -mind he lost there! - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot seems to me so thrown away--you must let me -speak, although I know it is a subject on which you can bear no -contradiction--so cruelly thrown away upon a man like your cousin -Gaston.’ - -‘No other woman would suit my cousin Gaston half as well.’ - -‘That is the true man’s way of putting things. “Suit Gaston.” Would -not a less Frenchified, less universally popular husband, suit Dinah -better?’ - -‘I am quite sure Dinah, who should be a competent judge, would answer -“No.” Miss Bartrand,’ broke off Geoffrey, with notable directness and -point, ‘I wonder why you and I are discussing other people’s happiness -just at an hour when we ought to be thinking about our own?’ - -The remark was made with Geff’s usual seriousness. But Marjorie, -reading between the lines, discerned some obvious joke therein. She -laughed until the high-banked road along which they walked re-echoed to -her fresh voice. Then starting at a brisk run, she took flight along -a foot-track which, diverging from the chaussée, led through a couple -of breast-high cornfields, across a corner of the common land, to -Tintajeux. - -Untaught daughter of nature though she was, Marjorie knew that every -moment brought the supreme one nearer in which Geoffrey Arbuthnot -must speak to her of love. Although the conclusion was foregone, -although her whole girlish fancy was won, she strove, with such might -as she possessed, to stave that moment off. For she knew that she was -a traitress to her cause, an apostate from the man-despising creed in -which, recollecting the sins of Major Tredennis, she had gloried. - -Fast as her limbs would bear her the girl sped on, Geff Arbuthnot, with -swinging, slow run, nicely adjusted to her pace, following half a dozen -yards behind. ‘Renegade!’ every bush along the familiar path cried -aloud to her. ‘Renegade,’ whispered the stream trickling down between -rushy banks, through beds of thick forget-me-nots, to the shore. The -cornfields were soon passed. They reached the breezy bit of moor above -the Hüets. The ravine where the water-lanes met lay in purple shadow: -all around was warm and joyous sunshine. A scent of fern and wild thyme -filled the air. Far away the tide curled round the dark base of the -Gros Nez range. The choughs and daws were flying across the face of the -cliffs. The gulls poised and swooped, flashes of intense white against -the background of green sea. - -For very want of breath Marjorie presently stopped short. Geff was at -her side in a couple of seconds. The young man caught her in his arms. - -‘Mr. Arbuthnot.... Sir!’ - -‘I thought it my duty to steady you.’ He liberated her, partially, and -with reluctance. ‘Your pace, Miss Bartrand, is killing. Do the Guernsey -Sixties ever play hare and hounds? You would make a really respectable -hare, I can tell you.’ - -‘I hope not.’ With a little air of ill-maintained stiffness Marjorie -contrived to put a few more inches between Geoffrey and herself. ‘Who -would wish to be anything really respectable, until one gets to the age -of the Seigneur, at least?’ - -‘We shall both of us be too stiff for hare and hounds by that time.’ - -Perhaps this was the first hour of his life when Geoffrey Arbuthnot -talked nonsense with a child’s sense of enjoyment, a child’s immunity -from care. Hard facts, hard work, had made up the sum of his existence -hitherto. His staunchest friends complained that he was just a little -too grimly lord of himself. In his undergraduate days the men of his -year, despite their recognition of his muscular and sterling qualities, -had a suspicion that there lurked a skeleton in some hidden closet -of Arbuthnot of John’s, a memory, or a dread which rendered the easy -philosophy of youth impossible to him. - -Dinah, who knew him well, Gaston, who knew him better, never saw the -look on Geff Arbuthnot’s strong face which lit it in the red freshness -of this Guernsey morning. - -‘How shamefully we lose the best hours of the day!’ Marjorie’s hand -rested, as she spoke, on a wicket-gate, overgrown by sweetbriar, which -led into the Manoir gardens. ‘Did you ever smell cherry-pie so sweet -before?’ Heliotrope was a passion with old Andros Bartrand. Rows of the -odorous purple bloom, profusely flourishing in this generous climate, -garnished the borders, even, of his kitchen garden. ‘I, for one, mean -to mend my ways. I shall get up with the sun from this day forth.’ - -‘Alter my hours, then. We could read together, out of doors, at -sunrise, just as well as in the schoolroom at eleven.’ - -‘Do you think we should do much serious work, Mr. Arbuthnot?’ - -Marjorie asked the question with assurance, then coloured up to the -roots of her hair. - -‘Not unless breakfast were part of the programme,’ said Geoffrey, with -discernment. ‘At this moment,’ he added, ‘I am reminded of my schoolboy -days in the City. I recall, forcibly, the starvation pangs that used -to unman us on dreary winter mornings over the pages of our Latin -Grammar and Greek Delectus.’ - -It was not a sentimental speech. Even when treading the primrose path, -nineteenth century young people are rarely indifferent, like the heroic -lovers of an older school, to their meals. And these young people had -really eaten nothing since yesterday’s dinner in Langrune. Confessing -that she too was famished, Marjorie proposed an instant sack of the -Tintajeux dairy and larder. There was a broken pane in one of the -dairy casements through which, luck befriending them, a bolt might be -drawn. From the dairy it would be only a step to the larder, and then, -having secured their booty, they could go forth and eat their breakfast -together in Arcadia. - -‘It is a bigger adventure, I can tell you, Mr. Arbuthnot, than any -which befel us on board the _Princess_. Grandpapa and Sylvestre keep -loaded carbines, and are quite careless as to time and place in the -matter of firing their weapons off.’ - -‘I am not fond of carbines--still, hunger overcomes my natural -cowardice,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I would brave Sylvestre--I would brave the -Seigneur himself for a bowl of milk.’ - -The dairy, almost hidden from view by thickly-planted alders, lay at -the northern end of the Manoir, immediately under a window of the old -Seigneur’s study. - -‘You hold your life in your hand,’ whispered Marjorie, as they stepped -noiselessly along. ‘Grandpapa is always astir by this hour. If he were -to look through his window, you see, he might fire first and recognise -you afterwards.’ - -‘Although you are my accomplice?’ - -‘He would be in the right, any way, according to old Norman law. What -is a Seigneur worth if he may not use firearms at discretion? We should -lodge the accident officially, au greffe, plead self-defence, if the -case ever came to be heard, and pay an amende of a few hundred francs -to the island poor.’ - -She gave a little shrug of her shoulders, which expressed that the -subject was disposed of satisfactorily. - -The broken pane, shrouded in green leaves, was conveniently near the -casement bolt. Sufficient space existed for Marjorie’s slim hand to -pass through the opening. There came a click as she slipped the bolt -back in its setting, a slight groaning sound as Geoffrey Arbuthnot -lifted the sash guardedly. Then the heiress of Tintajeux made good a -somewhat undignified entrance into her own house, her tutor keeping -watch for possible intruders outside. - -Oh! the ice-cool sweetness of this Guernsey dairy, the air entering -in free currents through gratings in either wall, the big pans filled -with golden cream, the butter of yesterday’s churning standing, in -tempting pats, upon the fair white shelves! Marjorie plunged a jug -boldly into a pan of milk only set last night. It seemed--as she -remembered Suzette, the fiery-tempered dairymaid--like a first plunge -into crime. Conscience, however, as occurs in weightier matters than -pillaging cream, hardened rapidly. To glide on tiptoe, from the dairy -to the larder, to cut some solid trenches from a new-baked raisin loaf -intended for the Seigneur’s lunch-table, was a minute’s work. - -Then Miss Bartrand handed out her spoils to Geoffrey Arbuthnot. She -cleared the window at a jump. The sash was stealthily closed, the -boughs were pulled back into place, and away the pair walked, across -the cedar-shadowed lawn, through the cool and dewy maze, to Arcadia. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXVI - -THE LAST OF ARCADIA - - -Never could the spot have justified its name more thoroughly than at -this hour. - -The syringa bloom had fallen during the past week. No odour, save the -delicate, intangible freshness of sea and moor, met the sense. There -was not a wrinkle on the far Atlantic, not a cloud in the arch of -sky. They chose a plot of grass for their breakfast-table so small -of dimensions, it was not possible to sit far apart. They had their -platter of cake, their jug of milk in common. Surely no shepherd or -shepherdess in real Arcadia was ever lighter of spirits than were these -two! - -‘I have learned the taste of nectar,’ said Geff, when the wedges of -cake had vanished, when the milk-jug stood empty. ‘In repayment of your -hospitality, Miss Bartrand, I am going to bring a sharp accusation -against you.’ - -‘Which is?’ Marjorie asked, her blue eyes meeting his with steadiness. - -‘The nectar you give may perhaps be poisoned, an enchanted philtre -taking the taste out of all one’s future life.’ - -‘I should call that a cruel, an unjust accusation,’ cried the girl, her -cheeks ablaze. ‘Explain yourself! I don’t like a thing of this kind -said, even in jest.’ - -‘I was never farther from jesting. Poison is a harsh word, certainly: -still--still,’ broke off Geoffrey, with the abrupt courage of a shy -wooer, ‘do you think a man could ever be as well contented with the -grayness and plainness of English life after an hour spent here, in -Arcadia, at your side?’ - -Her face grew graver and graver. - -‘If you mean this for nonsense talk, Mr. Arbuthnot, you offend me. I do -not care for flattery.’ - -Marjorie Bartrand rose to her feet. As Geoffrey followed her example, -he took out his watch, then replaced it in his pocket without noticing -the hour. Both were a little pale; both had grown suddenly constrained. -An unaccustomed mist made the familiar objects round her seem blurred -in Marjorie’s sight. - -‘I must go back to the house,’ she faltered. ‘The servants will have -risen by this time. Of course one ought to feel tired, and to want -rest.’ - -She stooped, under pretence of picking up the platter and jug, in -reality to hide her face from the man who loved her. But her fingers -were unsteady. An instant more, jug and platter both were slipping -from her grasp, when Geff, quick of eye and touch, caught them, and -Marjorie’s hand as well. - -She did not say again that nonsense talk offended her. - - -‘I should like you to understand one thing, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ It was -a good while later on when she told Geoffrey this. Her slight hands -rested unresistingly in his, the unmistakable print of love confessed -was on the faces of both. ‘Perhaps what I am going to say will make you -alter your opinion of me; it must be said, all the same. There shall be -no Bluebeard secrets between us to come to light hereafter. There was -a fortnight’s mistake in my life, once. I--I----’ the word seemed to -scorch her lips as they passed them, ‘have been engaged before.’ - -‘So the voice of gossip told me, long ago, Miss Bartrand.’ - -In an instant Marjorie rested her cheek, with a child’s rather than a -woman’s gesture, against Geoffrey’s arm. - -‘You ought not to say “Miss Bartrand,” now. From this day until death -comes between us I must be “Marjorie” to you.’ - -‘Marjorie,’ repeated Geff, with quick obedience. ‘What concern of mine -is it that you were engaged before you knew me? I dare say I shall be -an ogre of jealousy in the future. I cannot be jealous retrospectively. -The evil passion will date from this present hour, only.’ - -But Marjorie insisted, whatever pain it cost her, on giving him the -details of her first engagement, yes, even to the ring she accepted, to -the tears she shed over Jock, the setter puppy. And would Geoffrey have -felt no concern, she asked him, with a flush, in conclusion, had things -been different? Could he have felt no retrospective jealousy if she had -happened to care for Major Tredennis? - -‘I like to think you did not care for him. I like supremely to know you -care for me,’ was Geoffrey’s answer. - -‘Because, of course, no human being can, honestly, love twice,’ -observed Marjorie Bartrand, with conviction. ‘It must be all or -nothing. I wish you to know, although I was weak enough to be engaged -to Major Tredennis and to take his presents, and to listen to his -French songs, it was nothing. I could not look into your face as I am -looking now, if I had cared the value of an old glove for him, or for -any man.’ - -‘No human being can, honestly, love twice.’ So this was a fixed article -in Marjorie Bartrand’s belief! The reflection made Geoffrey pause. Of -the belief’s fallacy, his own state of feeling was pertinent evidence. -Four years ago he had loved Dinah Thurston with love as ardent as -was ever lavished by man on woman. And now this wayward Southern -child, with her terrible classics and worse Euclid--this child, with -the deep, sweet eyes that promised so much for the future, and the -chiselled sun-kissed hands, and the mouth, and the hair--had filled his -heart to overflowing. - -A certain tacit disingenuousness seemed forced upon him. That -prettily-told episode of her first engagement, of the Major’s French -songs, his presents and his flatteries, was in absolute truth a -challenge. But Geoffrey’s conscience smote him not as he let the -challenge pass. His passion for Dinah was no ‘fortnight’s mistake.’ It -was a part of himself. In losing her he got a wound that he must carry -with him to the grave. He could no more have touched upon the theme, -lightly, than he could have spoken lightly of his dead mother or of the -childish prayers he used to repeat in the shelter of that mother’s arms. - -The girl he sought as his wife was exquisitely fresh and to be desired. -Already, in a brief half-hour, every hope of his future life seemed -to have some silken thread of _Marjorie_ woven in its fabric. She was -unconnected with his past. The passion that had died, the regret that -would never die, were his own. Their history was not to be told, save -under dire necessity, of which the present rose-coloured moment gave no -forewarning. - -‘I knew from the first that you had been engaged to Major Tredennis, -and from the first,’ Geoffrey Arbuthnot drew her towards him, tenderly, -‘I began to fall in love with you.’ - -‘Not quite from the first?’ Marjorie questioned, artfully ensuring a -repetition of the honeyed truth. ‘Not on that evening when you put me -through my intellectual paces, when you told me that my classics--save -the mark!--were stronger than my mathematics?’ - -‘Yes, on that first evening. It was not because of your prettiness, -only, or your grace. It was not, even, because you snubbed me so -mercilessly. I don’t know why it was. It seemed that a new world had -suddenly opened out before me. As I returned along the Gros Nez cliffs, -the Tintajeux roses and heliotropes in my hand, I felt like walking -right above the mire and commonness of my former life.’ - -‘And your thoughts?’ - -‘Were of Tintajeux, every yard of the road. Yes, I am clear about it,’ -said Geff. ‘I began to fall in love from the first moment that I saw -your sweet Spanish face.’ - -Marjorie shook her head at the compliment. Her looks were sceptical. - -‘Your manner, I confess, did not betray you, Mr. Arbuthnot,’ she -remarked drily. - -‘Did you condescend to notice my manner?’ Geff asked. ‘The whole of -that evening, remember, except perhaps for a minute, when you had -wounded yourself among the briars, you held me at arm’s-length.’ - -‘I thought you a married man, sir. But I liked--I respected you, -brusque though you were, because I believed you had had the courage -of your opinions, the strength of mind to marry Dinah. How strange,’ -she went on, dreamily abandoning herself to his caress--‘how strange -it will be, when we are old people, to remember that our acquaintance -began in such a comedy of mistakes.’ - -Because he had had the strength of mind to marry Dinah! The unconscious -irony of her speech smote Geff Arbuthnot’s heart. He had been credited, -then, as a virtue, with the fulfilment of that mad hope whose -frustration took the keenest edge off his life, the intoxication out of -his youth! - -‘One builds up an ideal, foolishly or wisely,’ went on Marjorie’s -happy voice. ‘I had built up mine since I was eight years old. Well, -when I heard of a Mr. Arbuthnot who was able enough to have taken high -honours, good enough to give up his time to others, brave enough to -have married a girl beneath himself in class for the excellent reason -that he loved her, when I heard these things--the personal histories -of the Arbuthnot cousins cleverly mixed and transposed by poor -Cassandra--I felt that my ideal was clothed with flesh and blood. What -could I do but care a little for my new tutor?’ - -‘Married though the tutor was?’ - -‘That is beside the question. I was thinking of his fine qualities -only. I held out my hand to him in friendship before we met, even, and -I--I know that I was never for one instant in love with Mr. Gaston -Arbuthnot.’ - -Marjorie Bartrand coloured with slightly illogical vexation. - -‘Are you quite sure that you are in love at all?’ asked Geoffrey. - -For a few seconds an uncertain smile trembled round her lips. She drew -back from him, half ignorant whether his question had been asked in -earnest; then, lifting her eyes, Marjorie encountered the beseeching -entreaty written on Geoffrey’s face. There came impulsive, over-quick -submission. - -‘I mean to love you with my whole soul some day. Does not that content -you? Well, then, I mean--if you will give me breathing space--to love -you now.’ - -The midsummer morning was young, the blackbirds called aloud for joy in -the Tintajeux orchards, and Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s age was twenty-four. -Before they parted, ere Marjorie could repulse him or surrender, -he caught the girl in a swift embrace; he kissed her reverently, -passionately on the lips. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXVII - -A STONE FOR BREAD - - -The kiss cost him dear. A fledgling girl is not, finally, to be -captured without a struggle, save by a master hand; and Geoffrey’s was -the hand of a prentice. - -Marjorie’s heart leaped with novel tenderness at the contact of his -lips. She suffered him to hold her in his arms. She watched him with -shy pride, with a child’s delight in the new sense of ownership, as he -walked away, along the accustomed path, from Tintajeux. Then, later, -when she found herself in her own little white-draped realm, when, -later still, she had slept and awakened and dressed herself for a fresh -day, the current of feeling swerved. She shivered at realising how -absolutely her life had become entangled with his. She was assailed -by reminiscences, all uncomfortable ones, of Major Tredennis. She was -sensible of a longing, that had almost passion in it, for the liberty -she had been betrayed into relinquishing. - -‘I mean, if you will give me breathing space, to love you now.’ -Here, surely, was what she needed--time for becoming used to the new -phenomenon of a lover. - -During the past fortnight, Geoffrey had filled every thought of her -waking hours; a haunting sense of his nearness had touched her dreams. -At this point she had fain stood still--six months--a year--tacitly -engaged, if need be, but on the same fraternal footing as when they -walked together yesterday among the Langrune cornfields. Why hurry into -commonplace? The Bartrands were not a kissing race. Geff ought to have -divined their likes and dislikes, thought the poor child petulantly. -And yet, pleaded another voice in this conscience of seventeen, the -kiss was sweet! It seemed that she had become, suddenly and distinctly, -two persons--one a girl weakly contented, as our grandmothers used to -be, at the prospect of husband and home and fireside; the other, a -strong-headed, Minerva-like young woman coolly criticising the question -of love and marriage from a vantage ground, and liking it ill. Which -of the two,--she asked herself this pretty often throughout the sunny -tedium of the long day,--which was the real, which the artificial -Marjorie Bartrand? - -It had been settled between them that Geoffrey should walk out to -Tintajeux before the Seigneur’s supper-hour that evening. When the time -came, when Geff approached the Manoir, treading lightly, as befits a -man whose heart wells over with hope, he found the friendly schoolroom -window bolted. No youthful flitting figure was to be seen among the -growing shadows of the garden; Arcadia was empty. Andros Bartrand, -leisurely pacing, a cigar between his lips, his terriers at his heels, -possessed the lawn. - -With a dim sensation of chill Geoffrey rang at the front door, and -was ushered in by Sylvestre, a whole lever de rideau in the old -butler’s expressive Norman smile, to the drawing-room. Here Marjorie, -mutinous of spirit, but with a tenderly blushing face, awaited him. The -western lights filtered through the half-closed Venetians. Above the -cedar-shade gleamed as unstained a sweep of Atlantic as on the first -evening that Geoffrey visited Tintajeux. The Petit Trianon baskets were -filled with glorious Ducs de Rohan. The Cupids were hurling rose leaves -at the guillotine. The miniature Bartrands, imperturbable as becomes -mortals who have proved the nothingness of love as of life, seemed to -glance with rather more philosophic amiability than usual from their -frames. - -Well, all that Geoffrey saw or thought of was Marjorie. She looked -prettier than he had ever seen her look, as she moved forward to -greet him--softer, more womanly. For the girl, while she chafed, in -imagination, under her new yoke, had spent a good hour before her glass -ere her lover came. She had put on her one white dress of regulation -length, had clasped an old-fashioned Spanish necklace round her throat, -had pinned a little bunch of heliotrope and sweetbriar, mindful of the -morning’s dominant odours, in her breast. - -A sense of his immense good fortune in having won her filled Geoffrey -Arbuthnot’s heart. He took both her hands, looking down at their -slender carving, with the connoisseurship of possession. He raised them -within an inch of his lips. - -‘I hope, Mr. Arbuthnot, you will pardon me for receiving you here?’ -Marjorie asked him this with forced composure. ‘But I thought--I was -not sure whether we were to read to-night or not.’ - -Geoffrey Arbuthnot involuntarily drew back. The glance which met him -from his new sweetheart’s eyes was, he felt, cold. During an instant’s -space, mastered by one of those shadowy infidelities of which we repent -ere they take substance, Geff bethought him of eyes that never could -look cold, in happiness or in trouble--English-coloured eyes from -which, perhaps, the fire, the mind of Marjorie’s sapphire glance, were -wanting. - -‘I thought,’ she went on, with almost defiant ease, ‘that after -yesterday’s idleness, our reading to-night must be a sham, so it would -be unnecessary to see you in the schoolroom.’ - -‘I can guess what that means,’ said Geoffrey, without letting loose her -hands. ‘You have no work ready for me.’ - -‘I have done some Virgil, fuller, I know, of faults than ever, but I -thought, for one evening, sir, we might let Greek and Latin go.’ - -‘Why not let them go for ever--as things that have had their use!’ -cried Geoffrey Arbuthnot. - -‘As things that have had their use? Are you speaking of _my classics_? -You, who told me, a fortnight ago, I might come out in the third class -of a tripos?’ - -‘A fortnight ago is not to-day.’ - -‘Your good opinion has had time to cool? Pray be frank, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ -It was in her mood to quarrel--at least, to reach the brink of a -quarrel with him, if ’twere only for sweet relenting’s sake. ‘I don’t -one bit come up to your ideal of a model woman?’ - -‘I abhor models, irrespective of their sex. Marjorie, why are we -talking in this strain?’ And now her fingers reached his lips. ‘I want -you to be like nothing, to be nothing, but yourself.’ - -‘And I, myself, shall never alter. I may be too dull-witted to pass -the entrance examination for Girton. That will be my misfortune. I -shall always be athirst for knowing things, for seeing life--on its -seamy side, especially--with my own eyes, for getting to the real worst -of everything! And I shall always,’ added Marjorie, with a look that -indubitably had in it the nature of a challenge, ‘retain my Bartrand -temper.’ - -‘I have a temper also,’ answered Geff, drawing her a little closer to -him. ‘Do not omit that item from our prospects of future joy. You are -passionate. I am unforgetting. Stormy elements, these, to be brought -into daily, hourly contact under the same roof.’ - -‘And has your ideal of life always been one of conflict?’ asked -Marjorie. - -At the domestic picture, quietly touched in by Geoffrey, the lines of -her lips had softened against her will. - -‘I have had no experience save in conflict,’ answered Geff Arbuthnot, -truthfully. - -‘When you were a really young man, four or five years ago, did you look -forward to the Taming of a Shrew as a likely sequel to your term of -happy bachelorhood?’ - -The question was jestingly meant, lightly spoken. But Geoffrey’s dark -cheek reddened. - -‘Oh, if I have said anything indiscreet, forgive me.’ Marjorie watched -him with attention. ‘You must grow used, remember, to the faults of my -fine qualities. One of these is inquisitiveness. It would delight me to -know, precisely, what you used to think and feel when you were twenty -years old. I suppose you were not so preternaturally wise, always, as -you are now?’ - -‘I have never been wise at any period of my life,’ said Geoffrey -Arbuthnot. - -‘But when you were nineteen, say, what did you think, what did you -hope, what did you look forward to?’ - -‘What I hoped, what I looked forward to, was--madness.’ The unguarded -answer broke from him instantly. ‘If you would be kind to me, -Marjorie,’ he added, ‘let the past rest. There is enough, a great deal -more than enough, to be grateful for in the present.’ - -Marjorie, on this, drew herself to her full height. She looked at him -with the instinct of a child who would unriddle a secret by his own -close reading of another’s face. She freed her hands abruptly from his -clasp. - -‘What you hoped, what you looked forward to was--madness! Do you mean -in regard of University laurels?’ - -‘We are not talking of University laurels. We are talking,’ said Geff, -honestly, ‘of the happiness beyond happiness, the companionship for -life of two human souls that suit each other.’ - -‘And your hopes of these things,’ her lips whitened as she repeated the -words, ‘were madness? Singular contradiction! You have told me that -yours has been a secluded student’s life, that, until a fortnight ago, -you never cared for any society but that of men?’ - -‘Whatever I have told you has been true,’ said Geff, with firmness. -Then, instantly relenting, ‘Do not let us have a quarrel,’ he pleaded, -‘on this first day that we are sweethearts.’ - -She turned from him, indignant, breathless. - -‘If we quarrel over realities, Mr. Arbuthnot, the pity is we did not -look realities in the face before becoming sweethearts.’ - -‘Miss Bartrand--Marjorie!’ - -‘Oh, I am thoroughly in earnest. This morning, when first I knew you -cared for me a little, I was open with you. I told you what had to be -said about Major Tredennis, and you forgave me. Bluebeard secrets, bad -always, must be doubly so between people who mean to spend their lives -together. I told you of my miserable weakness----’ - -Her frank girlish face burned so hotly that Geff came to her relief. - -‘You were very open with me, Marjorie, true and straightforward, as it -is your nature to be.’ - -‘I did not hide from you, whatever the shame of it, that I had bound -myself once before.’ - -Geoffrey was no social diplomatist. He might, otherwise, with mournful -veracity have retorted that he had been a free man always. But the -statement would have implied a prevarication, and it was not in -Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s upright soul to prevaricate. - -‘You told me you had been engaged. You also gave an opinion as to its -being impossible for people, honestly, to love twice.’ - -‘Most certainly I did. I never cared more for Major Tredennis than I do -for this flower I wear--ask Mrs. Arbuthnot! I found courage yesterday -to talk to her about that wretched time--and I _do_ care for you,’ -looking straight from her heart at her lover. ‘And it is utterly -impossible for any woman or any man to love twice.’ - -‘You think so? I ought to have disagreed with you at once,’ struck in -Geff, promptly. ‘I ought to have told you this morning what I hold to -be truth.’ - -‘And this is?’ - -‘That women and men may love a second time honestly, although once, -only, with success.’ - -She turned away doubtfully, with lowered lids, hesitating a few -moments. Then: ‘Love twice? and why not love three, four, five times?’ -she questioned, looking up at him with a glance of fire. ‘Why hold at -all by constancy, or honour, or good faith? What mystic limitation is -there in the number two?’ - -‘A woman troubled is Heaven’s fairest work spoiled.’ - -Geoffrey believed as devoutly as do most men in the aphorism. But -Marjorie was not a woman, he remembered, only an impetuous girl, with -Southern blood in her veins, with the Bartrand pride on her lips, with -all sweet and modest and maidenly superstitions in her heart. - -He felt he had never loved her more dearly than in this very outburst -of unreasoning, childish wrath against himself. - -‘I know nothing about three, four, or five times. You persisted, -recollect, in making me talk of an uninteresting subject, my own past -life, and----’ - -‘And am I to think--are you putting me to the humiliation, now too -late,’ she exclaimed, the thought of his kiss returning to her, ‘the -humiliation of feeling, here, under my grandfather’s roof, that I am -offered your love at second-hand?’ - -A few instants ago Geoffrey’s impulse had been to take her in his arms, -to forgive her in spite of her injustice! But her tone had changed. -It was hard, suspicious. It bespoke pride, not only of race, but of -money. All the inherited baser possibilities of her nature had, under -the moment’s white anger, gained the ascendancy in poor Marjorie’s -breast. - -Geff was sensible of them and recoiled. For the first time to-day, -it occurred to him that the girl he sought to marry was not only a -Bartrand but an heiress, his superior in position as in purse. - -‘I don’t like to hear you say “humiliation.” Such love as I feel for -you,’ confessed Geoffrey Arbuthnot, nobly and simply, ‘could humiliate -no woman.’ - -‘And if it comes at second-hand, if some one else before my time has -appraised its value, and flung it aside?’ - -‘Miss Bartrand, you must explain to me what you mean by that question.’ - -‘I mean,’ flamed forth Marjorie, her whole angry soul throbbing in her -voice, ‘that I must be first--first, Mr. Arbuthnot, in the heart of the -man I marry.’ - -‘Would you not be first in mine?’ - -‘I should give him all. I could accept nothing short of all in return. -If, afterwards, I found that I had been deceived--you understand me, if -I knew that I had been chosen from other motives than love--I should -make his life and my own most miserable!’ - -And, indeed, the passion of her voice and face gave to the prophecy -only too much an air of certitude. - -Geoffrey Arbuthnot walked to a neighbouring window. Pushing back the -half-closed shutters he saw before him a wide expanse of the Manoir -gardens; through an arch of cedar boughs he caught a goodly vista of -fields and orchards beyond. And all that he looked upon would one day -be Marjorie’s! With crushing force came the conviction that he had -fallen into a desperate error, had walked blindfolded, a second time, -into a Fool’s Paradise. Marjorie Bartrand’s youth, the intimacy into -which they had been thrown, his own absolute want of premeditation -might be excused. The facts were there, looking, as disagreeable -facts have a knack of doing, with transparent clearness in his face. -He had walked into a Fool’s Paradise. To accept the position, give -Marjorie Bartrand back her freedom, unconditionally, were the moment’s -immediate and exceeding bitter duties. The wilful hot-headed child of -seventeen--conquered at one moment, at the next resisting--repented -her, already, of her bargain. Let that bargain be cancelled. - -‘Your life shall never become miserable through fault of mine, Miss -Bartrand.’ Turning round, Geff looked at her gravely. ‘Pardon me -whatever foolish words I spoke this morning. In a week or two forget my -existence! You are bound to me by no promise----’ - -‘And it costs you nothing to give me up? You can talk of forgetting in -this airy fashion?’ interrupted Marjorie, with vehement recollection of -her own surrender. ‘Then you never sought me from liking. I have had a -second experience of the same cruel story. The acres of Tintajeux, few -though they be, are matters, it seems, better worth caring for than -Marjorie Bartrand, herself.’ - -From her cradle to her grave it would be safe to aver that speech so -ignoble never issued from Marjorie Bartrand’s lips. She recognised its -meanness before the last word was spoken. Her cheeks crimsoned. She -could have flung herself at the feet of the lover her suspicion had -dishonoured. - -‘I was wrong ... forgive me for speaking like this,’ she began to -stammer brokenly. - -But Geoffrey Arbuthnot could not condone a paltry accusation, even from -her. With two strides he reached the girl’s chair. He stood before her, -pale and strongly moved. She hardly recognised the expression of his -face. - -‘And so you think that I, with the full use of my muscles and brain, -sought to marry you for money’s sake, the poor little handful of -money that goes with Tintajeux Manoir. The slight to my intelligence -is severe. Had I been a fortune-hunter, Miss Bartrand, I should have -struck for a larger stake.’ - -‘Then why did you look at me? Why did you not let me go my way?’ She -clasped her hands together, piteously. ‘For you have never loved me. -You confessed as much just now?’ - -‘Did I? I can only remember a confession in which I spoke the truth--a -confession you believed this morning,’ added Geoffrey, with as much -steadiness as he could muster. - -‘All this is waste of time,’ she said, with a miserable little laugh. -‘We have the habit of plain speaking--you and I. Let us keep it up to -the last. Your heart is not your own, Mr. Arbuthnot. You have liked -some other person better than you like me. _Have_ liked, did I say? You -like her, I doubt not, to this day.’ - -‘This day when I have asked you, wisely or unwisely, to be my wife?’ - -‘If your conscience were clear you could not trifle with me like this. -You would say No, or Yes.’ - -And, thus urged, Geoffrey Arbuthnot said ‘Yes’--with unmitigated -frankness, without a hint either at penitence or remorse. Long ago, in -his undergraduate days--thus the confession ran--he had fallen in love -... possibly as men do not fall in love twice during their lives! He -was rough, plain, a student as Marjorie saw him now, no suitor to win a -young girl’s fancy. And so---- - -‘And so,’ broke in Marjorie with trembling interest, ‘she was false to -you?’ - -‘She was neither false nor true,’ he answered; ‘I had no place at -all in her heart. My own best friend’--and here Geff’s voice sank, -each word of his avowal seemed wrung from him with pain--‘became, -unconsciously, my rival.’ - -‘Your best friend,’ stammered Marjorie, upon whom a first flicker of -light was beginning to dawn. - -‘Best, then, and I hope for ever--just as she whom he married will, -I know, be my ideal of all sweet and womanly qualities till I die. -Although I lost her,’ exclaimed Geff Arbuthnot, ‘I owe her everything! -It is using a commonplace to say that I would at any hour start to the -other side of the world, if by so starting I could confer on her the -smallest service. But it is the truth.’ - -He was a man, ordinarily, of demeanour so reticent, of emotions so -controlled, that this little outburst struck on Marjorie Bartrand with -double force. Alas! there could not be room for another instant’s -doubt. She recalled the morning when she had lectured her tutor on his -frivolity, she remembered his embarrassment when she spoke of Dinah as -his wife--his absence of mind, his pallor. The story of his past life -was laid open, a clear page, for her to read. The confession of her -engagement to Major Tredennis had met with an over-full equivalent. - -‘At last, then,’ she murmured, ‘I have got to the truth of things. It -might have been juster if I had not been deceived so long.’ - -‘Will you hear me out to the end?’ There was a ring of command rather -than of pleading in Geoffrey’s tone. ‘Four years ago it was my fate, I -can never say my misfortune, to come across a girl whom it was madness -for me to love. I lost. I suffered. But many a man has met with a like -overthrow, and got firmly to his feet in time. I am very firm on my -feet,’ said Geff Arbuthnot. ‘I have grown young again in knowing you. -If you had chosen to become my wife, I could have loved you well. -Yes, I do love you--too well! Now, when it seems we are like bidding -good-bye for ever.’ - -And Geoffrey rested his hands for an instant upon the girl’s graceful -down-bent head. - -‘And the dream is over--over.’ She repeated the words huskily, not so -much thinking of Geff as seeking to bring home to herself the extremity -of her own pain. ‘We are to be nothing to each other from this hour -forth, not even friends.’ - -Geoffrey Arbuthnot walked a few steps away. The movement was prompted -by a definite and conscious weakness. This saying good-bye for ever was -no easy thing, he found, so long as his hand rested upon the silken -hair, so long as the slender figure palpitated close to him, the -heliotrope sent its odour to his brain from Marjorie’s breast. - -‘The dream is over, because you discovered it to be a dream. You must -acknowledge, Miss Bartrand, that you have taken the matter wholly out -of my keeping.’ - -‘We might see each other, as friends,’ she stammered--true to a -time-worn instinct of her sex, offering a stone for bread, friendship -to the man she loved, and who loved her. ‘Surely our work need not be -dropped because of this I As long as you stay in the island you will -come out to read with me at Tintajeux?’ - -‘I shall return to Tintajeux, once more, after to-night,’ was Geff -Arbuthnot’s answer. ‘I shall return to shake hands with the Seigneur, -and to be paid my money. Good-bye for ever are hard words to speak,’ he -went on. ‘But we shall not make the hardness easier by trying to shirk -them. We have, virtually, said good-bye already.’ - -‘And we are never to be nearer reconciliation than this? You are not a -man to change?’ - -There came a furtive play of feeling upon her mouth. Deep in her heart -lurked a formless hope that Geoffrey was not in earnest, that at a -smile, a touch of hers, he must yield, if she so willed it. - -‘I am a man,’ he answered, ‘to change upon the day you bid me do so. -If, at some future time, you think less vile things of me----’ - -‘Mr. Arbuthnot!’ - -‘Well, or without that. If it should be your whim, in some idle hour, -to remember my existence--dare I say, to send me a flower you have -worn, a bit of ribbon, a sheet of paper with a single relenting word -written on it--you will have only to address your envelope to St. -John’s, Cambridge.’ - -‘And now, for the remainder of this summer?’ asked Marjorie, drear -visions rising before her of a silent schoolroom, of work laboured -through without the poignant desire of Geoffrey’s praise. ‘Is it -possible that you mean--that you have no other course than to leave -Guernsey at once?’ - -Something in her manner made it seem that she referred their quarrel -to him for final arbitration. But Geff Arbuthnot tried his utmost to -congeal. His present temper indisposed him for compromise. He had -been cut to the quick by that one scornful imputation, that one base -utterance of Marjorie’s lips--‘The acres of Tintajeux, few though -they be, are matters better worth caring for than Marjorie Bartrand, -herself.’ - -He felt it impossible to forgive her. - -‘I shall certainly not leave Guernsey without calling on the -Seigneur--to be paid.’ - -Geoffrey was not superior to a feeling of pleasure in the repetition -of these words. They were horribly cruel ones. It might well be, -afterwards, that he remembered with remorse how the girl’s slender -figure drooped, how her cheeks burned, how her hands fell listlessly -upon her knee, one in the other’s palm. - -‘And then--for the rest of the vacation, what are your plans?’ she -repeated, presently. - -‘I have no plans, now. The summer has gone out of my year! Maybe I -shall follow in the footsteps of Gaston and his wife. Dinah, I know, -would not be sorry to leave this place.’ - -He spoke without premeditation. It had, perhaps, not occurred to Geff -Arbuthnot’s coarser masculine perception that his meagre outline of the -past had revealed a secret of which Dinah was, herself, ignorant. To -Marjorie, in her despair, the mention of Dinah’s name was a last blow: -the heavier, perhaps, in that Geoffrey gave it with such calmness, was -prepared, as a matter of course, to seek refuge in the friendship of -the fair and gentle woman to whom, although she had never loved him, he -‘owed everything.’ - -‘Or I may cross at once to England. That is likeliest. In England one -can always fall back on work. I have had enough of idleness. A boat -calls here on Sunday morning that will suit me well enough.’ - -‘On Saturday, then, grandpapa and I will look for your visit. Could you -not,’ suggested Marjorie, with magnanimity, ‘ask Mr. and Mrs. Gaston -Arbuthnot to come with you to Tintajeux?’ - -Geoffrey had a moment’s hesitation. There was a note in her fresh and -youthful voice which he had never before distinguished, and which, I -think, wrung his heart. But he would not allow himself to soften. He -would not forgive her until she repented her of the thing which she had -uttered. - -‘Gaston has not returned, Miss Bartrand. There are heavy fog-banks -still at sea. The Cherbourg boat was not signalled when I left town, -and Dinah--well, Dinah, of course, will be miserable until she sees her -husband’s face.’ - -Geff took up his hat in readiness for departure, and Marjorie rose from -her chair. - -‘The Cherbourg boat will be back before Saturday, but, in any -case, grandpapa and I will count upon seeing _you_. Good-night, -Mr. Arbuthnot. This is not your last visit to Tintajeux. I do not -acknowledge that we are saying good-bye for ever.’ - -She kept herself under singular control. For a second or two she -yielded her cold hand, bravely, into Geff’s keeping. As he left the -drawing-room she accorded him a lofty _minuet de la cour_ curtsey, -learnt, in her babyhood, from her first French governess. Then, when -he was gone, when the figure she had watched so often had rounded the -last turning in the Tintajeux avenue, the poor child, with leaden -steps, made her way to the schoolroom. Sinking in her place beside the -ink-stained table, Marjorie Bartrand rested her face upon a heap of -books, then burst into a very thunder-shower of tears. - -Her scene with Geoffrey had swept away all sense of the dual -personality that troubled her before his coming. The strong-minded -Minerva, criticising love and marriage with acerbity, had vanished, -and in her place was a commonplace little girl sobbing her heart out, -as Rosie Verschoyle, as Ada de Carteret might have done, for the -sweetheart her own unruly tongue had estranged. - -If Geoffrey would but come back, take her in his arms, kiss and forgive -her! So, dumbly, cried Marjorie’s heart. - -But supper-time came and went. The sun dipped under the fading sea -line, the twilight waned, the yellow stars stole forth, one by one, -from the gray: Geoffrey Arbuthnot returned not. - -She had acted with family pride, perhaps from virtue, conceivably from -jealousy, without doubt, as became a Bartrand. These cold consolations -were all that the universe, just at present, seemed likely to offer. - - - - -CHAPTER XXXVIII - -TEMPTATION - - -When the Cherbourg boat reached Guernsey, twenty-four hours behind her -time, no Dinah, with radiant expectant face, waited on the quay to bid -Gaston Arbuthnot good-morning. - -It was the first occasion since their marriage that she had in like -manner failed. After ever so short a separation it was Dinah’s habit to -go bravely to the fore on harbour side or platform with a welcome for -the husband she loved. No Dinah was to be seen this morning. And Gaston -Arbuthnot’s spirit sat more lightly on its throne by reason of her -absence. - -He was honestly glad to return. A day and a night’s detention on a -rock, with a thick sea-fog, and without one’s dressing-case, was a -test, of sentiment and of friendship alike, which Gaston had felt to -be beyond his strength. But it was a relief to him that poor Dinah, -effusive, reproachful--Dinah, half sunshine, half tears--should not be -on the pier to enact a little scene of domestic interest beneath the -sharp, uncomprehending eyes of Linda Thorne. - -‘Useless to ask you to breakfast with us,’ murmured that lady, from -beneath her treble gauze mask, as she and Gaston were passing across -the gangway. ‘Dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, I am sure, will be in a fever of -anxiety about your return.’ - -‘Scarcely. Every one in Guernsey must have known that fog detained us. -If you will be at home this afternoon,’ Gaston added, when their hands -met at parting, ‘I will give you the latest bulletin as to Dinah’s -condition.’ - -‘Oh, I make no promises,’ cried Linda, carelessly. ‘“He who will not -when he may”--you know the rest of the proverb. Long before five -o’clock to-day some tragic event may have changed us’--in after times -this prophecy, made in jest, might possibly return to Linda Thorne’s -memory--‘changed us for ever into enemies. Robbie, love, accept my arm. -As you are quite determined that two shillings’ worth of cab would -bring us to bankruptcy, we will return to our home and infant on foot.’ - -Doctor and Mrs. Thorne turned, on leaving the quay, into a narrow -street leading towards the Old Town and The Bungalow. Gaston Arbuthnot, -with the lightheartedness born of recovered freedom, ran quickly up the -hundred-and-eighty steps that formed the shortest cut from the pier -road to Miller’s Hotel. At the summit of these steps a new temptation -assailed him in the person of old Colonel de Gourmet, the bachelor -proprietor of the most luxurious little house, the best cellar, and the -best cook in the Channel Archipelago. - -‘Why, Arbuthnot! Some one told me you were at the bottom of the sea. -You and Linda Thorne. Locksley Hall sort of thing! So goes the story of -the moment. You are the very man I could have wished to meet, sir. Come -back to breakfast with me. I have two of the finest mullet ever caught -in this Channel, and Kutscheel, my black fellow, could dress a mullet -with Brillat Savarin himself. Now, I’ll hear of no refusal.’ - -‘I have a wife, Colonel. The argument, naturally, does not carry weight -with you. Still, it is an argument. I have a wife, and she expects me.’ - -‘Send up a line from my house telling Mrs. Arbuthnot where you are. -I positively wouldn’t waste such fish on a man of less cultivated -taste.’ In the Colonel’s lack-lustre eye there came a momentary glow of -feeling. ‘In my time we used to look upon a palate--a palate, sir, as -one of the essentials of a gentleman. The young men nowadays don’t know -a mullet from a stickleback.’ - -Well, reader, a dual breakfast with old de Gourmet was a temptation, -after its sort, that Gaston Arbuthnot ranked high. The Colonel’s -admirably arranged house was screened by just sufficient leafy shadow -from the eastern sun, refreshed by just sufficient air on the side -where it opened to the sea. The Colonel’s black fellow was a finished -artist; his cellar the long result of half a lifetime. To Gaston--true -Parisian in all the more important business of existence--a noontide -breakfast was the crowning meal of the day. Man dines, he would -contend, as dogs or horses feed, because his body needs replenishment. -Breakfast, with its delicate light dishes, fine wine, fruits and -coffee,--breakfast succeeded by a prime cigar, morning sunshine, and -morning talk--is, essentially, a refined, a human repast. The nine -o’clock tea and toast, the marmalade, bloaters, or bacon, sacred to -the British householder, were scarcely less horrible to him than the -buckwheat cakes and maple syrup, the porridge, the pie, the ‘shad’ of -American breakfast-tables. - -‘If you can give me half an hour’s law, Colonel de Gourmet, time to -have a bath, to get a change of apparel, and hear my wife’s version of -the Locksley Hall episode, I will come to you. Otherwise, I know the -nature of mullet, and----’ - -‘I appreciate your delicacy, my dear sir. But my black fellow and I -thoroughly understand each other. Those mullet,’ said the Colonel, with -a quiver of the lips, ‘are now reposing, each in its paper shroud, -buttered, flavoured to a nicety. They will not approach the fire -until Kutscheel sees me turn yonder corner beneath the Arsenal gates. -I will wait for you here--putting the last finishing touch, alas! to a -poorish appetite--as I limp up and down in the shade. But don’t exceed -thirty-five minutes. We owe it to our cook, a human being with passions -and weaknesses like unto our own, to have a conscience in these -matters.’ - -A minute or two later, Gaston’s alert step had brought him to the outer -gate of Miller’s Hotel. He loitered for a few seconds in the garden, -enjoying its double sensation of warmth and flower scents. Then, with -hesitation for which he would have found it hard to account, Gaston -Arbuthnot entered the house. He traversed a passage, and opened the -door of Dinah’s sitting-room. - -It was empty. Her work-frame was shrouded in silver paper. A bouquet -of hot-house flowers lay, with petals browned and faded, on the table, -a card of Lord Rex Basire’s beside them. Gaston felt that the room had -not been lived in since they left it last on Wednesday morning. - -‘Madame had gone out,’ volunteered the black-eyed French waitress, -peeping in at him through the half-open door--the black-eyed waitress -building up dramatic likelihoods on the spot, possibly from the -recollection of Madame’s tears of yesterday, possibly from Milor’s -neglected bouquet on the table, possibly from a certain blank look on -Arbuthnot’s face. ‘Madame had gone out--there was a good hour at least. -Madame had left no message for Monsieur.’ - -For the first time since their marriage, thought Gaston Arbuthnot, not -without a pang, as he walked off in silence to his dressing-room! - -Well, there must be a first time, he supposed, in all one’s -disillusionments. From to-day forth, he need never more expect a -passionate greeting, perhaps never dread a passionate reproach from -Dinah. And it was best so. Gaston had seen Clesinger’s rival statues -of Rachel; one, the ‘Phèdre,’ the other, ‘Lesbia with her Sparrow.’ He -infinitely preferred the Lesbia, sparrow, silliness, and all. Still, -mused Mr. Arbuthnot, whose emotions had a trick of mounting quickly -from the heart to the head, it might be a little stroke of wise and -kindly diplomacy for him to exhibit discerning mortification, make -Dinah feel that she had been forgetful of him. _Forgetful!_ For the -first time, surely, since that morning in the rustic Cambridgeshire -church when she walked down the aisle, in her white straw bonnet, her -simple cambric gown--his wife. - -Accordingly, when he re-entered their sitting-room presently--Dinah -absent still--Mr. Arbuthnot pencilled the following note, curtly -amative, as was ever one of Captain Steele’s to his Prue! - - - ‘MY DEAREST GIRL--My existence, I perceive, has slipped your - memory. But I do exist. I am, at this moment, going out to - breakfast--not in high spirits. - - ‘Your devoted - ‘G. A.’ - - -Gaston Arbuthnot pencilled this note. Then, with affections, it must be -confessed, undividedly centred on red mullet, he started off, lightsome -of mien, elastic of step, in the direction of Colonel de Gourmet’s -house. At the first turning of the road a girl with golden hair, with -a face fair, despite its pallor, as the summer morning, stood opposite -to him--Dinah. A basket of strawberries hung on Mrs. Arbuthnot’s arm, a -bunch of white moss-roses, her husband’s favourite flower, was between -her hands. - -‘Dinah, my love, this is fortunate. I have been hunting everywhere -for you,’ said Gaston, hitting without effort upon one of those airy -little nothings which float men of his weight, like corks, over half -the whirlpools of life. - -‘I am glad, in spite of all that has happened, to see you back.’ - -And Dinah, who had never uttered an airy nothing since she was born, -looked hard at him. Traces, unmistakable, of tear-shedding gave an -expression Gaston Arbuthnot liked not to her eyes. - -‘Yet you did not show your gladness by meeting me on the pier--grim -and dirty objects we must all have been after our twenty-four hours’ -discomfort! Perhaps I deserved to be neglected,’ said Gaston, in a tone -of resignation. ‘But remember, darling, I am not accustomed to miss -your face when I have been away. The punishment, coming immediately -after a course of Alderney and fog, struck me as rough.’ - -‘Don’t talk of punishment,’ Dinah answered, her voice betraying the -strong effort by which she kept it controlled. ‘Your staying away has -been hard to bear ... and now, now I wish to forget everything but that -you are back safe.’ - -‘And what did you do with your time, yesterday? Of course you were not -anxious. You knew that fog, and fog alone, was keeping me in Alderney.’ - -‘Yesterday was the blackest day I have ever lived through.’ - -And Dinah lifted her face, courting rather than turning from her -husband’s scrutiny. - -‘Blackest? Why, I thought you had had sunshine in Guernsey, that the -fog concentrated itself with vile partiality upon our horrible rock -yonder! And what did you do with your time, then,’ went on Gaston, with -unabated cheerfulness. ‘Where was Geoffrey?’ - -‘I did not think of Geoffrey. I had heart for nothing but to stay in my -own room.’ - -‘Substituting tea for dinner, close air for oxygen, as Woman loves to -do when she is in trouble--or has manufactured trouble for herself. And -had you no visitors at all to lighten your darkness?’ - -‘Lord Rex Basire seems to have called. His card was lying this morning -on the parlour table.’ - -‘And you have no wider sympathies, Dinah, no desire to know how we, -miserable deserters, got along in Alderney?’ - -‘I like, of course, to hear everything that concerns you.’ - -Dinah accentuated the pronoun stoutly. - -‘Although you had not sufficient curiosity to meet me when I landed?’ - -As Gaston thus adroitly harked back upon his grievance his wife’s eyes -sank. She turned from him with a movement of impatience. - -‘The moment the steamer was signalled I got ready, Gaston. I went -straight down to the pier road and watched her come into harbour. Oh, -you never saw me,’ Dinah added quickly. ‘I was standing behind some -piles of timber at the entrance to the pier, a hundred yards distant. -And when I saw you and the Thornes land together, I felt certain you -would walk with them to their house, and I lost courage and got away.’ - -‘To avoid the deadly risk of saying good-morning to Mrs. Thorne and the -Doctor?’ - -‘I--I remembered there were no strawberries for breakfast,’ she -stammered, determined upon not giving him fresh offence, ‘no roses to -last us until to-morrow. Don’t you see,’ holding out her hands, which -trembled a little, ‘I have been marketing?’ - -‘Alone? But I need hardly ask the question. You always do your -marketing alone.’ - -His skilfully marshalled questions perplexed her vaguely. She felt the -same aching doubt which overcame her, once, on board the _Princess_, a -doubt as to Gaston’s belief in her perfect truthfulness. - -‘Yes, and no,’ she answered, a piteous deprecation in her tone. ‘Lord -Rex Basire was in the market-place. His company was so wearisome that -I could scarcely answer a civil word. Yet he followed me from stall to -stall. A lord, it seems, will not be affronted as a gentleman would. I -never shook him off till I turned the corner beneath the Arsenal gates.’ - -‘From which point Lord Rex no doubt caught a glimpse of me,’ said -Gaston with his unfathomable candour. ‘’Tis a good enough little -creature in its way, although brainless! We must be tolerant of all -men, Dinah. If one only frequented the society one loves best,’ he -pursued, ‘I should certainly not be going out to breakfast at this -moment.’ - -‘Going out!’ - -‘I saw de Gourmet at the bottom of the hill, and he invited me to eat -red mullet with him thirty-five minutes later. You must admit, Dinah, -that the temptation was strong? - -To this she made no answer. - -‘For when de Gourmet talks of red mullet he implies a menu. (Our food -in Alderney was barbarous.) Rougets en papillottes, accompanied by fine -old Graves. Tartines de caviar. Poulet sauté--with Château Margaux, -of ’58. A soufflé aux fraises. A glass of wonderful Tokai after one’s -morsel of Stilton! Still,’ added Gaston, ‘if _you_ had met me on the -pier I could never have said Yes--especially as I am obliged to dine at -the Fort to-night.’ - -Again Dinah was mute. She rested her hand upon the garden railing -beside which they stood. She kept the tears back, bravely, in their bed. - -‘It is guest night at mess, and there will be a larger party than -usual. My engagement dates, really, from a week ago. I made some idle -promise, it seems, of giving the Maltshire youngsters a lesson in -poker. By the bye,’ ran on Mr. Arbuthnot, with an air of spontaneous -reminiscence, ‘I remember! Little Oscar Jones offered to put me up. -Very lucky I thought of telling you.’ - -‘You intend to be away till to-morrow? Is that your meaning, Gaston?’ - -‘Till to-morrow, certainly. When can one get away from a mess-dinner -before midnight! This time, however, you will not be disturbed, my -love. Instead of being roused at an unearthly hour of the morning, you -will have your rest unbroken. And you want it, Dinah. Do you know that -you are losing your colour, that your eyes are beginning to look dark -under the lower lid?’ - -‘And your evening dress? When you breakfast with Colonel de Gourmet, I -generally see nothing of you for the remainder of the day.’ - -‘My dearest girl, you are all thoughtfulness. Just put together what -I shall want in my Gladstone. Miller will see that it goes up to the -Fort. And do not keep in your own room, Dinah, and do eat dinner, -instead of drinking tea, for my sake.’ - -By this time Gaston Arbuthnot had progressed some paces along the -descending path. Dinah had no choice but to return to the hotel, -then settle down, after a scarcely tasted breakfast, to one of her -accustomed days of loneliness and embroidery. - -Alas! the mere mechanical business of cross-stitch irritated her -cruelly. This conscientious sorting of coloured wools, this rigid -counting of threads, this hour-long stabbing of a needle in and out of -canvas--what good could be the outcome of it? She asked herself the -question ere her needle had taken a dozen stitches. What ill has been -lessened, thought Dinah, what pleasure added to mortal lot by all the -collective pieces of wool-work which patient, dull-hearted women have -executed since the world began? - -A keen, eager soul like Marjorie Bartrand’s would have settled the -question, unhelped, and finally, at about the age of eleven. Dinah’s -nature was essentially averse to revolution. She was slow at imagining -new futures, and an existence without cross-stitch would, to her, have -been the newest of all possible existences. But pain was beginning to -sting her, not only into rebellion, but into quickened intelligence. -It was not merely the emptiness of wool-work as an occupation that -overcame her. She felt humiliated by its want of art. She pictured -the tasteless adornment of Aunt Susan’s humble parlour rendered a few -shades more tasteless by the added pinks and greens and reds of her own -laborious ottoman! She divined, as she had never done before, what her -‘pieces’ must seem like in the fastidious sight of Gaston and of his -friends. - -With a sensation of disgust poor Dinah pinned a screen of silver paper -over her forget-me-nots and auriculas. Then she took Geoffrey’s volume -of Browning from the table. Seating herself in a corner of the room -farthest away from the fresh air, the enlivening summer odours and -warmth which floated in from the garden, she began to read. - -The book opened at ‘James Lee’s Wife.’ - -During the past twenty-fours hours she had pondered deeply over the -wisdom to be gained at the hands of polite society. What was the -Langrune expedition for her but an experiment, a lesson whereby she -might acquire the manners, the temper, the ideas (if such existed) -of her husband’s world! The experiment had taught her much. Yet, I -think, ‘James Lee’s Wife,’ read and re-read, through tears, had taught -her more. She had discovered no transcendental meaning, as a learned -Browning Society might have done, in Browning’s words. But she was -growing to look at life otherwise than by her own small rushlight of -personal experience, to know that it was no new thing for a man’s fancy -to die while his wife’s love burned at white heat, to realise that -there was a wide world lying outside her own narrow embittered lot--a -world to whose beauty and whose teachings the most self-engrossed soul -must open itself or perish. - -Dinah Arbuthnot did not want to perish. She could be content, she -thought, although delight was gone out of her days, if use survived; -ready to spin the wool and bake the bread; to return to the plain, -sweet wholesomeness of workaday existence from which the hapless good -fortune of marrying a gentleman had divorced her. - -To part from Gaston, in short! - -For an instant she had a physical longing to breathe the air of the -Devonshire moorlands. A wild hope crossed her that she might go back to -her father’s people, live their village lives, earn her own bread--be -Dinah Thurston again. Then her heart smote her with violence. The -volume fell to the floor. Could parting from Gaston be a beginning of -better things, a turning towards the straight path of duty--that path -along which so many a wife has to walk, uncomplaining, through the -after years of a marriage to which happiness has not been granted? Her -existence at his side was more, now, than a long, slow disappointment. -It was a growing anguish, a combat in which ignorant, plain-speaking -love on one side had no chance against a succession of sympathetic -rivals all uttering perfect little flatteries, all giving perfect -little dinners, on the other. And she, Dinah, was not two-and-twenty, -and her young heart craved, insistently, for sunshine. And such a -slender change, it seemed, in the eternal foreordering of events, a -child at her knee, a husband loving the quiet of his own fireside, -would have made up the sum of her prosaic ambition! - -Yet she must go on enduring. She must not part from Gaston until -the dark final curtain shut his face for ever from her sight. What -taste could she have for the Devonshire moorlands, the country joys -which contented her when she was a girl? No human soul can serve two -masters. After knowing passionate love, passionate jealousy, how could -she go back to a life of no emotion at all, how share the village -interests of people like her father’s folk; simple souls with whom it -was a vital point whether the next cake should be made with carraways -or with raisins, who could speculate through half a winter as to who -would be ‘asked,’ and who wear new bonnets on Easter Sunday, and in -whose minds a visit to Exeter, or the yearly house-cleaning, ranked -among the larger events of mortal destiny! - -The poor girl was reluctantly coming to the conclusion--a hard one -to realise at her age--that she would not be extraordinarily welcome -anywhere, when Geff Arbuthnot, unannounced, as was his habit, entered -the parlour. - -He took in the position of affairs promptly. Dinah’s colourless face, -her unoccupied hands, the book lying, as it had fallen, on the floor, -told him, with gist passing that of words, that she was in some fresh -misery of which Gaston was the cause. - -Geoffrey’s own heart was sore, his spirit troubled, to-day. A thought -distantly akin to that which had newly traversed Dinah’s mind for a -moment overcame him. What a little change in the foreordering of things -might have re-written the story of both lives! If Dinah Thurston had -chanced to love him before his cousin Gaston crossed her path.... - -‘Alone--and indoors, Dinah?’ Her Christian name for once slipped from -his lips. ‘It is a day,’ quoted Geff, ‘“when it were a sullenness -against Nature not to go abroad and see her riches.” Has Gaston -returned?’ - -‘Gaston and the Thornes have returned. The Cherbourg boat came in long -ago. And I have been out--I went down to market before breakfast. I -enjoyed the morning wonderfully.’ - -There was the kind of discrepancy between voice and statement that -you might detect in the speech of a man who should declare he had -‘wonderfully enjoyed’ a funeral. - -‘And what are you going to do with yourself this afternoon?’ - -‘I scarcely know--I am in an idle mood--write to one of the good old -aunts in Devonshire, perhaps.’ - -‘And Gaston?’ - -‘Gaston will not be seen till to-morrow. He has, in the first place, -gone out to breakfast. I was not on the pier when they landed, and -Gaston ran quickly up here to dress. I only spoke to him for a few -minutes outside the hotel. Colonel de Gourmet had waylaid him on the -road, it seems, and invited him to breakfast--off red mullet! The -temptation, Gaston said, was irresistible.’ - -A touch of sarcasm was in Mrs. Arbuthnot’s voice. - -‘The Guernsey red mullet is not a bad fish,’ retorted Geff with -appreciation. - -‘Breakfasting, of course, means spending the day at Colonel de -Gourmet’s house--until the hour comes round for afternoon teas! And -to-night there is a dinner-party at the Fort. Gaston is forced to be -there ... to give some of the Maltshire subalterns a lesson in poker. -He will not be back till to-morrow, quite out of consideration for me! -Gaston thought me looking pale. He did not wish me to have another -broken night.’ - -The speech was delivered with a kind of staccato airiness. Geoffrey -Arbuthnot’s face became graver and graver while Dinah made it. - -‘You are reading, I see, as usual. Why, you will be a confirmed -bookworm before long.’ - -Coming closer, he picked up the volume from the floor. He examined the -page at which it opened. - -‘“James Lee’s Wife;” I should say you would soon know Mrs. Lee’s -history by heart?’ - -‘I find something new in it, always. Don’t you think, Geff, so much -writing must have gone far to ease her sorrow? Or would writing just -come natural to an educated, born lady? In my class,’ said Dinah, ‘if -trouble cut us very keen, we should not feel like taking a copy-book to -write it down.’ - -The criticism, from Dinah’s point of view, was just. Geff sought not to -controvert it. - -‘The prettiest part of all is “Beside the drawing-board.” I was -thinking, before you came in, I’d rather be the little girl with the -poor coarse hand than write the best poetry ever printed.’ - -Geoffrey followed the drift of her remark. - -‘And Gaston?’ he asked with point. ‘How about his opinion? We cannot -look at a single small morsel of our lot, forgetting the rest. If there -is one thing Gaston admires more than another in a woman, it is the -whiteness and delicacy of her hand.’ - -‘All the same, Geff, I hate to live without work, common household work -that makes the hands rough and red. Work is the same to me as your -books are to you. And you know,’ added Dinah, ‘there must always be a -world full of ladies, delicate, white-skinned, fond of idleness, whose -finger-tips Gaston could admire.’ - -The observation gave Geff an inconveniently straight glimpse behind -the domestic curtain of his friends’ lives. Moving to the table he -became suddenly interested in Dinah’s marketing--the strawberries were -in their wicker basket still; the roses hung their heads, as though -conscious of neglect, over the rim of an ugly water-jug. - -You may, generally, prognosticate safely as to the state of a woman’s -heart when she treats her flowers lovelessly. - -‘They were all for Gaston. You know how he likes to see fresh fruit and -flowers on the breakfast-table.’ - -‘I know that the strawberries smell uncommonly good. They are to be -kept, of course, for Gaston’s return?’ - -‘Oh, no.’ Dinah’s voice was blankly indifferent. ‘I don’t care now what -becomes of them.’ - -‘You would do well to care!’ exclaimed Geoffrey, looking round on -her, shortly. ‘There are a good many millions of people in the world, -remember, besides Gaston Arbuthnot.’ - -‘Geoffrey!’ - -‘Yes, a good many millions, the majority of them poor, an enormous -percentage--suffering. Gaston and you, and I, are surfeited with good -things. We are certain every day we live that we shall dine--think -of that, Mrs. Arbuthnot, _dine_, with the accompaniment of as many -strawberries and roses as we choose to buy.’ - -The blood mantled hot over Dinah Arbuthnot’s weary face. - -‘You mean to remind me that I am selfish?’ she said, very low. ‘I know -it, Geoffrey. I know that I am sinking fast into everything that is -bad.’ - -‘In the common meaning of the words, you are the least selfish woman -living. But you are self-absorbed--no, even that is saying too -much--you are Gaston-absorbed. If you could see how some half-starved -people manage to get along--yes, and to be cheerful over their -crust--you might think less of strawberries and roses for Gaston’s -breakfast-table.’ - -The admonition looks rougher, set down in black and white, than it -sounded. Dinah’s face grew animated. - -‘I know that to be useful in any way would do me good. Long -ago I should have liked district-visiting in England, only you -see’--hesitating--‘we never stop long enough to explain ... I mean, for -the clergyman of the place quite to know about one.’ - -Her tone was tentative. She had an uneasy dread that young women who -marry men above them in rank are likely, if ‘unexplained,’ to be -suspect in orthodox eyes. In their early married days she recollected -a visit paid to them by a seaside curate with a subscription-list, -recollected the seaside curate’s glance when Gaston introduced her, -with her country speech and manners, as ‘my wife.’ - -And Dinah’s being the order of mind that generalises, for ever after, -from one experience, that glance haunted her still, an uncomfortable -reminder as to the likely sentiments of the clergy at large regarding -herself. - -‘Not long enough to explain! I don’t catch your meaning. What on earth -has any clergyman in England to do with you, Dinah Arbuthnot? Could -you not feel for miserable people, work for them, serve them heartily, -although you travelled round the country, a heathen, in a caravan, -although you had never spoken to a clergyman in your life!’ - -‘I want some one to show me the way,--that is another weakness of my -character,--I want some one to show me the way in everything good, -Geff.’ - -‘Let me show you the way, to-day. You remember the sailor lad who got -his ankle hurt as we were coming back from France?’ - -That wretched passage in the fog? Yes, Dinah remembered every incident -of it, too well. - -‘There was worse mischief done than the surgeons feared, at first. Poor -Jack is at present Number 28 in the accident ward of the hospital. He -will have to remain there for a good many more weeks than he thinks. -Well, one may safely assert, Mrs. Arbuthnot, that though you and I and -Gaston have roses and strawberries to spare, Jack has none.’ - -‘Take them to him, of course,’ Dinah exclaimed. ‘Surely, Geff, you -might have done that, without asking.’ - -‘And do you suppose Jack would not value such gifts more if they came -from a woman’s hand, the delicate white hand whose uses you despise! -To-day is Friday. On Friday afternoon the patients’ friends are -admitted to see them. But Jack’s friends are far away in Devonshire. -You will be his only visitor if you consent to come.’ - -Dinah rose, acquiescently, rather than with any initiative warmth. She -had a moment’s hesitation. Gaston held such contradictory opinions, at -times.... No knowing if Gaston would approve of her putting herself -forward. There was the Archdeaconess ... there were the island clergy? -Then, encountering a look that had a command in it from Geoffrey’s -eyes, she moved lingeringly towards the adjoining room. - -‘If I dressed to please myself, you need not wait two minutes, Geff. -But the powers that be,’ the little malice flashed from her unawares, -‘are sensitive--as to millinery! I could not run the terrible risk of -meeting Mrs. Thorne and Gaston in my morning gown.’ - - - - -CHAPTER XXXIX - -THAT LITTLE DIVINITY - - -The project roused her, at least, into physical brightness. As -she walked at Geoffrey’s side towards the hospital, the basket of -strawberries hanging from her arm, her hands filled with roses, a -stranger, meeting them, would have taken Dinah Arbuthnot for some April -cheeked girl, ignorant of passion as of disappointment; a girl needing -no apologist! She wore, on this fateful afternoon, a dove-coloured -Quaker gown, a Gainsborough hat tied beneath her chin by black velvet -strings; _item_, a large plain cambric tippet, with cambric half -sleeves reaching to the elbows. It was the latest costume invented by -her husband in an idle moment. And Geoffrey had lost exactly half an -hour while she put it on. - -But what man would grudge a lost half-hour after one glance at that for -which he had waited! - -The road from Miller’s Hotel to the hospital led through Petersport -High Street, and close to the north entrance of Colonel de Gourmet’s -garden. At the moment when Dinah and Geff walked along, it chanced -that the Colonel, himself, reclined under the shaded verandah of -his drawing-room,--the Colonel, smoking his third cheroot, and -offering unsentimental criticisms on the dress and looks of such -feminine passers-by as came within range of a pair of languidly held -opera-glasses. - -Of an afternoon Colonel de Gourmet’s drawing-room was generally full. -Lacking many, let us say lacking all the more solid human qualities, -the old East Indian sybarite had one virtue--he was universally -hospitable. Nothing pleased him better than that a man he had invited -to breakfast should loiter on till dinner. Nothing pleased him better -than that other men whom he had not invited should drop in, at any hour -they chose, make free with his rare cigars, rarer wines, and entertain -each other with ideas, or with that best discovered substitute for the -trivial masculine mind--cards. - -In a garrison town, sea on three sides, and barely available space on -the other for a polo match or a herring run, it may be believed that -old Colonel de Gourmet was in no lack of callers. - -Six or eight men, young enough, most of them, to be their host’s -grandsons, were lounging, this July afternoon, in various attitudes of -idleness about his pleasant bachelor drawing-room. The air was lightly -impregnated with tobacco smoke, so good of its kind that, mingled -with the wafted garden sweets, it scarcely seemed grosser than some -finely distilled odour of musk flower or of tea-rose. Gaston Arbuthnot -was on the point of finishing a match at écarté with little Oscar -Jones--two or three of Oscar’s brother officers forming a silent and -discriminative gallery. - -Cards, simply as cards, Gaston Arbuthnot disliked, although he had -an inborn knack of playing most things successfully. The childish -intricacies of a game like Nap., beloved of all the Maltshire -subalterns, were to him a weariness of spirit. - -‘We can use your English Nap. as a means,’ he would tell them, -frankly, ‘just as we can use blind hookey or, simpler than either, -chicken hazard, if we want to transfer money from one man’s pocket -to another. As a matter of amusement, I would sooner play euchre -or poker for counters: in poker especially, all our natural human -instincts--bluster, bluffing, intent to deceive, etc.--come agreeably -to the fore.’ - -Whist, Gaston confessed, he played well. At écarté he was moderately -good. This moderate goodness his antagonist was about to test -practically. - -‘Four, all!’ cried little Oscar, eager over a just-dealt, brilliant -hand of trumps. - -‘The king,’ said Gaston, quietly laying down his cards. ‘Some one tell -de Gourmet it is his turn to cut in.’ - -The Colonel had now risen to his feet. He was watching an object, -evidently of paramount interest, through his opera-glasses. - -‘A throat--an ankle--shoulders! Tell you what it is, sir,--she is -the prettiest woman in the island--not one of our society beauties -can hold a candle to her! And she’s not a woman one meets at any of -the parties.--By and by, Arbuthnot, by and by.’ For Gaston with a -presentiment of the truth, sat, restlessly, shuffling and re-shuffling -the cards. ‘To view the Queen of Hearts in flesh and blood is better, -surely, than handling her in pasteboard. Now where did one see that -little divinity before? At Saturday’s rose-show, of course. Asked -Linda Thorne about her. Mrs. Linda--true type of her sex--affected not -to know her name. Luckily, such a paragon does not need a name. An -Archdeaconess, if I mistake not, threw her little pebble. “The young -person with the yellow hair was--nobody one knew.”’ - -Every man in the room, with the exception of Arbuthnot, had by this -time crowded to the window. One of the youngsters hazarded a bold -whisper in the host’s ear. It was old de Gourmet’s deafer ear. He -caught the note of warning imperfectly. He resumed his parable with -warmth: - -‘French woman, do you say? Cannot believe it, sir. No French woman had -ever such a complexion, such hair. But the dress, with its complex -simplicity, comes from Paris, doubtless. Dove coloured _mousseline -de laine_.’ The Colonel made these things as much a study as his -Brillat Savarin. ‘A tippet, designedly plain, such as Perfection, only, -dare put on. A little black velvet knot beneath the dainty chin.... -(Directly, Arbuthnot, directly--calm your impatience.) And look at her -teeth, now she smiles, and her dimples! The young fellow with her seems -disposed to make the best of his opportunities--small blame to him!’ - -Throughout the listeners there ran a flash of hideous silence. At last -some one passed a slip of paper, on which a name had been hastily -scribbled, into Colonel de Gourmet’s gouty fingers, and then arose -general conversation, mainly as to the weather prospects. After this -fog that had been hanging about the Channel for days, and with the -glass running down fast, what were the chances we should not have a -thunderstorm in the course of the next twenty-four hours? - -Gaston Arbuthnot arranged the cards in two neat packs on the table and -waited silently for his host. He felt morally certain that the little -divinity was his wife, also that Lord Rex Basire was her companion. -And a wholesomely bitter contrition filled his soul, a feeling widely -differing from the vague disrelish with which he had watched her -teaching Basire cross-stitch five days before. Probably he never knew -how dear Dinah’s white name was to him, never realised how culpably he -had left her in the shade, until this moment’s humiliation. - -And still Gaston’s countenance betrayed him not. An instant later, he -was rallying the Colonel on his boyish enthusiasm, confessing that, -for his own part, he was too staid a Benedict to exert himself, at the -present state of the thermometer, merely because a nice-looking woman -happened to pass along the street. - -‘And what are our stakes--the usual fiver?’ asked de Gourmet, looking -immensely tickled as he hobbled across the room to the card-table. ‘I -am afraid of you though, Arbuthnot! You are just the man to be in luck.’ - -‘I don’t believe in luck. Conduct is fate.’ Gaston lifted his handsome -face. He fixed his clear steely glance on the somewhat Silenus features -over against him. ‘Champagne?--I thank you, Colonel. No brain-enemy, -just at present. Don’t you know that we Yankees keep our heads cool----’ - -‘On purpose to rook the Britishers,’ interrupted de Gourmet, still with -a suppressed chuckle in his voice. - -‘On purpose to rook the Britishers. Now, let us attend to business, -sir,’ said Gaston cheerfully. ‘The best of three games for a five-pound -note--good!’ - - -The little divinity and her companion had by this time reached the -hospital gates. - -‘I hope I shall use the proper words, Geff,’ whispered Dinah, looking -flushed and nervous. ‘The kind of _exhortation_, you know, that -clergymen’s wives would give to sick people.’ - -‘Impossible!’ Geoffrey disencouraged her promptly. ‘Orthodoxy cannot be -learnt at a moment’s notice. You must be content to be--yourself! And -that is much,’ he added, watching her beautiful, earnest face. ‘Your -sermon may well be a silent one. Look, just as you are looking at this -moment, and leave the rest to the patient’s human nature. Jack may be -a miserable sinner, needing homilies. That is a fact you and I have no -certitude about. We know that he is a poor lad, far from his people, -laid low in pain and weakness. Depend upon it, the sound of a tender -voice, the sight of Dinah Arbuthnot’s face, must prove good medicine, -both for his soul and body.’ - -The tears started to Dinah’s eyes. She was just at that tension point -of suppressed emotion when a kindly accent, a word or two of praise, -are as hands extended to a drowning man. If Gaston only esteemed her -poor personal gifts as Geoffrey did--for, of whatever she thought, -to-day, Gaston still was beneath the current of her thinking! Nay (this -followed by a descending, yet inevitable sequence of ideas), if Gaston -could only hold the opinion of her held--Dinah, remembering events, had -a little thrill of shame--by a man like Lord Rex Basire! - -Perhaps the sum-total of yoked infelicity might be lessened if careless -husbands would reckon with themselves, sometimes, concerning the number -of their deserved rivals--such husbands, I mean, as possess wives of -Dinah Arbuthnot’s mould. For must not the answer be trumpet-tongued: -‘The whole seeing world!’ Does not every man, save the purblind, range -himself by intuition on the side of a young and beautiful and neglected -woman? But careless husbands may not have imagination enough for such -a stretch, or there may be sympathisers ... outside feminine judges -... mature sirens ... a clever whisper, even, now and then. And so the -wife’s heart continues to ache to the last--or gives up aching of a -sudden: deeper tragedy, by far. - -Dinah’s colour went and came as she traversed the corridors of the -hospital beside Geoffrey. The moment they entered Ward A., the men’s -accident room, she forgot her want of knowledge, of orthodoxy. -‘Explanation’ was not needed here. She saw only the rows of beds, -each bed with its pallid inmate. She felt only that she was Dinah -Thurston--among the poor, the simple, the suffering,--among her equals. - -The patients in the ward were mostly working-men in the springtime -of their strength, the majority of them victims of the late quarry -accident. A few, like poor Jack, had been struck down by mishap at sea -or in the harbour. Beside nearly every bed was a visitor. Here might -be seen a country girl talking in whispers to her sweetheart. Here a -pale wife clasped her husband’s hand, or a mother in silent anguish -watched her lad’s changed face. On every pillow was a little posy of -sweet-smelling cottage flowers, reminding the gaunt sufferers who lay -there, patient and uncomplaining, of blue summer sky, of the freshness -of fields and gardens, of home. - -Number 28 had neither visitor nor posy. Poor Jack came from a remote -hamlet among the Devonshire moors. His mates on board the _Princess_ -were afloat again. The lad had no friends, save the surgeons and nurses -of the Guernsey hospital--and Geff Arbuthnot. - -‘Speak to him about his own country,’ Geoffrey whispered, as his -companion drew back a little; ‘Jack will dispense with any formal -introduction.’ - -And on this, Dinah, her face overflowing with sweetest womanly -compassion, stooped over the low pallet and spoke--a commonplace word -or two, unworthy of raising to the dignity of print--a word or two -whose homely Devonshire lilt called the blood up to Jack’s temples as -though some voice from the old familiar home addressed him. - -Since her marriage, Dinah had learnt to speak English, ‘with a foreign -pronunciation,’ Gaston would tell her, ‘yet scarcely strong enough to -be disagreeable.’ Although a tell-tale cadence was traceable, ever and -again, in her speech, she had tardily succeeded in putting away the -Devonshire burr that was strong on her tongue when Geoffrey met her -first. Here, at Jack’s bedside, no Gaston near to be put to shame, -she fell back, instinctively, upon the West Country accent, the soft, -half-strange, half-familiar o’s and u’s of her childhood. - -‘It’s so bad to be sick, for a young fellow like you, and away from -home. We just thought you might like a talk with some one Devonshire -born and bred. I wonder, now, do you and I come from the same part?’ - -‘I was born at Torrhill, a village out away beyond Chagford. A poor -place, ma’am, on the borders of the moor--quite a poor place,’ repeated -Jack apologetically. - -‘Why, that is near to my own town, Tavistock!’ said Dinah. ‘We used to -pass Torrhill going along the Vale of Widdicombe every autumn when we -went out whortleberrying. “Torrhill, in the cold country.” I mind we -children used to say, when we got snowstorms in winter, “the Widdicombe -folk were picking their geese.”’ - -Well, and as he listened to her simple talk, to the soft West Country -accent, it came to pass that Geff Arbuthnot’s heart knew a thrill of -its old infatuation. No man can possibly hold two women dear at the -same time. And Geoffrey was in love--the warm flesh and blood love of -four-and-twenty--with an actuality, not a remembrance. But his heart -thrilled at Dinah’s voice. Something in his temperament forbade him -to outlive the past, wholly. It was a book that could not be clasped. -A word, an accent, and the enchantment cast upon him in the long dead -summer days at Lesser Cheriton would be revitalised. This was his -weakness (a conscious one) always; and now he was in the dangerous -state of wounded feeling when a man’s tenderness is easily arrested at -rebound.... - -Those Devonshire o’s and u’s brought back before him in its fiery -ardour the fortnight when he worshipped Dinah Thurston’s footsteps, -the fortnight ending on that evening when Gaston and his friends drove -past in the twilight on their return from Ely. Standing here, in the -Guernsey hospital ward, Geoffrey’s senses recalled the rush of wheels -down the village street, the lingering daylight in the low fields of -Cambridgeshire sky. He remembered how Dinah’s head and throat stood out -in waxen relief against the dusky arbutus hedge of the cottage garden. - -And he decided, there and then,--yes, while she was chatting, -low-voiced, smiling, to the lad about the moors, and the ‘cold -country,’ and the autumn huckle-berrying--to return to England -forthwith. - -A French steamer was to touch at Petersport on Sunday morning. That -would give him to-morrow for winding up his small affairs, for taking -leave of his patients, for visiting Tintajeux. He would kiss, in -coldest fancy, the hair, the lips that should have made up to him for -the unattainable heaven of his youth’s desire. He would look once again -in Marjorie’s eyes, and go. It was possible--here, at least, might be -a gleam of comfort--that Gaston and Dinah would steer clearer through -their difficulties if left absolutely alone than they were doing now. - -He told her of his intention when they were on their way back to the -hotel. - -‘And, remember, you know your way to the hospital,’ he added quickly, -as Dinah was about to speak. ‘I hope when I am gone you will pay Jack -many a kind little visit, your hands as full of fruits and flowers as -they were to-day.’ - -‘When you are gone!’ echoed Dinah, blankly. The fear smote her that -with Geoffrey’s going, such slack hold as she still had upon Gaston -must be loosened. ‘I hoped you would remain here ... as long, at least, -as I must. Think of all the sick people who will miss you, Geff. Think -of Miss Bartrand.’ - -‘I shall find sick people everywhere. In the matter of doctors, -Guernsey is full of better men than I.’ - -‘And Marjorie Bartrand?’ - -‘Ah! that is a different side of the question. I am conceited enough to -think Miss Bartrand’s mathemathics will suffer.’ - -‘And you don’t care--you are not one bit sorry at giving her up? Do you -know, Geoffrey, I had begun to hope----’ - -‘Miss Bartrand will be a Girton girl before long,’ interrupted -Geoffrey. ‘Happily,’--he paused--‘she is not without self-reliance, has -more than a woman’s share, perhaps, of ambition. When we see each other -next it will be as fellow-students in Cambridge.’ - -Dinah knew the tone of his voice. It was not a tone that invited -discussion. - -‘Your leaving is an ill stroke of luck for me, Geff. Day by day -Gaston’s engagements seem to grow upon him. My time will be emptier -than ever when you are gone.’ - -‘You may fill it, full as time can hold. I thought as I watched you -charming poor Jack out of knowledge of his pain that you had missed -your vocation. You should be a nurse. Yours are the ideal face and -voice and tread that we want in the hospitals. If you ever harbour -thoughts of emancipation, or of a mission,’ said Geoffrey, ‘remember my -hint.’ - -‘When Gaston has used the last line that can be modelled from my face, -for instance?’ - -The smile was flickering with which Dinah hazarded the surmise. - -‘When Gaston has got his last inspiration from your face! Unluckily for -the hospitals, that day will not come quite yet. A woman with a mission -should have no such vexatious encumbrance as a husband or a lover.’ - -For once, Geoffrey’s tone was cynical. He recalled his parting with -Marjorie Bartrand over-night. - - - - -CHAPTER XL - -AT THE BUNGALOW - - -And all this time an offer of truce lay on the mantelshelf of Dinah’s -parlour; an offer directed to himself in the handwriting whose Greek -e’s, whose girlish assumption of scholarship, Geoffrey’s heart knew! - -Can we wonder at the pagan notion that the gods must needs hold their -sides for laughter when they gaze down on the ever-twisted plot of -our little lives? Geoffrey and Dinah were within a hundred feet of -Miller’s house. Five minutes more and Geff must have been lifted--this -time into quite other than a Fool’s Paradise, when, abruptly, a new -actor, jauntily floating in cobweb Indian silk, gleaming under a -scarlet sunshade, with eight-buttoned gloves, with airs, with graces -innumerable, made her entrance upon the scene. - -Mrs. Thorne’s manner was confident to-day, as of one with whom the -world goes well. She ran skittishly down the steps leading from -the hotel garden. She paused, tapping a high-heeled shoe in pretty -impatience on the gravel. She looked this way and that, expectantly; at -length, it would seem, decided, with a little merry shake of the head, -for the chances of town over country. Then, with such ease of tread -as high-heeled shoes are apt to confer on ladies whose summers are -increasing, she commenced the steep descent of the hill. - -‘I hope Mrs. Thorne has not been calling on me. I hope, if we stop, she -will make me no pretty speeches,’ said Dinah under her breath. ‘I could -not bear them just now. If Mrs. Thorne makes pretty speeches, I shall -say something true to her.’ - -Geoffrey, man-like, showed signs of instant flight on hearing the -ultimatum. He was in no vein, he said, for Linda Thorne’s fine spirits -(was in no vein, I fear, for the better sex at all, in its liveliness -or its asperity); he had an appointment to keep, a case of life and -death, at the bedside of one of the quarry workers--would not be back -till late--it was time for him to be on his road and---- - -‘In short,’ interrupted Dinah, ‘you have not courage to meet Mrs. -Thorne!’ - -‘If you like to say so--yes,’ was Geff’s answer. ‘But don’t tell Mrs. -Thorne the truth.’ He whispered this to Dinah at parting. ‘Or tell her -such truth only as affects herself, not you.’ - -Dinah, however, was not in a temper for advice, even Geoffrey’s. Erect -of carriage, with a flush of the cheeks, a sparkle in the eyes, Dinah -walked grandly up the hill, determined, at every cost, that final truth -should be spoken between her and Mrs. Thorne, did opportunity offer. - -‘So our philosopher shows valour’s better part,’ thought Linda, as -Geff vanished down a turning to the right. ‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot -positively declines to face me! We have never been rapturously fond of -each other. Now it is to be war to the knife. Excellent, detestable -young man! I accept the challenge.’ - -And Mrs. Thorne mentally kissed her pale buff finger tips in the -direction taken by Geoffrey. - -Dinah, meanwhile, had breasted the hill. Her head was held aloft, her -fine arms were folded in one of those attitudes of natural repose that -had always been the despair of Gaston’s pencil. To the artist who has -no ‘wood notes wild,’ the virtuoso with whom craft, workmanship, -style, are all in all, is not perfect naturalness the most difficult to -woo among the graces! - -Linda spoke first. ‘So very glad to meet you. I have this moment called -at Miller’s and found you absent. We can have our chat out of doors.’ - -She was serenely void of conscience. It was probably a mere physical -sensation of antagonism that hindered Mrs. Thorne from offering poor -magnificent Dinah her hand. - -‘To begin with, I must unburthen my soul by confession.’ So she ran on -gaily. ‘My visit was, really and truly, to your husband.’ - -Not a change of colour, not a shade of expression passed across the -face of Gaston’s wife. She possessed the self-preserving instincts of -many weaker creatures, and of her sex in general; could conceal, feign, -dissemble--except under the eyes, and at the voice of him she loved. - -‘The other night, at sea, just before the steamer stopped at Alderney, -you must know that he and I made a bet, a very foolish one.’ Linda had -the grace to redden as she remembered what that bet was about. ‘And Mr. -Arbuthnot won. He wins in everything, it seems?’ - -A compliment may have been implied by the tone. It fell dead on Dinah -Arbuthnot’s prejudiced ears. - -‘And so I thought I would run up this afternoon to discharge my debt. -I deposited the stakes on a corner of your mantelpiece. If you see Mr. -Arbuthnot before I do, tell him, from me, that he has won,--that I am -bankrupt! You will forgive me for invading your sitting-room, without -leave, will you not?’ - -Still Dinah did not speak. Her eyes glowed, deepened until their soft -English hazel seemed turned to black. - -‘I have known you long enough--we are sufficiently intimate,’ -went on Linda, feeling that she was being forced into the fencing -attitude--‘for me to venture on such a liberty?’ - -‘You can venture where you choose.’ Forth came the reply in Dinah’s -full, rounded tones. ‘The room is Gaston’s. How can I question your -right of entering it? But I must ask you not to speak of intimacy. If -I saw you daily, until the last day I live, I should never be intimate -with you.’ - -Her voice was crystal clear, by reason of its low pitch. Every word -was weighted by passionate, long pent-up feeling. Linda Thorne shifted -about, ill at ease, on the feet that a minute ago had danced under her -weight so airily. - -‘We ought, positively, to see more of each other! I think it quite -too charming of you to be so sincere--quite. I always say to my -friends--“Mrs. Arbuthnot has that most refreshing, that rarest of -gifts, sincerity.”’ - -‘Do you say this? Saying this, do you mean to speak well of me?’ - -‘Dearest Mrs. Arbuthnot! Can you doubt the honesty of my intentions?’ - -‘Never say it again. Be generous enough at least to spare me your -praise.’ - -The rapier points had lost their buttons. Linda Thorne fell into -position quickly. That Dinah, good Griselda-like woman, loved her -careless husband to the pitch of jealous idolatry, had been patent to -her long before. Still, viewing the Arbuthnot household from her own -level, Linda’s judgment was--that Griselda had consolations. Mild ones, -if you will: the devotion of Lord Rex Basire, impartially offered to -every pink-and-white nonentity he came across; the constant society, -tinged by that glamour which beautiful women confer on all their -relationships, of the excellent, detestable Scotch cousin, Geoffrey -Arbuthnot. But consolations, nevertheless. - -And this judgment sharpened her reply. - -‘If I were to refrain from praising you, my dear creature, I should -lay myself open to the charge of envy, the one vice,’ observed Linda, -with pathetic self-depreciation, ‘which I am free from. Every man in -this island, my own good husband included, sounds your praise. You have -absolutely a queue--I mean,’ considerately translating, ‘a little train -of conquests! Lord Rex Basire, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’ - -‘I ask you to stop! In the class of life I come from,’ exclaimed Dinah, -aflame, ‘we hold it unworthy for a married woman to make conquests.’ - -‘Rather severe, surely! Cleopatra may never have known she had -conquered, until Anthony’s peace was gone.’ - -‘Just as we hold it unworthy in any woman, married or single, to -beguile the husband of another.’ - -A tiny pink-hued veil reached to the tip of Linda’s nose. We may assume -that the veil concealed Linda’s usual percentage of well-applied rice -powder. But a gleam of white anger showed through veil and powder -alike. A nervous quiver worked around her thin lips. For a moment it -seemed as though Mrs. Thorne’s vulnerable point were found, as though -her antagonist’s last thrust had gone home. - -Then she recovered herself without too palpable effort. She laughed -good-humouredly. - -‘Our strain is getting over-tragic. We live in the day of little -things. Sensation is out of vogue. Nobody pushes husbands down wells. -Nobody “beguiles” the husbands of worthier people. Even if it were -otherwise, if Viviens were as the sands of yonder Channel, your -happiness, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, would be secure.’ It must be confessed -that Linda made her counter-stroke with admirable neatness. ‘A -beautiful woman married to an artist holds him in chains, rose-decked -ones, of course, but chains--_chains_.’ - -She forced Dinah to touch fingers. She covered her retreat under -a little roulade of interjections sent back, with grimace of -friendliness, across an expressive shoulder. ‘So fortunate we left -the _Princess_! Never could dear Robbie have stood the terrors of -that night! One hears whispers on all sides of heroic courage! Mrs. -Arbuthnot’s name foremost!’ Then Linda Thorne tripped down the hill, -by virtue of superior coolness mistress, outwardly, of the situation, -but with her heart thumping uneasily, with the queerest, hottest sense -experience had ever brought her of discomfiture and defeat. - -That Dinah’s temper had reached the point which chemists call flashing -point was certain. Another encounter like this, with sharpened memories -on both sides, probably with the added element of an audience, and -either Linda Thorne or Dinah Arbuthnot must become ridiculous. - -It was a dilemma, thought Linda, out of which the finest tact, the -cleverest self-effacement, could scarcely help one. She was like a -prime minister--the presumptuous simile tickled her--a prime minister -who, having lost the lead of the House, would fain transfer his power, -gracefully, to the chief of the Opposition. - -Dinah was that chief; and she, Linda Thorne, was genuinely ready to -abdicate. There was in Linda’s nature a thin stratum of Bohemianism; -the bulk of the woman was Philistine. She liked small popularities, to -air her domestic excellences, her devotion to her Robbie! She liked -to talk serious talk. She liked to dine with the Archdeacon! Sooner -than run the risk of scandal, or go through scenes of such dimensions -as this scene with Dinah, she felt that it would be well to take -Robbie and the infant, pack up her portmanteau, and fly. Oh, if Mrs. -Arbuthnot--a bright thought striking her--could but be made to pack up -_hers_ and go--never to return! Even if poor Dinah took the worshipped -Gaston with her, Mrs. Thorne felt that the price would not be too high. -She would forfeit every sentimental friendship in the world sooner -than again encounter the scorn, the passion of Dinah’s girlish face. -Above all--with an audience! - -It was, really, this vision of an audience, of public battles-royal, of -ridicule, perhaps of acknowledged defeat, which fired Linda Thorne’s -conscience to the height of renunciation. - -Arriving at the garden gate of The Bungalow she heard, no unfamiliar -sound, the voices of Rahnee and of Gaston Arbuthnot, at high play -within. Before discovering herself, the mistress of the house peeped -for a minute through the ivy-covered railings. She saw Rahnee aloft on -Arbuthnot’s tall shoulder, one little skinny hand clutching tight round -his neck, the other beating him stoutly with a switch. - -‘Faster! Missy But’not! Dallop, dallop!’ shrieked Rahnee. - -The child’s vigorous kicks were testifying to her delicious sense of -power over her slave, when the unwelcome gleam of a scarlet sunshade -caught her eyes. - -‘Rahnee--terrible infant!’ cried Linda, falling back on the tired -Indian voice that had been absent during her colloquy with Dinah. ‘Come -down, naughty girl. Think how you must be teasing Mr. Arbuthnot.’ - -‘No, me not tease Missy But’not. Go away!’ The thin arms imperiously -motioned Linda’s dismissal. ‘We not want nobody--Missy But’not and -Rahnee!’ - -‘My visit is to Rahnee exclusively,’ observed Gaston. ‘Remember, -Mrs. Thorne! You warned me not to come to The Bungalow. A mysterious -something might happen before five o’clock converting us for ever into -enemies. But I will not have Rahnee included in the feud.’ - -‘Did I talk such nonsense--really?’ cried Linda, with a forced laugh. -‘Well, who knows? Perhaps it will turn out that I was a prophetess, -after all. Rahnee, little tyrant, come down this instant.’ - -At a signal from Mrs. Thorne the ayah, who had been placidly dozing on -her square of carpet in the shade, arose. With a quick flank movement -the black woman bore down on Rahnee. Upon this, Rahnee, clinging closer -to Gaston, raised her shrill voice to its topmost limits. - -‘Rahnee, I command! Oh! dear--dear, what a trial children are at a high -temperature! Well, then, if you won’t be good,’--Linda drew from her -pocket a little silvery packet tied with cherry-coloured ribbon--‘if -Rahnee won’t be a good girl.... What does she think mamma has brought -her from town?’ - -‘Tandy!’ cried Rahnee, with a sudden accession of repentant wisdom. -‘Rahnee not tease poor Missy But’not no more.’ - -And bestowing two or three resonant kisses on Gaston, the child slid -down out of his arms. She gave her mother a careless caress, then -vanished, hiding herself and her ‘tandy’ under the ayah’s ample cotton -cloak, into The Bungalow. - -‘She really is not a bad little monkey,’ said Linda, who thoroughly -believed in her own system of education. ‘Touch Rahnee’s feelings and -you can at once bring her to obedience. Feeling is the grand requisite -in a child’s nature.’ - -‘Who would not be virtuous,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot, ‘if virtue were -always rewarded by providential sugar candy?’ - -‘And I so wanted to have a few minutes’ quiet talk with you. Do you -know, Mr. Arbuthnot, I am ... seriously afraid’--for once Linda -Thorne’s words came slow and haltingly--‘seriously afraid ... you will -pardon me, I hope, for saying this--that Mrs. Arbuthnot cannot be well.’ - -‘_Dinah!_ Why, she was fresh as a lily when I parted from her this -morning. I have indirectly heard of her looking her best since----’ - -But Gaston’s face was unsmiling. The moment when he shuffled and -re-shuffled the écarté packs, half a dozen men crowding to the -verandah of Colonel de Gourmet’s drawing-room, returned upon him with -significant and disagreeable clearness. - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot is looking exquisite. I thought I had never admired her -so much as in her Quaker dress, her simple country hat! Still, there -may be a bloom which exceeds health, a white which is too transparent. -Your wife strikes me--how shall I describe her state--as low-spirited, -hysterical!’ - -‘She eats and sleeps well. She can walk half round the island. -Difficult to conceive of a young woman with Dinah’s magnificent -constitution as hysterical!’ - -‘But she is so. I met Mrs. Arbuthnot on my way down from Miller’s -Hotel. I told her about our foolish wager, and how I had honestly -called to discharge my debt. A propos de bottes, you will find your -gloves on a corner of the mantlepiece.’ - -‘And Dinah?’ - -‘Dinah, I was afraid, looked like weeping, under the broad light of -day, in the open street.’ - -‘Impossible! She is little given to idle tears, even when cause exists -for shedding them.’ - -Gaston had reddened. He made the statement in the quiet tone of a man -sure of his facts. - -‘I felt as though I had committed some horrible crime--and of course, -when people’s nerves are unstrung, it is sheer cruelty to attempt -to argue with them. Our soft Guernsey air may be at the root of the -mischief. Half the disorders in these Channel places are nervous ones.’ - -‘My wife does not know the meaning of nerves. Your kindheartedness, -dear Mrs. Thorne, for once leads you wide of the mark. Will you let -me smoke a cigarette?’ asked Gaston, consulting his watch. ‘In ten -minutes’ time I must be on my way to the Fort.’ - -They walked up and down, amicably chatting among the pleasant blue-gray -shadows of the lawn. Neither was ignorant of the art by which speech -can be used for the concealment of thought, and Dinah’s name was not -mentioned until the moment came for Gaston’s departure. Then Linda -Thorne spoke again, and to the point. - -‘I meant every word I uttered, Mr. Arbuthnot, and my best advice to you -is, give your wife change. Why not try Sark? It is the lightest air we -have in the Archipelago. Or, better still, run over for ten days to -Brittany.’ In saying this, she glanced at him through her eyelashes. -‘You must, at least, allow that I am unselfish?’ - -‘I allow only that you want to get rid of us,’ laughed Gaston -Arbuthnot, with imperturbable neutrality. ‘Also, that your way of -working the scheme out is charming. You pack up wise counsel, Mrs. -Thorne, in silver paper, tied with rose-coloured ribbon, as you do -Rahnee’s candy!’ - - - - -CHAPTER XLI - -ONE WORD - - -The French waitress met Dinah as she entered the hotel. - -Madame Thorne had called--there was scarce five minutes since. The -visitor insisted ... but insisted on entering. A thousand amiabilities -were to be transmitted by the tongue of Louise, and something--the -Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders vaguely--had been left in Madame’s -salon for Monsieur. - -‘I know all about it,’ cried Dinah, with readiness. ‘Mrs. Thorne and I -have just been talking together. It is quite right, Louise.’ - -She assumed the lightest, most cheerful tone of which she was mistress, -feeling, with inward smart, that the French shrug was over-vague, -that a glimmer of suspicious knowledge showed on the serving-woman’s -face. Then she walked, her step mock-elastic, a poorly counterfeited -smile upon her lips, to her sitting-room. Shutting the door, with the -automatic care human beings bestow on trivial actions in times when -their hearts are fullest, Dinah walked straight to the fireplace. The -‘something’ left for Monsieur was evidently before her. A letter, -almost amounting to a packet, stood on the mantelpiece. It was -addressed in large decisive handwriting to ‘Mr. G. Arbuthnot, Miller’s -Hotel, Guernsey.’ - -(Cette chère Smeet! Elle sait si bien s’effacer! A pair of iron-gray -men’s gloves, lying, modestly, on the farther corner of the shelf did -not arrest Dinah Arbuthnot’s sight.) - -‘Mr. G. Arbuthnot, Miller’s Hotel, Guernsey.’ - -Well, reader, if Dinah had possessed only a few grains more of -worldly experience it must have been clear to her that this letter -never issued from The Bungalow. In the first place, by reason of the -handwriting--when did a woman of Linda’s culture affect the Greek e’s, -the up and down characters of an undergraduate? In the second, by the -ignorance of common English etiquette which the use of the title ‘Mr.’ -betrayed. - -But Dinah had no worldly experience at all, neither had she the -imaginativeness which renders some equally untaught people nimble at -guessing. In her mind was one engrossing thought--Gaston. In her ears -rang the text of Mrs. Thorne’s message. ‘I deposited the stakes on a -corner of your mantleshelf. Tell your husband from me that he has won, -that I am bankrupt.’ - -There was no room, in her tempest of heart and brain, for doubts that -could have been favourable to her own peace. - -‘Mr. G. Arbuthnot, Miller’s Hotel.’ She took the letter--at first with -unwillingness--in her hands. She turned it over and over. The envelope -was too small for all that the sender had forced it to contain; it -adhered on one side, only. A touch, Dinah thought, shrinking from -her thought, and the edges must come asunder. Her hands trembled so -violently that she let the letter fall, with some force, on the ground. -As she picked it up she saw that the narrow edge of adhering envelope -had become narrower. An instant more of dalliance--and the temptation, -strong and imperious, to open it altogether, had taken hold of her. - -‘Be true to yourself,’ whispered a still small voice, the voice of -Dinah’s better nature, ‘loyal, upright, as you have striven to be -from the day you married Gaston Arbuthnot. Go away from him to-night, -to-morrow, if you have not wifely courage to live your life out at his -side. But go, with head erect, looking neither to the right hand nor -the left, till the last.’ - -Then rose another voice, bolder of tone, of strain less heroic. - -‘Poor, foolish, hot-hearted woman! Is it not possible that you are -brewing a thunderstorm in a tea-cup? Why these turns and twistings of -conscience? Linda Thorne, Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, thinking no evil, make -one of the silly wagers common among idle people who inhabit an idle -world. The lady is the loser, calls at her friend’s hotel to discharge -her debt, and meeting the friend’s wife, confesses, playfully, that -she is bankrupt! Open that quarter-inch of yawning envelope, as Linda -Thorne, no doubt, intended you to do. In Gaston’s absence, you have -often opened letters addressed to him, by his own desire. Where is -the fancied line between former right and present wrong. How could it -matter to Gaston if you did see the contents of a packet in which there -is probably not a syllable of writing?’ - -And Dinah’s heart was vanquished by the meanness of opportunity. She -opened it. - -A length of folded ribbon met her sight; a tiny bouquet, odorous still -with yesterday’s sweetness, of briar and of heliotrope; a sheet of -notepaper upon which one word was written. Bare hints--outlines of -some unknown story, which jealous passion might easily colour, fill up -with vivid detail, endow with pulsating life! After the first moment’s -shock, Dinah stood like a woman petrified. Her eyes were fixed on the -_one word_--never meant for their perusal! Her face was bloodless. She -felt cold, stupefied with anger. It seemed to her that she could not -drag herself from the spot where this hateful, sure light had dispelled -her darkness for ever. She waited--as though waiting could avail her! -At last the striking of a clock caused her to start. She had got to -dress, she remembered, to face men and women, to dine--for Gaston’s -sake. With an effort that almost cost her bodily pain, Dinah made her -way into her bedroom. She locked, double locked the door. Then holding -the envelope and its contents between her shivering hands, she tried -to force herself into calmness, to resolve on conduct, if that were -possible, which should be just to herself and to her husband. - -He was guilty of no actual wrong-doing. This thought presented itself, -in clear pure light, amidst all the dusky half-shades of her mind. -Gaston was fickle, neglectful of herself, too easily led captive along -the road of pleasure. Worse things than these she could never think of -him. To the moment of her death he must remain her best beloved and -her lord; the one man, could the hour of choosing come again, whom she -would choose out of ten thousand. She did not accuse Gaston of wrong. -She sought not to blacken Linda. For aught she knew, these delicately -sentimental friendships, these intimacies which permitted tender -expression--the yielding of a ribbon or a flower!--might, in the world -above her head, be held innocent. - -What she did know was that she, Dinah, belonged not to that world, -desired no further education in its usages. A comedy ... an amusing -drawing-room charade, perhaps ... was in course of rehearsal between a -tired Indian lady, needing sensation, and her husband. She would not -passively, ignobly stand by, a spectator. She would drag out her life -of paltry distrust no longer. Gaston’s formal leave must be asked for, -before she started; money also--enough to take her from Guernsey to -the Devonshire moors. This would be all. Briefly, if Heaven would help -her, honestly, she would tell Gaston what wish lay next her heart. And -Gaston was not likely to thwart her! By Monday--oh, that it could be -earlier--she would go back to her own people, to a life shone on by no -sun, watered by no shower, a life shut out from keen pleasure as from -keen humiliation for evermore. - -Dinah sank into a chair and fell to examining the hue and texture of -the ribbon, curiosity, for the moment, out-balancing cold repugnance. -It was of foreign make, she saw; a relic, doubtless, of those days -when two people, _who might have suited each other_, used to meet, to -exchange furtive whispers in a Paris salon; a memento sufficiently -precious to have survived through a decade of divided years, and to -become the object of a keenly contested wager between them now. - -‘Tell your husband,’ with fresh purport Linda’s message returned to -her, ‘that he has won, and I am bankrupt.’ - -She put back the enclosures in their cover, not suffering herself to -smell the flowers’ languid odour, or look again on the one word whose -import her jealousy divined and magnified. Then, just as she had hidden -the letter away in a secret drawer of her dressing-case, the first -dinner-bell was set ringing, and Dinah bethought her that, if she would -carry out Gaston’s parting request, she must go into the dining-room, -alone. - -No further shirking of that ‘alone’ was practicable. On former -occasions she had quietly contrived to absent herself from the public -table when Gaston dined abroad, pleading headaches for heartaches, -preferring tea to food, ringing the changes by which neglected wives, -when they have common sense, keep their own sad counsel apart from -the world. The time was past for deceits now, either towards herself, -or others. Dinner, to-day, like all her future dinners, for twenty or -thirty years, say, must, perforce, be eaten without Gaston. - -To drift--here, in truth, seemed that which lay before her! To drift! -At the present moment to speculate on possible effects--to vacillate -over a tucker, a locket, the colour of one’s dinner dress. A despairing -human soul, perplexed over the rival merits of pink, white, or blue; a -soul which, when love shone on it, had less than its feminine share of -toilet vanity! As poor Dinah hesitated, her thoughts travelled back, -by no road she knew, to Saturday’s rose-show, her first meeting with -Rex Basire, her earliest distinct doubt of Gaston’s truthfulness. She -decided to put on the black dress she wore that day, to pin a white -rose, Gaston’s flower by predilection, in her hair, to wear a silver -bracelet, Gaston’s first present after their marriage, on her wrist. - -How fair, how marvellously fair she was! The fact struck Dinah with a -sense of newness as she stood, waiting for the last dinner-bell, before -her glass. Surely her looks, joined to such lavish love as she had -given, might have contented the heart, the pride of the most exacting -husband. If she had only had more mind. There was the flaw, the -fatal deficiency to a man with whom mind was all in all, like Gaston -Arbuthnot. - -She scrutinised the moulding of her temples, the lines of her perfectly -cut head. In outward proportion she thought there was not much amiss. -It must be the quality of the brain that was poor. There must be -an inherited peasant slowness, a bluntness of perception or wit, -_something_ which disabled her from holding her own against the taught -graces, the pliant, inexhaustible lightness of such an one as Linda -Thorne. She might, if lowlier duties had fallen to her, have been -clever enough to manage a house, to look after her husband’s interests, -to bring up children. Amongst ladies and gentlemen--oh, the bitterness -with which she uttered the titles of gentility half aloud--amongst -ladies and gentlemen she had no place, no chance. - -And in her nature, not thoroughly sounded as yet, but of whose depths -the last few days had vaguely informed her--in her innermost nature -were evil things that a constant pressure of temptation might bring to -the surface. She was not like Geoffrey. No ministering to others could -fill her life, at any rate not while she was young, while the cry for -love had the double keenness of a physical and of a moral want. If -she continued a hanger-on of the world that Gaston loved,--‘some one -who must be asked, don’t you know, occasionally, on sufferance,’--she -would, one day, meet with homage, differently offered, and from a -different man to Rex Basire. Was she sure that gratitude would not be -awakened in her, then vanity? Was she sure she might not decline, step -by step, to the condition of that most pitiable among women--a wife, -true to the cold letter of her fealty, who has at once outlived her -husband’s affection and the stings of her own self-contempt? - -Dinah started, guiltily, as the sharp clang of the dinner-bell -roused her into final action. It took a good many minutes before -she could recover sufficiently to face the ordeal that lay before -her. At last, arming herself by the reflection that henceforth all -life’s common actions must be gone through alone, and under a certain -cloud of suspicion, she made her way to the dining-room. After a -moment’s trembling heartsickness, she pushed back one of the double -doors--entered. - -A hush, an involuntary suspension of knife and fork greeted her. The -light through a western window fell full upon her golden head. The -whiteness of her throat and hands was thrown into brilliant relief by -the sombre dress she wore. - -‘A saint of Holman Hunt’s--Early manner,’ thought a high-church curate, -away on his four weeks’ holiday, and who never would know more of -Dinah than the large sad eyes, the lips’ carnation, the nimbus of -sunlight-coloured hair. - -‘Can the complexion be absolutely real?’ floated through the brain of -more than one duly aged and authorised feminine critic. - -Miller, with his professional little run and smile, came forward. He -ushered Dinah Arbuthnot to her place. - -‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot not expected, I believe?’ asked the host, as -Dinah prepared to take her seat. - -‘No, Mr. Arbuthnot is dining at the Fort.’ - -‘And Mr. Geoffrey will not return till late. Then I may be allowed to -fill this vacant chair? Thank you, madam. I should not have ventured to -place a stranger next Mrs. Arbuthnot without permission.’ - -A minute later Dinah discovered--no stranger, but her husband’s friend, -Lord Rex Basire, at her side. - - - - -CHAPTER XLII - -EMANCIPATION - - -Dinah Arbuthnot’s face asked vividly for explanation. - -‘Made sure Arbuthnot would be here--that is to say, _our_ -Arbuthnot’--Lord Rex stammered; he showed embarrassment that sat on -him oddly, as he apologised for his uninvited presence. ‘The comings -and goings of the Cambridge cousin are, naturally, beyond my powers of -calculation.’ - -‘Naturally,’ echoed Dinah. She remembered, with a pang of -self-reproach, what manner of errand kept Geoffrey absent. - -‘Strolled round here early--by accident, you know--thought I’d ask -myself to dinner with your husband. Clean forgot, till Miller or some -one put it into my head, it was guest night. That was half an hour ago. -Ought to have started off, instanter, to Fort-William.’ - -‘And why, pray, did you not do so?’ - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot, can you ask me!’ - -Rex Basire’s tone adequately supplemented his words. And Dinah’s pulse -quickened. She was on the threshold, she remembered, of a new, an -emancipated life. A wife who lives apart from her husband must accept -her position, grow used to many things, to every complexion of whisper -among the rest. That is the world’s immutable sentence. Away from -Gaston, divorced from the arm which, during four years, had cradled -her in warm safety--she must learn, like other unloved women, to -rely on her own strength--her strength and the chivalry of all such -knights-errant, such Rex Basires, as should cross her path! - -About the chivalry more might have to be learnt, hereafter. Dinah -realised, before the first step of her downward journey was taken, -that her strength was weakness. She felt as though all eyes around the -table must watch her with suspicion, read her secret. Rex Basire’s tone -of assured admiration brought the blood miserably, shamefully to her -cheeks. - -He saw and misinterpreted the blush. - -‘Thought, you know, as there was a rumour of the cousin’s absence, I -should have a chance of getting next you.’ - -‘You would have been better amused elsewhere, my lord. With Geff I can -talk or be silent as I like. Geff does not mind.’ - -Lord Rex on this made some whispered hit at the ‘model cousin’s’ -excellence. As he ate his half cold soup murmured comparisons fell from -him as to the men who are made of flesh and blood, poor devils! and -the other men, too good for this world, who are made of ice, yes, ice, -by Jove! But he was not great at covert allusion. The metaphorical ice -got mixed with the metaphorical flesh and blood: his nominatives were -nowhere. Breaking down, rather ignominiously, Lord Rex smothered his -failure under a capacious sigh. - -Dinah turned to him, with cheeks still burning. ‘I am afraid I did not -understand. Men of ice! Men of flesh and blood! Were you talking of -Geff or of yourself, Lord Rex?’ - -Despite her blush, the true eyes stopped him short, as they had so -often done before. Ere Rex Basire had time to double back towards his -starting-point there came an interruption--one of the trivial things -not to be mentioned in heroic story, yet which do, ofttimes, determine -the current of a human life. A plain little man, his large-checked -suit, his open Murray proclaiming the tourist, had during the past two -minutes attentively watched Lord Rex from the other side the table. -Upon hearing Dinah’s mention of the name, the stranger fidgeted with -his knife and fork, cleared his throat, coughed. Finally, leaning -forward with a bow, it was obvious that he expected, was eager for, -aristocratic recognition. - -‘Lord Rex Basire, if I mistake not?’ - -‘Sir! You are politeness itself. But you have the better of me.’ - -Rex Basire accorded his interrogator a blank and frozen stare. - -‘Oh, the top of St. Gothard, Lord Rex. You were travelling with the -Duchess. Her grace’s carriage broke down--something wrong with the -linch-pin--and as I was in the region, botanising, I had the honour of -offering her grace mine. Your lordship will recollect?’ - -‘Her grace’s carriage is invariably breaking down. Invariably. -Besides,’ drawled Lord Rex, putting up a ferocious pince-nez, and -resolute to nip renewal of acquaintance in the bud, ‘we are not on the -top of the St. Gothard now. Ah, Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ he addressed Dinah in -as low a tone as a man’s voice can sink to without becoming an actual -whisper, ‘_this_ makes up to one for a great deal I have suffered at -your hands.’ - -‘By _this_,’ said Dinah, whose courage was returning, ‘do you mean the -cold soup we have eaten, or the colder fish to which they are helping -us?’ - -‘I mean the happiness of sitting beside you, of knowing I am so much -forgiven that----’ - -‘Her grace travelled on as far as Andermatt in the carriage it was -my privilege to lend her. From Andermatt, if my memory serves me -right----’ - -‘Your memory is certain to serve you right, sir. The incident which I, -it seems, have forgotten, was more than unimportant.’ - -Lord Rex’s manner was brutal; no other word would adequately describe -it. The poor little tourist’s eyes dropped to his plate, his face -turned scarlet. Dinah leaned forward on the instant. With the gentle -womanliness which was _her_ breeding, she addressed him in her pleasant -country voice: - -‘My husband and I met with just the same kind of accident once. -Our carriage broke down, and we had to spend six hours, in wet and -darkness, between Berne and Vevey. I should not have forgotten any one -who had come to our help that night.’ - -‘Ah--you know Switzerland, madam? Then may I ask,’ the tourist gave a -piteous glance towards Lord Rex, ‘if you take an interest in the Alpine -flora? I have only time to pursue such things during my holidays.’ It -is possible he pronounced the word without its aspirate. ‘But botany -is my hobby; I get plants enough in my five weeks to fill my leisure -for the rest of the year. Now in that very region you speak of, I have -found two or three specimens that are unique. If you will allow me to -enumerate the Latin names, madam----’ - -And so on, and so on. The poor man was one of nature’s choicest bores. -His information was stale, his manner of imparting it prosy; his -blindness to the suffering he inflicted, absolute. Dinah’s face wore -a look of kindly interest through everything. Occasionally (Lord Rex -all but groaning aloud over his wasted opportunities) she would strike -in with some question calculated to start the narrator afresh on new -tracks, on new prosiness, if, peradventure, he chanced to lag. - -She even bowed courteously to him on leaving the table d’hôte: an -example not followed by Lord Rex. - -‘A charming dinner, on my word!’ So he broke forth, the moment he found -himself beside Dinah in the welcome freshness of the garden. ‘May I -ask, Mrs. Arbuthnot, what inhuman whim made you talk to that wretched -snob?’ - -Rex Basire’s voice went beyond the limits of petulance. - -‘Why a snob?’ asked Dinah, meekly. ‘You know I can never catch the -inner meaning of these names.’ - -‘Why? Because he was a snob. “Her grace’s carriage broke down on the -top of the St. Gothard; he had had the privilege of offering his.” -What the dickens did that matter to me? “Her grace travelled as far as -Andermatt in his carriage.” What the dickens did that matter to him?’ - -‘Only this, perhaps--that her grace’s misadventure obliged the snob to -go on foot.’ - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot!--I never expect a direct answer from any woman,’ Lord -Rex exclaimed with scarcely suppressed temper; ‘still, I should like -to know why during a mortal three-quarters of an hour you allowed that -little wretch to talk to you?’ - -She paused. A shade of deepened colour touched her cheek. ‘The wretch -was intelligent, Lord Rex.’ (_Aye, and opportune!_ This was a subtle -parenthesis, put in by Dinah’s conscience.) ‘I don’t understand Alpine -plants, but I liked to hear a good deal our tourist said about them.’ - -‘The ’obby he pursues during his ’olidays,’ observed Lord Rex, -humorously. - -Dinah turned swiftly round. A streak of sunset goldened her hair, -and the delicate outlines of her face. She gave a look of farewell -sincerity at Lord Rex Basire. - -‘Do you remember,’ she asked him, ‘a conversation you and I had on -board the steamer? It was just after my husband and the Thornes had -landed at Alderney.’ - -Yes, Lord Rex remembered. He was not likely--this, with a sigh--to -forget any hour or place in which he had had the good fortune to find -himself alone with Mrs. Arbuthnot. - -‘We spoke about class distinctions. I believe you called me a -Conservative. Certainly you told me you were the most out-and-out -demagogue in England. You were all for fraternity, Lord Rex. “Gardener -Adam and his wife, and that sort of thing.” Labour was the universal -purchase-money. Dukes and earls had best go back to the place from -whence they came. Well--you meant none of this.’ - -Lord Rex winced. ‘Unfair on a fellow,’ he observed, ‘to be thus taken -au pied de la lettre, and----’ - -‘You must speak in English,’ cried Dinah. ‘I have not French enough to -understand your meaning.’ - -‘My dear Mrs. Arbuthnot! A man may hold theories,--visions of an -impracticable Utopia, don’t you know ... charming--ahem! to air in -exquisite company; impossible to carry out in this rough chaos of a -world we live in.’ - -Dinah stopped for a minute or more, sedately reflecting, before she -answered. - -‘I think I understand. Socialistic opinions, if one is trying to -make talk for a rather stupid woman at a picnic, may be well enough, -especially if the rather stupid woman does not belong to one’s own -station.’ - -‘Mrs. Arbuthnot! I protest----’ - -‘The gardener Adam, of reality, is a snob. A wretch, bound, of course, -to lend his carriage to her grace, in distress, so long as he has -not the impertinence to talk of duchesses or linch-pins during the -remainder of his days. I have gained a new bit of wisdom, Lord Rex -Basire. It is not likely I shall meet you in England. If I do, I shall -remember what you said to our poor botanist--“We are not on the St. -Gothard now.” You might say, massacring me through a cruel double -eye-glass, “We are not in Guernsey now.” Good-night, my lord.’ - -She touched his hand. She passed away out of his life with a smile. -Her step was light. The rose-tints of the sky lent a fictitious -brilliancy to her face. Wonderful how that poor young woman, Mrs. -Arbuthnot, kept up her spirits! So opined feminine judges, looking -mercifully down upon events from the drawing-room windows of the -hotel. And under the sad circumstances--the husband’s indifference to -her growing hourly more pointed--to be carried away like a girl by -this foolish little lord’s attention! But that is the nature of these -pink-and-white, yellow-haired marionettes. The temperament, my dear -madam, is not one that feels or sorrows. - -Dinah Arbuthnot walked quietly to her room, then rang the bell, and -told the waiting-maid that she would require nothing further, and that -no one need sit up for Mr. Arbuthnot. She changed her dress for a loose -wrapper, rested herself during some minutes, and with her face hidden -between her hands, strove to realise the altered condition of things -which lay before her. - -It had been easy, an outlet to jealous anger, to declare, in the -moment’s heat, she would no longer live with Gaston Arbuthnot. -During dinner, though the strain was tense, there had been a certain -excitement, a sense of perilous adventure, to keep her up. Now came -blank reality. She must look at her position, as a stranger would, -from outside. If she purposed in good earnest to seek refuge with her -Devonshire kinsfolk, she had best benefit by Geoffrey’s escort on -Sunday, had best, wisely and soberly, begin to pack to-night. - -Well, reader, ‘to pack,’ however chaotic one’s mental condition, -means--to use one’s arms, see to the folding of one’s latest intricate -furbelows, make sure that one’s newest bonnet shall not be crushed. -Dinah got through this part of her work well enough; nay, inasmuch as -packing brought her muscles into play, felt the better for it. Then -came the bitter beginning of the end. She must sort her trinkets, must -decide which things it was right to take with her into exile, which -leave. - -Gaston was the most careless man living. The key of his dressing-case -was in his wife’s hands, everything he owned of value in her keeping. -It thus became needful, in looking over her own possessions, that she -should take count of his. And in doing so their four years of married -life returned, month by month, almost hour by hour before her. - -A legacy of two hundred pounds had come to Dinah from a well-to-do -farmer uncle a few days after her wedding. ‘Too much, rather, to give -to the poor, not enough, certainly, to invest,’ declared Gaston--they -were at the time in Paris. ‘We will go shares, my dear child. I will -take one of the good uncle’s hundreds for cigarettes and you shall have -the other hundred for chiffons.’ - -Dinah wanted no chiffons--at Gaston’s insistence, possessing more -millinery already than she knew what to do with. So her hundred pounds -were mainly spent in buying pretty things for her husband. Gaston was -fonder of rings and pins than are most born Englishmen. He had also an -innocent way of directing Dinah’s admiration to artistic trifles in -the jewellers’ windows of the Palais Royal and the Boulevards--trifles -which were tolerably sure to find their way to his own dressing-table -before the next morning. - -Ah, their good laughs when these innocent ways became too bare-faced! -Ah, the golden Paris days, when each hour was sweeter than the last, -when they used to jest together (little knowing) at the musty axiom -which limits a pair of true lovers’ happiness to the shining of a -single moon! - -All the happiness--on one side, all the love--was gone now, thought -Dinah, as trinket after trinket, memorials every one of them, passed -through her fingers. She, who, in the bloom of hope, believed all -things, trusted all things, had become harsh, unrelenting, a woman -bent, of her own free will, though it cost her her heart’s blood, upon -leaving her husband’s side. And Gaston--nay, of him she would think -no further ill, to-night, at least! The proofs--little needed--of his -light faith she had locked away, witnesses against him until the last -hour that both should live. But she would think no new evil of him -to-night. She would seek her pillow, leave the preparations for her -journey as they stood. Midnight was now drawing near. To-morrow, she -thought, when sleep should have renewed her strength, this beginning -of her changed existence, this saying of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ instead of -‘ours’ might come easier. - -To-day was still to-day. They belonged outwardly, in the world’s sight, -to each other yet. - -There on the bedroom mantelshelf was an unfinished model Gaston had -made of her, a sketch which, had it reached marble, might some day -have worked its way inside the walls of the Academy. Among the neat -proprieties of her dressing-table were two of his modelling tools, -not altogether innocent of clay. There lay a half-burnt cigarette ... -a glove that he had worn.... Ah, heaven! And with this passionate -affection at her heart, she was unloved of him, had no child with tiny -tender clasp to make up to her for her husband’s coldness! And she was -still only a girl in years; and life but yesterday, it seemed, was -sweet. - -If Gaston, with clairvoyant power, could have seen her at this moment -in her extremity of pain, doubt not that the couple of hilly miles -between Fort-William and Miller’s Hotel had proved an insufficient -barrier to keep him from her side. Common men, however, have common -lights to guide them. They reap even as they sow. - -When twelve o’clock struck and Dinah’s aching head sank on its pillow, -Gaston Arbuthnot, with unburthened conscience, was settling himself -placidly down to poker--the little game of draw in which he had -vouchsafed to act as mentor to the youngsters of the Maltshire Royals. - - - - -CHAPTER XLIII - -GEOFFREY CALLS TO BE PAID - - -It was a custom, dating farther back than Andros Bartrand’s childhood, -that the Seigneurs of Tintajeux should hold a stiff and formal levée on -the first Saturday of every alternate month. - -The ceremony, shorn of its former old-world stiffness, lingered -on, and to the feminine mind was one of the most popular Sarnian -entertainments. For Andros Bartrand, with his fine manner, his handsome -face, his learning, his temper, was scarcely less a favourite with the -sex at fourscore than he had been in the flower of his age, half a -century earlier. - -‘Will this generation of progress, will the coming democracy ever -produce men of eighty like our Seigneur?’ the Guernsey ladies, -Conservative to a woman, would ask. - -And he who had argued that there may be higher ideals of an -octogenarian than are comprised by culture, originality, vigorous -health, an arrogant profile, and a courtly bow, would have stood poor -chance of escaping without scar from their hands. - -‘The Seigneur grows robuster every year,’ remarked Mrs. Verschoyle to -Cassandra Tighe, on the afternoon of July 2. The ‘Tintajeux levée’ had -opened. The elder ladies were ranged along the row of white and gold -arm-chairs that surrounded the drawing-room. ‘Time stands still with -Andros Bartrand. Look at him talking--flirting, I call it--with Rosie. -The child declares, if the Seigneur would only ask her, she is quite -prepared to answer “Yes.”’ - -‘What would Lord Rex Basire say to that?’ whispered Cassandra, warming -up at the faintest suggestion of a love affair. - -Mrs. Verschoyle looked mournfully perplexed, the chronic state of her -good, maternal, overburdened soul. - -‘Lord Rex Basire? One certainly seems,’ said poor Mrs. Verschoyle -inappositely, ‘to have seen less of him since the picnic. But then we -have no gentleman to leave a card at the Fort! That is the worst of an -unmarried colonel in a regiment. One really can _not_ do the polite -thing. Does any one know, I wonder,’ a faint pink blush suffused the -whiteness of Mrs. Verschoyle’s cheek as some misty sequence of ideas -ran through her brain--‘does any one know if there is truth in this -rumour of the Arbuthnot family leaving the island?’ - -‘I can give reliable information about one member of the Arbuthnot -family,’ cried the prettiest, least wise, of the de Carterets. This -young lady, in the absence of better amusement, had been listening to -the exchange of confidences between her elders. ‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot -leaves Guernsey to-morrow. I am sure of my facts, because papa went to -inquire at Miller’s after a room for Fred. You know, Mrs. Verschoyle, -that we have had a telegram from Lloyd’s? Fred will be home on Monday.’ - -‘I hope your poor mother will get no shock when she sees him,’ Mrs. -Verschoyle answered sadly. ‘Not one young man in fifty brings back a -constitution from India.’ - -‘And Miller said the younger Mr. Arbuthnot’s room would be vacant -to-morrow. I appreciated Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot highly at the -subalterns’ picnic, and should like to have seen more of him, only -Marjorie Bartrand would not let me! Yes, Miss Bartrand,’ ran on Ada -de Carteret guilelessly, but putting additional meaning in her tone -as Marjorie came within earshot, ‘and--although this is not meant for -you to hear--I can tell by your face that you are listening, that your -conscience pricks you.’ - -Listening! Ay, that was Marjorie Bartrand, in truth, outwardly -listening, with strained sense, to the even hum of small-talk that -filled the rooms, inwardly awaiting, with the keen expectancy that -hardly needs the help of bodily hearing, for the step, the voice whose -absence already made the world blank to her. - -‘I shall certainly not leave Guernsey without calling on the -Seigneur--to be paid.’ - -To the cruel words, to such remote and slender hope of reconciliation -as they might hold forth, Marjorie’s heart clung tenaciously. She was -softer of manner to-day than was her wont, played her part of hostess -with studied dutifulness towards her grandfather’s visitors. The annual -Sunday School treat would come on next week, said the rectoress of some -remote country parish. Of course one might count on Marjorie Bartrand -to lead the games? Had the great St. Laurens scandal reached Tintajeux, -asked another? Maître Giroflée and his wife, the best church people in -the parish, gone over to Salem because the rector had cut down their -pew--good solid oak, it must be confessed, worth so much a foot--in -making his chancel restorations! - -Oh, with what weary patience the poor child listened to it all, making -occasional random answer, when answer was needed. How utterly had her -vivid child’s life lost its interest! How flat, how dissonant was every -sound on this planet to Marjorie Bartrand, so long as the footstep for -whose approach she yearned was silent! - -‘Why--witch! Your cheeks are as white as your gown,’ remarked the -Reverend Andros, happening, presently, to come across her. ‘We must -get our Cambridge Esculapius to prescribe for you. What is Arbuthnot -doing with himself?’ added the Seigneur, with a hard look at his -granddaughter. ‘We are short of the inferior sex to-day. Why is -Arbuthnot not here to make himself useful among the tea-cups?’ - -‘Afternoon parties are not much in my tutor’s way. But I believe--yes,’ -faltered Marjorie, with one of her dark blushes, ‘I believe--at this -moment--I see a figure like Mr. Arbuthnot’s crossing the moor. We will -put a tea-cup in each of his hands, sir, as soon as we feel certain of -having caught him.’ - -She fled into the recess of a window in the smaller drawing-room. -Standing there, shrouded by the lace draperies, she wondered if _more_ -than a dozen pair of eyes had noticed her change of colour! She -clenched her hands until the nails impressed her soft palms painfully. -She essayed, with will, to keep her rebel cheeks from flaming, her lips -from weakness. She marvelled by what art she could render her manner -passive--Marjorie Bartrand, who during her seventeen years of life had, -at every pass, gone aggressively to the fore, for good or for evil--on -her tutor’s entrance. - -His ring came at the front-door bell. ‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,’ was -ceremoniously announced by Sylvestre. The French windows stood open. -With the occult sixth sense which, in lovers, supplements the ordinary -ones of sight and hearing, Marjorie divined that Geoffrey walked at -once to the lawn in search of the Seigneur. After a time she could -hear his voice--excellent spirits Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot seemed to be -in--as he made his way through the crowded outer room. She caught the -laughter of Ada de Carteret, the thin gay tones of Rosie Verschoyle. A -sharp cross fire of raillery was being levelled against Geoffrey on the -subject of his abrupt departure. Marjorie could detect and misconstrue -the coolness with which he turned this raillery aside. By and by came a -new excitement. The Maltshire dandies were arriving in force, and in -the general flutter which ensued upon this important crisis no single -voice was longer distinguishable. Marjorie’s pulse went quicker. She -knew that her time had come. Three or four seconds passed breathlessly, -then a hand drew back the curtain behind which she was half concealed. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot stood beside her. - -‘I have kept my word. I am here to wish you and the Seigneur good-bye.’ -His composed speech stirred every fibre of Marjorie’s repentant, -passionate heart. ‘It is a surprise,’ Geff added, ‘to find half the -Guernsey world at Tintajeux Manoir. But I hope, Miss Bartrand, you can -spare me five minutes’ quiet talk?’ - -Marjorie, on this, had no choice but to look up at him. Tears, despite -pride, despite principle, were in her eyes. - -‘To say good-bye!’ she repeated, holding out her hand, then, with -cheeks going from rosy-red to white, shrinking back ere he could grasp -it. ‘I--I never thought you could be so cruel.’ - -So the girl cared something for him, after all, thought Geoffrey. She -would brush a tear away to-morrow, perhaps, when those who travel by -land or water were courteously alluded to by old Andros in the Litany, -would regret him a little, as long as this summer’s roses lasted. She -would remember him until her heart, if heart she possessed, should be -touched in earnest. No more than this. It was not her time to love, -poor Marjorie! And he ... must part from her as a strong man ought; -must say ‘this is,’ not ‘this might have been.’ There should be neither -recrimination nor bitterness. A touch of the sunburnt chiselled hand, -a look into the eyes which had wounded him, as children wound, from -ignorance, and then a brave and loyal farewell, this time a final one. - -A table on which lay books and photographs stood at hand. Geoffrey took -up a photograph of the Gouliots, Sark--some glistening boulders, a -fishing-net stretched on the shingle, a break of wave. How indelibly -the bit of sun-etching transferred itself to his brain’s tablets! How -often, in dull future hours, would those boulders, that break of wave, -stand out in crisp relief before Geff’s memory? - -‘Yes.’ He spoke in a key that only Marjorie could hear. ‘For just five -minutes I should like to claim you. When I was at Tintajeux the day -before yesterday, I was atrociously churlish to you, Miss Bartrand. I -have been brought to see it since. Will you accept my apology?’ - -Geoffrey had ‘been brought to see’ his churlishness! Then he held at -nought her offer of truce--the word it had cost her pride so dear to -write! He offered her this cutting rejoinder, an apology! - -‘You are hard upon me, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ There was a piteous deprecation -in her voice. ‘When you were my master, I used to think you severe; but -that was the worst. I believed you to be _human_.’ - -‘I am afraid I am very human.’ Geoffrey took up a fresh photograph; he -examined it at a curiously shortsighted focus. ‘So human,’ he added, -softening, ‘that I have not altogether given up the hope of your some -day writing to me.’ - -‘A formal, set letter, do you mean?’ - -‘A letter,’ said Geff, very low, ‘in which no thought of the Tintajeux -acres has place.’ - -For a moment her face showed one of its old bright flashes. In the -world of story books it had ever been Marjorie’s pleasure to scoff at -the frail impediments, arising from the necessity of a third volume, -which keep true lovers apart. Should paltry reserve--the thought came -upon her abruptly--should schoolgirl cowardice divide her, as though -three hundred pages of ‘copy’ depended upon the quarrel, from Geoffrey? - - -‘I don’t know what you would have me say. I can’t see why you should be -off so quick! I tried--I hoped----’ - -But while the monosyllables came haltingly from Marjorie’s tongue, a -stir had arisen in the larger drawing-room. It was plain that a group -of people, young men and maidens taking counsel together in a corner, -were bent on some kind of action. Their project matured quickly. Rosie -Verschoyle shot a beseeching glance at old Andros as she went through a -meaning pantomime of the waltz step. Little Oscar Jones, with the air -of a man upon whom rests an onerous embassy, made his way across both -rooms to Marjorie. - -‘Ten thousand pardons, Miss Bartrand! Would not intrude for the world -on a tête-à-tête. Fact is, you see, some of them want to get up a dance -on the lawn.’ - -‘A dance! Absurdity!’ cried Marjorie, bestowing on him an -ultra-Bartrand look. Then, recollecting their position as hostess and -guest, ‘I mean, would not tennis amuse you just as well?’ she observed, -with show of interest. ‘Or ask Gertrude de Carteret to sing, or----’ - -‘But, dear Miss Bartrand, we all of us want to _dance_,’ persisted -the handsome little lieutenant, with a smile that he had grounds for -believing irresistible. ‘Miss Tighe volunteers to play for us beside -an open window. Powerful backstairs interest is at this moment bearing -down on the Seigneur. We only want an encouraging word from you.’ - -‘I never say encouraging words. It is too foolish,’ cried Marjorie, -detecting, in her misery, that Geoffrey showed signs of flight. ‘To -begin with, we have so few gentlemen.’ - -‘Few; why, there are five at least of Ours. There is Mr. Geoffrey -Arbuthnot.... Ah! going already? Then we must reckon without Mr. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot. And it seems some of the clergy dance, a mild -square dance, and----’ - -‘Yes, yes, Marjorie!’ exclaimed a bevy of young girls, coming up and -surrounding her like the chorus in an opera. ‘It is useless for you to -be wise. Rosie has won the Seigneur to say Yes. Miss Tighe is ready. -The piano is on its journey to the window.’ - -‘Will you be my partner for the first waltz, Miss Bartrand?’ pleaded -Oscar Jones. - -Now, at any prior moment of her life, Marjorie Bartrand, deficient -neither in temper nor in courage, would, thus attacked, have held her -ground stoutly. But the girl saw, or fancied she saw, that Geoffrey -was eager to get away. Her spirit was charged to overflowing. The -eyes of half the people in the room were fixed upon her expectantly. -Easier, she thought, before Geoffrey, before them all, to give a coldly -assenting bow than trust her voice to speak; so she gave it. - -Oscar Jones looked radiant. ‘Thank you, awfully, Miss Bartrand. This is -a victory worth scoring. I will just go and start the corps de ballet, -ask the orchestra to strike up some gay old waltz tune, and return to -you.’ - -The corps de ballet was already setting towards the lawn. Cassandra -Tighe had taken her place at the piano beside an open window. Geoffrey -Arbuthnot and Marjorie, with youth, with love, with the heaviness -of parting at their hearts, were alone. But their good chance was -gone. The thread had snapped which bound together poor Marjorie’s -monosyllables. Two minutes later she would be treading a waltz measure, -the arm of Mr. Oscar Jones round her waist. And Geff (the conqueror, -to whom _all_, in whitest, girlish faith, had been conceded) felt his -blood rebel. He took the reprisals of his nobler sex, offered prompt, -italicised repetition of the crushing word, apology. - -‘You have accepted mine, have you not, Miss Bartrand?’ He held his hand -out, steadily, for a last good-bye. - -‘I accept the blame you choose to force on me,’ said Marjorie, turning -aside her face. - -Cold, fettered, was the speech of both. Still, in this interval -there was an encounter of pulses. Their hands had met; the farewell -pressure was a lingering one. Propinquity--unspiritual god of youthful -lovers--might, even at this supreme moment, have set things straight, -had not old Andros Bartrand passed by, looked at them, smiled. - -Marjorie moved away with a start. She felt as much divided from her -sweetheart as though the Channel already rolled between them. - -‘What is this I hear about your leaving us, Arbuthnot? The little witch -has been plaguing you, I suspect, with her false quantities. My dear -sir, not one in a thousand of the sex has an ear. Music is an art in -which they have had more opportunities than we, and there has never -been even a third-rate female composer. You are going to England next -week? To-morrow! Nay, if it is to be to-morrow we must have business -talk together. Come with me, Arbuthnot, to the library.’ - -The situation was a crucial one for Marjorie Bartrand. Scarcely had -Geoffrey gone away with the Seigneur--her heart told her, ‘to be -paid’--before a dapper figure tripped, alertly, across the rooms. The -well satisfied voice of little Oscar Jones reminded her that the first -waltz was beginning, that they were engaged to dance it together. -Her cheeks tingled with the sense of her humiliation and of her -helplessness. - -Oscar was in high spirits. ‘Coach gone, I suppose? Dancing not much -in Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s line. Confess now, Miss Bartrand’--by -this time they had reached the dancers on the lawn, Mr. Jones’s arm -encircled the girl’s lithe slip of a waist--‘confess, in your heart, -that you rate enjoyment higher than you do Euclid and Plato?’ - -‘I do not understand your question. I cannot deal in generalities.’ - -Marjorie Bartrand held herself as stiffly at bay from her partner as -was possible. - -‘Well, you’ll enjoy our dance, for instance, better than being shut up -in a schoolroom over musty books and figures with Arbuthnot?’ - -‘I shall not enjoy it at all.’ Without a second’s hesitation came the -answer. ‘Hostesses do not dance. See, there is Ada de Carteret standing -out. Give me my freedom, pray, and ask her.’ - -‘Your freedom--to go indoors, to “work a last problem, write one Latin -line,” with Arbuthnot? No, no, Miss Bartrand, you are the best dancer -in Guernsey, and I don’t often get the chance of a waltz with you.’ - -For Oscar Jones, like bigger men, had his vanities. The thought of -cutting out Geoffrey Arbuthnot was tasteful to him. It may be added -that, although Marjorie’s tongue had not lost its sharpness, she -was at this moment the sweetest-looking girl among the little crowd -of dancers. The fire of strong emotion glittered in her large eyes. -Her cheeks glowed damask. Her slim, white-clad figure showed up, -in exceedingly agreeable relief, against the dense background of -cedar-shaded lawn. - -That there was a certain dramatic interest connected with Geoffrey’s -going seemed divined by all. The divination rose to a whisper among the -non-dancers, elderly men and women who, gathering on the drawing-room -steps, enjoyed the pleasant sensations which bright sunshine, a -garden of flowers, blue sky, and the sight of young people moving to -dance-music, can scarce fail of producing. - -‘The child has a hectic flush that I do not like,’ observed the -plaintive voice of Mrs. Verschoyle. ‘I wish any one dared ask the -Seigneur if the mother died of heart-complaint. All that class of -disease is hereditary, and poor Marjorie is so little cared for! Not a -creature to see whether she wears a thick sole or a thin one.’ - -The Archdeaconess was standing close at hand, looking on at the -sunshine, the flowers, the lightly moving figures, through her -accustomed smoke-coloured medium. Madame Corbie turned round with slow -severity on Mrs. Verschoyle. - -‘Marjorie Bartrand is not a girl to die of heart disease!’ The -assertion was made with such suggestive profundity that mild little -Mrs. Verschoyle recoiled a step. ‘Marjorie Bartrand wants the refined -observance, the scrupulous exactness, the dignified correctness of -manner which can only be obtained at school. None of your Girtons. None -of your Newnhams. A strictly disciplined school, such as prevailed in -my young days, for the formation of character and the affections. I do -not consider,’ said Madame Corbie, ‘that Marjorie’s study of Greek and -mathematics has been to her advantage.’ - -‘And yet Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot appears so charming, so thoroughly -reliable.’ - -Seeing her Rosie joyously dancing in the distance, Mrs. Verschoyle’s -motherly heart was disposed towards optimism on most points. - -‘Has a word been uttered against the reliability of any member of the -Arbuthnot family?’ - -The question was an innocent one. And still did something in its tone, -something in the added blankness of Mrs. Corbie’s smoke-coloured gaze, -seem to reduce the character of each of the Arbuthnot trio to a ghostly -possibility. - -Marjorie and her partner floated past the window at this juncture. - -‘Give us one more round, Miss Tighe,’ cried Oscar, in breathless -staccato. ‘Never danced to such a splendid tune in my life!’ Cassandra -was labouring, hot with her exertions, through ‘Strauss’s First Set,’ -‘Les Hirondelles,’ or some other long buried favourite of her youth. -‘Capital turf, capital music, a first-rate partner! If a dance like -this,’ he proceeded, ‘could only last for ever, Miss Bartrand!’ - -‘Thank Heaven it draws to an end,’ said Marjorie, in a voice of steel. - -A hundred yards distant, across velvet lawns and beds of flower bloom, -she could discern the figure of Geoffrey Arbuthnot. He walked away, -firm of tread, erect of head, from the acres of Tintajeux and from her. -And her partner’s arm clasped her waist, her steps twirled lightly. She -was hostess of the party, must go through other dances, must entertain -the Seigneur’s guests to the end. - -From this time forth Marjorie knew that she could never more feel as a -girl feels, never enjoy with a girl’s enjoyment. She would be a woman, -with the bitter taste of grown-up life in her mouth, from this hour -onward till she died. - - - - -CHAPTER XLIV - -KISMET - - -‘To a naturally industrious man these islands would be the mischief.’ -The characteristic remark came from Gaston, who was entering his wife’s -sitting-room just about the hour when Geoffrey quitted Tintajeux. -‘Yes, Mrs. Arbuthnot, these bachelor breakfasts, these picnics, these -summer nights given up to card-playing, might well despatch many an -excellent fellow along the road to ruin. Happily,’ said Gaston, ‘I have -the capacity for large waste of time. I am in no sense of the word an -excellent fellow.’ - -His tone was blithe; the fact of his calling Dinah ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot’ -showed a willingness to meet contingent domestic trouble with good -temper. Stooping down, Gaston Arbuthnot snatched a kiss from his wife’s -pale lips; he pressed her drooping golden head between his hands. Dinah -wavered not in her resolves. His caresses were sweet to her as ever. -But was not the dearness of this man’s presence her danger; that which -should nerve her in righteous sternness towards herself--and him? - -‘No kiss for me, my darling! And pale cheeks again--swollen eyes! -Dinah, you are ill. Something in the place really disagrees with you. -We will leave it. You cannot stand the climate. I half believe I want a -change of air myself.’ - -Sinking down in an American rocking-chair, the easiest location the -room possessed, Gaston Arbuthnot propelled himself to and fro until he -reached a point at which his heels were on a level with his breast. He -rested the tips of his boots on the corner of an adjacent couch, he -folded his arms in an attitude of leisurely repose upon his breast. -Then, the primary point of comfort exhaustively seen to, he looked, -with closer heed than he had yet bestowed upon her, at his wife. - -Dinah was dressed in a dark travelling serge. Her hair was brushed back -tightly from her temples. Her face was bloodless, the outline of her -delicate features blurred by a night of tears. It was impossible for -her to be unlovely, even with pink eyelids and swollen lips. (If Gaston -Arbuthnot’s chisel could have compassed the tragic, how exquisite a -Niobe had lain here to his hand!) It was impossible, I say, for Dinah -to be unlovely. She seemed transformed, rather--a woman of harder, -colder texture than her old self. When at length she raised her head -slowly, the eyes that looked her husband through and through were -fraught with an expression that his soul knew not. - -‘I want change, you tell me, Gaston, and that’s true. We want change, -both of us.’ - -‘Oh, I was not in earnest about myself,’ said Gaston, a little -uneasily. ‘As far as health goes, the place suits me well enough. Only -one positively cannot work here! Now, look how this week has gone!’ He -took a note-book from his breast pocket, he turned over page after page -with a marked abandonment of his first sprightly manner. ‘This week, -too, when I was to have got on with your bust, to have begun I don’t -know how much besides. Where are you, by the bye, Dinah--I mean, where -is your model? There is a tidy look one doesn’t like about the room.’ - -‘The model is on the top shelf in your working place. Although you -don’t like tidiness, I have been putting everything as straight as I -could get it to-day.’ - -‘Like the good forgiving girl that you are! My dear child, I confess I -have idled through this week disgracefully. Not to speak of yesterday’s -dinner, of the old Colonel’s breakfast, of the best hours wasted--those -wretched cards again--to-day, there was the initial mistake of being -left behind in Alderney.’ - -‘You were left behind there, I think, for your own pleasure?’ - -‘I am not so sure of that. The scheme, any way, did not turn out -a success. Max Grimsby is the best fellow living--but one-ideaed. -You cannot get him to move, save in a circle. He is tethered to Max -Grimsby’s pictures. If the sun had shone he would have taken me round, -among rocks and places, to ‘verify’ his sketches, as he says, by -nature. There was a most disgusting fog. I could be taken nowhere. I -bored myself to extinction in Alderney. I----’ - -‘Gaston,’ exclaimed Dinah, fierily, ‘don’t say things of this kind, if -you please. The time is past for them. I know about the wager you had -with Mrs. Thorne before you left the steamer.’ - -‘Then you know about a very foolish matter.’ Gaston spoke with prompt -self-control, although he reddened. ‘You have certainly been tidying -with a vengeance, my love,’ he went on, looking round him. ‘I miss -a dozen landmarks. What has become of my own priceless portraits?’ -Wherever they lived poor Dinah loved to hang Gaston’s three or four -latest photographs upon the walls of her sitting-room. ‘I do not see -your embroidery frame, or----’ - -‘Yes,’ she again interrupted. ‘I know about Mrs. Thorne’s wager, about -everything. It is a relief to speak plain at last. I have known, for a -good long time past, that you deceived me.’ - -Down came Gaston Arbuthnot’s feet to their normal level. Away flew -all his assumption of serenity. A couple of quick strides brought him -across the room. - -‘If you are bent on having one of our wretched scenes, Dinah, look, -pray, to your language, as far as I am concerned. Say what you choose -about Mrs. Thorne, if it gives you pleasure. Say what you like, of -course, about yourself. Don’t use disagreeable expressions when you -speak of me! I’m the kind of conceited fellow whose love really won’t -stand rough usage. My love for you is the best possession I have. I -don’t want to risk my best possession. You understand?’ - -No, she did not, that was the worst of it. She could not see that her -strong direct nature, craving and athirst for affection, imposed a -strain beyond endurance upon a temperament at once ease-loving and -volatile like Gaston’s. - -‘I have never deceived you, as far as I can remember, Dinah. I have not -sufficient energy of character, I should imagine, to be deceitful.’ - -‘No? We may have different notions of deceit, perhaps.’ - -‘One may deviate, now and then, from veracity,’ said Gaston, recovering -his good humour. ‘Suppressions of fact, in minor matters, are forced -upon us all. The man would be a wretch, not fit for civilised society, -who should for ever blurt out what he considered truth, regardless of -the feelings he hurt, the toes he trod upon.’ - -‘For instance--to speak of something I understand--if you had gone to -Mrs. Thorne’s house after a mess dinner it would be forced on you not -to tell me of it next morning?’ - -‘To Mrs. Thorne’s house ... after a mess dinner! Such an unimportant -thing may have happened once--twice, perhaps, during the weeks we have -been here. But did I not mention it? Well, then, I do so now, and ask -forgiveness,’ resting his hand upon her shoulder, ‘for the heinousness -of my crime.’ - -‘And your wager--was that, too, unimportant? Your wager, made at a time -when my heart was breaking! And the feelings with which Linda Thorne -regards your winning it----’ Dinah’s voice choked. - -Gaston Arbuthnot was, habitually, a man of mild speech. His most -familiar men friends had never heard an English expletive escape him. -When he was strongly moved his tongue went back, instinctively, to -the language of his youth. And he was moved to sudden and keen anger -at this moment. Three or four French expressions, fortunately not -understanded of his wife, rolled from his lips. - -‘You make me detest the sound of Linda Thorne’s name. But take -care--take care, in this matter of hating, that you do not force me -farther than you intend.’ - -‘I would rather you hated than tolerated me,’ cried Dinah, her -tear-worn eyes looking bravely up into Arbuthnot’s face. - -Some new note in her voice startled him. It was a note, Gaston -Arbuthnot felt, that might well prove the prelude to dangerous -self-assertion. Was a _tu quoque_ possible? - -‘You do not wish me to be tolerant. The husband of any excessively -pretty woman must be so, whether he will or not. Now yesterday--suppose -the medal reversed, Dinah, that I begin to cross-question you--how -did you spend your afternoon, yesterday? You forget. Let me refresh -your memory. With whom were you walking down the High Street, towards -four o’clock, in the dove-coloured dress I invented for you, the -Gainsborough hat, the cambric collar?’ - -‘I am not jesting, though you are.’ Dinah started to her feet, her eyes -were level with her husband’s. ‘Geoffrey came in after you had gone -away; I was idle and dull as usual, and Geff asked me to carry some -fruit and flowers to the hospital. The walk did me good. We visited a -Devonshire sailor-lad--like one of my own people, he seemed to me--and -I was able to talk with him, the old country talk I love so well. And -afterwards, coming back--perhaps with my heart a little lightened--I -met ... your friend.’ - -‘Poor, ill-fated Linda Thorne?’ - -‘And everything went dark again. It was then I heard about your bet, -how you had won, how Mrs. Thorne was bankrupt! Mrs. Thorne had made her -way into the parlour while I was out. Your winnings were left for you -by her own hand. Gaston, I found them!’ - -‘The situation, my dear girl, grows poignant. You found them!’ - -Gaston Arbuthnot checked himself. The dimensions of this domestic -tragedy--this storm of wifely passion over a pair of iron-gray -gloves--overcame him with a fatal sense of the ridiculous. - -Dinah saw that he repressed a smile. Her righteous anger waxed hotter. - -‘And I intend to keep them until I die. If ... I mean when you see Mrs. -Thorne, you can tell her so.’ - -‘I will do nothing of the sort,’ said Arbuthnot, thoroughly incensed at -last. ‘This constant Inquisition business grows unbearable! There will -be no living with you, Dinah, if you go on nursing these puerile, these -childish jealousies. I would no more offer an impertinence to Mrs. -Thorne than to any other lady of my acquaintance. You must learn to be -reasonable.’ - -‘Must I? I have tried to learn much the last few days, without success. -It is because I can’t learn, because I am ignorant’--her voice had -grown hoarse, her eyes dilated--‘that I shall go away.’ - -‘We can go as soon as you like; I have told you so already,’ said -Gaston, coldly. ‘We can go the beginning of next week, if you choose. -You would not object very much to my leaving cards on the few people -who have been civil to me?’ - -‘I would like to go to-morrow, if--if you will give me money enough -for the journey. Geff will be crossing. He can see me as far as -Southampton. After that, I can easily make my way on to Tavistock -Moor----’ - -‘You--alone?’ - -‘Why not? In the old days, before I married, I needed no looking after.’ - -‘And I am to follow with the luggage,’ suggested Mr. Arbuthnot. ‘You -are quite sure there is room on Tavistock Moor for such luggage as -ours?’ - -But his tone was doubtful. Less and less could he understand the look, -yearning yet steadfast, that encountered him from his wife’s eyes. - -‘I will take my luggage with me. As near as might be, I have tried to -divide things. I have put all belonging to you in order, Gaston, as you -will find.’ - -‘You want to visit your people without me? Say it out!’ Gaston -Arbuthnot’s colour heightened. ‘This is rough--harder punishment than -I deserve, and a risky experiment! Think it over twice. I’ve been in -the world thirty years, Dinah, and have seen somewhat of most things. -I have never seen any good come of man and wife trying their hand at -these little imitation divorces.’ - -‘I cannot live up to your life,’ answered Dinah, unshrinkingly. ‘I -cannot understand you, or your friends, or the feelings you have for -each other. If I stayed, I might grow myself to be--well, something -I don’t care to think of. I was meant for the ways of common working -people. It suits me to be told things plain and straightforward, to -keep to my duty, to find my happiness there.’ - -‘My poor Dinah! Have you not always kept to duty?’ For once in his -life, Gaston Arbuthnot spoke from impulse. - -‘Up to this time, because my heart has been full. I have loved you so -much ... there has been no room for any feeling but love! This could -not last for ever, and you always away, and others--ladies born and -educated--not ashamed to take you from me. I might grow hard. I might -grow vain--worse! Yes, Gaston, down in my heart I feel all this is -possible. And so, if you please----’ - -‘Don’t hesitate. Let everything he absolutely clear between us.’ - -‘I will go home. My father’s sisters, I know, would be willing to take -me in while they live, and I can work at my trade as I used, of course, -if you will give me leave.’ - -Gaston Arbuthnot stood for a few seconds motionless. Then, without a -word, he walked to the farthest end of the room. He stood, gazing upon -some local oil-painting of an impossible First Napoleon, mounted on a -still more impossible charger, as intently as though he gazed upon one -of Raphael’s masterpieces. Let anger, wounded pride--ah, more dreaded -than either, let easy acquiescence be on her husband’s face, Dinah -could see it not! - -She waited for him to speak, with the tension of nerves that is a -bodily pain; hoping nothing--the time for hope was past--fearing only -lest, under the sting of her proposal, he should _tell_ her that he no -longer loved her. The truth, itself, had, in that moment, seemed small -beside the possibility of his confessing it. - -But Gaston Arbuthnot was not a man of coarse or cruel words. - -‘I never looked for such a scene--I am not good at these high passions! -Your vehemence forces me into the sort of position I detest. I have -told you often, Dinah, that in everything,’--he leaned sideways, as -though seeking a point whence the impossible Napoleon might be more -advantageously viewed--‘in everything I am a light weight. No use -asking from me the feats of an athlete. In life, I walk quietly. In -art, I can produce nothing bigger or intenser than I experience in -life. I am, what you would call, poor all round.’ - -‘Poor--in feeling, most of all,’ said Dinah with irrepressible -bitterness. - -‘In the constant exhibition of feeling, you mean, in reiterations of “I -love you.”’ Gaston turned, having got thus far; he walked back to her -with marked deliberation. ‘In the art of quarrelling about nothing--in -showy expenditure of emotion on trifles ... emotion of which, I take -it, only a limited quantity is dealt to each of us, and which we should -store up for large occasions--in capacity of this kind I am, doubtless, -poor. If I were a moral nonentity, Dinah, no human heart in my breast -at all, it would seem strange, after four years’ companionship, close -as ours, that you should love me still!’ - -There was an inflection in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice that overstepped -the line of tenderness. His face, though it was calm, wore an unwonted -flush. To Dinah, burning with passionate sense of injury, the very -reasonableness of his speech was an offence. To Dinah his quiet -pleading seemed fine words--altogether beside the present grave issue -of their lives. - -‘Love! Ah, I love you, well as ever, to my misfortune! I shall love you -till my death. Do we measure love out by the meagre quantity of it we -get in return?’ - -‘And loving me, after this strong fashion, you desire that we should -spend our lives apart? You tempt me to say a cutting thing,’ broke -forth Gaston with warmth, ‘yet I believe it to be a true one. A man -had better be loved less, Dinah, and that his wife should remain -contentedly at his side.’ - -‘No doubt of it. If you had married an educated woman you might have -been happy with her--according to your notions of happiness. But -there’s no going back on that now. I exist, you see.’ - -‘Yes, Dinah, you exist.’ - -‘And I am two-and-twenty. And since we came to this place, I scarce -know why, I have awakened. I see my ignorance. I know that I want more -than I used to want in life. Gaston--I cannot fall asleep again. If you -let me return among my own people I shall take to their plain country -ways--in time, perhaps, shall find a little peace. At least I shall -have work, real work, such as I was brought up to. I could never plod, -patiently, at cross-stitch flowers for days and days together as I have -done. And I can never rise to being a lady, as a week ago I thought I -might.’ - -‘Then the only outlook would seem to be Tavistock Moor. It is not a -brilliant one for either of us--for myself, in particular.’ Turning -away from her, Gaston took up his hat, he moved aimlessly, and with a -dull step towards the door. ‘If I do not cry “Kismet” with a better -grace,’ he added, ‘you must remember this sentence of widowerhood -has come upon one suddenly--as I think, without justice. But I -shall not seek to stay you. I wish you to take back your freedom, -unconditionally.’ - -And so speaking, and while the coldness of death seized Dinah’s -tortured heart, he left her. - - - - -CHAPTER XLV - -LABELLED AND CORDED - - -‘No argument can help us, Geff. A woman without a tithe of my poor -wife’s noble qualities but possessing even a faint sense of the -ridiculous, might be reached: Dinah, never! Oh, it is the absurdity of -the thing which humiliates one! A French song sung after a dinner-party -... the winning of a pair of gloves!’ said Gaston Arbuthnot bitterly. -‘And to think, out of such materials, that the jealousy of the most -impracticable woman living could evolve serious tragedy!’ - -‘Tragedy,’ returned Geff, ‘of which the fifth act is, as yet, -unconditioned.’ - -Dinner was over; a meal at which Dinah had not appeared. The Arbuthnot -cousins, side by side, were pacing a remote walk of the hotel garden. -And Geoffrey, little by little, had made out the truth in respect of -Dinah’s crowning misery. With his heart sore as a brave man’s heart -could be over keen personal disappointment, Geoffrey knew that he must -arbitrate between the two people who stood nearest to him on earth, and -with whose lives his own, by some fantastic stroke of destiny, seemed, -for good and for evil, to be interwoven. - -‘I don’t believe in rash judgments, formed when the blood is hot,’ went -on Gaston Arbuthnot. ‘When Dinah burst upon me with this new proposal -I felt as if ten years of my youth had been taken from me. My anger -was at white heat, and if I had spoken as I felt.... Well, I did not -so speak. I accepted my fate with a decent show of self-command. -Reviewing the position--yes, and remembering every word you have been -saying, Geff--I believe it may be best for my poor Dinah to leave me, -on probation. Let her stay for a couple of months with her people in -Devonshire, see how things go on, and----’ - -‘They will go on vilely! They will go from bad to worse.’ Geoffrey was -in no humour for putting ornamental polish on his words. ‘When does -good come from a tentative separation between man and wife?’ - -‘Exactly what I said to Dinah. These little imitation divorces, I told -her, are risky experiments. Impossible to make her hear me.’ - -‘Your eloquence must have been at fault. You have had perfect -happiness, Gaston--there is the truth! You have had such a lot as does -not fall to one man in a million, and you have grown careless of it.’ - -Geoffrey’s voice was set in a lower key than usual. Glancing round at -him, Gaston surprised an expression on the strong features, a glow in -the dark eyes that he remembered. Not wholly unlike this did Geff look -on the late June evening when he came, four years ago, to his rooms -in Jesus, and congratulated him, Gaston, on his engagement to Dinah -Thurston. - -‘You have always been Dinah’s friend. I thank God she will have you for -her friend in the future. Towards myself, perhaps, you are a little -less than kind. Some French proverb explains to us, does it not, how a -man’s friendship can never be perfectly equal for a husband and for his -wife?’ - -‘The French proverb is at fault, as far as I am concerned,’ said -Geoffrey. ‘I am your friend. I am Dinah’s. At this present hour I -reprobate the conduct of both with strict impartiality.’ - -‘My conduct is negative. I find myself placed by an outburst of the -eternal feminine injustice in a ridiculous position. I must, as men -have done before me, live a ridiculous position out. Whatever my wife -desires in the way of money arrangements shall be hers. On the day when -she is tired of Tavistock Moor I shall be at her feet.’ - -‘All this might be aptly said if you were in a stage-box, a critic -looking on at the histrionic break-up of other people’s lives, with a -view to the morning papers.’ - -‘I have tried, since I was a boy, to regard everything concerning -myself from an indifferent person’s point of view. The habit has become -second nature, and----’ - -‘Shake yourself free of it to-night. You are not an indifferent person. -You are not criticising a scene in a mixed drama. You have to decide -whether you, Gaston Arbuthnot, intend, at thirty, to be a failure or a -success.’ - -‘A failure!’ repeated Gaston, his pride galled instantly. ‘In your -office of peacemaker, Geff, don’t allow your good will to run away with -you. We have a score of big examples--Byron, if you choose, at their -head--to show how men of shipwrecked lives can give the world the best -of their genius.’ - -‘When you come to genius,’ said Geff, grimly truthful, ‘we are off our -lines. We are talking of common men, not of giants. For a man of your -calibre, Gaston, to forfeit his domestic happiness is to forfeit all. -In losing Dinah, whatever her folly in proposing the Quixotic scheme, -you would lose your right hand. Up to this time, even with a good and -beautiful and long-suffering woman at your side, your backslidings have -been many. Do you think you are going to work onward and upward without -an influence such as Dinah’s has been to hold you straight?’ - -‘You speak hotly, Geff.’ - -‘I feel hotly,’ answered Geoffrey, without an effort at a fence. ‘My -own life has been spoilt--I--I would say,’ he corrected himself, ‘the -happiness which men like you, Gaston, can throw away or keep as they -choose, is not likely to come near me. Mine must be sought for in -such commonplace daily work as I have strength to do. This gives me a -selfish interest in the welfare of the people I love. Your fireside and -Dinah’s,’ he attempted a lighter tone, ‘is the only one to which I can -look forward in my old age.’ - -Again Gaston watched his face curiously. Perhaps in the moment’s keen -illumination he read aright the larger nature than his own, apprehended -with his balanced mixture of worldly depth and moral airiness, a page -whose intricacies should never, in this life, be wholly deciphered by -poor Geff himself. - -‘You were right as to genius, Geoffrey. There is an ingredient wanting -in me! If I had had your heart I should not at thirty be a manufacturer -of third-rate prettinesses for the dealers.’ - - -Engrossed in talk, the cousins paced to and fro among the falling -shadows of the garden for another hour. It was an hour, a talk, which -neither of the Arbuthnots would be likely to refer to, which neither -certainly would forget this side the grave. By and by, when night had -come in earnest, when the roses and jasmines that clung round the -hotel verandahs smelt dewy sweet, Gaston returned to the house alone. -He entered through the little court that had been fitted up as his -studio. Here a flicker of starlight overhead showed him his tools, his -unfinished models, his working blouse, all the implements of his craft, -neatly set in order as Dinah’s hand left them. Passing on into the -parlour he found himself in darkness, silence. For a moment a nameless -fear--the possibility that she was gone--contracted Gaston Arbuthnot’s -heart. Then, with soft, eager step he made his way to his wife’s -bedroom, laid his hand on the lock, and opened the door by an inch. - -A solitary light burned there. - -‘May I come in, Dinah? Can I be of use to you in your packing?’ - -To this she answered not, or answered in so low a voice that Gaston’s -ear could not catch the sound. He pushed back the door wide and -entered, making fast the lock behind him. Dinah’s packing, to the -smallest detail, was complete. Her boxes, labelled and corded, stood in -a row; her wraps were put up; her travelling bag was strapped. Dinah -herself sat in a low chair beside the curtained half-open window. -The light from a hand lamp on the mantelshelf just enabled Gaston to -discern the dead whiteness of her tired face. - -‘Your packing done?’ he asked her. ‘And have you moved these heavy -boxes by yourself?’ - -‘The Frenchwoman helped me. I had no need of her--my arms are -strong--but when she insisted, I thought it would look strange to -refuse longer. I tried to speak to her lightly--just saying that I had -to go away, of a sudden, to stay with friends in England.’ - -‘That was wise. It were a pity that idle tongues should begin to talk -of us already.’ - -No answer came to this. Gaston saw that her hands trembled as they lay -tightly clasped together on her knee. - -‘And about money, Dinah?’ - -Crossing the room, Mr. Arbuthnot shut down the window, then placed -himself at the distance of two or three feet from his wife. He looked -at her long and tenderly, looked as though on that white, strained face -he saw some beauty which the dulness of his senses, the selfishness of -his heart, had never during the past four years let him discover. - -‘Geoffrey and I have just had a long talk. I believe, as far as -Southampton, you had better let Geff be purse-holder. Then we must -think of the future. We must plan as to a permanent settlement. I am -a poor man, you know, Dinah, or rich only by fits and starts. If I can -secure to you two hundred pounds a year, could you make it enough?’ - -Dinah raised her clasped hands deprecatingly. Her speech failed her. -Now, in the moment when she needed strength, self-control most, they -proved traitors. She could only sit, faint, cold, sick, only hear the -details of her own passionate wish put into calm, reasonable--ay, and -generous detail by Gaston. - -‘For the first year,’ he repeated, ‘until I become a steadier worker, -could you make an allowance of two hundred pounds suffice?’ - -‘I want nothing but a few pounds at first,’ said Dinah, with a -desperate effort. ‘After that I will work--plain sewing, out-door work, -anything they can find for me to do.’ - -‘You might get plain sewing and out-door work, too, without going as -far as Tavistock Moor.’ - -‘But I am known there. I am not the sort of woman--I mean as yet--to -make my way alone among strangers.’ - -‘You shall neither go to Tavistock Moor nor among strangers. You shall -remain with me.’ Gaston said this with slow emphasis. ‘The law is on my -side.’ - -Poor Dinah started up. The world seemed to float away from before her. -A piteous look in which--yes, amidst all its anguish--there was a -tremble of hope, went across her blanched face. - -‘My sins have been grievous enough, the sins of carelessness and -selfishness--they have not gone deeper. Let the future make up for -them. Forgive me, Dinah!’ Arbuthnot’s arms were opened wide. ‘I could -not work, I could not live without you. I love you better than my life.’ - -With a cry as of a child taken back, unexpectedly, to the lost shelter -of home, Dinah fell upon his breast. - - - - -CHAPTER XLVI - -A BYE-TERM MAN - - -But no such good thing as reconciliation fell to Marjorie Bartrand. - -Within a week of Geoffrey’s departure Dinah and her husband, bride -and bridegroom once more, started joyously on their way to Italy. -There was a little wonder among the few people who had known them, a -little hypothetic gossip, an unjust suspicion, perhaps, that Linda -Thorne could clear up more secrets than one, ‘as she listed.’ And then -Guernsey knew the name of Arbuthnot no more. Marjorie Bartrand must -take up life at its old point before love, before disappointment made -acquaintance with her--must stand, chill and alone, in the same Arcadia -where she stood beside Geoffrey on the morning of their one day’s -engagement; must work under a new teacher in the schoolroom where every -book, every window-pane, spoke to her of the past, and of the sharp -irrevocableness of her loss. - -Autumn faded, monotonously, into the season of soft weather which in -the Channel archipelago does duty for winter. March came again with its -outside show of hope; all Tintajeux busy at farm work--the Seigneur, -alert of step, taking part in his potato-planting and his vraic -harvest, like a man of five-and-twenty. Later on, the cuckoo flower -blushed anew, the rooks vociferated from the tree-tops. And then, a -little later, the roses reddened. Marjorie Bartrand, conning over the -entries in her last year’s pocket-book, began to know the meaning of -the sombre word anniversary. - -‘To-day,’ after this fashion the record ran, ‘commenced my reading with -Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’ - -‘Many faults in my Latin exercise. Geoffrey Arbuthnot stern and -inhuman.’ - -‘Have resolved to lecture a certain person on his neglect of his wife. -And on frivolity.’ - -‘This day received my first letter from Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’ - -And so through the brief drama, until a final entry on Sunday, July the -3d--‘To-day Geoffrey Arbuthnot left Guernsey for ever.’ After which all -was blank--in the pocket-book, as elsewhere. - -There were sombre anniversaries, I say, for Marjorie Bartrand. For two -or three of the young women who have flitted across the background of -this story, summer brought the sound of jocund bells, brought a day -which to each must henceforth be the one crowning anniversary, dark or -sunny, of life. Rosie Verschoyle took to herself a mate, happily for -Rosie, a worthier man than Rex Basire. Ada de Carteret became the wife -of little Oscar Jones. Marjorie enacted bridesmaid until the sight and -smell of orange blossoms were a weariness to her. She felt glad when -weddings and summer were alike over, when the scents of blown syringa -and heliotrope belonged definitely to the past, glad when the equinox -had stript the woods, and November, grave and pale, approached, like a -friend who knew her trouble, and had solace in store for her. - -For Marjorie’s character had opened out rather than altered. She was -a Bartrand--high-handed as ever; during the past fifteen months had -worked with a courage betokening of what tough fibre her spirit was -made. In November a decisive step towards the Alma Mater was to be -taken. Mademoiselle Pouchée, the earliest on the Tintajeux list of -governesses, had long besought Marjorie to stay with her in Cambridge, -and the Seigneur, with exceeding bad grace, had tardily consented to -the visit. For Cambridge meant Girton! Marjorie, of late, had been -coaching with a Girton graduate who held high office in the Guernsey -college, and was promised credentials to the highest feminine magnates -of the University. ‘Women who, in achieving renown, had lost the -fairest ornament of their sex.’ Thus spoke old Andros, stirred by -the irreconcilable antipathies of his youth, antipathies which sixty -subsequent years amidst a world in full progress had failed to modify. - -‘The best person you could come across would be that tutor of -yours--Arbuthnot.’ The Seigneur brought the blood into Marjorie’s -cheeks by telling her this, one day. ‘We must conclude that I shall die -some time. It is given to few men to draw breath in three centuries. -When I am gone you will need a husband more than the Higher Education. -I liked Arbuthnot. He was a shallowish classic and over-full of this -modern “know-all, know-nothing” spirit. But he was a _man_--so many -honest English stone, moral and physical, in him! A good make-weight -for a bit of wandering thistle-down like you.’ - -The speech lingered in Marjorie’s penitent soul. If things had gone -differently, then, Old Andros would not have said nay to Geoffrey’s -suit! Her own passionate temper, the jealousy that could brook -no rival, present or in the past, were alone answerable for love -forfeited, for a vista of long years, out of which the sweet fulness of -youth, at youth’s best, should be wanting. - -And blood warm and generous ran in Marjorie’s veins. Her object in -visiting Cambridge was, of course, to make personal acquaintance with -Girton. Her hopes and fears must be centred on the august ladies -who in future days would be her Dons. But the remembrance of her -lost sweetheart plucked ever at her heart. If by accident Geoffrey -crossed her path, what would be her duty? That was the thing to -consider--_duty_. Simply as an old comrade, might she not hold out -her hand, seek a final word of explanation? At what nice point should -self-respect, a due sense of wounded Bartrand pride, draw the line of -unforgiveness? - -These were not questions she could propound to her Girton coach, a lady -of fair exterior, young in years, but who had recently come out well in -two Triposes. Cassandra Tighe, with her lowlier range of thought, stood -nearer to one, Marjorie felt, her sixty winters notwithstanding, in -such trivial human perplexities as belong to love and lovers. In these -poor matters, ignorance would seem to possess a spurious wisdom of its -own. The higher sciences assist one moderately. And so, on the vigil of -her English journey, the girl started away between the lights, alone, -and with an overflowing heart, to seek her old friend’s counsel. - -It was a typical autumn evening of this mid-channel region. A -north-west wind shivered and sobbed among the poplars that hedged -the entrance way of Cassandra’s domain. The garden dahlias drooped -their heads, the chrysanthemums with their thin, half-bitter odour, -showed wan and ghostly in the thickening dusk. An irresistible sense -of decay was conveyed by the fitful rustle of the falling leaves. -The surrounding fields and copses were shrouded in vague mist. Loss -and uncertainty ... these seemed the dominant notes in the pallid -landscape. They suited Marjorie Bartrand’s mood. Were not loss and -uncertainty the dominant notes of her own changed life? - -The cottage door stood open. No sound stirred within, save the -ticking of the old Dutch clock on the stairs. Unannounced, she made -her way into Miss Tighe’s home-like ground-floor drawing-room. The -weather was too mild for more than a pretence at fire, the hour not -late enough for lamp or candle. Cassandra sat, unoccupied, beside -the scarce-lighted hearth. The kindly lady jumped up at the sound of -Marjorie’s step, then, almost with an air of shame, began to excuse -herself for her idleness. She had had a busy gardening day, little -credit though her borders did her, and after dinner meant to practise -for a couple of hours at her harp. ‘But even Cassandra Tighe,’ she -added, ‘must be tired, sometimes. I am an old woman, Marjorie. It is -the prerogative of all old people, save the Reverend Andros Bartrand, -to sit when the day draws in with hands folded. At such times we live -in the past, as you young ones love to do in the future.’ - -‘The future,’ repeated Marjorie, in an under-breath; ‘that is what I -want to speak to you about. I chose this hour on purpose. The best time -to talk of difficult things is entre chien et loup, as the Guernsey -folk say.’ - -She sat down somewhat dejectedly on the opposite side the hearth. The -young woman and the old one could just discern each other’s faces by -the flicker of the slow-burning fire. - -‘So you start for Cambridge to-morrow! And your grandfather, I hear, -gives you a letter to the Master of Matthias. Well, Marjorie, though -you should fail to Girtonise the Spanish nation eventually, I must -praise you for your present cleverness in Girtonising the Seigneur of -Tintajeux.’ - -‘The Seigneur was never more obdurate. “If it pleased my granddaughter -to roam the country with an organ and a monkey, she would do it; I -could only see that the organ and the monkey were good of their kind.” -This is his charming way of putting things--his excuse for giving me an -introduction outside of Newnham or Girton.’ - -‘And your _coach_, Miss Travers, is to be your escort. She is comelier -than one could have expected, poor thing. I have no prejudices, as -everybody knows,’ said old Cassandra. ‘When I heard a Girtonite was -coming to our college, I held my peace. If one of these emancipated -young women has regular features or a bright complexion, I acknowledge -the fact. Still, one wonders----’ - -‘How such a girl as Miss Travers could choose the higher life, instead -of marrying--some man like Lord Rex Basire, say, or Mr. Oscar Jones!’ - -‘Those two are not the only types of man extant,’ observed Cassandra. - -To this there succeeded a sufficiently pregnant silence. Marjorie broke -it with effort. Her voice had become unsteady. Her sentences were -disjointed. - -‘We are to stay one night in London--I don’t know whether grandpapa -told you about the plans? Next day we shall see whatever sights are -visible through the November fog, and late in the afternoon I shall run -down to Cambridge. It is high time I learned to knock about the world -alone! If I work steadily when we come back to Guernsey, very likely I -may go up to Girton as a bye-term man in January.’ - -‘Is this the future you wanted to talk about?’ Cassandra Tighe bent -forward. She looked hard at the slim girlish figure, the delicately -feminine face of Marjorie Bartrand. ‘You must learn to knock about -the world alone! You will go up in January as a bye-term man! These -prospects may be intoxicating. We require, I think, no assistance from -the friendly half-light to discuss them in.’ - -The remark went home. Marjorie’s ill-fated love affair had long been an -open secret between her and old Cassandra Tighe, and in a few minutes’ -time half confidences were over, reserve had gone to the winds. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s name, for the first time for months, was on the -girl’s trembling lips. - -‘I am not likely to be over forward again, Miss Tighe. But, strive -as I will, the longing overcomes me to see Mr. Arbuthnot--before he -marries some one else--to give him a last chance of explanation. -The word--_the one word_--I wrote that miserable afternoon may never -have reached him. When I heard Mrs. Arbuthnot was out,’ Marjorie made -confession, ‘my courage went from me--I had hoped to leave my packet -safe in Dinah’s hands--and I just gave it, without a message, to -the servant who answered my ring. Then I drove away--fast, for fear -Geoffrey should meet me and see my face.’ - -‘The Arbuthnot people were a singular trio.’ Cassandra made the remark -with an irrelevant neutrality savouring of the serpent’s wisdom. ‘The -best looking of the men, not your tutor, Marjorie, is doing good -things, it seems, as an artist. Colonel de Gourmet has a correspondent -in Florence, where the Gaston Arbuthnots live, and the accounts of them -are favourable. You know, of course, that there is a Miss Arbuthnot?’ - -‘Yes, I have heard the news. It is good to think that Dinah must be a -happier woman now.’ - -‘We shall not see such a face again on our shores. Do you remember my -mistake about her, Marjorie--the lecture I made you read your tutor on -his frivolity?’ - -‘You ask me questions instead of answering mine, Miss Tighe. If I -should meet him--if through blind accident I should speak to Geoffrey -again, would it be delicate, would it show proper womanly pride, for me -to attempt one last explanation?’ - -Cassandra did not instantly reply. The sobbing of the wind had died -among the poplars. The leaves fell noiselessly to the damp earth. Only -the ticking of the clock on the stairs broke silence. - -‘For ever--never!’ - -‘Never--for ever!’ - -And with each second, thought Marjorie, how many human loves must be -laid low, how many hearts must begin to ache for all time as hers was -aching now! - -Miss Tighe sat calm and placid, as when the girl first entered, her -hands folded on her knee. ‘And what earthly inducement had Pouchée to -settle in a University town?’ she observed at length. ‘Why does the -woman live alone?’ - -‘Her father was maître d’escrime in Cambridge. She and her mother live -on in the house where he died. I rather think Mademoiselle gives French -lessons still.’ - -‘Oh, Mademoiselle gives French lessons still, does she?’ Cassandra’s -tone was absent. She rose, moved closer to the hearth. Her face was -level with the miniature portrait of a lad in old-fashioned uniform -that hung there. By and by, ‘I am going,’ she said very low, ‘to tell -you something about which I have been silent for forty years.’ - -‘Miss Tighe----’ - -‘Don’t be afraid of an old woman’s prosy history, or of a sermon. You -will have neither. Forty years ago, child, there lived, in the far -north of England, a girl, somewhere about your present age. This girl -was on the eve of being married. Her wedding dress was ordered, the -guests were bidden. Well, at the eleventh hour she chose, in a flame of -paltry jealousy, to resent some fancied want of devotion in her lover. -He was single-minded, loyal--of finer stuff, altogether, than herself. -They might have been reconciled in an hour if she would have let her -heart speak, have returned to the arms outheld to receive her. The girl -would make not an inch of concession. She came, as you do, Marjorie, of -people who look upon unforgiveness as a virtue. She heard around her -the old stock phrases--delicacy, family pride--the righteousness of -subordinating feeling to will! And so it came to pass that the lover, -having neither wealth nor title, was allowed to go. He exchanged into a -regiment under orders for India. Our troops were then in Afghanistan, -engaged in hot fighting, and----’ - -Miss Tighe’s voice--the brave, kind voice that Marjorie had always -known--broke down. Marjorie felt herself turn chill with a vague -terror. To hear of this white-haired woman’s love seemed, in her -overstrained mood, like receiving a message from the world of ghosts. -She awaited the sequel of the story, not speaking, not lifting her eyes -to the narrator’s face. - -‘The lad fell--a locket his sweetheart had once given him hidden in -his breast. It came back to her, through a brother officer who knew -something of the dead man’s story--_and with a stain on it_. That stain -has marked every day of a lonely life throughout forty years. You will -not speak of this again, remember.’ - -‘Never, Miss Tighe, I promise you.’ - -‘But keep my words in your memory. If you meet Geoffrey Arbuthnot, -if a moment comes when happiness beckons one way, the Bartrand pride -another, they may, perhaps, be of use to you.’ - - -So human hearts can remain true to their griefs for forty years! -Marjorie pondered on this fact as she walked back through the -November-smelling, dark country to Tintajeux. She felt, with the -certainty of morbid eighteen, that her own life would be a counterpart -of Cassandra Tighe’s. She would never love any other man than Geoffrey, -would never marry where she did not love. She was not likely to die. -In the glow of her young health, feeling her limbs so lithe--the mere -act of walking and breathing an ever renewed bodily pleasure--death lay -over an horizon which she had not yet sighted. Ah, if she could hear -Geff’s step approaching now, if she could feel his hand-clasp, strong, -friendly as in the days of old, the collective pride of the whole -Bartrand race would not long stand between them! - -But the mirk lanes were forsaken; no human step save her own was to be -heard. The lights were lit in the scattered cottage homesteads, the -children at play round the fire, the elders resting after their day’s -work. Through the low windows Marjorie could see one family group after -another as she passed along, and felt her own loneliness the greater. -As she came near Tintajeux the cry of the owls, than which no more -freezing sound exists in nature, was all that gave her welcome. - -‘That stain has marked every day of a lonely life throughout forty -years.’ - -The moral of Miss Tighe’s story lingered in Marjorie’s heart. As she -and her grandfather sat for the last time together over dessert, old -Andros took not unkindly notice of her white cheeks and darkened eyes. - -‘You must get back your good looks before you show yourself in -Cambridge. Women are sent into the world to be graceful. When they fail -in that, they fail in everything. Be a senior wrangler if you will, -but keep your complexion. You have grown much more like your father of -late.’ This was the highest form of praise Andros Bartrand could offer -her. ‘Don’t go back to the little skinny Spanish witch of former days.’ - -‘I wish I could, sir,’ cried Marjorie, a flash of quickly-roused mutiny -in her eyes. ‘The days when I was a little skinny Spanish witch were -better than any I am likely to know again in this world.’ - - - - -CHAPTER XLVII - -BESIDE THE CRADLE - - -‘I just feel we are too happy. It makes me tremble, Gaston. I would -rather see the speck of cloud no bigger than a man’s hand than for ever -live in dread of it.’ - -‘You would rather have anything than the actual, my dear. That is a -little weakness of the sex. Surely your daughter ought to fill every -crevice of your dissatisfied heart!’ - -‘She fills it, fuller than my heart can hold--my own sweet baby. She -is a wonderfully forward child, is she not? So strong of her age,--so -intelligent--so beautiful!’ - -‘Not beautiful, Dinah. I am no amateur of infants, although I can -tolerate their presence after the age of two years. As regards the -particular infant sleeping in the cradle, yonder, even my knowledge of -the subject enables me to say she is unornamental--as unornamental a -child as could be found in Florence.’ - -‘She is your living portrait,’ returned the mother, unconscious of -irony. ‘Yes, even to her shrewd looks, to the firm way she clasps her -fingers. And already--in that,’ murmured Dinah, penitently, ‘it may be -she favours me--already, Baby has a temper.’ - -These exceedingly domestic confidences were interchanged in a vast old -Florentine room, fitted up by Gaston Arbuthnot as a studio, and on a -November night, some forty-eight hours later than the gray evening -when Marjorie paid her farewell visit to Cassandra Tighe. - -But November in Florence is a different season to November in the -English Channel. The dry nipping touch of Italian winter had already -made itself felt beside the banks of the Arno, and the blaze from -an up-piled heap of olive-faggots cast a ruddy glow upon the room -and its occupants. Gaston Arbuthnot, his day’s work done, reclined, -outstretched, in one of his favourite American chairs beside the -hearth. On the other side the fire was a cradle, wickered, capacious, -of the genuine Italian build that you may remember in many a -sixteenth-century picture. And beside this cradle stood Dinah, serious -of mien, gazing with rapt, Madonna-like devotion at the little English -child who slept there. - -At Gaston’s last remark she stooped and drew a muslin curtain tenderly -over her daughter’s face. Then she came across to her husband, she sank -on her knees beside him. Stealing a soft arm round Mr. Arbuthnot’s -neck, Dinah brought his cheek within reach of her lips. - -‘Honestly and without jesting, you can say you think the child _ugly_?’ - -‘I think she will never be as handsome as her mother--the better for -herself, perhaps. Beauty is a snare. Who should know that better than -Dinah Arbuthnot?’ - -‘If I had been--well, plainer than I am, would you have sought me out, -I wonder, in Aunt Sarah’s little cottage that summer?’ - -‘Difficult to speculate backwards! I had thought some plainish women -charming before I heard the name of Lesser Cheriton.’ - -‘That is a matter of course. You had been the friend of Linda Thorne.’ - -‘Linda Smythe, as she was at that time. I don’t know that “cette chère -Smeet” could ever be called charming. She was lively, apt, a thorough -mistress of situation and inexhaustively talkative--to a boy fresh from -school that gift of talkativeness goes for much! She lacked charm. I -have heard her mourn over the deficiency, in her plaintive little way, -poor soul, with tears.’ - -How calmly they spoke of Linda’s qualities--this Darby and Joan of -nearly six years’ standing, to whom romance, in its earliest, sweetest -bloom, would seem to have returned! From what a different standpoint -Dinah could review the sentimental dilemmas of Gaston’s youth! How the -renewal of their love had bettered them, man and woman alike! - -‘Sometimes when I look back upon our Guernsey days, the days, I mean, -which followed on that Langrune picnic, I feel a great remorse. Things -ended happily ... because you would not let my jealous temper ruin both -our lives.’ - -Possibly, thought Gaston Arbuthnot, because of Geff. He remembered -their talk when the summer eve was sinking into darkness, the eve upon -whose morrow Dinah would fain have quitted him for ever. - -‘But I deserved the heaviest punishment that could have fallen upon me. -Jealousy, such as mine was then, means selfishness, not love.’ - -‘Spoken from a fine moral height! All the same, Dinah, I think you did -love me, slightly.’ - -‘I was unjust to Linda Thorne about your wager. When I opened the -packet she left for you I was dishonourable. The whole thing may have -been a jest--may have belonged to a time before you knew me at all. I -recollect telling you I would keep that packet always. Well, Gaston--I -wish now I had never seen it. There is a drawer in my dressing-case I -have not once since had courage to open.’ - -Gaston Arbuthnot turned his head. Studying his wife’s face closely, -some suspicion of possible mistake began to dawn upon him. - -‘Are you certain as to your facts, Dinah? A drawer, you say, in your -dressing-case which you never have found courage to open? And why -not? I confess to being out of my depth. Linda’s gloves, honestly -lost by her, honestly paid, lay on the parlour mantelshelf. Of this I -am positive. From the mantelshelf I naturally transferred them to my -pocket.’ - -‘Gloves!’ - -‘What else? You do not suppose poor Linda and I made bets of twenty -pound notes?’ - -‘But the word she wrote for you--the flower, the ribbon.... Ah, -Gaston,’ cried Dinah, hurriedly, ‘let us never have another -misunderstanding. I was wrong--criminal, if you choose--in opening -a cover that was not directed to myself. But I suffered for my -wrong-doing--you should know that--and you may be frank with me now. I -am not so weak that you need hide a syllable of the truth.’ - -‘I put the gloves in my pocket,’ Gaston Arbuthnot reasserted, ‘and to -the best of my remembrance wore them out in about a fortnight. They -were iron-gray. A pair of iron-gray gloves would last one ten days or a -fortnight, would they not?’ - -On this Dinah Arbuthnot started to her feet. She remembered Gaston’s -talent, of old, for calm mystification, and her heart fired. - -‘I have not re-opened the subject for amusement, Gaston. To show you -that I would make amends in earnest, I will fetch the packet this -moment. I shall feel easier when it is in your keeping, to destroy or -keep, as you choose.’ - -Taking up a hand-lamp, Dinah passed into a neighbouring chamber. When -she returned, in three or four minutes’ time, there was a pallor about -her lips, a threatening of tears (the like of which during the past -fifteen months had been happily absent) in her voice. - -‘Baby has moved--has she not! I thought I heard her from my room.’ - -‘The infant sneezed,’ answered Gaston Arbuthnot with gravity. ‘Much to -my terror. Sneezing might suggest waking. And to be alone with a waking -baby recalls Dr. Johnson and the tower. Bring your wonderful packet -here’--she had paused for a moment beside the child’s cradle--‘and let -us have the scene out.’ - -‘We will never have a scene again while we live.’ Poor Dinah sank -into her former kneeling position; she rested her cheek against her -husband’s coat-sleeve. ‘Indeed, I think it might be fairer to you, more -generous to Linda Thorne, to close the matter--thus.’ - -She held the packet in the direction of the flames. - -With a quick movement Gaston Arbuthnot’s hand stayed her. He drew the -contents forth from the envelope. He read Marjorie Bartrand’s ‘one -word.’ Then he glanced at the blackened flower-stalks, at the bit of -tarnished Spanish ribbon. - -‘And could you believe--in the full possession of your reason, -wife--that this was meant for me?’ - -Dinah’s head drooped lower. She coloured violently. - -‘Could you believe that Linda Thorne, a woman who has travelled -over half the habitable globe alone, picking up experience -everywhere--Linda, a woman of tact, a woman of the world--would commit -herself to sentiment of doubtful application, set down in black and -white?’ - -‘I never stopped to reason--the heart within me was too sore. I knew -Linda Thorne had called. I saw that the envelope was directed to you.’ - -‘Or to Geoffrey--which? It is, as you see, addressed simply “Mr. G. -Arbuthnot.”’ - -‘But Mrs. Thorne and Geff disliked each other. Do you think, even in -jest, she would----’ - -‘My best Dinah--let a molehill which, during fifteen months, has been -assuming gigantic size, return, forthwith, to molehill proportions? -This handwriting may be Marjorie Bartrand’s. One can imagine a -classico-mathematical girl making that kind of “e.” It is certainly not -Linda’s.’ - -‘And the meaning of the solitary word “REPENTANCE!”’ - -‘Ah! you must read your own riddles,’ answered Gaston, with suavity. -‘Poor Linda and myself made an innocent wager of gloves, which I won. I -know no more.’ - -Dinah rose hastily. She turned her face away from the fire’s light. -Amidst the full happiness of the last year, in her wifely rejoicing -over Gaston’s progress in his art, in the flood of charity towards -all men which had come upon her with the new delights of motherhood, -she had always dreaded the cloud ‘no bigger than a man’s hand,’ had -always remembered the secret which a jealously locked drawer of her -dressing-case hid out of sight. Her moral attitude towards Gaston -had perforce been a stooping one, an attitude of dumb forgiveness. -Believing in the present, hoping all things for the future, it had not -been possible for her wholly to forget the past. In this moment’s sharp -enlightenment, this unlooked-for vindication of Gaston’s loyalty, her -first sensation was one of relief. Succeeding it--so swiftly that Dinah -distinguished not where relief ended and pain began--there swept across -her the keenest shame which in her fair untarnished life her soul had -ever known. - -‘You believe that the letter came from Marjorie Bartrand?’ - -The question fell from her lips almost unconsciously. - -‘One suspects the Greek “e’s,” and see--here, in this corner is the -Bartrand crest, an eagle with a bad-tempered beak and upheld claw. Take -back your own, wife, your cherished _vendetta_. I will have none of it.’ - -‘And you think she cared, really, for poor Geff?’ - -‘Marjorie was seventeen years old. The season of the year was June. -They bent their heads together over the same schoolroom table. -Even I--I, who have been so long out of the running, saw whither -things tended as early as the rose-show. Geff, no doubt, after a -Platonic mode, admired the budding Girton girl--a girl,’ said Gaston, -narrow-mindedly, ‘far too pretty for her calling! There came a breeze -between them,--Geoffrey hinted as much to me the night before he left -Guernsey,--a threatening of storm which, if a certain letter had not -been kidnapped, might have cost him his life, I mean his liberty, there -and then.’ - -By this time the blood had gone from Dinah’s cheeks. ‘And all this was -brought about through me, through my small, self-engrossed jealousy. -Oh, Gaston, how sinful I was, how guilty I am still! But for me, -Geoffrey might long ago have come to happiness. He was our best friend -always, and I betrayed him. I am the veriest wretch on earth.’ - -Tears of repentance rushed to Dinah’s eyes. - -‘You do not mention a slight reparation you owe to Linda Thorne,’ -observed Gaston, with his shrewd smile. ‘You forget that something may -be due also to me, even me, a husband.’ - -‘I was ill, body and mind, that miserable day. I had scarce had an -hour’s sleep since I came back from Langrune without you. A flimsy -excuse,’ poor Dinah faltered, ‘and yet the only one I have to offer.’ - -‘It is the excuse in vogue. The big social scientists put just the -same plea forward for the criminal classes. Crime is an illness. A man -may run a knife into another simply because his digestion, reacting on -the nerve centres, happened to be out of order. Probably, like you, my -dear, the poor fellow had been suffering from insomnia! Such excuses,’ -added Gaston, ‘are comforting enough for the man with the knife, but -scarcely so consolatory to him stabbed.’ - -Dinah touched the flower stalks wistfully. She folded the ribbon with -care before returning it to the envelope. Her hands trembled in her -excitement. - -‘You talk about reparation.... I shall not let an hour be lost. I -shall write to Miss Bartrand at once, send back her own letter, and -confess--oh, Gaston, the hard word is yours--that ’twas I kidnapped it.’ - -‘You mean to perform this act of contrition for Geoffrey’s sake?’ - -‘I do.’ - -‘Poor Geff! After getting decently out of danger once (and his letters -don’t savour of a broken heart), it seems a trifle rough on him to have -the thing revived.’ - -‘_Poor_ Geff!’ echoed Dinah, her eyes glistening through their tears. -‘You call a man poor who has a chance of winning Marjorie Bartrand’s -love? Does our happiness make you such an egotist,’--the reader will -note that Dinah’s vocabulary was enlarging,--‘such an egotist you do -not care for other people to marry?’ - -‘Or are you like the fox in the fable, my dear child--which?’ - -Dinah rested her clasped hands upon her husband’s shoulder, and -cogitated softly. - -‘Yes, I shall write to Tintajeux to-night. If it is not too late, -if the hearts of both are free, Miss Bartrand will find some way of -letting Geoffrey know the truth.’ - -‘Of that you may be assured. If two women are to conspire together in -league against him, I say “poor Geff” with still more marked emphasis.’ - -And rising, Gaston moved in the direction of the door. In these later -days, in the confidence of established love, Dinah had thought it no -grievance that her husband should join the Florentine Artists’ Club, or -spend a portion of every evening in other society than hers. - -‘Like all true women you are a remorseless match-maker,’ he told her. -‘Unless the flame between these two victims is clean burnt out, you -will contrive by your letter to re-kindle it.’ - -‘I wish I were a better scribe--that I could put my heart between the -lines! Oh, I must begin at once. Baby shall be left--for the first -time--with old Giacintha, and I will run round to the Piazza, and post -the letter myself.’ - -‘Five years hence, I hope Geoffrey will bless you for having written -it. There was a flash of temper not to be forgotten in Marjorie -Bartrand’s handsome eyes.’ - -‘And if there was! If a woman has a temper, even a jealous one, is it -impossible for her husband’s life to be happy?’ - -Dinah had followed Gaston to the door. She held up her face--the -loveliest face in Florence, said the artists who worked therein--for -his kiss. - -‘All men are not philosophers,’ Gaston Arbuthnot made reply. ‘I have -learnt--tolerably dear the lesson cost me--not only to exist in a -stormy atmosphere, but to flourish there.’ - - -And this is what Dinah wrote, not troubling herself over possible -faults of Syntax, not making a fair copy in the slanting pointed -handwriting to which, after much labour, she had tediously attained. -This is what Dinah wrote, straight out from her heart-- - - - ‘Florence, November 15. - - ‘MY DEAR MISS BARTRAND, - - ‘I have just found, _with shame and remorse_, that I did you - grievous wrong, last July twelvemonth. You were the kindest - friend, save Geff, that ever I met, and I repaid you, little - meaning it, with treachery. Perhaps when you _see the enclosed_ - you will guess what bitter confession I have got to make. - - ‘Dear Miss Bartrand--I found your envelope on the mantelpiece of - our parlour at Miller’s Hotel, and I committed the meanest action - of my life. I broke it open--and because I was blind with selfish - trouble, and thought of my own suffering before all things, I kept - the letter. I have had it in my possession till this hour. - - ‘It would be poor excuse to say I mistook the _person_ it was - meant for, as well as the _hand_ that wrote it. It would be - cowardice to say my heart was too hot, too miserable to reason. - I sinned, and if my sin has stood between my best friends and - happiness, my punishment will last me my life. - - ‘Unless I make too bold, may I hope, some future time, you will - let Geoffrey read what I now write? Ask him to think of July the - 1st, the day I went with him to Guernsey hospital. It was on that - day, a quarter of an hour after Geoffrey left me, at the sight of - _some one he will remember_, that I found your letter. - - ‘Dear Miss Bartrand, I am the penitent and humble well-wisher of - your happiness, - - ‘DINAH.’ - - -The letter was directed to Tintajeux Manoir, Guernsey, and posted by -the writer’s hand on the night of November 15. A sharp Italian night, -with the swollen Arno swirling, the moonlight lying in ebon and ivory -patterns along the Florentine streets, with only one person--so it -seemed to Dinah’s beating heart--abroad in the sleeping city. - - -At the same hour Marjorie’s eager eyes looked forth, through rain and -fog, through the blurred obscurity of a Great Eastern carriage window, -upon the lamps of Cambridge. - - - - -CHAPTER XLVIII - -HAPPINESS - - -Madame Pouchée’s house, the goal of the girl’s journey, belonged to -history; a thatched, lozenge-windowed structure, of which the pargeted -gables, the black oak joints, and plaster panels abutted, with -pathetically incongruous air, as of some aged spinster at a ball, on -one of the brisk, modern thoroughfares of the town. - -A brass plate engraved ‘Pouchée’ was on the front door, conferring a -semi-professional character upon the mouldering household. Although -the fencing-master, honest man, had lain for twenty years in Père -la Chaise, and Madame Pouchée had no more ostensible livelihood -than such small sums as Mademoiselle gained by the teaching of her -language, their plate raised them to the plane of citizens. The mother -and daughter formed units in that curious gathering of poor French -people which exists in our University towns, decayed families of -fencing-masters, hair-dressers, or cooks, once prosperous, who shiver -through English fog and cold to the end of their existence because they -are ‘dans leurs meubles,’ ratepayers! - -To quit her dark old home, to forego the sound of Great St. Mary’s -curfew, to submit her furniture to the hammer of the auctioneer, would, -to Madame Pouchée, have seemed little short of sacrilege. She passed -her life with no larger pleasure than knitting, no acuter pain than -rheumatism. She could go to Mass on Sundays and festivals with more -security in Cambridge than in France. Pouchée’s foils and masks were -suspended in the raftered entrance hall. Pouchée’s portrait, as a -glossy bachelor of twenty, with black frock coat, turn-down collar, and -gamboge gloves, hung in the salon. Upstairs, in one of the low-ceiled -attics, were her crucifix and bénitier, just as she brought them from -far Provence before her first child saw the light. - -Such things to an aged woman are more than climate, more than -nationality. Madame Pouchée’s lot had not been rose-coloured during the -fencing-master’s life. At the time of his death, even, Monsieur was in -Paris, led thither by some of the unexplained affairs which perennially -drew him from his own fireside. But his widow clung to the foils and -masks and portrait with as much patient fidelity as though he had loved -her always. The careless husband who lay in Père la Chaise belonged to -Madame Pouchée’s middle age. The foils, the masks, the glossy bachelor -with gamboge gloves and turn-down collar, were relics of her youth. - -Every corner of the house was burnished to that vanishing point of -cleanliness which only French housewives understand, on the evening -of November 15. Ere Marjorie had well alighted from her cab, an -unforgotten figure rushed forth through wet and darkness to meet her, a -pair of kind solid arms held her fast. - -‘But you are tall--but you are fresh and vermeille!’ Mademoiselle -Pouchée hurried the girl across the strip of pavement to the house. ‘I -see no more the little Cendrillon of old days. Come, then, mère, leave -thy kitchen. Come, that I may present thee to our future Girton girl.’ - -Madame Pouchée’s cheeks were swarthy as the olives of her native -country. An ample checked apron was tied round her neat black dress. -She wore the provincial linen head-dress of her youth. Genuine French -people do not shake hands on every occasion of human life, and fifty -English years had left Madame Pouchée a genuine Frenchwoman still. The -old lady came forward, not with a hand outstretched, but with such -natural courtesy, such charming welcome written on her Southern face as -reminded Marjorie of Spain, and caused her somewhat flagging spirit to -rally. - -‘I feel six years old again, dear Pouchée.’ This she said when -Mademoiselle had led her into the salon, a tiny panelled room where a -table was cosily spread for a dinner of two before the fire. ‘Surely -we had our lessons this morning! Surely I was wicked--when was I not -wicked?--and you gave me a double row of spelling for my penitence.’ - -Throughout the evening a mysterious sense of having gone back to her -childhood fell balmily on Marjorie’s heart. Madame Pouchée gave them a -little dinner, as exquisitely cooked, I dare to say, as was any dinner -in Trinity or Magdalen that night. For dessert were Tintajeux pears, -of which a goodly hamper had come over as a present from the Seigneur. -Their coffee was served in Sèvres cups, dislodged for the occasion from -Madame Pouchée’s inlaid cabinet--the costliest ornament of the salon, -brought with her in bridal days from Paris, when the nineteenth century -was in its teens. - -‘It is like a Tintajeux holiday,’ cried Marjorie, as she and Pouchée -sat, hand clasped in hand, beside the fire. ‘Do you remember every 29th -of May we used to eat our dinner under the big oak in honour, you said, -of le martyr Protestant, Charles?’ The prayer-books in the Tintajeux -family pew were of ancient date. Pouchée, honest creature, was wont to -entangle herself among the various Stuart and Orange services, greatly -to the Seigneur’s edification. ‘Ah, Pouchée, we are wiser now. We have -learnt history from loftier historians than Lady Callcott. And I, for -one, am not happier.’ - -‘Whenever I look at Tintajeux I see a small Marjorie with temper, with -eyes, with a determined Spanish face--and whom I loved much. There are -no figures in the picture. Still, whenever I look at Tintajeux----’ - -Mademoiselle Pouchée’s voluble tongue stopped abruptly. - -‘No figures in the picture?’ Marjorie glanced round the empty walls. -‘And what picture are you talking of? Where is the photograph of the -Manoir I sent you last Christmas?’ - -As she spoke Madame Pouchée entered, bearing a fresh-trimmed lamp--for -this little household boasted of no parlour-maid. The old Frenchwoman -lingered a while, her quick septuagenarian eyes watching the faces of -her daughter and of their guest. She had caught Marjorie’s last words. - -‘The photograph of Tintajeux Manoir? Why, it has been moved upstairs. -It hangs in the salon of our gentleman, notre bon locataire--pas vrai, -ma fille?’ - -Mademoiselle Pouchée put the interruption quietly aside. - -‘Mère loses her memory. We must not always heed her,’ she observed to -Marjorie, presently. ‘In bygone days, when the good papa was living, -our family received undergraduates as lodgers. Mère has the old time in -her heart still.’ - -‘Jesuitry, Pouchée! I remember your talents in that line. In bygone -days, when the good papa was living, no photograph of Tintajeux Manoir -existed.’ - -The remark was accompanied by a Bartrand look, as familiar, as smiting -to poor Pouchée as though she and Marjorie had done battle over some -delicate point of moral faithfulness that very morning. - -‘There are accidents--contingencies--nay, times being hard, -there is necessity. As well confess the truth. We do not take -lodgers.’ Pouchée’s eyes dwelt fondly on the inlaid cabinet, the -porcelain, the exquisite order of the little salon. ‘We are private -citizens--rentières, living on our means.’ - -‘And there is no one in the house save yourselves?’ - -A flourish of Pouchée’s fingers hinted negation. ‘The old place is, in -fact, two houses, as you will see by daylight. There are rooms at the -back that can be entered by a flight of open-air steps--steps dating -from the fourteenth century, ma mie.’ - -‘You promised me truth--not history, Mademoiselle.’ - -‘And by hazard--for the moment--we have a locataire. Not an -undergraduate. We spare a room or two, on occasion, to some quiet -gentleman--some resident M.A.--some student from the Art Schools. No -undergraduate sets foot within our doors. _We are not licensed._’ - -So keen a sense of distinction was conveyed by the italicised -words that Marjorie forebore from further questioning. An hour -later, however, when they were parting for the night in the fresh, -chintz-draped attic which was the guest-chamber of the house, she -ventured on a last surmise. - -‘As we passed a certain baize door at the turning of the stairs I -smelt the smell of a pipe. Our bon locataire must live somewhere in -that neighbourhood, Mademoiselle--our quiet gentleman, who is not an -undergraduate, and who has the photograph of Tintajeux Manoir on his -walls?’ - -But Pouchée was blankly uncommunicative. The gentleman went in and out -by the other staircase. Marjorie would neither see nor hear him during -her stay in Cambridge. As to the photograph--it would certainly return -to its place in the salon to-morrow morning. - -‘If you are afraid of University ghosts,’ added the Frenchwoman, as she -bade her guest a final good-night, ‘you will do wisely to bolt your -door. Sleep well, ma mie, and dream that we are making cowslip balls, -as we used a dozen years ago, in the woods of Tintajeux.’ - -The first five days of her Cambridge visit were resolutely spent by -Marjorie in sight-seeing. It was well for her, she said, to come under -the external influences of the Alma Mater, watch the cheerful flow of -undergraduate life, look at Newnham and Girton from without, before -delivering her letters of introduction.... It was well for her, while -she still stood uncommitted to the future, to run a last forlorn chance -of meeting the man she loved! - -Here was the truth, unrecognised, perhaps, as truth, even in Marjorie -Bartrand’s moments of sternest self-questioning. Day after day, -however, slipped vainly by. A dozen times in each twenty-four hours -her heart would leap, her pulses throb as men of Geoffrey’s height or -build went past her in the crowded streets. Geoffrey Arbuthnot appeared -not. She fell to quarrelling with herself over her own folly. Geoffrey -might be at the other side of the world--married--contented: in every -case must have learnt long ago to live his life, to do his work without -_her_. Happily, there were reprisals.... - -On the morning of the sixth day she determined to put her sweetheart -away from her remembrance for ever. - -‘I have come to the end of my sight-seeing.’ This she told the Pouchées -at breakfast. ‘I have heard a University sermon and the services at -King’s and Trinity. We have visited Trumpington churchyard and the -Backs. I have seen Milton’s tree and Gray’s fire-escape, and--and the -Girton girls playing tennis. When I have gone over your house, Madame -Pouchée, when I know what kind of rooms reading gentlemen inhabit, my -experience will be complete.’ - -The speech fell from her idly. Small curiosity in the affairs of others -was never a sin to be reckoned among the Bartrand qualities. - -But Mademoiselle Pouchée’s manner gave it purpose. Mademoiselle changed -colour, fidgeted with her coffee-spoon, contradicted herself. ‘The -rooms were the plainest rooms in Cambridge. No knowing at what time our -gentleman went out or might return. For herself, she seldom entered his -part of the house, and----’ - -‘Pouchée,’ exclaimed Marjorie, the old spirit of contradiction taking -possession of her, ‘there is a mystery about our excellent lodger which -I mean to solve. You seldom enter his part of the house, you say? You -were in his rooms last evening. I saw you enter through the baize door, -as I have seen you do pretty often already. I heard your voice as you -talked to him. Explain these things.’ - -‘Enfin! It would be better if the truth were told,’ said old Madame -Pouchée in her own language. ‘Our gentleman is an enemy of the sex. -What will you have! When he heard a young lady was coming to visit -us----’ - -‘He offered, of free will, to go in and out by the other stairs,’ -interrupted Pouchée, adroitly. ‘He showed the finest, most delicate -consideration. Since that first evening when Marjorie perceived his -pipe our gentleman has not smoked. He goes out early. He does not -return until he is worn out with work--such work as his is, too--at -night!’ - -‘Then it is impossible we can disturb him,’ exclaimed Marjorie, rising -briskly from the table. ‘As a matter of architecture I am interested in -the fourteenth-century stairs. The rooms they lead to must be equally -curious. You need not chaperon me.’ She looked back at Pouchée across -her shoulder. ‘I shall push back the mysterious red baize, and walk -straight into Bluebeard’s chamber without knocking.’ - -And running up the stairs, she was about to put her threat into -execution when Pouchée, by a dexterous flank movement, cut off her -advance. - -‘There may be a litter of papers. Grand ciel! there may be the bones, -the skull.’ With her hands upon the lock, Mademoiselle Pouchée barred -Marjorie’s progress by her own solid person; then, opening two inches -of door, she peered in, cautiously. ‘No; we are in order. We have -locked up our skeleton for once. You may enter, child--Barbe-bleu is -not here to eat you.’ - -Marjorie Bartrand stopped short upon the threshold. Something in the -meagrely furnished room, the piles of books, the small fireless grate, -the absence of any pretence at decoration or cheerfulness, affected her -strongly. She shrank from intruding, unbidden, on such valiantly borne -poverty as was here in evidence before her. - -‘And you have robbed him of Tintajeux Manoir!’ She glanced round at the -bare, damp-stained walls. ‘Tintajeux at least gives one a notion of -quick and wholesome air, of honest sunshine!’ - -‘Our gentleman robbed himself. When I told him the morning after your -arrival that you had asked for it, he took the photograph from his wall -with his own hand.’ - -‘And you can give him no other picture to fill its place?’ - -‘He has a magnifique picture here, facing the window. See,’ -Pouchée adjusted herself into a favourable light with an air of -connoisseurship, ‘a magnifique portrait, just a little mildewed, of -King William the Fourth. The fur on his Majesty’s cloak has been the -admiration of many artists. Come in, ma mie, entrez. What are you -afraid of?’ - -And Marjorie entered. She looked for a few seconds at the time-stained -mezzotint which, with its black frame, its cheap glass, seemed but to -make the wall whereon it hung more sorrowfully ugly. Then she crossed -to the room’s one window--a diamond leaded casement through whose small -dulled panes the side view of a crowded alley, of the corner of a still -more crowded churchyard, was attainable. - -A ponderous book lay on a chair beside the window. Marjorie Bartrand -lifted it. - -‘Marjorie, I forbid you to touch a book! Our gentleman studies for -medicine. Medical works are not for the perusal of young girls.’ - -‘The girl of the future peruses everything! Quain’s “Elements of -Anatomy,”’ cried Marjorie, holding the volume as high out of Pouchée’s -reach as its weight would allow. ‘I wonder whether our gentleman would -lend it to us, if we asked him prettily? We might study our bones -together, Pouchée. Who knows, in days to come, that I may not go for a -Natural Science Tripos?’ - -And--with the book still held aloft--her nimble fingers found their way -to the title-page. In the top right-hand corner was a name, written in -characters she knew: - -‘GEOFFREY ARBUTHNOT, _January_, 1880.’ - -For an instant Marjorie Bartrand turned ashen pale. Then as she -recalled her position, as she realised that she had forced herself, -unasked, into Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s room, the poor child crimsoned from -throat to brow. She felt that the very soul within her had cause to -blush over her temerity. - -‘Let us come away this moment. I am taken by surprise--there has been -some cruel mistake.’ - -The book almost fell out of her grasp. Swiftly as her limbs would carry -her she made her way out of the room and down the stairs. Then, when -they were safe again in the little salon, she caught Pouchée’s hand -with passion. - -‘I look to you, Mademoiselle, for an explanation,’ she cried with -impetuous voice, with flaming eyes. ‘What right had you to conceal from -me that Geoffrey Arbuthnot lived here?’ - -But Pouchée had the strength of conscious innocence. All further need -of mystification was over now. Regarding their lodger as a shy recluse, -an enemy of the sex, the two poor French ladies had striven with will -to keep him and their visitor from meeting. This was the secret of -their reticence, the sum of their offending. Mademoiselle Pouchée met -Marjorie’s lightning glance calmly. - -‘Mère and I had nothing to conceal. How could it have interested you to -hear a stranger’s name?’ - -‘And you have never spoken of me in his presence?’ - -‘If we did, it was by hazard. Why should Marjorie Bartrand of -Tintajeux be more than any other young lady to Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot?’ - -‘Simply,’ returned Marjorie, closely watching Pouchée’s unmoved -face,--‘simply because Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot had the picture of -Tintajeux hanging on his walls.’ - -‘By hazard, also. He took a fancy to the photograph from the first day -he came to lodge with us. It had a look of Scotland,--it recalled some -place where he had known good times. And so, to give him pleasure, -I said that while he lodged here, Tintajeux should hang above his -chimney-piece.’ - -‘From whence it was unhung, by his own hand, to please the caprice of -an unknown visitor. Mr. Arbuthnot is very generous!’ - -‘Mr. Arbuthnot,’ cried Pouchée, warming on the instant, ‘is the most -noble-hearted man living. Yes, and I have travelled! I have had my -experiences widened. I know my world. That he should work hard at the -hospital or over his books, I comprehend. A high degree is at stake. -Men have their ambition. Mr. Arbuthnot goes into courts and alleys, -vile places, left alone by the police, and where priests or parsons -might get their throats cut. He searches out the worst outcasts in -Barnwell and Chesterton, only to serve them.’ - -‘Now--at this present time?’ stammered Marjorie, conscience-stricken. - -‘Now, while you and I, mon enfant, have been sight-seeing. His last -protégé,’ went on Pouchée, ‘is a miserable bargeman, one of the worst -characters on the river. This man was struck over the head by some -falling timber two or three weeks ago. He was too nearly gone, so his -mates thought, to be carried to hospital, and our gentleman just saved -his life. He has nursed him day and night since, as one of your great -London doctors would nurse a Prince of the Blood. If Mr. Arbuthnot were -of our religion I could understand it. I visit in Barnwell myself a -very little.’ - -This was Pouchée’s account of her own charities. She visited in -Barnwell a great deal. Beside fever-stricken, dying pallets, her -acquaintance with Geoffrey Arbuthnot had first begun. - -‘But we, Catholics, see in the poor our own sick soul. We hope, in -saving them, to save ourselves.’ - -‘And Geoffrey Arbuthnot?’ - -‘He serves them, gives them his time, his money--what do I know! his -heart--simply _because_ they are castaway men and women. “Sisters and -brothers in a queer disguise.” You should hear him say that, with his -grave smile! It was to talk over some of the sisters and brothers, -Marjorie, that I went to our gentleman’s rooms last night.’ - -‘Our gentleman ought to be a happy man,’ said Marjorie, with a sigh. - -The Frenchwoman’s shoulders were sceptically expressive. - -‘A hair-shirt is never worn for pleasure, child. It is not in nature -that a man of six-and-twenty should care for other people’s lives more -than for his own. Geoffrey Arbuthnot might have made a good servant of -the Church,--an Ignatius Loyola, a Francis Xavier. But if one speaks -about happiness--allez!’ - - - - -CHAPTER XLIX - -FROM DINAH’S HAND - - -These things sank heavily on Marjorie’s bruised heart. She felt that -Geoffrey’s indifference to herself was now an ascertained fact,--nay, -that his fancy for her, at no time worthy of a higher name, had turned -to repugnance. He had asked her to be his wife under the glamour of a -picturesque moment--a friendship, unique in its conditions from the -beginning, suddenly taking upon itself a surface likeness to passion! A -true lover would not have availed himself so readily of his chance of -freedom, would not have magnified his mistress’s heat of temper into -a crime, would not have rejected the fullest amends that woman could -offer, short of falling upon her knees in the dust before an offended -sweetheart! - -Mademoiselle Pouchée was overjoyed when the girl announced herself -ready, next day, to deliver her letters of introduction. - -‘We shall see what such presentations lead to,’ exclaimed the kindly -soul, her round face beaming. ‘A dinner here, a lunch there--the -highest gentlemen in Cambridge to be met at each! I predict a _succès -fou_! Not all the world, let me tell you, brings such letters to the -University. By after to-morrow you will have every evening of your week -engaged.’ - -‘The University will keep its head, dear Pouchée. A singularly -insignificant young person from the Channel Islands runs no risk of -becoming a sensation. The highest gentlemen in Cambridge will pay -Marjorie Bartrand just attention enough to ask her name--and forget it.’ - -Nevertheless, on the score of invitations, Pouchée’s forecast proved a -true one. Before night, arrived a friendly invitation bidding Marjorie -to dine at the house of the Master of Matthias next day. As Miss -Bartrand looked forward to studying in Cambridge, the note added, a -lady high in authority at Girton had been asked to meet her. - -‘Of that Girton lady I speak not,’ observed Pouchée, when the hour came -on the morrow for Marjorie to dress. ‘About Newnham and Girton I am -dumb.’ Imagine Pouchée dumb on any subject, earthly or terrestrial! ‘I -have lived by brain work, I have been a teacher over nineteen years. -See my whitening hairs, my lost illusions, my disenchantments! In that -sad trade the woman’s heart breathes not. Make yourself charming, -fillette! The most distinguished society of Cambridge is to be met with -at the table of the Master of Matthias. For a child of eighteen there -may be better things in store than coming out high in a Tripos; yes, or -standing on a level with the first wrangler of them all.’ - -Marjorie’s presumptive triumphs caused the whole Pouchée household to -expand. Wax candles--rare extravagance--stood lit before her mirror. -Flowers were on her toilette-table. Her white dinner dress, with its -simple adjuncts, was lovingly laid ready for her by Mademoiselle’s -hands. - -But in Marjorie’s restless heart there was no place for pretty dresses, -for anticipation of social success. She drew aside her curtain. She -gazed down through a chink of blind upon the street, hoping against -hope, as she had so often done before, to discover the face of her -false sweetheart among the passers-by. - -It was the most crowded hour of the short November day. Athletic -men were there, returning, in flannels and wrappers, from the river -or the Piece; sporting men from the hunting-field; reading men from -their trudge along the Wranglers’ Walk. Of ‘pifflers’ an abundance; -men with terriers, men with button-holes, men in dog-carts--the -whole many-coloured undergraduate world, alert, self-engrossed. -Drawing together the curtain, Marjorie Bartrand moved back to her -looking-glass. She stood confronting the pale, serious-eyed vision that -met her there with a kind of pity. She was so young, and the years to -come were so many; disappointed years under whose weight she must stand -upright, give no sign she winced beneath their burthen, wear a brave -countenance--work! She felt that she hated Cambridge, this ceaseless -ebb and flow, this turmoil of exultant, successful, youthful life! -Was not Tintajeux, with its dying woods, its still moorland, a fitter -drop-scene for the little played-out drama of her personal happiness? - -As Marjorie meditated, the sharp sound of the postman’s knock made -her start. No letter of more vital interest than a despatch from -the Seigneur was likely to reach her; and yet her breath quickened. -Her mood throughout the day had been one of feverish, unreasoning -expectancy. Change, for good or for evil, was, she felt, in the air. -Opening the door of her room, she listened with vague impatience. Hot -controversies anent over-weight and foreign postage were impending -between Madame Pouchée and the postman; Madame, in the matter of extra -half-pence, standing stoutly on the defensive. After a time there -would seem to be a reluctant payment of coin, followed by the brisk -shutting of an outer door. Then the old Frenchwoman’s slippered steps -began leisurely to ascend the stair. The girl’s breath came faster. She -ran out on the landing. The letter was _not_ the size or shape of the -Seigneur’s letters, and it bore two postmarks: Florence, Guernsey.... - -‘ ... Five half-pence over-weight. I hope, mère, it may be worth its -postage,’ observed Mademoiselle Pouchée, busily tying up violets in -the salon for the adornment of Marjorie’s dress. ‘The child has never -spoken about Italy, still--her heart is somewhere, mère, and I don’t -believe that somewhere is in Newnham or Girton. Ah, when I, too, had -eighteen summers, when----’ - -‘Pouchée! Dear, good old Pouchée!’ called out a voice, resonant, -hearty, imperious, from the attic floor. ‘Leave the violets. Come -upstairs, quick! I have had splendid news. Everything in the world is -changed. You must send an excuse to the Master of Matthias at once.’ - -In a moment the Pouchées, mother and daughter, were at the bottom of -the stairs. Marjorie Bartrand, her opened letter in her hand, a flush -of wild excitement lighting her face up into its vivid Southern beauty, -stood on the landing above. - -‘An excuse! Consider what you talk about!’ exclaimed Pouchée solemnly. -‘Have your splendid news, with all my heart! But have your splendid -dinner, too. The Master of Matthias keeps the best table in the -University. At his house you meet----’ - -‘The most distinguished society of Cambridge. Oh, Pouchée, what should -I find to say to distinguished society ... to any king or emperor in -Europe?... Hark! There is Great St. Mary’s clock striking the quarter. -We have not a minute to lose. Write a note, Mademoiselle, in your best -hand, with your pretty, courteous French grace, and give it to the -coachman to deliver. I must read my letter through once more.’ - - -Seven was the appointed time of the Master’s dinner-party. At the -moment when Great St. Mary’s clock boomed the hour’s first stroke, -Marjorie Bartrand extinguished her candles. She descended with muffled -tread to the red baize door at the turning of the stairs. Here she -paused, listened until she heard the shrill treble of French voices, -knew that the Pouchées were safely talking together downstairs. Then, -on tiptoe, she stole to Geoffrey’s quarters. The door stood ajar; a -stray reflected flare of gaslight from some shop window in the court -beneath enabled her to grope her way across the chill and comfortless -room. - -The girl paused, irresolute. She remembered Cassandra Tighe’s story, -remembered the miniature Bartrands, the confession made in their -presence of Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s first love. During a few seconds the -old Bartrand pride swayed her--the happiness of her life hung by a -thread. Then she took a packet from her breast. She laid it meekly, -furtively, on the student’s writing-table and fled, like one who quits -the scene of a committed crime, to the light and cheerfulness of the -little salon below. - -Pouchée was decking the mantelshelf with the violets Marjorie should -have worn. ‘Headstrong as ever, child! But I forbear to reason,’ -she cried, ‘until you explain yourself. That big Italian letter, -re-directed in the Seigneur’s hand, has brought you important news?’ - -‘I will answer you to-morrow, Pouchée. All I know is that I have lost -my chance of distinguished society, and that my heart is the happiest -heart in all Cambridge.’ - -‘Grand ciel! Then you have a dear friend among the Florentines!’ Poor -Pouchée’s face brimmed over with curiosity. ‘I accept him, without -conditions, for your sake. The Italians are ungrateful as rats. Think -of all my country has done for them! Still, if a Florentine is your -fate----’ - -But her imaginary concessions were cut short; the violets slipped -through Pouchée’s fingers. There came the sudden click of a latchkey at -the house door. A man’s firm step sounded in the passage. - -‘It is our gentleman! Save yourself, quick, child! The curtain of the -bay window will hide you.’ - -The words had scarce left Pouchée’s mouth when Geff Arbuthnot entered. -He took a rapid glance round him, walked in the direction of the -window--Marjorie’s heart thrilled as she crouched, imprisoned, out of -sight--then stopped short. There was something of insecurity about his -movements. - -‘For a moment I was afraid to come in. The front door has become -strange to one. But you are really alone, Mademoiselle? Your visitor -has started to her party? Then you will let me have five minutes’ chat -beside your fire? I have something good to tell you.’ - -‘That is right, sir. Please let me set you a chair.’ - -In performing this little action Pouchée artfully chose such a point -that Marjorie, shadowed herself, might gain a full view of Geff -Arbuthnot’s face. - -‘Your fire makes one feel we are in November.’ - -He stretched his hands forth to the blaze. ‘How delightful your salon -is to-night, Mademoiselle Pouchée.’ - -Coming in from the mud and darkness, the dreary prose of Cambridge -thoroughfares, he might well think so. The room was redolent with the -odour of Marjorie’s discarded violets; morsels of muslin embroidery, a -thimble never worn by Pouchée’s finger, lay on a work-table near Geff’s -elbow. The warmth, the grace, the nameless sweetness of a young girl’s -presence, were everywhere. - -‘How well that Guernsey photograph looks in its old place!’ Could it be -that Geoffrey shrank from pronouncing the name of Tintajeux? ‘You shall -not dismantle your walls again for whim of mine.’ - -Pouchée stirred the fire into a keener flame. She gave a discreet -little cough. - -‘We will settle about that another day, sir. I wait impatiently your -news. Something good about yourself, I hope?’ - -‘Something very good.’ His face brightened. ‘You know our poor patient -down in Barnwell?’ - -‘Our Irish bargee, O’Halloran, the dingiest character even Barnwell can -show.’ - -‘But whom, when he was at his worst, Mademoiselle Pouchée tended like a -sister.’ - -‘I sat up one or two nights. I helped--because the good-for-nothing -is of my religion. Our priest advised an act of contrition. I had my -motives.’ - -‘As I had mine,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Never condescend, Mademoiselle, to -become a motive-monger. Do you think no experimental zeal mingles with -a medical student’s attention to his pauper fellows?’ - -‘O’Halloran rewards you, I trust, with gratitude. _That_, at least,’ -observed Pouchée, with a touch of cynicism, ‘would be a new experience -among ces messieurs of the gutters!’ - -‘O’Halloran rewards me with gratitude. The bandages were off him this -afternoon for the first time, as you know. Well, he was sitting, -propped up in bed, looking at my face with such poor remnant of sight -as remains to him, when suddenly--“Doctor! I’m darned,” he cried in his -hollow voice, “if it be’ant my Varsity man, after all!”’ - -‘Modestly spoken! His Varsity man, indeed!’ - -‘I should have thought the fever had come back,’ said Geff, ‘if I -had not had my finger on his pulse two minutes before. “Your Varsity -man, Mike--what are you talking about?” I asked him. “What have you -to do with the University or its men?” “I had to do,” he said, “with -a Varsity man one accursed November night that _you_ must remember, -doctor. There was a lot of chaps together, rough river chaps--you know -the sort, sir--and three or four of the Varsity gentlemen came across -’em, down Petty Cury. The gentlemen wasn’t of the fighting kind, so far -as I can recollect, but anyways they got into a Town and Gown row--a -bad one.... Doctor, I say”--the poor fellow put out his big weak hand -to me--“I was the leader of the roughs. I struck a foul coward’s blow -when the gentlemen was fighting honourable and unarmed. It was me give -you the devil’s mark you’ll take with you into the coffin.”’ - -‘Scélérat--misérable!’ put in Pouchée, between her closed teeth. - -‘I tried to joke him out of his fancy,’ went on Geff Arbuthnot, ‘but in -vain. Mike had seen my face, before he struck the blow--and afterwards. -He had never forgotten me. The scar which you, Mademoiselle, have -lamented over, as marring my beauty, put my identification beyond -doubt. “My Varsity man--my Varsity man,” he moaned. “I’ve thought -of him many a time in the black years since.... And now, at last, -I’ve found him. Doctor, you’ve saved my life--you’ve looked after me -when I should have died, else, like a dog on this miserable floor, -here--there’s one favour more I durstn’t, no, I durstn’t ask of you.... -Give me your hand in token of forgiveness.”’ - -‘And you gave it him,’ cried Pouchée, whose face had turned a queer -shade of colour as she listened. - -‘I gave him my hand, and Mike, who I suspect has cared neither for God -nor man in his life, caught it to his lips. My dear Mademoiselle, you -can guess that it was a good moment. To pull one’s patient round, in -body, is much. O’Halloran will have a human heart in that dark breast -of his from to-day forth.’ - -And having told his story, Geff Arbuthnot rose. With a lingering look -he took in the home-like suggestiveness of the little salon, the -violets on the mantelshelf, the morsel of embroidery, the slender -implements of needlework on the table. Then he bade Mademoiselle -Pouchée good-night. Marjorie listened while his remembered step ran -up the stairs, listened until she knew by the opening and shutting -of a distant door that he had gained his study. Then she crept forth, -uncertain of mien, from her hiding-place. - -‘Have I committed a dishonourable action? Was there anything I should -not have heard? Oh, Mademoiselle,’ she went on, incoherently, ‘is not -Geoffrey Arbuthnot the noblest man in the whole world?’ - -And Marjorie clasped the mantelshelf, steadying herself thereby. She -bent down over a cup of violets, hiding the face from which she felt -all trace of colour must have vanished. - -‘You look tired, ma mie. The news from Florence has not brought back -your roses. Now, what shall I get for you?’ cried Pouchée, stealing a -kind arm round the girl’s shoulder. ‘Thanks to your Italian letter, -remember, you have been cheated out of dinner.’ - -‘I should like some tea,’ Marjorie answered, plausibly. ‘Tea and a -plate of tartines, cut after the fashion that only you, dear Pouchée, -understand.’ - -If the flattery were a trick of war to effect the Frenchwoman’s -absence, I hold that, in a moment supreme as this, it was pardonable. - -Off went Pouchée to the kitchen, unsuspecting to the last of the love -story in which she had played a part, and Marjorie, her heart on fire, -awaited her fate. For the first two or three minutes all was quiet. -Then she heard the impetuous opening of Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s door. Her -limbs well-nigh failed her, her spirit sank. Through a few seconds of -suspense the past fifteen months seemed to unroll themselves, one by -one, before her sight.... At last the salon door opened and closed. -Marjorie moved a step forward--she held out a hand that trembled -violently. A moment more and strong arms held her close, her blushes -were hidden on Geff Arbuthnot’s breast. - -There was a long space of silence, an interchange of such words, such -broken attempts at explanation as pen and ink can ill put into form. -Then Geoffrey led his sweetheart into the broader light of lamp and -fire. He looked at her tall figure, her altered softened face, with -wondering eyes. - -‘You have grown several inches, Miss Bartrand. You have become -beautiful. Tell me I am not asleep--dreaming, as I have done so -often--that I hold your hand. Tell me my good luck is real!’ - -‘Don’t talk of good luck yet. I have not lost my Bartrand temper. -Plenty of bad times may be in store for both of us.’ - -‘And when was this sent to me’ Geoffrey touched his breast-pocket, in -token that Marjorie’s ribbon and letter lay there. ‘The address is an -enigma. There is a faded look I cannot interpret about the handwriting.’ - -‘I left the packet fifteen months ago at your hotel in Guernsey.’ The -girl’s face drooped. ‘You ought to have had it on the day after--after -my vile temper drove you away from Tintajeux. I wrote ... one word ... -as you wished; I sent you the bit of Spanish ribbon for a book-marker. -But fortune was against me. I forgot that you and your cousin Gaston -had the same initial.’ - -‘If Gaston had opened a letter wrongly he would have brought it to me -on the spot.’ - -‘There was mistake within mistake--at that time poor Dinah’s heart was -near to breaking--so she writes me now.’ - -‘Dinah! You have heard from Mrs. Arbuthnot? Let me see her explanation.’ - -‘I will read a passage or two aloud.’ Marjorie Bartrand drew the -Italian letter from her pocket. - -‘No. You will let me read every word of it for myself.’ - -And Geoffrey Arbuthnot took the letter, unfolded, and read it through. - -‘Dinah was tried beyond her strength,’ said Marjorie, instinctively -deciphering a pained expression on Geoffrey’s face. ‘But she has no -need to feel so contrite. It will make our happiness doubly sweet to -know it has come to us, in the end, from Dinah’s hand.’ - -The tone, the generous words, smote Geoffrey to the quick. - - -‘Can you give up everything for me?’ he asked her presently. ‘Your -dream for years has been Girton. Do you desire still to become a Girton -student, or....’ - -‘I desire that you shall guide me,’ was the prompt answer. ‘I need no -other life, no other wisdom, no other ambition than yours.’ - -A finis commonplace as daylight, reader, old as the foundation of the -Gogmagog Hills. Gaston’s prediction was verified--Marjorie Bartrand had -proved herself a very woman after all. - - -THE END - - -_G. C. & Co._ - -_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. - - - - -_BENTLEY’S FAVOURITE NOVELS._ - -Each work can be had separately, price 6s., of all Booksellers in Town -or Country. - - -By Mrs. HENRY WOOD. - -_East Lynne._ (140th Thousand.) -_Anne Hereford._ -_Bessy Rane._ -_The Channings._ -_Court Netherleigh._ -_Dene Hollow._ -_Edina._ -_Elster’s Folly._ -_George Canterbury’s Will._ -_Johnny Ludlow._ (1st Series.) -_Johnny Ludlow._ (2d Series.) -_Lady Adelaide._ -_Life’s Secret, A._ -_Lord Oakburn’s Daughters._ -_Master of Greylands._ -_Mildred Arkell._ -_Mrs. Halliburton’s Troubles._ -_Orville College._ -_Oswald Cray._ -_Parkwater._ -_Pomeroy Abbey._ -_Red Court Farm._ -_Roland Yorke._ (A Sequel to ‘The Channings.’) -_Shadow of Ashlydyat._ -_St. Martin’s Eve._ (A Sequel to ‘Mildred Arkell.’) -_Trevlyn Hold._ -_Verner’s Pride._ -_Within the Maze._ - - -By FRANCES M. PEARD. - -_Near Neighbours._ - - -By W. E. NORRIS. - -_Thirlby Hall._ - - -By RHODA BROUGHTON. - -_Belinda._ -_Cometh up as a Flower._ -_Good-bye, Sweetheart!_ -_Joan._ -_Nancy._ -_Not Wisely but too Well._ -_Red as a Rose is She._ -_Second Thoughts._ - - -By Mrs. ALEXANDER. - -_Look before you Leap._ -_Her Dearest Foe._ -_The Admiral’s Ward._ -_The Executor._ -_The Freres._ -_The Wooing o’t._ -_Which shall it be?_ - - -By Mrs. ANNIE EDWARDES. - -_A Ball Room Repentance._ -_Leah: a Woman of Fashion._ -_Ought We to Visit Her?_ -_Steven Lawrence: Yeoman._ -_A Girton Girl._ - - -By Mrs. RIDDELL. - -_Berna Boyle._ -_George Geith of Fen Court._ -_Susan Drummond._ - - -By Mrs. PARR. - -_Adam and Eve._ -_Dorothy Fox._ - - -By HAWLEY SMART. - -_Breezie Langton._ - - -ANONYMOUS. - -_The Last of the Cavaliers._ - - -LONDON - -RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON ST. - -Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. - - - - -_BENTLEY’S FAVOURITE NOVELS._ - -Each work can be had separately, price 6s., of all Booksellers in Town -or Country. - - -By CHARLES READE. - -_A Perilous Secret._ - - -By Hon. LEWIS WINGFIELD. - -_Lady Grizel._ - - -By ROSA N. CAREY. - -_Barbara Heathcote’s Trial._ -_Nellie’s Memories._ -_Not like Other Girls._ -_Robert Ord’s Atonement._ -_Wooed and Married._ - - -By JESSIE FOTHERGILL. - -_The First Violin._ -_Healey._ -_Kith and Kin._ -_Probation._ -_The Wellfields._ - - -By J. SHERIDAN LE FANU. - -_In a Glass Darkly._ -_The House by the Churchyard._ -_Uncle Silas._ - - -By MARCUS CLARKE. - -_For the Term of his Natural Life._ - - -By Baroness TAUTPHŒUS. - -_The Initials._ -_Quits!_ - - -By Mrs. CAMPBELL PRAED. - -_Policy and Passion._ - - -By HELEN MATHERS. - -_Comin’ thro’ the Rye._ -_Sam’s Sweetheart._ - - -By ANTHONY TROLLOPE. - -_The Three Clerks._ - - -By F. MONTGOMERY. - -_Misunderstood._ -_Seaforth._ -_Thrown Together._ - - -By JANE AUSTEN. - -(The only Complete Edition, besides the Steventon Edition, at 63s.) - -_Emma._ -_Lady Susan, and, The Watsons._ -_Mansfield Park._ -_Northanger Abbey_, and, _Persuasion_. -_Pride and Prejudice._ -_Sense and Sensibility._ - - -By Mrs. NOTLEY. - -_Olive Varcoe._ - - -By Lady G. FULLERTON. - -_Ellen Middleton._ -_Ladybird._ -_Too Strange not to be True._ - - -By W. CLARK RUSSELL. - -_An Ocean Free Lance._ - - -_BENTLEY’S FOREIGN FAVOURITE NOVELS._ - - -By HECTOR MALOT. - -_No Relations. [With Illus.]_ - - -By Mrs. AUGUSTUS CRAVEN. - -_A Sister’s Story._ - - -By E. WERNER. - -_No Surrender._ -_Success: and how he won it._ -_Under a Charm._ - - -LONDON - -RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON ST. - -Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GIRTON GIRL *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following -the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use -of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for -copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very -easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation -of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project -Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may -do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected -by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark -license, especially commercial redistribution. - -START: FULL LICENSE - -THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK - -To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. - -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the -person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph -1.E.8. - -1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. - -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the -Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when -you share it without charge with others. - -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country other than the United States. - -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: - -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work -on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the -phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: - - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and - most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no - restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it - under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this - eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the - United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where - you are located before using this eBook. - -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project -Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. - -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. - -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg-tm License. - -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format -other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm website -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain -Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. - -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. - -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works -provided that: - -* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation." - -* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm - works. - -* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - -* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. - -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of -the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the Foundation as set -forth in Section 3 below. - -1.F. - -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. - -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right -of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. - -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. - -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. - -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. - -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. - -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm - -Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. - -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at -www.gutenberg.org - -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation - -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. - -The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, -Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up -to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website -and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact - -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg -Literary Archive Foundation - -Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without -widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. - -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular -state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate - -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. - -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. - -Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate - -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works - -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. - -Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our website which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This website includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/67733-0.zip b/old/67733-0.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index caf1977..0000000 --- a/old/67733-0.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/67733-h.zip b/old/67733-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index ae4e21e..0000000 --- a/old/67733-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/67733-h/67733-h.htm b/old/67733-h/67733-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index fbcade5..0000000 --- a/old/67733-h/67733-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,17563 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" - "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> - -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> - <head> - <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> - <title> - The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Girton Girl, by Annie Edwardes. - </title> - <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> - <style type="text/css"> - - p { margin-top: .75em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .75em; - } - - p.bold {text-align: center; font-weight: bold;} - p.bold2 {text-align: center; font-weight: bold; font-size: 150%;} - - h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { - text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ - clear: both; - } - h1 span, h2 span { display: block; text-align: center; } - #id1 { font-size: smaller } - - - hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; - } - - body{margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; - } - - table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 5px; border-collapse: collapse; border: none; text-align: right;} - - .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ - /* visibility: hidden; */ - position: absolute; - left: 92%; - font-size: smaller; - text-align: right; - text-indent: 0px; - } /* page numbers */ - - .center {text-align: center;} - .smaller {font-size: smaller;} - .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - .mynote { background-color: #DDE; color: black; padding: .5em; margin-left: 20%; - margin-right: 20%; } /* colored box for notes at beginning of file */ - .space-above {margin-top: 3em;} - .right {text-align: right;} - .left {text-align: left;} - .s3 {display: inline; margin-left: 3em;} - - .poem {display: inline-block; text-align: left;} - .poem br {display: none;} - .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} - .poem div {margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} - .poem div.i1 {margin-left: 1em;} - .poem div.i2 {margin-left: 2em;} - .poem div.i4 {margin-left: 4em;} - .poem div.i9 {margin-left: 9em;} - - </style> - </head> -<body> -<div lang='en' xml:lang='en'> -<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of <span lang='' xml:lang=''>A Girton Girl</span>, by Annie Edwardes</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: <span lang='' xml:lang=''>A Girton Girl</span></p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Annie Edwardes</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 29, 2022 [eBook #67733]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: MWS, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK <span lang='' xml:lang=''>A GIRTON GIRL</span> ***</div> - -<div class="mynote"><p class="center">Transcriber’s Note:<br /><br /> -Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.<br /></p></div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="center"><img src="images/title.jpg" alt="title page" /></div> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p> - -<h1>A GIRTON GIRL </h1> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p> - -<p class="bold2">A GIRTON GIRL</p> - -<p class="bold space-above">BY</p> - -<p class="bold2">ANNIE EDWARDES</p> - -<p class="bold">AUTHOR OF ‘ARCHIE LOVELL,’ ‘OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER?’ ETC.</p> - -<div class="center space-above"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div class="i2">O Women, Women! O our frail frail sex!</div> -<div>No wonder tragedies are made from us.</div> -<div>Always the same: nothing but loves and cradles’</div> -<div class="i9"><i>The Revolt of the Women</i> (<span class="smcap">Aristophanes</span>)</div> -</div></div></div> - -<div class="center space-above"><img src="images/logo.jpg" alt="logo" /></div> - -<p class="bold space-above">A NEW EDITION</p> - -<p class="bold space-above">LONDON</p> - -<p class="bold">RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET<br /> -Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen</p> - -<p class="bold">1886</p> - -<p class="bold space-above"><i>All rights reserved</i></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> - -<h2>CONTENTS</h2> - -<table summary="CONTENTS"> - <tr> - <td colspan="2" class="left"><span class="smaller">CHAPTER</span></td> - <td><span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>I. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Triangular Friendship</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>II. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Poker Talk</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>III. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Has He a Wife?</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>IV. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">A Trinity Ball</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>V. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Marjorie</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>VI. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Two in Arcadia</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_71">71</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>VII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">On the Brink of a Flirtation</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>VIII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Cross-stitch</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>IX. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Half Way towards Little Go</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>X. </td> - <td class="left">‘<span class="smcap">They say——</span>’</td> - <td><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XI. </td> - <td class="left">‘<span class="smcap">Dodo’s Despair</span>’</td> - <td><a href="#Page_115">115</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Yellow-backed Novels</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XIII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Through Smoke-coloured Spectacles</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XIV. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Brought up by the Jesuits</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>XV. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">A Love-letter</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XVI. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">A Rash Resolve</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_166">166</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XVII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">The First Crumpled Rose-leaf</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XVIII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">How Dinah said ‘Yes’</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XIX. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Gaston Arbuthnot’s Philosophy</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_194">194</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XX. </td> - <td class="left">‘<span class="smcap">James Lee’s Wife</span>’</td> - <td><a href="#Page_204">204</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXI. </td> - <td class="left">‘<span class="smcap">Is my Virgil Passable?</span>’</td> - <td><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Linda as an Art Critic</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXIII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">A Swagger and a Sword</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXIV. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Rex Basire’s Humour</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_238">238</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXV. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">You—and I!</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXVI. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Cut and Thrust</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXVII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Growing old Gracefully</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_261">261</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXVIII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">For Auld Lang Syne</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_275">275</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXIX. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Missing</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_282">282</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXX. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Linda warms to her Part</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_290">290</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXXI. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Wife and Husband</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXXII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Rose-water Socialism</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_312">312</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXXIII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Close to Port</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_320">320</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXXIV. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Dead Rose Petals</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_325">325</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXXV. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">A Traitress</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_334">334</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXXVI. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">The Last of Arcadia</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_341">341</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span>XXXVII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">A Stone for Bread</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_347">347</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXXVIII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Temptation</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_362">362</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XXXIX. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">That Little Divinity</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_379">379</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XL. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">At the Bungalow</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_389">389</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XLI. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">One Word</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_399">399</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XLII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Emancipation</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_407">407</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XLIII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Geoffrey calls to be paid</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_416">416</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XLIV. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Kismet</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_428">428</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XLV. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Labelled and Corded</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_438">438</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XLVI. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">A Bye-term Man</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_444">444</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XLVII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Beside the Cradle</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_454">454</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XLVIII. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">Happiness</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_464">464</a></td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td>XLIX. </td> - <td class="left"><span class="smcap">From Dinah’s Hand</span></td> - <td><a href="#Page_475">475</a></td> - </tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> - -<p class="bold2">A GIRTON GIRL</p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER I</span> <span class="smaller">TRIANGULAR FRIENDSHIP</span></h2> - -<p>‘The foundations of Newnham and of Girton may be deep,’ observed -Gaston Arbuthnot, in his pleasant, level, semi-American voice. ‘The -foundations of the Gogmagog Hills are deeper! Girl wranglers may come, -girl optimists may go. The heart of woman remains unchanged. And the -heart of woman——’</p> - -<p>But a plate piled with luscious Guernsey strawberries happening to -be placed, by a jaunty Norman waitress, under Gaston’s nose, the -generalisation, for the moment, ended abruptly.</p> - -<p>Guernsey. Imagine that dot of granite washed round by such blue as our -western Channel shows in June; imagine carnation-smelling sunshine, -a friendly trio of young persons breakfasting, with appetite, on the -lime-shaded lawn of Miller’s Sarnian Hotel; imagine the flutter of a -muslin dress, the presence of a beautiful girl of two-and-twenty, and -the opening scene of this little drama lies before you.</p> - -<p>I may add that the friendship of the three persons was a paradox, as -the reader of the succeeding pages shall be brought to see.</p> - -<p>‘The heart of woman tends towards marriage. Well,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> a picturesque -revival of Lady-Jane-Greyism,’ went on Gaston Arbuthnot, as his plate -of strawberries subsided, ‘may be safe enough—to the Lady Jane Greys! -Especially in an age when women, young or old, are by no means given -to losing their heads. But let the Roger Aschams who bear them company -look to it! This young person whom you, Geoffrey, propose to coach is -probably neither worse nor better than her sisters. The man-hating -story I flatly disbelieve. Marjorie Bartrand may or may not go to -Girton. She is sure to prove herself a very woman in the end.’</p> - -<p>‘Unfortunately, you flatly disbelieve so many things.’ As she spoke -Gaston’s wife transferred a monster strawberry from her own plate to -her husband’s. ‘You told me, only yesterday——’</p> - -<p>‘Dinah, my love,’ interrupted Gaston, with good humour, ‘never remind a -man who has well dined or well breakfasted of what he said yesterday. -In what state were one’s nerves twenty-four hours ago? Was the wind -in the east? Had our perennial duns arrived from England? Had our -cousin Geoffrey been reading pauper statistics at us? Each or all of -these accidents may have engendered scepticism which at this moment is -replaced by the childlike faith born of idleness and a fine digestion.’</p> - -<p>And Dinah’s strawberry, encrusted by sugar, delicately dipped in -Guernsey cream, was placed between Gaston’s white teeth, savoured and -swallowed.</p> - -<p>It was not part of Mr. Arbuthnot’s philosophy to refuse any little -choice morsel that the world, artistic, intellectual, or physical, -thought fit to offer him.</p> - -<p>He was a handsome man verging on his thirtieth year: tawny-bearded, -fair, with hands that Titian or Velasquez might have loved to paint, -and a profile of the type commonly known as Bourbon. (Although he may -not play the first part in this or any other drama, one has a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> feeling -that Gaston should advance to the footlights, make his bow, a good -minute before his fellow-actors leave the slips.) His eyes were shrewd -and near together, their colour and their expression alike prone to -shift if a stranger sought, too persistently, to investigate them.</p> - -<p>With a first look you felt sure that Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot bore a brain. -You felt equally sure, with a second, that the opinion was shared, even -to exaggeration, by Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot himself.</p> - -<p>In dress it was his pleasure to affect Bohemianism. On this particular -June morning Gaston wore a brown velveteen coat, a spun silk shirt, -a white sombrero hat—the well-tailored man becoming only more -conspicuous under the disguise. What smaller things shall be said of -him? That he had been brought up as a child in Paris, the only son of -a valetudinarian American widow, and spoke French to this hour with a -better accent than English, rolling his ‘r’s’ and clipping his vowels -like a born denizen of the boulevards. Item: that he had a fair English -girl for his wife; item: a loyal, rough-hewn Scottish cousin for his -friend—the Dinah and Geoffrey who, breakfasting with appetite although -their discourse was of sentiment, made up the paradoxical little group -under the lime trees at which we have glanced.</p> - -<p>Let us turn to Geoffrey next, leaving Dinah, as I see they leave the -first actress in the theatrical advertisements, for the bottom of the -list.</p> - -<p>The cousinship of the Arbuthnots might be divined at a glance, -although, reviewed feature by feature, the two men were notably unlike -in their likeness. Both were tall, both were wiry of build, both held -their heads high, going along life’s road as though the world, taken -from whichever point of view you liked, were decidedly a place worth -living in. Here the likeness ended. Gaston, indeed, would declare -that by virtue of his mother’s Yankee blood,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> and his own Parisian -instincts, they were less related, physically, than any ordinary -cousin-germans.</p> - -<p>One overwhelming difference between them was patent. Geoffrey was no -beauty-man! When he was the freshest of freshmen, five or six years -before the morning of this Guernsey breakfast, Geff went in, one -November night, for a little bit of guerilla fighting in the Cambridge -streets, which, without quenching the guerilla spirit, effectually left -a beauty-spoiling brand upon himself for the remainder of his life.</p> - -<p>It happened thus. Geoffrey, raw from school, had newly carried off one -of the scholarships best worth winning in the University. Although -brave, manly, impetuous, the lad’s hours were early, his habits sober. -He belonged, indeed, to a class which young gentlemen, fond of their -pleasure, and of modest mental gifts, are apt to label during their -first two terms of residence under the generic name of smug. Well, -with an old schoolmate, less versed in Greek than himself, Geff had -been drinking coffee and conning over such portions of Plato as would -be wanted by his friend for the coming Little Go. He was midway on his -way back to his scholar’s attic in John’s when, turning sharply round -a corner of Petty Cury, he found himself in the thick of a small but -classic ‘town and gown.’ A brace of undergraduates, raw as himself, -held a mob of roughs at bay; stones, oaths, and brickbats flew about -with Homeric profusion. A fine Cambridge drizzle gave atmosphere to the -scene. Police, bull-dogs, proctors, were beneath the horizon.</p> - -<p>With no other weapons than his fists and his Plato, Geff rushed to the -fore. In those early days he had neither the weight nor the staying -power which on many a well-contested football field have since made his -name a terror to the foe and a tower of strength to All England. He -had, however, the force born of will, of brain, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> generous impulse. -Ere twenty seconds had sped Plato, with all the Platonic philosophy, -went to the winds, and the biggest, brawniest of the roughs, stoutly -gripped about the neck-cloth region, gave tokens of surrender.</p> - -<p>Unfortunately for Geff’s beauty, his antagonist’s left hand held a -broken stone bottle. As the ruffian felt himself reel to earth he swung -the missile, with dastard might, into the Scotch lad’s face, cutting -his nose and forehead very literally to the bone. There came a cry of -‘Proctor!’ There was the shuffle of departing feet. Then Geoffrey, -blinded, stunned, fell into a bull-dog’s arms and heard the usual -proctorial question as to name and college, addressed with the usual -calm proctorial courtesy to himself.</p> - -<p>It was a week before the Little Go exams.; and Geoffrey Arbuthnot, as -soon as the surgeons could strap his face into a grim resemblance of -humanity, went down.</p> - -<p>The incident in nowise lessened his Cambridge reputation. Although he -eventually came out eighth in the Classical Tripos, it is not known -that the most foolish tongue called Arbuthnot of John’s a smug again; -tacitly, he was recognised, even by pleasure-loving young gentlemen, -as one of that queer ‘good-all-round sort’ in whom the defects of -bookishness and staid living are condoned by certain sterling natural -virtues—glorious muscle, unconquerable pluck. ‘Virtues that a man -can’t help, don’t you know, if they are born in him!’ And which, -confusing to the pleasure-loving intelligence though such facts may be, -do certainly, in the long run, bring public credit to the Alma Mater.</p> - -<p>But the blow from his street antagonist had marred Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s -looks for life.</p> - -<p>Strength, loyalty, gentleness, were written large upon his face. His -dark, somewhat sunken eyes had in them the glow of an intellect high -above the level of his handsome cousin! His smile, though Geff did not -resemble the family of Bourbon, was finer, because sweeter, more wholly -human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> than Gaston’s. But his looks were marred. That rugged cicatrice -across nose and forehead could never wear out, and Geoffrey possessed -not the thousand little drawing-room graces that, in some women’s -sight, might go far towards rendering such a blemish ‘interesting.’ His -hands, however firm, lithe, adequate for a surgeon’s work, did neither -suggest Titian nor Velasquez to your mental eye. His dress bespoke the -student. His French was grotesque. Although a second Bayard in his -reverence for abstract Woman, he had no small attentions for concrete -idle ladies.</p> - -<p>Garden parties Geoffrey Arbuthnot evaded; dancing parties he abhorred. -In regard to matrimony he would shake his head, not holding it a state -meet for all men.</p> - -<p>Concerning this latest clause, however, the reader shall learn more -when we come to ask why the triangular friendship of the persons -breakfasting together under the shadow of Mr. Miller’s limes was -paradoxical.</p> - -<p>‘Yes,’ resumed Gaston Arbuthnot, tilting himself to the outside limit -of equilibrium on his garden-chair, and clasping his arms, with a -gesture admirably suggestive of habitual laziness, above his head, -‘look the position in the face for one moment, and you reduce it to an -absurdity. No girl of seventeen has ever yet been a man-hater; has she, -Dinah?’</p> - -<p>‘I was not,’ admitted Mrs. Arbuthnot frankly, although she blushed. -‘But Miss Bartrand of Tintajeux, young though she is, has gone through -disappointment. Mrs. Miller told me so when I showed her the paper with -the advertisement. Miss Bartrand, more than a year ago, was engaged to -the major of some English regiment stationed in Guernsey.’</p> - -<p>‘Is that a disappointment, my love?’</p> - -<p>‘The major of the regiment proved a sorry character,’ said Dinah -gravely. ‘Miss Bartrand found out that he had broken the heart of some -poor girl at a former garrison town.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘And, from that hour forth, swore to look on all men as in the -conspiracy,’ interrupted Gaston. ‘What breadth of discrimination, what -knowledge of the world, these simple-seeming schoolgirls occasionally -show!’</p> - -<p>‘When I was eighteen, that spring I went to stay with Aunt Susan at -Lesser Cheriton, I knew no more of the world’s ways than a baby, did I, -Geff?’</p> - -<p>‘The philosophers are divided as to how much a baby does know,’ -answered Geoffrey, fixing his dark eyes with discrimination upon Mrs. -Gaston Arbuthnot’s face.</p> - -<p>‘There is an unexpected parry for you, my dear girl.’ Shifting his -chair away from the table, Dinah’s lord began to fold himself a loose, -or Spanish-modelled cigarette. Pipes and cigars of ordinary goodness -Gaston would no more smoke than he would swallow any of the popular -fluids known among Britons as wine. He had the virtue of facile -temperance, wore the blue ribbon of a fastidious taste. Unless his -small luxuries were of the choicest, he could at any time fill the -anchorite’s <i>rôle</i> without effort. ‘You had better apply to your own -lawful husband, Dinah, than to Geff, when you want a compliment.’</p> - -<p>‘I apply to Geoffrey when I want truth.’</p> - -<p>Dinah made this answer unconscious of the slight irony her speech -conveyed.</p> - -<p>‘The truth! When a pretty woman talks of truth,’ cried Gaston, ‘she -means, “Give me the biggest, most sugared lump of praise that my moral -gullet will enable me to swallow.”’</p> - -<p>Mrs. Arbuthnot had been married close upon four years. Yet was she so -much in love with Gaston still as to colour rosy red at the doubtful -flattery of this remark.</p> - -<p>She was a blonde, amply framed Devonshire girl, in the fresh summer -of her youth. ‘Not a lady,’ according to the traditions of small -social courts, the judgments of smaller feminine tribunals. Dinah’s -lips could scarcely unclose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> before ineradicable accents of the west -country working folk informed you that Gaston Arbuthnot, like so many -artists—poor dear impressionable fellows!—had married beneath him. -Not a lady, as far as the enunciation of certain vowels, the absence -of certain petty artificialities of female manner were concerned, but -with the purity of April dawn on her cheeks, the wholesome work-a-day -qualities of a long line of yeoman progenitors in her heart.</p> - -<p>About most women’s charms men are prone to hold contradictory opinions. -What world-renowned beauty but has at times felt the cold breath -of adverse criticism? A smile from Dinah’s pensive mouth, a gleam -from Dinah’s serious eyes, appealed to all beholders. Tottering old -gentlemen would turn, with spectacles hastily adjusted, to wonder; fine -ladies cast looks of despair after her from their carriages; young men -of every sort and condition would lose their peace, if Dinah did but -demurely walk along London pavement or provincial street. She was an -altogether unique specimen of our mixed and over-featured race: white -and rose of complexion; chiselled of profile, with English-coloured -hair (and this hair is neither gold nor flaxen nor chestnut, but a -subdued blending of the three); eyebrows and eyelashes that matched; -a nobly cut throat; and the slow, calm movements that belong in all -countries to the fair large Madonna-like women of her type.</p> - -<p>Madonna. The word in connection with poor Dinah must awaken instant -visions of sock-knitting and of pinafore-mending! Gaston’s wife was, in -truth, a very ideal of sweet and gracious motherhood. Gladly you would -have imagined her, girt round by a swarm of toddlers, with eyes and -cheeks like her own, to be bequeathed, a priceless heirloom, to future -generations. But Dinah had no living child. And round Dinah’s mouth -might be discerned lines that should certainly not have found their way -thither at two-and-twenty. And in Dinah’s low country voice there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> was -a lilt at times of unexpected sadness. Round some corner of her path -Dull Care, you felt, must lurk, stealthily watchful. At some point in -the outward and visible sunshine of her married life there must be a -blot of shadow. A woman like Dinah could be hit through her affections -only. Her affections were centred painfully—I had almost written -morbidly—on one subject. And that subject was Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, -her husband.</p> - -<p>‘If Miss Bartrand be a hater of men, a scorner of marriage, so much the -easier prospect for me,’ said Geoffrey. ‘At the present time I look -upon myself as an educational machine to be hired out at so much an -hour. I have no more mind to put on company manners for Miss Marjorie -Bartrand than for any thick-headed fresher I was vainly endeavouring to -get through Little Go.’</p> - -<p>‘You? It depends, rather, on what Miss Marjorie Bartrand has a mind -for,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot, with the certainty born of larger -experience.</p> - -<p>‘Happily, the wording of the advertisement shows that Miss Bartrand -means work. We have it here.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey looked down the columns of a small, blue, badly-printed local -newspaper, half French, half English, that lay open on the breakfast -table.</p> - -<p>“Tutor wanted. I, Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux, need a coach -to prepare me for Girton. Classics and mathematics. Six hours a -week.—Apply, personally, at Tintajeux Manoir, after six <span class="smaller">P.M.</span> -An Oxford or Cambridge man preferred.”’</p> - -<p>‘Does any one know if Marjorie Bartrand is handsome?’ exclaimed Gaston, -with sudden animation. ‘Dinah, I adjure you to find out the truth in -this matter. The women of the hotel would at least repeat the popular -island beliefs. “An Oxford or Cambridge man preferred.” The crystalline -artfulness of the clause touches one, from a girl who makes pretence at -misanthropy.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘But surely, Gaston, you would not——’</p> - -<p>‘I would do most things. My classics were unfairly judged of by my -college tutor. My mathematics,’ Gaston confessed, with his air of -unreliable fatuity, ‘never existed. Still, I kept all my terms, except, -of course, the hunting terms. And I succeeded—as far as I went! If I -passed no exams., I was at least never spun. I am as much a Cambridge -man as Geoffrey is. I feel more than disposed to apply to Miss Marjorie -Bartrand myself.’</p> - -<p>The muscles about Dinah Arbuthnot’s delicately-carved mouth trembled.</p> - -<p>‘You would tire before the first lesson was over,’ said Geff, watching -Dinah, while he addressed Dinah’s husband. ‘You want my incentive, -Gaston, filthy lucre. My terms as a coach in Guernsey are five -shillings an hour. Five sixes are thirty. Yes, reading classics and -mathematics with Miss Bartrand will just pay half my weekly hotel bill, -supposing I am not lucky enough to get other work.’</p> - -<p>‘And you don’t care a straw whether Marjorie Bartrand is pretty or -plain? My dear Geff, if ever fortune brings you to the stage, take the -part of Joseph Surface, for my sake. It would suit you to admiration.’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER II</span> <span class="smaller">POKER TALK</span></h2> - -<p>Ere Geoffrey had had time to retaliate, a factor of no common -importance was destined to enter the difficult problem of Dinah -Arbuthnot’s happiness. Holding the corner of her apron before her lips, -the jaunty French waitress tripped up a pathway leading from the hotel -to the lime-shaded lawn, and placed a lady’s card between Gaston’s -hands.</p> - -<p>‘Une dame ... Mais, une petite dame qui demande Monsieur!’</p> - -<p>And the serving-woman’s eyes took in the whole space of blue mid-heaven -at a glance. Obviously this Norman waitress, with acumen derived from -an older civilisation than ours, was mistress of the situation.</p> - -<p>In a second of time Dinah had glanced over her husband’s shoulder.</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Thorne. Who is Mrs. Thorne? What is that written in pencil? -“<i>Née</i> Linda Constantia Smythe.” Gaston, what is the meaning of -“<i>Née</i>?”’</p> - -<p>I am bound to add that Dinah pronounced the monosyllable as ‘knee.’ And -a red spot showed on Gaston Arbuthnot’s cheek.</p> - -<p>From his precocious boyhood up, it had been a belief of Gaston’s -that lady-killing was an open accomplishment; the established means -of defence as much an art to be learnt as the means of attack. And -still, at the sight of those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> poor pencil-marks, at the thought of the -youthful evenings when Linda Constantia used to hand him cups of weak -tea, flavoured atrociously with cinnamon, in the salon of a remembered -Paris entresol, the conscience of the man was touched.</p> - -<p>As Dinah’s voice asked the meaning of the word ‘knee,’ he changed -colour.</p> - -<p>‘Linda Constantia Smythe. What an absurdly small world we inhabit! You -and I, my love, and Geoffrey, coming across poor Linda Constantia! -Faites entrer cette dame,’ he added, turning to the waitress. ‘An -absolutely forgotten acquaintance of a hundred years ago, Dinah—an -acquaintance of times before I had heard your name. Linda married—no, -did not marry; went out to India a spinster, and returned, poor soul! -the wife of a Doctor Thorne. They say, in these Channel Islands, a man -will run across every mortal he has known, or is fated to know, from -his cradle to his grave.’</p> - -<p>‘You never told me of your acquaintance with any Linda Constantia -Smythe. I wonder you recollected her name so instantly, Gaston.’</p> - -<p>‘Easier, perhaps, to recollect the name than the lady. Can it be -possible that this is she?’ A cream-coloured parasol, a great many -yards of cream-coloured cambric, were advancing with agitated flutter -across the lawn. ‘By Jupiter! how these meagre women age when they -once cross the line. Can this be the walk one has admired, I know not -how oft? Are those the shoulders?... My dear Mrs. Thorne,’—Gaston -Arbuthnot rose to meet his visitor, thoroughly warm, thoroughly natural -of manner; and Dinah, with a sensation of insignificance only too -familiar to her, sank into the background—‘this is too kind! Doctor -Thorne well, I hope? And your little daughter? You see I have watched -the first column of the <i>Times</i>. About your own health I need not ask. -And so<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> you have really given up India—have made a settlement in -Guernsey! Dinah, my love, let me introduce you to one of my very early -Parisian friends. My wife—Mrs. Thorne.’</p> - -<p>Dinah bowed with the staid gravity that in her case, as in that of -some other lowly-born people one has known, came so near to the -self-possession of breeding. Mrs. Thorne was effusive.</p> - -<p>Gaston felt an honest artistic satisfaction in watching the contrast -the two young women presented to each other.</p> - -<p>Linda Thorne’s figure was lithe, straight, thin; the sort of figure -that ever lends itself kindly to the setting forth of such anatomical -deformities as shall have received the last approving seal of Parisian -fashion. Her eight-buttoned long hands were pleasingly posed. She wore -a great deal of frizzled darkish hair on a forehead that, but for this -Cupid’s ambuscade, might have been overhigh. Traces of rice-powder, at -noon of a June day, were not absent from Mrs. Thorne’s India-bleached -cheeks. Her eyes were big, black-lashed, green. Her nose was flat, -giving somewhat the Egyptian Sphinx type to a personality which, -with all its demerits, was by no means void either of allurement or -distinction.</p> - -<p>If Linda had spoken perfect grammar, in a London tone, and with a -taught manner, you would have set her down, perhaps, as an actress from -one of our good theatres. Speaking, as she did, at utter grammatical -random, with the slightest little bit of Irish accent, and no manner at -all, imagination might suggest to you that Dr. Thorne’s wife belonged -to some lost tribe of nomad Lords or Honourables. And the suggestion -would be correct. Linda’s grandfather was an Irish earl; a hare-brained -gentleman not unknown to the newspaper editors of his day, but with -whose deeds, good or evil, with whose forfeited acres, domestic -relations, or political principles, our story has no concern. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p> - -<p>Linda grasped Mrs. Arbuthnot’s hands; drawing her towards herself with -such warmth that Dinah’s unsmiling face rose higher in the air. She -had an instinctive, a horrible dread that this old Parisian friend -of Gaston’s, this lady of the green eyes, rice-powdered cheeks, and -effusive manner, might be going to embrace her.</p> - -<p>‘A pleasure, and an immense surprise to meet like this!’ Mrs. Thorne -took in with one long look the blooming fairness of the girl Gaston -Arbuthnot had married, then dropping Dinah’s hands, she turned coolly -away. ‘I heard of your arrival here, Mr. Arbuthnot, from Colonel de -Gourmet.’</p> - -<p>‘Colonel de Gourmet is——’</p> - -<p>‘Our island authority in all matters of taste, from the dressing of a -salad to the delivery of a sermon. He said you looked like a man who -would understand the meaning of the word “dinner.” That is the highest -praise Colonel de Gourmet can give.’</p> - -<p>‘I appreciate the compliment immensely.’</p> - -<p>‘You must appreciate the Colonel by meeting him at our house. Somehow, -I fancied you were alone. I thought stupidly, you had come to Guernsey -for art reasons, and as a bachelor.’</p> - -<p>So her visit was deliberately not intended for the wife; after such -a declaration, could not involve the necessity of the wife’s future -acquaintance! The keen blood quickened on Dinah’s cheek. Dinah’s -husband was unmoved. Should it be counted as strength or as weakness, -as fault or as virtue, that no small feminine by-thrust at his -lowly-born wife ever shook the outward composure of Gaston Arbuthnot?</p> - -<p>‘No, Dinah is with me. We are just starting on somewhat lengthy -travels. We mean to spend the early summer here, Mrs. Thorne. In autumn -we shall ramble leisurely on towards the South of France, and in winter -make a settlement of some kind in Florence. In Florence, greatly to my -wife’s satisfaction, I am pledged to do serious work.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Yes! And is it true, then, that you are a sculptor by profession, that -you have become an artist to the exclusion of other aims! Of course -there is a way of looking at things which makes such a life seem the -most charming possible.’ Mrs. Thorne clasped her thin clever hands -as though entering some mysterious general protest against art and -its followers. ‘And still, one has regrets. I was foolishly ambitious -about you, if you remember, Mr. Arbuthnot. In our romantic boy-and-girl -Paris days, I quite thought you were to get into Parliament. To be the -people’s friend. A kind of second Mirabeau. To make a tremendous name.’</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot’s face for a second betrayed sincere perplexity. When -was Linda Constantia ambitious in her hopes about his intellectual -future! At what period of that shallow flirtation, a decade of -years ago, could dreams of a seat in the House of Commons, and of -Parliamentary victories, have been possible to her?</p> - -<p>‘I am open to flattery, Mrs. Thorne. When does a mediocre man not glory -in the fine things which, according to his friends, he might have done? -Yet it seems to me I never held a political opinion in my life.’</p> - -<p>‘You once held very strong ones. Why, in a letter you wrote me -after—after we had said good-bye in Paris, you were so nobly warm, I -remember, about the English lower classes! Our sisters and brothers -in the alleys, whose claims that dear, immortal Mrs. Browning so -beautifully reveals to us.’</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot, at this mention of a letter, felt the ground grow -solid beneath his feet.</p> - -<p>‘I must have written to you from Cambridge; for the moment, perhaps, -had taken up some of Geff’s fads. Let me introduce my cousin, by the -bye. Geoffrey Arbuthnot—Mrs. Thorne.’</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thorne, who knew that in Geoffrey Arbuthnot she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> would never have -a friend, smiled ambrosially. Geff rose. He gave the lady the lowest, -at the same time the coldest bow in the world. It was a true case of -elective dislike at first sight.</p> - -<p>‘Yes,’ went on Gaston, ‘I remember.’ He drew forward a garden-chair, -into which Mrs. Thorne—no unpleasing picture in her broad Leghorn hat, -her cambric morning gown, her eight-buttoned gloves, her cream-coloured -sunshade—sank gracefully. ‘I had taken up one of Geff’s fads. The -British Workman was an epidemic among all classes of Cambridge -undergraduates that term. Get hold of your poorer brother in his hour -of sobriety—that is to say, on a Friday afternoon. Present him with -a bookshelf of your own carving. Explain to him the newest thing out -in draining-pipes. Show him how to make a window-box of rough cork, -and present him with half a dozen slips of scarlet geranium. Humanise -him—always, of course, with the capital H. Humanise him!’</p> - -<p>‘You call work so utterly noble as this “a fad”? I assure you, Mr. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot, I am wild myself about the working classes. At this -very moment I ought to be visiting among my district people.’</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thorne’s eyes offered Geoffrey a glance of tentative sympathy.</p> - -<p>‘Different men come to the same end by different roads,’ said Gaston. -‘Your greatest English authority on culture declares that any man with -a dash of genius is the born elevator of others. I believe myself to -have a dash—a thin streak, rather—of genius. I believe myself to be a -born elevator, but it must be in my own way.’</p> - -<p>‘And that is?’ asked Geoffrey.</p> - -<p>‘Well, remembering the atmosphere of Barnwell and Chesterton, the scene -of our early labours, one feels sure that the geraniums must have -choked for want of air. Remembering the clay soil, the neighbourhood of -that oozy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> river, the thick air, the black ugliness,’ Gaston shivered -unaffectedly, ‘one is sceptical even as to draining-pipes. My opinion -is—that the English must be regenerated by art, by sculpture notably, -owing to the low price of plaster casts. Sculpture can be best studied -in Italy, and I am on my road thither. But Geff and I may still be -fellow-labourers in the same cause.’</p> - -<p>Gaston rattled forth this specimen of ‘poker talk’ lightly, his -sombrero pulled low on his forehead, his shrewd, thought-reading eyes -making observation the while of Linda—Linda whom, in long-dead Paris -days, he just liked too well to be ever, for one moment, in love with. -And the result of his study was that, in her Leghorn hat and cambric -gown and slim, eight-buttoned gloves, Linda Constantia Thorne looked -undeniably picturesque.</p> - -<p>Each attitude that she took had, he saw, been diligently learnt by -heart. It was Mrs. Thorne’s habit when in town to spend her nights -at the Lyceum, studying gracefulness, from the stalls, at so much an -hour. Her expression savoured rather of earth than heaven. Her figure -spoke of the Parisian deformity artist, not of nature. But these faults -were just <i>les défauts de ses qualités</i>. Gaston could never think -idiomatically save in French. A well-paying section of the art of 188- -required models of Linda Thorne’s type. And what artist, with pockets -poorly lined, can resist the prospect of a good unpaid model?</p> - -<p>If pure-faced Madonnas commanded the worship yielded to them of old, -no need to go farther than the exquisite brow and throat of his own -Dinah. But pure-faced Madonnas in the nineteenth century are for the -first-class sculptor. Gaston belonged to the dilettante third-rate men -who execute pretty conventionalities with readiness, get money for -them from the dealers, and are stirred neither by great expectation of -success nor by great disappointment in failure. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p> - -<p>In any case, so decided the quick brain under the sombrero, Linda -Thorne, during half a summer here in Guernsey, must be a resource, -personally, against stagnation. She had ripened into a kind of sub-acid -cleverness that pleased Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot’s taste. Her acquaintance -opened out a not unprofitable means of spending one’s hours between -work and dinner. On principle, he was in favour always of the brain -woman, as opposed to the sentiment woman. He chose the white rose -rather than the red—his only condition being that the white rose must -wear Jouvin’s gloves, get her dresses from Paris, abjure patchouli, -and be peremptorily certain that every inch of his, Gaston’s, heart -belonged to the somewhat neglected girl, with Juno face and Devonshire -accent, who waited for him at home.</p> - -<p>Before sixty seconds were over he had resolved upon soliciting Linda -Thorne to be his model.</p> - -<p>‘And while Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot chisels marble for the English pauper -in some delicious Florentine palace, you are thinking of Guernsey as an -abiding-place?’</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thorne asked the question softly of Geoffrey.</p> - -<p>‘I? Certainly not, madam. After a few weeks’ holiday I am going back to -my medical work in Cambridge.’</p> - -<p>‘Geoffrey won his academic honours long ago,’ said Gaston. ‘In my -cousin Geff you behold that melancholy specimen, Mrs. Thorne, a man of -genius resolutely bent on not getting on in the world. After passing -eighth in the Classical Tripos of his year——’</p> - -<p>‘And finding that a Classical Tripos does not mean bread and cheese,’ -put in Geff with sturdy independence.</p> - -<p>‘My cousin went back to school, set up a skeleton, and began smelling -evil smells out of bottles, like a good little boy of sixteen. In -another year and a half he hopes to get some unpaid work in the East -End of London. The worse,’ added Gaston, with the hearty appreciation -of Geoffrey,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> which was the finest thing in his own character—‘the -worse for all the wretched men and women in Cambridge whose lives are -bettered by my cousin Geff’s labours among them.’</p> - -<p>‘Re—ally? Dear, dear, it is all too noble! A veritable life-poem in -prose! My husband is a man of science, too. Only in his days, you know, -doctors believed in their own horrible medicines. Doctor Thorne will -be charmed to make Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s acquaintance. You are not -working quite <i>too dreadfully</i> hard here in Guernsey, I hope?’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey detested italics, even though he might tolerate a woman who -habitually employed them. Judge how he was affected by the italicised -enthusiasm, applied to himself, of Linda Thorne!</p> - -<p>‘My work in Guernsey will take the shape of pupils, if I am lucky -enough to get any. My terms are five shillings an hour, madam. My -tuition comprises Greek, Latin, arithmetic, a moderate quantity of -algebra, and, if required,’ said Geff, without the ghost of a smile, -‘the use of the globes. Perhaps you could recommend me?’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, to be sure; I quite understand.’ Linda’s highly-wrought tones -went through a diminuendo of interest, well bred but rapid, at this -announcement of poverty. ‘Classics; the use of the globes; algebra; -pupils.’</p> - -<p>‘Of whom we hope we have caught one,’ cried Gaston, watching her face, -gauging the extent of her sympathy for life-poems in prose. ‘You think, -do you not, Geff, that you have secured Miss Marjorie Bartrand of -Tintajeux?’</p> - -<p>‘I have already offered myself in writing, and shall walk out to -Tintajeux, on approval, this evening. If Miss Bartrand thinks me -capable of teaching her arithmetic, also the rudiments of Greek and -Latin, at five shillings an hour, the bargain will be struck.’</p> - -<p>‘Capable!’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> - -<p>The exclamation came from Dinah, who until now had maintained a staid -but not ungracious silence while the others talked. A certain light in -Dinah’s eyes betrayed the profound conviction of Geoffrey’s intellect -which was felt by her.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thorne looked, without showing she looked, at the three Arbuthnots -in turn.</p> - -<p>‘You think Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot more than capable of guiding the -whole combined feminine intellect of our poor little Guernsey. Do you -not, Mrs. Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>Linda asked this with the North Pole voice that puts the social -position of a feminine questioner at so vast a distance from the social -position of her questioned.</p> - -<p>‘I know nothing about intellect, except what I hear from Geoffrey and -my husband. I am quite uneducated myself.’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s reply was accompanied by a large level glance from those -fearless, truthful Devonshire eyes of hers. And Mrs. Thorne’s eyes fell.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot felt the heart within him rejoice. He would honestly -have liked to accord a ‘Brava!’ to his wife.</p> - -<p>‘A good many interpretations may be put upon the word “uneducated,”’ -observed Geoffrey.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thorne had long known herself to be a clever woman. She felt that -she was a cleverer woman than usual at this moment. Yet not a suspicion -had she of the situation’s actual point, not an inkling of the delicate -friendship which bound Geoffrey to Dinah, and, at a somewhat lengthened -distance, to Gaston.</p> - -<p>‘Ah! When you have stayed longer in our Robinson Crusoe little -island—— And it <i>is</i> charming, is it not?’</p> - -<p>‘Quite too deliciously charming,’ answered Gaston, paraphrasing Linda’s -own style of speech. ‘And cheaper than any decently liveable place -this side Italy. For the daily consideration of two five-franc pieces -one gets such sunshine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> as cannot be bought in Great Britain, three -excellently cooked meals, and the advantage of living under the same -roof with members of the English aristocracy. You hear the domestic -gossip, Dinah. Does not a dowager countess, with a German lady’s -maid, a second husband, two pug dogs, and a wig, reside in some upper -apartment of Miller’s Hotel?’</p> - -<p>‘But you will find that we are a little behindhand. Doctor Thorne -and myself are sensible that there is always the insular note. Our -friends are most kind, most hospitable, and of course there are the -military people to fall back upon. Still, remembering other days, the -intimacies of the soul, the freedom, the expansion of Indian society, -Robbie and I feel we are in exile. There is a constant danger of fatty -degeneration—I see Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot laughing at me—fatty -degeneration of the mind.’</p> - -<p>‘Want of appreciation is the saddest thing in human life,’ murmured -Gaston, with a serious face. ‘I am taking my wife to Florence on the -outside chance that we may be recognised by the Florentines as persons -of distinction. In London we are nowhere.’</p> - -<p>‘Yes. There is the insular note. Now, these Bartrands of Tintajeux. -Delightful people! Noble French family who emigrated a hundred years -ago to Guernsey—such of them, I mean, as were not guillotined—dropped -the “de” from before their name, and settled here. Well, it is very -wicked to awaken prejudice, but——’</p> - -<p>‘Put aside all moral obligations,’ exclaimed Gaston Arbuthnot. ‘At a -pass like this, dear Mrs. Thorne, it is a matter of life or death to -some of us to have facts. Is Marjorie Bartrand pretty?’</p> - -<p>With her long, gloved fingers Linda Thorne stroked down imaginary -creases in her dress.</p> - -<p>‘Marjorie ought to be pretty. I am a frank adorer of beauty, you -must know. I hate to see a girl with possibilities make the least of -herself. So I always contrive to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> give Marjorie a friendly lecture. If -she would only arrange her hair differently, as I tell her, and dress -like other people, and take a little reasonable care of her complexion, -she might be distinctly nice-looking. All to no purpose. Marjorie -is Marjorie still. Some people call her an original. I,’ said Linda -playfully, ‘go farther. I call her an aboriginal.’</p> - -<p>‘I see her with my mind’s eye. Geoffrey, accept my condolences. All -these classico-mathematical girls,’ observed Gaston, ‘are the same. -Much nose, little hair, freckles, ankles. Let the conversation be -changed.’</p> - -<p>‘Marjorie has too little rather than too much nose, and is certainly -too dark for freckles. It seems, Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, that you have -grown cynical in these latter days. If I were a girl again I should be -wild to become a pupil of Mr. Geoffrey’s—if he would have me. I should -adore classics and mathematics, a touch of science even! Positively, I -think one <i>ought</i> to have a smattering of biology, just as one ought -to attend the ambulance classes. But we may cultivate the Graces also. -Now, Marjorie carries everything to extremes. Perhaps that is only -another way of saying Marjorie is a Bartrand.’</p> - -<p>‘And the Bartrands, you hinted, are, as a race, handsome?’</p> - -<p>Never was man surer of carrying his point, by oblique if not by direct -means, than Gaston Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘Handsome, stiff-necked, unrelenting. I am not talking scandal against -Queen Elizabeth, mind. If I said this in their presence, both Marjorie -and her terrible grandfather would feel flattered. Something softer the -child may perhaps have inherited from her Spanish mother.’</p> - -<p>(‘A Spanish mother!’ interpolated Gaston, in speculative parenthesis. -‘Southern eyes flashing at you from the handsome Bartrand face!’)</p> - -<p>‘But Marjorie has the true family temper. She knows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> too much. She -ascribes the worst motives to every one. She cannot forgive. About -a twelvemonth ago, when the girl really ought to have been in the -schoolroom, there was an unhappy little love story afloat in Guernsey.’</p> - -<p>‘A lover who was unworthy of her, of course?’</p> - -<p>‘That sort of thing happens to many of us,’ said Linda, examining the -stitching of her kerchief, ‘and yet we women manage to forget our -own wrongs and to tolerate humanity for the remainder of our lives. -Marjorie, reckoning pounds, shillings, and pence by our modest insular -standard, is an heiress. Well, she despises the very name of man now, -because a certain rather mercenary Major Tredennis sought to marry her -for her money.’</p> - -<p>‘And intends to be revenged upon us from the awful heights of Plato -and conic sections! Geff, my boy, I don’t envy you as much as I did a -quarter of an hour ago.’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, Mr. Geoffrey will be frightfully snubbed. It is only right to -prepare him beforehand.’</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thorne raised her eyes—very fine and sparkling eyes they looked -just then—to Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s face.</p> - -<p>‘I shall like the sensation,’ remarked Geff. ‘To the usual forms of -feminine caprice one should be indifferent. Snubbing means sincerity.’</p> - -<p>‘If you tell her she has worked out a proposition in Euclid right she -will resent it, think you are offering her an affront under the veil of -compliment.’</p> - -<p>‘Then I will speak of the propositions only in which she fails.’</p> - -<p>‘If you admire the flower she holds in her hand she will throw it away. -If you say the sky is fair, she will remark that, for her part, she -thinks it looks like rain. Once or twice,’ said Linda, ‘I have met -Marjorie Bartrand at some village treat or flower-show. The girl is not -out, or likely to come out. She possesses <i>one</i> dress, I believe, the -orthodox length of other people’s! And each time I have pitied<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> the -unfortunate young men who tried to make themselves agreeable to her.’</p> - -<p>‘I am not an agreeable young man, Mrs. Thorne, either in fact or -intention. Your warnings are kind, but I think even a Bartrand and an -heiress will find it waste of time to snub me long.’</p> - -<p>As Geoffrey spoke a side gate of the hotel garden opened. The figure of -a spare, wooden-structured old gentleman dressed in white nankeen, and -with a white umbrella, outspread, walked in.</p> - -<p>‘Why, there is Robbie! My dear good husband!’ exclaimed Mrs. Thorne, -impulsively. ‘What in the world——’</p> - -<p>‘Allait-il faire dans cette galère?’</p> - -<p>The quotation was put in by Gaston in an innocent voice.</p> - -<p>Now Dinah’s French studies had in her youth been conducted, for five -terms, in a small and remote Devonshire boarding-school. Consequently -she did not understand one word of the language as pronounced by -Gaston. Her heart sank as she watched an amused smile play round -Linda’s mouth. Already ideas were exchanged between these two -people—dear friends once—from which she must, perforce, remain shut -out.</p> - -<p>‘Doctor Tho—orne! Doctor Tho—orne!’</p> - -<p>And with playful undulatory movements of her parasol Mrs. Linda strove -to arrest her husband’s attention.</p> - -<p>‘Linda! Bless my heart, my love, I thought you were district visiting -hours ago. Quite an unexpected pleasure.’</p> - -<p>And, hat in hand, Doctor Thorne advanced up the path, dutifully -obedient to his Linda’s call, to be introduced to Linda’s friends.</p> - -<p>He was an ultra Indian-looking, ultra curry-coloured old Company’s -servant, considerably more than thirty years his wife’s senior, with a -snow-white military moustache,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> projecting white eyebrows, mild, tired -eyes, a very thick gold chain, a puggaree, and buff shoes. You could -never look at Doctor Thorne without a certain surprise that he did -not live in Cheltenham; so well was his appearance in tune with your -recollections of the Cheltenham promenade winter garden, Montpellier -lawn-tennis courts, and club windows blossoming over with generals, -admirals, and old Indians.</p> - -<p>But in Cheltenham Linda might have hunted! Quite early after their -return to Europe Doctor Thorne made the discovery that he and his wife -had two passions—Linda’s for horses, his own for living within his -pension. This decided him on choosing an island for his residence.</p> - -<p>‘Bless my heart, Linda! A positively unexpected pleasure,’ repeated -the Doctor, with urbane little bows discreetly given to no person in -particular.</p> - -<p>‘You dear, delicious Robbie, to turn up just when you are <i>so</i> wanted!’ -cried Linda. ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot, let me introduce my husband.’ With a -careless wave of the hand that said, plainly enough, this part of the -ceremony might be cut as short as possible. ‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. Have -I not often told you, Robbie, of my old friendship for Gast—, I mean, -for Mr. Arbuthnot, in Paris? Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, a medical student -from Cambridge.’</p> - -<p>Doctor Thorne was one of the most thorough believers extant in this -questioning, sceptical nineteenth-century world. He believed in his own -drugs, practising, on a small but murderous scale, here in Guernsey, -and holding the same pharmacopœial opinions that obtained half a -century earlier in Calcutta. He believed in the great political names -he had admired when he was a schoolboy; in the balance of power; in the -infallibility of Church, State, and the British Empire generally. He -believed in the extraordinary convenience of his house, in the fitness -of his furniture, in the talents of his Linda. Doctor Thorne, I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> -should add, had a mind—curiously small, thoroughly limited, but still -a mind—not badly stored with facts, of a dry and statistical order, -which he loved to impart to others.</p> - -<p>Fastening at once on Dinah—for Linda, moving a few paces distant, -began to lionise the adjacent islands for Gaston’s benefit, and Geff -contrived to vanish from the scene—fastening on poor Dinah for his -victim, Doctor Thorne at once opened a conversation with the airy -didactic grace in which old gentlemen would seem to have shone when the -story-books of our infancy were written.</p> - -<p>‘Your first visit to the island, Mrs. Arbuthnot I Then I trust you -and your worthy husband will accept my services as your cicerone. -There is much here, I can assure you, to stimulate the interest and -foster habits of observation. In the first place, you see, we have the -people themselves, whose habits of frugality contrast in a marked and -favourable manner with those of larger countries. You are not perhaps -acquainted with the statistics of savings-banks generally?’</p> - -<p>‘I have never had anything to save in my life, sir.’</p> - -<p>‘Well, then, I can give you a few important facts. Sit down, pray. Let -us protect our heads under the shadow of this delightful ash, or lime, -which is it? I can give you a few details, with the amount actually -saved by each person in this island over the age of fifteen. Studies -of this kind captivate the softer faculty of benevolence, while they -strengthen and enlarge the understanding.’</p> - -<p>Dinah was well dowered by Nature with means of self-defence. She could -put down an impertinence—I am afraid could resent an injury, as well -as any fine London lady of them all. But in Dinah’s moral arsenal was -no weapon for demolishing a mild little prosy gentleman of sixty-seven, -with snow-white moustache, yellow shoes, and a tired smile. Some -intuition she could not have analysed made her almost feel a species of -pity for Linda’s husband. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p> - -<p>We do not easily experience two distinct kinds of pain at one moment. -It may be that Dinah’s heart was too sorely troubled for her to be -sensible of boredom, even at the hands of such a master in the art of -boring as the Doctor.</p> - -<p>‘That morsel of table-land in the south is Sark,’ observed Linda, -pointing to an outline of haze faintly towering above the dense blue of -the Channel. ‘And the streak nearer at hand—please don’t look at me, -but at the islands—the streak nearer at hand, with the sun shining on -its yellow patches, is Jetho; and nearer still, where the pale green -spaces mark the shallows, is Herm. I hope you are following my stage -directions, Mr. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>Mr. Arbuthnot was scrutinising her face; curiously, as one scrutinises -any waif or stray from the past suddenly brought back to one; but -tenderly, too. When does a man of Gaston’s character feel aught but -kindness towards the woman whose life has been a little embittered by -his own fascination?</p> - -<p>The kindness made itself felt in his voice and look when he answered -her:</p> - -<p>‘Almost the last time you and I saw each other we followed stage -directions side by side. Have you forgotten those New Year charades of -Madame Benjamin’s?’</p> - -<p>‘I have forgotten nothing,’ exclaimed Mrs. Thorne, with a sharpish -accent. ‘I have remembered you, Mr. Arbuthnot; I have thought of you, -hoped for your happiness all these years. Now, at length, I am called -upon to witness it.’</p> - -<p>She gave a glance at Dinah, patiently enduring the Doctor’s statistics, -then went on with a sort of effort:</p> - -<p>‘You must let me congratulate you. I am blunt, matter-of-fact—just as -I used to be.’ Certainly Linda Thorne was at no pains to modulate her -voice. ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot is simply beautiful. Those matchless lines of -profile! Those soft waves of gold above her brow!’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘You like that way she has with her curls? I am answerable for it. It -took exactly fifteen months to convince Dinah that a woman may wear -short hair upon her forehead, yet save her soul alive.’</p> - -<p>‘And the lips, the chin! I believe Mrs. Arbuthnot’s face is the first I -have ever seen without a flaw.’</p> - -<p>Linda spoke as one might speak of a shell cameo, of a china vase, of a -lily modelled in wax.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot mentally translated the chill distinct tone, with -edification to himself.</p> - -<p>‘Dinah’s is a nature laid on large lines. She is the best possible wife -for such a light-ballasted man as I.’ He made this confession of faith -with genuine earnestness, feeling, rather than acknowledging he felt, -that the speech set his conscience satisfactorily at rest ‘Goodness -matters a great deal more, does it not, Mrs. Thorne, than a beautiful -face?’</p> - -<p>‘Possibly. I am ready to accept what you say. Tell me only you are -not offended by my outspoken admiration,’ she went on. ‘Surely I may -presume sufficiently on old—old acquaintance, to congratulate you on -your marriage, on the domestic sunshine of your life?’</p> - -<p>‘It is delightful to feel that your heart is warm as ever! As a matter -of priority, congratulations, Mrs. Thorne, were due to you first. Dinah -and I have been married three years and three quarters, while you——’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, it makes me too old a woman to be precise about dates,’ said -Linda, looking away from him. ‘My daughter, although she retains her -ayah and her spoilt Indian ways, is a big girl, almost four years old. -I hope you will visit The Bungalow soon for Rahnee’s sake.’</p> - -<p>‘The Bungalow being——’</p> - -<p>‘The straggling, white, one-storied place which you see low down under -the hill to the right. That is my home, built entirely from Doctor -Thorne’s own plans. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> ugliest house, every honest person who sees it -admits, in Guernsey.’</p> - -<p>‘Not in its interior. I am certain a house inhabited by you could not -be ugly.’</p> - -<p>‘Prettily said. Why, pray, in the present æsthetic age, cut off’ as we -are from the poetic upholstery of London, should a house inhabited by -me not be a great deal uglier than other people’s?’</p> - -<p>‘I decline, at this hour of the morning, to be logical. One has an -instinct in such things.’</p> - -<p>‘Rahnee, at least, is not ugly. I am not afraid of your judgment on our -little Rahnee. Now, what is to-day?’</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot believed it to be the fourteenth day of June, in the -year of grace 188—.</p> - -<p>‘Well, then’—Mrs. Thorne’s voice sank so as to be only half a tone -higher than a whisper—‘will you dine with us this evening, at -half-past seven? I believe,’ added Linda vaguely, ‘that one or two -of the artillery officers may be coming to us. We do not entertain. -I make a point of telling everybody that. Doctor Thorne and I do not -entertain. But if our friends care to drop in unexpectedly, to eat our -roast mutton with us, and smoke a cigarette with Robbie afterwards, -there we are.’</p> - -<p>It was to be a bachelor party, then. Dinah might possibly have been -invited to eat roast mutton at Mrs. Thorne’s table. She could, under no -circumstances, be asked to smoke a cigarette with Robbie afterwards. -But Gaston accepted with frank cordiality. During the years of his -married life it had so grown to be a matter of course that Dinah, -dear good girl! should never go into the world, that even the form -of hesitation at leaving her had been dropped on the part of Dinah’s -husband.</p> - -<p>‘No dress coat, no white tie, <i>please</i>. In these long June evenings one -likes to stroll away as far from bricks and mortar as possible. There -will not be a moon to-night.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> Still, even in the darkness, it will be -enjoyable to breathe pure air and watch the light upon the Caskets from -the jetty yonder.’</p> - -<p>‘And what do you think of my old friend?’ Gaston Arbuthnot asked his -wife when the Thornes had departed on their different roads—the Doctor -to visit a patient in Miller’s Hotel; Linda, her dress, a caviller -might say, scarce fitted to the work, to her poor dear brothers and -sisters in the alleys. ‘I have listened to Linda Thorne’s verdict on -you. Now for the reverse of the medal. What do you think of Linda -Thorne?’</p> - -<p>‘I think her vulgar.’</p> - -<p>It was the first time Gaston had heard judgment so harsh from Dinah’s -lips. Hers was the least condemnatory of human souls. She shrank with -a rare modesty from giving opinions on the people with whom Gaston -associated, was openly unashamed always of her own lowly origin, and of -her inability to discern the finer shades of a society to which she was -not born.</p> - -<p>A slight tinge of red kindled on Arbuthnot’s cheek. ‘Vulgar is a strong -word. Women are not always generous in their strictures upon each -other. Yet it happened that Mrs. Thorne was singularly generous in her -criticism of you. Linda thinks you beautiful, my dear. She said yours -was the first face she has ever seen without a flaw.’</p> - -<p>‘Standing close beside me as you did, Mrs. Thorne would have shown -delicacy by not talking of me at all. Although I tried not to listen, I -heard too well what she said. It was those flatteries of Mrs. Thorne’s, -for of course I am no judge of manner, which made me think her vulgar. -A lady at heart would have known how you must wince on hearing me so -coarsely praised.’</p> - -<p>For one moment Gaston Arbuthnot’s looks were threatening, then the -cloud passed.</p> - -<p>‘I believe you are half right, my dear girl,’ he observed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> in his -sunniest voice, and picking up his wife’s hat from the spot where -it had fallen at her feet. ‘But people of the world are not as -transparently truthful as you, my Dinah. You shoot at the bull’s eye -when you do discharge an arrow, and seldom miss the mark. Now, let me -tie your hat strings! Lift your chin—so! Let us wander off to the sea -and forget all the insincerities, all the Linda Thornes in existence.’</p> - -<p>The speech must have been uttered with some of the airy mental -reservation that Gaston Arbuthnot’s habit of ‘poker talk’ made easy to -him. He did not for one instant forget that he was engaged to dine that -evening at The Bungalow; engaged, although there was no moon, to enjoy -pure air and watch the light upon the Caskets from the jetty yonder.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER III</span> <span class="smaller">HAS HE A WIFE?</span></h2> - -<p>‘The battle is to the strong, Marjorie Bartrand; the race to the swift. -Women have been fatally handicapped since the world began. And Nature -understands her own intentions, depend upon it, better than we do.’</p> - -<p>‘Does Nature intend one half of the human race to be ciphers?’</p> - -<p>‘Nature intends men to have wives. There is no escaping that fact. When -I was a girl we got quite as much education as society required of us.’</p> - -<p>‘Society!’</p> - -<p>‘We learned modern languages, French and Italian, for of course German -was not in vogue, and I must say I think Italian much the more feminine -accomplishment.’</p> - -<p>‘That is paying an exceedingly high compliment to German, ma’am!’</p> - -<p>‘And we studied English literature, solidly, not out of little -green-backed handbooks. Never a day passed that I did not read -Addison, or some other fine Queen Anne writer, aloud to my father. -And we knew how to write a letter. And we coloured from Nature, for -the love of the thing, exceedingly well, some of us, though there was -no South Kensington, and we never called ourselves art students, and, -and—Marjorie Bartrand, how did this conversation begin?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Apropos of Spain, did it not?’</p> - -<p>‘To be sure. Apropos of your Girton scheme, your wish to see classics -and mathematics pushed into a country where women are still content to -be women, and very womanly ones. University teaching for girls is a -freak that will die out of itself, like coal-scuttle bonnets, bishops’ -sleeves, crinoline, or any other mode that is at once cumbersome and -unbeautiful.’</p> - -<p>Afternoon sunshine was flooding the weather-beaten lichened walls of -Tintajeux Manoir. The Atlantic glittered, one vast field of diamonds, -until it melted into pallid sky along the southern horizon line. The -keen, cool ocean saltness mingled with and almost overbalanced the -fragrance of the pinks, heliotropes, and roses in the Reverend Andros -Bartrand’s old-fashioned borders. On a garden bench, at some short -distance from the house, were seated two ladies, fresh of face, both; -countrified of dress; fast friends, although more than forty years -stood between their ages. A cedar of Lebanon spread wide its layers of -odorous darkness above their heads. A grass plot, emerald green, close -shorn, was their carpet.</p> - -<p>‘If your wits were your fortune, child, such ambitions might be -pardonable.’ So, after a space, the enemy of progress resumed her -parable. ‘In families where the olive branches are in excess of the -exchequer, the governess, Heaven help her, is expected to “ground” -the boys, as they call it, in Latin grammar and Euclid. But with your -grandfather’s position, your own inheritance, putting the idea of your -marriage aside——’</p> - -<p>‘As you know I have put it, for ever and ever!’ cried Marjorie -Bartrand, her whole face seeming abruptly transformed into a pair of -passionate eyes. ‘Did we not decide long ago, Miss Tighe, that the word -mar——, the word I detest so heartily, should never be spoken between -us. Allow that I may not be forced, for money, to ground small<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> boys in -Latin grammar. Allow that my visions of raising Spanish girls above the -level of dolls are as laughable as you all seem to find them. May I not -want to bring myself, Marjorie Bartrand, up to the highest improvable -point as a human being? Great in mathematics I shall never be.’</p> - -<p>‘I am thankful, indeed, to hear you say so,’ remarked Miss Tighe, with -an air of relief.</p> - -<p>‘But even the Seigneur is forced to confess I might become—a -fourth-rate classic! I know French and Spanish, Dogberry wise, by -nature. That must help me a long way on the road to Latin. And I -have learnt seventeen irregular Greek verbs—I’m not sure about the -aorists—and Mademoiselle le Patourel and I went straight through the -Apology of Plato, with Bohn’s crib.’</p> - -<p>‘Poor Sophie le Patourel! You have outgrown her, at last, as you -outgrew all your previous dozen or more governesses.’</p> - -<p>‘I don’t know about “outgrown.” Grandpapa ridiculed our attempting -Greek, from the first. You know the cruel way we Bartrands have of -ridiculing under cover of a compliment! Well, one day last week, -Mademoiselle le Patourel was reading the text of Plato aloud, not very -flowingly, poor good soul——’</p> - -<p>‘Sophie le Patourel had better have kept to the millinery! Her mother -made up a cap like no woman in this island.’</p> - -<p>‘And looking round she saw the Seigneur, outside the window, with a -wicked smile about that handsome old mouth of his as he listened. -Grandpapa made her the prettiest speech in the world about her -quantities, her fine classic tastes, and her pupil. And Mademoiselle le -Patourel never gave me another lesson.’</p> - -<p>‘So now your scheme is to prepare for Girton by yourself. Ambitious, on -my word!’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘My scheme,’ said Marjorie, lowering her voice and glancing over her -shoulder to make sure her terrible grandfather, Andros Bartrand, was -not within earshot—‘my scheme is to have a real University coach of my -own. A Cambridge B.A. at the present time residing in Guernsey.’</p> - -<p>Cassandra Tighe started up from her seat.</p> - -<p>She was a spare, tall, conspicuous spinster, with a face all features, -a figure all angles, a manner all energy. Her hair was bleached, as -much by exposure to weather as by actual age. Her complexion was that -of a frosted apple. Her dress cost her fifteen pounds a year!</p> - -<p>Living alone with one woman-servant in a small Guernsey cottage, it may -be affirmed that Miss Tighe made as much of her life as any gentlewoman -of modest income, and more than sixty summers, in the British -dominions. Her intellectual resources were many. She was a thorough, an -inborn naturalist. She played the harp, and with no dilettante touch, -but as ladies early in the Victorian reign were wont to play that -instrument. She drew. On stormy evenings, when she knew her voice could -not penetrate the cottage window shutters, Cassandra confessed that she -sang—such songs as ‘I see them on their winding way,’ ‘The Captive -Knight,’ or ‘Zuleika.’</p> - -<p>Her popularity and her influence were widespread. The figure of Miss -Tighe in her red fishing-cloak, with nets, hooks, jars, boxes, bottles, -overflowing from her village cart, was familiar throughout every nook -and corner of the island. If she had not had the sunniest of human -hearts you might have been tempted to dub her a gossip. That good old -English word, however, is associated in these days with a more than -doubtful spice of malice. And men and women who had known Cassandra -Tighe for thirty years averred that they had never heard an unkindly -judgment from her lips. She was simply a <i>raconteuse</i>—we lack the -English equivalent—a sympathiser in all the vivid varying doings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> -that constitute the lives of young and wholesomely happy people; a -chronicler of news; a delighter in love affairs.</p> - -<p>Simply this. And yet, not unfrequently, Cassandra Tighe made mischief. -Truthful, as far as conscious veracity went, to a fault, this excellent -lady’s memory was in a chronic state of jumble; so stored, it may be, -with polysyllabic names of plants, grubs, and fishes, that subsidiary -human details had to be packed in pell-mell, and take their chance -of coming out again untwisted. And, depend upon it, these tangled -well-meaners, not your deliberate villains, are the cause of half the -loves marred, the heartburnings, the jealousies, that make up the -actual dramas, the unwritten three-volume novels of this work-a-day -world!</p> - -<p>‘You are going to study with a tutor, Marjorie Bartrand! With a -Cambridge B.A.! With a <span class="smaller">MAN</span>! What does your grandfather say?’</p> - -<p>‘I have not told him the news, Miss Tighe. I grudge giving the Seigneur -such intense pleasure. “If you insist on learning Latin and Greek,” -grandpapa has always said, “learn them decently. Send these trashy -governesses to the winds. Be taught by a competent master.” Yes,’ cried -Marjorie, bringing down a very small hand with very great energy on her -knee, ‘I grudge grandpapa his triumph, but the truth must be told. Now -that I have caught him, I shall begin coaching with my B.A., my Cantab, -forthwith.’</p> - -<p>Cassandra shook her head, mournfully incredulous. She was of an age -and of a disposition to which revolutionary ideas do not come with -ease. There was really no place in her mental fabric for the picture of -Marjorie Bartrand, here, inside the sacred walls of Tintajeux, reading -classics and mathematics with a University coach.</p> - -<p>‘I think it more than likely the plan will fall through. We have no -Cambridge tutors in the island, unless, indeed, you mean good old Mr. -Winkworth from the High Street Academy?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I mean no one belonging to Guernsey. I mean a person who—ah, Miss -Tighe,’ the girl broke off, ‘I see that I must make full confession. -No knowing, as grandpapa says, when you once begin to speak the truth, -where the truth may land you. My B.A. is coming to arrange about terms -and hours this evening.’</p> - -<p>‘And how did he—how did any stranger man hear of you?’</p> - -<p>‘I put an advertisement in the <i>Chronique Guernésiaise</i>, three days -ago.’</p> - -<p>‘Without consulting the Seigneur! Child—you did this thing? You gave -your name, unknown to your grandfather, in the public newspaper?’</p> - -<p>‘I gave my name in the public newspaper, ma’am, and this afternoon I -got an answer to my advertisement. Wait one second and you shall hear -it.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie drew a note from the breast of her frock, and with an air half -of mystery, half of triumph, began to read aloud:—</p> - -<blockquote><p class="right">‘“Miller’s Hotel, Tuesday, June 14th.</p> - -<p>‘“Geoffrey Arbuthnot, B.A., Cantab., is willing to read classics -and mathematics with Miss Bartrand. Terms, five shillings an hour. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot will call at Tintajeux Manoir, on approval, -between the hours of seven and eight this evening.”’</p></blockquote> - -<p>‘Arbuthnot? Why, this is fatality.’ Cassandra discerned a special -providence, an inchoate stroke of destiny in most things. ‘I was -looking in at Miller’s Hotel last night. That reasonless creature, -Mrs. Miller, has one of her throats again, and I did so want her to -take some of my globules, but in vain. The ignorance of uneducated -people——’</p> - -<p>‘And you saw my coach of the future,’ interrupted Marjorie, knowing -that when Miss Tighe got into such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> engrossing interests as throats and -globules, she must be brought back to her subject with a run.</p> - -<p>‘Yes, I saw Mr. Arbuthnot. A rough diamond, my dear, to speak truth.’</p> - -<p>‘That is so much in his favour,’ said Marjorie, peeling, shred from -shred, the petals of a carnation that she held between her fingers. ‘I -want to do my work for Girton steadily, unvexed by the sight or thought -of that most irritating of God’s creatures—a beauty-man.’</p> - -<p>Cassandra looked hard at the girl, remembering days, perhaps, when -a beauty-man, in the fullest sense of the contemptuous epithet, had -scathed rather than softened Marjorie Bartrand’s heart.</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, on the score of ugliness, will meet your -wishes, my dear. A rough-hewn Scotchman of the Carlyle stamp. A man -who looks as though he ought to do big things in the world. A man with -a scar—got, I am told, in a Quixotic pavement fight—traversing his -forehead.’</p> - -<p>‘I like the sketch. Proceed.’</p> - -<p>‘As regards Geoffrey Arbuthnot himself I have done. Walking at his -side, the evening light falling on her uncovered head and fair -face, was the loveliest sight these old eyes have beheld for many a -year—Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s wife.’</p> - -<p>‘Geoffrey Arbuthnot—has he a wife?’ cried Marjorie in an altered -voice. ‘My Cambridge B.A.—married! I hope you are sure of your facts, -Miss Tighe. You know that sometimes—rarely, of course—mistakes occur -in our little bits of Sarnian intelligence. You are perfectly certain -that Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot is a married man?’</p> - -<p>‘I have seen his wife. How can you ask me if I am certain? “A daughter -of the gods,”’ Cassandra quoted, “divinely tall,” fair-skinned, -large-eyed, with a look of repressed sadness about her mouth that makes -her bloom<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> and youth the more noticeable. I was sitting in poor Mrs. -Miller’s parlour, endeavouring to argue the woman out of taking Doctor -Thorne’s drugs. As a human creature, a father, a husband, I have not -one word to say against Doctor Thorne——’</p> - -<p>‘I have!’ exclaimed Marjorie Bartrand imperatively. ‘As a human -creature, a father, a husband—most especially as a husband—I have -everything imaginable to say against Doctor Thorne.’</p> - -<p>‘As a physician I consider him a man-slaughterer. Yes,’ repeated -Cassandra, with pious warmth, ‘a man-slaughterer. Indeed, if I had sat -at the inquest on more than one of Doctor Thorne’s departed patients, -Heaven knows what verdict I should not have returned against him.’</p> - -<p>‘But your story, Miss Tighe? The man like Carlyle; the beautiful wife. -Return, please, to the Arbuthnots.’</p> - -<p>‘Well, just as I was trying to put reason into Mrs. Miller’s weak mind, -I was startled by the sight I told you of. This lovely young woman went -past the window, not two yards from where I sat.’</p> - -<p>‘With her husband. Was she leaning on Mr. Arbuthnot’s arm?’ asked -Marjorie. ‘Did they look as if they had ever had a quarrel? Was she in -white—bridal looking? Did you hear them murmur to each other? Miss -Tighe, be dramatic! At Tintajeux we have not the joy, remember, of -eventful living.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot was dressed in black. Her hair lay in short blonde -waves on her forehead. She wore not a flower, not an ornament about -her person. As they passed the window her husband remarked that he -considered the roast duck and peas of which they had partaken for -dinner were excellent.’</p> - -<p>‘So much,’ said Marjorie, affecting cynicism, ‘for a chapter of married -romance.’</p> - -<p>‘Ah, that has been. The key of our common life is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> C major—roast duck -and green peas—whatever accidental sharps and flats we may deviate -into occasionally. The romance has been. I was overcome by the young -woman’s singular beauty,’ went on Cassandra. ‘I asked her name, and was -rewarded by hearing such an account of them as warmed my heart. The -girl belonged to the humblest class of life—a gardener’s daughter, -or something of the kind; and Arbuthnot, while he was still an -undergraduate at Cambridge, married her.’</p> - -<p>‘Geoffrey Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie repeated the name softly; a question in her tone rather than -in her words.</p> - -<p>‘Geoffrey, I presume; that is to say, most decidedly and beyond -question, Geoffrey,’ answered Cassandra, with the fatal certitude of -inaccuracy. ‘I am the more positive because I felt a kind of love -at first sight for the two young people, and made Mrs. Miller give -me details. A party of Cambridge men were staying in the hotel when -first the Arbuthnots arrived; and some of these men knew the husband -by sight. He is looked upon as rather eccentric among his fellows. I -am afraid, Marjorie, whenever a man leads a nobler life than other -people the tendency of the day is to call him eccentric. And Geoffrey -Arbuthnot’s life must be very noble.’</p> - -<p>‘Because he had the courage of his opinions in choosing a wife?’</p> - -<p>‘Not that only. Arbuthnot is a student still at the Cambridge medical -school, and gives such time as he has over from study to the most -miserable people in the Cambridge streets. Not proselytising, not -preaching—for my part I don’t believe much in a preaching young man,’ -said old Cassandra, whose opinions tended towards the broad; ‘simply -binding up their wounds as men and women. Doing the Master’s work, not -talking about it.’</p> - -<p>‘And his beautiful wife helps him!’ exclaimed Marjorie,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> her sensitive -Southern face aglow. ‘Ah, Miss Tighe, thank you again and again for -your visit and for telling me this news. In my foolish, trivial, wasted -existence, what a splendid bit of good fortune that I should have the -chance of knowing two such people!’</p> - -<p>Cassandra Tighe looked a little uncomfortable. She prided herself on -her freedom from the prejudices of her sex; within limits, really -did startle her friends, sometimes, by the free exercise of private -judgment. But the liberality of a white-haired lady, whose sixty years -of life have run in the safest, narrowest, conventional trammels, -may differ widely from the liberality of a hot head, an eager, -self-forgetting young heart like Marjorie Bartrand’s.</p> - -<p>‘It will be a fine thing for your Girton prospects, capital for your -Greek and Latin, to read with Mr. Arbuthnot. But I gathered—you must -take this as I mean it, Marjorie Bartrand; you have no mother to tell -you things—I gathered from different small hints that Mrs. Arbuthnot -is not exactly in society. That she is good and sweet and honest,’ said -Cassandra, ‘you have only to look in her face to know; still if I were -in Marjorie Bartrand’s place, I should wait to see what the island -ladies did in the matter of calling.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie paled round the lips—sign infallible, throughout the Bartrand -race, of rising tempest. Cassandra, knowing the family storm-signals, -prepared to take a hasty departure.</p> - -<p>‘I forget time always under the Tintajeux cedars. And there is plenty -for me to do at home. To-morrow Annette and I are off to Sark for five -days’ shore-work. Our talk about your new tutor has been an interesting -one.’</p> - -<p>‘Especially the clause that prohibits my calling on the new tutor’s -wife!’</p> - -<p>‘There is no prohibition at all. The Seigneur might safely leave -his card on Mr. Arbuthnot. It would be a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> very pretty piece of -condescension, and of course a gentleman calling upon a gentleman can -lead to nothing,’ added Cassandra, rather ignobly temporising.</p> - -<p>‘Exactly. Thank you very much, Miss Tighe, for your advice. As you say, -I have no mother to enlighten me as to the dark mysteries of calling -or not calling. And as I consider the island ladies too frisky for -pioneers——’</p> - -<p>‘Marjorie! Our archdeaconess, our irreproachable Guernsey matrons, -<i>frisky</i>?’</p> - -<p>‘I shall just have to act for myself. As Mrs. Arbuthnot, you tell -me, has all good qualities written on her face, and knowing the fine -things we do know of her husband’s life, it must be a credit to any -woman—above all to an archdeaconess—to make their acquaintance.’</p> - -<p>‘Still, if she is unused——’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, I shall not put myself forward. If their merit is unrecognised, -if narrow-minded, irreproachable people hold back from calling on -them, I can understand that there may be shyness on my tutor’s part in -mentioning his wife. I shall simply bide his time. I shall be silent -until he chooses, himself, to speak to me of Mrs. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘That will be wise. Treat him, honest gentleman, as though one had not -heard of his marriage. Meantime we can find out if our leading ladies, -Madame Corbie especially, intend to notice her——’</p> - -<p>‘But in my own self, I honour Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,’ interrupted -Marjorie, her face colouring like a rose at sunset. ‘I admire, honour, -<i>love</i> him! I wish the world were full of such men. I hold out both -hands in fellowship to him at this moment.’</p> - -<p>Cassandra, for once, showed prescience worthy of her name. Cassandra -argued no more.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER IV</span> <span class="smaller">A TRINITY BALL</span></h2> - -<p>Geoffrey Arbuthnot was a man of whom none could say that Fortune had -been to him a too fond mistress.</p> - -<p>As a four-foot high boy, with shrewd observant Scottish eyes, with -a Scottish mind already beginning to hold its own ideas as to the -universe, he was sent, through the reluctant generosity of an uncle, to -a London public school. In those days sanitary and social reforms for -overtaxed city schoolboys were still inchoate. Each boy must look after -himself, make personal acquaintance with facts, with the cut and thrust -of human circumstance, take his recreation on the London pavements, -sink or swim as he listed.</p> - -<p>Geoffrey Arbuthnot, before he was ten had made acquaintance with a -great many facts, all hard ones. He had no pocket-money, no tips. -His holidays had to be paid for out of the same reluctant uncle’s -purse—father and mother sleeping in a Perthshire kirkyard ere Geff -could well remember aught—and were enjoyed under the roof of such -persons as endure homeless schoolboys, on systems of rigid economy, as -a business.</p> - -<p>Hard-working to excess, perhaps because in work he found a friend, -pushed into dead-language grooves because the masters sought to keep up -the dead-language reputation of the school, Geoffrey Arbuthnot awoke -one morning at the age of eighteen a fine classic. He was sent up to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> -compete for a Cambridge scholarship, won it, and, true to tradition, -began reading, his heart warmed by the unwonted feeling of success, for -his Classical Tripos.</p> - -<p>Considering that every aptitude he possessed lay in an opposite -direction to classical study, one can scarcely look on the nine -Cambridge terms that followed as fortunate. The square man did his best -to fill the round hole faithfully, his own squareness decreased not. -And then, in the midst of this Greek and Latin epoch, came his love -affairs—I retract the plural: his one overwhelming passion, ardent, -pure as was ever love felt by man for woman; a passion which paled, -ere he could well grasp it, into shadow, and which still—yes, in the -Guernsey sunshine of this June day—rendered his happiness paradoxical, -just at the age when happiness should be fullest, most complete.</p> - -<p>Geoffrey Arbuthnot had not been smiled on by Fortune. Nevertheless, -he possessed gifts which for the simple hourly manufacture of human -contentment are better worth than the bigger favours of the gods. -Life interested him. If he had had few artificial pleasures, he had -exhausted no pleasures at all. In regard of nature, his sensations were -vivid as a child’s. Walking forth to Tintajeux Manoir at an hour when -the crisp blue and gold of afternoon had reached declension, Geoffrey -felt youth run in his veins like wine. The hay and clover smells from -the newly-cut fields; the ‘kiss sweet! kiss sweet!’ of the thrushes; -the verdured hedges touched still by Spring’s immaturity, though the -flower of the May was past; the peeps at every turn of purple salt -water; the road-side ferns through which, knee-deep, he waded; the -yellowing honeysuckle sprays which brushed his face; the streamlets -slipping seaward away, through channels thick with cresses and -forget-me-nots; ay, even the whiffs of wood-smoke from the farmhouse -chimneys, the incomprehensible Froissart French in which he heard the -haymakers chattering to each other over their bread<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> and cider,—all -the low, melodious notes of this homely landscape affected him with a -physical and keen delight.</p> - -<p>His life, since remotest baby-days, when he walked holding his mother’s -hand in blithe, fair Scotland, had been passed among streets and among -the human creatures who inhabit them. The pleasure of the Bethnal Green -arab who, at six years old, first handles a living daisy, differs, in -degree only, from Geoffrey’s as he trudged along through the Guernsey -lanes, his mind vaguely fixed on Tintajeux Manoir and on the chill -reception from his future pupil which there awaited him.</p> - -<p>Would Miss Bartrand’s thunder glances be discharged from black eyes -or blue ones? Geoffrey had reached a stretch of undulating rushy -common at the extreme western point of the island when this question -presented itself. Ahead was a vista of mouldering banks, gay in their -shroud of blue-flowered, ivy-leaved campanula, and with here and there -a jutting tip of granite, crimson, by reason of its glittering mica, -in the sunset. Above hovered a falcon, almost lost to view against the -largely-vaulted, bountifully-coloured evening sky.</p> - -<p>Interpreting Froissart French by such lights as he possessed, Geoffrey -learned from an ancient goat-tending peasant dame that a neighbouring -block of stone building, partially visible on the left through oak and -larch plantations, was Tintajeux Manoir. Would the girl who awaited -his visit there be blonde or dark? Something Mrs. Thorne had hinted -about a Spanish mother. According to all mournful human probabilities, -the heiress would be swarthy; a black-eyed, atrociously clever-looking -young person, he thought, with shining hair drawn tightly from her -forehead, with stiff linen collar and wristbands, with a dignified -manner and inkstained fingers. Also, despite her seventeen summers, -with a leaning towards stoutness.</p> - -<p>Geoffrey disrelished the picture projected before his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> mental sight -about as much as in his present buoyant physical state he could -disrelish anything. Consulting his watch, he found with relief that -he had reached the outskirts of Tintajeux five-and-twenty minutes too -early. There would be time, amidst this delicious wealth of atmosphere -and hue that flooded him around, for a quiet smoke before encountering -the terrible presence of Miss Marjorie Bartrand!</p> - -<p>A suspicion that the heiress’s peppery temper might be roused if one’s -jacket smelt of tobacco rather heightened the alacrity with which Geff -Arbuthnot threw himself down on the fragrant sward and produced his -pipe and pouch. The pipe was a black, ferociously Bohemian-looking -‘bulldog,’ the pouch a delicate mass of silk embroidery and velvet. As -he drew forth—alas! that I should have to say it, his strong-flavoured -cavendish, Geoffrey thought, as it was his custom to think four or five -times each day, of the tender friendly woman’s hand that worked this -pouch for him—Dinah’s!</p> - -<p>Poor Dinah! When he saw her last, an hour before, her hands were -clasped together with the half-apathetic gesture of a person to whom -moral suffering has become a habit. A basket of coloured wools stood -before her on the table, ready for her evening’s cross stitching. -Round the corners of her lips was the look of silent endurance which -had become so painfully familiar to Geoffrey’s sight. And all this -for what? There was no great sin, surely, in Gaston’s putting himself -at once under Mrs. Thorne’s easy guidance. The happiest households -one hears of, thought Geoffrey, striking a vesuvian, are those in -which the broadest law of liberty obtains. Does not an artist, more -than other men, want change, professionally? Dinah should know that a -creator, of the cheap popularity order, as Gaston with his pleasant -self-depreciation would say, must have a constant supply of straw for -his brickmaking; must have material,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> ‘stuff,’ must see brisk lights, -sharp shadows that the calm twilight of domestic happiness does not -yield. And yet....</p> - -<p>It was that constant, unspoken ‘and yet’ in Geoffrey’s mind which, up -to the present point, had rendered the close friendship of the three -Arbuthnots a paradox.</p> - -<p>Leaning back against a little thyme-grown knoll, his hands clasped -behind his head, Geff looked, with eyes that had learned the secret -of most common things in Nature, at the moorland weeds around him. -Here were graceful quake grasses in plenty, and waving sedges, and -the poet’s wood-spurge, three cups in one. Close at his right hand -grew a stalk of rush crowned by four or five brownish insignificant -flowers, the least lovely outwardly of all the brilliant Guernsey -flora. Well, and it came to pass that the neighbourhood of these -degenerate, colourless petals altered Geff’s mood. He thought of the -inherited mysteries and dooms of human life. He called to mind the -sordid prose of the Cambridge outskirts, and the wretched men and -women, forced deserters from the army of progress, who lived in them. -He called to mind his own often despairing work, the struggles, hard -and single-handed, of his manhood, his youth. His youth—ah! and with -that the moorland scene faded. The years since he first saw Dinah -spread themselves out scrollwise, suddenly illuminated, before Geff -Arbuthnot’s mind.</p> - -<p>How well he remembered himself a lad of twenty! How well he remembered -the hawthorn-scented evening of their first meeting! He was walking -alone through the one street of Lesser Cheriton, had passed its -rectory, its seven public-houses, was honestly thinking of his -approaching ‘Mays’ and of nothing in the world beyond, when a cottage -casement window opened just above his head, and looking up he saw -her—unornamented, in russet gown and apron blue, a jug of water in her -white hand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> ready for the thirsty row of mignonette and geranium slips -in the window-box.</p> - -<p>He loved her, there and then. It was an old, a sacred story now, and -Geoffrey questioned no syllable of the text as he scanned it quickly -through. He took her picture back with him to his dark, book-strewn -scholar’s attic in John’s, and that night he dreamed of her. Next -morning he walked forth to Lesser Cheriton at the same hour, passed the -rectory, the seven public-houses, and again caught glimpses of Dinah’s -head as she sat, with a very fat old lady, alas! of a very humble -class, in a close little parlour sewing, the lamp lighted, the windows -fast shut, all the glories of the outside June night ignored.</p> - -<p>The same kind of mute worship went on the next evening and the next. -Towards the end of the week the old lady of a very humble class -accosted him. Geff could remember the thrill of that moment yet. Away -through the garden gloom did he not descry the flutter of a russet -dress, the outline of a girlish head downbent over a bush of opening -roses? The young gentleman would pardon her for taking such a liberty, -but as he seemed fond of the country he might care sometimes for a -bunch of cut flowers. She was a lone widow and lived too far off to -send in her garden stuff to the Cambridge market except in wall-fruit -time. If she could dispose, friendly like, of a few cut flowers it -would be a little profit to her. Some of the University gentlemen, she -had heard, dressed up their rooms, like a show, with flowers, and the -roses and carnations this term were coming on wonderful. If the young -gentleman would please to walk round the garden and see?</p> - -<p>The young gentleman walked round the garden. He bought as many flowers -as his arms could carry away. He learned that the girl’s name was Dinah -Thurston, that she was ‘apprenticed to the dressmaking,’ and had come -up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> all the way out of Devonshire to spend a month’s holiday with the -old lady, her father’s sister. The Devonshire burr in Dinah’s speech -disenchanted him no more than did an occasional lapse or two in Dinah’s -grammar. When is a stripling of his age disenchanted by anything save -frowns or rivals? Geoffrey held original ideas on more than one burning -social subject, had made up his mind—on the first evening he saw Dinah -Thurston—that it was a duty for him and for every man to marry young.</p> - -<p>And he cared not one straw either for want of money, or for plebeian -birth.</p> - -<p>Good, because healthy blood flowed in this girl’s veins, thought -Geff—the incipient physiologist. Sweet temper was on her lips. A -stainless woman’s soul looked forth from those fair eyes. She was -above, only too much above him in every excellence, inward or external. -What chance had he with his plain face, his shy student’s manner, of -winning such a jewel as Dinah Thurston’s love? What hope was there that -she would wait until the day, necessarily distant, when he would be -able to work for a wife’s support?</p> - -<p>He became a daily caller at the cottage, and it is hard to suppose -that both Dinah and Dinah’s protector were quite blind to the truth. -Garden stuff was ever Geff’s ostensible object. He wanted cut flowers -for himself, for an acquaintance who could not walk as far as Lesser -Cheriton. He wanted radishes, cresses,—so different, he declared, to -the stringy salad of College butteries! He wanted to know when the -strawberries were likely to ripen.</p> - -<p>He wanted some daily excuse for gazing on Dinah Thurston’s face.</p> - -<p>Hard, I repeat, to think that the feminine instinct, however -unsophisticated, would make no guess, as time went on, at the state -of the poor young undergraduate’s heart. But this is just the kind -of point at which good women, in every class, are prone to innocent -casuistry. At all events,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> Dinah Thurston and her aunt gave no outward -sign of intelligence. The old lady took her daily shillings and -sixpences with commercial gravity. Dinah cut the flowers or tied up -little hunches of cress and radishes in a convenient form for Geff to -carry.</p> - -<p>So, as in a new garden of Eden without a threat of the serpent’s -coming, matters progressed for yet another fortnight.</p> - -<p>Lesser Cheriton lies at a junction of rough Cambridgeshire lanes; -a village girt round by blossoming orchards in May, by sheets of -black water or blacker ice in December. In addition to its rectory -and seven public-houses, it contains a score or two of the thatched, -high-shouldered cottages common to this part of England. Being -untraversed by any of the Maid’s Causeways, Lesser Cheriton lies -somewhat out of the ordinary undergraduate track. Geoffrey had no -intimate friend in the University save Gaston Arbuthnot, whose time was -quite otherwise occupied than in watching the comings and goings of -his simple scholar cousin. He was known to be a hard-working man who -took his daily walk from duty and without companionship. But for an -after-dinner stupidity—a turning missed—the little love drama would -probably have unfolded itself with commonplace speed, and Geoffrey have -gained a wife, for I cannot think Dinah’s unoccupied fancy would, at -the age of eighteen, have been hard to win. The turning, however, <i>was</i> -missed—thus.</p> - -<p>Just as Geff, his hands filled with flowers, was parting from the -girl, one hushed and radiant evening, there came a rush of wheels—he -could hear it now, dreaming over the past on this Guernsey moorland, -and the blood rose to Geff’s face at the remembrance—a rush of wheels -down the slumbering street of Lesser Cheriton. For a few seconds the -sound was muffled by the ivied churchyard wall where the road wound -abruptly. Then, at a slapping pace,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> trotted past a high-stepping bay, -of which Gaston Arbuthnot was for the moment the possessor, also Gaston -Arbuthnot, in his well-appointed cart, returning to Alma Mater, with a -brace of rich Jesus friends, after spending the afternoon at Ely.</p> - -<p>Lesser Cheriton does not lie on the road between Ely and Cambridge. -Lesser Cheriton, we may boldly say, lies on the road nowhere. But these -young gentlemen were in the adventure-seeking, after-dinner mood, when -a devious turning of any kind is taken with pleasant ease. And here, -on their wrong road, and in Lesser Cheriton’s one street, they found -themselves.</p> - -<p>There was daylight lingering still in the low fields of Cambridgeshire -sky. There was a young May moon, too, whose yellowish silver caused -the outlines of Dinah Thurston’s head and throat to stand out in waxen -relief against the dusky arbutus hedge that divided the cottage garden -and the road.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot turned sharply round for an instant and saw her. -Shouting a cheery ‘Hullo!’ to his cousin, he drove on, giving a little -valedictory wave of his whip ere he disappeared. And Geff, the glory -shorn suddenly, unaccountably from his Eden, bade Dinah good-night, and -started on his four-mile trudge back to Cambridge.</p> - -<p>It was ten days before he again smelt the mignonette and roses of the -cottage, or slaked his soul’s thirst by gazing on Dinah’s face. By -early post next morning came a letter saying that the uncle to whose -reluctantly generous hand he owed the hard All of his life lay at the -point of death. The old man was sound of mind still, and desired his -nephew’s presence. A lawyer wrote the letter, and it was added that Mr. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot would well consult his worldly interests by obeying -the wishes of the dying man without delay.</p> - -<p>It was one of those crises when all our present and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> future good seems -to resolve itself into a desolate ‘perhaps.’ Geoffrey’s debts were few. -Still, he had debts. The possibility of remaining up his nine terms at -Cambridge might depend upon the will of this stern-hearted uncle who, -dying, craved his presence. And yet, in obeying the summons, might he -not be risking dearer things than worldly success—jeopardising hopes -which already threw a trembling light over his loveless life?</p> - -<p>He had spoken no syllable of his passion to Dinah, was too -self-distrustful to tell his secret by means so matter-of-fact as a -sheet of paper and the post. And so, like many another timid suitor, -Geoffrey Arbuthnot elected to play a losing game. With immense fidelity -in his breast, but without a word of explanation, he set off by noon of -that day to London—not ignorant that Gaston’s eyes and those of Dinah -Thurston had already met.</p> - -<p>A girl’s vanity, if not her heart, might well have been wounded by -such conduct. In after times Geoffrey Arbuthnot, musing over his lost -happiness, would apply such medicine to his sore spirit as the limited -pharmacopœia of disappointment can offer. If he had had a man’s metal, -if, instead of flying like a schoolboy, he had said to her, on that -evening when Gaston drove past them at the gate, ‘Take me or reject me, -but choose!’—had he thus spoken, Geoffrey used to think, he might have -won her.</p> - -<p>To-night, on the Guernsey waste-land, with heaven so broad above, with -earth so friendly, the past seemed to return to him without effort -of his own and without sting. The fortnight he passed in London, the -unknown relatives who beset the sick man’s bed, the scene amidst a -London churchyard’s gloom, wherein he, Geff, in hired crape, was chief -mourner, the reading of the will, the return to Cambridge—all this, at -first, floated before his vision in grey monotone, as scenes will do in -which one has played a spectator’s rather than an actor’s part. Then in -a moment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> (Geoffrey’s half-closed eyes scanning the moor’s horizon, the -soft airs blowing on his face) there came upon him a flash of light. -It was so intolerably clear that every leaf and flower and pebble of -a cottage garden in far-off Cambridgeshire stood out before him with -a vividness that was poignant, a vividness that had in it the stab of -sudden bodily pain.</p> - -<p>Springing to his feet, Geoffrey resolved to brood over the irrevocable -no longer. He emptied the ashes from his pipe, then replaced it, with -Dinah’s delicate morsel of handiwork, in his pocket. He took out his -watch. It was more than time for him to be off; and after a farewell -glance at the campanula-shrouded knolls, Geff started briskly in the -direction of Tintajeux Manoir. But the ghosts would not be laid. There -were yet two pictures, a garden scene, an interior, upon which, whether -he walked or remained still, Geoffrey Arbuthnot felt himself forced, in -the spirit, to look.</p> - -<p>The garden scene, first: time, seven of a June evening, sky and -atmosphere rosy as these that surrounded him now. Thirsting to see -Dinah’s face, Geoffrey walked straight away from Cambridge station, -he remembered, on his arrival from London. He was dusty and wearied -when he drew near the village. The rectory, the seven public-houses -of Lesser Cheriton, looked more blankly uninhabited than usual. Some -barn-door fowls, a few shining-necked pigeons, strutted up and down -the High Street, its only occupants. When he reached the cottage no -one answered his ring. The aunt was evidently absent. Dinah, thought -Geoffrey, would be busy among her flowers, or might have taken her -sewing to the orchard that lay at the bottom of the garden. He had been -told, on some former visit, to go round, if the bell was unanswered, -to a side entrance, lift the kitchen-latch, and if the door was -unbolted, enter. He did so now; passed through the kitchen, burnished -and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> neat as though it came out of a Dutch picture—through the tiny, -cool-smelling dairy, and out into the large shadows of the garden -beyond.</p> - -<p>Silence met him everywhere.</p> - -<p>The roses, only budding a fortnight ago, had now yearned into June’s -deep crimson. The fruit-tree leaves had grown long and grayish, forming -an impenetrable screen which shut out familiar perspectives, and gave -Geoffrey a sense of strangeness that he liked not. Under the south -wall, where the apricots already looked like yellowing, was a turf path -leading you fieldward, through the entire length of the garden.</p> - -<p>Along this path, with unintentionally muffled footsteps, Geoffrey -Arbuthnot trod. When he reached the hedge that formed the final -boundary between garden and orchard a man’s voice fell on his ear. He -stopped, transfixed, as one might do to whom the surgeon’s verdict of -‘No hope’ has been delivered with cruel unexpectedness.</p> - -<p>The voice was his cousin Gaston’s.</p> - -<p>Geoffrey had no need to advance farther. In his black clothes, among -the trees’ thick leafage, he was himself invisible, could see by the -slightest bending of his neck as much as the world in the way of -personal misery had on that summer evening to display to him.</p> - -<p>For there, at the entrance to the orchard, stood Dinah Thurston, the -glow that lingers after sunset throwing up the fresh beauty of her -head and figure, and there stood Gaston. They were face to face, hands -holding hands, eyes looking into eyes. And even as Geoffrey watched -them his cousin bent forward and kissed Dinah Thurston’s unresisting -lips.</p> - -<p>Youth, the possibility of every youthful joy, died out in that moment’s -anguish from Geff Arbuthnot’s heart. But the stuff the man was made of -showed itself. More potent than all juice of grape is pain for evoking -the best and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> worst from human souls. Desolate, bemocked of fate, -he turned away, the door of his earthly Paradise shutting on him, -walked back to the scholar’s attic in John’s, whose full loneliness -he had never realised till now, and during two hours’ space gave way -to such abandonment as even the bravest men know under the wrench of -sudden and total loss.</p> - -<p>During two hours’ space! Then the lad gathered up his strength and -faced the position. As regarded himself, the path lay plain. He must -work up to the collar, hot and hard, leaving himself no time to feel -the parts that were galled and wrung. But the others? At the point -which all had reached, what was his, Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s, duty in -respect of them? It was his duty, he thought—after a somewhat blind -and confused fashion, doubtless—to stand like a brother by this woman -who did not love him. Stifling every baser feeling towards Gaston, it -was his duty to further, if he could, the happiness of them both. The -sun should not go down on his despair. He would see his rival, would -visit Dinah Thurston’s lover to-night.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot, a man of means, which he considerably lived beyond, -occupied charmingly-furnished rooms in the first court of Jesus. -Peacock’s feathers and sunflowers had not, happily for saner England, -been then invented. A human creature could profess artistic leanings, -yet run no risk of being expected by his fellows to live up to a dado! -Gaston’s surroundings seemed rather the haphazard outcome of personal -taste than the orthodox result of a full purse and adherence to the -upholstery prophets. They had the negative merit of sincerity.</p> - -<p>Walking with quick steps towards Tintajeux, how distinctly those -rose-lit Jesus rooms, the last in the series of pictures, came back -upon Geoffrey’s sense! He remembered an unfinished sketch in clay -upon the mantelpiece; a Lilith, with languid eyes and limbs, with -faultless passionless<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> mouth, with coils of loosened hair; charms how -unlike those of the demure Madonna in the cottage at Lesser Cheriton! -He remembered the smell of hothouse flowers, the like of which at all -seasons of the year was wont to hang about Gaston Arbuthnot’s rooms; -remembered a pile of yellow-backed French books on a writing-table, -also a framed photograph of the prettiest actress of the day exactly -fronting the easy-chair in which his cousin Gaston was pleased to -affirm that he ‘read.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey Arbuthnot had to wait some minutes alone, his cousin’s level, -self-contained voice informing him from an inner room that he, Gaston, -was dressing for the last ball of the term, given by Trinity. Would -Geff not have come to that Trinity ball, by the bye? Ah, no. Mourning, -weepers. Decent respect—cette chère Madame Grundy. And so the uncle -had cut up decently! Nothing for him, of course. Kind of wretch whom -uncles always would regard as belonging to the criminal classes. Had a -mind to dispute the will, ruin Geoffrey as well as himself by throwing -the whole thing into Chancery!</p> - -<p>Then Gaston’s airy step crossed the room to a waltz tune that he -whistled. A curtain was drawn back. The two men whose future relations -were to be one long paradox stood opposite each other.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot was in evening dress; his white cravat tied to -perfection, a tiny moss rose in his button-hole; a pair of unfolded -lavender gloves were in his hand. His handsome ‘Bourbon’ face looked -its handsomest. No traces of perturbed conscience marred his gracious -and débonnaire mien. A man may surely find himself deep in a flirtation -with some soft-eyed village Phillis, and at the same time like to dance -with as many pretty girls in his own class of life as choose to smile -on him!</p> - -<p>He advanced with outstretched hand.</p> - -<p>‘I congratulate you, Geff.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p> - -<p>The uncle had left Geoffrey a sum that for the forwarding of the frugal -student’s worldly ambition was more than adequate—one thousand pounds.</p> - -<p>‘And I,’ said Geff, his ice-cold fingers returning his cousin’s grasp -firmly, ‘congratulate you!’</p> - -<p>There must have been some modulation in his voice, some look on his -haggard face, that supplemented these four words, strongly.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot changed colour.</p> - -<p>‘What, on Lilith?’ he asked, shifting away, and bending over his -unfinished sketch. ‘It is to be good, like all my things, some day. A -new block in the pavement of the road to Hades! At present this left -arm, above the elbow, is, as you see, a libel on anatomy.’</p> - -<p>Geff followed him. He rested his hand on his cousin’s shoulder with -such emphasis that Gaston Arbuthnot had no choice but to look up.</p> - -<p>‘I congratulate you,’ he repeated very low, but with a concentrated -energy that infused meaning into each syllable ‘I congratulate you upon -your engagement to Dinah Thurston.’</p> - -<p class="space-above">So these visions of the past stood out; not merely with rigid -correctness of form, but with colour, with fragrance, with the stir -of human passion, the ring of human voices, to give them vitality. -By the time the last one had vanished—the rose-shaded lamps, the -actress in her frame, the clay-sketched Lilith, the yellow-backed -novels dissolving into the actual grays and greens of this Guernsey -moorland—Geoffrey found himself ringing, with a somewhat quickened -pulse, despite his indifference to every form of feminine caprice, at -the front bell of Tintajeux Manoir.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER V</span> <span class="smaller">MARJORIE</span></h2> - -<p>The door was opened by a French serving-man, who bestowed on Geoffrey -a bow such as valets used to copy from their masters in days when the -first country in Europe possessed a manner. Had not Sylvestre made -the Grand Tour with the Reverend Andros Bartrand more than half a -century before the present time! He was clad in a faded livery of puce -and silver, wore long white locks that in this uncertain light gave -Geoffrey the notion of a pigtail and hair powder, and had a wrinkled -astute face, in which official decorum and a certain thin twinkle of -humour, if not of malice, contended together agreeably for precedence.</p> - -<p>‘Monsieur demands these ladies?’—from her earliest years Marjorie -Bartrand had received a kind of spurious chaperonage through this -plural phrase of Sylvestre’s. ‘Will Monsieur give himself then the -trouble to enter?’</p> - -<p>The look of the old manoir was cheery; its atmosphere was sun-warmed. -And still the prospect of his approaching ordeal chilled Geoffrey’s -courage. The thought of standing before Miss Bartrand on approval -caused him to pass a bad five minutes, as he paused in the -drawing-room, whether Sylvestre had ushered him, for her coming.</p> - -<p>Could the initial letters of his terrible pupil’s character be -deciphered, as one constantly hears it asserted of women,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> through the -outward and visible presence of the house she inhabited?</p> - -<p>The Tintajeux drawing-room was over-vast for its height. It opened -towards the south, upon the cedar-shaded lawn; it communicated through -a double row of fluted pillars with a smaller apartment towards the -west. The uncarpeted floors were of oak, black from age, fragrantly -and honestly beeswaxed, as floors used to be when Sylvestre was a -boy. Nothing like your gray-headed butler for keeping up conservative -habits of industry among the servants of a younger generation! Over the -chimneypiece and doors were half moons, those graceful ‘lunettes’ of -a hundred years ago, carved in bas-relief and tinted in flesh colour. -The lace window draperies, looking as though they must fall to pieces -at a touch, were relieved by an occasional fold of rich-hued crimson -silk. Venetian mirrors hung at all available points along the tarnished -white and gold walls. On either side the mantelpiece were miniatures of -eighteenth-century Bartrands in velvets and brocades, no prefiguring -of destiny looking out from their unconcerned, half-closed patrician -eyes. In the centre stood a grand buhl clock, its design a band of -Cupids hurling down rose leaves on some unseen object (the guillotine, -perhaps) behind the dial.</p> - -<p>In each of the deeply bowed windows stood a Petit Trianon gilt basket. -They were full of odorous roses, pressed close together, as cunningly -set roses ought to be, and showing no green between their damask and -pink and faintly yellow petals.</p> - -<p>As Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s eyes took in one after another of these -details, the room seemed to him a piece of special pleading for the -whole past Bartrand race. He stood here in a world that knew no better! -He was amidst the shades of a generation which had heroically paid the -price of its misdeeds. And the fancy, true or false, predisposed him -towards the present owners of Tintajeux. They had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> at least, he felt, -the fascination of a pathetic background. Rare charm to an imaginative -man whose business has led him among the dusty tracks of our modern, -low-horizoned English life!</p> - -<p>Moving to a window, Geff looked forth across lawn, garden, orchard, -upon as fair a sweep of sapphire as ever gladdened human eyes; for here -in the heart of the Channel you got beyond the North Sea’s yellowish -green, and have real deep ocean blue. In the foreground, so near indeed -that Geff instinctively stepped back within shelter of the window’s -embrasure, a clerically-dressed tall man was slowly pacing to and fro -on the grass. Somewhat rakishly placed on one side his head was a black -velvet skull-cap. An after-dinner glow shone on Andros Bartrand’s -bronzed four-score-year-old face; between his lips was a cigar. A -couple of excellently-bred brindled terriers slunk at his heels.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div class="i4">‘Ho, Œdipus,</div> -<div>Why thus delay our going?’</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Taking his cigar from his mouth, the Seigneur of Tintajeux recited a -passage from Sophocles in the Oxford Greek accents of sixty years ago, -looking about him with the leisurely physical enjoyment of the moment -that was more common, probably, at the time of his own youth—a time -when Göthe still walked upon the face of the earth—than it is now.</p> - -<p>Something towering, individual, audacious, was in the old figure. Geff -watched the Reverend Andros with admiration. A man so richly vitalised -that he could smoke an after-dinner cigar, declaim Greek verse for his -own pleasure at eighty—a man who had so proved himself superior to the -common shocks and reverses of human life—should be one worth knowing, -even though his fine moral equipoise must perforce be studied in the -murky and dubious atmosphere engendered by a girl’s temper. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p> - -<p>Tintajeux Manoir with its weather-bleached walls, its courtly, faded -drawing-room, its half lights, its rose scents, had already laid -hold of Geoffrey’s imagination. The Seigneur with his antiquated -Greek accent, his wise, subtly ironical old face, reciting Sophocles -under this late sky, had for him a personal interest. If only the one -jarring note need not be struck! If the capricious heiress were but a -full-fledged graduate, a resident M.A. say, within the distant walls of -St. Margaret’s Hall, or of Girton!</p> - -<p>Scarcely had the thought crossed Geff Arbuthnot’s mind when he heard -a door behind him open and close. Turning quickly, he saw, to his -pleasure, a child dressed in a white and red cotton frock, confined -by a bright-coloured ribbon round the slim waist, and who advanced to -him—a pair of brown, beautifully-carved small hands, outheld.</p> - -<p>‘You are ten minutes late, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’ The faintest -un-English accent was traceable in her voice. ‘But you are welcome, a -thousand times over, to Tintajeux.’</p> - -<p>Now Geff was a veritable child lover, and if this young person had only -been two years younger than she looked, he would, likelier than not, -have finished several of his life’s best chances by lifting her in his -arms and kissing her on the spot. With a little princess of thirteen -or fourteen one must be on one’s guard—for the first five minutes, at -least, of acquaintance.</p> - -<p>He took her offered hands and held them, enjoying the arch vivacity of -that upturned face, brimful of sunshine as a water lily’s cup; a face -good as it was sweet.</p> - -<p>‘Poor Cambridge B.A. Poor abashed big coach!’ thought Marjorie -Bartrand. ‘The worthy man must be used to cold receptions, I should -say, on his wife’s account. Now, let me set him at his ease.’</p> - -<p>Crossing to one of the Trianon baskets she softly signed to Geoffrey to -follow. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Do you see that “Bon Espoir,” Mr. Arbuthnot?’ A hawk moth hovered, at -the moment, with poised vibrating wings above the mass of roses. ‘In -Spain we have a superstition about the “Bon Espoir” when he enters a -house. If he is powdered with black we say, Bad luck! If he is powdered -with gold, Good! Ah,’ clapping her hands, ‘and our “Bon Espoir” is -gold! We are to be lucky, sir, you and I, in our dealings. Now I shall -tell you another Spanish saying. “To begin a friendship with a gift is -a happy omen.” Take this rose from me.’</p> - -<p>And with a movement of quick grace, most artless, most unconventional, -one of the finest roses in the basket was transferred by the pupil’s -hand to her future master’s button-hole.</p> - -<p>‘Grazias, muy Grazias,’ said Geff, hazarding the only two words of -Spanish he knew.</p> - -<p>Marjorie clasped her hands over her ears.</p> - -<p>‘You pronounce frightfully ill, though the words are true, Mr. -Arbuthnot. Decent people say the “z” in grazias sharp. They say -“mou-y.” Yes, sir,—and although you do teach me classics and -mathematics—Spanish and French are my natural languages, and I shall -always think myself free to give you a little lesson in pronunciation.’</p> - -<p>‘Classics and mathematics!’ stammered Geoffrey Arbuthnot, reddening -as the unwelcome image of Miss Bartrand was brought back to him. ‘I -believed—I mean, my impression was——’</p> - -<p>He stopped short.</p> - -<p>‘English University manners are not good,’ thought Marjorie, shaking -her head, pityingly. ‘But I like my poor B.A.—yes, just because -he is shy and rugged, and has that ugly scar across his forehead. -I respect him for his unpolished manner. I will call on his wife -to-morrow! My impression was,’ she remarked aloud, showing such a gleam -of ivory teeth in her smile, as rendered a large and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> rather square -mouth lovely—‘my impression was that I advertised in the <i>Chronique -Guernésiaise</i> for some one good enough to help me in my attempts at -work, and that Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot offered to be that some one. I -hope, sir, you do not repent you of the offer already?’</p> - -<p>So he stood in presence of the heiress; a little country girl with -sun-kissed hands, innocent of inkstains, a child’s fledgling figure, a -child’s delightful boldness, and not one barleycorn’s weight of dignity -in her composition. Should he, obeying first impulse, believe in her, -and so incur the fate of well-snubbed predecessors? Or should he arm -himself against the coquetry which this very frankness, this assumption -of simplicity in dress and speech, might mask?</p> - -<p>Long ago, in Gaston’s Cambridge rooms, Geff came across a French volume -entitled, ‘The Bad Things which Men have said of Woman.’ He extracted -therefrom, at more than one reading, such bitter nectar as his scanty -knowledge of the tongue allowed. Several of the maxims had slumbered -in his memory. They reawakened at this moment, and bade him play the -philosopher, remember at what price per hour the heiress was about to -hire him, and for what work. ‘Self-respect was in his keeping still,’ -cried half a dozen wicked old well-chosen French cynics in a breath. -‘Let him retain it.’</p> - -<p>And Geff followed his own impulse. He looked on Marjorie’s unblemished -prettiness, and believed in her—with a circumspect belief.</p> - -<p>‘One or two things, I know, want explaining.’ A wave of Miss Bartrand’s -hand signalled to Geoffrey to take a chair. Then she seated herself -opposite him, the rosy western afterglow falling directly on her clear, -truth-telling face.</p> - -<p>‘You thought my advertisement bizarre, did you not?’</p> - -<p>‘On the contrary, I thought it sensible and to the point.’</p> - -<p>Geff’s answer was given with stiff courtesy.</p> - -<p>‘But too independent; for I had never consulted my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> grandfather, -understand! I never spoke to the Seigneur till an hour ago, about my -having a coach. Tell me, you don’t think the worse of me for this?’</p> - -<p>Had he fallen asleep, lying among the blue-leaved campanulas on the -moor with the waving sedges at hand, with the falcon soaring high -overhead; was this drawing-room, with its mirrors and rose-scents and -Cupids, a dream? Could it be possible that Marjorie Bartrand, the -heiress, who never bestowed a civil word upon any man, should plead, in -sober reality, for his, Geff Arbuthnot’s, good opinion?</p> - -<p>‘I am obliged to think and act for myself. There is my defence. My -grandfather, whom you will see presently, is clever—oh, cleverer than -any man in Guernsey, perhaps in Spain! Mathematics, classics—<i>you</i> -even could name no branch of learning, Mr. Arbuthnot, that grandpapa -has not.’</p> - -<p>‘Of that I am sure, Miss Bartrand.’</p> - -<p>‘He was known in Oxford sixty years ago. The revolution so disgusted my -great-grandfather with everything French that he turned Protestant out -of revenge. A mean action—say?’</p> - -<p>‘That depends upon the manner of conversion.’</p> - -<p>‘Well, he had come to be Seigneur of Tintajeux through the inheritance -of his Guernsey wife, and to be a proper Seigneur in this country you -should be a Reverend. How great-grandpapa got to be ordained I don’t -know. Andros, his son, was sent to Winchester and Oxford.’</p> - -<p>‘The Seigneur I am about to see?’</p> - -<p>‘Yes, and Andros became a fellow of his college. He was one of the -three best classics in Oxford. But he stands right away out of my -reach.’ Marjorie stretched up her slight arms as though pointing to the -inaccessible mental plane occupied by the Reverend Andros. ‘He lives -with the gifted people of sixty years ago. For me that is too old.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Rather,’ said Geff, unable, though he would fain stand on his dignity, -to repress a smile.</p> - -<p>‘Grandpapa is an eighteenth-century man. He was just born early enough -to be able to make that his boast. And he has eighteenth-century ideas. -“Unless a woman be a Madame de Staël,” says the Seigneur, “let her keep -silent. If she be a Madame de Staël, let her keep a thousandfold more -silent.” Now I,’ cried small Marjorie, ‘mean to make my voice heard. I -want to know nineteenth-century life straight through. I want to learn -facts, at first hand. As a matter of lesser moment, I want a degree. Do -you think London University would be beyond me?’</p> - -<p>‘I must know first,’ answered Geoffrey, ‘to what height of learning you -can reach on tiptoes.’</p> - -<p>A flash of indignation swept over Marjorie’s face. The possibilities of -temper showed round that acute, square-cut mouth of hers.</p> - -<p>‘It is correct masculine taste to laugh at a girl’s ambition, I -know! The Seigneur, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,—all have the same fine -generosity! But why do we lose time? Perhaps, if you will come to -the schoolroom, you will look over my books, sir. It is too late, of -course, to do any work to-night?’</p> - -<p>‘Not too late for me,’ answered Geoffrey, in his heart liking the girl -better and better. ‘I came out hoping we should begin to read at once. -My time is yours.’</p> - -<p>Miss Bartrand led the way, her face held somewhat aloft, into a room -plainly furnished as a study, and strewed with books and papers, on the -west side of the inner drawing-room. As Geoffrey followed, every sense -tempered to a keener edge than usual, he could not help remarking with -what curious grace Marjorie’s raven-black tresses were braided. He had -been to a few, very few, London entertainments in his life, had glanced -at most varieties of our current female ‘heads;’ none tolerable to -him beside a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> certain recollection of soft gold worn in little waves, -that way poor Dinah had with her curls, upon a Madonna forehead. But -Marjorie’s ebon locks gathered high, in one thick coil, upon the summit -of her head, compelled his admiration. The style was too foreign, -altogether, for English taste. And the white and red dress, the gaudy -waist ribbon, were too evidently got up for effect, Geoffrey decided, -now that he could draw breath and criticise. The complexion, too, to a -man who for years had had a living ideal of snow and rose-bloom before -him, was certainly sallow. And those great black eyes....</p> - -<p>Stopping short, Marjorie waited for her visitor on the schoolroom -threshold. At the moment he overtook her, she turned, looked up at him. -And behold! her eyes were blue; intensely blue as, I think, only Irish -or Spanish eyes ever are; with a sweep of jetty lash, with a hidden -laughter in them, although the possibilities of temper still lurked -round the corner of her lips.</p> - -<p>‘This is to be your torture chamber. From the time I was five I have -worked myself up to my present state of ignorance at that inky desk you -see, and under the rule of a long line of governesses, most of whom -gave me and themselves up in despair. Now put me to the test, if you -please, Mr. Arbuthnot. Don’t spare my feelings. Treat me as you would -treat any backward schoolboy.’</p> - -<p>And Geff Arbuthnot obeyed the command to the letter. He did not spare -her feelings.</p> - -<p>Marjory Bartrand’s attainments were to the last degree patchy and -scrappy; the typical attainments to be looked for in a quick, -self-willed child, indifferently taught by a succession of teachers, -and whose faulty studies had been supplemented by an avid, -indiscriminate consumption of good books.</p> - -<p>‘Your classics are weak, Miss Bartrand.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey remarked this, pushing papers and books aside, and looking -kindly across the table into his pupil’s face. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Oh! I never liked the subjects. I knew that you would say so.’</p> - -<p>With an effort Marjorie Bartrand kept her voice under control.</p> - -<p>‘But your classics are stronger than your mathematics.’</p> - -<p>‘Yes, Mr. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘You will have a great deal of work before you can bring either to—we -will not say a high, but an ordinary level.’</p> - -<p>‘Yes, Mr. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘You spoke of a London degree. Let us look at London matriculation -first. Children are trained at high schools for about six years, I -understand, for London matriculation. And many—more than a third—of -the candidates fail.’</p> - -<p>‘I spoke of London because London gives you letters after your name. -The older Universities would be more thought of in Spain. I have -grandpapa’s leave to go to Newnham or Girton when I am eighteen. The -first of all my governesses lives in Cambridge. So I should have <i>one</i> -friend there.’</p> - -<p>‘The Girton and Newnham work is on the same level as the other -colleges.’</p> - -<p>‘And you think that work beyond my reach?’</p> - -<p>Geff Arbuthnot thought that a girl with a head so graceful, with eyes -so blue, with soft brow gleaming under such a weight of dusky hair, -might be content amidst the flower-scents and cedar-shades of Tintajeux -Manoir, content to let Euclid and Greek particles go—to be a woman, to -accept the homely, happy paths wherein women may walk unguided by exact -science, or the philosophy of all the ancients.</p> - -<p>The opinions he knew were heterodox and not to be uttered, especially -by a man who, at five shillings an hour, had engaged himself to lighten -the thorny road that leads to knowledge. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Memory will get one through most exams., Miss Bartrand. You have a -good memory?’</p> - -<p>‘For all useless things, yes. In “Don Quixote,” for instance, you would -find it hard to puzzle me. You know a little Spanish?’</p> - -<p>‘Five words at most.’</p> - -<p>‘How deplorable! A person who has no Spanish is not quite in possession -of his faculties. If one had time to spare in these long summer days, -I——’</p> - -<p>Marjorie broke off abruptly, colouring to the roots of her hair, as -she remembered the existence of her tutor’s wife. A girl not ignorant -of Spanish only; a girl who could just overcome the difficulties of -the Prayer-book and Lessons, perhaps, or write a letter without any -glaringly bad spelling, on a push.</p> - -<p>‘If one had time to spare in these long summer days, Miss Bartrand?’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey Arbuthnot found a pleasure it had been hard to him to account -for in her confusion.</p> - -<p>‘I was going to say I would teach you Spanish. As if Spanish -mattered! As if there were not nobler, lovelier things in life than -book-learning. But that was a real Bartrand idea. We Bartrands, -mouldering among our owls in this old place, cannot see daylight clear. -We think too much of ourselves. Our minds are as narrow as our garden -paths. I teach you Spanish, indeed! I’ll tell you what I call that -proposal.’ She leaned across till her sweet bud of a face was close to -Geoffrey’s, and spoke with a suspension of the breath. ‘I call it a bit -of <i>devilish</i> Bartrand pride and stiff-neckedness.’</p> - -<p>Geff started, with a pantomime of horror, from the adjective italicised.</p> - -<p>‘You know the meaning of Tintajeux?—Tint-à-jeu in old Norman. You -English in Cornwall say Tintagel—the Devil’s castle. A fit abode for -us. Look at grandpapa!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> He quarrelled seven years ago with M. Noirmont, -the rector of our next parish, over a Latin quantity. Never in this -world will grandpapa speak again to that innocent old man.’</p> - -<p>‘A wrong quantity is no jesting matter,’ observed Geoffrey Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘Then he has three daughters, my aunts. Neither of the three has spoken -to the others or to him for five-and-twenty years. No vulgar quarrel -to start with. “We Bartrands wage war on a grand Napoleonic scale,” -says the Seigneur. “An exchange of reproachful epithets is sheer waste -of brain-power.” The marriage of each sister in succession wounded the -other sisters’ pride. All wounded grandpapa’s. It was quite simple.’</p> - -<p>‘You colour highly, Miss Bartrand.’</p> - -<p>‘I am giving you sketches from life. No colouring could be too high for -showing up our Bartrand traits, the little faults of our virtues, as -the French say, prettily.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey felt himself on the road to disenchantment. The girl might -have marvellous eyes, a wealth of dusky hair, tones of liquid music, -a sunburnt hand that was a poem. The heart within her was hard to -the core. Linda Thorne, by hidden affinity, perhaps, was not so very -far out in her judgments. Marjorie knew too much, had learned bitter -lessons in human nature, not from books, but from keen reading of the -men and women nighest to herself in blood.</p> - -<p>‘Yes, we think too highly of our small talents. I, with my shallowness, -to propose teaching a Bachelor of Arts anything! I ought to be grateful -to Mr. Arbuthnot for condescending to read with such a pupil. Now, -which three mornings in the week could you give me?’</p> - -<p>He could give her Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. They gravely -arranged their hours. They talked over the work—say, a book of Cicero, -the two first books of Euclid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>—to be looked over before their first -lesson. Then Geoffrey Arbuthnot rose to his feet. Putting on a staid -and tuitional manner, he stated that his terms in Guernsey, would be -five shillings, <i>British currency</i>, per hour.</p> - -<p>Marjorie’s face grew one hot blaze of shame.</p> - -<p>‘Oh! of course—please do not speak of money. It is far too little. It -is an honour, I mean, for me to learn, and I am coming——’</p> - -<p>She was just about to commit herself, and so considerably simplify -Geff’s position—just about to blurt out, ‘and I am coming to call upon -your wife,’ when a footstep, alert, though it had paced the earth for -more than eighty years, sounded on the garden path outside. The glass -door of the schoolroom was pushed open, and old Andros Bartrand walked -in.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER VI</span> <span class="smaller">TWO IN ARCADIA</span></h2> - -<p>An atmosphere of fresh country air, blent with tobacco smoke, -surrounded him, as we like to think it surrounded Parson Adams. He -saluted Geff with that nice mixture of personal reserve and general -expansiveness which among a bygone generation was called breeding. He -bestowed a partial smile on Marjorie (‘those Bartrand company smiles,’ -as she used to bemoan, when she was a younger child. ‘Counters that -I must make believe are sixpences until the visit is over, until the -round game melts back into our grim duel at solitaire’).</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Arbuthnot, I presume? Welcome to Tintajeux, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ He -shook Geff’s hand with a distant affability. ‘Glad always to see a man -from the Alma Mater in our little island. Oxford is not the Oxford of -my days, still——’</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Arbuthnot hails from Cambridge, grandpapa,’ shrieked Marjorie with -energy in the Seigneur’s deafer ear.</p> - -<p>‘Then, in one sense, Mr. Arbuthnot is to be congratulated, for -Cambridge is nearer to Newmarket. A bitter blow to the talent that -victory of Mademoiselle Ninette’s in the One Thousand, last April, was -it not?’</p> - -<p>‘The proverbial uncertainty of fillies retaining their form,’ -said Geoffrey. ‘The usual reason for strong fielding.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> Still, the -performance of Maydew in the Two Thousand was so good that the odds -seemed legitimate.’</p> - -<p>Geff Arbuthnot cared as much for horse-racing as for the native -industries of Japan. But the tastes of a man of fourscore must be -respected. And with a glance at the Seigneur of Tintajeux you could -detect the sporting element, softened, not ungracefully, through a -course of sixty years by the learning of the scholar and the quiet life -of the priest.</p> - -<p>‘You come over to England, of course, sir, for the big events of the -year?’</p> - -<p>‘Not I, not I. When you arrive at the age of a hundred you will find -yourself content with newspaper reports of most human goings on, great -or small. I have my books about me here, my farm, my dogs, a horse or -two, and my cure of souls. Marjorie, small witch, where are you? Did -you not say Mr. Arbuthnot was to take Holy Orders?’</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Arbuthnot is to cure bodies, not souls.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie’s answer was given in a tone of <i>altissimo</i> derision.</p> - -<p>Geff put himself through a little exercise of moral arithmetic; the -result required being the precise sum of dislike which a man of his -age could feel towards a scoffing girl of seventeen, a girl with -eyes like Marjorie’s, silken black hair, and exquisite hands. It was -not, perhaps, so large an amount as one might have looked for. ‘An -Æsculapius,’ observed the Reverend Andros. ‘You know the parable, Mr. -Arbuthnot? Two stalwart men, Nature and Disease, are fighting. A third -man, the Doctor, seizes his club and rushes into the <i>melée</i>, sometimes -hitting Disease and sometimes Nature. You are to be the man with the -club.’</p> - -<p>‘I am to be the man with the club,’ answered Geff, relishing the old -Seigneur’s manner. ‘As long as I confine myself to the setting of -broken bones, sir, I hope to do as little harm as may be.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘The doctors kill us no quicker than they used,’ admitted Andros -Bartrand liberally. ‘When I was an undergraduate they relied on their -brains, as you do now on your finger-tips, and I believe killed us no -quicker. You are an honours’ man, of course? At a hundred years old one -is naturally ignorant as to the University regulations of the times. I -know next to nothing of your Cambridge Triposes. You won your laurels, -I assume, among bones and minerals?’</p> - -<p>The Seigneur’s prejudices were mellow and crusted as his own port. -A born and passionate lover of classic literature, he regarded the -admission of natural science into the Universities as a mistake, a -sort of shuffle among examiners and Liberal Governments that enabled -lowly-born classes of men to take high degrees.</p> - -<p>‘Unfortunately for myself, I did not,’ said Geff. ‘When my real college -life was over I saw bread and cheese in a remote perspective, and -had to begin bones and minerals from their ABC. In my day I came out -eighth,’ and being exceedingly human, Geff’s face flushed a bit, ‘in -the Classical Tripos.’</p> - -<p>The Seigneur put his hand within the young man’s arm.</p> - -<p>‘Come for a walk with me, Mr. Arbuthnot. Eighth in the Classical -Tripos—eh! I will point out the limits of my vast estate to you. -Marjorie, small witch, go and set ready the tea-table. Mr. Arbuthnot -will spend the remainder of the evening with us.’</p> - -<p>The daylight by now had gone into odorous dew-freshened dusk; a big -solitary planet looked down upon the woods of Tintajeux. Geff felt -himself in a new world, a thousand miles removed from pale, work-a-day, -prosaic England. The affluence of air and sea, the largeness of sky, -took possession of him, played in his blood, evoked that precise -condition of mind and body which is so often at four-and-twenty the -prelude to human passion. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p> - -<p>The talk of Andros Bartrand accorded well with the scene and moment. -They spoke of men, measures, books—of books chiefly.</p> - -<p>‘I belong, really, to the eighteenth century,’ said the Seigneur, as, -with his hand on Geff’s arm, they paced the lawn’s goodly limits. Old -Andros had the vanity of his age in seeking to exaggerate it. He had -been known, or so Marjorie would affirm, to speak of himself as alive -at the dawn of the French Revolution. Perhaps you appreciated his -real age best when you reflected that the bride of his youth might -have been a contemporary of Emma Woodhouse! ‘I was born before moral -pulse-feeling came into fashion. This modern verse—“singing, maugre -the music”—don’t please me. I never mix my wines. I like to take my -verse and my philosophy separate. Hand-made paper, rough edges, vellum, -constitute poetry nowadays, don’t they!’</p> - -<p>‘The æsthetic fever is on us still, sir, I fear.’</p> - -<p>‘In regard to Church matters, I was middle-aged, mind, when Tract -90 decimated the country. Tractarian or Evangelical, Theist or -Pantheist—the Church went on quite as profitably before parsons began -calling each other by such a variety of names.’</p> - -<p>‘Names that all mean the same thing,’ Geoffrey suggested, ‘if men had -temper enough to examine them coolly.’</p> - -<p>‘Possibly. Let me direct your attention to my young wheat. You see it -in the enclosure, just between that red stable roof and the orchard. -I mean to cut my wheat with the Guernsey sickle, Mr. Arbuthnot, the -same pattern of sickle, it is believed, that was used under Louis XI. I -mean to get more for my wheat per quarter than any grower in England. -There is the advantage of being a Channel Island farmer. One may not -only be a Conservative, but, like certain great statesmen, make one’s -Conservatism pay.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p> - -<p>A resonant call from Marjorie summoned them before long to the -tea-table—a meal at which old Andros with his grand-seigneur air made -his guest pleasantly welcome. The dinner-hour at Tintajeux was five, -the ‘late dinner’ of Andros Bartrand’s youth. By half-past eight, in -this keen Atlantic air, broiled mullet, hot potato scones, with other -indigenous Guernsey dishes, were adjuncts to the tea-table which no -healthily-minded person could afford to despise. Afterwards came a -cigar smoked just inside the open French windows. ‘At a hundred years -old,’ the Seigneur apologised, ‘there was one thing a man might not -brave with impunity—night air.’ And then Geoffrey Arbuthnot prepared -to take his leave.</p> - -<p>Business-like, he reverted to pounds, shillings, and pence. It was -a settled thing that he should read classics and mathematics with -Miss Bartrand on three mornings of the week, at the sum (happily the -darkness veiled the blushes on Marjorie’s face) of six francs an hour.</p> - -<p>‘Classics and mathematics!’ cried old Andros, assenting to the money -part of the transaction with suave courtesy. ‘What will the little -witch do with classics and mathematics when she has got them?’</p> - -<p>‘Enter Newnham or Girton with them, in the first place,’ answered -Marjorie unhesitatingly.</p> - -<p>‘Newnham or Girton!’</p> - -<p>The unfavourable summing-up of all arguments that have been put forth -on the subject of woman’s higher education was in Andros Bartrand’s -enunciation of the words.</p> - -<p>‘Newnham and Girton send forth good men,’ remarked Geoffrey Arbuthnot. -‘In the future, sir, when the girls shall “make Greek Iambics, and the -boys black-currant jams,” we look forward confidently to seeing Girton -head of the river.’</p> - -<p>‘At my age I am unmoved by new theories,’ said old<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> Andros. ‘New facts -I am not likely to confront. There has never yet been a great woman -poet.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Browning, grandpapa.’</p> - -<p>‘Nor a great woman painter.’</p> - -<p>‘Rosa Bonheur.’</p> - -<p>‘Nor a discoverer in science.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Somerville.’</p> - -<p>‘Nor a solitary musical composer.’</p> - -<p>The girl was silent.</p> - -<p>‘Yet all these fields have been as open to them as to men, have they -not, witch?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie Bartrand had passed into the garden. She stood impatiently -tapping a slender foot on the turf and looking up, her arms folded, an -expression on her face curiously like that of old Andros, at a strip of -crescent moon that showed between the cedar branches.</p> - -<p>‘A new moon. I curtsey to her, twice, thrice, and I wish a wish!’</p> - -<p>‘Did you hear my question, witch? In poetry, art, music, have women not -had just as ample chances as men?’</p> - -<p>‘Spanish women have had no chances at all,’ cried Marjorie, raising her -tone, as she adroitly shifted her ground, after the manner of her sex. -‘For their sake I mean to work—yes, to get to the level of a B.A., -grandpapa, in spite of your most withering contempt.’</p> - -<p>‘For the sake of Spain, benighted Spain!’ remarked the Seigneur -genially. ‘My granddaughter’s blood is half Spanish, Mr. Arbuthnot. -I had a son once—an only son——’ Could it really be that Andros -Bartrand’s firm voice for a second faltered? ‘When he was no longer -a young man he went to Cadiz, for health’s sake, and married, poor -fellow, a Spanish girl who died at the end of the year. Marjorie -has stayed a few times among her mother’s family, and has gone -Spain-crazed, as you will soon find out for yourself.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Crazed!’ rang Marjorie’s tuneful voice through the night. ‘I want -to hold my hands out to my own people, yes, to teach, if I ever know -anything myself, among the girls of our poor benighted Spain. And I am -proud of my craziness. I thank you for the word, grandpapa. It is the -prettiest compliment.’</p> - -<p>The complexion of the family talk was threatening; Geoffrey Arbuthnot -hastened his adieux. But Andros had still a farewell shot to discharge -against the little witch.</p> - -<p>‘Our poor benighted Spain is the one country in Europe with a decent -peasantry of its own. Get Mr. Arbuthnot, get anyone who understands -the matter, to talk to you about the English ploughman, and compare -the two pictures. The Spanish peasant’s wife sews, knits, embroiders, -reads her Mass-book and can cook a capital stew. Her drink is water. -Infanticide is unknown. The men are hospitable, courteous, dignified. -Among benighted people like these, Marjorie Bartrand proposes to preach -the benefits of a liberal pauper education as exhibited in England.’</p> - -<p>By the time the Seigneur’s ironies came to an end Marjorie’s small -figure had vanished among the deepening shadows of the lawn. Fearful -of losing sight of her altogether—for, indeed, Marjorie Bartrand was -suggestive of something weird, sprite-like, and of a nature to take -other form at an hour when owls do fly—Geff bade his host a hasty -good-night and followed.</p> - -<p>The girl herself was invisible, but a clear childish voice chanted the -old ditty of Roland somewhere in the neighbourhood, ‘Like steel among -weapons, like wax among women.’ Or, as Marjorie sang with spirit:</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>‘Fuerte qual azero entre armas,</div> -<div>Y qnal cera entre las damas.’</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>‘I have found my gardening scissors, Mr. Arbuthnot,’ she cried, -emerging through the schoolroom window, a basket on her arm. ‘Flowers -smell sweetest that are cut<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> with the dew on them. I mean to cut some -roses and cherry-pie for—for——’</p> - -<p>‘Your wife,’ was on Marjorie’s lips, but she stopped herself abruptly, -all Cassandra Tighe’s warnings about Geoffrey’s domestic embarrassments -coming back to her.</p> - -<p>‘Let me help you,’ said Geoffrey. A minute later Marjorie, on tiptoe, -was vainly endeavouring to catch a bough of swaying yellow briar. ‘You -are just one foot too short to reach those roses, Miss Bartrand.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie sprang up in air. She plunged with bold final grasp among the -thorns, and succeeded in getting scratches destined to mark her right -hand for some weeks to come; scratches that might, perhaps, recall -this moment to both of them in the pauses of some tough mathematical -problem, some arid point in Latin grammar or Greek delectus.</p> - -<p>‘The result of over-vaulting ambition.’ Thus from his calm altitude of -six-foot-one Geff moralised. ‘How many roses am I to pick?’</p> - -<p>‘You are to pick three beauties!’ said Marjorie, somewhat crestfallen. -‘Won’t you have the scissors? These briars prick cruelly.’</p> - -<p>But Geff wanted no scissors; his skin, so he told her, was of about the -same texture as a stout dog-skin glove. When the briar-roses were duly -laid in Marjorie’s basket he put on the grave manner of his profession. -It was his duty as a surgeon to make immediate inspection of her -injuries.</p> - -<p>‘You are losing a good deal of blood, Miss Bartrand.’ Taking both her -hands, he held them up, in the streak of moonlight, not very distant -from his lips. ‘But while there is life there is hope. Three, four, -deep wounds! For my sake, don’t faint, if you can help it.’</p> - -<p>‘Faint!’ Marjorie’s laugh was a thing good to hear; a thing fresh as -the chatter of birds in April, pungent as the smell of new-turned -earth. ‘I wonder whether any of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> old Bartrands ever fainted. I -mean, <i>before</i> they were guillotined! Confess, we are queer specimens, -grandpapa and I, are we not, sir?’ Asking Geff this question, she -left her hands in his simply until he should choose to let them go. -The first ineffable coldness of girlhood was on her. She knew no more -of passion than did her own roses. ‘Not very pleasant people to live -with—say! in an out-of-the-way Guernsey manoir.’</p> - -<p>‘So much must depend on the taste of him who survived the ordeal.’ -Geoffrey Arbuthnot quietly surrendered the slim hands resting -unresponsively in his. ‘At the present moment life in an out-of-the-way -Guernsey manoir seems to me—endurable.’</p> - -<p>A stronger word was very near escaping Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s lips.</p> - -<p>‘You are taken in by our picturesqueness,’ said Marjorie with decision. -‘England must be an astonishing ugly country, judging from the effect -our bit of Channel rock appears to make upon English people. Now, to -me, who have seen Spain, it is all so cramped, so sea-weedy. Look -away to the left there—sea. To the right—sea. Move a little step -nearer—close here, don’t be afraid, and look where I point across the -moor—sea again. Let an out-and-out big wave come some day, and the -whole nation would be submerged, like Victor Hugo’s hero.’</p> - -<p>The glimpse of silver-gray tranquil moor brought back before -Geoffrey the thyme-grown bank, the falcon high poised, the tuft of -wood-rush—associated with the last rose visions of the squalid -Barnwell pavements, of the men and women, forced deserters from the -army of progress, who dragged out their span of human existence there.</p> - -<p>‘I should like to know what you are thinking about,’ Marjorie asked, -noting with a child’s acumen the changed expression of his face.</p> - -<p>‘I am thinking about England, about the hard battles<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> some English -men and women have to go through with. A night like this,’ said -Geff, ‘brings sharp thoughts before one of one’s own life, one’s own -uselessness.’</p> - -<p>In an instant Marjorie was softened. Tears almost rushed to her eyes. -Her thoughts, true to her better self, followed Geoffrey’s as if by -instinct. Then the good impulse passed. It entered her wilful head that -this excellent young gentleman from Cambridge meant to sermonise her. -She resolved to shock him.</p> - -<p>‘I used to feel goody-goody myself, very long ago. You would not -believe it, sir, but as a child I was pious.’</p> - -<p>‘I believe it thoroughly,’ answered Geff, grave of countenance.</p> - -<p>‘When I wanted my lettuce-seed to come up I would perform little acts -of propitiatory contrition to Pouchée, the poor old Pouchée who lives -in Cambridge now. When grandpapa went out shooting I carried his -game-bag, and used to offer fervent prayers, whenever the dogs came -to a point, that he might kill his bird. Facts undermined my faith. -Sometimes the point was false. Sometimes grandpapa missed his aim. -Chaffinches and slugs ate my lettuce-seed. I turned infidel. I have -remained one. Grandpapa says I have the hardest flint soul in, or out -of, Christendom. Still, that is one Bartrand judging of another.’</p> - -<p>‘I am not a Bartrand,’ remarked Geff Arbuthnot. ‘I do not think you -have a hard flint soul. You believe in wishes addressed to a strip of -new moon, for instance?’ They were standing at the highest point of -Tintajeux; a small plateau, the approach to which was fashioned on the -exploded system of puzzle or maze. Long before Marjorie’s lifetime this -plateau—who shall say on what morning of youthful human hope—had been -christened Arcadia! The country-folk around Tintajeux called it Arcadia -still. Cool draughts of air were stirring from the moorland. They -brought fragrance of distant hayfields, honeyed whiffs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> of the syringa -hedges that formed the maze. Would Marjorie ever curtsey to future -moons without the scent of hay, the over-sweetness of blown syringa -returning on her senses?</p> - -<p>‘Some day,’ observed Geff, as she maintained a caustic silence, ‘I mean -you to tell me what you wished for, a quarter of an hour ago, under the -cedars.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie Bartrand turned from him, the determination of a long lineage -of dead, high-tempered Bartrands on her face. To command, implied or -spoken, had she never yet bowed, during her seventeen years of life, -without asking the reason why.</p> - -<p>She asked nothing now. Her cheeks—happily, the starlight betrayed no -secrets—were glowing damask. For the girl knew, deep in her fiery -heart, what the wish was; a wish by no means unconnected with her -feelings towards Geoffrey Arbuthnot.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER VII</span> <span class="smaller">ON THE BRINK OF A FLIRTATION</span></h2> - -<p>Meanwhile the solstice night grew at each instant more purple, more -mysterious. Geff felt himself in love with midsummer starlight, -with Guernsey, with Tintajeux. Marjorie he would fain have engaged -for a game of hide-and-seek among the neighbouring orchards, or of -follow-my-leader along the beach, white in the crescent moon’s shining. -For what was this poor small heiress but a child, with a child’s cold, -sweet, unopened heart, a child’s quick temper, a child’s readiness for -play, in whatever shape play might happen to be offered her!</p> - -<p>‘You will not tell me your wish to-night, Miss Bartrand. Never mind. -You will tell it me some day. To show you I bear no malice, you shall -hear mine. My present wish, as I must leave Tintajeux, is to return to -Miller’s Hotel by the longest road possible. You could point it out to -me?’</p> - -<p>‘I should rather think so!’ cried Marjorie, brusquely. ‘If you don’t -mind a quarter of an hour’s nice hard scramble, your plan is to go up -the Gros Nez cliffs, about a mile from this, and so back to your hotel -along the edge of the steep. You are tolerably steady on the legs, I -suppose?’</p> - -<p>Tolerably! A too shallow purse, a too well endowed brain had -combined to force Geoffrey Arbuthnot out of the ranks of the big and -world-renowned athletes. But ask the All England football team, ask -the men against whom the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> All England football team has played, if -Arbuthnot of John’s be tolerably steady on his legs!</p> - -<p>‘I don’t know that I am unusually feeble, Miss Bartrand. My weakness, -perhaps, is more of the nerves than the limbs. Point out some path to -me that you and the Seigneur are in the habit of treading, assure me, -on your honour, that you think that path safe, and perhaps I shall have -courage to attempt it.’</p> - -<p>‘Well, when you get free of Tintajeux you must go straight across the -corner of the moor to Les Hüets. At the end of a few hundred yards you -will find four water-lanes meet. You must take the one that seems to -lead away from Petersport, and follow it until you get to Tibot. You -know Tibot, of course?’</p> - -<p>‘I am shamefully ignorant, Miss Bartrand. I do not know Tibot.’</p> - -<p>‘After that, a brisk two minutes’ walk down, down, through spongy wet -earth churning at every step over your ankles, brings you to the shore. -Right in face of you are the Gros Nez heights, and if you get to the -top all right (even in broad day it is not considered a very safe climb -for strangers), your road home will lie straight before you, along the -edge of the cliffs.’</p> - -<p>Geff Arbuthnot clasped his forehead.</p> - -<p>‘When I get clear of Tintajeux I must go across the moor to an -unpronounceable place where four water-lanes meet. Of these I must -choose the one that looks least likely to lead anywhere. Then down, -down, through spongy wet earth churning up to my ankles at every step, -until I catch sight of the cliffs where I shall finally break my neck. -Miss Bartrand, will you allow me to ask a favour?’</p> - -<p>‘Doubtless.’ A gleam of white teeth showed the heartiness of the girl’s -amusement. ‘It rests with me, though,’ she added maliciously, ‘to say -“yes” or “no” to it.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Unfortunately it rests always with feminine caprice to say “yes” or -“no” to the proposals made by men.’</p> - -<p>The hour, or the moonlight, or some curiously occult and unknown -influence must have been telling on Arbuthnot of John’s. He stood on -the brink of a flirtation.</p> - -<p>‘As you may have proved to your cost, sir,’ thought Marjorie, not quite -without a movement of pity. ‘As you may have proved in that hour—I -wonder how many years ago—when the Devonshire peasant girl decided on -becoming Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘And my proposal is that you come with me, at least as far as the -unpronounceable meeting of the water-lanes; start me on my downward -spongy way to the sea, and then, unless I descend too quickly from the -Gros Nez cliffs, I shall have a fair chance of finding my road home.’</p> - -<p>To an agonised wife! It might be—so mixed is human happiness, thought -Marjorie ironically—to the least little domestic lecture on the -subject of late hours.</p> - -<p>‘Feminine caprice,’ she observed gravely, ‘is in your favour for once, -Mr. Arbuthnot. I will look after your interests as far as Tibot. After -that, your fate will be in your own hands. On the outside chance of -your getting back alive to your hotel, I may as well present you with -some rather better flowers.’</p> - -<p>She flitted about, moth-fashion, from one garden-plot to another, -ever rifling the choicest and sweetest bloom of each for her basket. -Afterwards, the lodge gates passed, she accompanied Geoffrey across a -strip of common land and down a few hundred yards of darksome lane to -the Hüets, from which point the trickle of a little moorland stream -guided them to Tibot. Here, emerging into such light as the young -moon yielded, the moment came for bidding good-night. And here an -exceedingly delicate question in social tactics presented itself with -force to Marjorie’s attention. What decorous but strictly indirect -message ought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> to accompany her gift of flowers to Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s -wife?</p> - -<p>‘You don’t mind carrying things, I hope, sir, as long as they are not -from the butcher’s, or done up in a brown paper parcel? Guernsey is not -Cambridge, you know. Grandpapa and I carry everything on the end of our -walking stick, from a conger eel downwards.’</p> - -<p>‘I will carry a conger eel for you, any day, with delight,’ said -Geoffrey.</p> - -<p>‘I shall remember that speech. I shall present you with a conger eel -four feet long, in the market, and watch to see you carry him to your -hotel. To-night I only want you to take these flowers for me to—to -some one in the town,’ observed Marjorie, with staid composure.</p> - -<p>But she was in no courageous mood, really. She listened as though -she would ask counsel of it to the familiar little black-veined moor -stream, eddying away with chill clear voice to the sea.</p> - -<p>‘You have only to command me,’ said Geoffrey, with an absurd, a -reasonless sense of personal disappointment, ‘and I obey. The address -of your friend is——’</p> - -<p>‘You will have no difficulty about the address. Indeed, I am afraid,’ -stammered Marjorie, ‘that at present, for another few days, I have -scarcely a right to speak of the person as my friend. The difficulty -is, sir, how will you carry the flowers? In your hands, you say! A -man who would climb Gros Nez cliffs must pretty nearly hang on by his -eyelashes, like the heroes in Jules Verne’s stories; at times he wants -as firm a grip, I can tell you, as all his ten fingers can give.’</p> - -<p>‘If I surmount these terrific perils, if I reach Petersport safely, -your flowers will share my fate. Don’t be anxious about them, Miss -Bartrand.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie paused, her face set and thoughtful. After a minute or -two, with the unconsciousness of self, the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>ignorance of possible -misconstruction which rendered her actions so absolutely the actions -of a child, she unloosened her waist ribbon. A length of twine lay in -her basket. With this she bound the flower stalks firmly together, then -knotting her ribbon, she attached it in a long loop to the bouquet.</p> - -<p>‘Before setting foot on the cliff’s you must pass the loop round your -neck—so.’ For Geffs better guidance she pantomimed her instructions -round her own girlish throat. ‘By that contrivance you leave your hands -free. And you must take care of my ribbon, if you please, sir, and -bring it back next lesson. It is a bit of real Spanish peasant ribbon -one of my cousins bought for me in Cadiz. A thing not to be replaced in -these parts of the world. Good-night, Mr. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘You have not said half enough. You have not even told me whom your -flowers are for.’</p> - -<p>‘My flowers are for a person I hope, before long, to know and like -well.’</p> - -<p>‘The description is tantalising. It would scarcely furnish me, I fear, -with the one name and address of the person wanted, among all the -narrow, twisting streets of Petersport.’</p> - -<p>‘The flowers are, Mr. Arbuthnot, cannot you guess—for whom they are -meant?’</p> - -<p>‘I am ill at originating ideas, Miss Bartrand. I can guess nothing.’</p> - -<p>‘Because you cannot, or will not, which?’</p> - -<p>‘Because I cannot, because I am blankly unimaginative.’</p> - -<p>For a few moments Marjorie stood masterfully inactive. Then she flew -discreetly back into the shadow of the lane. On a slightly rising mound -she stopped. What light there was touched the upper half of her face, -and Geoffrey could see her eyes. He knew that her mood, for Marjorie -Bartrand, was a softened one. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘The flowers are for yourself, Mr. Arbuthnot,’ so her voice rang -through the sea-scented night. ‘For your better self, you understand. -Don’t lose my ribbon, and, if you can help it, don’t fall over the Gros -Nez cliffs. Good-night.’</p> - -<p>And with a wave of her hand—though he was blankly unimaginative, -Geoffrey believed it might be with a wafted kiss from her finger -tips—she disappeared.</p> - -<p>Geff Arbuthnot’s first experience in snubbing had come to an end.</p> - -<p>Pondering over many things, most of all over the cruelties and caprices -of youthful woman, he ran lightly down the ankle-deep water-lane, then -across a miniature bay of argent, shell-strewn sands, to the base of -Gros Nez cliffs. The ridge rose sheer above his head, a dark wall of -over a hundred and fifty feet, polished as glass to the limit of the -breakers, but, above that line, fissured, lichened, rough.</p> - -<p>Miss Bartrand’s sarcasm had not exaggerated the gravity of the ascent. -The man who in an uncertain light should successfully scale Gros Nez -must have not only his hands and feet, but his wits thoroughly under -command.</p> - -<p>And here the loop of ribbon attached to Marjorie’s flowers proved of -great use.</p> - -<p>I have tried to represent in Geoffrey a man little moved by the -nicer shades of cultivated or hothouse feeling, a man more likely to -be wrapped up in one grim fact of the mortuary or dissecting-room -than in all the pretty uncertainties of sentiment put together. But -to-night a change had certainly passed over him. Before beginning his -climb he found a delicate pleasure in suspending Marjorie’s bouquet, -exactly in the mode her fingers had taught him, round his neck. He -found a pleasure—the cliff’s dizzy height hardly won—in unknotting -her ribbon, smoothing it out from its creases with a hand unversed -in millinery tasks, finally in hiding it away, jealously, in the -breast-pocket of his jacket. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p> - -<p>Concerning this jealousy he asked himself neither why nor wherefore. In -transitional moments like these an old tender image fading even as a -new one rises above the horizon, few of us in our inmost thoughts care -to be motive-seekers. Geoffrey knew that he would not for an empire -have let Dinah see that ribbon to-night, or any other night. He knew -that between him and the little girl with carved sweet lips and ebon -hair there existed a secret. He knew that tutoring was a far pleasanter -business than he had bargained for, also that the flowers Marjorie had -given him, and which he carried in his hand, smelt of Tintajeux.</p> - -<p>But he took out his embroidered tobacco pouch, his short black briar, -notwithstanding. He smoked his cavendish vigorously as he trudged -back to Petersport. Arbuthnot of John’s might stand on the brink of a -flirtation. He was not as yet in a state that need occasion a man’s -staunchest bachelor friends anxiety.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER VIII</span> <span class="smaller">CROSS-STITCH</span></h2> - -<p>Dinah was still busied over her embroidery frame when Geoffrey’s -entrance brought the coolness of the night, the wholesome odour of -heliotropes and roses, into the chronically dinner-oppressed atmosphere -of Miller’s Hotel.</p> - -<p>Her blonde youthful face looked weary. The lightless, far-away -expression, which you may always observe as a result of unshed tears, -was in the glance she lifted to Geff.</p> - -<p>‘What, you are up still! Do you know that it is past eleven, Mrs. -Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>Four years ago, when Geoffrey first saw Gaston and Dinah in the bloom -of wedded happiness not two months old, it was decreed by Gaston, least -jealous of men, that his wife and cousin should call each other by -their Christian names.</p> - -<p>Upon Dinah’s joyous lips Geoffrey, without an effort, became at once a -familiar household word—dear good old Geff, through whom, obliquely, -her introduction to the husband she passionately loved had come about!</p> - -<p>But Geoffrey, after a few stammering, painful efforts, abandoned the -calling of Dinah by her Christian name for ever.</p> - -<p>He could and did call her so to Gaston only. He intended to stand by -her heroically, absent, or in her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> presence; intended, God helping him, -to be the good brotherly influence of her life and of her husband’s. -Looking upon the eyes that met his with such cruel self-possession, -upon the lips which he had once madly coveted to press, Geoffrey -Arbuthnot realised that he could never feel towards Dinah as a brother -feels. He resolved that his speech, knowingly, should not play traitor -to his heart. Gaston’s wife must, for him, be coldly, stiffly, -conventionally, ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ until his life’s end.</p> - -<p>‘Yes, I am up still, Geff. There’s no chance of seeing Gaston till long -past midnight. A lady like Mrs. Thorne, accustomed to India and Indian -military society,’ said Dinah, ‘would be sure to keep late hours. So -I thought I would shade my poppies straight through. I must wait for -daylight to put in the pinks and scarlets.’</p> - -<p>Crossing to the table where Dinah was laboriously stitching, Geoffrey -seated himself at her side. He looked attentively down at her work with -those acute, deep-browed gray eyes of his.</p> - -<p>‘Your embroidery is very——’ he was about to say ‘beautiful,’ but -checked himself. The star-strewn night, the hay-scents along the -cliffs, the roses of Tintajeux were in his soul, lifting it above -sympathy with poor Dinah’s wool-work. ‘Your embroidery is very delicate -and smooth,’ he went on truthfully. ‘And how quick you are about it! -You only began the top yellow rose when I stayed with you and Gaston, I -recollect, last Easter.’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s pieces of work were on a scale that carried one back to -the female industry of the Middle Ages, yet was their ultimate use -nebulous. Vast ottomans, vast cushions, yards of curtain border, imply -a mansion. And the Arbuthnot’s mansion at present existed not. But on -what else should a childless woman, cut off from household duties, not -over fond of books, forlornly destitute of acquaintance, and with an -ever-absent husband, employ herself? </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p> - -<p>Once, long ago, the poor girl made Gaston a set of shirts, as a -birthday surprise. These shirts were lovingly, exquisitely stitched, as -Dinah Thurston had been taught to stitch in her childhood. They were -also a consummate failure. As a monument of patience, he observed, they -were beyond praise. As a fit—‘Well,’ said Gaston, kissing her cheek in -careless gratitude, ‘it is not a case of Eureka.’</p> - -<p>He never wore them, never knew on what day, in what manner, his wife, -fired by sharp disappointment, got them out of existence. Simply, the -shirts did not adjust themselves well round his, Gaston Arbuthnot’s, -shapely throat. It was not a case of Eureka. The subject interested him -no farther.</p> - -<p>Plain sewing for grown men and women, Dinah promptly decided, was -fruitless labour. Of dressmaking proper Gaston would never (excusably, -perhaps) suffer a trace in his rooms. And so, the sweet fashioning of -tiny children’s clothes not belonging to her lot, Dinah Arbuthnot it -would seem had no choice, no refuge on the planet she inhabited, but -cross-stitch.</p> - -<p>At moments of more than common loneliness she would feel that her life -was being recorded—mournfully, for a life of two-and-twenty—in these -large and not artistic embroideries. It seemed as though she stitched -with a double thread, as though a dull strand of autobiography for ever -intertwined itself among the flaunting roses, the impossible auriculas -and poppies that grew beneath her hands.</p> - -<p>The piece at which she now worked was begun in London, at a time when -Gaston used to dine out regularly every night of his life, and when -his days, from various art callings, were, perforce, spent apart from -her. As Geoffrey spoke, she could see her St. John’s Wood lodging, her -afternoon walks in the Regent’s Park, worked gloomily in with every -shade of those topmost yellow roses. After<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> London came a short stay at -Weymouth. Here Gaston had a ‘convict study’ to make, on order, and with -his usual good luck discovered he knew several capital fellows in the -regiment quartered at Portland. The capital fellows naturally delighted -in having the versatile artist at mess, and Dinah passed almost as many -lonely evenings as she had done in London. It was in Weymouth, she -remembered, that her auriculas, her impossible auriculas, began to take -colour and shape. And now, in Guernsey....</p> - -<p>The heavy drops gathered in Dinah Arbuthnot’s eyes; pushing her work -frame away, she turned to Geoffrey. The lamp shone on her full. The -delicate outlines of her cheek and throat stood out before him in -startling whiteness.</p> - -<p>‘And so you have come back from your coaching, Geff.’ Her tone was -quiet. Long practice had taught Dinah to repress that sound detested by -Gaston—as by all husbands—tears in the voice. ‘How do you like the -sensation of being snubbed by an heiress?’</p> - -<p>‘Pretty well, I thank you,’ said Geff. ‘Snubbing, as you know, Mrs. -Arbuthnot, is a sensation I got used to in my youth.’</p> - -<p>‘Was the heiress very bad? Did she make you feel miserably -uncomfortable?’</p> - -<p>‘No, I cannot go so far as that. I cannot say that I felt miserably -uncomfortable.’</p> - -<p>‘But you don’t care for her? If you keep the work on, it will not be -for pleasure?’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s heart was fuller than it could hold with love for her husband. -Geoffrey was nothing to her, except the best friend that she and Gaston -possessed. Yet she asked this question quickly, with interest. In her -secret consciousness it was an accepted fear, perhaps, though Dinah -knew it not, that Geoffrey would never care, as men care who mean to -marry, for any girl. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Work that is to be decently done must always be done for pleasure.’</p> - -<p>It was Geff Arbuthnot who uttered the aphorism.</p> - -<p>‘And your evening, snubbing and all, has been passed pleasantly?’</p> - -<p>‘I have breathed ampler air,’ Geoffrey made evasive apology, man-like. -‘I have seen more blue sea and sky than ever in my life before. Miss -Bartrand’s snubbing was—not beyond my strength. The Seigneur of -Tintajeux is a specimen of the old scholarly, high-and-dry parson, -worth walking any number of Guernsey miles to see. Some day, Mrs. -Arbuthnot, I shall take you with me to Tintajeux.’</p> - -<p>‘To come in for my share of snubbing too?’</p> - -<p>Dinah asked the question, faintly colouring.</p> - -<p>‘Marjorie is a frank, generous-hearted child. You cannot think of her -in the light of a grown-up woman. She is a Bartrand, with the faults -and virtues of her inheritance, the faults—pride and temper—visibly -on the surface. I am very sure,’ added Geff, bending his head, as -though to examine the intricate shading of Dinah’s poppies, ‘that you -and Marjorie Bartrand might be fast friends, if you chose.’</p> - -<p>‘I have no friends,’ said Dinah, ‘except my own people, down home,’ of -whom, in truth, Gaston allowed her to see little enough,’and—and you, -Geff.’</p> - -<p>The voice was unfaltering, the full good mouth was steady. Dinah -made the admission, not as a matter of complaint, but of fact, and -Geoffrey’s heart fired.</p> - -<p>‘That “friendlessness” is the one huge mistake of your life,’ he -exclaimed. ‘Gaston is not selfish, would not be selfish, unless your -unselfishness forced him into being so. You should never have allowed -this morbid love of solitude to grow on you. You ought to assert -yourself, to go into the world at Gaston’s side, whether you like it or -not.’</p> - -<p>‘I should not like it now. When I was a girl, when we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> first married, -my heart was light, against what it is now. It was the end of the -London season, you remember. No, I don’t suppose you do?’</p> - -<p>Did he not, though—that late July time when, after seeing the marriage -ceremony over, he went back to his scholar’s attic in John’s; that Long -Vacation when the skies were brazen to him, when day and night alike -were one feverish pain!</p> - -<p>‘It was the end of the London season, and when Gaston took me to the -Opera and twice down to dinner at Richmond I did feel,’ confessed Dinah -with humility, ‘that I had it in me to be fond of junketing,—oh, -Geff, there’s one of my country words! luckily Gaston can’t hear -it—of pleasure, I mean, and society. But the taste has died.’ Of what -lingering, cruel death, who should know better than Geoffrey? ‘Ladies -of my husband’s class have not called upon me. I have neither rank, -talent, nor a million. Without these, Gaston says, no woman can make -her way in the English world.’</p> - -<p>Hot words were ready to rush from Geoffrey’s lips, but he kept them -back. To remain on equal terms with husband and wife in this strange -triangular friendship did sorely tax his powers of self-repression at -times.</p> - -<p>‘Gaston would rejoice in knowing that your life was cheerfuller, no -matter how the cheerfulness was brought about. He has told me so, -often. Now, here, in Guernsey, eight sea-going hours removed,’ said -Geff lightly, ‘from English Philistinism, what should hinder you from -joining in any little bit of “junketing” that may offer itself?’</p> - -<p>‘The hindrance of having no introduction to the Guernsey ladies.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Thorne has called on you.’</p> - -<p>‘On Gaston. He is dining with them now. He will dine with them four -evenings a week. Yes,’ Dinah’s voice fell, ‘I know, at a glance, the -kind of clever person who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> will amuse my husband. Mrs. Thorne is one of -them. She is magnetic.’</p> - -<p>‘With the magnetism that repels rather than attracts,’ remarked Geff.</p> - -<p>‘That is your feeling about her. You and Gaston would be safe not to -admire the same woman.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey Arbuthnot was mute. Although his face was too sunburnt to -admit of visible deepening in hue, it may be that just then Geoffrey -Arbuthnot blushed.</p> - -<p>‘You have no change in your character. You could be content (a happy -thing for your wife, whenever Mrs. Geoffrey appears on the scene) with -one mood, one voice, one face, day after day, before you for forty -years. Is not that true?’</p> - -<p>‘I am not an artist,’ said Geff, after a pause. ‘For a humdrum -man, prosaically occupied, the one face, Mrs. Arbuthnot, the one -voice,’—ah, fool that he was! his own voice trembled—‘might -constitute as much happiness as we are likely to taste, any of us, this -side death.’</p> - -<p>‘And Gaston is an artist in every fibre.’ Poor Dinah’s estimate of Mr. -Gaston Arbuthnot was invariably Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot’s, except that she -believed in him a vast deal more than he believed in himself. ‘I ought -to know that my dull days, my silent evenings, are matters of course. -It is not Gaston’s fault that he can only get inspiration through -change. Some day, when the world is bowing down before a really great -work of his, my hour of triumph will come. Who knows, Geff, if Gaston -had married in his own class, if he and his wife had led just the usual -life of people in society—it may be his genius would not have fared so -well!’</p> - -<p>Dinah never looked more perilously lovely than when, with flushed -cheeks and kindling eyes, she spoke aloud of her ambitions for her -husband. The poor girl’s whole life lay in her one, passionate, -oft-bruised affection. More than<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> common beauty, a look of divine, -all-hoping, all-forgiving love, shone on her face at this instant.</p> - -<p>Geff Arbuthnot recollected it wanted only ten seconds to midnight, -and that he must fly. Had not long habit trained him to recognise the -moment when flight was his surest, his only wisdom!</p> - -<p>‘You and Gaston understand each other, as no third person can hope to -do, Mrs. Arbuthnot. I consider you the two happiest mortals alive, -though perhaps you do not know the extent of your own happiness.’</p> - -<p>‘And you are off to your pillow, to dream of the heiress who has not -snubbed you,’ said Dinah, as he moved from her side. ‘Why, Geff!’ For -the first time she caught sight of the bouquet, somewhat cunningly held -in shadow hitherto. ‘What roses, what jasmines, what heliotropes? I -have been wondering all this time what made the room so sweet.’</p> - -<p>And speaking thus, she stretched forth her hand for Marjorie Bartrand’s -flowers.</p> - -<p>During nearly four years, a portentously large slice of life under -five-and-twenty, it had been one long case of give-and-take between -Geoffrey and Dinah—the ‘take’ invariably on Dinah’s side. She took his -heart from him to start with. She took the happiness out of his youth. -Silently, unrecognised, Geoffrey constituted himself her knight-errant -in the hour of his own sharpest pain. (Till her death Dinah could never -know the part played by Geoffrey at the time of her engagement and -marriage.) In a hundred ways he had since steadied her husband in the -path of right. By a hundred unselfish actions he had smoothed nascent -domestic discontents, any one of which might have worked mortal havoc -with Dinah’s peace.</p> - -<p>She had received all his devotion—a prevalent weakness, it is to be -feared, among gentle, unimaginative women of her type—as the simplest -thing in the world! </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p> - -<p>If Dinah, as once there was promise, had had children, doubt not that -her moral nature must have widened. But this was not to be. A tiny, -dying creature held between weak arms for half a day; some yellowing, -never-used baby-clothes, jealously hidden out of Gaston’s sight; a kiss -stolen, when her husband was not by to see, from any fair cottage babe -she might chance to come across in her walk—this much, and no more, -was Dinah to know of motherhood.</p> - -<p>And the love blindly centred on Gaston had in it an element which, -although the word is hard, must in justice be called selfishness.</p> - -<p>‘Nothing Gaston likes so well as the smell of flowers on his breakfast -table.’ And Dinah still carelessly held out her hand in a receptive -attitude. ‘He says his brain must be like the brains of dogs or -deer—smell colours all his thoughts. You will see, Geff! Those -heliotropes and roses will just set him kneading some new idea into -clay to-morrow morning.’</p> - -<p>But the heliotropes and the roses did not quit Geoffrey’s hand.</p> - -<p>In this moment, ay, while Dinah was speaking, a current of new, keen, -healthful life had swept through him. He felt more thoroughly master of -himself than he had done since that May evening when he first blindly -surrendered his will, with his heart, to a blonde girl watering flowers -through a casement window at Lesser Cheriton. Marjorie’s roses, fresh -from her pure touch, a friendly gift from the world-scorning child -who, somehow, looked upon her tutor as out of the scope of scorn, were -his. If Gaston needed inspiration from flower-scents, Doctor Thorne’s -garden, any other garden than that of the Seigneur of Tintajeux, must -supply the inspiration.</p> - -<p>He made a dexterous exit, rushed away, boy-fashion, light of spirit, -three steps at a time, to his own room. And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> before half a minute was -over Dinah Arbuthnot had forgotten him. Poor old faithful Geff, his -lesson-giving, his heiress, his bouquet—what were these, nay, what -were the alien concerns of the universe to a pathetically tender soul, -quick smarting under its own immediate and narrow pain!</p> - -<p>Had Linda Thorne the power of holding an artist’s restless fancy -captive, the genius of making time pass swiftly, the talent of clever -talk, of giving genial little dinners, of dressing perfectly? Above -all, was she a woman to expect nothing whatever in return for her -devotion? A woman strong enough to be philosophical, even, towards a -rival who should vanquish her, in her own world, with her own weapons? -If she were thus gifted—Dinah moved to the window and looked out -across the hotel garden to a point between an opening in the trees -where the sea showed blue and foamless—if Linda Thorne were thus -gifted, then might to-night be taken as a foretaste of what the next -six weeks, the bloom and glory of a mid-Channel summer, had in store -for herself.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER IX</span> <span class="smaller">HALF WAY TOWARDS LITTLE GO</span></h2> - -<p>‘Sixties’ and ‘forties’ are traditions, happily, of the past. -Although Sarnian spinsters may still go out to tea with a maid and a -hand-lanthorn, the number of their candles is no longer a rigorous type -of their social condition.</p> - -<p>But the society of an island, twelve miles long by four broad, must -always be cousin-german to the society of a ship. Wherever choice is -circumscribed, human nature tends to eclecticism. Sixties and forties -may have had their day. A stranger is amazed, still, at the number of -island families who do not visit other island families, seemingly from -hereditary topographical reasons. The Eastern people have not much to -say to those of the West. The country districts hold scanty intercourse -with the townsfolk.</p> - -<p>At the time I write of the remote little peninsula of Tintajeux was -probably the most exclusive parish in the island.</p> - -<p>‘While we were on terms with the Rector of Noirmont we had four people -in our set,’ Marjorie would say. ‘The Rector of Noirmont, his wife, -the Seigneur of Tintajeux, Marjorie Bartrand. Since grandpapa and -M. Noirmont had their big Latin fight we have split up into further -faction. Our set consists of the Seigneur of Tintajeux and Marjorie -Bartrand. We are a nation of two.’</p> - -<p>Of the things done and left undone by the Petersport<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> inhabitants, -this nation of two was ofttimes as ignorant as though some dark -continent divided them. The dances, picnics, military bands, garden -parties, and general gossip of urban life, concerned the Bartrands -languidly. Old Andros had his farming, his dogs, his classic authors, -and a curiously mixed performance which he called parochial work, to -occupy him. Marjorie had her study, a boat, fishing-tackle, gardening -tools; in days not so very far distant, had a carpenter’s bench; -all the wholesome outdoor interests of a country-nurtured child. If -Cassandra Tighe chanced occasionally to rattle round in her village -cart and communicate to them the last town news, they heard it; rarely, -otherwise.</p> - -<p>It thus happened, Cassandra remaining away with her nets and her -sea-monsters in Sark, that the comedy in course of rehearsal between -Geff and Marjorie went on for several days without interruption. The -master and pupil met seldom, save during the hours of work, when Geff, -professionally severe, discouraged idle conversation. It did not become -easier to Marjorie than it had seemed on the first night of their -acquaintance to say the words, Your wife. The terms on which they met -were frank; slightly stiffer, perhaps, under the broad sun of noon than -they had been among the syringa blossoms by starlight! They stood, on -the outside, at least, in the position of any commonly dense freshman, -and of a coach, conscientiously minded to get his man, if possible, -through Previous.</p> - -<p>On the outside. Growing to know Marjorie’s transparent nature better -and better, deriving keen refreshment from the badly-trained, fine -intelligence which might have risen so high above the commonly dense -freshman’s level, Geoffrey grew, hourly, more sensible that their -seasons for meeting were ’ower lang o’ comin’,’ that each intervening -day was a space of time to be lived through! At this point stood Geff. -Secure, she was fain to think contented, in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> knowledge of a Mrs. -Arbuthnot’s existence, Marjorie worked with an unstinted zeal, a vivid -delight, such as the whole defunct race of governesses, morning or -resident, had failed to awaken in her.</p> - -<p>So things progressed through half a dozen lessons. Then, one sunless -afternoon, sky and sea and speck of island painted in half-tones, -misty, dubious as the happiness of human life, came the rattle as of -a score of chained captives along the avenue of Tintajeux. Marjorie, -pacing up and down the schoolroom as she boldly struggled with the -irregularities of a Greek verb, recognised the sound of Cassandra’s -cart-wheels. Pushing Delectus and exercise books aside, she ran forth -joyfully to meet her friend. Had not important news to be told? Our -Cambridge B.A. thinking good things possible in the direction of -Girton, the emancipation of those benighted Spanish women, who only -know how to manage their house or fold their mantilla gracefully, a few -prospective inches advanced!</p> - -<p>‘You are inkier than ever, Marjorie Bartrand.’</p> - -<p>This was Miss Tighe’s first personal observation, thrown back over her -shoulder as she knotted Midge, the unkempt Brittany pony, to a rail, -with one of the sundry odds and ends of rope stowed away in readiness -within that all-containing cart of hers.</p> - -<p>‘Only about the wrists,’ Marjorie pleaded, holding out the sleeve of -her holland pinafore.</p> - -<p>‘But I don’t see that University teaching puts flesh on your bones. -You are growing too much like that picture of your mother. Eyes are -all very well, especially handsome ones, but one wants something more -than eyes in a face. You would have done much better’—who shall say -Cassandra was not right—‘much better to come with Annette and me to -Sark, jelly-fish hunting.’</p> - -<p>The speech gave an impression of being double-shotted. But Marjorie, -with unwonted meekness, made no retort<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> until she and her visitor were -within shelter of the drawing-room. There, in the familiar presence of -the buhl Cupids, of the miniature Bartrands, who had danced, loved or -hated each other, and gone to the guillotine with such easy grace, the -girl felt herself protected—oh, Marjorie, from what dim vision of a -sin could that white soul need protection? She began the story of her -days, and of her intercourse with Geff Arbuthnot, bravely.</p> - -<p>‘I feel half way towards Little Go, Miss Tighe. I get my six hours’ -teaching a week, and——’</p> - -<p>‘You have always had teaching in abundance,’ remarked Cassandra, -wilfully misinterpreting her. ‘Since you were twelve, you have had -Madame Briquebec six hours a week.’</p> - -<p>‘Madame Briquebec—a music mistress!’</p> - -<p>‘Six hours’ lessons, and twelve hours’ practice. It would require a -Cambridge mathematician,’ observed Cassandra, ‘to reckon how many -years’ solid capital, out of a lifetime, are given by young women to -such an instrument as the piano!’</p> - -<p>‘I am not talking of the piano, as you know, Miss Tighe,’ cried -Marjorie, the heart within her rallying at the scent of coming strife. -‘I never practised less for poor old Madame Briquebec than I do now. I -talk of my six hours’ solid reading with Mr. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘Ah! I trust you find Mr. Arbuthnot solidly satisfactory?</p> - -<p>‘My tutor thinks well of my staying power. Mr. Arbuthnot sees no reason -why, if I gave my life up to it for four years, I should not, some day, -come out low in a Tripos.’</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Arbuthnot, like the rest of the world, knows perhaps upon which -side his bread is buttered.’</p> - -<p>The suggestion was Cassandra’s.</p> - -<p>‘Bread—buttered! Let me tell you, ma’am, I think that a most harsh -speech! Yes!’ cried Marjorie Bartrand,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> her face aflame, ‘and verging -on spiteful. A speech most unworthy of Cassandra Tighe.’</p> - -<p>‘To my mind the subject scarcely necessitates so much indignation, -Marjorie.’</p> - -<p>‘And to mine, it does. If you implied anything, it must be that Mr. -Arbuthnot flatters me from motives of self-interest, which is vile.’</p> - -<p>Old Cassandra took off her leather driving gloves; she pressed out -their folds slowly. Then she examined a signet-ring, masculine in size -and device, which was always worn by her on the third finger of the -left hand.</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Arbuthnot comes to visit you, professionally, three days a week.’ -Speaking thus she did not lift her eyes to the young girl’s face. ‘He -comes to Tintajeux at other times, naturally?’</p> - -<p>‘He came on that first evening when we engaged him—I mean, when Mr. -Arbuthnot was good enough to promise to read with me. It was fine -warm weather, you must remember—the night before you left for Sark. -Grandpapa invited Mr. Arbuthnot to drink tea with us, and afterwards I -walked as far as the Hüets, to put him on the right track for getting -home by Gros Nez.’</p> - -<p>‘He speaks to you, frequently, of the poor, stay-at-home Griselda wife, -I make no doubt.’</p> - -<p>The blood rose up, less at the question than at Cassandra’s way of -putting it, to Marjorie’s cheeks.</p> - -<p>‘My tutor has never spoken to me of Mrs. Arbuthnot. You decided, Miss -Tighe, that day when we talked it over under the cedars, that there -might be an indelicacy in my mentioning her too abruptly. And during -our hours of reading we work, and work hard. I think,’ said Marjorie, -lifting her small face aloft, ‘that as regards the learning of classics -and Euclid, it matters nothing to me whether Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot -stay at home or walk abroad.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. <i>Geoffrey</i>!’ repeated Cassandra. ‘Oh, that certainly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> is not the -name. I may have led you wrong in the first instance. Geoffrey is not -the name of the man people talk so much about.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie walked off to the schoolroom, from whence she presently -returned with Geoffrey’s card, one that he had enclosed in his first -stiff business note to the heiress of Tintajeux.</p> - -<p>‘Samson, Samuel, Cyril. I am nearly sure of Samson,’ mused Cassandra. -‘Accuracy as to names and dates was a kind of heirloom in our family.’</p> - -<p>‘The name of my coach is Geoffrey,’ said Marjorie Bartrand. ‘Behold it, -Miss Tighe, in black and white—Geoffrey Arbuthnot, B.A., Cantab.’</p> - -<p>‘I cannot make this out at all. The whole thing is so fresh in my -memory. Coming up from the harbour I called in at Miller’s. It was -but human to ask that poor, weak, unreliable woman about her throat. -Well, although she has swallowed Dr. Thorne’s drugs, Marjorie, she is -recovering. Nature is so perverse in these chronic invalids.’</p> - -<p>‘Recovering sufficiently to retail a fruity bit of gossip, which -Miss Tighe enjoyed. I wonder whether the world was as scandal-loving -in <i>your</i> days?’ said Marjorie, addressing the calm-eyed group of -Bartrands beside the chimneypiece. ‘You were not a moral generation. -Perhaps when glass heads were universal, stone-throwing was less in -vogue.’</p> - -<p>‘Poor Mrs. Miller threw no stones. She told me plain and sad facts -about these young Arbuthnot people. The husband for ever philandering -in the train of certain idle ladies belonging to our island society, -the wife watching up for him till all hours of the morning, people, -very naturally, speculating right and left——’</p> - -<p>But Cassandra Tighe stopped short. Like an arrow from a bow Marjorie’s -slip of a figure had shot across the drawing-room. She stood at her old -friend’s knee. A pair of eyes glowing with all the force of strong, -fiery, yet most generous temper, looked down upon Cassandra’s face. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I hate the speculations of malicious tongues, Miss Tighe. I will -never believe that Geoffrey Arbuthnot “philanders,” whatever the -term means, or treats his wife neglectfully. I know him to be manly, -straightforward, true. I think Griselda ought to be happy, oh! happy -quite beyond the common lot.’</p> - -<p>The last words were not uttered without a quiver of Marjorie Bartrand’s -lip.</p> - -<p>Miss Tighe finished, we may well believe, with the theme of love and -lovers some thirty-five or forty years before the present time. Was -the subject ever of vital personal moment to her? A jealously worn -signet-ring, the portrait of a scarlet-coated, dark-eyed lad that -hung in her drawing-room, were the only evidence to warrant intimate -friends in hazarding a tentative ‘yes.’ Her present interests, said -the people of a young and irreverent generation, were of fish, fishy. -Are fibres discernible under the microscope in a dogfish’s brain? Can -a mollusc see, or only distinguish, between light and darkness? One -thing was certain. In Cassandra Tighe’s breast lingered all tender, all -womanly sympathy in the troubles of humanity at large. And something -in Marjorie’s voice touched her, not to distrust, but compassion. She -looked, with the pain that is half foreboding, at the young girl’s -ardent, indignant face.</p> - -<p>‘Marjorie Bartrand, we are old friends. You always take the lectures I -give you in good part.’</p> - -<p>‘I may do so occasionally, Miss Tighe, very occasionally. Let us keep -to facts.’</p> - -<p>‘I hope you will take a little lecture in good part now. Drive to -Petersport to-morrow, and call on Mrs. Samson Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot. With so many fables afloat, let us snatch, -ma’am, pray, at whatever truth we may.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Geoffrey, if you choose. Although my conviction<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> is unshaken. -Drive in to Petersport to-morrow. Call upon your tutor’s wife. Remember -her want of birth and education, imagine a little excusable jealousy. -Put yourself, in short, in her place, and I am sure your good heart——’</p> - -<p>‘I have no heart. Grandpapa, the whole of my governesses have impressed -that upon me often.’</p> - -<p>‘Your good common sense, then, will teach you how you can best befriend -her. That is my lecture.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie moved away into the nearest window. She looked out, athwart -garden, orchard, moor, towards the Atlantic, gray, sullen, as though -the season had gone back from June to December. A sense of deeply -wounded pride, of cruel, inexplicable disappointment mingled in the -girl’s heart.</p> - -<p>‘I ought to have done the right thing,’ so she communed with herself. -‘I ought to have done it at once. I have just drifted into meanness. -As though it could matter to us Bartrands if every woman in the island -declined to call on Mrs. Arbuthnot. It was you, Miss Tighe,’ she turned -round incisively on Cassandra, ‘who preached to me the gospel of -Mammon.’</p> - -<p>‘And one hears such nice things said of her, poor dear. The faults are -so obviously the husband’s. Really, if I could have known all one knows -now, my wisest advice would have been—keep clear of them both! In -these prickly affairs, in anything connected with a <i>mésalliance</i>, you -are pretty sure to get your hand stung, whichever way you grasp your -nettle.’</p> - -<p>‘Too late in the day for pensive regrets, Miss Tighe. I have not kept -clear of Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘The more the pity. As matters stand, Marjorie, I know that your -conduct will be full of the sweetest tact. We have a few old-fashioned -rules,’ said good, well-meaning Cassandra, ‘to guide us in our -perplexities. The first is, to do unto others as we would they should -do unto us.’</p> - -<p>‘To-day is not Sunday.’ Marjorie’s foot tapped a quick<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> little tune on -the polished floor. ‘Please don’t let us have Sunday talk.’</p> - -<p>‘How should we feel if we were Mrs. Arbuthnot? If you were Mrs. -Arbuthnot, how would you wish Marjorie Bartrand should do unto you?’</p> - -<p>Cassandra’s tone was plaintively sentimental, infalliblest tone of all -to stir up mischief, never far from the surface, in Marjorie Bartrand’s -heart.</p> - -<p>‘How should I feel if I were Mrs. Arbuthnot? Wish that I had my -precious liberty back, of course, and envy every girl I met hers—the -natural feelings, one would hope, of all well-conducted, sensible -married women. Ah,’ ejaculated Marjorie, folding her lithe arms, and -with darkness like that of a swiftly-gathered thunder-cloud on her -Southern face, ‘and to hear people talk as though such things as -roaming husbands and weeping wives were <i>necessities</i>, as though the -doom of the serpent was laid upon every son and daughter of Adam. <i>A -Dieu ne plaise</i> that it should be so! There is one girl,’ striking her -breast emphatically, ‘in Her British Majesty’s dominions who will shed -tears for no man while she lives!’</p> - -<p>‘We will hope so, Marjorie,’ said Cassandra, as she put on her driving -gloves. ‘A good many of us have held the same opinions at seventeen, -and yet had occasion to modify them later on.’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER X</span> <span class="smaller">‘THEY SAY——’</span></h2> - -<p>But the thunder-shower soon broke, the blue sky showed beyond. -Tears, Marjorie Bartrand shed none. What sorrows had she of her own, -what sweetheart, philandering or otherwise, to weep for? In regard -of Geoffrey’s unknown wife, her brief-lived cynicism shifted, ere -Cassandra had been gone an hour, into most genuine, most girl-like -pity. After an outburst of temper, however scornful or unjust, there -was ever in Marjorie’s heart a pungent and fiery fidelity which led her -back, straight as magnet to steel, to her better self.</p> - -<p>That she should be disappointed in Geoffrey’s character was, she told -herself, inevitable. What is there in any man that one should not, on -close acquaintance, be disappointed in him? She had thought, judging -from frank and plainly given confidences, that she knew, to a minute, -how her tutor’s time was passed here in Guernsey. A little hospital -work daily, Geff having met an old college friend in the house surgeon; -a little study for his next Cambridge exam.; a good deal of boating; a -good many walks round the island; three days a week, his reading with -herself at Tintajeux. The picture had been a clear, a pleasant one in -Marjorie’s sight. And now matter so alien as this of fashionable fine -ladies, midnight domestic scenes, idlers speculating right and left, -must come, unwelcome and ugly blots, on the canvas. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p> - -<p>She was disappointed in Geoffrey, personally. She felt, with the -certainty of her age, that she could not work under him again with the -bright unblemished interest of the past days. The change of feeling -should be made up, Marjorie determined, by kindness shown to his wife. -On Mrs. Arbuthnot she pledged herself to call to-morrow. Meantime, yes, -during the forenoon lesson, she would assume a sterner manner towards -this recreant husband, this sober-mannered student who, after all one -hoped of him, was so little raised at heart above the pitiful vanities -of his sex.</p> - -<p>And in the first place her own waist-ribbon must be summarily returned. -This was Marjorie’s resolve when her head rested on its pillow. The -waist-ribbon which, for fear of wounding Geoffrey’s feelings (his -wife’s, perhaps, vicariously), she had suffered her tutor to keep, -must be returned. Looking upon him in this new—alas! to Marjorie’s -experienced mind, this too familiar—character of a philanderer, she -could imagine him, married though he was, exhibiting that bit of ribbon -among his companions as a trophy. ‘A gift, don’t you know, bestowed on -one by a fair hand that shall be nameless.’ Or he might show it among -the idle fine ladies—oh, the hot shame at Marjorie’s sleepy heart—the -idle ladies in whose train he followed, while his wife, ignorant of -Euclid or Greek, but not <i>devoid of human nature</i>, shed tears, not one -single drop whereof the man was worthy, at home.</p> - -<p>Marjorie Bartrand fell asleep in a state of the most pointed and -virtuous indignation. Morning brought her back, as it brings back all -of us, not to accidental emotion, but to the common habit of life. -Her habit was to rise, the moment her eyes unclosed, open her window, -and gladly welcome the new day. She did so now. Standing in her white -night-dress, the elastic air blowing on her face, she looked across a -corner of the orchard to the spot where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> Geoffrey, the crescent moon -shining, plucked the briar roses above her reach. Away in the distant -fields she saw the Reverend Andros, as he walked to and fro with firm -slow step among his men. On her dressing-table lay an algebra paper, -always her hardest work, which she intended resolutely to ‘floor’ -before her tutor’s coming.</p> - -<p>How sweet life was, thought the little girl, how full of fine things -that no man’s hand can take from us! Might it not be wisdom, even in a -Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, as she had committed the error of marriage, to -make the best of it—enjoy the sun that shone, the wind that blew, by -day, and look upon sleep, not weeping, as the state for which nature -designs our race at midnight!</p> - -<p>After a swim in the bay, a brisk run up to the manoir, Marjorie, -with hunger befitting her years, kept her grandfather in excellent -countenance at his breakfast, a solid country meal at which broiled -fish, ham and eggs from the farmyard, home-made rolls and Guernsey -buttered cake predominated. Then she went to the schoolroom, and, long -before a figure she watched for rose above the moor’s horizon, had got -the better of her paper.</p> - -<p>Her wits were at their brightest this morning. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, for -the first time since they had known each other, threw out a few crumbs -of praise when the reading closed. Crumbs of plain household bread, be -it understood—no sugar, no spice—but that caused Marjorie’s heart to -beat, the blood to leap swiftly into her mobile, all-confessing face.</p> - -<p>Geff watched her with admiration he sought not to hide. They had been -working under the cedars, as was their custom in these fair summer -forenoons. A solitary beam of sunlight pierced the thick and odorous -shade. It fell full on Marjorie, looking more like a child than usual -in an unadorned cotton frock, and with her silky raven hair spread out -to dry, unconfined by comb or ribbon, over her shoulders. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘The endowments of life certainly don’t go to those who need them -most.’ Geff gave utterance to the truism with the want of preface that -was his habit. ‘Many a pale-faced, hard-working village schoolmistress -would have her path smoothened by possessing a tenth part of your -brains. While for you——’</p> - -<p>The words were leaving his lips in blunt fidelity. They were not well -considered words, perhaps. Which of us can stand on mental tiptoe -every hour of the twenty-four? But they were about as innocent of -premeditated flattery as was ever speech offered by man to civilised -woman.</p> - -<p>Marjorie interrupted him shortly; dormant indignation against poor -Geff as a frequenter of idle society, a midnight reveller, a careless -husband, flaming forth on him, lightning wise.</p> - -<p>‘For me, Marjorie Bartrand, living on rose leaves in Tintajeux -Manoir—oh! I should be equally charming with brains or without them, -should not I? Thank you immensely for the compliment, sir. If I could -change places I would rather be the village schoolmistress, plainly -doing her day’s work for her day’s wages, than live idly on all the -rose leaves, all the flatteries, the world could heap together.’ Then -lifting her eyes, a look in them to pierce a guilty man’s soul, ‘At -what time should I be likely to find Mrs. Arbuthnot at home?’ she asked -him with cold directness. ‘I shall drive in to Miller’s Hotel. I shall -call on Mrs. Arbuthnot this afternoon.’</p> - -<p>A flush of undisguised pleasure went over Geoffrey’s face. All these -days he had hoped that some offer of the kind would come from Marjorie, -not doubting that in this small island rumours of Dinah’s beauty, -perhaps of Dinah’s troubles, must have reached as far as Tintajeux.</p> - -<p>‘I am afraid Mrs. Arbuthnot is to be found at home at most hours.’</p> - -<p>‘So I am told.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Dinah goes out too little in this fine June weather.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot must amend her ways. To-day is our Guernsey rose show. -There will be military bands playing, dandies promenading,’ said Miss -Bartrand witheringly, as she glanced at Geff’s undandified figure, -‘fine ladies thinking and talking of everything under God’s sun save -the roses. Some of Mrs. Arbuthnot’s friends will surely tempt her to -join the gay crowd in the Arsenal?’</p> - -<p>‘Dinah has no friends. I mean, we have been too short a time in -Guernsey to look for many callers. In the matter of visiting-cards, -ladies, I am told, are prone to be sequacious.’</p> - -<p>So did Geff, with single-minded good-will, seek to round off the edges -of Dinah Arbuthnot’s isolation, of Gaston’s neglect.</p> - -<p>‘And yet they say,’ cried Marjorie, her heart palpitating well-nigh to -pain, ‘that Mrs. Arbuthnot’s husband has acquaintance without stint.’</p> - -<p>‘You must not believe half “they” say, when men and women’s domestic -concerns are the theme of conversation. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s husband -chanced to meet accidentally with a Doctor and Mrs. Thorne here. The -lady was a friend of former student days in Paris. It was the kind of -meeting,’ added Geff apologetically, ‘in which a man has no choice but -to renew an acquaintance, and——’</p> - -<p>‘And Linda Thorne, of course, has called upon Mrs. Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>The question came like a sword-thrust from Marjorie Bartrand.</p> - -<p>‘I ... I am afraid ... not yet,’ answered Geoffrey, with hesitation.</p> - -<p>Gaston’s careless conduct in regard of Dinah was just the one subject -that could occasion straightforward Geoffrey’s tongue to stammer.</p> - -<p>‘Ah! Linda Thorne has not called on Mrs. Arbuthnot.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> That lowers one’s -opinion,’ mused Marjorie, ‘not too high at any time, of Linda Thorne.’</p> - -<p>‘When you meet Dinah you will see that she is a woman to care little -for the common run of morning callers.’</p> - -<p>‘I shall endeavour, just the same, to make her care for me.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie’s tones were icy, a swell of curiously mixed feeling was in -her breast.</p> - -<p>‘Endeavour will not be needed. I never made too sure,’ said Geff -modestly, ‘that you would pay this visit. But I know that Dinah, in her -heart, is more than prepared to bid you welcome.’</p> - -<p>He rose, visibly reluctant, from the cool greensward. Then, with a -sense that some subtle, intangible change had crept into his relations -with his pupil, Geff prepared to take his leave.</p> - -<p>But perilous stuff had yet to be dislodged from Marjorie Bartrand’s -conscience. She would not call upon the wife while that bit of Spanish -ribbon, a loan made in a moment of foolish high spirits, remained -unchallenged in the husband’s possession.</p> - -<p>‘I hope you have taken care of something I lent you, sir. A piece of -coloured ribbon tied round those flowers I sent, the first evening -grandpapa and I had the pleasure of knowing you, to Mrs. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘To Mrs. Arbuthnot! This is rough on a man,’ cried Geff. ‘Why, Miss -Bartrand, you must have forgotten. Those flowers were given to me.’</p> - -<p>‘Don’t make too certain of that.’</p> - -<p>‘But I am certain. I can see you as you stood in the strip of moonlight -by the water-lane, wishing me good-night. Your last words were, “the -flowers are for yourself—your better self.”’</p> - -<p>‘The ribbon, at least, was given to no one,’ retorted Marjorie, -changing colour under his gaze. ‘It was lent to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> hinder you from -breaking your neck. You meant to climb the Gros Nez cliffs if you -could. To do that a real good Guernsey man needs his hands, both of -them, and I thought it a pity——’</p> - -<p>‘The real good Guernsey night should be disfigured by a stupid stranger -leaving the world too tragically. I thank you heartily,’ went on Geff, -as the girl blushed deeper and deeper. ‘I measured the extent of your -sympathy to an inch at the time.’</p> - -<p>A ring of absolute independence was in his voice; a suspicion lurked -there, too, of hardly restrained laughter. For the situation was taking -hold of him. Let us see, thought Geoffrey, in this feather-light matter -of keeping or not keeping a morsel of sash ribbon, how far the small -shrew could be tamed? Let us see which of the two should fitly, in the -end, be styled conqueror?</p> - -<p>So he thought: by no means forecasting that this feather-light matter -of keeping a morsel of sash ribbon might be the pivot on which his -life’s fortunes should one day turn.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XI</span> <span class="smaller">‘DODO’S DESPAIR’</span></h2> - -<p>‘My sympathy, I believe, was rightly bestowed,’ said Marjorie frigidly. -‘I would not see the poorest wandering pedlar start for the Gros Nez -cliffs without helping him to the extent I helped you. Even a pedlar -might have a wife at home, sir. A foolish, fond creature, shedding -tears of anxiety for him in his absence.’</p> - -<p>The side-thrust did not seem to scathe Geoffrey’s conscience as it -should have done.</p> - -<p>‘Would you make it a special point that this married pedlar should -return you your ribbon, Miss Bartrand?’</p> - -<p>‘I make it a point that Mr. Arbuthnot shall do so.’ Marjorie delivered -her ultimatum unflinchingly. ‘The ribbon is worthless, except as a -memento of some happy days I spent in Cadiz once, totally worthless to -any living person but me.’</p> - -<p>‘And why should it not be a memento of happy days spent in Guernsey by -myself?’</p> - -<p>She looked him straight between the eyes, too hotly, dangerously irate -to make immediate answer.</p> - -<p>‘Suppose, leading a prosaic life in the thick of bricks and mortar, -that length of ribbon could act as a kind of talisman.’</p> - -<p>‘I don’t understand you in the least.’</p> - -<p>‘A charm bringing back to one’s tired eyes and heart<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> the blue summer -night, the smell of moon-coloured hayfields, the whole moment when it -was given to me.’</p> - -<p>‘I will suppose nothing of the sort. It was not given. This is vapid, -sentimental talk,’ said Marjorie, concentrating her thoughts firmly on -absent Dinah. ‘And I abhor sentiment.’</p> - -<p>‘On that solitary point we agree.’</p> - -<p>‘The ribbon I lent you to tie round Mrs. Arbuthnot’s flowers is just a -yard of woven, parti-coloured silk. Buy the best match you can find to -it in the nearest mercer’s shop. It will be as good a talisman.’</p> - -<p>‘Are you a materialist, Miss Bartrand? Would you say that the ragged -colours of one of the Duke’s regiments, the pennants of one of Nelson’s -ships, were so much woven silk, more or less stained and weather torn?’</p> - -<p>‘I do not see that my sash ribbon can or should be of the smallest -interest to Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,’ observed Marjorie, the blood -leaping, more swiftly than it had done under his praise, to her cheek.</p> - -<p>In this moment she was a woman, the childish cotton frock, the hair -hung out to dry, the slim immature figure notwithstanding. A dawning -of her sex’s shame burned at her heart as she turned her looks away -from him. In this moment, were it possible to assign place and date -to matter so intangible, I should say that Geff Arbuthnot first, -distinctly, began to fall in love.</p> - -<p>‘And suppose <i>I</i> feel that your sash can and ought to be of the -greatest possible interest to me?’ he urged.</p> - -<p>Marjorie found no answer to her hand. If she had been reared under a -different rule to Andros Bartrand’s, if she had associated more with -girls, had frequented afternoon-teas and garden-parties, she would, -doubtless, even in innocent little Sarnia, have learned the formula -by which a married man, hazarding idle speeches, ought mildly and -effectually to be crushed. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p> - -<p>Marjorie knew no more of flirtation or of its dialects than she did -of Sanscrit. She had gone through an engagement, once, during a brief -uncomfortable fortnight; an experience which took the taste for -lovers and lovers’ vows most adequately out of her young mouth. And -now—oh, now she never meant to marry! She had her Greek and Latin in -the present, a large outlook for herself and others in the future. Of -flirtation she knew nothing, of engagements she knew too much! And she -liked Geff Arbuthnot, and did not like the duties of repressing his -frivolity, or of ranging herself against him in the civil wars of his -home life. Yet to the utmost of her strength should both these duties -be fulfilled.</p> - -<p>‘Your interests were appropriated long before you ever saw me,’ she -replied at last. ‘What hour, this afternoon, would it be convenient, -pray, for me to visit Mrs. Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>Her tone, her look, might for a moment have suggested to Geoffrey -that the secret of his youth had made unto itself wings and flown to -Tintajeux. Only the very supposition were wild! Gaston, Dinah herself -had never suspected the passionate madness which, in the May twilight -of long ago, used to draw him night after night to the little thatched, -rose-covered cottage at Lesser Cheriton.</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot? For anything I know to the contrary, Dinah will be at -home between three and four o’clock.’</p> - -<p>‘And at our next reading, sir, you will bring back my ribbon.’</p> - -<p>‘I made no promise.’</p> - -<p>‘Of what mortal use can a bit of ribbon be to you, Mr. Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>‘I have had thoughts of turning this particular ribbon into a -book-marker,’ said Geff, boldly imaginative.</p> - -<p>‘A book-marker! I ask you—do you think it honest to keep property that -belongs to other people?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘My conscience, I must confess, does not prick me.’</p> - -<p>‘If I order, will you obey?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie had turned abruptly pale. Her mouth quivered.</p> - -<p>‘If you order, I submit,’ said Geff, watching her gravely. ‘I will -never go against your smallest wish while I live. You shall have your -ribbon before our next lesson, Miss Bartrand, I promise.’</p> - -<p>The shadow of a quarrel was between them when they bade good-bye. And -at the thought of this shadow Marjorie’s illogical spirit was sore -vexed. But I think Geff Arbuthnot walked back to town with a lighter -spirit in his breast than had reigned there since the moment when he -first saw Dinah and Gaston as lovers, hand clasping hand, in the little -Cambridgeshire orchard.</p> - -<p>His knowledge of young girls, their instability, their hot and cold -fits, their tempers, their fluctuating emotions, had been derived -from books. So his theories on the subject were mainly worthless. But -men who in after days rival neither Thackeray nor Balzac, do often, -during one phase of their own experience, make keen enough guesses as -to the source of female weakness. Geoffrey felt, with an instinct’s -force, that Marjorie Bartrand’s blanched cheeks, her quivering lip, -her passionate tones, were not the outcome of childish anger. He felt, -with an instinct’s force, that the girl herself was a child no longer. -Whither must this altered state of things tend?</p> - -<p>The question was complex; and Geoffrey willingly let it rest. As he -walked the warm air was briar-scented, the birds murmured lazy midday -nothings to each other amidst the lush hedges, the voice of Marjorie -Bartrand filled his heart. What need to hope or fear for the future -when one is twenty-four years old, and the actual living hour has a -hold, delicious as this, upon the senses!</p> - -<p class="space-above">Dinah and her husband were alone together, a quiet<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> little picture of -domestic still life, when Geff reached the hotel.</p> - -<p>A vine-trellised slip of courtyard lay outside the north window of -Mrs. Arbuthnot’s sitting-room. Here, during the sunny forenoons, -Gaston, picturesquely bloused, found it pleasant to work, when he was -sufficiently in the vein to work at all. He wore his blouse, was in the -vein, now. That which two days ago was a mass of rough clay, showed the -airy outlines of a baby-girl, seated on a Brobdingnagian shell, one -small foot neatly shoed and socked, the other clasped, naked, between -her dimpled hands, in an attitude of inimitable, three-year-old dismay.</p> - -<p>‘We label this work of genius “The Lost Shoe,” or “Dodo’s Despair,” or -some equally pathetic and unhackneyed title,’ remarked the sculptor as -Geff entered upon the scene. ‘We get our so many guineas for it, from -our masters, and solicit further orders, do we not, Dinah?’</p> - -<p>‘You should have no master but your art,’ was Dinah’s answer.</p> - -<p>‘That is easily said. My wife, as usual, Geff, is urging upon me to -fulfil my mission, to deliver messages, to begin big and serious work. -But I fancy I gauge my own depths justly. I have no messages whatever -to deliver to anybody. These trickeries of Philistine sentiment,’ -Gaston pointed with a shapely clay-stained hand to his model, ‘are -always a success. In the first place, they draw tears from Mr. and Mrs. -Prud’homme. In the second, the dealers approve them. What more can an -artist’s heart desire?’</p> - -<p>‘Everything,’ replied Dinah.</p> - -<p>But she spoke in parenthesis, and under her breath.</p> - -<p>‘Am I anatomical, Geoffrey? This must always be important, whether a -man work with or without a mission. How about this bend in the left -knee-joint? Are my muscles right?’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey offered one or two strictly professional criticisms;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> then -after admiring the grace, the charm of the little clay sketch, gave his -uncompromising moral support to Dinah.</p> - -<p>Whoever possesses genius—well, talent, no need to fight over -words—lies under the behest of duty. Gaston’s duty, the one straight -and unmistakable road that lay before him, was to abandon conventional -prettiness, to go in for the expression of the highest thoughts that -were in him.</p> - -<p>‘I am destitute of high thoughts,’ said Gaston, his refined, -intellectual face belying the assertion. ‘I have not the prophet’s -<i>rôle</i>. If I tried to soar, I should immediately afterwards have to -climb down. I have no original ideas to embody——’</p> - -<p>‘Gaston!’ broke, with an accent of denial, from Dinah’s lips.</p> - -<p>‘And the dealers, Farrago in Pall Mall especially, are my masters. -Before I left town Farrago’s advice was memorable. “The market demands -nothing classic in statuettes, Mr. Arbuthnot. Nothing romantic. Above -all, nothing to make us think. The market demands trifles, sir, -trifles. Objects for the smoke-room or boudoir. Domestic amenities, as -you agreeably say, for Monsieur and Madame Prud’homme! And, for wider -sections of society, ‘flavour.’ In any case, trifles. Nothing, if you -please, to make us think.”’</p> - -<p>‘Instead of obeying,’ exclaimed Dinah, ‘you ought to say, “I, Gaston -Arbuthnot, must do such and such work, no other. Let Mr. Farrago take -my statuettes or leave them, as he likes.”’</p> - -<p>‘That style of talk is for giants, my dear child—putting aside the -fact that I am bound to Farrago for another six months. Carlyle talked -so to the Edinburgh Reviewers. Viewed by the light of after success his -talk may sound grand. If Carlyle had not speedily written the “French -Revolution” it would have been called “tall.”’</p> - -<p>‘But I want you to write your “French Revolution” in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> clay,’ Dinah -persisted. ‘Here, in Guernsey, you know, you planned to make studies, -always studies, for the great work you will set about in Florence. But -then,’ a piece of embroidery was between Dinah’s hands; she lifted her -eyes from her wools and silks at this juncture, and fixed them, full of -earnest reproach, on Gaston, ‘there have been unfortunate throw-backs.’</p> - -<p>‘Throw-backs! As how?’ Gaston Arbuthnot applied himself to the -correction of one of the points anatomically criticised by Geoffrey. -‘As long as I am bound to Farrago, even feminine morality, my love, -will allow that I should be honest. Every saleable thing I do must -pass, as per contract, through Farrago’s hands. Taking one day with -another, I have got through rather more work than the average, here in -Guernsey.’</p> - -<p>‘Have you put your own thoughts into form, Gaston? This model, when it -is finished’—she glanced somewhat coldly at ‘Dodo’s Despair’—‘will be -a portrait of Rahnee Thorne simply.’</p> - -<p>‘Rahnee Thorne idealised!’ Gaston’s rejoinder was made with the -unruffled temper that characterised him. ‘My clay infant has flesh upon -her bones, and an infant’s face. Rahnee, though I love the child, is -but a poor little wizened Bengalee, at her best.’</p> - -<p>‘Will the portrait of Rahnee’s mamma, the model you have on hand at The -Bungalow, need to be idealised also?’</p> - -<p>‘Dinah, you should be magnanimous.’ And with a movement that in a less -composed man might have been a shrug of the shoulders, Mr. Arbuthnot -prepared to clean the clay from his hands. ‘A pretty woman—well, if -you shake your head, an exceedingly beautiful woman—need never utter a -sarcasm about a plain one.’</p> - -<p>At the negative compliment a colour, soft as the pure pink veining of -a shell cameo, stained Dinah’s face. Her breast throbbed. And all the -time the speech, delicious in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> sound, signified nothing. Gaston had -been engaged for days past to escort plain Mrs. Linda to the rose-show, -and felt not the smallest temptation to break his engagement. Dinah -must be magnanimous! Dinah’s husband, after two or three hours’ facile -work on ‘Dodo’s Despair,’ needed relaxation, and would have it.</p> - -<p>‘You ought to take me to the show, Geff,’ she pleaded, turning round -half jestingly, half in earnest, to Geoffrey. ‘What would Linda Thorne, -what would Gaston think, if I suddenly made my appearance among all the -fine ladies of Guernsey?’</p> - -<p>‘Linda Thorne might have her own views,’ said Gaston. ‘When Dinah -Arbuthnot shows her face, every fine lady, in Guernsey, or elsewhere, -must be on the spot eclipsed.’</p> - -<p>Whatever Dinah thought, Geff knew that a certain insincerity underlay -the speech, and controlled a pungent remark with effort. The friendship -of the Arbuthnot trio was never more sharply paradoxical than at this -moment.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XII</span> <span class="smaller">YELLOW-BACKED NOVELS</span></h2> - -<p>The June rose-show stands second only to Her Majesty’s Birthday among -the big events of the Channel Islands’ calendar.</p> - -<p>By three o’clock the road between Petersport and the Arsenal plateau -was filled with a growing stream of men and women. Simple rose -lovers many of them, but some lovers of another kind. And some roses -themselves! What buoyant young figures fluttered past the window -whence Dinah Arbuthnot, shrouded from view, undreaming of her own -future, watched the crowd! What ruddy fine complexions were here, what -well-shapen noses and mouths, what dark Norman eyes! Why, you might -scour half a dozen English counties before you could bring together as -many handsome girls as would soon be within the Guernsey Arsenal’s four -walls. Must not excuse be made—the thought was Dinah’s—for an artist -who should long to stock his brain’s tablets with so much beauty, even -though an idle tear or two, a little discontent in some one left at -home, must be the price of his experience?</p> - -<p>She strove her best to be magnanimous, to give a valiant ‘yes’ to this -self-propounded question. Then, even as she made the effort, a group -of persons drew nigh from the direction of Petersport, at the sight of -whom poor Dinah’s magnanimity and the wifely heart that beat in her -breast<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> stood instantly at variance. Her hands turned cold and rigid. A -prophecy, rather than an actual living look of jealous anger, swept all -the youthful gentleness from her face.</p> - -<p>A group of four persons: Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, Mrs. Thorne, the small -daughter Rahnee, and a native nurse. Dazzling was Mrs. Linda in -whatever furbelows and head gear local Parisian milliners had impressed -on the feminine Sarnian mind as the ‘last thing out.’ Overdecked in -embroidery and ribbons was Rahnee, a sorrowfully thin little child, -with dark-ringed eyes, sallow cheeks, bangles on wrist. A typical -Indian child, perverse, sickly, unruled, and who at the present moment -was dancing, knowingly and deliberately, on her mother’s fragile -flounces at every second step.</p> - -<p>‘I am sure one ought to reform her.’ Thus Linda would make confession -among her matron friends. ‘But what is to be done as long as you -keep an ayah? You must reform the ayah first. That is just the one -enthusiasm of humanity which is outside my reach, to reform an ayah.’</p> - -<p>Rahnee, I repeat, danced persistently and with effect on her mother’s -cobweb furbelows, as she capered and twisted herself along the street. -Linda’s expression was as little honeyed as the expression of a -coquette can ever be in the presence of a man she seeks to charm. The -ayah vainly gesticulated, vainly uttered expostulations in unknown -Eastern tongues from the rear. Breakdown and rout of one or other of -the forces seemed imminent. Suddenly, just as they were passing the -hotel—perhaps it was this incident stabbed Dinah’s unreasoning heart -to the quick—Gaston came to the fore as mediator. Holding out both -hands, Gaston Arbuthnot offered small Rahnee a place on his shoulder. -Dinah could hear his pleasant voice, indicative of a mind content with -its surroundings, as he began some sage nursery talk, all-engrossing, -it would seem,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> to Rahnee’s soul. The thin arms closed round his neck, -the tiny primrose-gloved fingers played with his hair. Mrs. Linda, -a restored picture of amiable maternity, trotted behind. The ayah -followed after; her black orbs pantomiming unspeakable things to such -portions of the Guernsey world as had been chance witnesses of the -scene. Then, domestic-wise, the group of four persons went their way.</p> - -<p>A choking, hysterical lump rose in Dinah’s throat. With a vague sense -of her own worthiness, a suspicion that if Dinah Arbuthnot was out of -keeping with sunshine and flowers and little children, Dinah Arbuthnot -herself must be to blame, she watched Gaston and his friends until they -had turned the corner towards the Arsenal. Barely was the final shimmer -of Linda’s flounces lost to view, when a clatter of hoofs approached -rapidly along the Petersport road. A miniature phaeton with a girl -driver, and drawn by a pair of small black ponies, came in sight. -A minute later, and Marjorie Bartrand, who had drawn up before the -portico of the hotel, was inquiring—yes, there could be no mistake; -through the open windows the sound of her own name reached Dinah -distinctly—‘If Mrs. Arbuthnot was at home?’</p> - -<p>Dinah had not received one morning visitor in Guernsey. How many -morning visitors (upon Mrs., not Mr., Arbuthnot) had Dinah received -since her marriage? The unexpected respectability of the event—for our -Tintajeux Bartrands, mind you, with all their eccentricity, stand on -the topmost rung of the social insular ladder—moved Mr. Miller’s mind. -A man of tact and discrimination, the host proceeded himself to usher -Marjorie in.</p> - -<p>The Arbuthnots’ parlour door was thrown open with an air. ‘Miss -Bartrand of Tintajeux’ was announced in Miller’s most professional -voice. Then came the meeting to which Marjorie had looked forward with -resolute <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>conscience, perhaps with lurking doubts as to the cordiality -of the reception that should await her.</p> - -<p>‘This is very good of you.’ Dinah spoke in her usual voice. She came -forward with the simplicity that draws so near to De Vere repose. -‘Geoffrey never warned me I was to look for such a pleasure. I take it -very kind of you to come, Miss Bartrand.’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s trouble had just reached that level when the smallest act of -good will, from friend or stranger, may cause the cup to overflow. Her -eyes suffused, her colour heightened.</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Arbuthnot thought I should be likely to find you at home this -afternoon. I wanted to see you long ago!’ cried Marjorie, her gaze -fixed on the face whose delicate beauty so far overpassed her -expectations. ‘But I waited—I thought,’ stammered the girl, for the -first time since she could remember feeling an excuse needed for her -conduct ‘I thought, of course, Mr. Arbuthnot might ask me to call.’</p> - -<p>‘Who—Geff?’ answered Dinah, with a fleeting, shy smile. ‘No, indeed, -Miss Bartrand. Geoffrey would not make so bold. He knows too well that -I live retired.’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s phrases were certainly not those of the educated world. But -Marjorie, looking open-eyed at the mouth and throat and golden hair, -was in no mood to be critical.</p> - -<p>‘I have lived retired pretty well from the time I married. My husband -does whatever visiting is required of us.’</p> - -<p>‘That is unfair to the world at large!’ cried Marjorie Bartrand, -drawing up a chair to the table, where wools and silks lay heaped -beside Dinah’s patiently progressing canvas. ‘Whatever hermit rules you -observe elsewhere we shall make you break through them in Guernsey. -I may look at your work? What intricate shading!’ She scanned the -pathetic mass of Dinah’s stitches. ‘What a labour of love embroidery -must be to you!’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘It helps pass the time,’ said Dinah Arbuthnot. Wool-work fills up long -hours that must else be empty. For I am not a scholar like you, Miss -Bartrand, or like Geoffrey. And I only learnt the piano for two years -at boarding school, not enough to play well.’</p> - -<p>‘Still, you do play?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie glanced across at a piano that stood open. A goodly heap of -music scores lay on a neighbouring ottoman.</p> - -<p>‘Not in such a public place as an hotel. The notes you see there are my -husband’s. Mr. Arbuthnot sings, as I dare say you know. He was thought, -once on a time, to have the best tenor voice in Cambridge. Some day,’ -said Dinah doubtfully, ‘I may play just well enough to accompany him. -Unfortunately for me, the most beautiful of his songs are in French.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie bethought her of Geoffrey’s accent, and was silent.</p> - -<p>‘You will have good opportunities of learning French in Guernsey, Mrs. -Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘Geff wants me to take lessons. We have a French waitress here in the -hotel, but she speaks too quick for me, so do my husband and—and Mrs. -Thorne. I only understand the sort of French we learned at boarding -school—the sort of French the girls talked together,’ said poor Dinah -modestly.</p> - -<p>No books, no languages, no music; only cross-stitch, the counting of -canvas threads, to fill one’s existence and one’s heart. And for life -companion, thought Marjorie, a husband who frequented afternoon teas, -who warbled ‘beautiful’ French ditties, in a bad accent, to audiences -of women on the level of Linda Thorne!</p> - -<p>This vision of Geoffrey, as a singer, added the crowning touch to -the girl’s disappointment in his character. Throughout the brief, -bitter-tasting epoch when her unwilling hand wore an engagement-ring, -she was accustomed to hear<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> French sentiment in an English accent, -and an English tenor voice, during at least three hours out of each -twenty-four. At this moment the tinkling burthen of one frequent song -came back, with a sense of repulsion that was pain, upon her heart.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>‘Si vous n’avez rien à me dire</div> -<div>Pourquoi passez-vous par ici?’</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>She remembered how the white hands of Major Tredennis used to rattle -out the accompaniment of that song. She remembered the flower -Major Tredennis wore at his button-hole the last day he visited -Tintajeux—remembered, when she got knowledge of his treachery, how -instant and far-reaching was her scorn.</p> - -<p>With what honesty did she now scorn all human creatures of the -Tredennis stamp! How loyally would she put herself forward as Dinah’s -friend; yes, although she must forfeit the reading of mathematics and -classics with Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot as her reward!</p> - -<p>‘You have not been here long enough to see much of the island. Of -course you are fond of the country?’</p> - -<p>‘Well, I was country born and bred. Real country folk, my husband says, -set less store upon green fields and hedgerows than the town people.’</p> - -<p>‘But you like being out of doors? You will walk or drive with me -sometimes? I have a pair of Welsh ponies, capital at scrambling up and -down our Guernsey lanes.’</p> - -<p>‘You are very kind, Miss Bartrand, but I can’t quite give an answer. -You see I should have to speak to Mr. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>Poor Dinah coloured with actual shame at the proposal.</p> - -<p>‘Now, to-day. Why are you not enjoying yourself with the rest of the -world at the show? Guernsey roses, I can tell you, are worth looking -at.’</p> - -<p>‘I asked Geff, in joke, of course, to take me,’ Dinah answered. ‘But he -was not polite enough to say “Yes.”’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Will you come with me?’ cried Marjorie. ‘As I drove in from Tintajeux -I was getting my courage up all the way to ask you this. I have no -chaperon, and now that I am seventeen, nearly a grown-up woman, the old -ladies tell my grandfather it is improper I should go about without -one. I, who know the island like a cat! You would be doing an act of -charity by coming with me to the Arsenal.’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s face grew irresolute at this piece of special pleading. She -crossed to the window, and looked with wistful eyes up the street. She -recalled the group which had passed along a quarter of an hour before. -She heard Gaston’s voice again, saw the tiny primrose hands clasped -round his throat. She thought of Linda Thorne’s rainbow-coloured -flounces, and of Linda Thorne herself.</p> - -<p>‘I should like to go.’ The truth broke from her after a minute more -of hesitation. ‘I was feeling duller than usual when you came, Miss -Bartrand, and I do like a flower-show above all things. We used to go -to the Tiverton shows when my sister and I were girls. Uncle William, -who lived bailiff at Lord Lufton’s, would take us when the gentlepeople -were gone. But that,’ Dinah interrupted herself hastily, ‘was -different. We were with Uncle William, we were in our place. I should -not be in my place with you. Perhaps you are too young, Miss Bartrand, -to see this. My husband is at the Arsenal with his friends, and——’</p> - -<p>‘Wherever a husband goes is a place for his wife, according to my -ideas of matrimony,’ said Marjorie, in a careless tone, but with her -veracious face aflame. ‘I will not hear another excuse. It will be a -curiously pleasant surprise for Mr. Arbuthnot when he sees you in my -society.’</p> - -<p>‘The ladies are dressed so elegantly,’ objected Dinah, at the same time -moving towards the door. ‘And I never wear smart things.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Neither do I.’ In truth, Marjorie wore one of the plain washed frocks, -the sunburnt straw hat, that she wore on the moor at Tintajeux. ‘What -do smart things or smart people matter to you and me? Dress as you -choose, Mrs. Arbuthnot. You will look better than every woman in the -Arsenal.’</p> - -<p>‘I had best put on black. My husband, fortunately, has lovely taste, -even in ladies’ dress. He tells me black is always the safest thing for -me to wear.’ (‘Black cachemire and silence.’ Dinah remembered those -were the requisites Gaston advocated, obliquely—the hint concealed by -charming flowers of speech—on the solitary occasion when he introduced -her to some female members of his family in London.) ‘I shall ask you -to tell me, Miss Bartrand, about my gloves and ribbons.’</p> - -<p>Thus speaking, Dinah passed away through a side door into her own -chamber. For Gaston, with his knack of organising daily life after -the manner that best suited himself, had taken a compact little suite -of apartments on Mr. Miller’s ground floor. And Marjorie, left to her -meditations, glanced around the parlour—in writing of Guernsey, and -of Dinah, the old-fashioned word must be excused—for land-marks that -should point out its present possessor’s tastes.</p> - -<p>Dinah was not a woman whose affections tended towards ornament, in art -or in dress. Had they done so, Dinah’s life had probably been happier. -Her work-basket, with its outlying heaps of silk and wool, was the only -sign Marjorie could detect of feminine occupation. What of Dinah’s -husband? Pipes and cigarette-holders of varying patterns were ranged on -either side the mantelpiece. A tobacco jar stood in unabashed evidence -on a table. An odour not to be mistaken clung round the draperies of -the windows. So this man smoked, thought Marjorie irefully—<i>smoked</i> in -his beautiful, refined wife’s living-room! Yellow-backed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> French novels -abounded (French novels, I must confess, were an abiding inspiration -of Gaston’s genius). The neighbourhood of the piano was strewn with -French songs. A volume of Greek poetry, lent to Geoffrey by old -Andros Bartrand, lay on a bookshelf. In a corner by the door Marjorie -discerned a rough briar walking-stick, which she recognised as her -tutor’s property.</p> - -<p>As she looked around the room her impulse was to burst into tears. -It was but an inn’s best parlour. You could not expect the perfume, -the grace of Tintajeux under good Mr. Miller’s roof. But it was not -Louis Seize furniture, or Pompadour cabinets, or Trianon rose-baskets, -that Marjorie missed. To pipes and tobacco smoke her life with the -Seigneur had accustomed her. Yellow-backed novels did not disturb her -conscience. Within limits she could endure French songs. The room -repulsed her because it destroyed every dream she had had of Geoffrey! -Without the Greek volume, she thought, without the briar stick even, -her disenchantment had been less vivid. She had not been forced to -remember him, to admit the lapse into bathos of her own ridiculously -high-pitched ideal.</p> - -<p>But so the facts stood. ‘One may be made a fool twice,’ the girl told -herself. ‘First by a sweetheart, secondly by a friend. Happily Dinah -Arbuthnot, not Marjorie Bartrand, must this time pay the reckoning.’</p> - -<p>And the tears were in her eyes still. In spite of all disillusionment, -her liking for Geff lingered obstinately. She thought she could never -again be glad of heart as on that mid-summer night when she curtsied to -the moon and wished a wish by her tutor’s side on the lawn at Tintajeux.</p> - -<p>It took Dinah Arbuthnot fifteen minutes—a real ‘quarter of an hour of -Rabelais’ for Marjorie—to put on hat and gown; fifteen minutes ere she -could be sure her appearance would pass muster in the eyes of Linda -Thorne. The best<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> and simplest women infrequently dress for the other -sex, or for the world at large, or for themselves. They dress for each -other, oftenest of all for one especial feminine criticism which they -have reason to fear.</p> - -<p>‘Shall I do, Miss Bartrand?’ Dinah peeped, her exquisite face aflush, -through the half-opened door, then she crossed the room to Marjorie; -instinct, true as a child’s, informing her that in Geoffrey’s pupil -she had found a friend. ‘I want you to pick me to pieces, find as much -fault with me as you can. Shall I do?’</p> - -<p>‘Do!’ repeated Marjorie.</p> - -<p>And a volume of hearty admiration was in the monosyllable.</p> - -<p>Dinah Thurston, in her girlhood, had learnt dressmaking as a trade. Of -dress as a difficult social art Dinah Arbuthnot knew not the initial -letters. Here her husband was an unfailing monitor. Gaston had an -artist’s knowledge of colour and effect. He had the sense of fitness -belonging to a man of the world. Dinah’s apparel might not accurately -follow the fashion books. It bore the seal of distinction at all times.</p> - -<p>Thus the ‘safe’ black dress was absolutely perfect of its kind; plain -of make, as was meet for such a bust, such shoulders as Dinah’s, -but draped by a Parisian hand that knew its cunning. A ruffle of -Mechlin lace enhanced the sweet whiteness of the wearer’s throat. -A velvet-lined hat threw up the outline of the head, the waves of -short-cut English-coloured hair in rich relief.</p> - -<p>‘You are lovelier than any picture!’ cried Marjorie, looking at Dinah -Arbuthnot with as generous a pleasure, surely, as ever woman felt in -the beauty of another.</p> - -<p>‘Advise me about my gloves.’ Dinah blushed and drew back at the girl’s -frank praise. ‘Here are cream-coloured ones, you see, the same shade -as my ruffle, and here is a box of long black silk gloves. My husband -had them sent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> from Paris with the gown. Of course, the cream-coloured -are the dressiest.’ The tone of Dinah’s voice betrayed her own leaning. -‘Mr. Arbuthnot warns me generally against light gloves. My hands, he -says, are half a size too large. Still for a flower-show——’</p> - -<p>‘You must wear the black gloves, Mrs. Arbuthnot. No shadow of doubt -about it! As you see, I don’t go in for dandy dress myself,’ said -Marjorie, ‘but one can’t help hearing the whispers of the milliners. -These long silk gloves are at present the one righteous thing to wear -in London and in Paris.’</p> - -<p>‘And no ribbons, no ornament? I have a gold necklace that looks nice on -black, and——’</p> - -<p>‘You want no ornament at all. You must take our little world by storm -just as you stand at this moment. Miller has some crimson roses in his -garden. We will cut one as we pass. The black of your hat would be -better for a single spot of colour.’</p> - -<p>By the time Marjorie’s fiery Welsh ponies had rushed up to the Arsenal -four o’clock was striking. The rose-show festivities were, for the weak -and frivolous, at their culminating point. It was the hour when staid -flower-lovers—sensible souls who came to see the real, not the human -roses—were leaving, Cassandra Tighe among them.</p> - -<p>‘I am starting off to Tintajeux,’ she told Marjorie, as they passed -each other at the entrance. ‘The Seigneur’s “Duc de Rohan” has taken -a prize, and I must be first to carry the news to the Manoir.’ Then, -with a kindly glance at Dinah, ‘You have done the right thing, have -paid your visit,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t see the necessity of mixing -yourself up with it all in public. Linda Thorne presides at the -refreshment tent, and that wretched man is simply infatuated in his -attentions. But the error is generous. Being a Bartrand, you can, I -suppose, do nothing by halves.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I consider myself honoured by appearing with Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ returned -Marjorie, very low. ‘I want to judge of that wretched man’s conduct at -first hand, see facts alive, and extract their meaning by the light of -my own common sense.’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XIII</span> <span class="smaller">THROUGH SMOKE-COLOURED SPECTACLES</span></h2> - -<p>The refreshment tent was pitched at the most conspicuous point of the -Arsenal, just within the gates. Here Linda Thorne, assisted by three or -four white-muslined aides-de-camp, dispensed strawberries, ices, and -tea, liberal of smiles, but most illiberal in charges to the crowd.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot hovered near, not engaging Mrs. Thorne’s attention, -but with the air of a man whose freedom is nominal—of a prisoner on -parole. The ayah had vanished. Small Rahnee, in a corner, was busily -laying up a week’s trouble for her tropical digestion over a plate of -stolen macaroons. A swarm of well-gloved, well-set-up young gentlemen, -subalterns, for the most part, of the Maltshire Royals, newly returned -from Africa, clustered ornamentally around.</p> - -<p>‘Lord Rex,’ cried Linda, in a playful voice appealing to a youth who -stood behind her chair, a plain but ultra-dandified youth, with a -sun-scorched face, sandy hair and eyelashes, and who wore his left arm -in a sling. ‘My dear Lord Rex, where are your thoughts to-day? For -the third and last time of asking, will you run across to Madame the -Archdeaconess, and press her to drink a second cup of tea?’</p> - -<p>For Linda, a clever politician, never allowed the present to divert her -mindfulness from the future. Belonging—<i>sub silentio</i>—to the extreme -left of any society in which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> she found herself, Mrs. Thorne kept a -firm grip, here in European coteries, as formerly in Indian stations, -on whatever Conservative mainstay might be within her reach. Her -Guernsey mainstay was the Archdeacon’s wife. Linda was a member, under -Madame Corbie, of cutting-out clubs, district-visiting corps, societies -for persuading members of all denominations to change places with each -other, and similar intricate philanthropies of the hour and place. If, -occasionally, serious circles looked with misgiving upon some little -new escapade, some unaccustomed outbreak of vivacity at The Bungalow, -Linda’s usefulness floated her. There was such a fund of sterling -worth in Linda Thorne! So some old lady would say at whose house Linda -perhaps, on the preceding evening, demure as a mouse, had been painting -Christmas cards for the Caribbee Islanders. Such energy, such zeal -for the weaker brethren! Such a genius for collecting subscriptions, -or organising fancy bazaars! And then one must not forget the stock -she came of. One must always remember what our dear flighty Linda’s -grandpapa <i>was</i>!</p> - -<p>Hence, perhaps, the leniency of the judgments. The old Sarnian ladies -never forgot that our dear flighty Linda’s grandpapa was an earl.</p> - -<p>‘Madame Corbie—tea!’ echoed Lord Rex Basire, the sun-scorched dandy, -absently. ‘Ah, there she goes again! The prettiest girl, yes, by Jove! -the out-and-outest girl, every way, I have seen in Guernsey. Golden -hair, a complexion, a figure.... Let me take the Venerable her cheering -cup at once, and set me free to fly after my Dulcinea.’</p> - -<p>‘A new Dulcinea?’ asked Linda, with a glance as sweet as the cup she -had prepared for Madame Corbie. ‘I thought Lord Rex Basire had flown -after every Dulcinea in the Channel Islands a long time since.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex broke away without reply, causing a good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> deal of the -Venerable’s tea to overflow by reason of his impetuous movements. But -he was not set free again as quickly as he desired.</p> - -<p>Madame Corbie was what the Scottish bailie called ‘a fine respectit -half-worn sort of woman.’ Her set of immediate worshippers, poorer -cousins for the most part, would speak of her beneath their breath as -so superior! Madame Corbie never smiled. Madame Corbie never retracted -a step once taken. It was her harmless boast that she had never read -a novel in her life—as one would say he had never cut a throat, or -picked a pocket. She would wear no black satin that cost less than -ten shillings and sixpence (Guernsey currency) per yard. And she -surveyed the moral, as she did the physical, world through a pair of -smoke-coloured spectacles.</p> - -<p>Even the Archdeaconess, however, had her little stock of human vanities -and foibles. Persons of title, though they exist in adequate number on -the British mainland, are scarce and prized, like the pink flowering -hydrangea, on these smaller islets. With the rectors’ wives from -half a dozen country parishes sitting around, neglected, it was a -distinctly soothing sensation for good Madame Corbie’s unworldly heart -to have Lord Rex Basire, the fifth son of a very impoverished duke, in -attendance upon her.</p> - -<p>A second cup of tea? Why, Lord Rex and dear Linda were certainly -conspiring to spoil us all! And might she, the Archdeaconess, ask if -there was such a thing to be had as a macaroon?</p> - -<p>‘Too late, Madame Corbie! Lost your chance,’ cried Lord Rex. ‘That -young limb, Rahnee, has been beforehand with you. I saw her devouring -the last three macaroons at a gulp just as Linda sent me off with your -tea.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex was forced to shout these words into Madame Corbie’s ear, -for the band of the Maltshire Royals were playing a forcible, much -kettle-drummed polka not twenty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> feet distant, so his attentions, -even to the obtuse perceptions of country rectors’ wives, must be -unmistakably marked.</p> - -<p>‘Sadly unwholesome diet, to be sure. But poor Linda Thorne is so -indiscreet in minor matters. You agree with me, do you not, Lord Rex? -Nothing more sadly indigestible for a young child’s stomach than -macaroons?’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex Basire heard her not. It may be doubted whether Lord Rex heard -the horns and kettle-drums as they echoed resonantly from the Arsenal -walls. He was absorbed in the vision of a distant lovely head, poised -flowerlike on a white throat, its waves of amber hair set off against -the soft velvet of a Rubens hat. No other interest existed on our -planet at that moment for Lord Rex Basire.</p> - -<p>He was a man who from his birth upward had followed the desire of -the hour, for evil or for good; mainly, not for good. His desire now -was to become acquainted with the exquisitely pretty girl whom his -eyes pursued. Bluntly abandoning the question (from a physiological -side) of macaroons, he addressed himself to the Archdeaconess. Did -Madame Corbie—the polka by now had stopped, Lord Rex could ask his -question without a shout—did Madame Corbie know the name of the girl -who was walking with Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux? ‘Golden-haired -girl—straight features, the loveliest complexion in the world,’ added -Lord Rex, with the frankness of a momentarily real feeling.</p> - -<p>‘It will be my husband’s cousin once removed, Ella Corbie of La -Hauterive,’ observed Madame Corbie blandly. ‘The Hauterive yellow roses -are fine this year. I have not a word to say against their “Celine -Forestier.” But, in my poor opinion, the Archdeacon’s “Maréchal Niel” -ought to have taken the prize. Yes, yes,’—Madame Corbie gazed through -her smoked spectacles into the perspective of history—‘Ella Corbie -is still nice looking. I remember her, dressed for her first evening -party, more than a dozen years ago, and now——’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘My dear Madame Corbie! I beg a thousand pardons, your cup is -empty—allow me to set it down,’ interrupted Lord Rex Basire.</p> - -<p>For at this precise moment the perfect features, the lovely complexion, -were again setting towards him in the crowd.</p> - -<p>But Madame Corbie, the head of our local society, rose to the occasion, -and to her feet.</p> - -<p>‘Let me have a good look, Lord Rex, and if it is my cousin Ella, I will -introduce you to her. A young lady walking, you say, with Marjorie -Bartrand? That is certainly most unlike Ella! The Hauterive family keep -so exclusively to themselves. Still——’</p> - -<p>‘There they are—coming this way, by Jove!’ cried Lord Rex -breathlessly. ‘You see the girl I mean? Splendid girl in black—lace -ruffle—a red rose lying on her hair?’</p> - -<p>Madame Corbie looked through her smoke-coloured glasses straight. Then -she looked through her smoke-coloured glasses obliquely. Then she -pushed them high away on her ample forehead, and gazed stoically upward -in the broad light of the merry June day.</p> - -<p>‘The person,’ she pronounced, with awful solemnity, ‘who is walking -with Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux <i>does not belong to this island</i>.’</p> - -<p>And so speaking, and with the folds of her satin doing credit to the -price paid for them, Madame Corbie there, in full presence of the -inferior clergy’s wives, sat down.</p> - -<p>‘Ah! I thought not. Thought I had never seen such a pretty woman in the -place,’ observed Lord Rex, addressing his own consciousness, rather -than the ill-pleased ears of the Archdeaconess. ‘What are the odds -I don’t get properly introduced and properly snubbed before another -quarter of an hour is over!’</p> - -<p>As a preliminary step Lord Rex rushed back to the refreshment tent, -Madame Corbie’s tea-cup his ostensible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> excuse. He threw himself on -Linda Thorne’s ambiguous sympathy.</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Thorne, you know all about every one, by fine natural -discernment. I’ve heard you say so a hundred times. Who is this -wonderful girl in black that Marjorie Bartrand is walking about with?’</p> - -<p>A suppressed smile lurked round Linda Thorne’s thin lips.</p> - -<p>‘Let us give Mr. Arbuthnot the task of learning her pedigree. It is an -act of charity always to find work for idle men. Mr. Arbuthnot,’ she -turned to Gaston, ‘I want you to find out something for the peace of -Lord Rex Basire’s mind and of my own existence. Who is this wonderful -girl in black who is walking about the Arsenal grounds with Marjorie -Bartrand?’</p> - -<p>‘If I were of a brave disposition I would go myself,’ said Lord Rex, -when Gaston had sauntered placidly off on his mission. ‘But I am not. -I am a coward down to the ground. Peace at any price is my motto, -politically and otherwise. To-day I am feeling more than usually -nervous—not half “go” enough in me to stand up under one of Marjorie -Bartrand’s snubbings.’</p> - -<p>‘I cannot say your modesty makes itself known to the world by outward -and visible signs.’</p> - -<p>‘Modesty—no! I understand you, madam. A man may have forward manners -but a faint heart.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex Basire’s arm, in justice let it be spoken, got a bullet -through it in hot warfare. This dandified boy was in the thick of more -than one African fight when clouds gathered dark above the English -colours, was all but drowned on a never-to-be-forgotten night while -attempting to carry succour to the wounded, left with their solitary -gallant surgeon, on an abandoned position.</p> - -<p>‘I tried once, at a militia review or something, to talk to Marjorie, -just in the usual way one talks, not without success you know, to girls -of her age.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘And the result was?’ asked Linda.</p> - -<p>‘She looked at me coolly—grand Spanish eyes of hers those are, bar the -temper in them! “You are fresh from Eton, are you not?” she observed. I -confessed that Eton had known me in my youth. “Talk about Eton, then,” -struck out Miss Bartrand, straight from the shoulder. “Talk about -cricket, football, boating, Latin grammar, if you learnt any. I will -not,” with a murderous flash from her big eyes, “listen to foolishness -from any man.”’</p> - -<p>By the time Lord Rex finished this characteristic anecdote Gaston -Arbuthnot, with his usual expression of genial impenetrability, had -sauntered back to the refreshment tent. Picking up Rahnee, he asked the -child what ailed her? For Rahnee’s face, sickly at all times, wore a -look and hue forlornly out of keeping with the bravery of her attire.</p> - -<p>‘What in the world has befallen the infant, Mrs. Thorne? Her complexion -is of the lively arsenic green the doctors forbid us to use in wall -papers.’</p> - -<p>‘Rahnee! mamma’s own darling pet, what is the matter?’ cried Linda, -suddenly recalled to the fact of her darling’s existence.</p> - -<p>‘Me eat matazoons. Bad matazoons!’ whimpered Rahnee, with the tender -conscience, the quick physical repentance of her age.</p> - -<p>‘That is a wise little Rahnee,’ said Gaston Arbuthnot, kissing her. -‘Right morality. Pitch into our pleasures the moment our pleasures -begin to pitch into us.’</p> - -<p>‘Have you seen her?’ exclaimed Lord Rex. ‘This kind of trifling, -remember, may be fun to all of you. It’s stretched high above a joke to -me. A tall fair girl, dressed in black——’</p> - -<p>‘With a crimson rose in her hair,’ added Linda, ‘and walking with -Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux.’</p> - -<p>‘Well, yes,’ Gaston admitted in the lapses of whispered consolation to -poor Rahnee, ‘I have seen her.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘And who is she?’ exclaimed Linda Thorne. ‘I am almost as curious as -Lord Rex. Have you discovered this new Dulcinea’s name?’</p> - -<p>‘Her name is Dinah Arbuthnot,’ replied Gaston cheerfully. ‘Yes, Mrs. -Thorne, incredulous though I know you feel, the wonderful girl in -black, and who is walking with Miss Bartrand of Tintajeux, is—my wife.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex sank in an attitude of despair, half mock, half genuine, upon -the nearest bench.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XIV</span> <span class="smaller">BROUGHT UP BY THE JESUITS</span></h2> - -<p>Dinah Arbuthnot had been more than woman could she have run the -gauntlet of this Guernsey rose-show unconscious of her success.</p> - -<p>But admiration to Dinah was no new thing. As a girl she never went -through that chrysalis or ugly-duckling stage, the remembrance of which -to many women puts an edge on after triumphs. Heads were turning after -her to-day, she saw, just as heads used to turn when she was a baby -toddling along the Devonshire lanes, or a slim maid walking in the -procession of ‘young ladies’ from Tiverton boarding-school. She had -known since she knew anything that she was beautiful, and rated beauty -at a pathetically low standard.</p> - -<p>Thanks to roseleaf tint or well-cut features, a sweetheart’s fancy can -easily be won. Who should say that cleverness, knowledge of the world, -tact, are not the solid gifts that bring happiness, the qualities -that might chain a husband—wearied, say, after modelling from hired -beauty—to his own fireside?</p> - -<p>‘If you do not object, Miss Bartrand, I would like to find some -place where we could rest, away from the crowd, a little.’ Bent upon -displaying their friendship before the Sarnian world, Marjorie had -by this time paraded her companion bravely throughout the length and -breadth of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> the Arsenal. ‘My husband has seen me. He is in the tent -near the entrance—the tent where Mrs. Thorne is serving refreshments. -As Mr. Arbuthnot does not come forward to meet us, I am afraid he is -displeased.’</p> - -<p>‘Displeased! That is a great idea,’ cried headstrong Marjorie. ‘Put all -the blame on me. I think I shall be strong enough to bear the brunt of -Mr. Arbuthnot’s wrath if I rest myself well first.’</p> - -<p>They succeeded in finding a bench, withdrawn somewhat from the crowd, -yet within sight of the stall at which Linda presided. Here Dinah could -pluck up her drooping courage, while Marjorie communed scornfully in -her heart as to the pitiful weakness of married women in general, and -of this most neglected, most mistaken married woman in particular. -Their seclusion lasted for two or three minutes only. Then a blush -started up into Dinah’s cheek, vivid, bashful, such as a girl’s face -might wear on catching sight unexpectedly of her lover, for she saw -Gaston approaching. At his side was a very dandily dressed, sun-tanned -youth, his arm in a sling; a youth whom as yet Dinah Arbuthnot knew not.</p> - -<p>‘He is coming! Miss Bartrand, I look to you to smooth things over. Just -say you pressed me to come to the show, and I refused at first, and——’</p> - -<p>‘I will say everything that can decently be compressed into one act of -contrition.’ Marjorie’s tone was fraught with ironical seriousness. -‘But your eyes are better than mine, Mrs. Arbuthnot. A guilty -conscience perhaps sharpens the external senses. I am looking with the -best of my seeing power over the whole Arsenal. I see no Mr. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘Then his companion must stand in the way—the light-haired gentleman -with a plain-like, reddish face,’ whispered Dinah, ‘and who wears his -left arm in a sling.’</p> - -<p>‘That is our popular hero, Lord Rex Basire, newly returned from South -African fighting, and as proud of his gunshot wound as a foolish girl -might be of her first conquest.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Well, and there is my husband walking with him.’</p> - -<p>‘Your husband! Mrs. Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie’s world was reeling. A possibility—she knew not of what—a -wild and passionate hope trembled on the outside edge of her thoughts.</p> - -<p>‘Perhaps I am not a fair judge,’ murmured Dinah, the two young men -having been arrested on their road by that incorrigible button-seizer, -Doctor Thorne, ‘but, to my mind, Gaston must always be the most -noticeable man in any company he enters, no matter how high that -company may be.’</p> - -<p>‘Gaston?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie Bartrand was in a state of such bewilderment that the echoing -of Dinah Arbuthnot’s words seemed about as great originality in the way -of speech as she was mistress of.</p> - -<p>‘Geoffrey must have sounded my husband’s praises to you pretty often. -That is a right good point of poor Geff’s, his love and admiration for -Gaston. At Cambridge he was called the handsome American. I know it,’ -said Dinah, with earnestness which became those sweet lips of hers -mightily, ‘because Aunt Susan had relations in the town, on Market -Hill, you know. Before my marriage we used to hear something flattering -of Gaston every day. It is the same in London. The tailors will give -him any credit. I believe they would make his coats gratis so long as -they got his promise to wear them.’</p> - -<p>‘And Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot?’ It cost Marjorie no small effort just -then to force Geff’s name from her lips. ‘What relationship is there -between him and you?’</p> - -<p>‘Geoffrey is our first cousin. His father and my husband’s died, -both of them, when their children were young. Gaston has always been -Geoffrey’s good genius.’ In saying this Dinah believed herself to be -enunciating truth, clear as crystal. ‘They did not meet as boys.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> -Geoffrey spent his young years in a gloomy city school. My husband -was brought up—you can tell it, they say, by his accent—in Paris. -When they came together in Cambridge nothing could be more different -than their positions. Poor Geff, a scholar at John’s, was forced to -work without amusements, almost without friends, for his Tripos, while -Gaston——’</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot had livelier things than work to think about,’ -suggested Marjorie, as Gaston’s wife paused.</p> - -<p>‘He was clever enough to come out first in any Tripos he had read for. -But his friends would not let him read. He was sought after, popular,’ -said Dinah, with a sigh, ‘just as you see him now. However, that made -no difference for Geff. Gaston treated him like a younger brother -always. He does so now. I have grown myself to think of Geoffrey as of -a brother.’</p> - -<p>She stopped short, for Gaston Arbuthnot and Lord Rex Basire were now -within hearing distance; Doctor Thorne, adhesive as goose-grass, -addressing them by turns as he followed, with his nimble limp, in their -steps.</p> - -<p>‘Yes, Mr. Arbuthnot, you must grant me my postulate.’ Doctor Thorne -packed up all of nature or of books—chiefly of books—that came within -his reach in little, neatly-labelled comprehensible forms, dilettante -demonstrations of the universe ready for his own daily use and the -misery of his fellows. ‘Grant, as a postulate, that the magnitudes -we call molecules are realities, and the rest follows as a necessary -deduction. Let us look around us at this moment. Evolution teaches us -that these bright blooms we behold actually come into being through the -colour-sense of insects; and, and——Lord Rex Basire! you, I am sure, -are fascinated by the subject!’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex had not heard a syllable. Breaking away from Doctor Thorne, -Lord Rex stood still, his eyes pointedly avoiding Dinah’s face. Gaston, -meanwhile, his hat held low,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> after the fashion of Broadway or the -Boulevards, was saluting the two ladies, making Marjorie Bartrand’s -acquaintance, and jesting amicably with Dinah as to the march she had -stolen upon himself and an unexpectant Sarnian world.</p> - -<p>When two or three minutes had passed Lord Rex gave evidence of his -presence. Coming forward, he delivered a set little compliment to -Marjorie Bartrand on the Seigneur’s roses. It was a source of agreeable -satisfaction to Lord Rex Basire that the ‘Duc de Rohan’ should have -taken a first prize. He would like——</p> - -<p>‘The Seigneur’s dark roses have taken a prize every June show for the -last quarter of a century,’ Marjorie interrupted him cruelly. ‘When -once we islanders, flower-show judges included, get into a safe groove, -we keep there.’</p> - -<p>‘What an improving place Guernsey must be to live in!’ Gaston Arbuthnot -remarked. ‘I have been trying vainly through the best years of my life -to keep in safe grooves.’</p> - -<p>‘To <i>keep</i> in safe grooves!’ repeated Marjorie, with rather stinging -emphasis. ‘You would need to get into them first, would you not?’</p> - -<p>‘You are severe, Miss Bartrand.’ Gaston came over to the girl’s side. -‘And I like it. Severity gives me a new sensation. Now, I am going to -ask a favour which I can tell beforehand you will grant. I want you to -show me these conquering Tintajeux roses. Tintajeux is not an unknown -name to us.’</p> - -<p>Gaston added this last clause in a lower key, then watched to note how -much the colour would vary on her ever-varying face.</p> - -<p>Under any other circumstances than the present ones Marjorie would, -I think, have selected Gaston Arbuthnot as the type of human -creature least to be encouraged under heaven. Was he not obtrusively -good-looking, a popularity man, a dandy for whom Bond Street tailors -would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> content, as a flesh-and-blood block, a living advertisement, -to stitch gratis? Was he not a coolly neglectful husband, a -pleasure-seeker, a frequenter of the afternoon teas of frivolous, -attention-loving women?</p> - -<p>But in her rush of joyous surprise, of contradictory relief, in her -gratitude to him for not being Geoffrey, the girl was ready to extend -a hand of hearty friendship to Dinah’s husband—during the first half -hour of their acquaintance, at all events.</p> - -<p>‘You wish to see the Tintajeux roses? Come, then, and let me play -show-woman. Unfortunately,’ Marjorie added, ‘I don’t know in which -quarter of the globe the “Duc de Rohan” lives.’</p> - -<p>‘I believe I can guide you. I know the whereabouts of every stall in -the Arsenal.’</p> - -<p>And Lord Rex neatly affixed himself to the party as Marjorie and Dinah -rose.</p> - -<p>Dinah’s breath came short. She knew instinctively how the eyes of this -pale-haired, sun-burnt youth avoided her face, and in that avoidance -read the fact of his admiration. She divined that Lord Rex’s intention -was to walk at her side. She foresaw, with terror, the necessity of -conversation.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot gave his wife a quick, comprehensive look—Lord -Chesterfield embodied in a glance! Then he went through a brief, -informal word of introduction.</p> - -<p>‘Lord Rex Basire—my wife. I fancied, Dinah, that you and Basire had -met already. Now, Miss Bartrand, let us make an exploring tour of the -Arsenal. We shall reach the Seigneur’s dark roses, sooner or later. I -look to you,’ Gaston added, ‘for enlightenment as to some of the human -elements of the show.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie’s mood was abundantly bright; the ‘enlightenment’ was not -slow of coming. Her prattle, with its brisk bitterish flavour, amused -Gaston as he would have thought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> it impossible to be amused by any -classico-mathematical girl extant. As they passed the bench that still -supported Madame the Archdeaconess’s sacerdotal weight, Marjorie -broke into a laugh—that hearty, human, unmistakable laugh of hers. -For Doctor Thorne stood beside the great female pillar of the Church, -delivering an oration in his most verbose little manner, to which not -only the Archdeaconess, but the wives of the inferior clergy, listened -with respect. And Marjorie’s quick ear had caught his text.</p> - -<p>‘One ought not to laugh at our betters, Mr. Arbuthnot, ought one?’</p> - -<p>Asking this, Marjorie looked gravely up in Gaston’s face.</p> - -<p>‘It is so written in the copy-books, Miss Bartrand. For my part, -I think the greatest good a man ever does his fellows is when he -furnishes them, consciously or unconsciously, with materials for farce.’</p> - -<p>‘At least, one should not laugh loud enough to be heard?’</p> - -<p>‘I think you ought to laugh very often, and loud enough for all the -world to hear,’ replied Gaston.</p> - -<p>‘Doctor Thorne is too much for me; I have an old “Sandford and Merton” -among my books, and when I hear him talk, I think of Mr. Barlow -moralising at Tommy. Mr. Barlow turned scientist. “Grant as a postulate -that the magnitudes we call molecules are realities ...” “Evolution -teaches us that these bright blooms ...” etc. Dr. Thorne’s flower-show -speech! We had it last autumn with the dahlias. We had it in the spring -with the tulips. I heard him addressing it just now to that poor small -boy, Lord Rex. Mrs. Corbie is orthodox to the core. I suppose he will -make a big jump, as they do over the words in plays, when he gets to -anything so brimstony as “evolution.”’</p> - -<p>The crowd, as it happened, was setting in the direction of the -Tintajeux roses. By the time Gaston and Marjorie had made their way -into front places before the stand, they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> discovered that Dinah and -Lord Rex Basire had parted company from them in the crowd.</p> - -<p>‘I brought Mrs. Arbuthnot here. It was through my persuasion she laid -down her cross-stitch,’ cried Marjorie, ‘and now we have let her fall -victim to Lord Rex. How wearied she will be of him!’</p> - -<p>‘I am not so sure of that. My wife has the old-fashioned weaknesses of -the sex. The sight of a wounded soldier is dear to her. All women, at -heart, are thoroughgoing Jingoites.’</p> - -<p>‘I am not! I am an ultra, red-hot Radical,’ exclaimed Marjorie. ‘As to -Lord Rex—I believe his wound was well long ago. He wears his arm in a -sling to get up sympathy.’</p> - -<p>‘It will secure Mrs. Arbuthnot’s,’ said Gaston. Then: ‘What a world -of good it will do my wife to have been here,’ he added warmly. ‘That -is just what poor Dinah needs, to come out more, mix more with her -fellow-creatures, brighten up her ideas; to lay down her cross-stitch, -in short. That hits the nail on the head—to lay down her cross-stitch! -It was charming of you to call on us, Miss Bartrand! I take it for -granted, you see, that you have called. You heard of our existence -probably from Geff?’</p> - -<p>‘I heard from Mr. Geoffrey that Mrs. Arbuthnot was staying at Miller’s -Hotel.’</p> - -<p>But Marjorie’s voice faltered. Her soul clothed itself in sackcloth and -ashes as she thought of her own error, of the <i>generous</i>, <i>delicate</i> -motives which had prompted her—Pharisee that she was!—to call on -Dinah.</p> - -<p>‘Whatever Geff does comes to good. He cannot take a mile-long walk -without some man or woman being the better for it. Geff has a kind of -genius for bringing about the welfare of other people.’</p> - -<p>At the mention of Geoffrey every artificial trace left Gaston’s -manner. The best of the man showed always, no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> matter how trifling the -occasion, in the honest regard he bore his cousin.</p> - -<p>‘Now, look, Miss Bartrand, at the way Geff is spending his time in this -island!’</p> - -<p>Where Marjorie had suspected him of easy-going callousness, of -philandering in the train of idle, fine ladies, of singing French -songs, of putting himself on the social and intellectual plane of a -Major Tredennis.</p> - -<p>‘Six hours a week must, I own, be grudged to him—the hours he spends -at Tintajeux Manoir.’</p> - -<p>‘Spare yourself the trouble of being polite, Mr. Arbuthnot. If you knew -how I detest politeness!’</p> - -<p>‘But remember all his other hours.’ The art of thought-reading was -certainly to be reckoned among Gaston’s accomplishments. Within ten -minutes of his introduction to this little classico-mathematical -girl, behold him discoursing with cunning naturalness on the subject -likeliest to interest her in the world—Geff’s virtues! ‘Remember how -his days, often his nights, are really passed.’</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot reads, does he not?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie gazed into the heart of a glorious Duc de Rohan with interest.</p> - -<p>‘Geoffrey reads as I,’ said Gaston, passing into a lighter strain, -‘meant to read, once. You look sceptical, Miss Bartrand! There was -a time when I had bookish ambition. Yes, I talked, like many a fool -before me, of going in for two Triposes, and left Cambridge without a -degree. But Geff has a gigantic physique, a real hunger for hard work. -He simply does not know the meaning of taking a holiday.</p> - -<p>As they chatted Gaston’s eyes dwelt with artistic satisfaction on -the girl’s slender figure and hands, on the chiselled Southern face -overkissed by sea and sun for some English tastes, but pure, fresh, as -the wine-dark roses over which she bent.</p> - -<p>‘I am a sculptor by trade,’ he went on. ‘It might be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> truer to say a -poor manufacturer of statuettes for the London market. Geff has told -you how we get our daily bread, has he not?’</p> - -<p>‘My tutor speaks of little—beyond my reading,’ stammered Marjorie, -still without meeting the penetrating glance of Gaston Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘Well, even after work as light as mine, I find,’ said Gaston, with -a clear conscience, ‘that amusement, varied in kind and ample of -quantity, is needful. The heartiness of one’s work seems determined to -a nicety by the heartiness of one’s play. Geoffrey takes his recreation -just now in the wards of the Guernsey hospital. There was a bad quarry -accident the day after our arrival here——’</p> - -<p>‘I know,’ exclaimed Marjorie, paling. ‘The worst accident we have ever -had at St. Sampson’s.’</p> - -<p>‘Geoffrey, I need not say, went to the fore as a volunteer. Between the -poor lads in hospital and those who lie still in the houses to which -they were carried from the quarry his hands are full. That is the way -Geff recreates himself.’</p> - -<p>For a good many seconds Marjorie was speechless. Could it be that -conscious weakness—weakness in her, a Bartrand—hindered the girl from -trusting her own voice? Then, giving Gaston her profile still, she -turned brusquely aside from the Tintajeux roses and from the discussion -of Geoffrey’s qualities. She remembered her grandfather’s dinner-hour. -The sun was getting low. It would be only human to search for Mrs. -Arbuthnot, and deliver her out of the hands of Lord Rex.</p> - -<p>‘We shall find them perfectly happy, and eating ices,’ said Gaston. -‘Dinah’s is not such a critical spirit as yours, Miss Bartrand. Let us -bend our steps to the refreshment tent.’</p> - -<p class="space-above">Dinah and Lord Rex were all this time advancing,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> haltingly, -monosyllabically, towards acquaintanceship. Gaston’s happy -many-sidedness, his power of adapting himself, without effort, to the -tastes and moods of others, were gifts in no manner shared by Lord Rex -Basire. Dinah’s intelligence differed about as widely from Marjorie -Bartrand’s as does placid English moonlight from a flash of tropical -lightning.</p> - -<p>Thus,—starting, as a cleverer man might do, along beaten tracks, the -first remark made by Lord Rex was meteorological:</p> - -<p>‘Splendid day this, isn’t it, for a rose-show?’</p> - -<p>‘Certainly.’</p> - -<p>The chilling assent was not spoken for some seconds, Dinah’s education -having failed to inform her that the smallest platitude uttered by men -and women when they meet in the world needs instant answer.</p> - -<p>‘As a rule, you see, one gets beastly weather for this sort of thing.’</p> - -<p>Silence.</p> - -<p>‘Festive gatherings, I mean, <i>und so weiter</i>. Speech-day at Eton was -always the wettest day of the three hundred and sixty-five.’</p> - -<p>‘Was it indeed, Lord Rex Basire?’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s gentle nature prompted her to be civil to all created beings. -She would be civil, kindly even, to this plain and sun-scorched boy -who had elected to walk beside her, and whose eyes took so many -covert glances of admiration at her face. In the heart of Eve’s -simplest daughter were such glances, one short quarter of an hour -after introduction, ever registered as crime? Not only would Dinah -be civil,—knowing little of titles, and less as to their modes of -application, she would fain give Lord Rex Basire the fullest benefit of -his.</p> - -<p>He paused, and doing so looked with a straighter gaze than heretofore -at Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife. She was surpassingly beautiful, fairer -than any woman he had seen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> with his fleshly eyes or dreamed about in -such soul as he possessed. Was she stupid? Not one whit for the higher -feminine intelligence or the higher feminine culture did Lord Rex care. -In society he held it Woman’s duty to supply him, Rex Basire, with -straw for his conversational brick-making; hooks and eyes, don’t you -know! gleanings from the comic papers, hints at politics, easy openings -for unsentimental sentiment. A distinctly stupid woman frightened him. -‘Makes one feel like being on one’s legs for a speech,’ Lord Rex Basire -would say.</p> - -<p>‘You are looking forward to a long stay in the island, I <i>hope</i>, Mrs. -Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>At the italicised verb Dinah’s eyes turned on her companion with a -vague distrust. Then she changed colour. A rose-flush, vivid as sunset -on snow, overspread her face. For she thought of Gaston.</p> - -<p>‘If you are a friend of my husband’s, I can understand your wishing to -keep us here.’</p> - -<p>There was a smile on her lips. The stiffness of her manner began -visibly to relax.</p> - -<p>Lord Rex for a moment was taken aback. Then he plucked up heart of -grace. To see a married woman blush like a school-girl at the mention -of her husband’s name was a new and puzzling spectacle to him. He -could scarcely flatter his vanity that he, personally, was receiving -encouragement. Still, Dinah had smiled. And with the burthen of -conversation-making resting heavily on him, he was glad enough to -follow any cue that might present itself.</p> - -<p>‘Friend? I should think so! Best fellow in the world, Arbuthnot—and a -man of genius, too; good-all-round sort of man. Never heard a Briton -sing French songs as he does. Rather proud of my own accent.’ As Lord -Rex progressed in confidence his speech grew more and more elliptic. -‘Sent to Paris in my infancy. Brought up by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> Jesuits—there were -Jesuits in those days, you know—till I went to Eton. But Arbuthnot -puts me in the shade, ra-<i>ther</i>.’</p> - -<p>‘Your lordship was brought up by the Jesuits!’</p> - -<p>Side by side with many wholesomer qualities, Dinah had inherited not -a few of her yeoman forefathers’ prejudices. At the word ‘Jesuit’ she -regarded Lord Rex with an interest that had in it almost the tenderer -element of pity.</p> - -<p>‘I was. You look doubtful, you don’t think the fathers could give one -such a Parisian roll of the “r” as your husband’s?’</p> - -<p>‘Of that I’m ignorant, my lord. I am no French scholar. I thought of -the Jesuits’ fearful underminded dealings.’ Dinah gave a half shudder -in the warm sunshine. ‘I thought of the doctrines they must have -instilled into you.’</p> - -<p>Underminded! From what sect or denomination could Arbuthnot have taken -his handsome wife? That Dinah was a rustic ‘mixed up with the great -bucolic interests,’ Lord Rex felt certain. The Devonshire burr, the -staid, shy, village manner betrayed her. What were her tenets? What -sort of conscience had she? A Puritanical conscience, of course, but of -what shade, what dimensions?</p> - -<p>He harked warily back upon the safe subject of Gaston’s songs.</p> - -<p>‘Arbuthnot was singing to us magnificently last night. He was in his -best form. Faure himself could never have given “A vingt ans” in -grander style. And then he was so well accompanied. The accompaniment -is half the battle in “A vingt ans.’”</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot, it should be explained, dined on the preceding -night at the mess of the Maltshire Royals. He had dined at mess often -of late, and on each occasion Dinah’s heart felt that it had got a -reprieve. Dinah believed that dining at the mess of the Maltshire -Royals meant, for one evening at least, seeing nothing of The Bungalow, -and of Doctor and Mrs. Thorne. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘You have good musicians among you, no doubt. I know,’ she observed, -remembering long and not successful practising of her own, ‘that the -accompaniment of this song is hard. But it has become the fashion for -young men to play the piano lately.’</p> - -<p>‘We can most of us get through a polka, played with one finger, or -Malbrook. When I am alone,’ said Lord Rex, ‘I execute the Marseillaise, -with chords. No man in the regiment could play a true accompaniment to -“A vingt ans.”’</p> - -<p>‘No? My husband played it for himself, then?’ asked Dinah, -unaccountably persistent.</p> - -<p>‘Not a bit of it! A singer never sings his best unless he stand, head -up, chest expanded.’ Lord Rex dramatised the operatic attitude as they -walked. ‘Mrs. Thorne accompanied Arbuthnot—deliciously, as she always -does.’</p> - -<p>It was seldom Dinah’s policy to discover her feelings by speech. So -much worldly wisdom she had learnt, through most unworldly forbearance -towards Gaston. Her complexion showed one of its over-quick changes, -her mouth fell. But she spoke not. That there must be deviation -from truth somewhere, she divined, with a bitter personal sense of -humiliation. But where? She shrank from the possible answer to this -question.</p> - -<p>A good-humoured epitome of the dinner-party had been given by Gaston, -over this morning’s breakfast-table, for her own and Geoffrey’s -benefit. ‘The usual guest-night at mess. Curious how precisely -alike all mess dinners are. The Engineer Colonel’s never finished -commencement, “When we were in the lines before Sebastopol;” the -Major’s tiger-slaying adventures in Bengal; the elderly Captain’s -diatribes against Liberal Governments and enforced retirements, “A -man in the very prime—no, sir, a man before he is in the prime of -life put on the shelf.” And the Irishman’s story. And the subaltern’s -witticisms.’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> Gaston, I say, had enlivened the breakfast-table with his -lively putting together of these oft-used materials. He had made no -reference to the singing of French songs, or to Linda Thorne.</p> - -<p>Then Lord Rex Basire’s memory must be at fault.</p> - -<p>‘You cannot mean last night. You must be thinking of some former time. -Mr. Arbuthnot dined with you at mess yesterday.’</p> - -<p>‘Of course he did. After dinner we adjourned—we, the favoured few—as -our manner is, to The Bungalow.’</p> - -<p>‘Where Mrs. Thorne played accompaniments for Gaston.’</p> - -<p>Dinah made the observation with mechanical self-control, hardly knowing -what cold repetition of words this was that escaped her.</p> - -<p>‘Yes; we had quite a chamber concert. A lot of rehearsing that -accompanying business seems to want! Hardly ever drop in at The -Bungalow of an afternoon without finding them at the piano.’</p> - -<p>Dinah knew a moment’s cruel pain. There was a proud, hurt expression on -her face. She stopped short, involuntarily. Then: ‘It would take much -rehearsal,’ she said, ‘before I should play well enough to accompany -Mr. Arbuthnot in public. But Mrs. Thorne seems clever nearly in -everything. I wish I had her talents.’</p> - -<p>And she resumed her walk, and began to speak—the village shyness -thawing fast away—about the flowers, and the music, and the people.</p> - -<p>It became clear as daylight to Lord Rex Basire that his society was -duly valued.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XV</span> <span class="smaller">A LOVE-LETTER</span></h2> - -<p>When Gaston and Marjorie approached the refreshment stall they saw a -picture which many a genre artist, in ink or oils, might have been glad -to study.</p> - -<p>For there outside the tent stood Dinah Arbuthnot, fair and flushed. She -and Lord Rex were eating ices, as Gaston, the materialist, predicted. -The western light shone on Dinah’s bright hair. It touched the rose -she wore, and the outline of her lips and chin. Lord Rex, dutifully -attentive, held her sunshade. An Archdeaconess with surroundings of -inferior female clergy loomed large on the horizon. Nearer at hand was -Linda Thorne, patiently enduring long stories of the tiger-slaying -Major’s, while her eyes and ears were elsewhere. Sarnian society -generally, in dubious groups of twos and threes, looked on. It was -Dinah’s first step across the border of a new world.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot seized the points of the situation at a glance. He -played the part that fell to him with acumen. Towards Dinah his manner -was simply irreproachable. So thought Marjorie, no over-lenient judge; -so, from afar, thought Linda Thorne. It were premature to hint at -any forecasting of storm in Dinah’s own hot heart! He insisted upon -supporting his wife’s plate while she finished her ice. He contrived to -bring her and Linda so far into friendly juxtaposition that at parting -a chilly handshake was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> exchanged between these ladies. But he also -was true to his colours. He had come to the rose-show in Mrs. Thorne’s -society; in her society he remained. The last glimpse Marjorie got of -her new friends revealed a perspective of Linda with sprightly energy -pointing out distant roses to Mr. Arbuthnot, while Dinah walked slowly -homeward from the Arsenal gates, Lord Rex at her side.</p> - -<p>Had the afternoon been one of unmixed good? Had her interference with -the Arbuthnot trio brought about good at all? Marjorie asked herself -these questions as she urged her ponies to a gallop along the Tintajeux -high road. That she had discovered a foolish error appositely might be -matter for congratulation so far as pride went! Had she performed a -very generous or delicate action in bringing untaught Dinah from her -cross-stitch, pushing her into the glare of public notice, obliging her -to tolerate the attention of a man like Rex Basire? If, unprompted by -the Bartrand thirst for governing, she had left destiny to itself, had -been content, as in old times, to help in the hayfield, or the dairy at -home, might not her day’s work have been fruitfuller?</p> - -<p>Dinner had waited long when she reached Tintajeux, and the Seigneur -was in the disposition most dreaded of Marjorie throughout the meal. -He talked more than his custom, displayed a genial and grandpaternal -interest in her doings at the Arsenal. Tintajeux had taken a first -prize, of course. And how did the Duc de Rohan look among the baser -herd? Was he well placed? In sun or in shadow? Marjorie, the Seigneur -<i>supposed</i>, had scarce found time, among her numerous friends, to give -a glance that way.</p> - -<p>‘I looked more at our roses than at any in the show,’ said Marjorie -truthfully. Were not her eyes fixed downcast on the Duc de Rohan when -Gaston Arbuthnot talked to her of Geff? ‘Would you believe, sir, that -the Hauterive Corbies have taken a prize? I think the Archdeaconess<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> -would sooner have been cut out by any farmer in the island than by her -husband’s cousin.’</p> - -<p>‘No need to tell me the local tittle-tattle. On that head Cassandra -Tighe has been a more than sufficient oracle. By the bye, witch,’ with -the memory of over-boiled fish strong upon him the Seigneur turned his -piercing old gaze towards his granddaughter, ‘Cassandra informs me that -Mrs. Arbuthnot is an extraordinarily pretty woman; good, too, as she is -pretty. Your tutor shows poor taste in dancing attendance on anything -so vapidly commonplace as Doctor Thorne’s Indian wife.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie Bartrand, who, three weeks ago, had never changed colour -before mortal, was conscious, at this moment, of blushing furiously -before the Reverend Andros. Still more did she quail under the eyes of -Sylvestre, who stood, in his faded puce and silver, listening, with the -unabashed frankness that characterises servants of his age and nation, -to their talk. From her grandfather all she need fear was a little -searching banter, directed towards herself. Let the dramatic instincts -of Sylvestre be aroused, and he was capable of waylaying Geoffrey -Arbuthnot—yes, and of inviting confidence respecting the most intimate -family concerns at Geff’s next visit. It needs personal acquaintance -with a Frenchman of Sylvestre’s type to realise how the passion for -scandalettes, smouldering through long years of solitude and disuse, -would be ready at the first handful of fuel supplied to break forth -anew!</p> - -<p>‘Doctor and Mrs. Thorne were at the rose-show. The proceeds of the -refreshment stall go, this June, to some sort of charity, so Mrs. -Thorne, of course, presided there. But Mrs. Thorne is one of the people -I never can find two words to say to.’</p> - -<p>‘Our solemn-eyed Cantab finds a great many more than two words, it -would appear. Let me help you to a merry-thought, witch. You have -nothing but bones on your plate.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p> - -<p>Marjorie picked her merry-thought, as she finished her dinner, in -silence. Over dessert, however—Sylvestre’s inquisitive face fairly -vanished from the scene—she plucked up courage and spoke:</p> - -<p>‘We have been making nimble but ridiculous conjectures, sir. One could -not well speak of this before Sylvestre. Miss Tighe made sure of the -Arbuthnot family history, you know, and——’</p> - -<p>‘Avoid expletives. I know nothing, until it is your pleasure to inform -my ignorance.’</p> - -<p>‘I mean Cassandra believed, from whispers she heard in Petersport, that -Mrs. Arbuthnot was kept too much in the background. It would be a right -and kindly thing, we thought, for me to call on her, and so—and so——’</p> - -<p>‘Take your time, Marjorie; slur over nothing. We have a long evening -before us.’</p> - -<p>‘Well, sir,’ desperately, ‘I called. And our solemn-eyed Cantab is not -a married man at all. The name of the Mr. Arbuthnot who dances attend -... who visits at Dr. Thorne’s house, is Gaston. He is a cousin of -Geff’s, I—I mean of my tutor’s.’</p> - -<p>The Seigneur looked deliberately at his granddaughter’s face. Then, as -though politely reluctant to take further notice of her embarrassment, -he lifted his gaze to a full-length portrait in pastels of some -bewigged and powdered Bartrand on the opposite wall.</p> - -<p>‘And why should we not speak of Miss Tighe’s mistake, of Mr. Geoffrey -Arbuthnot’s celibacy, before Sylvestre? Remember the rascal’s Gallican -blood—Sylvestre requires an occasional bit of comedy more than any of -us. And so you have been acting a charade, my love, solemn-eyed tutor -and all. A very pretty charade, upon my word!</p> - -<p>The Reverend Andros Bartrand laughed drily. It was about the first time -on record that he had addressed his granddaughter as ‘my love,’ and -Marjorie was prompt to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> recognise latent sarcasm under the endearment. -How terrible to reach old age, thought the child of seventeen—to read, -to think, and yet outlive the power of loving; intellect surviving -heart by many a year, as bodily strength in the end must survive all. -What had she ever been to him but a plaything! From the hour she -arrived at Tintajeux with her tempers, her four-year-old tongue, her -foreign ways, the necessity of keeping a kitten to gambol before the -Seigneur’s study fire had possibly been done away with. Just that! She -had diverted him. At the present day she might be picturesque, shed the -pleasing charm of youth upon his lawn and dinner-table. She understood -the arrangement of his books. She could dust his library to admiration. -And she was not afraid of him! (Marjorie omitted this, the leading -clause, from her mental summing-up of personal virtues.) She was not -afraid of him! When did fearlessness fail of carrying weight with a -cold, strong nature like the Seigneur’s? Though her colour went and -came, though her lips quivered under his irony, the girl was not afraid -of him at this moment.</p> - -<p>‘I might have known, sir, that if I was distressed it would furnish you -with amusement. That is our amiable Bartrand spirit, our way of showing -sympathy with others.’</p> - -<p>‘Distressed? You astonish me. Distressed at finding that an -intelligent, studious young man is in possession of his freedom? The -charade, we may almost call it the Arbuthnot drama, grows mightily -puzzling to me, a spectator. Let our worthy Cantab be bachelor or -Benedict. What concern is it of ours?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie rose from the table, with difficulty choking back her tears. -‘I love gossip as little as any one,’ she said, coldly. ‘You introduced -the Arbuthnots’ name, sir, so I chose to mention that the Thornes’ -friend and my tutor are two distinct persons. And I have no interest -in Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s concerns! And if a drama is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> being acted, -let me tell you, grandpapa, that I, for one, play no part in it. Like -yourself, I am a spectator only.’</p> - -<p>Her tone was high, but when she reached the schoolroom—friendly -sanctuary in many a dumb pain of her childhood—when she looked at the -ink-stained desk, the piles of books, the window through which the -China roses peeped, her humour changed. Marjorie stood a self-convicted -impostor in her own sight. For she knew that she was not a spectator -only in the Arbuthnot drama, that she was not unmoved by the discovery -of Geoffrey’s freedom. ‘Bachelor or Benedict, what concern is it of -ours?’ She knew, also, that under the Seigneur’s irony lurked wholesome -truth. Pluming herself on her own strength, on the Bartrand immunity -from vulgar human error, she had drifted into a position from which -the pride of any simple village maiden must recoil. She remembered her -airs of easy patronage towards Geoffrey, from the first evening when -he walked out to Tintajeux on approval, until this morning. What could -she have seemed like in his sight? Had he rated her as an over-forward -Miss-in-her-teens, a hoyden wearing her heart—ah, shame!—upon her -sleeve? Or had he doubted her, worse humiliation still, as every honest -man must doubt a girl who, under the convenient shield of Greek and -Euclid, could lend herself to the small meanness of coquetry?</p> - -<p>She walked to the window, buried her face amongst the cold, -swift-falling rose-petals, then looked out on the landscape. Something -strange had crept into its familiarity. There trotted Sylvestre, rake -in hand, his livery exchanged for a fustian jacket, to the clover -field. There were the farm buildings, there was the row of poplars, -showing distinct against the sunset. The China roses gave out their -faint evanescent odour; the big vault of Northern sky was stainless. -And here was Marjorie Bartrand, to all outward seeming the same -Marjorie Bartrand as yesterday, but out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> of tune, for some queer -reason, with her surroundings. The dew-smelling roses, the poplars, -the farm buildings, yes, old Sylvestre himself, had been her friends -through her whole span of childish life. With the new life that was -awakening, with the stir of alien emotion in her breast, they were -unsympathetic. Geoffrey Arbuthnot—what Geoffrey thought of her, -what Geoffrey felt towards her—these were the questions burning in -Marjorie’s soul, transforming her, as no lengthening of skirts or -plaiting of hair had ever done, from a child to a woman.</p> - -<p>Suddenly a man’s quick step advanced along the gravel road that led -from the side lodge to the Manoir. The step stopped; Marjorie heard her -grandfather’s voice. She put her head forth through the window, hoping, -dreading that Geff, repentant after their half quarrel of the forenoon, -might have walked out to Tintajeux—to be forgiven. In lieu of Geff’s -stalwart outline, the diminutive figure of the country postman met her -sight. The Seigneur, ready always as a boy for the moment’s amusement, -was overlooking the contents of the village letter bag.</p> - -<p>‘A letter for you, witch.’ Clear, resonant, rang the old voice, as -Andros Bartrand caught sight of Marjorie. ‘A letter, and a bulky one. -The address is written in a hand that savours of the Alma Mater. The -postmark is “Local.” I am to open it for you, of course?’</p> - -<p>‘If you do I start for Spain to-night—this moment!’ cried Marjorie, -with fine, Bartrand presence of temper; her grandfather meanwhile -proceeding, in pantomime, to carry out his suggestion. ‘If you do, -sir——’</p> - -<p>But the sequel of the threat remained unspoken. Away flew Marjorie -through the low schoolroom window, away, without drawing breath, over -flower border, over lawn, till she reached the Seigneur. A few seconds -later her letter—her first love-letter, whispered a voice in the white -and girlish conscience—lay with seal unbroken between her hands. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p> - -<p>She could not read it here, under this open largeness of air and -sky, with her grandfather’s searching eyes fixed on her face. She -must heighten her pleasure, as not so many summers back she was wont -to heighten the coveted flavour of peach or nectarine, by eked-out -anticipation. Not here, not in the schoolroom, peopled by commonplace -remembrances of Sophie le Patourel and all the long train of Sophie’s -predecessors. In this ineffable moment (are not our mistakes the -sweetest things we taste on earth?) she must be alone, must know that -a bolt was drawn between her happiness and the world. She entered the -house with eager limbs, sped up the stairs, light still with the brief -flicker that comes between sunset and dusk. She sought the shelter of -her own room; a little white-draped room, where fragrant alder-blooms, -flecks of foam on a deep green sea of foliage, brushed the casement, -where you could feel the coolness from the orchards, where only the -tired evening call of the cuckoo, the murmur of late bees, still awork -in blossom dust, broke silence.</p> - -<p>‘Miss Marjorie Bartrand, Tintajeux Manoir, Guernsey.’</p> - -<p>Prolonging her suspense to the utmost, Marjorie ran over aloud each -syllable that Geff Arbuthnot’s hand had traced. Then, with fast-beating -pulse, she opened the envelope, drew forth its contents, and prepared, -delightedly, to read.</p> - -<p>The love-letter was written upon blue, most unloverlike foolscap, and -consisted of three words: ‘Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s compliments.’ Within, -carefully folded, lay Marjorie’s waist-belt, intact, as when she looped -it to his bunch of roses and heliotropes in the moonlight.</p> - -<p>So she had won obedience. Even in the light matter of keeping or not -keeping a bit of ribbon she had had her way. And her breast swelled -with disappointment, the hot tears rushed to her eyes. In this moment -Marjorie Bartrand’s illogical heart owned Geoffrey as its master.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XVI</span> <span class="smaller">A RASH RESOLVE</span></h2> - -<p>The strength, the delicacy of Geff Arbuthnot’s character were never -better shown than in his present relations to Dinah.</p> - -<p>Weaker men pay allegiance readily enough to the passion under whose -sway they happen to rest. Geff was loyal, with a fine, a rare fidelity -to the love that had passed away. He was Dinah’s brother always. And -the story of Saturday’s rose-show told him, late that evening, by -Dinah’s lips, sufficed to fill him with a more than vague misgiving.</p> - -<p>He had wished often, thinking over the difficult question of her -welfare in his rough-and-ready way, that Dinah could be forcibly saved -from solitude and cross-stitch. Lo! the rescuer was at hand. But that -rescuer, Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s common sense informed him, should be -a very different Galahad to Lord Rex Basire. Acting on the moment’s -impulse, Marjorie Bartrand had made a tentative effort at lifting -Gaston’s wife into the fellowship of her kind. And the experiment was -too successful. Dinah, so Geff divined, had scarcely taken one step in -public, before the little hero of a lesser hour, the most popular man -in his regiment, the most sought-after partner at the island balls, -thought fit, the world looking on, to throw himself at her feet.</p> - -<p>‘And did you find pleasure in it all? Did you for a single moment feel -amused to-day?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p> - -<p>Something in Geoffrey’s voice suggested a sharper note of interrogation -than was supplied by his words.</p> - -<p>Dinah and Geff stood together on the same spot of lawn where we first -heard the Arbuthnot trio talking of sentiment while they breakfasted. -Gaston was dining out, whether at the Fort-William mess or at Doctor -Thorne’s house Dinah had not sought to know. Of what avail to ask for -truth when you have once been answered with a fable, no matter how -prettily that fable was illustrated?</p> - -<p>‘I was pleased for a time. Gaston showed no anger at my coming. It -amused me to hear Lord Rex Basire talking down, as he thought, to my -rustic understanding. Then without warning,’ Dinah turned away; she -looked at the pale horizon line of sea, ‘I had a few moments’ horrible -pain.’</p> - -<p>‘You were ill!’ exclaimed Geoffrey, uncertain of her drift.</p> - -<p>‘No, Geff, no. I don’t mean such pain as people consult the doctors -for. The pain was at my heart—a sickening doubt of every one—a -feeling that I stood on one side and all the rest of the world on the -other—a sudden despair of life! Geoffrey,’ she went on, ‘with the gay -people walking about, and the flowers smelling sweet, and the music -playing, it did seem to me for a few seconds’ space that my heart must -break.’</p> - -<p>‘And on which side did you range me in your thoughts? Was I with you or -with all the rest of the world?’ asked Geoffrey Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>These half confessions of Dinah’s were no new experience to him. She -never uttered an ungenerous suspicion of Gaston, never made a complaint -as to her own neglected life. And still a kind of moral moan had of -late been constantly in poor Dinah’s talk. The warm woman’s heart, ill -at rest, jealous, with no wholesome work or interest to keep emotion -subordinate, was always, unconsciously, on the brink of betraying its -secret. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p> - -<p>He looked with pity that could never tire at her averted face.</p> - -<p>‘You, Geff?’ she cried, putting on a brighter tone. ‘Why, you were on -my side, of course. You do everything good that is done for me in this -world. Through you, for certain, Miss Bartrand came all the way from -Tintajeux to call on me.’</p> - -<p>‘Don’t give me credit on that score. Marjorie Bartrand’s doings are -guided by no living person save Marjorie Bartrand. She had made up her -mind to know you; had heard, doubtless, about you and Gaston among -the islanders, and of her own free will sought you out. Count me -for nothing,’ said Geoffrey Arbuthnot, ‘in any action or caprice of -Marjorie Bartrand’s.’</p> - -<p>‘Had heard about me and Gaston!’ Dinah repeated his words with the -preoccupation of morbidly strained feeling. ‘I think one may know -pretty well what that means. No wonder so many people turned round to -look at me at Saturday’s rose-show.’</p> - -<p>‘People turn to look at you generally, do they not, Mrs. Arbuthnot? -There is as much human nature, depend upon it, in the heart of the -Channel as in Hyde Park or Piccadilly.’</p> - -<p>‘That is more like a speech of Lord Rex Basire’s than of yours!’ cried -Dinah, with a laugh unlike her own. ‘Throw in a lisp, varnished shoes, -a waistcoat, and a double eyeglass, and I could believe it was his -lordship, not Geff Arbuthnot, who was condescending to talk to me.’</p> - -<p>‘You must have put forth all your charity, have exercised a great deal -of wasted patience, in allowing his lordship to condescend at all.’</p> - -<p>Chiefly through Gaston’s spirited character sketches over the breakfast -table, Geoffrey had long ago known with certainty what manner of man -Lord Rex Basire was. Instead of answering, Dinah stooped above a head -of garden lilies, the dense white of whose petals showed waxen and -spotless through the gloom. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I like the smell of lilies better than of all other flowers that -blow,’ so after a minute her rich low voice came to Geoffrey; ‘I can -never smell them, nor yet lavender, without thinking of Aunt Susan’s -garden at Lesser Cheriton.’</p> - -<p>Where Geff first saw her! The garden amidst whose crowding summer -verdure he stood at the moment when his youth went from him, when Dinah -and Gaston, hand clasped in hand, bent towards each other in the level -sunlight. At this hour, with the whispers of a new love stirring in his -heart, Geoffrey Arbuthnot could not hear that distant time spoken of, -above all by Dinah’s lips, without a thrill of the old passion, the old -maddened, blinding sense of loss overcoming him.</p> - -<p>‘It might have been well for some of us,’ he began, ‘if we had never -heard the name of Lesser Cheriton——’</p> - -<p>But Dinah interrupted him quickly:</p> - -<p>‘No, Geoffrey, I can never believe that. If it means anything, it must -mean I had better not have married Gaston. I should have no hope, no -religion—I should be a woman ready for any desperate action—if I -thought that my life, just as I have it, was not the one God had cut -out for me as best. The fact is, you know, I have been too narrow,’ -she went on hurriedly. ‘Something has been running in my mind all this -evening—some idle talk of Lord Rex Basire’s that I may repeat to you -another time; and I begin to see my conduct in a new light. From the -day Gaston married me I have been too narrow, far.’</p> - -<p>‘In what way? Give me one or two specimens of your overnarrowness.’</p> - -<p>‘I have tried to make the sayings of one class fit in with the doings -of another. I have thought that right and wrong must be the same -everywhere. This was my ignorance. If I had taken up—well, with -Gaston’s sort of opinions,’ she added, making an unsuccessful attempt -at gaiety, ‘it might be better for me and for him, too, now.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I differ from you,’ said Geff, somewhat coldly. ‘Right and wrong are -the same in every class. It would be an excellent thing for your health -and spirits to get more change, more society. Stop there! Remain for -ever,’ added Geff warmly, ‘in such ignorance as yours.’ And indeed the -thought crossed him that, at this hour, what Dinah needed was safer -anchorage, not wider ship-room. ‘Your happiness and Gaston’s would be -wrecked if you attempted to rule life by any other “sayings” than your -own.’</p> - -<p>But there was a goodly alloy of mild obstinacy in Dinah Arbuthnot’s -character. A given idea started, and she was slow to part with it. The -recesses of her mind would seem to shut, with pertinacious closeness, -over any decided impression, once made, and the key for opening these -recesses could not always be found, even by Dinah herself.</p> - -<p>From whatever source the sudden conviction of her narrowness arose, -another four-and-twenty hours showed Geoffrey that the conviction was -genuine. Dinah had made some kind of compact with herself, not only in -the matter of opinions but of conduct. On the following day, Sunday, -it happened that Lord Rex walked home with Mrs. Arbuthnot from morning -service at the town church. Invited by Gaston, whose easy hospitality -extended itself to most men, Lord Rex remained to lunch. He stayed on, -long after Gaston’s afternoon engagements had taken him elsewhere. And -Dinah, although her cheeks flushed, her spirit chafed, endured this, -her first experience in the difficult duties of a hostess, without -complaint.</p> - -<p>‘Lord Rex Basire kept his Sabbath, it seems, in Miller’s Hotel,’ -observed Geff, when the Arbuthnot cousins were smoking, one his short -briar pipe, the other a delicately-flavoured cigarette after dinner. -Geoffrey’s own Sabbath had been kept in the wards of the hospital, full -to overflowing with the survivors of the quarry accident. ‘No<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> wonder -Dinah confesses to a headache. That lad’s talk, a nice mixture of slang -and assurance, judging from the specimens he gave us at lunch, would -scarcely be of the nature Dinah loves.’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, I don’t know. Basire can be very fair company when he likes,’ said -Gaston, with philosophic optimism. ‘He is not a giant, intellectually. -But in their heart of hearts, Geff, however unflattering this may be -to you and me, women don’t care a straw for intellectual men—until -they have been authoritatively labelled. The island ladies, from Madame -the Archdeaconess downwards, delight in Lord Rex, title, disabled arm, -slang, assurance—all.’</p> - -<p>‘Imagine five hours of him at a stretch. That is about what your wife -had to live through to-day.’</p> - -<p>‘Dinah is rousing herself, I hope and believe. It will do her all the -good in the world to live through being bored.’ This was said with -amiable imperturbability by Dinah’s husband. ‘I trust, for her own -sake, poor girl, she is learning reason, beginning to discover there -may be other music in the spheres besides that of the eternal domestic -duo without accompaniment.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey Arbuthnot puffed away at his pipe in silence.</p> - -<p>‘It was a great thing getting her to the rose-show. For that, Geff, I -suspect, I must thank you.’ Gaston gave a penetrating glance at his -cousin’s face. ‘Miss Bartrand would certainly not have called on us but -at your instigation, and through Miss Bartrand my poor Dinah has been -introduced—well, to Lord Rex Basire, an Open Sesame! let us trust, to -the strictly guarded gates of insular society.’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XVII</span> <span class="smaller">THE FIRST CRUMPLED ROSE-LEAF</span></h2> - -<p>Rex Basire showed no disposition to let his newly-made acquaintance -with Dinah Arbuthnot cool. Long before the hour for visitors on Monday -afternoon, Louise, the French waitress, entered the Arbuthnots’ -parlour. She placed before Dinah a card, also a bouquet made up -entirely of white and costly hothouse flowers. Just like the bouquet -Gaston gave her on her wedding morning! thought Dinah, with a rush of -bitter-sweet recollection.</p> - -<p>‘The Monsieur who was here yesterday, le petit Milor au moustache -blond, demanded news of Madame. Was Madame visible? Should she, Louise, -pray Milor to enter?’</p> - -<p>Dinah glanced with indifference at card and flowers alike, then she -rose from her work-table. Gaston Arbuthnot, it happened, was at home, -putting the finishing touches to ‘Dodo’s Despair’ in his improvised -studio. Walking quickly to the open window, Dinah, in a whisper, -appealed to her husband.</p> - -<p>‘Gaston, how shall I get rid of Lord Rex Basire? He has sent in his -card and some flowers, as if flowers from a stranger could give one -pleasure! He demands news of me, the French girl says, but that is too -senseless. Tell me the civil way to—to——’</p> - -<p>‘Shut the door in his face,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> looking up -from his model as Dinah hesitated. ‘Why shut the door at all? The poor -boy will be better off talking to you than he would be making useless -purchases for young ladies in the Petersport shops.’</p> - -<p>‘But I am at work. I am counting off stitches for the forget-me-nots -round Aunt Susan’s ottoman, and then I shall come outside. I want no -company but yours.’</p> - -<p>‘Basire will help you to count forget-me-nots. The very employment he -would delight in!’</p> - -<p>And, raising his voice, Gaston Arbuthnot called cheerily to the servant -that Madame was visible. There was no time for Dinah to escape. In -another minute Lord Rex had followed his hothouse bouquet, his card, -and the French waitress into her presence.</p> - -<p>She suffered him to possess her hand for one chill, unwilling instant. -Determined, after a somewhat confused and halting fashion, to amend the -error of her ways, to instruct herself, as in a book, in the usages -of Gaston’s world, poor Dinah shrank like a child from the initiatory -chapter of her lesson. She had endured Lord Rex, yesterday, in the -spirit of martyrdom. But to-day, to-morrow! Over what space between the -present time and September was her endurance to last?</p> - -<p>‘I was afraid if I waited till the afternoon you would be out, Mrs. -Arbuthnot. And I have a weighty matter to put into your hands; -I—I—mean an awfully great favour to ask of you.’</p> - -<p>Rex Basire, as garrison society knew him, was a youth weighted by no -undue modesty, no obsolete chivalrous deference in his manner towards -Woman. He really shone, little though Dinah might appreciate such -shining, as he stood, hesitating—for a moment half abashed—before the -calm coldness of her face.</p> - -<p>‘You will forgive me for calling at this unholy hour?’ he proceeded as -she remained silent. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p> - -<p>Dinah Arbuthnot glanced towards the flood of sunshine that rested on -the flower-bright borders of Mr. Miller’s garden.</p> - -<p>‘Why is the hour unholy?’ she inquired, with slow gravity.</p> - -<p>‘I mean an hour when you were certain to be busy,’ said Lord Rex, -approaching her work-table. ‘Now I can see I am interrupting you, Mrs. -Arbuthnot, am I not?’</p> - -<p>He drew forward a chair for Dinah; then, after standing for some -appreciable time, and finding that she neither spoke to him nor looked -at him, he seated himself, uninvited.</p> - -<p>‘Awful shame, isn’t it, to interrupt you like this?’</p> - -<p>‘It does not matter much, my lord. My time was occupied in nothing more -important than counting stitches for a border—that dreariest form of -feminine arithmetic,’ Dinah’s lips relaxed, ‘as my husband calls it.’</p> - -<p>‘Does your husband say so really? Just what one might expect. All -husbands are alike.’</p> - -<p>Modelling his clay outside, Mr. Arbuthnot smiled good-humouredly to -himself at the remark.</p> - -<p>‘Now, to me—you mustn’t mind my saying so—lovely woman is never so -lovely as when she is absolutely a woman! Dead against the higher -education business—girl graduates—platform females—you know the -style of thing I mean. Only one out of my tribe of sisters, Vic, the -eldest, works at her needle—my favourite sister from my cradle.’</p> - -<p>Rex Basire felt that he threw a shade of discriminative, yet -unmistakable flattery into this avowal of family preference. Dinah held -her peace, having in her possession none of those useful colloquial -counters which less uninformed persons have agreed to accept as coin. -Rex Basire’s generalisation about husbands lingered in her mind with -unpleasant, with personal significance. Was it possible that Gaston’s -coolness towards her had become<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> matter of comment in the idle little -world to which Linda Thorne and Lord Rex Basire both belonged?</p> - -<p>‘I work at my needle,’ she remarked presently, ‘because I am not gifted -enough to do better things. If I had talent, a tenth part of talent -like Gaston’s, I should not spend my time counting threads of canvas.’</p> - -<p>So the discriminative flattery had fallen through. Lord Rex tapped -his exceedingly white teeth with the top of his cane. He searched -diligently throughout the length and breadth of his brain for -subject-matter, and found the land naked. His want of inspiration must, -he began to think, be Mrs. Arbuthnot’s fault. These constant allusions -to the absent husband were crushingly unsuggestive; tended, indeed, -towards irksomeness. Arbuthnot was a well-looking man enough, of the -usual American type, clever, possibly, in his way,—could knead up -clay into droll little figures, and sing French songs without accent! -It was distinctly not to listen to Gaston Arbuthnot’s praises that -Lord Rex had toiled under a hot sun, and at this ‘unholy hour,’ from -Fort-William Barracks up to Miller’s Sarnian Hotel.</p> - -<p>He asked himself if Dinah were really as beautiful as during the past -two days and nights she had appeared before him in his dreams? With a -world full of charming women, most of them disposed, thought Lord Rex, -to value one adequately, were this particular woman’s good graces high -enough stakes to be worth playing for?</p> - -<p>Was she really, if one watched her dispassionately, so beautiful?</p> - -<p>Dinah set up her frame, and, leaning over it, began, or went through -the semblance of beginning, to count her stitches. In doing so the line -of down-bent golden head, the sweep of lash on the pink cheek, the -outline of throat and shoulder, were given with full unconscious effect -to Lord Rex. And the young man’s heresy left him. Whatever his other -scepticisms, he felt, while he lived he could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> never doubt more on one -subject, the flawlessness of Dinah Arbuthnot’s beauty.</p> - -<p>‘Please let me help you in your dreary arithmetic, Mrs. Arbuthnot. -Lend me a needle, at least, and give me a trial. I have only one hand -to use, but I have been shown, often, how worsted-work stitches are -counted.’ And, indeed, Rex Basire had had a pretty wide training in -most unprofitable pursuits. ‘Each little painted square of the pattern -goes for two threads, does it not?’</p> - -<p>‘I am sure I did not know gentlemen understood about cross-stitch!’ -And Dinah reluctantly surrendered her canvas to his outstretched hand. -‘Your lordship,’ she added, ‘will never make out the different shades -of blue. This forget-me-not border is the most heart-breaking pattern I -have worked.’</p> - -<p>Your lordship—your lordship! Gaston’s face assumed an unwonted -liveliness of colour as his wife’s voice reached him. Would Dinah never -leave off talking as the young ladies talk behind the counters in glove -shops, he asked himself? Would she never learn the common everyday -titles by which men and women address each other in the world?</p> - -<p>The clay was no longer plastic under Mr. Arbuthnot’s touch. He moved -without sound to the window. He took a discerning glance at the two -people seated beside the table—Lord Rex with masculine awkward fingers -solemnly parcelling out canvas forget-me-nots, as though his commission -depended on his accuracy; Dinah, a look of shy amusement on her face, -demurely watching him.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot took one glance. Then he put aside his tools, wrapped -a wet cloth hastily around ‘Dodo’s Despair,’ and with a manner not -devoid of a certain impatience, prepared to quit his studio. Could it -be—the question presented itself unbidden—that a shadow of coming -distrust had fallen on him? The thought was absurd.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> He, Gaston -Arbuthnot, distrustful of the gentle, home-staying girl, whose devotion -to himself had at times—poor Dinah—amounted to something worse than a -fault, an inconvenience! That to-morrow’s sun should rise in the east -was not a surer fact than that his wife’s Griselda-like fidelity should -endure to the end.</p> - -<p>And still, in the inmost conscience of him, Gaston Arbuthnot was -uncomfortable.</p> - -<p>He had spent nearly four years of absolute trust—four golden years of -youth, of love, with the sweetest companion that ever blest the lot -of erring man. In this moment he realised the sensation of the first -crumpled rose-leaf. Commonly jealous he could not be. His temperament, -the circumstances of his lot, forbade ignoble feeling. He knew that for -a man like Rex Basire toleration must be the kindliest sentiment that -Dinah, with difficulty, could bring herself to entertain.</p> - -<p>It was not jealousy, not distrust; it was simply the reversal of all -past experience that disconcerted Gaston’s mind. It was the whole -abnormal picture—the diverted look on Dinah’s face, her embroidery -needle and canvas—<i>hers</i>—between Rex Basire’s fingers, that was so -blankly unwelcome in his sight.</p> - -<p>If Gaston Arbuthnot ever in his life was an actor in a similar bit of -drawing-room comedy, you may be sure the <i>rôle</i> chosen by him had been -the one now played by Lord Rex. Some other fellow-mortal in a blouse, -and with clay-stained hands, may have watched from the slips. It was -Gaston who counted the stitches!</p> - -<p>He was not cut out by Nature to take subordinate parts; and this his -first little taste of abdicated power had a singularly insipid flavour -to his palate.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XVIII</span> <span class="smaller">HOW DINAH SAID ‘YES’</span></h2> - -<p>Rex Basire, meanwhile, counted manfully on. A hundred-and-ten from -the corner scroll to the first line of blue; and seventy-six, either -way, of grounding. Emboldened by success, he insisted upon filling -in the yellow heart of a single forget-me-not. ‘Just as a souvenir!’ -he pleaded, contriving to get through the task cleverly enough. A -twelvemonth hence, when half the world lay between them, he thought -Mrs. Arbuthnot might look at the centre of this forget-me-not, and -remember to-day!</p> - -<p>‘I shall remember a length of filoselle wasted. Your lordship’s -stitches must be picked out at once—they are worked the wrong way of -the silk.’ Taking back the needle and canvas, Dinah began to put her -threat into instant execution. ‘A twelvemonth hence,’ she added, ‘I -hope to be looking at something more interesting than wool-work. Most -of my pieces get stored away, for no one in particular. This ottoman is -for my Aunt Susan in Cambridgeshire. It will be a great set-off to her -front parlour,’—Dinah admitted this with a tinge of artist’s pride; -‘but I am not likely to see it there. We have not been to Cheriton for -four years, and——’</p> - -<p>‘Happy Aunt Susan!’ exclaimed Lord Rex, who was wont to be a little -impudent without awakening anger. ‘What would I give to have—not an -ottoman for my front<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> parlour—but something modest, a kettle-holder -with an appropriate motto, say, worked for me by fair and charitable -fingers!’</p> - -<p>‘By your favourite sister’s, perhaps.’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s voice was cold and clear as ice as she offered the suggestion.</p> - -<p>‘You are in an unkind mood, Mrs. Arbuthnot. So unkind,’ Lord Rex took -up a pair of scissors, and regarded them solemnly, as though they had -been the shears of fate, ‘that I feel, beforehand, you mean to say “No” -to everything I ask. I told you, did I not, that I had come to put a -weighty matter into your hands?’</p> - -<p>‘Do nothing of the kind, my lord. I am unused to receiving favours from -a stranger. Your flowers are very beautiful’—with a touch Dinah placed -the bouquet two or three inches farther from her—‘and I daresay your -lordship meant it kindly to bring them. That is enough! I live quite -retired, and——’</p> - -<p>Stopping short, Dinah coloured violently. At this moment she heard -Gaston’s tread as he ran down the outer stone staircase. She knew that -she was left alone with Rex Basire for just as long as Rex Basire might -think fit to stay.</p> - -<p>‘But we hope to win a favour from <i>you</i>. The subalterns of the regiment -are getting up a party for Wednesday, and we want to know if you will -condescend to play hostess for us? We mean to be original,’ Lord Rex -hurried on, not giving Dinah time to speak and refuse. ‘Instead of -having a humdrum dance or dinner on terra-firma, we mean to charter a -yacht—the <i>Princess</i>, now lying in Guernsey harbour—and carry all the -nicest-looking people in the island out to sea.’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s eyes gave him a look of momentary but severe disapproval.</p> - -<p>‘For this a hostess is imperatively needed. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>Chaperonage, in its most -venerable form, we can command. I’ve been spending the forenoon, I give -you my word I have, in paying court to old ladies. Miss Tighe smiles on -our project. The Archdeaconess does not frown. Of course we have Mrs. -Verschoyle. But we want a great deal more than venerable chaperons. -We want a young and charming lady to do the honours for us. Mrs. -Arbuthnot, we want you!’</p> - -<p>Now Dinah’s nature held as little commonplace vanity as could well -fall to woman’s share: through commonplace vanity had Lord Rex never, -at this juncture, won her to say ‘Yes.’ From pleasure, so-called, she -had shrunk, more than ever, since the taste she got of pleasure at the -rose-show—yes, during the very hours when, with rash strategy, she had -been planning to act a part in Gaston Arbuthnot’s world, among Gaston’s -friends.</p> - -<p>But every human being, given a wide enough scope, must end by -justifying the cynic’s aphorism. The resisting powers of the best man, -of the best woman living, have their price, so far as insignificant -mundane matters are concerned.</p> - -<p>No need to seek far for poor sore-hearted Dinah’s price!</p> - -<p>Whispers of the projected yachting party had, for several days past, -reached her, chiefly in fragments of talk between her husband and the -other boarders in Miller’s Hotel. She knew that Gaston was an invited -guest. She had an impression, based on air, and yet, like many a -jealous fear, not all foundationless, that Linda Thorne was to be the -quasi-hostess, the graceful presiding influence of the hour.</p> - -<p>‘Me!—you ask me?’ she faltered, sensible of a blinding rush of -temptation, and not lifting her eyes from the canvas where she had now -effaced the last trace of Lord Rex’s handiwork. ‘I should think others -would be more suitable. I should think,’ the blood forsook her lips as -she suggested the name, ‘that Mrs. Thorne——’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Oh, we have decided, all of us, against Linda,’ said Lord Rex, with -his usual cool sincerity. ‘Mrs. Thorne is the nicest woman going, on -shore.’</p> - -<p>‘Of that I am convinced.’</p> - -<p>‘And she has been kind enough to murmur an experimental “Yes,” though -no one acknowledges to having asked her. (A suspicion goes about that -it was Arbuthnot!) But Mrs. Thorne’s qualities are not sea-going. She -has not the marine foot, as your husband would say. She and the Doctor -will be of our party, of course, but Linda could never play the part -of hostess for us. Oscar Jones took her and the de Carteret girls out -sand-eeling—you know little Oscar, the one handsome fellow in the -regiment?—and Mrs. Linda was sea-sick straight through the jolliest -night of May moonlight. You like the ocean, I am sure, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘Yes, I like it. Years ago, when we had not long been married, Mr. -Arbuthnot hired a little cutter yacht. We spent four weeks at sea off -the coast of Scotland. They were the happiest weeks of my life.’</p> - -<p>Dinah said this with her accustomed quiet reserve. Yet, had Lord Rex -known her better, he might have discerned a tremor in her voice as she -recalled those far-off days—days when neither mistrust nor coldness -had marred the first ineffable joy of her love for Gaston Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘That is all right; I am a second Byron myself. The sea is my passion. -It would have been a sort of blow—I hope you understand me when I say -that it would have been a sort of blow—to hear you say you were a bad -sailor.’</p> - -<p>Dinah, who never helped out a flattering speech, direct or implied, -looked away from him.</p> - -<p>‘A suspicion goes about that it was Arbuthnot.’ The words rang in her -ears; light words, heedlessly spoken, yet destined to swell the total -with which Gaston Arbuthnot was already too heavily credited on the -balance-sheet of his wife’s heart. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘We may count upon you, may we not? Arbuthnot has accepted for himself. -Now we want your promise. If the weather continues like this we may -rely upon seeing you on board the <i>Princess</i> next Wednesday?’</p> - -<p>‘You have not explained what seeing me on board the <i>Princess</i> means.’ -Dinah’s tone was evasive. Probably, thought Lord Rex, the puritanical -conscience required time to collect itself! ‘I don’t know, at my staid -age,’ she added, ‘that I should countenance you. What did you say about -carrying all the nice-looking people in Guernsey out to sea?’</p> - -<p>Upon this slight whisper of encouragement Rex Basire entered -voluminously into details. The proprieties—to begin, he declared, -solemn of face, with the facts of greatest significance—the -proprieties were set at rest. An undeniable Archdeaconess, a Cassandra -Tighe (minus nothing but her harp), were secured. The de Carteret -girls, and Rosie Verschoyle, four of the Guernsey beauties regnant, -had accepted. It would be a high spring tide on Wednesday, and the -<i>Princess</i> must start early to reach the Race of Alderney before the -ebb. Afternoon would find them anchored off Langrune, in Normandy. -‘Where we shall land, observe the manners and customs of the natives, -eat a French dinner, take our little whirl, perhaps, in the casino -ball-room,’ said Lord Rex, ‘and so back, à la Pepys, to our virtuous -homes.’</p> - -<p>‘The scheme is too gay for me,’ cried Dinah, with an uneasy dread -of Gaston’s disapproval. ‘I never danced in my life. I hope—no, I -am sure, my lord, that I shall never set foot inside the walls of a -casino.’</p> - -<p>‘Not of a French casino, Mrs. Arbuthnot?’ Lord Rex argued warily, still -mindful of the puritanical note.</p> - -<p>‘Certainly not. A French casino! Why, that only makes it worse.’</p> - -<p>‘A French casino is an innocent kind of sea-side dancing school. Papas -and mammas of families sit around. Small<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> boys and girls exhibit their -steps. Papa drinks his little glass of absinthe, mamma her tumbler of -sugar-water. We go back to our hotel, hand-in-hand with the babies, -at ten o’clock. Except the Zoological Gardens on week days, I know no -human form of dissipation so mild as a French casino.’</p> - -<p>‘I should have to meet too many strangers on board. I should be alone -among them all. The only lady in Guernsey who has called on me is -Geff’s pupil, Miss Bartrand of Tintajeux.’</p> - -<p>‘Who will be invited to come, under your charge.’ Lord Rex adroitly -left more delicate social questions untouched. ‘Marjorie Bartrand would -be rough on a chaperon, I should think. Difficult to say whom the -Girtonian of the future would not be rough on! But you, Mrs. Arbuthnot, -seem to have stepped into her favour.’</p> - -<p>‘And is Geoffrey to be asked?’</p> - -<p>‘Geoffrey? Ah, to be sure—your cousin. Senior wrangler, was he not?’</p> - -<p>‘Geoffrey took his honours in classics.’</p> - -<p>‘Frightfully “boss” man, any way. Does not look as if he cared about -frivolous amusements in general, still——’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex hesitated. Some finer prophetic sense informed him that -Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s might be a name as well omitted from the programme -of pleasure he was chalking out with such zealous trouble for next -Wednesday.</p> - -<p>‘But is the party to be frivolous? I hardly understood that. No one -loves the sea better than Geff. He will go, I’m sure, if I go.’</p> - -<p>This was said by Dinah with conviction. Through long habit she had come -to regard Geoffrey’s obedience to her smallest wish as an accomplished -fact.</p> - -<p>‘Notes shall be despatched to Miss Bartrand and to your cousin without -an hour’s delay. I am awfully<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> indebted to you, Mrs. Arbuthnot. You -can’t think what a load of moral obligation you have taken off my mind -by saying “Yes.”’</p> - -<p>And when Lord Rex left Miller’s Hotel he was radiant; a possibility of -Geoffrey Arbuthnot saying ‘Yes’ also, the one little shadow of a cloud -that obscured next Wednesday’s horizon.</p> - -<p>On his return to Fort-William, later on in the day, his road took him -past the garden gate of Doctor Thorne’s Bungalow. The gate stood open, -and Lord Rex sauntered in, as it was the habit of unoccupied insular -youth to do, during the afternoon hours of tea and gossip.</p> - -<p>Small Rahnee and her ayah were picturesquely grouped upon a bright -square of Persian carpet on the lawn. A macaw and two tame parrots -gave a local, or eastern, colour to the scene as they screeched from -their perches among the garden shrubs. Within one of the drawing-room -windows—bay windows opening to the ground—reposed Linda. Her dress -was of embroidered Indian muslin, not absolutely innocent of darns, -perhaps, for the Doctor retained so much of old bachelor habit as to be -his own housekeeper, and poor Linda must practise many a humiliating -economy in her lot of <i>femme incomprise</i>. Bangles, similar to Rahnee’s, -concealed the outline of the lady’s thin wrists. Her black hair, -worn in a single coil, revealed sharply the outline of her head, -Linda’s one incontestably good point. The cunningly arranged shadow -of a rose-coloured window awning, if it did not hide, at least threw -possible defects of complexion, suspicions of coming crow’s-feet, into -uncertainty.</p> - -<p>Linda Thorne was not a pretty woman. Lord Rex, his eyes still dazzled -by Dinah’s wild rose face, felt more than usually cognisant of the -fact. And still, with Rahnee and the turbaned ayah, with the macaws and -parrots, the embroidered Indian dress, the Indian-looking bungalow,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> -Linda ‘composed’ well. She formed the central figure of a Benjamin -Constant picture, right pleasant to behold.</p> - -<p>A hum of animated voices was in the air. Three or four young and pretty -girls were distributed, spots of agreeable colour, about Linda’s -sober-hued drawing-room. The prettiest of them all presided over a -miniature tea-table drawn close beside the hostess at the open window. -And the burthen of everybody’s talk, the clashing point of everybody’s -opinions, was next Wednesday’s yachting-party.</p> - -<p>‘We are to start at seven. Mamma heard it from Captain Ozanne himself.’</p> - -<p>‘At midnight of Tuesday. The <i>Princess</i> will be away twenty-four hours.’</p> - -<p>‘A week, at least, Rosie! And Madame Corbie is to be chaperon.’</p> - -<p>‘I heard—Cassandra Tighe.’</p> - -<p>‘There are to be no chaperons worth speaking of, for of course—don’t -be offended, Linda—we cannot look upon you as one, so——’</p> - -<p>‘So you are quite wrong, all of you,’ exclaimed Lord Rex, his head -peeping up suddenly across Linda Thorne’s shoulder. ‘Miss Verschoyle, -will you give me a cup of tea if I promise to set you right in a few of -your guesses? A cup of tea, and your protection, for I am certain to be -well attacked.’</p> - -<p>‘This stimulates our curiosity to the proper point,’ the young lady -answered, with a doubtful smile, but making place for Lord Rex at -her side. ‘At the same time, it is an admission you have been doing -something rather less wise than usual. Do you take six or seven lumps -of sugar in your tea, Lord Rex? I never remember the precise number.’</p> - -<p>Rosie Verschoyle was a bright-complexioned, dimpled girl of nineteen, -with an exactly proportioned waist (of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> society), an exactly correct -profile, the exact mass of nut-brown hair that fashion requires -descending to her brows, and a pair of large, nut-brown, somewhat -spaniel-like eyes. Until Dinah’s advent Lord Rex thought Rosie the -fairest among the beauties regnant, and was openly her slave at all -the picnics and garden-parties going. Miss Verschoyle had not the -air of encouraging these attentions. She seldom lost a chance of -making Rex Basire’s vanity smart, and had been known to say that she -positively disliked that plain, forward boy who managed to scare away -really pleasant partners and monopolise one’s best dances. And still, -throughout the whole island society, among Rosie’s more intimate -girl-friends notably, there had been a growing suspicion for some time -past that Miss Verschoyle would, one day, marry Lord Rex Basire.</p> - -<p>‘I take as many lumps as Miss Verschoyle chooses to give me.’ He -received the cup with mock humility from her plump, white, inexpressive -hands. ‘The sweets and bitters as they come.’</p> - -<p>‘Bitters—in tea!’ echoed Rosie, opening her brown eyes wide. ‘Steer -clear of metaphors, Lord Rex. They really do not suit your style of -eloquence.’</p> - -<p>‘Rosie, Rosie! While you two children spar, the rest of us are dying of -curiosity.’ The admonition was made in Linda’s smoothest voice. ‘Lord -Rex, recollect your promise. You know, you are to set us all right. -What are the plans for Wednesday? Why are we certain, when we have -heard these plans, to attack you? Come here, and make confession.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex perched himself, obediently, on a stool near Mrs. Thorne’s -feet. Then, sipping the tea sweetened for him by Rosie Verschoyle, with -more trepidation of spirit, so he afterwards owned, than he ever felt -before the fire of an enemy, he thus began his shrift:</p> - -<p>‘We have made due inquiry from the harbour-master,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> and find the -<i>Princess</i> must clear out as soon as the first English steamer is -signalled. Will seven o’clock be too early for you all?’</p> - -<p>A chorus of cheerfully acquiescent voices answered, ‘No.’</p> - -<p>‘We have also invited Madame Corbie and the Archdeacon. It seems, -for an expedition of the kind, one ought to have a real substantial -chaperon or two. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Thorne, but——’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, don’t apologise,’ cried Linda, with good humour, willing, like -most of her sex, to condone the accusation of over-youth.</p> - -<p>‘And Madame Corbie accepts, conditionally. I have been paying my court -to aged ladies half the morning! So, unconditionally, does Miss Tighe. -As regards chaperonage, one may say really—really——’ hesitated -Lord Rex, feeling in his guilty soul how red he grew, ‘one may say, -Mrs. Thorne, that, in the matter of chaperons, there will be an -embarrassment of riches.’</p> - -<p>‘Especially as mamma never allows me to go anywhere without herself. -Was it about the superabundance of chaperons that you knew we should -attack you?’</p> - -<p>Rosie Verschoyle asked the question in her gay, thin little voice, her -unpremeditated manner, yet with a directness of aim that poor Lord Rex -had not the cleverness to parry.</p> - -<p>‘Attack me? Why, that was only a foolish joke, don’t you know! -Yes, we—we have Mrs. Verschoyle and the Archdeaconess as -chaperons-in-chief. Only, poor Mrs. Verschoyle, the moment the -<i>Princess</i> moves, will be in the cabin, and the Archdeaconess——’</p> - -<p>‘Try not to look so conscious. The Archdeaconess?’</p> - -<p>‘If the wind veers between this and Wednesday, will not start at all. -And so, as we must have a married lady to do hostess for us, and as -you, Mrs. Thorne, are also not a first-rate sailor, I have asked Mrs. -Arbuthnot.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p> - -<p>A heavy silence followed upon this announcement. Linda Thorne was the -first to break it.</p> - -<p>‘And Mrs. Arbuthnot has accepted? I need hardly ask the question.’</p> - -<p>‘Yes,’ returned Lord Rex, staunchly enough, ‘I am glad to say that Mrs. -Arbuthnot has accepted.’</p> - -<p>Rosie Verschoyle turned over and examined a band of silver on her round -white wrist.</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot? Surely that is the same person we saw with Marjorie -Bartrand at the rose-show? How wonderfully handsome she is! Mamma has -talked of nothing else. One will be quite too glad to see her near. In -these democratic days we must all bow unquestioningly before Beauty. -The capital B renders it abstract.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex felt the speech to be ungenerous. Vague questionings that -he had once or twice held within himself, as to whether he might or -might not be in danger of liking Miss Verschoyle too well, received an -impromptu solution at this moment. He was in no danger at all: held -the local estimate of her good looks, even, to be overstrained. As -she stood before him, in her fulness of youthful grace, the delicate -profile held aloft, the little cruel sentences escaping, one by one, -from her pouting red lips, Rosie’s prettiness seemed changed to Rex -Basire as though the wand of some malignant fairy godmother had -secretly touched her.</p> - -<p>‘My political opinions outstep democracy, Miss Verschoyle. But if I -were as starched a Tory as—as my own father, by Jove! I should think -Mrs. Arbuthnot’s society an honour. I don’t understand that sort of -thing, the tone people put on in speaking of a woman whose only crime -is her beauty.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot, if she needs a defender, is fortunate in possessing so -warm a one.’</p> - -<p>The remark was made by Rosie Verschoyle with unwise readiness. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘But one could never imagine her, poor dear, needing anything of the -kind.’ It was Linda Thorne who spoke. ‘I have been introduced to Mrs. -Arbuthnot by her husband. I have heard about her, also from him, and I -am sure she is quite the most harmless of individuals. Not naturally -bright! Like too many other gifted creatures, Mr. Arbuthnot may know -the want of household sympathy——’</p> - -<p>‘Gets along capitally without it,’ interrupted Lord Rex. ‘Never saw any -man better satisfied with himself and with his life than Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘Not naturally bright, and lacking the education which, in more -fortunate people, serves as a varnish to poorness of ability. If they -stay here long enough I shall persuade Mr. Arbuthnot, as a duty, to -make his wife take lessons—in music, riding, calisthenics, anything to -beguile her from that patient, that perpetual cross-stitch.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex gave a searching look at Linda Thorne’s face. His was no -very high or luminous character, as will be seen in the after course -of this history. Yet were his failings chiefly those of his age and -circumstances. When he erred it was without premeditation, walking -along tracks trodden hard by others. His virtues were his own, and -among these was the virtue of thorough straightforwardness. It trembled -on Lord Rex’s tongue to ask Linda a crucial question relative to -Gaston Arbuthnot’s ‘duty,’ when approaching footsteps made themselves -heard along the gravel drive. There came a shrill shout of welcome -in Rahnee’s voice, a torrent of pigeon English, presumably from the -ayah, in which the words ‘Missy ’Butnot’ might be distinguished. Linda -Thorne’s Indian-bleached cheeks assumed a just perceptible shade of red.</p> - -<p>‘Talk of angels,’ she observed, raising her finger to her lips, -‘and straightway we hear the flutter of their wings! It would be -wise to choose a rather less invidious theme than the demerits of -cross-stitch.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p> - -<p>And then, almost before she finished speaking, Gaston Arbuthnot, with -the quiet air of a man certain of the reception that awaits him, -entered upon the scene.</p> - -<p>Next Wednesday’s yachting expedition continued to be the subject of -talk among Linda’s visitors. But it was talk with a difference; the -character of Ophelia cut, by desire, from the play. Hard to bewail the -lot of gifted creatures, or discuss the necessity, in these democratic -days, of bowing down to Beauty, with Dinah’s husband taking part in -one’s conversation! When the party had dispersed, however,—Lord Rex, -in spite of his disenchantment, escorting Rosie Verschoyle home,—when -Linda Thorne was left alone with Gaston Arbuthnot, she spoke her mind. -And her tone was one which all her social knowledge, all her powers of -self-command and self-effacement, failed to render sweet.</p> - -<p>Now it was a peculiarity belonging to Gaston Arbuthnot’s character -that he was apt to mystify every human creature, his cousin Geoffrey -excepted, with whom his relations were near. The more intimate you -became with this man the less firm seemed the moral grip by which -you held him. Dinah’s over-diffident heart perpetually doubted the -stability of his love. She was unhappy with him, dreading lest, in her -society, he were not enough amused. She was unhappy away from him, -dreading lest in her absence he were amused too well! Linda Thorne was -equally at fault as to the texture of his friendship. Long years ago, -Gaston Arbuthnot’s boyish good looks—perhaps it must be owned, Gaston -Arbuthnot’s devoted attentions—won all of tender sentiment that Linda, -then a neglected, overworked governess, had to give. She had been to -India in the interval. She had learnt the market worth of sentiment. -There was Dr. Thorne ... Rahnee! There were her duties, real and -histrionic, to fill her life. And the days of her youth had reached the -flickering hour before twilight.</p> - -<p>But Linda had not forgiven Gaston Arbuthnot. She<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> had not forgotten -how near she once came to loving him. And she was sorely, unreasonably -wounded, through vanity rather than through feeling, by Dinah’s fresh -and girlish charm.</p> - -<p>An anomalous position; perhaps, a commoner one than some young wives, -morbidly sensitive as to alien influence over their husbands, may -suspect.</p> - -<p>‘So there has been a small imbroglio about Wednesday’s arrangements! I -cannot tell you how glad I am to be relieved from a weight of sea-going -responsibility. Mrs. Arbuthnot, I am sure, will enact hostess for our -young subalterns so much more gracefully than I could. She is a good -sailor, doubtless?’</p> - -<p>Gaston had taken up a morsel of drawing-paper and some red chalk—every -kind of artistic appliance had found its way, of late, into Mrs. -Thorne’s drawing-room—some ideal woman’s face with beauty, with anger -on it, was growing into life under his hand. He finished, in a few -delicate, subtle touches, the shadow between a low Greek brow and -eyelid ere he spoke.</p> - -<p>‘Dinah is a famous sailor. We look back to a little Scottish yachting -tour we made, soon after our marriage, as about the best time of our -lives.’</p> - -<p>Linda Thorne, a fair decipherer of surface feeling in general, could -gather absolutely nothing from Gaston’s level tone. He raised his eyes, -during a steady second or two, from his paper; he met her interrogative -glance with one of strict neutrality.</p> - -<p>‘I am relieved and at the same time stupidly inquisitive. Now, why -in the name of all things truthful, did you not mention that Mrs. -Arbuthnot meant to go with us on Wednesday?’</p> - -<p>Gaston was silent; too absorbed perhaps in his creation, slight chalk -sketch though it was, to give heed to matter so unimportant as this -which Linda pressed upon him. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Possibly you were not aware that Mrs. Arbuthnot <i>was</i> going!’</p> - -<p>Linda Thorne hazarded the remark with a suspicion of innocent malice.</p> - -<p>‘That really is the truth.’ Taking a folding-book from his breast, -Gaston stored away his sketch carefully between its leaves. ‘You must -excuse me, Mrs. Thorne. An idea struck me just now, suggested by a look -I surprised on the face of Miss Verschoyle, and I hastened forthwith -to make my memorandum. Dinah to enact hostess for the subalterns on -Wednesday, do you say? Surely not. I could almost wish that it were to -be so. But my wife, as you know, keeps to her own quiet way of life.’</p> - -<p>‘We have Lord Rex Basire’s word for it. According to Lord Rex, Mrs. -Arbuthnot has most decidedly accepted their invitation.’</p> - -<p>‘Dinah does not mean to go. Lord Rex deceives himself.’</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot spoke with sincerity. He had told Geoffrey, as a jest, -that Dinah was turning over a new leaf, beginning to discover, poor -girl, that there might be other music in the spheres besides that of -the eternal domestic duo without accompaniment. Of Dinah’s profoundly -changed mood, her resolve of gaining wider views by frequenting a world -which as yet she knew not, he was ignorant.</p> - -<p>Linda Thorne watched him sceptically.</p> - -<p>‘Pray do not dash my hopes. I trust and I believe that Mrs. Arbuthnot -will play hostess to us all next Wednesday. Come!’ she added, with -rather forced playfulness. ‘Will you make me a bet about it? I will -give you any amount of odds you like in Jouvin’s best.’</p> - -<p>‘It is against my principles to bet on a certainty, Mrs. Thorne. I am -as certain that Dinah has not pledged herself for Wednesday’s picnic -as that I have pledged myself to dine with Dr. and Mrs. Thorne this -evening.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p> - -<p>But, in spite of his assured voice, a shade of restlessness was to -be traced in Gaston Arbuthnot’s manner. He would not remain, as it -had become his habit to do, at The Bungalow, singing, or drawing, -or chatting away the two hours between afternoon tea and dinner, in -Linda’s society. Even Rahnee (to Gaston’s mind the first attraction -in the house) must forego her usual game of hide-and-seek with ‘Missy -’Butnot.’ Even Rahnee threw her thin, bangled arms round her playmate’s -neck in vain. Frankly, so, at last, he was brought, to make confession, -he had forgotten to tell Dinah of his engagement, must hurry back, -forthwith, to Miller’s Hotel to set Dinah’s heart at rest. Unnecessary? -‘Ah, Mrs. Thorne,’ and as he spoke Gaston’s eyes looked straight into -the lady’s soul, ‘that question of necessity just depends upon the -state of one’s domestic legislation. Regarding these small matters, -my wife and I, fortunately for ourselves, are in our honeymoon stage -still.’</p> - -<p>This was always Gaston’s tone in speaking of Dinah at The Bungalow. He -painted truth in truth’s brightest colours whenever he afforded Linda -Thorne a glimpse of his own household happiness.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XIX</span> <span class="smaller">GASTON ARBUTHNOT’S PHILOSOPHY</span></h2> - -<p>The first dressing-bell was ringing by the time he reached the -hotel. Dinah’s parlour was empty; her embroidery frame—silver paper -shrouding its impossible forget-me-nots and auriculas from the light -of heaven—stood on her work-table. Passing into the adjoining room -without knocking, Mr. Arbuthnot beheld a sight not new to him, save as -regarded the hour of the day—Dinah on her knees beside her bed, her -head bowed, her face hidden between her hands.</p> - -<p>She rose up hurriedly at the sound of her husband’s entrance. She -brushed away some tell-tale tears, not, however, before Gaston’s quick -glance had had opportunity to detect them.</p> - -<p>All men dislike the sight of a wife in tears. A small minority may -dislike the sight of a wife on her knees. Gaston Arbuthnot shared both -prejudices. He concealed his irritation under a kiss—cold, mechanical, -the recipient felt those kisses to be—bestowed on each of Dinah’s -flushing cheeks.</p> - -<p>‘I beg a thousand pardons for disturbing you at your prayers, my dear, -but——’</p> - -<p>‘I was not praying. I wish I had been,’ interrupted Dinah promptly. ‘To -pray, one’s heart must be at rest.’</p> - -<p>Now Gaston Arbuthnot looked upon all strong and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> unpleasant emotion -with a feeling bordering on actual repugnance. And Dinah’s voice had -that in it which threatened storm. His irritation grew.</p> - -<p>‘I beg your pardon for interrupting a mood not calm enough for prayer -(although it required a prayerful attitude), yet sad enough for tears. -That terrible habit of weeping will wear away even your good looks in -time, Dinah.’</p> - -<p>A time far distant, surely! Never had she been fairer in Gaston’s sight -than at this moment, in her fresh cambric dinner dress, with her hair -like a nimbus of gold around her forehead, with a colour vermeil as any -Italian dawn on the cheeks his lips had newly touched.</p> - -<p>‘I should like to keep my good looks till I am fifty years old, if good -looks were only faithful servants, if they brought one only a taste of -real happiness. As it is——’</p> - -<p>‘My dear girl, although you chance to be a little out of temper with -life, don’t forget you have a husband. I am a vain man—so you and Geff -tell me—and the chief of all my vanities is, that I am blest with a -handsome wife.’</p> - -<p>‘Out of temper with life? I think not, Gaston. Life has been sent me, -the rugged with the smooth, and I must learn to fit myself to both. If -I had been clever I should have learnt my lesson long ago. I must shape -myself to things as they are, not want to shape them according to my -poor village notions. I was trying to reason about it all just now.’</p> - -<p>‘In an attitude that I misunderstood,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘I go on my knees when I need to think, clearly and humbly. I would not -dare to say at such times that I pray.’</p> - -<p>Talk like this was beneath, or above, Gaston Arbuthnot’s level. He told -her so plainly.</p> - -<p>‘My afternoon has been passed in a thoroughly mundane<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> and grovelling -manner, Dinah. I left this house at about three, just when you were -giving Lord Rex Basire a lesson in cross-stitch! Since then I have been -spending my time, not in solemn thoughts that required genuflexion, -but in listening to the last little version of the last little bit -of island gossip. It seems you mean, after all, to go into the world -where, as I have often told you, so many more sink than swim. You have -accepted Rex Basire’s invitation for the picnic next Wednesday?’</p> - -<p>The accusation, if it were one, came with a sharpness of ring foreign -to Gaston Arbuthnot’s modulated voice. Dinah’s colour deepened.</p> - -<p>‘I have accepted Lord Rex Basire’s invitation for Wednesday—yes.’</p> - -<p>‘You cannot, I think, mean to go. The picnic will be a helter-skelter -kind of affair. It was got up by these young men, in the first -instance, more as a frolic than anything else, and——’</p> - -<p>‘You are going yourself, are you not, Gaston?’</p> - -<p>‘That is uncertain. I believe I did give a conditional consent over the -dinner-table, before it was at all sure the thing would come off.’</p> - -<p>‘And Mrs. Thorne is going?’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, Linda goes everywhere. There is a legend that she and the Doctor -dined one night at mess.’</p> - -<p>‘And Madame Corbie? Don’t you think a party that is staid enough for an -Archdeacon’s wife must be safe for me?’</p> - -<p>It was Dinah who spoke; yet the tone, the words, were curiously unlike -Dinah’s. Some other woman, surely, stood in the place of her who during -four years had been as wax to every careless turn of Gaston Arbuthnot’s -will!</p> - -<p>‘I can see that you have made up your mind—confess, Dinah, you have -run already to Madame Voisin’s and ordered your dress for Wednesday?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p> - -<p>She turned away, impatiently, at the question.</p> - -<p>‘Well, I will not be unwise enough to argue. At least persuade Geoffrey -to go too, get Geoffrey to take care of you. Had I been consulted,’ -remarked Gaston drily, ‘I should have advised you to “come out” -anywhere rather than on a yacht hired, in this kind of way, by Lord Rex -Basire and his brother subs.’</p> - -<p>‘Gaston!’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, not because of the right or wrong of the thing. I don’t,’ said -Gaston, ‘go in for transcendental attitudes, morally or physically. My -advice would have been simply offered on a matter of taste. You, my -love, are doubtless the best judge. What time is it—seven? Then I have -scarcely half-an-hour left to dress.’</p> - -<p>‘To dress!’ faltered Dinah. ‘And my briar roses, our walk to Roscoff -Common? I have been looking forward to it for days. Did you not promise -to draw me some real briar roses for the finish of my border?’</p> - -<p>‘Of course, I promised, and of course I shall fulfil, my dear child. -The Roscoff roses will keep.’</p> - -<p>‘And you are going out to dinner again, Gaston?’</p> - -<p>‘Only to The Bungalow.’ Mr. Arbuthnot made a move towards the door of -his dressing-room. ‘Mrs. Thorne is amiable enough generally to condone -a morning-coat. To-night, I believe, there will be more of a party than -usual.’</p> - -<p>Dinah rested her hand upon her husband’s shoulder, but not with the -clinging, imploring touch to which Gaston Arbuthnot was accustomed.</p> - -<p>‘If I could have an answer to one question I should be content,’ she -exclaimed, almost with passion. ‘It is an answer you can give. What -are Mrs. Thorne’s gifts? What is the cleverness which draws a man as -difficult to please as you five days a week to her house?’</p> - -<p>The situation had become critical. A feverish colour<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> burned on Dinah’s -face, her question was trenchant and desperately to the point. But it -was just the hardest thing imaginable to get Gaston Arbuthnot into a -tiptoe posture. The drama of his life, so he himself avowed, consisted, -a good nine-tenths of it, of carpenter’s scenes. If he were forced to -declaim some passage of high and tragic blank-verse it would inevitably -sound like a bit of genteel comedy from his lips!</p> - -<p>A husband of warmer temper, it would be unjust to say of warmer heart, -must have kindled at the daring of Dinah’s words, the ardent eagerness -of her face.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot was interested rather than moved. He answered with the -chill candour of an impartial judge:</p> - -<p>‘Linda’s gifts? First on the list we must place the cardinal one of -vocal silence. Mrs. Thorne does not sing.’</p> - -<p>‘She can accompany other people who do,’ said Dinah, with imprudent -significance.</p> - -<p>‘And can accompany them well. Have I ever told you, Dinah, how and -where I first saw the lady who is now Doctor Thorne’s wife?’</p> - -<p>‘You have not. You have never spoken to me about Mrs. Thorne’s life, -past or present.’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s tone was as nearly acrid as her full and rounded quality of -voice permitted. She felt intuitively that Gaston would parry her -question, as he had so often done before, by apposite narrative which -yet led no whither; felt that though every word he spoke might be true -to the letter, the one truth of vital moment to herself would be in the -words left unspoken.</p> - -<p>‘It was in Paris, my love, in long past days before I went to -Cambridge, and when I was much less of an Englishman than I am now. -My mother, with a wholesome dread of my artist friends, and of the -Quartier Latin, cultivated what she called occasions of family life for -me. One such occasion came to her hand. Under the same roof<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> with us, -but on a lower floor, as befitted their purse, lived a rich Jew family, -with a bevy of young daughters and an English governess——’</p> - -<p>‘Linda Thorne?’</p> - -<p>‘At that time Linda Smythe. Yes, Linda Constantia was seated at a -piano the first evening my mother forced me down to Madame Benjamin’s -salon. I think I see her now, poor soul, playing accompaniments to the -singing—the terrible operatic singing of Papa Benjamin. By and by -we danced in a round, “Have you seen the baker’s girl?” “Mary, soak -thy bread in wine,” and other mild dances of the unmarried French -<i>mees</i>. The governess remained at the piano still. ‘Our good Smeet! -she knows so well to efface herself,’ said Madame Benjamin, giving me -a tumbler of sugar-water to present to my countrywoman. I might almost -answer your question, Dinah, in Madame Benjamin’s words—Linda Thorne -understands perfectly the difficult social art of effacing oneself.’</p> - -<p>‘Was she effaced at Saturday’s rose-show?’</p> - -<p>‘She was a <i>locum tenens</i>, good-naturedly presiding over the -refreshment stall for some friend with a sprained ankle.’</p> - -<p>‘With an affection of the throat, Gaston. So the story ran, when you -first told it me.’</p> - -<p>‘You are severe, Dinah. If a pretty woman could possibly be tempted -into feeling bitterly towards a plain one, I should say that you were -bitter towards Linda Thorne.’</p> - -<p>Dinah was unsoftened by the compliment.</p> - -<p>‘To efface oneself,’ she repeated. ‘That means—in homely, plain -English, such as I talk and understand?’</p> - -<p>‘To keep gracefully in the background while others fill the prominent -parts,’ said Gaston, with a laugh. ‘If you knew Linda Thorne better, if -you could see her at one of her own charming little parties, you would -appreciate the knack she has of not shining. She is quite the least -selfish, least self-absorbed creature in the world.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p> - -<p>Straight, warm, living, flew a denial from Dinah’s lips.</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Thorne is wrapt in selfishness! If she was a good, true woman, -she must guess how the hearts of other women, other wives, bleed, -only at a thought of neglect! I can’t cope with her, Gaston, for -conversation. She was born and educated a lady, and I belong to the -working people, less taught when I was a child than they are now. But -that should make her generous. She is rich in good things—has she not -got little Rahnee? And I have but the hope, weak that hope grows at -times, of keeping your love.’</p> - -<p>A flush of annoyance overspread Gaston Arbuthnot’s handsome face.</p> - -<p>‘If you would only take life in a quieter spirit, Dinah, content -yourself with the moment’s common happiness, like the rest of us! I -speak in kindness, my dear girl.’ Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot here fell to -examining his signet-ring closely, perhaps because he did not wish -to meet his wife’s eyes. ‘If you would care for any mortal thing, in -addition to that somewhat unworthy person, Gaston Arbuthnot, it would -be better for us both.’</p> - -<p>Dinah turned deadly white.</p> - -<p>‘If the child had lived!’ she uttered. ‘If we had her now, nearly the -age of Rahnee, my heart would not be so athirst for love. It would -come to me naturally. Just as I am, no cleverer, or brighter, or more -original, you might find my company sufficient, if we had the child.’</p> - -<p>‘We cannot cut out our lives by our own pattern,’ said Gaston, with -irrefragable philosophy. ‘The disappointment, God knows, was bitterly -keen to both of us at the time. Looking round the world now, I am -disposed to wonder sometimes if the possession of a child be an unmixed -blessing.’</p> - -<p>‘It would have been so to me.’ The wound had never so thoroughly healed -that Dinah could bear a careless touch on the cicatrice. ‘But I have no -right to complain,’—she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> said this through her tears,—‘God gave, and -took away. Who am I to question His wisdom?’</p> - -<p>During several seconds Mr. Arbuthnot seemed to grow more and more -absorbed in the contemplation of his ring; then, by an alert side -movement, he contrived to reach the door of his dressing-room.</p> - -<p>‘You are going? You intend really to dine with the Thornes this -evening?’</p> - -<p>Dinah brushed her hand hastily across her eyes.</p> - -<p>‘Certainly, I intend to keep my engagement,’ answered Gaston Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘You would not break it, if I asked you?’</p> - -<p>‘I would do any conceivable thing you asked me—with sufficient cause. -I have too much opinion of your good taste to dread your ever placing -yourself, or me, in a ridiculous position.’</p> - -<p>‘If you would, I should give up all this plan for Wednesday. We would -go back’—a soft far-off look stole over Dinah’s face as though for -a moment she indulged in the retrospect of some too-dear dream—‘go -back—ah! fool that I am—to the early days—days when you said the -best dinner-party in London could not tempt you to leave me for an -evening.’</p> - -<p>While she was speaking she had followed him. Her hand rested on his -sleeve. Her eyes, with piteous, imploring earnestness, sought to read -his face.</p> - -<p>‘There is no returning to old days,’ said Gaston Arbuthnot. ‘People -of our age should have sense enough to realise this. The exclusive -boy-and-girl idolatry of one year of life would be rank absurdity in a -dignified Darby and Joan of our standing.’</p> - -<p>Dinah shrank away from him. Perhaps it occurred to her that exclusive -idolatry had never existed at all on Gaston’s side. How long, in truth, -did he keep to the declaration, made in his honeymoon, of preferring -quiet evenings with her to the best dinner-parties in London? </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘When I came in just now, Dinah, I interrupted you at some spiritual -exercise, not high enough to be called prayer, yet that required -a kneeling attitude. It is a pity,’ said Mr. Arbuthnot, looking -disagreeable, ‘that the self-communings of good people so seldom lead -them to charity—I don’t mean almsgiving—I mean a broader, more -charitable frame of mind. If you could only recognise one fact, that -there is a great variety of human nature about you in the world, it -would be something gained.’</p> - -<p>‘I know it, Gaston. What I want is to be lifted out of my own narrow -ignorance.’</p> - -<p>‘Take Geoffrey, for instance. In Geoffrey we have a man sound to the -core. No caprice, no vanity in our cousin, none of the discontent -and levity, and thirst for amusement which disfigure some characters -that might be named. For contrast,’ Gaston Arbuthnot’s eyes rested -discerningly on his wife, ‘look at Rex Basire—an empty-skulled little -tailor’s block, doubtless, yet with a brave soldier’s heart in him -all the same! By the bye, my dear, I need not exhort you,’ he added -lightly, ‘to be charitable to Lord Rex. If women would only be as -fair towards each other as they are towards us! I really admired the -philosophy with which you gave that young gentleman his lesson in -cross-stitch to-day.’</p> - -<p>The careless tone of banter brought back Dinah’s accustomed -self-control. Nothing so effectually checks emotion as the absence of -emotion in our fellow-actors.</p> - -<p>‘Lord Rex was bent upon working three or four stitches in my ottoman. -It cost me the trouble only of unpicking them, and when he asked my -leave I was ignorant—I always am ignorant—about the politeness of -saying “No.” That is what I must learn.’</p> - -<p>‘The art of saying “No,”’ observed Mr. Arbuthnot, not in a very hearty -voice.</p> - -<p>‘The art of speaking and acting—well, as Mrs. Thorne,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> as every woman -of your world, would do! There’s no going back to old days, Gaston. -You are right there. I must shape myself to things as they are, not -to try to shape them to my needs. That is chiefly why I accepted the -invitation for Wednesday. I mean to learn from the example of others. I -mean to turn over a new leaf from to-day.’</p> - -<p>‘Keep true to your own transparent self, child. Be what you have been -always, and I, for one, shall be contented.’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XX</span> <span class="smaller">‘JAMES LEE’S WIFE’</span></h2> - -<p>The speech was really the best chosen, prettiest thing that a somewhat -errant husband could have found to say. In every moral encounter that -befel Gaston Arbuthnot, and whether his antagonist floundered in the -mud or no, Gaston seemed invariably to find himself, at the last, in -a graceful attitude. But Dinah’s heart was no more warmed by honeyed -little phrases than by the reconciliatory kiss her husband bestowed -on her ere he started to his dinner-party. She was reaching—nay, had -reached—the miserable stage when honeyed phrases and reconciliatory -kisses are in themselves matters of distrust? How, her lonely dinner -over, would she get through the evening hours—long counted-on -hours—when she was to have walked, her hand within Gaston’s arm, to -distant Roscoff Common for her briar roses.</p> - -<p>For a space Dinah looked listlessly forth at the garden. It was full of -people who knew each other, who talked together in friendly voices—the -boarders of the hotel, with whom Gaston mixed, with whom Gaston was -popular. Then she seated herself before her embroidery frame. But -recollections of Lord Rex Basire, of the effaced stitches, of Gaston’s -commentaries on her ‘patience,’ made the thought of work repugnant to -her. If she could only read, she thought! Not after her dull, country -pattern, repeating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> each word to herself as a child cons his task ere -he can take in its meaning. If she could read for pleasure, as she had -watched Geoffrey read—quickly, easily, with hearty human interest, -like one bent on receiving counsel from some well-beloved friend!</p> - -<p>A book of Geff’s lay on the mantelshelf. Dinah rose, crossed the -room with languid steps, and took it in her hand. Then, as readers -invariably do, to whom the shell of a book matters more than the -kernel, she fell to a careful examination of the text, binding, -title-page.</p> - -<p>‘The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. Vol. VI. <i>Dramatis Personæ</i>.’</p> - -<p>Well, four years ago, during the brief fortnight of Geoffrey’s madness, -it chanced one evening that he walked out to Lesser Cheriton with this -very book in his pocket. (Did some ineffaceable rose odour of that dead -June cling to the pages still, rendering Vol. VI. dearer in Geff’s -imagination than its fellows?) He read ‘James Lee’s Wife’ aloud to -Dinah Thurston—a poem totally outside the girl’s comprehension—and -during the recital of which her decently suppressed yawns must have -rebuffed any man less blindly in love than was Geoffrey Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>At ‘James Lee’s Wife’ the book opened now.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>‘<i>Ah, Love, but a day,</i></div> -<div><i>And the world has changed!</i>’</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Dinah read through the first stanzas untouched. Pretty love-warblings, -the cry of a happy woman’s heart,—what had they to say to her, Dinah -Arbuthnot? In the last stanza of ‘By the Fireside’ her pulse gave a -leap.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>‘<i>Did a woman ever—would I knew!—</i></div> -<div class="i1"><i>Watch the man——</i>’</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Dinah went back to the window, the volume in her hand. She returned -to the beginning of the poem, pored over it, line by line, stanza by -stanza, in the fading light. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>‘<i>Yet this turns now to a fault—there! there!</i></div> -<div class="i1"><i>That I do love, watch too long,</i></div> -<div><i>And wait too well, and weary and wear;</i></div> -<div><i>And ’tis all an old story, and my despair</i></div> -<div class="i1"><i>Fit subject for some new song.</i>’</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>And when she had got thus far, the clouds of her ignorance lightened. -She began to understand.</p> - -<p>Shortly before ten o’clock, entered Geoffrey. The parlour lamps were -not lit. Dinah’s figure was in dense shadow as she leaned, absorbed -in her own thoughts, beside the open window. Geoffrey, believing the -room empty, sang under his breath, as he groped his way across to the -mantelshelf; no very distinguishable tune—an ear for music was not -among Geff’s gifts—but with sufficient of a quick, triplet measure in -it to recall a Spanish Barcadero that Marjorie Bartrand was fond of -singing to herself.</p> - -<p>To Dinah’s sick heart the song was consciously wounding.</p> - -<p>She had been so long used to Geff’s undivided homage, that sense of -power had, little by little, grown into tyranny, gentle rose-leaf -tyranny, whose weight Geoffrey’s broad shoulders bore without effort, -and yet having in its nature one of tyranny’s inalienable qualities, -lack of justice.</p> - -<p>‘Always in spirits, Geoffrey!’ The reproach came to him through the -gloom. ‘It is good to think, whether the day is dark or shining, our -cousin Geoffrey can always sing.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey was at her side in a moment.</p> - -<p>‘It is cruel to speak of my horrible groanings as singing, Mrs. -Arbuthnot; crueller still to hint of them as betokening good spirits. -Where is Gaston? You are back earlier than I expected from your walk to -Roscoff.’</p> - -<p>‘The walk fell through. I shall have to border my work with a rose -pattern bought in the shops. Gaston was obliged to dine at Dr. -Thorne’s. He made the engagement, of course, without thinking of our -walk. I ought never to have counted on those Roscoff wild roses. I——’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s voice lapsed, brokenly, into silence. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘If you would like the roses, you can have them by breakfast -to-morrow,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Few things I should enjoy better than a -six-mile trudge in the early morning.’</p> - -<p>‘No, Geoffrey, no. Gaston always tells me that my bought patterns are -atrocious, and the walk was planned by him, and he was to have sketched -from the fresh briars by lamplight. My heart in it all is over. The -Roscoff roses may go!’</p> - -<p>As so much of weightier delight had been allowed to go, negligently, -irrevocably, out of Dinah Arbuthnot’s life. Dinah herself might not -suggest the thought, but to Geoffrey’s mind it was a vivid, a pathetic -one.</p> - -<p>‘And why should you not take my escort? You know I am never burthened -with engagements. Let us go to Roscoff to-morrow. You owe Miss Bartrand -a visit. Well, we will take Tintajeux on our road, and make Marjorie -show us the way to Roscoff Common.’</p> - -<p>‘Miss Bartrand will not expect me to return her visit. She came here -because—because you, dear Geff, with or without words, bade her come! -I should never have courage to face the grandfather. Gaston would be -the right person to call on the Seigneur of Tintajeux.’</p> - -<p>‘The Seigneur of Tintajeux might think otherwise,’ Geoffrey laughed. -‘Old Andros Bartrand made minute inquiries about Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot -the last time I saw him.’</p> - -<p>‘About me—always the same story!’ cried Dinah, uneasily. ‘Why should -people talk of us? What is there in my life, or in Gaston’s, that need -arouse so much curiosity?’</p> - -<p>‘Shall I answer as your friend, Lord Rex, would do?’</p> - -<p>‘Answer truly, Geff, not like Lord Rex Basire, but like yourself.’</p> - -<p>‘Why should the good people of Guernsey talk about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> you, do you ask? -Because, Mrs. Arbuthnot, even in this country of fair faces, yours may -have gained the reputation of being the fairest.’</p> - -<p>The speech would have fitted Lord Rex better. Geff was sensible in the -darkness that his cheek reddened.</p> - -<p>‘The fairest!’ echoed poor Dinah, petulantly. ‘Oh, I sicken of the -very word “fair.” Shades of hair or of eyes, a white skin, a straight -profile, how can people think twice of these trivial things? The woman -best worth speaking about in Guernsey or elsewhere should be she, not -with the fairest, but the happiest face.’</p> - -<p>Her own, certainly, was not happy to-night. Growing accustomed to the -parlour’s darkness, fitfully broken by a reflected light from one -of the garden lamps outside, Geff could note her exceeding pallor. -He could note, also, that Dinah Arbuthnot’s eyes revealed no trace -of tear-shedding, that a look rather of newly-stirred interest, of -awakening excitement, was in their depths.</p> - -<p>‘And you have spent your evening not only without Gaston, but without -cross-stitch? It is a fresh experience,’ he told her gravely, ‘for you -to be idle.’</p> - -<p>‘I read until the light went—don’t you see—I have got hold of a book -of yours? A book of verses that I did not understand when you tried to -read it aloud to me at Lesser Cheriton.’</p> - -<p>Ah, how the old name, spoken by her tongue, stabbed him always! -Geoffrey Arbuthnot bent his face above the volume in Dinah’s hand.</p> - -<p>‘“Robert Browning.” But for my bad reading, you ought to have liked -these poems four years ago.’</p> - -<p>‘I think not, Geff. Uneducated people can like only where they feel. -And in those young days’—oh, unconsciously cruel Dinah!—‘I felt -so little. But I have an object now in learning. I want to learn on -all subjects, out of books as well as from life. That reminds me of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> -something I had to say to you, Geff. Lord Rex Basire was calling on me -this afternoon.’</p> - -<p>‘Lord Rex Basire was calling on you the greater part of yesterday.’</p> - -<p>‘And I took upon myself to accept an invitation for you. There will -be a picnic party on Wednesday. It is some yachting expedition to the -French coast, got up by the officers of the regiment, to which you will -be asked——’</p> - -<p>‘But to which I shall certainly not go. I can get as far out to sea as -I like with the fisher people. Wednesday is one of my busiest days.’</p> - -<p>‘Miss Bartrand will be invited, too, if you are thinking of her.’</p> - -<p>‘Miss Bartrand can do as she chooses. I have more important work than -my two hours’ reading at Tintajeux.’</p> - -<p>‘If I ask you, Geff, will you refuse?’</p> - -<p>‘I refuse, unconditionally. I hate gay parties. What mortal interest -could I have in the society of men like Lord Rex Basire and his brother -officers?’</p> - -<p>‘Only that I am going, that Gaston ... I mean, I looked upon it as a -matter of course you would accept, and——’</p> - -<p>The words died on Dinah’s lips. She had an unreasoning sensation that -her firmest safety ground was at this moment cut abruptly from her feet.</p> - -<p>As she stood, faltering, uncertain, Geoffrey took the volume of -Browning from her. It opened at page 58.</p> - -<p class="center">‘<i>Little girl with the poor coarse hand.</i>’</p> - -<p>There was just sufficient light for him to make out the letters of the -first line.</p> - -<p>‘Is this the poem you have been reading, Mrs. Arbuthnot? Why, I -distinctly remember your pronouncing “James Lee’s Wife” to be -meaningless.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I have my lesson—shall understand,’ said Dinah. ‘“James Lee’s Wife” -is the story of a woman whose heart is broken.’</p> - -<p>And she turned from him. Geoffrey could only see her face in extreme -profile. The cheek with its drawn oval, the exquisite, sad lips, showed -in strong relief, like a cheek, like lips of marble, against the night -sky.</p> - -<p>He first broke silence.</p> - -<p>‘Do you care, seriously—do you care a fraction, one way or the -other—about my accepting this invitation of Basire’s for Wednesday?’ -he asked her. ‘Is it possible my going could be of help to you?’</p> - -<p>A big lump in poor Dinah’s throat kept her, during some moments, from -speaking. Then with trembling eagerness her answer broke forth. She -cared more seriously than she could say ‘about Geoffrey’s not forsaking -her.’ Gaston, of course, would be of the party, but then Gaston was -so popular, so sure to be unapproachable! She would never, never want -Geoffrey to martyrise himself again. It was the first great favour she -had asked him. When she was once launched in the world, said Dinah, -rallying with effort, she would know what to say and do and look, -unhelped by a prompter.</p> - -<p>And all Geff’s hatred for gay parties, and for men like Lord Rex Basire -and his brother officers, went to the winds. That Dinah was beginning -to anatomise her pain unhelped by suggestion from without, that Dinah -had grasped the subtle meaning of ‘James Lee’s Wife,’ were facts that -could not be lightly put aside. Her cry to himself, Geoffrey thought, -was that of a child who seeks succour, from instinct, rather than from -knowledge of his danger.</p> - -<p>‘The martyrdom would not last long,’ urged Dinah, misjudging his -intention. ‘To any one so fond of the sea as you, Geff, twelve or -fifteen hours on board a steamer are not much. We are to leave early in -the morning and be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> back in Guernsey the following night. If you know -what a kindness you would be doing me!’</p> - -<p>‘I mean to go,’ said Geff Arbuthnot shortly.</p> - -<p>Twelve hours! He felt, just then, that he would pass twelve weeks, or -months, on a steamer, if by so doing he could lighten one ounce of -Dinah’s burthens to her!</p> - -<p>‘And Gaston’s conscience will be at rest,’ she exclaimed. ‘The truth -is, you see, Gaston was not well pleased at my accepting at all. He -bade me ask you, Geoffrey, to look after me.’</p> - -<p>To a more sophisticated mind than Geff’s it might have occurred that -the most fitting man to look after Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife would -be—Gaston Arbuthnot himself.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXI</span> <span class="smaller">‘IS MY VIRGIL PASSABLE?’</span></h2> - -<p>I have written that, in a softened and remorseful moment Marjorie -Bartrand’s heart owned Geoffrey for its master.</p> - -<p>In a character like Marjorie’s, softened and remorseful moods are apt, -however, to be intermittent. On the evening of Saturday her pride had -melted, ay, to such a point that, holding her tutor’s ‘love-letter’ -between her hands, she went into a storm of penitent tears—she, -Marjorie Bartrand, whose boast had been that there was one woman in -Her British Majesty’s domain who would shed tears for no man while she -lived!</p> - -<p>Looking back upon these things from the cool and bracing heights of a -Tintajeux Sunday, the girl’s stout spirit recoiled with derision from -the image of her own weakness. The Seigneur’s after-dinner sarcasm, she -felt, with tingling cheek, was true of aim. She <i>had</i> played a part, -unknowingly, in the Arbuthnot drama: thanks to Cassandra Tighe, had -no doubt treated Geoffrey with kindness not his due for the imaginary -wife’s sake! Now would everything be on a frigidly proper footing. Her -tutor had shown very good sense in returning property that had wrongly -fallen into his keeping. Whatever small halo of romance hung around his -life was dispelled. The construction of Latin prose, the working out -of mathematical problems, would henceforth go on with dignified and -scholarlike serenity. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span></p> - -<p>But, as a first step, Geoffrey Arbuthnot should hear the truth!</p> - -<p>Old Andros happened to give a longer sermon than usual on this Sunday -morning of June 26—a sermon wearing a French garb now, but which was -first preached fifty years ago before the University of Oxford, and -whose polished sentences breathed the safe and sleepy theology of its -day. The whole of the congregation slept, save one; the gentlemanly -optimism of eighteen hundred and thirty appealing moderately to hearers -who in the evening would revive beneath the burning eloquence of -some neighbouring Bethesda or Zion. Marjorie, only, was awake: keen, -restless, preternaturally stirred to mundane thoughts and desires -as she had ever found herself, from her rebellious babyhood upward, -under the inspiration of a high oak pew and monumental slabs. She -thought over all her hours with Geoffrey from the first evening when -she saw him in the Tintajeux drawing-room until their half quarrel on -Saturday. She thought of her visit to Dinah, of the disillusionment -wrought in her by the vision of French songbooks and yellow-backed -novels. She thought of the moment when she rescued her letter from the -Seigneur’s hands! Happily, the comedy of errors approached its finish! -Geoffrey Arbuthnot should hear the truth, should have his masculine -vanity soothed by no further misinterpretation of her conduct. Into a -debateable land where a mature woman, her heart already touched, had -shrunk from venturing, Marjorie, with the madcap courage of seventeen, -resolved to rush.</p> - -<p>As a first step, Geoffrey Arbuthnot should hear the truth!</p> - -<p>And this resolution, formed in the dim religious light of the Tintajeux -family pew, did not melt away, like too many excellent Sunday purposes, -under the secular warmth of work-a-day open air. When Geoffrey walked -into Marjorie’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> schoolroom on Tuesday morning he found Grim Fate, in a -pink chintz frock, with blossoming maidenly face, ready to place him in -the outer cold for ever.</p> - -<p>‘Good-day to you, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ The girl held herself stiffly -upright, with smileless lips, with hands safely embedded in the pockets -of her pinafore. ‘I was much obliged to you for returning my ribbon on -Saturday, but I need not have put you to the trouble, to the expense of -postage! I could have waited until to-day.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey, a backward interpreter always of feminine petulancy, sought -for no latent meaning in her words. Marjorie Bartrand had never looked -sweeter to him than now, in her fresh summer frock, with a livelier -damask than usual on her cheeks, and with her hands cruelly holding -back from their wonted friendly greeting. He had it not in his heart, -on this June morning, to find a fault in her, inheritress of all the -sins of all the Bartrands though she might be.</p> - -<p>‘My poverty is heinous, Miss Bartrand, but I could just afford the -penny stamp required for the postage of your waist-belt. After the -lecture you read me on Saturday morning,’ went on Geff good humouredly, -‘I really dared not face you with that morsel of ribbon still in my -possession.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie’s lips lost their firmness. Taking her place at the schoolroom -table, she cleared her throat twice. Then she pushed across a pile of -copy-books in Geoffrey’s direction. She signed to him to be seated, -presented him with a bundle of pens, drew forward the inkstand. -Finally, intrenched, as it were, behind the implements which defined -their social relationship, she delivered herself of the following -singular confession:</p> - -<p>‘When my lecture, as you please to call it, was given I did not know -that <i>you</i> existed, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘Miss Bartrand!’</p> - -<p>‘The lecture was meant, in good faith, for another person.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> If an -apology is needed, there you have it! I—I had listened to idle -gossip,’ said Marjorie, taking desperate courage at the sound of her -own voice, ‘and so—I must say it out, little though I like such -subjects—I thought you were a married man, sir. I thought so from the -first evening you came here. I thought so until the hour when I saw Mr. -Gaston Arbuthnot at the rose-show.’</p> - -<p>‘And your motives—when you called on Dinah?’ exclaimed Geoffrey, -thrown off his guard.</p> - -<p>‘When I called on Mrs. Arbuthnot I believed her to be my tutor’s wife. -I had heard a great deal about her goodness and her beauty. And I had -almost grown to hate you,’ added Marjorie, with one of her terrible -bursts of outspokenness, ‘for leaving such a woman as Dinah at home, -neglected, while you amused yourself.’</p> - -<p>Then she lifted her eyes. She was startled to see how Geoffrey -Arbuthnot’s face had paled; paled under the incivility, so Marjorie -supposed, of her speech.</p> - -<p>‘As a fact, of course, I never hated you at all.’ Her voice shook a -little. ‘That gentle, beautiful Mrs. Arbuthnot is not your wife.’</p> - -<p>‘Not my wife,’ echoed poor Geoffrey absently.</p> - -<p>His tone was chill. Dipping a pen in the ink, he began to trace -meaningless curves and lines on the cover of the exercise-book nearest -his hand. During a few seconds he was obviously unmindful of his -pupil’s presence.</p> - -<p>‘Her lips, with their sad expression, haunt me,’ remarked Marjorie -presently. ‘Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot, I should think, must be the most -beautiful woman in the world.’</p> - -<p>‘As she is certainly the truest and best.’ Geff had got back his -self-possession. He spoke his credo as valiantly as though Marjorie -Bartrand’s eyes were not fixed upon him. ‘And so,’ he found voice to -say, ‘you could actually believe, on hearsay evidence, that a girl like -Dinah would have chosen me for her husband, and I—have neglected her?’</p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p> - -<p>Geoffrey laughed, not very joyously; then, taking up another copy-book, -he glanced with mechanical show of attention over a sentence or two -of Marjorie’s Latin translation. He held the page upside down—a fact -which her memory, in after times, might recall as significant.</p> - -<p>‘I honestly believed you to be married. Have you forgotten the first -evening you walked out to Tintajeux—that evening when I told you the -Bon Espoir was a good omen for our friendship?’</p> - -<p>‘A fortnight ago to-day. I have not forgotten it.’</p> - -<p>‘I looked upon you as my friend before I saw you. I had heard your -history—the history, it would seem, of your cousin Gaston! I honoured -a man who had had the courage of his opinions. I respected, I drew to -you on account of the wife you had chosen. And now, Mr. Arbuthnot,’ -exclaimed Marjorie hotly, ‘the comedy of errors is finished. I have -learned my mistake, you see. And I trust that my apology has been -sufficient.’</p> - -<p>This time Geoffrey broke into a fit of wholesome, unconstrained -laughter.</p> - -<p>‘I am afraid I see through everything, Miss Bartrand. Your apologies -say too much. I have been treated with humanity by accident, and may -count upon dark days for the future. That I am not married is my -misfortune,’ he added, watching her face,—‘a misfortune which, if I -could only thereby re-establish myself in your favour, I would gladly -remedy.’</p> - -<p>‘Would you?... do you mean ...’</p> - -<p>And then, looking up into her tutor’s eyes, Marjorie knew that they -were both of them talking unwisdom, were trenching as nearly on the -forbidden ground of sentiment as a young man and woman who had met for -the hard study of classics and mathematics could well do.</p> - -<p>‘I believe I got through some fair work yesterday,’ she remarked, with -an air of cold business. ‘As to-morrow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> is to be wasted on folly, -we may as well lose no time now. It is your system never to praise, -sir,—a good one, doubtless. Yet I hope you will think my Virgil -passable. I <i>promise</i> you it was done without the crib.’</p> - -<p>Geff read the halting translation aloud, no longer holding the -manuscript upside down. He did not think Marjorie’s Virgil passable, -and put the copy-book aside without a word of comment. He showed -himself severer than usual over Greek aorists, was stringent, to -cruelty, in regard of Marjorie’s shakiest point—her mathematics. But -at last, when the professional work was over, when he had risen to take -leave, Geoffrey Arbuthnot extended his hand to his pupil as the girl’s -heart knew he had never done before.</p> - -<p>‘You have tolerated me hitherto,’ he observed, ‘for my imaginary wife’s -sake. Do you think you can tolerate me, in future, for my own?’</p> - -<p>With his eyes fixed on her face, her small fingers crushed in his -grasp, Marjorie’s cheeks turned the colour of a pomegranate.</p> - -<p>‘You know ... you ought to have been the other Arbuthnot cousin,’ she -stammered, glancing up under her long lashes, then drawing her hand -away warily.</p> - -<p>‘I ought, you think, to have been Gaston? He would never have pleaded, -as I plead, for toleration. Every woman living would tolerate Gaston of -her own free will.’</p> - -<p>‘Save Marjorie Bartrand! Pray make one exception to your rule. I come -of an arbitrary and stiff-necked race. We—we Tintajeux people belong -to minorities. We like, in most cases dislike, where we can.’</p> - -<p class="space-above">‘Give me credit, for a short time longer, of being the other Arbuthnot -cousin,’ Geoffrey whispered as he left her. ‘Dislike me only as -much as you did on that first evening when you gathered roses and -heliotropes—for my wife!’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXII</span> <span class="smaller">LINDA AS AN ART CRITIC</span></h2> - -<p>Wednesday morning’s sun rose cloudless. A few persistent fog wreaths -lay, even as the day advanced, to leeward of the islands. There was an -undue ground-swell, although the surface of the water glistened, smooth -as oil, when the high spring tide began to flow in from the Atlantic. -None but an inveterate croaker could, however, prophesy actual mischief -from signs so trivial. Lord Rex Basire declared aloud—certain of his -guests arriving not as the time for departure drew nigh—that the day -must have been manufactured expressly for the subaltern’s picnic. No -wind, no sea, a nicely-tempered sun above one’s head, a favourable -tide—‘What more,’ asked Lord Rex, ‘especially if one add the item of a -powerful steamer, could the never satisfied heart of woman require?’</p> - -<p>The heart of the most Venerable woman in the island required that there -should be neither ground-swell nor fog-bank. At the eleventh hour -came an excuse, on the score of weather, from Madame Corbie. The post -of chaperon-in-chief stood vacant. Happily for the youthful hosts, -Rosie Verschoyle’s mother was faithful—a little white passive lady, -accustomed to the iron rule of grown-up daughters, who only stipulated -that she should lie down, within reach of smelling-salts, before -leaving Guernsey harbour, and neither be spoken to nor looked at until -they arrived in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> smooth water off the coast of France. Old Cassandra, -in her scarlet cloak, was to the fore, with cans for fish, with crooks -for sea-weed, with a butterfly-net, with stoppered bottles—Cassandra, -burthened by a sole regret—that she had left her harp behind. If -these young people had wished, in mid ocean, to dance, how willingly -would Cassandra have harped to them! Doctor Thorne and his Linda were -punctual; so were the trio of pretty de Carteret sisters whom poor Mrs. -Verschoyle, according to a trite figure of speech, was to ‘look after.’ -And still Rex Basire glanced vainly along the harbour road for the only -guests concerning whose advent he cared. The steam was up; the skipper -stood ready on the bridge. In another ten minutes the <i>Princess</i> of -necessity must quit her moorings, and still the sunshine of Dinah -Arbuthnot’s face was wanting.</p> - -<p>‘You look frightfully careworn, Lord Rex,’ said Rosie Verschoyle with -malicious intonation, as she followed the direction of his glances. -Pray, has your lobster salad not arrived? Is your ice melting? Or does -some anxiety even yet more tragic disturb your peace?’</p> - -<p>‘There they are—no, by Jove! only the men. Twelve feet two of the -Arbuthnot cousins!’ exclaimed Lord Rex, with frank disrespect of -Rosie’s sympathy. ‘Is it possible Mrs. Arbuthnot can have thrown us -over? The thought is too atrocious!’</p> - -<p>The tall figures of Gaston and Geoffrey—twelve feet two of the -Arbuthnot cousins—were descending by quick strides the stepway that -forms a short cut from the High Town of Petersport to the quay. -Before Rex Basire’s disappointment had had time to formulate itself -more coherently a clatter of ponies’ hoofs, a rush of wheels, made -themselves heard round the corner of the adjacent harbour road. A few -instants later and the welcomest sight the world could, just then, have -offered to Lord Rex was before him:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> Marjorie Bartrand, in her pony -carriage, and at Marjorie’s side, fairer than all summer mornings that -ever dawned, the blushing lovely face of Dinah Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘Have we to apologise? Are we really behind our time?’ cried Gaston, -as Lord Rex came forward to welcome them at the gangway. ‘It has been -a case of the fox and the goose and the bunch of grapes. My wife would -not start without Miss Bartrand; Geff would not start without my wife. -I was not allowed to start alone. The most delightful weather!—and -the most delightful party,’ added Gaston, looking at the sunlit world -around him with his pleasantest expression. ‘Miss Verschoyle, the Miss -de Carterets—Marjorie Bartrand! Why, all the pretty faces in Guernsey -are assembled on board the <i>Princess</i>!’</p> - -<p>The four or five hours that followed were hours destined to be marked -with a red letter in the calendar of Dinah’s life. She felt the youth -at her heart, enjoyed the salt freshness of the morning, entered into -the mirth and spirit of the expedition like a child. Gaston’s conduct -was unexceptionable. Before they had quitted the harbour he took his -place beside his wife—jotting down each new effect of sky or wave -or passing fishing-boat in his note-book. He remained beside her -throughout the voyage. The pretty island girls, capital sailors all of -them, chatted in picturesque twos and threes with their bachelor hosts. -Lord Rex Basire devoted himself, with a show of perfect impartiality, -to every one.</p> - -<p>If this was growing used to the perils of a factitious world, the first -plunge into a social vortex where more neophytes sink than swim, Dinah -found the process distinctly pleasant. And I am afraid the thought -of Linda, effaced for once, in grim earnestness, by all-effacing -sea-sickness down below, failed to take the edge off Mrs. Gaston -Arbuthnot’s enjoyment.</p> - -<p>Herm, with its fringe of shell-spangled sands, was soon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> left behind. -The high table-land of Sark became a fairy-like vision, hanging -suspended, as on Mahomet’s thread, between heaven and sea, ere it -vanished out of ken. After an hour’s steady steaming Alderney’s tall -cliffs were sighted through the haze; and then, shortly before one, -the south-west swell gave signs of lessening. The <i>Princess</i> was to -leeward of the Point of Barfleur, and lunch, served after a desultory -and scrambling fashion, began to find hearty welcome among the watchers -on deck.</p> - -<p>At the cheery whizzing of champagne corks old Doctor Thorne aroused -himself from a comfortable siesta he had been enjoying in the bows, and -came aft. The sight of Linda’s husband, a tumbler of Moet in his hand, -his puggareed hat pushed back from his sun-shrivelled Indian visage, -brought back the thought of Linda Thorne to the general mind.</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Thorne! Shall Mrs. Thorne not have champagne sent to her?’ cried -Gaston, who was reclining, a picture of virtuous contentment, beside -his wife. ‘Or, better still, now that we have a smooth deck, Doctor, -shall Mrs. Thorne not come up into the light of day?’</p> - -<p>The old Doctor shook his head as he accepted a goodly plate of lobster -salad from the steward’s boy.</p> - -<p>‘Poor girl! My poor dear Lin! A typically severe case of <i>mal de -mer</i> always. Stop a bit—no hurry—just give me a trifle more of the -dressing. I have collected a mass of data about sea-sick persons,’ -observed the Doctor, draining down his champagne, with relish, ‘and I -am wholly against any attempt at nourishing them. Quite a mistake to -administer stimulants. (Thank you, Lord Rex, you may give me another -quarter of a tumbler of your excellent Moet.) A mistake to imagine -persons as sea-sick as my poor wife can digest anything.’</p> - -<p>‘I think you are disgracefully heartless, Doctor,’ cried Rosie -Verschoyle, in her thin, gay accents. ‘Mrs. Thorne<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> and dear mamma -must require wine much more than all we well people. I declare it is -positively shameful to think how we have been enjoying the voyage while -they were in misery. Now, who will help me carry something to our poor -martyrs below?’</p> - -<p>‘Who,’ of course, meant Lord Rex Basire. Following the airy flutter -of Rosie Verschoyle’s dress, Lord Rex dutifully assisted in conveying -biscuits, champagne, and sympathetic messages to the martyrs—as far -as the cabin door. Though the deck was smooth, Linda showed coyness as -to returning thither. Her belief in human nature, especially in Gaston -Arbuthnot’s human nature, was, I fear, frailish. The livid cheeks, -pale lips, and sunken eyes of recent sea-sickness were tests to which -Linda, under no conditions, would have dreamt of exposing a sentimental -friendship!</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Thorne is quite too good—the dearest, most unselfish creature -living!’ Rosie Verschoyle announced these little facts before all -hearers, on her return to upper air. ‘Doctor Thorne, I hope you are -listening to my praises of your wife. Mrs. Thorne is not ill, not very -ill herself, but she will not leave my poor frightened mother for a -moment. I call that real, quiet heroism. In glorious weather like this -to remain shut up in the cabin of a steamer for another person’s sake!’</p> - -<p>‘Our good Smeet! She knows so well to efface herself.’</p> - -<p>There was a twinkle in Gaston Arbuthnot’s shrewd eyes. Possibly, as -Rosie Verschoyle spoke, the words of Madame Benjamin’s eulogy came back -to him.</p> - -<p>A league or two beyond Barfleur a French pilot was signalled for, the -pilotage from the Point to Langrune being tortuous and difficult. Does -the reader know the fairness of that little-visited strip of Norman -coast? Fairness at its zenith, perhaps, in April, when the orchards -bordering the shore are heavy with white pear, or rose-pink apple<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> -bloom; when the black-thorn blossoms so lavishly that, if the wind -be south, you may distinguish whiffs of the wild, half-bitter aroma -far out at sea. But exquisite, too, on a late June day like this, the -yellow colza in full harvest, the barley-fields ready for the sickle, -the Caen-stone spires and homesteads standing out in white relief -against the level horizon-line of sky.</p> - -<p>A French pilot was signalled for. After his coming the <i>Princess</i> -steamed slower and ever slower eastward. By and by—Langrune already -visible across the expanse of yellowish sea—it became observable that -the vessel’s movement could scarce be felt by those on board. The -skipper stood consulting with the pilot on the bridge, the figures of -the men at the wheel were motionless. There was a simultaneous hush in -everybody’s talk, a momentary tension of the breath at the thought of -something happening! And then came the blank, unmistakable order, ‘Stop -her!’ Before leaving Petersport wrong reckoning had been made as to the -difference between the hour of ebb in Guernsey and along the coast of -France; the skipper had no choice but to anchor. Would the passengers -await the turn of the tide and deeper water, or land, by help of the -boats, on some rocks within easy reach, and trust to getting ashore -across a tract of wide wet sand as best they might?</p> - -<p>The stout-nerved Guernsey girls, accustomed to scores of bigger -adventures at sand-eeling parties and conger expeditions, laughed at -the horrors of the position. With Cassandra Tighe as leader, these -young women announced their determination of reaching the shore -forthwith, though not dry-footed. Among the chaperons arose murmurs of -contumacy. Poor Mrs. Verschoyle, a ghastly figure, emerging tremulously -from the cabin, observed that she looked on all voluntary sea-going -excursions as a tempting of Providence. With a spot like L’Ancresse -Common, not three miles from Petersport—L’Ancresse Common, where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> one -could have had the society of our excellent Archdeacon and of Madame -Corbie—<i>why</i>, said Mrs. Verschoyle, with the acerbity of mortal -digestive revolt—why put one’s self at the mercy of tides and pilots -at all?</p> - -<p>Old Dr. Thorne was flatly rebellious. There was good champagne on board -the <i>Princess</i>, thought the Doctor. There were Burmese cheroots—a warm -sun. There was the ultimate certainty of floating up with the tide.</p> - -<p>‘If any one be at a loss how to pass the afternoon hours let him take a -siesta, or inquire if the skipper have a pack of cards stowed away. You -see the wisdom of my remarks, I am sure, Lin, do you not?’</p> - -<p>‘I see the wisdom of them for you and me, my dear,’ said Lin, -graciously. Under cover of a doubly-folded gauze veil, protected by -rice powder, a parasol, a well-adjusted Indian shawl, Linda Thorne had -at length committed herself to the cruel eye of noon. ‘My own election -is to abide by Mrs. Verschoyle, whatever happens. I am afraid we shall -hardly win over the young ones, Robbie, to our staid philosophy.’</p> - -<p>‘If Rosie and the Miss de Carterets land I shall land,’ said Mrs. -Verschoyle, with dreary resignation.</p> - -<p>The poor little lady’s elder daughters were married. She had three -girls in the schoolroom still. She had also boys. Chaperonage at -balls and picnics, nursing of measles or scarlatina, love affairs, -school bills, breakages, all came to Mrs. Verschoyle as the burthens -of her widowed, many childrened lot—heavy burthens to be borne under -sorrowful protest. ‘If the picnic had only been at L’Ancresse Common,’ -she repeated, ‘we should have the Archdeacon and Madame Corbie with us, -and need never have got wet shoes at all.’</p> - -<p>A consultation with the skipper resulted in a general lowering of the -boats. A quarter of an hour later the whole of the party, save the -Doctor, were landed on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> Smaller Cancale, a reef of rock separated -by a mile of treacherous sands from terra firma, and upon whose -limited area a crowd of Parisians of both sexes were fishing—no, were -following ‘<i>la pêche</i>’ (the terms are not convertible)—after the guise -and in the vestments sacred to the Parisian heart.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Verschoyle sank down on the first slippery point of rock that -presented itself, vainly wishing, little though she loved the -steamer, that her maternal duties had allowed her to remain there -with the Doctor and the sailors. Cassandra Tighe started off, the -lightest-hearted of the party, perhaps, to hunt for zoophytes and -molluscs among the tide pools. The younger people, all, pronounced -themselves in favour of an exploring walk inland before dinner—all -except Mrs. Thorne.</p> - -<p>‘I mean to look after your mother, Rosie,’ said Linda, removing her -double folds of gauze, as she took her place at the elder lady’s side. -‘Please let me indulge my Indian laziness. Some one, positively, ought -to stay with dear Mrs. Verschoyle, and I like to be that some one. It -makes me remember my queer old governess days to find myself among -Parisians.’ Linda was prone to these little bursts of retrospective -humility. ‘And then, there is my husband! Robbie, no doubt, will -eventually drift up with the tide. Quite too charming to leave all us, -sober elders, together.’</p> - -<p>‘Sober elders’—so Dinah realised, with a contracting heart—was a -sufficiently elastic term to embrace Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. Before -landing from the boats, Gaston, with keen artistic vision, had descried -some marvellously pretty fisher-girl among the crowd of French people -on the rocks. Not a real red-handed, rough-haired fisher-girl, but the -latest Worth idea of a duly got-up <i>pêcheuse</i>, the very subject, Gaston -declared, for his own meretricious pencil. He must make a stealthy -study of her forthwith. And indeed, at this present moment, not many -paces distant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> from Mrs. Verschoyle and her devoted friend, Gaston -Arbuthnot, sketch-book in hand, was already at work.</p> - -<p>Dinah lingered aimlessly. The desire of her heart was to stay beside -her husband. Her pleasure would have been to watch his quick, clever -pencil, to hear him discourse, in his light strain, about these -foreigners, whose theatrical manners and dress, overwhelming to her in -her ignorance, must to him be familiar. She felt that the brightness -of her day would be clouded if she left Gaston! And yet, mused Dinah, -troubled of spirit, <i>do</i> wives, in society, hang jealously at their -husband’s elbow, or watch their pencil, or listen to their talk with -delight? Would she expose herself—far worse, would she expose Gaston -to ridicule, by shirking the walking party?</p> - -<p>An expressive glance, shot from Mr. Arbuthnot’s eyes, set these -questionings only too sharply at rest.</p> - -<p>‘Look carefully in through the cottage windows, Dinah.’ He bestowed on -her a little valedictory wave of two fingers. ‘Capital bits of ware are -still to be unearthed in these parts of the world. If you see a likely -cup or saucer, get Geoffrey to talk French for you.’ Gaston Arbuthnot -was a dabbler in most branches of <i>bric-à-brac</i>, and up to the present -date had never lost money by his dealings. ‘Mrs. Thorne, when we have -got rid of these young people, I want you to criticise me. My beautiful -fishing-girl grows too much like a figure from the mode-books.’</p> - -<p>Linda Thorne, promptly obedient, took up her position at the artist’s -side.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIII</span> <span class="smaller">A SWAGGER AND A SWORD</span></h2> - -<p>It was the hottest, most deserted hour of the day when the walking -party reached Langrune plage, an hour when such of the young Parisians -as do not follow <i>la pêche</i> drive donkey-carts—those wonderful, -springless, seatless, Langrune carts—along the country roads, or -start, by rail, to distant Trouville for toilettes and distraction. -Here and there were elderly ladies at work before the doors of their -canvas bathing-sheds. In the road two portly fathers of families were -solemnly sending up ‘messengers’ to a very small Japanese kite some -fifty or sixty feet above their heads. Two other middle-aged gentlemen -played at battledore and shuttlecock. A few irrepressible boulevard -lovers sat over their cards or dominoes outside the restaurant windows -of the principal hotel. The shrill sounds from a fish auction, held -on the monster slab of rough granite which constitutes the Langrune -market-place, alone broke the stillness.</p> - -<p>Before one had thought it possible that dress or speech could have -betrayed the nationality of the new-comers, up ran a brown-legged, -tattered sand-imp, holding out a bunch of shore-flowers. He announced -his name, with some pride of birth, as Jean Jacques la Ferté of these -parts, offering his services as cicerone to the English strangers.</p> - -<p>‘The gentlemen, without doubt, make a pilgrimage to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> La Delivrande, -half a league away up the country? At La Delivrande is the church -and the altar where the miracles are wrought. There are the little -ships of the sailors, the crutches left by the cripples who get back -use of their legs. And for the ladies there are the stalls with the -relics. Every one in the country,’ ran on the child, with voluble -distinctness—Jean Jacques, a source of revenue to his parents, was -trained to speak good French with the visitors—‘every one in the -country who is sick gets cured. Every one who has a <i>grand espoir</i> goes -to La Delivrande, and, if he has faith, attains it. Or so the curé -says,’ added Jean Jacques, with a roll of his black eyes and a knowing -shrug of the shoulders.</p> - -<p>At seven years of age even sand-imps, in these advanced French days, -like to show we are no longer bound by the priestly superstitions that -were well enough for our grandmothers.</p> - -<p>Lord Rex made a free paraphrase of the child’s narrative in English, -and was witty thereupon. ‘Every one who is sick gets cured. Every -one who has a <i>grand espoir</i> goes to La Delivrande, and, if he have -faith, obtains it. Miss Verschoyle, what do you say? Have you a <i>grand -espoir</i>? Have you faith? Shall we make our pilgrimage, confess our -little peccadilloes, and get cured together?’</p> - -<p>Miss Verschoyle rebuked his flippancy, but with lips less severe -than her words. For Rosie’s mood was a lenient one. Had not Lord Rex -throughout the day conducted himself as well, really, as though that -poor Mrs. Arbuthnot were non-existent? It was decided that every one -had unfulfilled hopes, that every one stood in need of cure, and -that a general confession of peccadilloes would be the best possible -employment of the afternoon! In another five minutes the pilgrims were -on their road, ragged Jean Jacques leading the way, towards the distant -white twin spires of La Delivrande. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p> - -<p>The plage, I have said, was deserted; not so the lane, with quaint -wooden houses on either side, which forms the High Street of Langrune. -Here were bare-limbed, dark-faced fisher-lads, busily mending their -nets; clear-starchers plying their delicate craft in the open air; -housewives roasting coffee; pedlars chaffering over their outspread -goods. Huge cats, with sleepy, watchful eyes, the sun shining -comfortably on their ebon-barred coats, reposed on the window-sills. -Lace-makers were at work, their headgear antiquated as their faces, -their bobbins twirling in and out the pins, unerringly, as though they -were the very threads of fate itself. Everywhere was the din of voices. -Everywhere were open doors, open windows; and within, such plentitude -of frugal cleanliness, such polished oak cupboards, such well-scoured -cooking-pans, such snow-white bed draperies, such balsams and geraniums -in brilliant scarlet pots, as might have put a Dutch village to shame.</p> - -<p>Marjorie Bartrand and Dinah paused beside one of the lace-makers’ -chairs, allowing the more ardent of the pilgrims to get on ahead. A -distinct shade of constraint was holding Marjorie and Geff Arbuthnot -aloof to-day. They had not met since yesterday’s friendly parting. No -further misunderstanding in respect of Geff’s celibacy was possible -between them. But a change had come across Marjorie’s manner towards -her tutor. Geoffrey was sensible that she answered him with pungent -and monosyllabic curtness during the whole of their outward voyage. -And—seeing that among the knot of pretty Sarnian girls excellent -temper reigned supreme, also that Geoffrey had joined the party for -other motives than his own pleasure—one can scarcely wonder that -this philosopher of four-and-twenty suffered himself, without over -difficulty, to be consoled.</p> - -<p>At the present moment, disappearing in the perspective of Langrune -village, Geoffrey walked, to all outward seeming, well content, beside -the prettiest and least wise of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> the three Miss de Carterets. Of which -fact Marjorie took a brief and scornful note in her heart.</p> - -<p>‘One can imagine a man’s becoming a senior wrangler.’ She made the -remark to Dinah as they watched the everlasting bobbins whirl. ‘Yes, -even I, with my halting Euclid and weak algebra (of which, no doubt, -Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot has spoken), can imagine a man’s becoming a -senior wrangler. I can no more conceive of bobbin-turning than I could -of a world in which two and two shall make five.’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s slower brain needed time for reflection. ‘There could not be a -world where two and two make five,’ she observed with certainty. ‘And -lace-making, once you have served your time, steadily, is easy enough. -Two of my cousins, down Honiton way, are lace-makers, and I learned a -little of it when I was a child. The number of threads looks hard to -strangers, Miss Bartrand, but it just gets to one twirl of the bobbins -in time. Many of the workers keep to the same pattern for life, when -they know it well. After a bit, your fingers work without your eyes.’</p> - -<p>‘How horrible! One twirl of the bobbins, one pattern, for life! And to -think that lace-makers do not commit suicide by scores!’</p> - -<p>‘I don’t know that there’s much difference between lacework, or -wool-work, or plain sewing,’ said Dinah Arbuthnot. ‘We have, all of us, -to go through with our day’s task, whatever the stitch may be.’</p> - -<p>The speech came so naturally, was so fraught with unconscious womanly -humility, that Marjorie felt abashed. What real heroism, of an -incomprehensible kind, must not Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife possess? This -girl of two-and-twenty who worked perpetual cross-stitch, who kept -her tongue and spirit calm, who loved, with soul and might, yonder -<i>débonnaire</i> gentleman, of the handsome eyes and decorative smile, -sketching charming Parisian fisher-girls on the beach—under Linda -Thorne’s criticism! </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘If I speak hotly against needlework, it is that I am thinking of -Spain, my mother’s country. In Spain, you must know, the miserable -girls, to this hour, scarcely learn more than embroidery in their -schools and convents, with reading enough, perhaps, to stumble -through the announcement of a bull-fight, or decipher a love-letter. -Of course,’ admitted Marjorie Bartrand coldly, ‘it is said that when -a woman marries, in England or in Spain, she must do as her husband -wills. I never see the force of that “must.” I think a woman should do -what is right for herself, with large trust in Providence as to the -rest! The question is not one that concerns me. Still, Mrs. Arbuthnot, -one cannot help feeling indignant about all very crushed people. I am -dead against slavery, especially when slavery puts on a domestic garb.’</p> - -<p>By this time they had passed the last straggling houses of Langrune. -Fair level country, the fields already on the edge of harvest, spread -around their road. Along the wayside path was a very mosaic of -brilliantly blended hues, the corn-flowers blue and purple, the scarlet -poppies, the white and gold of the wild camomile making up the purest -chord of colour. A slight south-west wind, dry and elastic after its -transit over so many a league of sunny land, was invigorating as wine.</p> - -<p>‘How the spirit rises the moment one treads real solid earth!’ cried -Marjorie Bartrand. ‘I feel at this moment like walking straight off to -Spain, the country I love and where my life will be spent! Why, with -twenty francs apiece in our pockets, and camping out by night under -stacks or hedges, you and I might easily reach the Peninsula on foot, -Mrs. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s geography did not embolden her to hazard a contradiction. -Something in Marjorie Bartrand’s tone jarred on her reasonlessly. It -were hard to believe that she considered Geff a man likely to fall in -love. Had not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> the conditions of her life for years put speculations -as to Geoffrey’s future happiness on one side? And still, a true -daughter of Eve in every weakness belonging to the passion, Dinah was -an inchoate match-maker. She would fain have seen the whole world blest -with such fireside beatitude as constituted her own ideal of highest -good. With firm and true perception she had noticed a dozen trivial -things of late, all proving Geff’s imagination, if not his heart, to -be in his teaching of Latin and Greek at Tintajeux Manoir. She had -hoped that the notice taken of herself by Marjorie was an earnest of -the pupil’s liking for her master, had furtively and with misgiving dug -the foundations of many an air-castle that Marjorie and Geff, at some -far-off day, might jointly inhabit.</p> - -<p>The girl’s diatribes against domestic slavery, her open avowal of love -for Spain and of her hopes of spending her life among Spanish people, -caused a troubled look to come on Dinah’s face.</p> - -<p>‘Your plans don’t point towards an English home, Miss Bartrand. Yet I -think Geoffrey has told me you mean to study at Girton?’</p> - -<p>‘To fit myself for my future work—yes. The Spanish school-boards -are just as conservative as English ones. A young woman armed with -Cambridge certificates would have more chance of coming to the front -than another, equally strong-minded, who should rely on her own merits.’</p> - -<p>‘Strong-minded!’ Dinah ejaculated with horror. ‘At your age, with all -the sweet happiness of life still to come, you talk, as though you -approved such things, of being strong-minded?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie swept off the heads from a cluster of wayside camomile flowers -with the stick of her sunshade. An expression of will which yet was -neither unlovely nor unfeminine glowed upon her girlish face.</p> - -<p>‘Let us understand each other better, Mrs. Arbuthnot.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> It may well be -that our notions of “sweet happiness” are not the same.’</p> - -<p>Dinah looked uneasy, and kept silent.</p> - -<p>‘Power—I will make a confession to you such as I never made -before—power is my ideal of happiness. I want to rule, we will hope -for good; in any case, to rule, to be needed on all sides, sought -after, distinguished—to see my name in print! That is the truth, no -matter how I may wrap truth up in fine-sounding words,’ said Marjorie -Bartrand. ‘That is the secret of my enthusiasm for humanity, and of -my personal ambition. To lead others, <i>to command</i>, is my ideal of -happiness.’</p> - -<p>‘And mine,’ exclaimed Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife unhesitatingly, ‘is—to -obey. For a woman to look up to another stronger life, to be ruled -by a stronger will, gladly to take all little household worries on -herself—I speak badly, Miss Bartrand, but you guess my meaning—and -feel more than paid by one kind look or word in return, to know that -as much as she wants of the world is safe between four lowly walls, -to have her hours filled with the care of others, to keep her parlour -bright and cheerful, to hear the voices of the children——’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s own voice broke; and Marjorie, who had watched her with looks -of lofty compassion, softened involuntarily.</p> - -<p>‘So far from speaking badly, Mrs. Arbuthnot, you speak with very pretty -eloquence. You draw a picture of constant giving up, which, if one -could believe it to be from life, would, I confess, be attractive. It -is drawn from life, perhaps?’</p> - -<p>‘Oh—no; I said only that would be my ideal of happiness,’ faltered -Dinah, with a pang.</p> - -<p>‘Fancied or real, such an existence would never do for me. I have not -much taste for obedience. I have none at all for household worries. -Babies I bar.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Miss Bartrand!’</p> - -<p>‘Yes, I do. Grandpapa and I visit about in our Pagan way among the -Guernsey country people, and I know that I absolutely bar babies of -every shade and degree. I am not sure I would go so far as to <i>injure</i> -one,’ said Marjorie, stealing a glance at her companion’s shocked face; -‘but I feel that they are safest kept out of my sight. I tell the -mothers so.’</p> - -<p>‘You are too young to know what you feel, Miss Bartrand.’ There was a -standstill of some moments ere Dinah recovered herself enough to speak. -‘Long before you are my age you’ll begin to see things differently. -Young girls are a bit hard, I’ve sometimes thought, in all classes of -life, until the time comes.’</p> - -<p>‘What time, may I ask?’</p> - -<p>‘The time for having a sweetheart and getting married,’ said Dinah -Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>From any other lips Marjorie would have regarded such a suggestion -as an indignity. Dinah was so true a woman, had a soul so whitely -delicate, that the speech carried with it no possible suspicion of -offence. It was homely common sense, kindly and simply uttered.</p> - -<p>‘What you say might be true of most girls of my age. If I am hard, it -is not because of my youth, or my inexperience. I have had’—Marjorie’s -face flamed to the hue of the poppies in the corn—‘what the world is -pleased to call a sweetheart. But for the interposition of Providence -(I remember that interposition, night and morning, on my knees) I -should be married now.’</p> - -<p>‘Unless he loved you above everything, you are best as you are, Miss -Bartrand. In marriage it is all or nothing. I mean—I mean,’ Dinah -hesitated, ‘no wife could be happy with half a heart bestowed on her.’</p> - -<p>‘Half! What do you say to a quarter, a fraction?’ exclaimed Marjorie, -hotly. ‘What do you say to a creature<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> stuffed as the dolls are, with -sawdust, in lieu of a human heart at all? A creature well set up as -regards shoulders, six feet in measurement, with fine white teeth, blue -eyes, yellow moustache, a swagger and a sword? His would scarcely be -the larger soul, Mrs. Arbuthnot, the stronger will which it should be a -woman’s crown of honour to obey!’</p> - -<p>Down went another head of clustering camomile, felled by a well-aimed -stroke from Marjorie’s hand. Her eyes flashed fire.</p> - -<p>‘And yet a wayward girl, scarcely past sixteen, and with no mother to -give her counsel, might for two or three weeks, you know, be hurried -into thinking such a man a hero. I was that girl, Mrs. Arbuthnot. -Vanity blinded me, or the love of power, or something stronger than -either. At all events, when Major Tredennis asked me, one fine morning, -to be engaged to him, I said “Yes.”’</p> - -<p>‘And the Seigneur of Tintajeux?’ asked Dinah, looking round at the -dimpled, indignant face of seventeen.</p> - -<p>‘“Major Tredennis comes of a race of gentlemen,” said grandpapa. “If -Major Tredennis can make adequate settlements, and my granddaughter -elects to spend her life with a popinjay, she may do so.”’</p> - -<p>‘And, with no better advice than that, you were engaged?’</p> - -<p>‘I was engaged. Major Tredennis used to write me foolish notes. He -gave me a ring I never wore. He gave me chocolate creams, and a setter -puppy. He sang French songs to me in an English accent. Looking back at -it all now, I think the chocolate creams were the best part of that bad -time, except, of course, the setter, <i>whom I loved</i>. When it was all -broken off—for the owner of the white teeth and the sword was a right -wicked craven, and should have married a girl in England who cared for -him, without once looking at me;—when it was all broken off, and I -had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> to send Jock back, I did weep, scalding tears, at parting from -him. The only tears I have ever shed, or shall shed, in connection with -love-matters.’</p> - -<p>‘Wait!’ was Dinah Arbuthnot’s answer. ‘If I see you, as I hope to do, -two or three years hence, it may be you will tell a different story.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie glanced at the yachting party, sauntering contentedly, a -hundred yards or so in front, among the lights and shadows of the -orchard-bordered road. There was Lord Rex, outrageously devoted -in manner to Rosie Verschoyle, with whom he loitered apart. And -there, a little divided also from the rest, was Geff Arbuthnot, well -entertained, one must surmise, by the shallow talk, fascinated by the -pink-and-white charms of Ada, the most soulless and the prettiest of -the de Carteret family.</p> - -<p>‘If such a revolution takes place, a dozen years hence, that I marry,’ -she observed, after consideration, ‘the husband I choose shall be -a head-and-shoulders taller than myself, morally. No singer of -ballad sentiment, no popinjay, with yellow moustache, and a sword, -and uniform, next time. If I take to myself a master, he shall be a -man—with a temper, a will, a purpose in life, all nobler than my own.’</p> - -<p>Such a husband as Geoffrey would be! The thought obeyed the wish in -Dinah’s heart.</p> - -<p>‘And I must be first—first in his affection. I would have no rivals, -past or present. If Bayard himself walked the earth and wished to -marry me, Marjorie Bartrand, I would ask him if I was first. Yes, Mrs. -Arbuthnot, I would ask Chevalier Bayard himself if he had looked at -any other woman before he loved me; and if he had, and though my heart -broke for it, I would refuse him.’</p> - -<p>A red light broke on Marjorie’s cheeks, her eyes dilated. The likeness -to old Andros, which came out in every moment of strong emotion, was -never more marked than now. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘If we ask too much we may lose all,’ said Dinah, not perhaps without a -pang of dread as visions of Geoffrey’s youth rose before her. ‘I never -heard anything about this gentleman.’</p> - -<p>‘Chevalier Bayard? the first gentleman the world has known!’</p> - -<p>‘But if he was put upon his word, yes, and though he stood with his -bride before the altar, I think Chevalier Bayard might have to confess -to some foolish fancy in the past.’</p> - -<p>‘I spoke of love, not of foolishness,’ exclaimed Marjorie Bartrand. -Then, as though quickly repenting of her warmth: ‘We have talked more -than enough,’ she cried, ‘about a peradventure that will never become -fact. Let us forget, with all speed, that so much nonsense has been -spoken.’</p> - -<p>But the conversation was one which neither of these young women could, -by any means, forget while she lived.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIV</span> <span class="smaller">REX BASIRE’S HUMOUR</span></h2> - -<p>A rough-paved village square; green-shuttered houses, sweltering in the -afternoon sun; a pair of openwork spires, delicate as lace, dazzlingly -white as Caen stone could make them, silhouetted against the burning -sky; tattered children with mercenary hands full of wild flowers; a -knot of British pilgrims, irreverently loquacious outside the church’s -western door; gruesome beggars making exhibition of wounds; honest -peasant people; dishonest relic sellers—such were the salient features -of La Delivrande at the moment when Marjorie and Dinah descended into -its closer air out of the field-smelling, wind-blown road that brought -them hither from the coast.</p> - -<p>‘We will ask Mrs. Arbuthnot’s opinion, and abide by it,’ cried Lord -Rex, coming forward a few paces to meet them. ‘She will be far better -versed in this kind of thing than the rest of us. Ought we to carry -candles in our hands, Mrs. Arbuthnot, when we seek our cure? There is a -candle-stall conveniently opposite, and Miss Verschoyle and I will head -the procession as penitents-in-chief.’</p> - -<p>‘Please help to keep Lord Rex in order, Mrs. Arbuthnot. He is really -doing and saying the absurdest things!’ Rosie Verschoyle must have -been, surely, at the zenith of good temper when she thus addressed that -poor Mrs. Arbuthnot! ‘Now, Lord Rex, I command you to drop this talk -about<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> candles instantly. Of course the whole business is a ridiculous -piece of Popish superstition, still,’ observed Rosie, with a certain -largeness, ‘one has one’s ideas. A church is a church. Positively, I -will not speak another word to you to-day unless you behave yourself -with decorum when we are inside.’</p> - -<p>The awfulness of the threat appeared, for the moment, to check Lord -Rex Basire’s playful spirits. He made no purchase of candles. Save -that he affected a sudden and very marked lameness of gait, he behaved -no worse than his companions on entering the church. Guided by ragged -Jean Jacques, the English people walked up to a fretted stone screen -dividing the choir from the nave. In a small side altar on the left was -a doll, clothed in woven gold, unlovely of face, with eyes ‘dreadfully -staring,’ with a crown of paper lilies, with a score of rushlights -burning before her in a row—La Delivrande.</p> - -<p>Who that has travelled in primitive French districts can fail of -knowing these little miracle chapels, their atmosphere, their votive -offerings, their sincerity, their tinsel, their pathos? At least a -hundred graven memorials on the wall beside the Virgin told the story -of simple human hearts that had suffered, believed, of anguished -human hopes that had here found fulfilment. Dinah Arbuthnot’s cheeks -paled as Marjorie, in a whisper, translated the meaning of the -inscriptions. Here a mother recorded her gratitude for her child, a -wife for her husband, a daughter for her parent. Here the names were -graven in full, here in initials. Occasionally there was one word only, -‘<i>Reconnaissance</i>,’ and a date. Dinah’s cheeks paled, her eyes filled. -If she were alone, Dinah felt—puritan, heretic, though she were—she -would gladly kneel and make her confession, lay bare her sorrow, on the -spot where so many stricken and weary human souls had cast away the sad -garment of repression before her! </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p> - -<p>Lord Rex Basire’s view of the place and situation continued -irresistibly comic. And the faces of his companions, the rose-pink face -of Miss Verschoyle not excepted, failed to condemn him for his levity.</p> - -<p>A heap of pious gifts, testimonials, in kind, from the cured, lay, -incongruously, as they had been offered, before the altar of the -Virgin. There were crutches, big and small, a child’s reclining -carriage, models of ships innumerable, a wooden leg—the stoutest faith -might long for an explanation of that wooden leg! Well, reader, with -the fair church solemn and hushed, five or six black-clad women telling -their beads before the different altars, its only Catholic inmates, -Lord Rex, it must be concluded, found the temptation towards practical -jocularity too strong for him. Hobbling up to the altar, this humorous -little lord stood, with bowed head, with contrite manner, in front -of the lily-crowned figure for some minutes’ space. Slowly ascending -a step, he next deposited his crutch, a silver and ebony toy, upon -the heap of worn and dusty peasant offerings; then walked away with -tripping, resonant step, with head joyfully erect, down the western -aisle, as who should say, ‘Behold me—a believer, cured.’</p> - -<p>Ragged Jean Jacques held his mouth between two sun-blackened hands, -showily pantomiming his appreciation of the Englishman’s costly -waggishness. The subalterns of the Maltshire Royals tittered aloud. -Alas! in a marching regiment, as elsewhere, has not human nature its -weaker side? Is not a duke’s son, with two inches of brain, and wit in -proportion, a duke’s son, even when he jests? The young ladies with one -exception looked about as frigid as Italian snow looks under the kisses -of an April sun. The exception was Marjorie Bartrand.</p> - -<p>Away out of the church flew Marjorie, brushing against Rex Basire’s -elbow in her exit. She waited in the porch outside, eager beggars -pressing forward with their wounds,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> children with their half-dead -wild-flowers, relic-mongers with their chaplets and rosaries—blest, -ay, to the last bead, blest, ‘<i>tout bonnement</i>,’ by his Holiness, away -in Rome. By and by, when the last of the loud-talking, merry-spirited -knot of idlers had issued forth from the church, Marjorie fastened upon -the offender-in-chief. With luminous eyes, with drawn breath, with -hands tightly clenched in her hot indignation, she scathed him, thus:</p> - -<p>‘You have played a delicate bit of comedy, have you not, Lord Rex? -It was the finest stroke of humour to scandalise a few poor peasant -women, saying prayers for their dead?... For me,’ looking one by one -round the group, ‘I felt ashamed—more ashamed than ever I was in my -life before—of belonging to the same nation as you all! I read once,’ -said Marjorie, ‘in a wise book: “Where we are ignorant, let us show -reverence.” The ignorance only has been shown to-day.’</p> - -<p>Dinah Arbuthnot and Geoffrey, who had lingered behind the others -in the church, arrived on the scene just in time to hear the last -accents of this denunciation. Then, ere the culprits could utter a -word in self-defence, away shot Marjorie’s arrowy figure along a -shadowed by-street, away, neither stopping nor hesitating, along the -old chaussée that leads from La Delivrande Paris-wards, in an exactly -opposite direction to the Langrune road.</p> - -<p>‘By Jupiter! I was never so frightened in my life.’ Rex Basire’s limbs -collapsed under him in well-dramatised alarm. ‘Have all Girton girls -got dynamite in their eyes? Does their speech invariably bristle with -torpedoes? Is Marjorie Bartrand Protestant, or Catholic, or what?’</p> - -<p>‘Ah, what!’ repeated Rosie Verschoyle, ever ready with a little amiable -platitude. ‘A hundred years ago the Bartrands were Papists, remember. -It is a moot question among the people who know them best what the -Tintajeux religion is at the present day.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I know one thing,’ cried Geoffrey’s friend, Ada de Carteret. ‘All -through Tintajeux parish the Seigneur is looked upon as more learned -than canny. When the country folk come near old Andros after dark, -declaiming Greek, and with a couple of black dogs at his heels, they -will run a mile round sooner than meet him.’</p> - -<p>‘The Seigneur’s term of endearment for Marjorie is witch, when they -happen to be on speaking terms at all,’ said another voice. ‘Poor girl! -In spite of her temper one cannot help liking her extremely. Who was it -said of Marjorie that she had such an olive-like flavour?’</p> - -<p>‘You always feel there must be a fund of goodness in the dear -child—somewhere.’ This finishing note was given in Miss Verschoyle’s -thin voice. ‘As to the lecture you came in for, Lord Rex, you deserved -it richly. It is quite too—in saying this, I mean it—quite! to laugh -at other people’s beliefs, even when they are most ridiculous.’</p> - -<p>And then they all sauntered off to the stalls, where Lord Rex, we may -be sure, found ample scope for his veiled yet poignant irony among -the crosses, medals, rosaries, and relics that had been blest, ‘<i>tout -bonnement</i>,’ away in Rome, by his Holiness!</p> - -<p>Marjorie, meanwhile, pursued her way through shadow and sunshine, -unconscious in which direction the fiery haste of her steps was bearing -her. When her temper had burnt out—in the space, say, of two minutes -and a half—she perceived that she was once more in open country, -alone among colza stacks and fields of ripening barley, but on a less -frequented road, amidst a landscape with wider horizons than the road -and landscape she and Dinah had traversed in coming to Langrune from -the sea.</p> - -<p>How good it was to breathe this wild, well-oxygenised air! With what -glad senses Marjorie gazed about her across the plains, rippling, -as the sun lowered, in lucent amber waves, and shaded deliciously -at intervals by rows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> of pearly, smoke-coloured poplar! A family of -peasant farmers drove by in one of their old-world Norman harvest -waggons—coeval, perhaps, with Andros Bartrand’s sickle! Friendly nods, -gleaming smiles from sunburnt faces, were bestowed on the little girl -as the homely cartload jolted on. She watched with wistful eyes until -the waggon lessened, was lost to sight in the long perspective of -white road. Seating herself beside a ditch, under shadow of a solitary -pollard willow, a sudden vision of vines and olives and Spanish sierras -arose, with all the strength of inherited nostalgia, in Marjorie’s -breast. If the harvesters would only have carried her a league or two -onward with them! She had nothing of value in her possession but a -watch. How many francs could one raise upon a watch, Marjorie Bartrand -wondered, in some primitive, unsuspecting Norman town? Enough, surely, -living among peasant people, and eking means out by an occasional -day’s work at onion-weeding or colza stacking, to carry one down to -the frontier, the cherished land of dreams. A letter could be sent to -relieve the Seigneur’s mind, and....</p> - -<p>And then, glancing back along the chaussée, Marjorie saw a man’s -figure advancing towards her with steady quickness; a figure she knew -over-well, darkly outlined against the chrome yellow of the sky. So -Ada de Carteret was forsaken. Her heart went pit-a-pat. She would have -given a fortune to fly, yet stirred not! One minute later and her -nostalgia was cured. Longings for vine and olive and Spanish sierra -had vanished, all, before the unromantic English presence of Geoffrey -Arbuthnot.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXV</span> <span class="smaller">YOU—AND I!</span></h2> - -<p>‘You have found out a right pleasant spot.’ Geff settled himself coolly -into repose among the long wayside grasses that clothed the opposite or -field side of the ditch. ‘Our friends, when they have bought themselves -each a cross and medal, are going down to watch the Parisians return -from fishing. You and I will have the best of it among the barley here.’</p> - -<p>‘You—and I!’</p> - -<p>‘You—and I! Does the expression displease you, Miss Bartrand?’</p> - -<p>‘If you have any intention of remaining, you had better take out your -pipe at once, Mr. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘Why?’</p> - -<p>‘Because an idle man, his feet dangling over a ditch, and not smoking, -would be a spectacle too wretched to contemplate.’</p> - -<p>‘The description may be worse than the fact. I am idle. My feet dangle -over a ditch. I am not smoking. I was never less wretched in my life.’</p> - -<p>‘I spoke of such a person as an object of painful contemplation.’</p> - -<p>‘Is the spectacle painful to you at this moment? Speak frankly.’</p> - -<p>‘I—I only wished to let you know that you might smoke, if you chose.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Thanks! I would rather do nothing to alter my present state of -feeling.’</p> - -<p>And then they came to a full stop: a rather marked one.</p> - -<p>Marjorie spoke first. ‘The charm of a spot like this’—she brought out -each word with incision—‘is its solitude.’</p> - -<p>‘<i>Solitude à deux.</i> The French have such an expression, have they not?’</p> - -<p>Geff Arbuthnot asked the question, pronouncing his <i>eu</i> vilely.</p> - -<p>‘“Solitude a-doo!” I am hopelessly stupid,’ said Marjorie, holding her -head aloft. ‘“A-doo!” Is it meant for a farewell, or what? I really do -not see the drift of the idiom—a quotation, perhaps, from one of the -classic authors?’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey was sensible that she had never been more dangerous than at -this juncture, mutinous pride struggling with merriment on her clear -girlish face, as she turned his terrible French accent into ridicule. -He was sensible, also, of a new, an unexpected pleasure in being -laughed at by her.</p> - -<p>‘Were you enjoying your solitude (without the “doo”) truly, and -thoroughly, when I disturbed you?’</p> - -<p>‘Thoroughly, no. I had not got the flavour of folly enough out of my -mouth for that. You relished, I hope, the exquisite wit we English -people showed in the church, Mr. Arbuthnot? You appreciated the fun of -wounding simple beliefs by depositing our Oxford Street finery among -the real piteous crutches before La Delivrande? And to think that young -women,’ exclaimed Marjorie, waxing warm, ‘are stigmatised, in masses, -as frivolous! How can they be anything <i>but</i> frivolous with such -examples before them?’</p> - -<p>‘Let us cast up both columns of the account. Would a man—no, as we are -talking of Lord Rex Basire, let us say would a foolish youth—display -his foolishness among a bevy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> of pretty girls, unless they were ready -to give him smiles as an encouragement?’</p> - -<p>‘I am sure Mrs. Arbuthnot would not be among the smilers. Her beautiful -face looked so good and calm, when the rest of us stood giggling there -before the altar.’</p> - -<p>‘My cousin is serious—a little over-serious always.’ Geoffrey -Arbuthnot gazed attentively at the horizon as he made this remark.</p> - -<p>‘It would do your cousin a vast deal of good to run away from that -feather-weight husband of hers. Look shocked, if you choose; I am in -earnest. I consider,’ said Marjorie, displaying her worldly wisdom with -gravity, ‘that Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot’s character is thoroughly spoilt. -He is a charming fellow, doubtless. Still, everybody need not remind -him of his charm to his face.’</p> - -<p>‘And you believe in retributive morality? You think the curative -treatment for a charming fellow is—that his wife should run away from -him?’</p> - -<p>‘My experience of charming fellows would incline me towards heroic -treatment. As we walked up from Langrune I asked Mrs. Arbuthnot to -start with me on foot for Spain. With twenty francs in our pocket, I -told her, and doing a day’s work on the road whenever our resources ran -low, we might get down safe to the frontier in time. But Mrs. Arbuthnot -did not seem to see it.’</p> - -<p>‘Dinah’s is not an adventurous spirit. If you would accept a -substitute, Miss Bartrand, perhaps I——’</p> - -<p>‘Go on, pray.’</p> - -<p>‘Might be allowed to follow, with a thick stick, at a distance.’</p> - -<p>‘Keep your stick for England! I would not be afraid on the loneliest -road between this and Barcelona.’</p> - -<p>‘Without the stick, then—shall we start?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie shifted her posture a little. She became suddenly interested -in a plant of marshmallow at her side. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘When next I enter Spain, Mr. Arbuthnot, it shall be with dignity. -When I meet my mother’s people I hope to be armed with degrees, -certificates—whatever the English universities will confer on me.’</p> - -<p>‘Don’t go until your name has been bracketed high on the list of -wranglers.’</p> - -<p>As Geoffrey made this venture on thin ice he watched his pupil -narrowly. One of the storm-flashes that lit Marjorie Bartrand’s face -into such frequent, such perilous beauty, was his reward.</p> - -<p>‘You mean—never go at all! Do you feel a pleasure, Mr. Arbuthnot, in -throwing cold water over my dearest hopes and ambitions?’</p> - -<p>‘An enormous pleasure, Miss Bartrand. I have felt it from that first -evening when you were good enough to hire me as your teacher at -Tintajeux.’</p> - -<p>The girl looked away from him, her colour changing.</p> - -<p>‘That evening, when I had to receive you in state, to make formal -speeches and curtsies, all my great-aunts and uncles looking on through -their Bartrand eyelids! Do you remember our Bon Espoir? He was an omen -of better temper, perhaps, than has prevailed between us since. Were -you taken aback? Was I quite unlike what you expected?’</p> - -<p>She asked these momentous questions with the keen curiosity -characteristic of the passion in its earlier days. But all the time she -shrank from encountering Geff Arbuthnot’s glance.</p> - -<p>‘You really desire to know?’</p> - -<p>‘Yes.’</p> - -<p>‘I will tell you, on one condition. What was your wish when you -curtsied under the cedars to the new moon?’</p> - -<p>‘My wish?’ turning farther and farther away from him. ‘Why, folly -unrepeatable—the sort of nonsense my nurses taught me to say when I -was little. Your memory is inconveniently good.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Accurate to the smallest detail! How clearly one can see the meeting -of those four water-lanes, and the flowers you gave me, as I know -now, alas! for Mrs. Arbuthnot, and the ribbon you tied them with—the -ribbon,’ said Geff coolly, ‘which you will some day send me back for -a book-marker! Yes, the fairest summer evening of my life was the one -when I first saw Tintajeux Manoir—and you.’</p> - -<p>And he believed his own words. Sure sign that the heart within him was -sound—healthiest life at its core. Guessing at the confessions of that -ingenuous maidenly face as Marjorie, half blushes, half wilfulness, -persistently gave him her profile, Geoffrey Arbuthnot had clean -forgotten Lesser Cheriton, ay, and a drama played out there in which he -took a not unimportant part.</p> - -<p>‘I think this Norman evening is to the full as fair,’ said Marjorie. -‘There are bigger sweeps of outline, there is more quality in the air -than falls to our lot in the Channel Islands.’</p> - -<p>Then, again, there came a pause, broken softly by the occasional hum of -an insect on the wing, by the swaying of stalks, the whispers of the -ripe and restless grain, by the chirp of the hedge crickets, by the -solitary treble of a lark lost somewhere, pouring its heart out in the -sea-blue vault above.</p> - -<p>Marjorie could not be silent long.</p> - -<p>‘To begin at the beginning, what did you think of me when you got my -first note—the two lines I sent in answer to yours? Nothing very good, -or you would not be so reluctant to tell it.’</p> - -<p>‘I thought,’ said Geff, ‘that you required my services as a coach, that -there was a little affectation about your Greek “e’s,” and that your -name was Marjorie D. Bartrand.’</p> - -<p>‘That terrible signature of mine—the one bearable name I possess -reduced to a D! You know, Mr. Arbuthnot, I hope, what D. stands for?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Dorcas?’ suggested Geoffrey, ‘or perhaps Deborah? We have a number of -fine old Hebrew names beginning with D.’</p> - -<p>‘But I am not a fine old Hebrew. I am a Spanish woman, heart and soul, -and I bear my mother’s name, Dolores. Grandpapa and I met an American -in Paris, when I was younger, who used to call me “Miss Dollars.” -The thought of that pronunciation always makes me shy of bringing my -beautiful Spanish name to the fore.’</p> - -<p>‘Dollars is more beautiful than Dolores.’ Saying this, Geoffrey took -studious care to imitate her accent. ‘Dollars is at least suggestive -of human activity, of the market-place, not the graveyard. Why should -a child, with all the good chances of life open, have such a name as -Grief imposed upon her by worldly-wise godfathers and godmothers?’</p> - -<p>‘I speak of Dolores, not Grief, and—and you have no poetry in you, Mr. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot! You don’t know all that a word says to us southern -people. Think of plain Marjorie Bartrand—nothing but “ar, ar!” If I -could only change Bartrand for a name with no “ar” in it, I——’</p> - -<p>The supposition was rushing forth with velocity. Then, in a trice, -Marjorie stopped. She coloured to the roots of her hair. And then -she and Geoffrey laughed so loud that the stilly air rang with their -laughter. If these two young people did not actually tread the primrose -path, they were within a stone’s-throw of it, ignorant though both -might be of the route which lay so near them.</p> - -<p>‘That “ar” is the worst of all your cruelties,’ said Geff presently. -‘To show my greatness of mind I will return evil for good. I will -tell you what you wish to know. As I walked out for the first time to -Tintajeux, I had you constantly before my mind’s eye, Miss Bartrand. I -saw you, with the vision of the spirit, every inch an heiress.’</p> - -<p>‘Every inch an heiress!’ repeated Marjorie, abashed.</p> - -<p>‘With rigid manners, hair drawn back, Chinese fashion,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> and -overwhelming dignity. Whenever people are of more than common volume—I -fancy that is the euphemistic term, is it not?—dignity!’</p> - -<p>‘And you found me—a scarecrow.’ She measured, mentally, and with -self-abasement, the leanness of her unfledged figure. ‘What did you -think when a lank country child, in a cotton gown, and without either -dignity or manner, appeared before you?’</p> - -<p>‘I felt it was my duty to accept facts as they came. I summoned up -courage, and mastered my disappointment with tolerable ease,’ said -Geoffrey Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>His face supplied a postscript to the admission which caused Marjorie’s -heart to beat faster.</p> - -<p>‘We must not stop here all day!’ she cried, springing promptly to her -feet. ‘Although, if one had something to eat, it might be pleasant to -do so. Yonder, to the left, is Courseulles spire. We saw it—no, you -were hemmed in by sunshades—I saw it from the steamer. If we take this -footpath through the cornfields, we might visit Courseulles and make a -small turn round the country before going back to our company and our -dinner at Langrune.’</p> - -<p>But Geoffrey did not move.</p> - -<p>‘I will have my bond,’ he uttered with tragic emphasis. ‘I will never -stir from this spot until you tell me what your wish was when you -curtsied to the moon.’</p> - -<p>‘I would rather not say. You have the right to insist, of course—it -was a bargain. But, please, let me off. Why should I repeat such -puerility here, in the wise and sober light of day?’</p> - -<p>‘I will have my bond,’ repeated Geoffrey Arbuthnot tenaciously. ‘I have -made my confession in full. Now, do you make yours. What was your wish?’</p> - -<p>A flood of shame by this time suffused Marjorie’s cheeks. But Geoffrey -was stubborn. He exacted his pound of flesh to the uttermost. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I curtsied, as the children do, thrice ... and each time, while you -were talking solemnly to grandpapa, I said, quite in a whisper——’</p> - -<p>‘Don’t mind punctuation, Miss Bartrand. It will be the sooner over.’</p> - -<p>‘“I like my coach—may my coach like me!”’ cried Marjorie, nearly in -tears, but giving to the refrain the true sing-song of the nursery. -‘Remember, sir, when I was so inane I had only known you two hours, -and—and I believed you to be the other Mr. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey slipped down to his feet. As Marjorie was standing on the -bank, it thus happened that their faces were on a level, and very near -each other. Geoffrey observed, more closely than he had done before, -the texture of her skin—delicate, in spite of sunburn, as perfect -health and Guernsey air could render it. He looked into the depths of -her gray eyes, even in their quietest expression touched with fire. -He admired the character, so superior to all mere prettiness, of her -serious large mouth.</p> - -<p>‘The wish has come true,’ he whispered, in a tone never to be forgotten -by Marjorie Bartrand, ‘although I have the misfortune of being myself, -not Gaston. Let me help you.’</p> - -<p>He held out his hands, but Marjorie, with her agile young strength, -had cleared the ditch almost before his assistance was proffered. -They paused a moment or two irresolute, they discussed a little as to -latitude and longitude, and then away the two started, in the direction -of Courseulles, across the cornfields.</p> - -<p>A third figure, dove-winged, golden-quivered, walked with them, -although they might not discern his presence.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXVI</span> <span class="smaller">CUT AND THRUST</span></h2> - -<p>Never was a man surer of tumbling into little unlooked-for -sociabilities than Gaston Arbuthnot. Had he been shipwrecked on a South -Sea island I believe Gaston would have chanced upon an acquaintance -there, some vanished shade from London Club or Paris café would have -seized him by the button-hole before the day was out!</p> - -<p>He was button-holed in Langrune-sur-Mer. When the pilgrimage returned -from La Delivrande, Linda and her Robbie were found seated with -Mrs. Verschoyle on a trio of hired chairs before the hotel, taking -their pleasure rather mournfully. Cassandra Tighe, her scarlet cloak -conspicuous from afar, was dredging—happy Cassandra—among such rocks -as the tide still left uncovered.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot was invisible.</p> - -<p>‘A real case of forcible abduction,’ cried Linda Thorne, addressing -herself to Dinah. ‘You are not a foolishly nervous wife, I am sure, -Mrs. Arbuthnot? You could philosophically listen to a story of how two -pretty French girls carried away an English artist against his will.’</p> - -<p>Dinah assented with one of her rare smiles. The knowledge that Gaston -was finding amusement otherwise than in the half-clever talk, the too -ready, too flattering sympathy of Linda herself, cast retrospective -brightness upon the afternoon that his absence had clouded. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p> - -<p>From jealousy of a selfish or little kind Dinah’s heart had never bled. -Earlier in their married life, when Gaston still affected dancing, and -as a matter of course went to balls without his wife, it was her usual -next morning’s pleasure to scan his programmes, enjoy his sketches -of his partners, his repetitions of their small-talk—all without a -shade of hurt feeling. Once or twice she hinted that she would fain -accompany him as a looker-on. ‘Nobody looks on long in this wicked -world,’ was Gaston’s answer. ‘You do not dance, you do not play whist. -You have a brain under your yellow locks, and you are too young to talk -scandal. Ball-room atmosphere is unwholesome. I would not hear of such -a sacrifice.’ And as it was not Dinah’s habit to pose as martyr, she -obeyed, trusting in him always.</p> - -<p>Beautiful, pure of soul herself, she simply honoured the beauty, -believed in the purity of soul of other women. Gaston was popular, -spoilt; an artist with an artist’s—more than this, with an American -temperament. A degree of youthful immaturity seemed ever to lurk amidst -his astute knowledge of life and of men. He had but a half-share, as -he would tell her, of the fibres derived from long lines of bored -ancestors. He sought diversion for diversion’s sake. She had made no -quarrel with the inexorable facts of her husband’s existence or of her -own. If only she had been his equal, intellectually! If she could have -supplied him with the mental companionship he needed, or interested him -in his childless fireside! Ah, could she thus have risen to his level, -Gaston’s heart had been in her keeping still. Hence came the morbid -unrest of her present life; hence the dread, increasing daily, hourly, -strive with it as she might, of Linda’s influence.</p> - -<p>‘I am afraid one gets used to most things, Mrs. Thorne. I have seen -Gaston run away with so often that I am not much moved by the thought -of these pretty French girls.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p> - -<p>Linda Thorne rose. She rested her hand confidentially within Dinah’s -arm, much to Dinah’s chagrin, and proposed that they should walk -together along the sands to look for Mr. Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘Yes, I must positively tell you the whole story. Your husband had -finished his sketch of the lovely fisher-girl. The young person was not -at all lovely, in fact. But she was striking. She had distinct genre. -Artists care for genre, you know, much more than for beauty.’</p> - -<p>Dinah resolved to question Gaston as to the truth of this. She resolved -to cultivate distinct genre in herself for the remainder of her days.</p> - -<p>‘Striking—that word sums up all. The big cobalt-blue eyes, that say -about as much, in reality, as a china tea-saucer, and are supposed -by imaginative men to say everything—blonde hair worn in a pigtail, -palpably not original, to her heels; complexion carefully toned to -a shade one point short of freckles; bare arms, akimbo—excellently -shaped arms, of course; a native prawn basket, and a fishing-dress from -Worth’s. I got to know the type so well,’ said Linda, ‘in my governess -days, during one summer, especially, when the Benjamin sent me to -Houlgate with her children.’</p> - -<p>Dinah, who, as we have seen, had no genius for supplying the hooks and -eyes of conversation, remained chillingly silent.</p> - -<p>‘Your husband had finished his sketch of her—an admirably idealised -one. I have it here.’ And Dinah, for the first time, perceived that -Mrs. Thorne held possession of Gaston’s sketch-book. ‘Let us look at -it together!’ impulsively, ‘or are you—no doubt you are—blasée about -sketches? Well, well, it may be natural. Married to an artist, if one -has no real, strong, natural talent for art——’</p> - -<p>‘I have no real, strong, natural talent for anything,’ interrupted poor -Dinah petulantly. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Oh—naughty! You must not say such things. I will not allow you to be -modest. Mr. Arbuthnot tells me your needlework is’—Linda looked about -her as though an encomium were hard to find—‘most elaborate! In these -days needlework ranks among the fine arts. Of course you are wild about -this exquisite new stitch from Vienna?’</p> - -<p>‘I have not seen it. The only wool-work I do is old-fashioned -cross-stitch.’</p> - -<p>‘Just fancy! And Mr. Arbuthnot, I am convinced, spends his time—half -his time—in designing quite lovely patterns for you?’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s breast swelled as a vision of the Roscoff wild roses overcame -her. She made no attempt at a parry.</p> - -<p>‘If I had married an artist I would never have gone to the shops for -patterns. Or rather, if I had married an artist I would never have -embroidered at all. I should have thrown myself into his ambitions, his -work—have spent my life so utterly at his side.’</p> - -<p>Dinah stooped to pick up a little pink shell from the strand, by this -action freeing herself from Linda Thorne. She put the shell inside her -glove, thinking she would keep it as a memento of Langrune and of this -summer day that had passed so nearly without a cloud. So nearly—but -the summer day was not over yet!</p> - -<p>‘All this time I am not accounting to you for your husband’s -disappearance, am I? My dear creature, it was really the drollest -thing! Robbie had not as yet floated up with the tide, and Mrs. -Verschoyle and I, your husband with us, had made our slippery way -across the rocks to mainland. Well, just as Gast ... I mean, as Mr. -Arbuthnot was putting a last touch to his sketch, up ran a little -Frenchman, full dress, a rose-and-white daughter in each hand, and an -enormously stout wife, with a bouquet, following. He threw his arms -round your husband’s neck,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> and but for Mr. Arbuthnot’s presence of -mind would certainly have kissed him.’</p> - -<p>‘Kissed!’</p> - -<p>‘Of course. Have you never lived among French people? It was some old -artist companion of Gast ... of your husband’s bachelor life. You -can imagine the recollections of former joyous days spent in Paris -as students together, the inquiries for mutual friends, now dead or -married, the history each had to give of his marriage and present -happiness!’</p> - -<p>‘I cannot. I am not imaginative.’</p> - -<p>It must be confessed that a tinge of displeasure was audible in Dinah’s -voice. Every syllable of Mrs. Thorne’s unpremeditated chatter had -wounded her like a stiletto prick.</p> - -<p>‘Ah—and I am imaginative to my finger tips. We seem the very -antithesis of each other, in character, as we are in looks.’ Linda -had really a very graceful way of admitting her own plainness, when -occasion offered. ‘I can assure you I filled up a dozen little blanks -in our Benedicts’ exchange of confidences. I traced out a full and -rounded whole most satisfactorily. People may slur over half a dozen -years in as many words. If nature has endowed you with imagination, -you read between the lines. The barest outline suggests the finished -picture.’</p> - -<p>Something in her tone would seem to imply that Gaston Arbuthnot’s -married life had been a spoiled life, or so it seemed to Dinah’s -irritated heart. Dinah felt that the half dozen words must have yielded -latent hints of her own intellectual shortcomings, hints which Linda -Thorne’s talent for filling up blanks had developed into certainty.</p> - -<p>‘The next part of the ceremony was the introduction to Madame de Camors -and the children—two small Parisian coquettes, about the age of my -Rahnee, who fell in love with Mr. Arbuthnot on the spot.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Little children fall in love with Gaston always,’ said Dinah hastily.</p> - -<p>‘The family party was taking its departure, it seemed, under the -broiling sun, to a children’s ball at Luc Casino. At a word from -papa the small imps seized a hand each of Gas ..., of Mr. Arbuthnot, -and dragged him away <i>nolens volens</i>. All children are tyrants,’ -generalised Linda, with a dismal yawn, occasioned probably by the -recollection of her virtuously spent afternoon, ‘but these terrible -French children are the worst of all. Perhaps it is in imitation of the -Americans. I consider the way American infants are brought forward in -public places is a disgrace to the century.’</p> - -<p>‘You think children without exception should be kept in their -nurseries’?’</p> - -<p>Dinah called to mind a group of four that passed her window on their -road to the rose-show. She remembered a small figure dancing with -exultation on rainbow-hued flounces.</p> - -<p>‘My dear soul! Fancy putting such a question to me, a mother! Of course -I make an exception of my own daughter. She is a good quiet little -monkey,’ added Linda; ‘although Mr. Arbuthnot is positively spoiling -her fast—I hope I impose her on no one. Children, as a rule, I look -upon from the governess point of view. You know how my bread was earned -when I was young?’</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Arbuthnot has told me that he first met you in Paris.’</p> - -<p>‘Yes, in the domestic service of Madame Moïse Benjamin. I got twenty -pounds a year and my washing. I had to sleep under the roof, to play -dance music, to remodel Madame’s dresses, to teach English to the three -girl Benjamins and a boy—ah, that boy!’ said Linda, between her teeth. -‘If you think me like Becky Sharpe ... confess now, you <i>do</i> think me -like Becky Sharpe?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I do not, indeed.’ Dinah’s manner grew colder and colder. ‘I never -heard of Becky Sharpe before.’</p> - -<p>‘Well, if you had,’ said Linda, in high good humour, and storing up -all the little scene against future dramatisation—‘if you had heard -of Becky Sharpe, and had thought me like her, where would be the -wonder? I was brought up just as Becky was, to live by my wits. My -mamma—I connect her hazily with sofa cushions, much white embroidery, -an Italian greyhound, doctors, and the smell of ether—my mamma died -when I was four years old. She lies in Brussels cemetery,’ ran on -Linda, drawing a hasty outline of a tombstone on the sand, ‘with Lady -Constantia Smythe, and more than one side allusion to the peerage -graven above her head. At the time she died we had not very definite -daily bread. Still, my grandfather was an earl, and poor papa found one -of his few consolations in making much of our nobility.’</p> - -<p>Frankness, it would seem, was Linda Thorne’s strong point, but Dinah -was unmoved by it. The earldom dazzled Gaston Arbuthnot’s lowly-born -wife no more than Linda’s personal confidences propitiated her. Dinah -had a child’s instinct for friends and for enemies. She liked, she -disliked, unerringly, and was too transparently honest to mask her -feelings.</p> - -<p>Stooping down, she picked up another shell from the sea’s smooth -edge. She sought once more to widen the space between herself and her -companion. Linda Thorne’s quick brain observed the movement, divined -the intention.</p> - -<p>‘Excellent, stupid, well-meaning, ill-acting young woman. And I have -not a reprehensible sentiment at all towards her!’ Thoughts like this -shot through Linda’s mind—Linda who really had it not in her to know -sterner passion than a drawing-room malignity. ‘With her youth, her -goodness, her complexion, her upper lip, to be jealous of poor, plain, -cynical, elderly me! She needs a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> pretty sharp lesson. Children who cry -for the moon deserve to get something worth crying for.’ Then, sweetly, -‘You seem interested in shells, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ she observed -aloud. ‘You study conchology as a science, perhaps, under the Platonic -auspices of that severe-looking cousin of yours, Geoffrey Arbuthnot of -John’s.’</p> - -<p>‘I study nothing, unfortunately for myself. I am quite ignorant,’ said -Dinah, lifting her face and meeting her tormentor’s eyes full. ‘I am -picking up a shell or two,’ she added, ‘to keep as a remembrance of my -day in Langrune.’</p> - -<p>‘I should say you would remember Langrune without any tangible -memento,’ remarked Linda. ‘Rather ungrateful, you know, if you did not.’</p> - -<p>‘How, ungrateful?’</p> - -<p>‘Well, because the picnic was given unconditionally in honour of -you——’</p> - -<p>‘I do not understand you,’ interrupted Dinah, with ill-judged warmth. -‘The party was planned before any one in Guernsey knew of my existence. -I was asked accidentally—because I could be of use. Four or five girls -had promised these young officers to come, and they wanted a married -woman as a chaperon. This was what Lord Rex Basire said when he invited -me on Monday.’</p> - -<p>‘And you believed him? You accepted out of pure kindness to faire -tapisserie! Mrs. Arbuthnot, you are too amiable.’</p> - -<p>By this time Dinah Arbuthnot’s face blazed from brow to chin. Her -conscience, over-sensitive in the lightest matter, smote her sore. Was -not a selfish longing for widened experience—nay, was not a certain -distrust of Gaston, a contemptible sense of triumph over Linda—at the -bottom of her acquiescence?</p> - -<p>‘What unusually correct taste Dame Nature displays in her colouring -this evening.’ Mrs. Thorne gazed with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> decent vacuity at the sky, and -away from Dinah’s face. ‘Soft primrose, fading into pearly-green, with -just those few vivid touches of deep crimson. It suggests thoughts for -a ball dress. And still, beautiful though the effect is, I would rather -not see that sort of shimmer on the water. If we come in for fog-banks -somewhere about the Race of Alderney, it will matter little whether the -picnic originated for the chaperons, or the chaperons for the picnic! -How atrociously hungry this sort of thing makes one! Surely dinner-time -must be drawing nigh.’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXVII</span> <span class="smaller">GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY</span></h2> - -<p>‘In two words, you have amused yourself, my dear.’ Under cover of the -friendly twilight, Gaston Arbuthnot pressed his wife’s hand as it -rested, a little shyly, on his arm. ‘A good sign for the future. You -must enter into the world more, Dinah. You must cultivate this faculty -for being amused; I desire nothing better.’</p> - -<p>Though fog-banks and disaster might lie in ambush about the Race of -Alderney, nothing could be tranquiller than the fair summer evening -here, on the coast of France.</p> - -<p>After an excellent dinner, vraie cuisine Normande, served in the -quaint, red-tiled salle of the Hôtel Chateaubriand, the collected -yachting party were now progressing along the pleasant sweep of road -that leads to Luc. Luc alone, among this group of villages, has a -jetty, and off Luc the <i>Princess</i> lay moored. Daylight’s last flicker -was dying from the sky. Already deep fissures of shade intersected -the white sand dunes bordering the shore. The sea lay motionless, a -vague iridescence far away, northward, the only foreboding of coming -change. Cassandra Tighe, a bold spot of colour in the gloaming, had -exchanged her dredging net for some amphibious structure of green gauze -and whalebone. She flitted hither and thither among the bushes that -skirted the path, moth-hunting. The younger members of the expedition, -in groups of two, loitered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> slowly along their way, for it was an hour -when girlish faces look their fairest, when men’s voices are apt to -soften, involuntarily!</p> - -<p>Dinah Arbuthnot, after a good deal of strategy, had contrived not -merely to get possession of her husband, but to hold him, strongly -guarded, and at safe distance from the rest. Linda Thorne herself (and -Linda had, at will, a longer or a shorter sight than other people) -could scarce do more than guess at the outlines of the two figures. -The little lover-like fact that this sober couple, this Darby and Joan -of four years’ standing, walked arm in arm, could be known only to -themselves.</p> - -<p>‘Yes, Gaston, I was amused at sea, for you were there. And I was -amused differently by Miss Bartrand. I wish you had been with us at La -Delivrande. It was the first time I ever went inside a Popish church,’ -said Dinah, gravely. ‘And yet, Popish though it was, I could scarce -help saying my prayers as we stood before the altar. The tears came in -my eyes as I remembered—I mean as I looked at the heap of offerings, -and thought of the sad hearts that had brought their troubles there.’</p> - -<p>‘Was the smell very detestable—a smell one could sketch? Had you -beggars? Had the beggars wounds? Of course, votive churches and such -things have to be done, in one’s youth. I am too old,’ said Mr. -Arbuthnot; ‘my digestion is too touchy for me to run the risk of -physical horrors of my own free will.’</p> - -<p>‘I thought an artist should seek out every kind of experience.’</p> - -<p>Gaston had so often insisted upon the duty of pursuing inspiration -among all sorts and conditions of men—still more of women—that the -remark from Dinah’s lips had a savour of mischief.</p> - -<p>‘Every sort of agreeable experience, my dear child. The disgusting -is for the great masters. Mine is pocket<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> art—a branch that the -critics discreetly label as decadent, although lucrative. Besides,’ -said Gaston, ‘I have sold my soul to the dealers. And the dealers -have sold theirs, if they have any, to a puerility-loving public. An -honest manufacturer of paper weights and clock stands needs nothing -but prettiness,—I won’t say beauty,—the prettiness of a Parisian, -masquerading as a fisher-girl!’</p> - -<p>‘Or of Parisian children dancing at an afternoon ball. Mrs. Thorne told -me about your meeting with some old student acquaintance, and how his -daughters led you away captive.’</p> - -<p>‘Small tyrants! I had to dance four dances with each of them, and then -be told I was “un Monsieur très paresseux” for my reward. And so Mrs. -Thorne and you are becoming better friends,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot, -looking hard through the veil of twilight at his wife’s reluctant -face. ‘She is a dear good soul, is she not? So bright, so spontaneous! -Really, I think that is Mrs. Thorne’s crowning charm—her spontaneity.’</p> - -<p>‘I am no friend of hers.’ Dinah’s voice had become cold. ‘I did not -like Mrs. Thorne at first. I dislike her now.’</p> - -<p>‘Impossible, Dinah—impossible. A woman with your face should dislike -no created thing.’</p> - -<p>‘I dislike her because her words sting even when they sound softest, -because she will never look at one straight. I dislike her,’ said -Dinah, feeling her cheeks burn with shame and indignation, ‘because she -calls you “Gaston” when she speaks of you.’</p> - -<p>At this terrible climax Mr. Arbuthnot laughed, so heartily that the -quiet undulating sandhills echoed again. Far ahead Mrs. Linda might -perhaps have caught the ring of his voice, have marvelled what subject -people who had been married four mortal years could find to laugh about.</p> - -<p>‘This is a black accusation. Happily, whatever her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> sins in my absence, -Mrs. Thorne does not call me “Gaston” to my face.’</p> - -<p>Dinah was silent. Gaston’s assurances had never carried the same weight -with her since Saturday’s rose-show, the occasion when she learned of -midnight adjournments to Dr. Thorne’s house, and of the singing of -French songs after a certain mess dinner. Her own conscience was rigid. -To suppress a truth was, according to Dinah’s code, precisely the same -as to utter an untruth. She allowed no margin for her husband’s offhand -histories—as a woman of larger mind would possibly have done. She -could not see that carelessness, a quick imagination, and an intense -love of peace, were factors sufficiently strong to account for any -little inconsistencies that might now and again creep into Gaston -Arbuthnot’s domestic confidences.</p> - -<p>‘Of that I cannot judge. I suppose I ought not to care what Mrs. Thorne -does or says in <i>my</i> absence.’</p> - -<p>‘Of course you ought not. The speech is worthy of your thorough -common-sense, Dinah.’</p> - -<p>‘But Mrs. Thorne calls you “Gaston” to me, and I think it a very -wretched, unkind thing to do. I think it mean.’</p> - -<p>‘You ought not to think of it at all. Artist people are called by the -first name that comes to hand.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Thorne is not an artist.’</p> - -<p>‘She remembers me, in the old days when I knew Camors, as a budding -one.’</p> - -<p>‘And she corrects herself with over-care. Having once said “Gaston,” it -would be better not to go back to “Mr. Arbuthnot.”’</p> - -<p>‘Ah, there, my dear girl, you are too strong. If Linda Thorne -excuses she accuses herself, although I must confess I don’t see the -heinousness of her crime. You are becoming a casuist, Dinah.’</p> - -<p>‘Am I? It seems to me that I am remaining what I always was.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p> - -<p>They walked on, after this, mutually taciturn. The interest seemed -to have gone from their talk. At last, just as they neared the first -lights of Luc village, Dinah’s fingers closed with significant -tightness on her husband’s arm.</p> - -<p>‘I have an important word to say to you, Gaston. All through our walk I -have been wishing to bring it out, but I had not the courage.’</p> - -<p>‘Some one else calls me by my Christian name, perhaps? Or are we only -to discuss more enormities of Linda Thorne’s?’</p> - -<p>There was a threat of impatience in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice. This -little running accompaniment of domesticity gave a quite new character, -he decided, to picnics, viewed as a means of social pleasure.</p> - -<p>‘I was not thinking of Linda Thorne. I wanted to ask—Gaston, forgive -me—if you would keep nearer to me till we get back to Guernsey?’</p> - -<p>‘<i>Nearer!</i> Will not everybody be near everybody else on board the -steamer? Don’t, I beg, ask me to do anything absurd,’ he added, with -emphasis. ‘You have no idea how ready one’s best friends are to laugh -at one under given circumstances.’</p> - -<p>‘But if you were just to stop at my side on board—I mean, so that no -one else could come near me.’</p> - -<p>‘I will do nothing of the kind. You have no perception of the -ridiculous, Dinah. It is a want in your nature. A woman with the -slightest sense of humour would never wish her husband to be -demonstrative before an audience.’</p> - -<p>‘Demonstrative?’</p> - -<p>‘Jealous might be nearer the mark. A variety of reasons could be given -as to the miserable wretch’s motives in such a position. Jealous—of -little Rex Basire, probably!’</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot laughed. This time his laughter had no very hearty -sound.</p> - -<p>‘You must learn to be self-reliant,’ he went on presently.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> ‘Your first -lesson in worldliness was to be taken to-day, remember. Well, you must -go through with it! I was not especially anxious for you to join the -party.’</p> - -<p>‘You were not. I came to please myself only.’</p> - -<p>‘And you have pleased yourself and me. You are the most charming -woman present; and let me tell you these handsome Guernsey girls are -formidable rivals. I am proud of you. The opening page of the lesson is -a success. Don’t spoil it, Dinah, by picking a childish quarrel with me -now.’</p> - -<p>‘I am proud of you!’ The unexpected praise sent a thrill through -Dinah’s heart.</p> - -<p>Her petition to Gaston to keep near her was made in a very different -spirit to that of childish quarrelling. On the road back from La -Delivrande to Langrune it had come to pass that the walking party, -following a natural law, broke up into couples, and that Dinah, -unprotected by Marjorie or by Geff, found herself alone with Lord Rex -Basire. Being, for his age, a very thorough man of the world, Lord Rex -uttered no word at which Mrs. Arbuthnot, or any sensible woman, could -take umbrage. But his manner, his tones, his looks, were eloquent with -a feeling which, to her straightforward, rustic perception of things, -constituted an offence.</p> - -<p>In the matter of admiration, Dinah, as I have said, was neither prude -nor Puritan. She knew the greatness of her gift. It was an everyday -experience to see heads turn wherever she walked upon the earth, and, -being a quite natural and single-hearted daughter of the common Mother, -such acknowledgment of her beauty had never yet been repugnant to her. -But the admiration covertly expressed by Rex Basire as they sauntered -slowly through chequered light and shadow back to Langrune, was of -another nature. Instinct warned Dinah that, if she were an unmarried -girl, she might well read on this foolish young man’s face and in his -manner signs of love. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p> - -<p>And the warning, to Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife, was, in itself, a -humiliation.</p> - -<p>She was unacquainted with the weapons by means of which differently -nurtured women parry equivocal attention. Save from Linda Thorne’s -lips to-night she had never heard the term ‘Platonic.’ Geoffrey was -her only friend. Of men like Lord Rex Basire she knew nothing. To gaze -and hint and sigh after this tormenting fashion might, she thought, -be a received habit among young officers of his rank. And the torment -would soon be over—if Gaston would only keep near her on board the -<i>Princess</i>! Once safely back in Guernsey, and Dinah felt she could -take absolute care of herself for the future. There should be no more -lingering afternoon visits, no more instruction in wool-work for Lord -Rex Basire. Of the lesson learnt to-day, one paragraph, at least, was -clear, should be reduced to practice before another twenty-four hours -went by. If Gaston would only keep near her in the interval!</p> - -<p>But at Gaston’s praise she forgot everything. In the sweetness of that -unlooked-for avowal, ‘<i>I am proud of you</i>,’ all dread of the future, -all unpleasant recollections of the past, were swept clean away out of -Dinah’s brain. She would not risk the moment’s happiness by another -word. Her hand trembled, as though they had gone back to the old -romantic days at Lesser Cheriton, as it rested on Gaston’s arm.</p> - -<p>‘Proud of me! Ah, my love,’ she whispered, ‘I hope that you and I will -never have a worse quarrel than this while we live.’</p> - -<p>And when the pair of married sweethearts emerged into the glare of -lamps outside Luc Casino, Dinah’s face was radiant. Lord Rex, devotedly -attentive at the moment to pretty Rosie Verschoyle, saw, and felt -mystified. Decidedly, the Methodistic heart, like the Methodistic -conscience, was a book wherein Rex Basire might not read. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p> - -<p>Linda Thorne approached at once; a tall figure, diaphanous, graceful, -in the lamplight. An Indian shawl was on Linda’s arm, one of those -exquisite dull-hued cachemires capable of investing the plainest woman -with ephemeral poetry. Her hand held a bunch of wild flowers; a long -trail of bindweed was twined, by fingers not unversed in millinery, -round her hat.</p> - -<p>‘I hope you approve my ball attire?’ She asked this with a little -curtsey, her eyes addressing Gaston rather than Gaston’s wife. ‘Our -hosts tell us that we have all free entrance to the Casino, the result, -I suspect, of some liberal bribe to the Administration. Really, the -way our subalterns have preconcerted every detail of their picnic has -quite a Monte Christo flavour. You are engaged to me, remember, Mr. -Arbuthnot, for your first waltz.’</p> - -<p>‘There will be neither first nor last, Mrs. Thorne. I exhausted the -very small dancing power that is in me on Hortense and Eulalie this -afternoon. I have not waltzed with a partner over seven for years,’ -added Gaston. ‘My step dates from the days of Louis Philippe.’</p> - -<p>Nevertheless he moved away from Dinah; he followed whithersoever Mrs. -Thorne might choose to lead.</p> - -<p>She chose the Luc dunes—that broad belt of wind-blown sand, held -together by coarse grasses or sea thistles, which stretches the entire -length of the straggling village, and forms a welcome contrast to the -burnt-up turf terrace, with burnt-up geraniums, mildewed urns, and -peeling stucco goddesses of loftier watering-places.</p> - -<p>This evening Luc was merry-making. There were fireworks, there was a -procession of torches—one of those ever-recurring processions by which -the hearts of Parisian children, big and little, are gladdened at the -seaside. Tiny figures marched, two and two, with Chinese lamps along -the village causeway. A band of small boys evoked martial melody from -drum and fife. Catherine-wheels<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> rotated, rockets scurried up into -space. By and by an artfully constructed bonfire of colza stalks flared -up in the centre of the plage. Hand linked in hand the children danced -around it.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>‘Nous irons aux bois,</div> -<div>Les lauriers sont coupés.’</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>Their shrill voices rang across the dunes. Gaston Arbuthnot could -descry his friends, Hortense and Eulalie, wildly circling around the -red flames with the rest. As he did so, he thought involuntarily of his -sketch-book, forgotten from the moment when the children laid violent -hands upon him, hours ago, until this instant.</p> - -<p>‘Oh, I know! Your sketch-book is gone,’ cried Linda, as he felt in -pocket after pocket. ‘This is the Nemesis that falls on creatures of -impulse, Mr. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘But it is no joking matter. Every memorandum I have made during the -last month—gone!’</p> - -<p>For once Gaston’s voice was tragic. He knew full well the market value -of those rough notes of his.</p> - -<p>‘Every memorandum—from your first bit of Sarnian still life, an old -market-woman dozing, knitting-pins in hand, at her stall, down to -our fisher-girl of the Boulevards. Taking into account the studies -of Rahnee and of myself, there must be literally scores of valuable -jottings in that book.’</p> - -<p>‘You are laughing at me? No, I divine! You have taken care of my book, -Mrs. Thorne, like the dear good——’</p> - -<p>Fortunately, Gaston Arbuthnot broke off. Would Mrs. Thorne, would -any woman, still conscious of youth and charm, forgive the man who, -in exuberance of gratitude, should say to her, ‘like the dear good -creature I know you to be’?</p> - -<p>‘I have taken care of your sketches,’ she answered, drawing the book -forth from beneath her cachemire. ‘I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> have done more. You ask sometimes -why I always carry a housewife in my pocket. You shall see the part -my housewife has played to-day. While I sat quietly with Robbie and -Mrs. Verschoyle (the young people, <i>very rightly</i>, enjoying themselves -elsewhere) I sewed all your ragged leaves together for you—thus.’</p> - -<p>Linda Thorne was a notably clever worker. Perhaps the length of her -stitches, the breadth of her hems, were not always in accordance -with the orthodox feminine standard. She could effect things with -her needle—such as fine-drawing a rent in cloth, or improvising an -anchorage for a buttonless collar—which might be the despair of many a -mistress of the craft. She did her stitching with brains.</p> - -<p>At an out-of-the way Indian station, so the legend ran, Mrs. Linda, -under stress of some unlooked-for gaiety, once manufactured an evening -waistcoat for her Robbie, and a pair of neat white satin boots for -herself at a sitting.</p> - -<p>‘This is capital!’ cried Arbuthnot, joyfully recovering possession of -his sketches. ‘Each page hinged on with a splendid contrivance of red -silk to the dislocated remains of back. I have often wanted Dinah to -devise some sort of surgery for my veteran sketch-books. She must take -a lesson by this.’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, no, no! Mrs. Arbuthnot is a far better needlewoman than I am. -When I sew anything tolerably,’ said Linda, ‘it is by accident. I -must have a motive for what I do. If I lived with—I mean, now, if -dear Robbie were an artist, it would be my passion to help him in all -the mechanical part of his work. If I were staying with you—and Mrs. -Arbuthnot—you would discover that I can, really, in my way be useful. -Michael Angelo himself must have had a poor obscure some one to grind -his paints for him.’</p> - -<p>The pathetic image of Robbie as an artist made Gaston laugh inwardly. -He was not struck by the humour of hearing his own name coupled with -Michael Angelo’s.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> Nay, it might be well, he thought, if Dinah felt -this passion of unselfish helpfulness; well, if Dinah occasionally -gave him the kind of praise he got from Linda Thorne. For Dinah never -flattered. Her words of encouragement, unlettered country girl though -she was, were full of soundest criticism. There was no honey in them. -True love has its intuitions. Dinah knew that to feed this man on -constantly sugared words was to poison him. She would gladly have -seen in Gaston a noble discontent, gladly have listened to less frank -avowals that he had found his level, and got on pretty well, there! -Dinah, in short, was not a delightful acquaintance, but a steadfast, -loyal wife. And her praise, in common with that of other steadfast -wives, was apt to take the wholesome bitterness, the slightly sub-acid -flavour of a tonic.</p> - -<p>‘Michael Angelo! My dear Mrs. Thorne, how much, how very much you -over-estimate me! If you spoke of me as imitating, from afar, the -little affected prettinesses of a Greuze, the compliment would be too -high.’</p> - -<p>‘I fixed my standard for you, years ago, Mr. Arbuthnot. In the days -when you used to thank me—<i>me</i>, a governess—for playing dance-music -at Madame Benjamin’s, I had my convictions as to the place you would -one day occupy in Art.’</p> - -<p>At other times—on the morning, for instance, when we first saw the -Arbuthnot trio in the garden of Miller’s Hotel—Linda remembered her -aspirations as to the place her friend would, one day, hold in the -House of Commons. But Gaston, if he noted the discrepancy, passed it -generously over. Hard for a man to believe a charming woman insincere -simply because she a little over-estimates his own genius!</p> - -<p>‘Those light-hearted salad days! When I was with de Camors this -afternoon——’</p> - -<p>‘The effusive little Frenchman who so nearly kissed you?’</p> - -<p>‘As long as I forgot the children, and the twelve stone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> of mamma, and -the fact that de Camors himself is growing bald, I could have believed -he and I were six-and-thirty again. Six-and-thirty used to be the sum -of our joint ages.’</p> - -<p>‘Do not talk of age. It is a subject about which a man may jest, while -a woman just breaks her heart.’</p> - -<p>And Linda extended towards him her thin adroit hands, clasped in a pose -that she had studied, not unsuccessfully, as one of pained entreaty.</p> - -<p>‘Women are younger, relatively, than men,’ answered Gaston, with the -sincerity of his sex. ‘When I was two-and-twenty, Dinah’s age, I knew -more of the world than I know now. Whereas my wife——’</p> - -<p>‘Ah! your wife,’ interrupted Linda Thorne, the mask for a moment -dropping, the voice hardening. ‘I was thinking of living, palpitating, -flesh-and-blood women—inhabitants of a world where nothing is -faultless save over-faultless perfection. I—I mean,’ she went on, -rapidly recovering her self-control, ‘that at thirty (and I am past -thirty, alas! who looks at me under broad daylight but must see -it?)—at thirty a man is scarcely in the noonday sun—a woman already -feels the breath of evening. Her one chill hope is—to grow old -gracefully. Mrs. Arbuthnot is a girl still.’</p> - -<p>‘And you—were a child when I first knew you in Paris,’ observed -Gaston, cleverly quitting the dangerous territory across whose borders -he has been betrayed. ‘How natural it seems, Mrs. Thorne, that we -should be walking together, you and I, in the old country, with the old -language round us again! Do you hear what the children are singing down -on the sands yonder?’</p> - -<p>Linda set herself to listen, her expressive hands clasped, her face -bowed.</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>‘Nous irons aux bois,</div> -<div>Les lauriers sont coupés’—</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>shouted the shrill young Gallican voices in the distance. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p> - -<p>Mr. Arbuthnot repeated the nursery rhyme as Murger wove it into his -delightful ‘Letter to a Cousin.’</p> - -<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<div>‘Nous n’irons plus aux bois. Les lauriers sont coupés.</div> -<div>Nous n’irons plus aux bois, oh, ma cousine Angèle!’</div> -</div></div></div> - -<p>The lady at his side bowed her face lower, and believed, in all -integrity, that she was about to be overtaken by tears. Mrs. Linda, to -do her justice, was not of a lachrymose temperament. At the zenith of -their boy and girl flirtation, years ago, she had never shed a tear for -Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot; until he appeared with his beautiful wife, had, -indeed, clean forgotten her youthful weakness and his existence. But -she possessed considerable imagination, a gloss of surface sentiment. -She was also an insatiate novel reader, and had fallen into the habit -of perennial strong emotion, leading nowhere. She could realise how a -woman who had loved ought to feel, as she recalled past happiness with -the lover of the past—both married, and one, alas! fast nearing an age -when the most pathetic drama turns, without help from the burlesque -writers, into parody.</p> - -<p>Linda Thorne believed herself to be on the brink of tears. Gaston -Arbuthnot believed so, too, and his heart could not but soften over -the poor thing’s impressibility. So widely different in effect are -tears shed in bitter earnest by one’s wife, and tears shed in pretty -make-believe by the wife of another man.</p> - -<p>‘Do you hear, Mr. Arbuthnot—the dancers have changed their tune?’ She -asked this as the children, eddying like spirit-figures in an opera -scene round the fire, broke into a new measure, ‘<i>Marie, soak thy -bread in wine!</i>’—universal refrain of all French children from the -Pyrenees to the Channel. ‘“<i>Marie, soak thy bread!</i>” How that foolish -rhyme brings back the Benjamins’ salon, and my place behind the piano, -and you, Mr. Arbuthnot, handing round refreshments with the small -slave-driver, Moïse! “Marie, soak thy bread”.... Alas!’—Mrs. Thorne’s -utterances grew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> mystic—‘We women have to soak our bread in sour -enough wine, have we not?’</p> - -<p>‘The Benjamin refreshments—sugar-water, orgeat,’ mused Gaston -Arbuthnot, keeping safely to the practical. ‘Yes, those were charming -evenings, especially when Papa Moïse did not sing. I remember, as -though ’twere yesterday, how my poor mother used to suspect Madame -Benjamin of putting bad almonds in the orgeat.’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXVIII</span> <span class="smaller">FOR AULD LANG SYNE</span></h2> - -<p>Meantime, whilst this mature pair of sentimentalists recalled the past -under the starlight, the younger people, sound of heart and limb, were -making the most of the present inside the walls of Luc Casino. Fine -weather for their voyage, an excellent French dinner, and now a ball, -with distractingly pretty girls for partners, what further enjoyment -could hearts as light as the hearts of the subaltern hosts desire?</p> - -<p>Lord Rex, only, played spectator. While Rosie Verschoyle danced waltz, -polka, American, to outward seeming in gayer spirits than her wont, -Lord Rex remained fixed in his attendance on Mrs. Arbuthnot, beside one -of the open ball-room doors. Dinah was curiously staunch of purpose, -about trifles as about serious things. She clung to ‘first principles.’ -It was a first principle with her never to enter a casino, English or -French, and Rex Basire vainly expended his best special pleading in -seeking to change her.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Arbuthnot objected, perhaps, to waltz with a one-armed man? Would -she give him a polka, then? Would she ‘rush’ an American quadrille? It -made it ever so much more diverting if one did not know the figures of -an American. Well, if she would not dance at all, would she take his -arm and walk round the rooms? ‘Simply to put them in their place, Mrs. -Arbuthnot. I have my British<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> vanity. I want these bragging Frenchmen, -accustomed to nothing handsomer than lay figures out of the pattern -books, to see <i>you</i>.’</p> - -<p>All in vain. Dinah wished neither to dance nor to dazzle. Only, if Lord -Rex pleased—thus, after a space, she admonished him—it would be wise -for his lordship to join the rest of his party. Miss Verschoyle was -standing out; there could not be a likelier time than the present for -him to secure Miss Verschoyle’s hand.</p> - -<p>His lordship, however, did not please. And so, when Gaston and Linda -Thorne returned, later on, from their walk, the first fact patent to -both on entering the ball-room was Dinah’s absence. With a quick look -around, Linda discerned Rosie Verschoyle standing at her mother’s side, -partnerless.</p> - -<p>‘Rosie Verschoyle a wall-flower? Oh, this is too bad! What can Lord Rex -be thinking of?’ exclaimed Linda, ingenuously. ‘Mr. Arbuthnot, I insist -upon your asking poor little Rosie to dance at once.’</p> - -<p>‘I thought you and I were to take pity on each other, Mrs. Thorne, for -auld lang syne?’</p> - -<p>‘Think of Rosie, not me. It is positively wicked for old married women -to monopolise the dancing men while girls stand out.’</p> - -<p>‘Are you sure Miss Verschoyle would care to have a man with deposited -affections for her partner? a veteran whose waltz step dates from the -reign of Louis Philippe?’</p> - -<p>‘Try her. In my young days girls would sooner dance with anybody than -remain partnerless.’</p> - -<p>‘That “anybody” gives me confidence. It is good to know the exact -compartment in which one is pigeon-holed.’</p> - -<p>Gaston crossed the room. He made his bow before Rosie, who moved -forward graciously. Now that Mr. Arbuthnot had asked her, said the -girl, in her thin staccato, she would have the enjoyment of one really -good waltz.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> Something in Gaston’s looks made her certain that he was -a splendid dancer. Louis Philippe? Mr. Arbuthnot’s step dated from -the days of Louis Philippe? ‘Why, that,’ cried Rosie, ‘was before we -were all born!’ She confessed to never remembering about those ‘horrid -French Revolution people,’ but had a notion Louis Philippe came next -to the king who got his head cut off. Or was he Egalité, the man who -insisted upon dying in his boots?’</p> - -<p>‘Louis Philippe came next to the king who got his head cut off,’ said -Gaston, as his arm clasped her well-rounded waist. ‘I had no idea, Miss -Verschoyle, that you were such a profound historian.’</p> - -<p>Linda Thorne took the chair left vacant beside Rosie’s mother.</p> - -<p>‘Your dear child is looking her best, Mrs. Verschoyle. I think our -Guernsey roses do us national credit. We ought to produce an effect -upon the foreign mind.’</p> - -<p>‘The young people are too much flushed, every one of them. A day like -this may lay the seeds of lifelong malady. I know, as a fact, Mrs. -Thorne, that Rosie is dancing in wet shoes.’</p> - -<p>‘Better dance than sit still in them,’ remarked Linda, cheerfully. ‘You -never catch cold while you are amused.’</p> - -<p>‘Could we not have been amused at a quarter the cost? I have been -trying in my own mind to reckon up the expenses of the expedition. -Putting everything at the lowest, I bring it to something -fabulous—fabulous! If these young subalterns, sons, no doubt, of -needy men, had only given us a tea-drinking on L’Ancresse Common! When -Colonel Verschoyle was in command——’</p> - -<p>The time when her colonel commanded a regiment in Guernsey was Mrs. -Verschoyle’s one unchequered recollection, the standard by which all -subsequent mortal events must be judged!</p> - -<p>‘When poor Colonel Verschoyle was in command, that is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> what the -officers used to do. Give us a tea-drinking at L’Ancresse and a -dance for the young people afterwards. No show. Very little expense. -Everybody pleased. Then, of course, if you got your shoes wet you could -change them.’</p> - -<p>The advantages of L’Ancresse over Langrune as a spot whereat to change -your shoes seemed to touch Mrs. Verschoyle nearly. Her eyes filled.</p> - -<p>‘The money that has gone on all this,’ she mourned; ‘not to speak of -the doctors’ bills we may have to pay hereafter! When first the plan -was chalked out I foresaw how everything would end. I entreated Rosie -to reason with Lord Rex. Unfortunately I can never get my children to -listen to me.’</p> - -<p>‘You should have gained over Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ said Linda, with a spice -of malice. ‘As the picnic was got up for her, no doubt she could have -amended the programme.’</p> - -<p>Mrs. Verschoyle looked more like a little bewildered white mouse -than usual, as this newly propounded idea made its way slowly to her -intelligence.</p> - -<p>‘It is a most unprecedented thing! To get up a party of pleasure for -a married lady without daughters! Mrs. Arbuthnot, I believe, has no -daughters?—at all events not of an age to be introduced. Well, she -is a very sweet-looking young woman,’ said the meek, motherly soul, -through whose lips no breath of scandal ever passed. ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot -has just that fair, placid, large look that used to be so much admired -in my Flo. But the complexion is too transparent for health. Did -I tell you Flo’s husband was ordered to Malta? His regiment is on -this season’s reliefs, and Flo talks of coming over to me with the -children—four babies, and a native nurse. I suppose I shall be able to -take them all in?’</p> - -<p>‘Easily. You have only to give up your own room and sleep in the -conservatory. When Rahnee is married and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> offers to come home, with -four babies and a native nurse, sleeping in the conservatory,’ observed -Linda, ‘is just the kind of sacrifice I shall be prepared to make.’</p> - -<p>‘You would have the old jungle ague back upon you in twenty-four hours -if you did. Neither you nor Doctor Thorne are people who should take -liberties with yourselves. Indeed, I think you have both been looking -sadly this spring. Rosie, my dear, come here.’ For the waltz had ended. -Gaston Arbuthnot was walking past, English fashion, his partner on his -arm. ‘Come and sit down by me out of the draught. I do hope this is the -last dance we shall stay for, Mr. Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>‘No, indeed, mamma. We are to stay for the next. It is another waltz, -and I am engaged for it to Lord Rex;’ Rosie glanced, a little ruefully, -towards the door where Dinah and Lord Rex still stood. ‘Thank you so -much, Mr. Arbuthnot, for our beautiful waltz. I hope,’ said Rosie -Verschoyle, ‘all my partners, as long as I live, will have taken -dancing lessons in the reign of Louis Philippe.’</p> - -<p>When the opening bars of the waltz sounded, Lord Rex, with no very -great alacrity, came across the room to claim Rosie’s hand. Gaston -Arbuthnot bent over Linda.</p> - -<p>‘“For auld lang syne.” Is this to be our dance, Mrs. Thorne?’</p> - -<p>Linda Thorne was not a pretty, not by natural gift a graceful, woman. -She was a perfect dancer. Poor Dinah, from her hiding-place, had found -a genuine pleasure in watching Gaston waltz with dimpled, smiling Rosie -Verschoyle. For Dinah, like all wholesome-minded mortals, had unmixed -sympathy with the spirits and enjoyment of light-hearted girlhood. She -looked with very different perceptions at Linda Thorne, looked at her -with something of the feeling a true but unpopular artist might know on -watching the facile successes of meretricious talent. This tinselled, -pleasure-loving Linda, with her clinging<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> draperies, her Indian -perfumes—this wife whose heart was not with her husband, this mother -who contentedly could leave her child to servants—was so far below the -ideal towards which, since her marriage, Dinah Arbuthnot had faithfully -striven.</p> - -<p>Below an ideal standard. And yet, in such vital points as talking -amusing talk, in dancing, dressing, dinner-giving, in the all-important -matter of pleasing men difficult to please like Gaston Arbuthnot, -how immeasurably was Linda her superior! Dinah’s heart contracted. -She was just going to shift away into deeper shadow, when a hand -touched her arm with friendly purpose. Turning, she saw Marjorie -Bartrand—Cassandra Tighe, laden with nets and specimen boxes, in the -rear.</p> - -<p>Marjorie’s face glowed damask. ‘A pity you were not with us, Mrs. -Arbuthnot. We have been having a glorious time, moth-hunting in the -Luc lanes, Miss Tighe and I, and—and—every now and then Mr. Geoffrey -Arbuthnot condescended to join when the chase got warm. What are you -all about here?’ Marjorie ascended a step; she took a smiting glance -round the ball-room. ‘Well, this is as good as a sermon. Miss Tighe, -come and be edified. Is it not fine to see middle-aged couples waltzing -for the public good?’</p> - -<p>With a little scornful gesture of the head Marjorie indicated Gaston -and-his partner.</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot may be doing his steps from personal motives, -perhaps because he has the “artistic temperament,” whatever,’ said -Marjorie, ‘that elastic term may mean. Nothing but severe principles, -the determination to point a moral, could make Linda Thorne go through -violent exercise on a night like this.’</p> - -<p>‘Linda Thorne is considered the best waltzer in Guernsey,’ said -Cassandra. ‘Your tongue is over-sharp. You speak before you think, -Marjorie Bartrand.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I feel before I do either,’ whispered the girl, her hand stealing -back, with half-shy kindness, to Dinah’s arm.</p> - -<p>‘If Mrs. Arbuthnot had been with us,’ said Cassandra, ‘she would have -witnessed a sight worth laughing at. Marjorie scoffs at middle-aged -partners. What would you think, Mrs. Arbuthnot, of a white-haired woman -flying across hedges and ditches—breathless with excitement, over the -capture of a butterfly? Scarce a dozen specimens of <i>Pontia Daplidice</i> -have been seen in Northern Europe during the last twenty years,’ went -on old Cassandra, flushed still with victory. ‘And of these six only -were netted, like mine, on the wing. Why, it would be worth staying a -week here—a week, a month, on the outside chance of sighting a second -<i>Pontia Daplidice!</i>’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXIX</span> <span class="smaller">MISSING</span></h2> - -<p>All this time the <i>Princess</i>, lying well outside the Luc rocks, was -getting up her steam. Before the waltz had ended a red light, hung from -the vessel’s bows, gave the signal for those on shore to hurry their -departure. There was a flutter of airy dresses as the English party -emerged from the ball-room into darkness, a ripple of talk as they -filed, Indian fashion, hand steadying hand, down the narrow path that -led from the casino to the little fishing slip or jetty.</p> - -<p>And then unexpectedly came the first misadventure that had arisen to -mar this day of calm and sunshine. When the party had embarked in two -of the unwieldy flat-bottomed boats of the country, it occurred to Lord -Rex, as commander-in-chief, that their number should be counted. And -soon the cry arose that one was wanting! Seventeen human souls left -Guernsey that morning—on this point all were confident. Sixteen human -souls only were forthcoming now. And no efforts of memory, individual -or collective, could hit upon the defaulter’s name.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Verschoyle exclaimed in a hollow voice that it was a most -uncomfortable omen. She would be sorry to depress the younger people’s -spirits, but, for her part, she would sooner set sail in the teeth of -a hurricane than have had this thing occur. ‘Let the counting be more -systematic,’<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> said the poor lady, jumping to her feet, and for once in -her life launching into independent action. ‘Let me repeat each name -slowly, beginning with the youngest of the gentlemen, and let each -person answer as he is called. Mr. Smith? Brown? Jones? Lord Rex? The -two Mr. Arbuthnots? Doctor Thorne?’</p> - -<p>After Doctor Thorne’s name there was a moment’s silence. Then Linda, -tragic of accent, ejaculated, ‘Robbie! Of course!’ And then, I regret -to say, most of the younger people began to laugh. ‘But it may be a -matter of life and death,’ cried Mrs. Thorne. ‘If you please, Lord Rex, -I will go on shore at once. The <i>Princess</i> may start, probably will -start, without me. My duty is to look for Robbie. Oh, I am most uneasy! -It is all my selfishness. Robbie ought never to have been brought on -such an expedition. I am certain something has happened to him! I shall -never forgive myself while I live.’</p> - -<p>These amiable anxieties were the exact sentiments suited to the -occasion. Mrs. Thorne expressed them with agitated dignity, and, of -course, no one laughed again. Consolations, even, were forthcoming. -Dr. Thorne had been seen, in the flesh, outside Luc Casino; or, if -not the Doctor, some old gentleman exactly like him, with a puggaree, -sand-shoes, a white umbrella, and smoking an enormous cigar, just like -the cigar poor dear Doctor Thorne always used to smoke. It was the -prettiest, least wise, of the De Carteret sisters who offered this -bit of evidence. The gentleman was observed to look in for a while at -the dancing, and then to walk away in the direction, Ada de Carteret -believed, of the sea.</p> - -<p>‘The sea! And who can tell that the sea has not surrounded him! In -out-of-the-way French places the tide always swells up with a circuit.’ -Tears were in Linda’s voice as she proclaimed this maritime fact. -‘I am most uneasy.’ She adjusted her Indian shawl with grace round<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> -her shoulders, then skipped lightly to land. ‘Robbie ought never to -have been brought—it was all my selfishness—I am torn in pieces by -remorse.’</p> - -<p>The young ladies, with the exception of one flint soul, cried, -‘No, no,’ in chorus. Mrs. Thorne positively must not say these -dreadful things, when every one knew she had such a <i>character</i> for -unselfishness! Mrs. Verschoyle felt for her smelling-salts, then -settled herself gloomily down, prepared for the worst. Mrs. Verschoyle -felt within her the courage of a prophet whose own dark sayings are on -the eve of fulfilment.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot, in his quiet, unmoved manner, rose. Stepping on -shore, Gaston volunteered to go in search of the missing Doctor.</p> - -<p>These were just the scenes wherein Linda so infinitely diverted -him,—Frenchman as he was in three-fourths of his nature,—little -scenes in which, on the boards of domestic life, she played such -admirable farce without knowing it!</p> - -<p>‘I shall walk straight back to Langrune, Mrs. Thorne. Notwithstanding -your solemn tone, in spite of Miss de Carteret’s evidence, I believe -the Doctor has never missed any of us, and at this moment is smoking -his cigar, possibly sipping his “little glass,” at the Hotel -Chateaubriand.’</p> - -<p>‘Unless you are here in a quarter of an hour, sharp, we shall leave you -behind,’ called out Lord Rex, when Gaston had proceeded some paces on -his errand. ‘The <i>Princess</i> is chartered until to-morrow only. Whatever -the rest of us do, the skipper will take care not to lose his tide.’</p> - -<p>Linda Thorne, by this time, in her agitation, and her Indian shawl, was -at Gaston’s side. So the exordium might be taken as addressed to them -both.</p> - -<p>‘All right,’ answered Mr. Arbuthnot leisurely. Langrune is not the end -of the earth. If by the time we secure the Doctor, the steamer has -weighed anchor, we must all get back to Guernsey <i>viâ</i> Cherbourg. That<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> -would fit in very well. The <i>Lady of the Isles</i> crosses from Cherbourg -to-morrow,’ went on Gaston, raising his voice as he looked back over -his shoulder towards the boats. ‘We should just have time to visit the -dockyard before starting.’</p> - -<p>And then the two figures sped onward, side by side. They were watched -with keen speculative interest by the occupants of the boats. No one, -save simple Mrs. Verschoyle, felt disturbed as to the Doctor’s ultimate -fate. Was an old gentleman who had taken admirable care of himself for -forty years in India a likely subject to be spirited away on the sands, -between Luc and Langrune? But the situation had a dramatic piquancy -that stirred even the unimaginative minds of the Miss de Carterets -and their attendant subalterns. For there was Dinah! Impossible to -forget that Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot, that lowly-born young woman with the -beautiful eyes, and set, sad mouth, was also watching the two figures -as they disappeared in the darkness.</p> - -<p>‘A quarter of an hour. By Jove! ten minutes of that quarter must be -nearly gone.’</p> - -<p>And taking out his watch, Lord Rex struck a vesuvian in order to learn -the time. It was exactly eight minutes to nine, and at nine, sharp, the -<i>Princess</i> was to weigh her anchor. The moment for action had come. -Now, what was the wisest thing to do? One point seemed certain—it -was useless for both boats to wait longer. Let the smaller boat, at -the head of the jetty, start for the steamer at once, let the captain -be told what had happened, and asked to put off his departure as long -as practicable. If Gaston Arbuthnot and the Thornes arrived in time, -the second boat would bring them off. If not—why, common sense could -really dictate no better plan than Gaston’s own. Langrune was not the -end of the world A railway to Cherbourg existed. The <i>Lady of the -Isles</i> would no doubt bring the lost sheep comfortably back to their -respective folds to-morrow. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p> - -<p>Dinah as it happened was, with Ada de Carteret and the elder ladies, -in the boat at the head of the jetty. And soon before Dinah’s eyes, -as before the eyes of one who dreams, the reflections of the Casino -lamps, the children’s Chinese lanterns, were dancing with fairy-like -brightness across the moving water. She realised that her day of -pleasure was over, that every one—yes, she could catch the voices of -Marjorie and of Geff, holding merry talk in the other boat—every one -took the adventure jestingly, and that her heart felt like lead, that -her hands were ice-cold, that each breath she drew was a conscious and -painful effort. Well—if she had enough bodily strength to act her part -out, she thought, say no word to betray her plebeian emotions, and so -bring down ridicule on her husband or herself, she must be content! -Once on board the steamer she could hide herself in the cabin, away -from sight, and there wait, until the comedy (or tragedy) had reached -its next act. This one wretched comfort remained to her. She would be -able to screen herself, for a while at least, from observation—to be -alone!</p> - -<p>But a new and still more diverting incident was about to be woven into -the text of the play.</p> - -<p>‘If I were not in such a nervous state,’ cried Mrs. Verschoyle, when -the boat was within three or four lengths of the <i>Princess</i>, ‘if I were -not so morally shaken that I distrust my own senses, I should say our -good Doctor was on board. There came a flash of light just now beside -the wheel, the lighting, perhaps, of a fusee, and for a second it -seemed to me that I saw Doctor Thorne’s figure distinctly. A pity some -reliable person was not looking!’</p> - -<p>And Mrs. Verschoyle, to her own surprise, had seen correctly. The -Doctor it proved to be—the Doctor smoking one of the ship’s best -cheroots, and enjoying the summer night with unruffled innocence. He -advanced gallantly to assist the ladies in their embarkation, and heard -with gusto<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> the story of his own supposed fate. Surrounded by the tide? -Tut, tut! Linda might have known, had she exercised her reason, whither -he had betaken himself. ‘Only you ladies never do reason,’ said the -Doctor, addressing Mrs. Verschoyle. ‘It was growing damp on shore—and -let me give you a bit of advice, my dear madam: whenever you feel that -clinging kind of chill, after gun-fire, get on board ship, if you have -the chance. Get an honest plank, instead of the abominable miasmal -emanations of Mother Earth, under your feet. Yes, yes,’ went on the -Doctor comfortably, ‘I hailed one of the <i>Princess’s</i> boats and came on -board two hours ago, have drunk my cup of coffee, and beaten Ozanne at -his own game, cribbage.’</p> - -<p>‘And your wife’s anxiety?’</p> - -<p>‘My dear Mrs. Verschoyle, I am penitent! Only my wife, you see, might -have reasoned. It would have deprived you all, no doubt, of a harmless -excitement; but Linda, I think, might have reasoned. Any way, it is -better to be drowned by one’s friends’ imaginations than run the risk, -in earnest, of a pair of damp shoes.’</p> - -<p>To this Mrs. Verschoyle gave a qualified assent. The mention of damp -shoes affected her. Still, she was not a little shocked at Doctor -Thorne’s levity—‘At his advanced age,’ thought poor Mrs. Verschoyle, -perturbedly, ‘and after the awful narrowness of his escape!’</p> - -<p>‘The fear is, Doctor, that Mrs. Thorne will be left behind,’ cried Ada -de Carteret, with meaning. ‘At the first word of danger Linda started -off along the Langrune road to look for you.’</p> - -<p>‘Linda ought to have reasoned——’</p> - -<p>‘And Lord Rex declares the captain must weigh anchor at nine, sharp! It -is like a scene in a novel—the last scene but one, with everything in -a delicious tangle still. Why, Doctor, you are the hero of the day!’</p> - -<p>‘I feel enormously flattered,’ said the old Doctor. ‘It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> is a very long -time since a charming young lady has said anything so pretty to me.’</p> - -<p>‘But your wife, Doctor Thorne!’ expostulated Cassandra Tighe, who with -her nets and cases had been the last to leave the boat. ‘Do you realise -that if Ozanne saves his tide—if we return to Guernsey to-night—Mrs. -Thorne will remain in France?’</p> - -<p>‘I cannot believe it. Ozanne would not surely be so ungallant. (Allow -me, Miss Tighe, to help you with a few of your packages.) No, no. -The skipper would not be so ungallant. And then my dear Linda is the -most famous traveller! Surely I have told you what wonderful presence -of mind she showed once in the Nilgiri Hills? Lost, actually lost, -for four entire days! If, by mischance, Linda should be left alone, -she will make her way home to-morrow, <i>viâ</i> Cherbourg, and enjoy the -adventure.’</p> - -<p>‘And Mrs. Thorne is not alone,’ cried Ada de Carteret, clapping -her hands, and no doubt feeling that the position grew more and -more deliciously tangled. ‘Mr. Arbuthnot is with her—not Marjorie -Bartrand’s coach, but the other one: the singing, flirting, -good-looking Mr. Arbuthnot,’ added this vivacious young lady, -profoundly forgetful that the good-looking Mr. Arbuthnot’s wife stood -within three yards of her elbow.</p> - -<p>‘Then my fears are set at rest,’ observed the Doctor genially. ‘If -my friend Arbuthnot is there my fears are set thoroughly at rest. -Meanwhile, I may as well speak to the skipper. The tide, of course, -must be saved. Still, it would be only right to let Ozanne know how -affairs stand.’</p> - -<p>And Dinah had listened to it all—youthful jest, aged philosophy, all! -And standing among the others, with a queer sensation that she had -suddenly oldened by a dozen years, some pallid ghost of a smile rose to -her lips. Here was a grand opportunity, verily, of learning a lesson at -first hand, a chance in a thousand for readjusting one’s standard,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> for -observing the nicer little shades of feeling and usage which prevail in -the world to which one would fain belong.</p> - -<p>A smile, I say, rose to Dinah’s lips. Which of us does not remember -how, in sharp mental stress, he has found himself looking on at the -trivial accessories of his pain, as a stranger might, derisively! In -the poor girl’s heart was death.</p> - -<p>She knew that for Gaston to have set at naught her pleadings, for -Gaston to have quitted her thus, might render to-night a bitter crisis -in the lives of both.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXX</span> <span class="smaller">LINDA WARMS TO HER PART</span></h2> - -<p>But Dinah was not unobserved, not uncared for.</p> - -<p>If Cassandra Tighe’s taste for piquant situation once in a hundred -times led her astray, the ninety-nine good offices performed by the -kindly old maid in the interval were sufficient, surely, to atone for -the single blunder.</p> - -<p>Cassandra’s heart went out towards Dinah at the first moment when -the fair sad face passed before her in the garden of Miller’s Hotel. -She had listened with regret to stories of Gaston’s fickleness—even -while her talents as a narrator assisted in giving such stories wider -currency—had felt remorse, sharp and hard, for her own unwitting -share in the ‘Arbuthnot drama.’ At this hour of which I write, Dinah -standing mute, wan, beside her, Cassandra’s breast kindled with renewed -compassion towards the simple unbefriended country girl, a compassion -none the less genuine in that it went somewhat wide of Dinah’s actual -and present trouble.</p> - -<p>‘You look thoroughly done up, my dear Mrs. Arbuthnot. I am afraid -to-day’s gadding about has been too much for you. Let us see,’ said -Cassandra, in a whisper, ‘if we cannot find some quiet corner, you and -I, where we may settle down and rest.’</p> - -<p>Dinah turned on her a look of blank, unanswering pain. She wanted -neither sympathy nor support, wanted only to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> creep below, out of -sight, to avoid all temptation to disobedience, all possibility of -bringing down ridicule—on Gaston!</p> - -<p>‘I feel chilled—nothing, that is, to speak of. You are very good, Miss -Tighe, but I had rather go down to the saloon alone, please. I am used -to being alone, and—and I have a cloak which I must look for.’</p> - -<p>A note of suppressed passion was in her voice. It betrayed emotion -curiously at variance with the commonplace words, the staid reserved -manner. And, in a moment, Cassandra Tighe’s valorous spirit had armed -itself for action.</p> - -<p>‘Dr. Thorne, will you stop that Luc boat, if you please? Never mind -my nets, they can go anywhere. Attendez, matelots! Attendez moi,’ -cried Cassandra in her own peculiar French, and signalling with her -handkerchief to the boat, already a few lengths distant from the -steamer. ‘It would scarcely do, Doctor, to let matters shape themselves -with such very slight rough-hewing! Some one must go ashore without -delay. Think of Linda’s anxiety if the <i>Princess</i> should leave before -she had been assured of your safety!’</p> - -<p>‘I think of many things,’ said Dr. Thorne, with humour, ‘the dampness -of the night pre-eminently. Of course, I must go. Still, Linda might -have exercised her reason—such reason as Providence bestows on the -sex. Linda is not a child. What possible good could come from this kind -of wild-goose chase?’</p> - -<p>And the old Doctor moved an inch or two, exceedingly crusty of mien, in -the direction of the companion ladder.</p> - -<p>But this was not the plan of Cassandra Tighe’s campaign.</p> - -<p>‘You will just stay comfortably where you are; you will keep a dry -plank under your feet, Dr. Thorne, and give me carte blanche to look -after your wife. If the <i>Princess</i> starts without us, Linda and I must -find our way back to Guernsey. I have a purse in my pocket, Linda has a -brain in her head. We both know how to travel. To you, Mrs. Arbuthnot, -I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> confide my treasure.’ Turning round she gave Dinah a little chip -box, clasping the girl’s cold hands for an instant as she did so. ‘Take -care of <i>Pontia Daplidice</i>, my dear, and take care of yourself. Look -for your cloak by all means. Doctor Thorne, do you persuade Ozanne to -give us every possible moment’s law. I have a presentiment that all -will come right, that your good wife’s over-anxiety will not lead her -into mischief.’</p> - -<p>The unwieldy Luc boat was by this time swaying to and fro at the bottom -of the ladder. A Luc fisherman stood, with bare brawny arms extended, -for Cassandra’s reception. A few seconds later Cassandra and boat, -alike, had become a dark spot on the water, luminous now with the -quick-moving facets of the rising tide. Dinah was alone, indeed!</p> - -<p>She stood, for a time, mechanically watching the row of lights on -shore, mechanically listening to the steam as it puffed, with energy -unmistakable, from the funnels of the <i>Princess</i>. Then, uncertain of -tread, heavy of limb as of heart, she groped her way below, resolved, -silently, to endure whatever fate the coming half-hour might have in -store for her.</p> - -<p>The cabin lamps were as yet unlighted. Dinah entered the ladies’ -saloon, at hazard. She sank down on the couch nearest the door. Then, -burying her face between her hands, she strove, with might, to collect -her thoughts, to stifle the resentment against Gaston which conscience, -sternly just, already condemned as paltry—ungenerous.</p> - -<p>It was of her own perverse will that she accepted Rex Basire’s -invitation. How often had Gaston warned her that, with her temper, -her opinions, she would find ‘society’ a dangerous experiment; a game -in which she would be likely to stake gold against other players’ -counters! She had come here to-day to please herself. She had no right -of control over her husband’s actions. Gaston lived according to the -light of his own conscience, not hers. He was courteous by temperament, -fond of little unforeseen deviations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> from any laid-down programme, -prompt, always, in putting his time, his energy, himself, at the -service of his friends.</p> - -<p>‘Langrune is not the end of the earth.’ She recalled his cheery, -amused tone, as he was vanishing with Linda across the dunes. ‘If the -<i>Princess</i> should start without us, we must get back by Cherbourg -to-morrow. It will fit in very well.’ She remembered Doctor Thorne—his -self-possession, his confidence in Gaston. ‘If my friend Arbuthnot is -there, one’s fears are set at rest.’ She could imagine Linda’s witty -reproduction of the whole too delicious accident when they should get -back to Guernsey. Oh, let her gain mastery over herself—mastery! Let -to-day’s lesson be a deeper one than can be gained by nice observance -of tone, or look, or manner. Let her have learned to conquer small -jealousies, to be wary of quick judgments, to construe the actions, the -intentions of others, nobly.</p> - -<p>Dinah resolved in the spirit to be strong. Meanwhile, she realised, -with growing certitude, that she was weak, exceedingly, in the flesh. -Her breath came with greater effort, her hands grew colder and more -clammy. Rising with difficulty, she set herself to search for her cloak -among a pyramid of wraps that lay, disordered, on a neighbouring couch, -dimly discernible by aid of a newly-lighted lamp from the main cabin. -Dinah Arbuthnot’s cloak lay (can Fate not be ironical even in the -disposition of a heap of shawls?) immediately above a soft, long Indian -scarf belonging to Mrs. Thorne. As she lifted it, the subtle Eastern -perfume, associated always with Linda’s presence, seemed to Dinah, in -a second, to fill the cabin. A feeling of sickness, a sudden access of -keen personal repulsion, took hold of her—all-powerful hold; for, this -time, it was instinct, not reason, that moved her anger. She flung down -her cloak, with a childish sense of disgust at having handled it. She -sank back, passively, upon the sofa....</p> - -<p>A few minutes later came in the steward to light the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> centre lamp. -Seeing one of the guests alone, and deathly white, he took the -commonsense, or steward’s view of the situation. Feeling queer, -already? Let him get the lady a brandy-and-soda, a glass of wine, -then? Settle the system before they got into rough water—though, for -the matter of that, they would have a splendid passage. Sea like a -millpond, tide favourable. Nothing but running into one of these here -Channel fogs to be feared.</p> - -<p>‘I will take some soda-water, if you please.’ Odd and far away Dinah’s -voice sounded to herself. ‘I am a good sailor in general. I would -rather have a rough sea than a smooth one. But this evening I am a -little tired. I feel thirsty.’</p> - -<p>She drank the soda-water with a sense of refreshment. ‘The wretchedest -preparation, without the B., that could be made for a voyage,’ thought -the steward, as he stood, salver in hand, waiting for her glass. Then, -when the man had again left her alone, she crept back into her place, -held her hands tight to her throat to relieve the cruel sensation that -well-nigh choked her, and waited.</p> - -<p>Waited—how long she knew not—perhaps, a short ten minutes only. In -recalling the whole scene, later—the swell of the rising water, the -murmur of voices in the adjacent cabin, the clinging, overpowering -Indian perfume—in summing up, I say, each external detail of that -miserable evening, it would afterwards seem to Dinah Arbuthnot that no -year of her life ever took so much hard living through as those mortal -minutes.</p> - -<p>At length they came to an end. Doubt was to be set at rest, or turned -into yet sharper certainty. For she could tell, first by the muffled -thud of rowlocks, then by the splash of oar blades in the water, that -the second boat was arriving. She could distinguish Geoffrey’s voice, -Lord Rex Basire’s, old Doctor Thorne’s—very loud this last, and -didactic, but yielding Dinah’s heart no consolation. Would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> not Doctor -Thorne talk loud and didactically whether his Linda had returned from -her quest of him or not?</p> - -<p>After a time the voices began to disperse. There came the measured -yoy-a-hoy of the sailors, the shuffle of feet, the fall of cable on -deck. Then Dinah heard the steward saying to one of the boys that they -had weighed anchor. And not a moment too soon. With the air so thick, -and the glass nohow, the skipper ought to have started, on this badly -buoyed coast, a couple of hours ago. A French pilot might be all very -well, but to his, the steward’s mind, English daylight was better.</p> - -<p>Dinah knelt upon a sofa, inclined her face to the cool air of an open -porthole, and watched the receding French coast. There lay the villages -of Luc and Langrune, a line of lights flickering, misty and irregular, -above the shimmer of the sea. Far away in the distance rose one larger -light, the signal lantern in the tower of La Delivrande. Dinah watched, -automatically. She noted scarcely more than a playgoer, carried away by -excitement, notes the scene-painting at the most thrilling situation of -a drama. To her, as to a child, the whole world was concentrated under -the passion that governed herself. Had Gaston come back? She longed to -know this with a longing which one must call to mind her narrow past -life, her more than girlish simplicity, rightly to understand. And -still she did not attempt to leave the cabin. Her strength, moral and -physical, seemed paralysed. How should she make her way, alone, up on -deck, search in the darkness for Gaston, ask questions, parry, with a -jest, such airy explanation of her husband’s disappearance as might, on -all sides, be offered her?</p> - -<p>A voice, close at her elbow, made her start guiltily.</p> - -<p>‘No one in the ladies’ saloon? Well, then, Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot -must have tumbled overboard. Her husband and I have vainly searched -the <i>Princess</i> for her.’ Oh,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> kindly Cassandra! Was no small bit of -embroidery tacked on, just at this juncture, over the bare truth? ‘So -much for trusting valuable entomological specimens out of one’s own -hands!’</p> - -<p>‘Miss Tighe, I am here. I have been trying to get a little warm. Your -moth is safe,’ stammered Dinah.</p> - -<p>She scarcely knew in what fashion the words left her dry and trembling -lips.</p> - -<p>‘Moth? A country-bred girl like you not to know that a speckled -white, although, by luck, we caught him out of hours, is a butterfly! -Well, I have brought back our other pair of butterflies, safe and -sound.’ Before saying this Cassandra had put on her spectacles and -carried her box beneath the doorway lamp. She made a great show of -examining its contents, critically, thus allowing Dinah to recover her -self-possession, unnoticed. ‘From certain murmurings I overheard among -the sailors I believe we, all three, narrowly escaped being abandoned -to our fate.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Thorne had begun to think that her husband was on board?’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s constrained tone was one of doubt rather than inquiry.</p> - -<p>‘My dear, nobody ever knows what Mrs. Thorne thinks. Linda is a -charming woman, the pleasantest companion, when she chooses, in the -world. But, as the Doctor says, Linda might reason. These electric -transitions, from gay to grave, and back to gay again, are embarrassing -in a world where the rest of us walk by rule. Linda Thorne is all -impulse.’</p> - -<p>‘Ah!’</p> - -<p>‘At the first word of the Doctor’s disappearance, to run off, -helter-skelter, like a schoolgirl ... yes, Linda Thorne,’ cried -Cassandra, peering round at some person or persons across her shoulder, -‘I am talking of you. Come down and hear all the wicked things I have -to say. At the first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> word of the Doctor’s disappearance to run off -like a schoolgirl, taking somebody else’s husband with her! It was -atrocious! Who is that behind you, Linda? Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. Tell -Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, from me, that everything worth looking after on -board the <i>Princess</i> is found.’</p> - -<p>As Cassandra Tighe scored her point, not without a little air of -triumph, Linda tripped gaily down into the cabin.</p> - -<p>‘We are to have the very finest weather, Miss Tighe, and all the world -means to remain on deck. Only, of course, one wants shawls. What! Mrs. -Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>Pausing in her search among the heap of wraps, it would seem that Linda -recognised Dinah’s presence with amiable surprise. But Dinah was coldly -silent.</p> - -<p>‘Surely you, of all people, are not going to become a cabin passenger? -My dear creature, I have just escaped the quaintest little adventure -in the world! But for Miss Tighe’s advent, I should have eloped, yes, -run clean, straight away, with your husband. We were planning it all -out, from a commercial standpoint, as we flew, frantically, along the -sandhills after Robbie. Were we not, Miss Tighe?’</p> - -<p>‘I leave these matters to your own conscience,’ was the dry answer. -Possibly, Cassandra recollected that the butterflies were not flying -very frantically at the moment when she captured them on the starlit -dunes. ‘If you had run away with Mrs. Arbuthnot’s husband, I should -have taken good care to run with you. I warned the Doctor of my -intentions before I left the <i>Princess</i>.’</p> - -<p>‘It was quite too unselfish, Miss Tighe, and, pecuniarily, most -àpropos. I possessed five sous in copper (Guernsey currency); Mr. -Arbuthnot was worth something under twenty francs. We should have had -to leave our watches at the Mont de Piété, for me, alas! no novel -experience, the moment we reached Cherbourg. Things have turned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> out, -under Providence, for the best. Only, I think, I <i>think</i>,’ admitted -Linda, with arch frankness, ‘the Doctor rather regrets having to retire -into insignificance. If I had not come back, Robbie would have remained -the hero of the situation.’</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thorne ran through all this in her accustomed little tired, -inconsequential way of talking, winding up, finally, with a long and -earnest yawn. She then danced up to a strip of mirror at the best -lighted end of the cabin and settled herself to the contemplation of -her own image with interest. She dabbed her cheeks first with rice -powder, then with eau-de-cologne, then with powder again, producing -these cosmetics without a show of disguise from a tiny gilt case that -hung at her waist-belt. She arranged the folds of her cachemire scarf -above her sleek head in a certain Gitana mode, which, like all good -art, gave an idea of unpremeditation, and became her mightily; she -pinned a knot of feathery grass, a memento, doubtless, of the starlit -dunes, in her breast.</p> - -<p>Easy to predict that Linda Thorne would not be sea-sick to-night! She -was warming to the situation, intended to work up her part—everything -in human life was a part to Linda Thorne—with spirit.</p> - -<p>‘Come up on deck, Mrs. Arbuthnot, will you not? Surely, with your -splendid sea-going qualities, you are not going to stop down in this -Black Hole of Calcutta?’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot will come up when I do,’ cried Cassandra, who, with an -added pair of spectacles on her nose, was pinning out insects under a -lamp. ‘Go your ways, Linda Thorne, wise ones if you can, and leave Mrs. -Arbuthnot and me to follow ours.’</p> - -<p>‘I would not be wise if I might,’ said Linda, giving an expressive -backward glance across her shoulder. ‘If I were wise ... I should see -myself as other people see me.’</p> - -<p>And having uttered this, the acutest speech that ever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> left her lips, -away floated Mrs. Thorne, with her powdered cheeks, her cachemires, and -her Indian fragrance, from the cabin.</p> - -<p>Dinah could hear the languid accents, the little stage laugh (learnt -from the stalls), for a good many seconds later. She could distinguish -the voices, too, of Gaston, and of Rosie Verschoyle. How heart-whole -they all seemed. How frequent was their laughter! What a light time the -past hours had been to every one of the party but herself! Gaston’s -philosophy, thought Dinah, taking an unconscious downward step, might -be the true one after all, then. Live while we live! What had she -profited by a strain of feeling too tall for the occasion, by the -tiptoe attitude, by throwing away gold where a more reasonable member -of society would have quietly staked counters?</p> - -<p>‘Any admittance here?’ exclaimed a masculine voice, as an impatient -hand pushed back the cabin door. ‘Why, Mrs. Arbuthnot, I have been -searching for you everywhere. I want you to come up on deck at once, -please, and see a comet. Not a comet really, you know,’ Lord Rex went -on, looking hard at Dinah’s white face. ‘Some kind of Japanese fire -balloon sent up by the French people. However, it does just as well as -one.’</p> - -<p>‘Yes, my dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, go,’ cried old Cassandra, glancing up, -over her double spectacles, from her pinning. ‘It will take me an -hour’s work to bring all my specimens straight. And your colour shows -you want oxygen. You are right, Lord Rex. Take Mrs. Arbuthnot on deck -to see this comet which is not a comet. I shall follow by and by.’</p> - -<p>And Dinah Arbuthnot obeyed. She did more. Dinah allowed the tips of her -cold fingers to rest within Rex Basire’s hand as he pioneered her up -the cabin stairs into the semi-darkness of the night.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXI</span> <span class="smaller">WIFE AND HUSBAND</span></h2> - -<p>The outlook continued promising overhead. The tide was at the right ebb -for making Barfleur Point. At an earlier hour than had been hoped for, -the friendly Casket lights showed, at intervals, above the starboard -bow of the <i>Princess</i>. The skipper, cheerful of voice, promised his -passengers that in forty minutes more—tide and weather remaining -favourable—the vessel would be lying well to leeward of Alderney.</p> - -<p>All this time Dinah had found no opportunity for exchanging a -conciliatory word with her husband. She felt that Gaston did not so -much avoid as ignore her. He always contrived to be deep in talk with -some other person when his wife sought to draw near him. He did not -address her, did not recognise her presence. At length, abruptly, just -as Dinah was nerving herself to make some desperate first advance, Mr. -Arbuthnot crossed the deck. He came up to the spot where she and Rex -Basire stood together. With the pleasantest air imaginable he put his -hand under Dinah’s arm.</p> - -<p>‘Suppose you take a turn with me, wife?’ Mr. Arbuthnot made the -proposal in his lightest tone, Rex Basire listening. ‘Do you see that -revolving beacon? No, my dear, no! Neither aloft on the funnel, nor in -my face, but away, far as you can look, to the right. That beacon marks -the Casket Rocks. And there, straight ahead, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> without any lights -showing, as yet, we are to believe is Alderney. Let us make our way to -the forecastle. We shall have a better view.’</p> - -<p>The fore part of the deck was deserted, save by two or three knots of -sailors, talking low together in patois French as they watched the -horizon. Gaston and Dinah were practically alone. She felt the heart -within her throb uneasily. An icy politeness lay beneath the surface -geniality of Gaston Arbuthnot’s manner. Dinah was prompt to recognise -it.</p> - -<p>‘What a long day this has been, Gaston. I shall want no wider -experience in respect of yachting picnics.’</p> - -<p>‘You are changeable, Dinah. As we walked from Langrune to Luc, it was -agreed between us that the day should be considered a success.’</p> - -<p>‘A great deal has happened since then,’ exclaimed Dinah, under her -breath.</p> - -<p>‘Nothing very notable, surely. If I recollect right, I did my duty to -the extent of two waltzes in the Luc ball-room, and you, my dear child, -had a long, a most amusing and intellectual conversation, I cannot -doubt, with Lord Rex Basire, in one of the doorways.’</p> - -<p>‘Lord Rex Basire is never amusing when he talks to me.’</p> - -<p>‘Then I congratulate you on your proficiency in seeming amused. It -ranks high as a difficult social art, even among veterans.’</p> - -<p>‘Gaston!’ she exclaimed, a new and poignant doubt making itself felt.</p> - -<p>‘Dinah.’</p> - -<p>‘I don’t know what to think of your tone. Why have you never said a -word, never looked at me during all these hours? Are you offended?’</p> - -<p>‘On the contrary,’ retorted Gaston. They were now out of sight, out of -earshot of everybody. As he spoke, Arbuthnot withdrew his hand from -his wife’s arm. ‘I am<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> thoroughly your debtor. It was the sense of my -indebtedness that made me bring you here. I wished to thank you without -an audience, quietly.’</p> - -<p>‘To thank <i>me</i>,’ stammered Dinah, in a sort of breathless way. -‘For—for——’ she broke off, reddening violently.</p> - -<p>Gaston watched her. ‘For your solicitude, your kindly tact! That idea -of despatching the old lady in the scarlet cloak to chaperon me was -boldly original, a fine intuition of wifely vigilance——’</p> - -<p>‘Gaston! I never——’</p> - -<p>‘Yet scarcely the sort of vigilance that passes current in a -commonplace and scoffing world. If you had the smallest spark of -humour, Dinah—that missing sense! that one little flaw in your -character!—you would see things as the commonplace scoffing world sees -them.’</p> - -<p>‘Should I?’</p> - -<p>‘You would divine that, under no possible circumstances—really it -would be well to remember this for the rest of our mortal lives—under -no circumstances can I require an old lady, with or without a scarlet -cloak, as my chaperon.’</p> - -<p>A different woman to Dinah might here have turned the tables on Gaston -Arbuthnot, have stoutly, truthfully disavowed responsibility as to -Cassandra Tighe’s movements. Dinah was too transparently honest to -defend herself as to the letter, knowing that she had been an accessory -in the spirit.</p> - -<p>‘When the time was so short—ten minutes more, Gaston, and the -<i>Princess</i> would have started without you—I felt that my heart must -stop. Miss Tighe, any one, could have seen on my face what I suffered.’</p> - -<p>‘I have no doubt that “any one” could, and did see it,’ said Gaston -Arbuthnot, with grave displeasure. ‘It would not occur to you to -make an effort at decent self-control, whatever ridicule you might -be bringing upon others. Does it never strike you, Dinah,’ he went -on, unjustly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> ‘that other women have human sensibilities as well as -yourself—Linda Thorne, for instance? She rushed off, poor thing, -in the greatest agitation at the first whisper of the Doctor’s -disappearance, fearing nothing from Mrs. Grundy, fearing all things for -her husband. Was it generous, charitable, do you think, to let your -disapprobation be written, so that he who ran might read, upon your -face?’</p> - -<p>‘I think,’ said Dinah, faithfully, ‘that Mrs. Thorne felt no agitation -whatsoever.’</p> - -<p>Gaston also thought so. It was a point he would not commit himself to -argue out.</p> - -<p>‘There are feelings one must take for granted. Mrs. Thorne did the -right thing in refusing to start without her husband. I acted as I -judged best in determining to remain by her. That ought to have been -enough for you.’</p> - -<p>‘Yes. It ought to have been enough.’</p> - -<p>Dinah gazed before her at the purplish streak faintly dividing the -sea-line from the sky. It grew blurred and tremulous. Her eyes had -filled with tears.</p> - -<p>‘You had plenty of people to bear you company—Geoffrey, Miss Bartrand. -It is unbecoming in you, Dinah, to act like a wayward girl. However -matters had turned out about Doctor and Mrs. Thorne, what hardship -would there have been in your returning to Guernsey with Geoffrey and -without me?’</p> - -<p>‘None, none! I was wrong from first to last. All this is my lesson, -remember. One cannot get a lesson by heart without a little trouble.’</p> - -<p>‘One might learn it without making everybody else absurd,’ persisted -Gaston. ‘You asked me why I had never addressed a word to you, never -looked in your direction, since we put out to sea. I will tell you why, -my dear. I considered you dangerous. I was afraid.’</p> - -<p>Dinah lifted up her face. She fixed her truthful and transparent gaze -full on Gaston Arbuthnot. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I don’t understand you, Gaston. You know I never can understand when -you speak with a double meaning.’</p> - -<p>‘Well, there was a certain electric look about you, a look prophetic of -lightning or thunder showers, for neither of which I am in the mood. -You ought to have chosen a husband of more heroic mould, Dinah. There -is the truth. A man, like the hero of a lady’s novel,’ observed Mr. -Arbuthnot, wittily, ‘always equal to a strained attitude. A man fond of -the big primeval human passions—love, hatred, jealousy. But you have -married me, and I am afraid you must take me as I am. You must also, as -often as you can—remember this, Dinah—as often as you can, endeavour -not to render me ridiculous.’</p> - -<p>When Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot re-emerged out of the darkness, Gaston’s -hand was resting on his wife’s shoulder, Dinah’s face had recovered its -calm. It would have taken a keen observer of countenance to guess that -a breeze so stiff as the one we know of had just stirred the surface of -these two persons’ lives. Was Linda Thorne such an observer?</p> - -<p>Linda was standing alone in the gangway, her attitude one of -deliberation, when Gaston and his wife came aft. She kept her position, -speaking to no one, until Lord Rex, companionless, like herself, had -managed to find his way to Dinah’s elbow. Then Linda Thorne made -a move. She crossed to the vessel’s side. Resting her hand on the -bulwarks, she gazed heavenward. Such good lines as her throat and -shoulders possessed were well outlined against the pallid background of -sky.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot followed her before long.</p> - -<p>‘We are fortunate, after all our misadventures, are we not? The mate -tells me that we have sighted Alderney. It seems likely that we shall -get back to Petersport without fog.’</p> - -<p>‘And what, may I ask, do you mean by our misadventure?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span></p> - -<p>There was a ring of sharpness in Linda Thorne’s tone.</p> - -<p>‘Ah—what! The moment,’ said Gaston, ‘when gleams of a scarlet -cloak first flashed upon one along the sand-dunes seems, to my own -consciousness, about the most serious of them.’</p> - -<p>‘You are singularly insincere, Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot!’</p> - -<p>‘I cannot agree with you, Mrs. Thorne. My worst enemies, on the -contrary, have the grace to credit me with a sort of brutal frankness.’</p> - -<p>‘And, supposing no scarlet cloak had appeared? You would willingly have -been left, a second Robinson Crusoe, on the desert shores of Luc?’</p> - -<p>‘The cases are not parallel. Robinson Crusoe had only the society of -his man Friday.’</p> - -<p>‘And there were no beaux yeux to weep for him! So many years,’ observed -Linda, ‘stand between me and the literature of my childhood that I am -uncertain about details. But I don’t think one ever heard of a Mrs. -Crusoe!’</p> - -<p>Gaston knew that he was being laughed at. He kept his temper charmingly.</p> - -<p>‘And there is, very decidedly, a Mrs. Arbuthnot. When I think of Dinah, -I cannot call Miss Tighe’s advent a misadventure. Poor Dinah has a -child’s quick capacity for unhappiness. Her imagination would have -conjured up a dozen possible horrors, by sea and land, if I had not -returned to her.’</p> - -<p>‘That is all so very, very pretty, is it not?’ Linda stooped, as if -watching the rush of the sea; Gaston Arbuthnot could not catch the -expression of her face. ‘We professional old travellers are toughened -and sun-baked out of all rose-water nervousness. Robbie has told -you—whom does he not tell?—the story of my being lost, actually lost, -in the Nilgiris? If I were to be mislaid for a fortnight, I really -don’t believe the Doctor would suffer a moment’s uneasiness.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘And yet you were so cruelly upset by <i>his</i> disappearance. The -superiority,’ apostrophised Gaston, ‘of the unselfish sex over ours.’</p> - -<p>‘I was not only upset by his disappearance,’ said Linda, still taking -an interest in the waves, ‘I am disturbed about him, in my conscience, -still. If Doctor Thorne takes the slightest chill to-night, we shall be -having the old jungle fever back upon him.’</p> - -<p>Gaston sympathised as to this contingency, not, as yet, perceiving the -drift of Linda’s alarms.</p> - -<p>‘At Robbie’s age one cannot be too prudent. To run into one of these -cold Channel fogs might end in something quite too serious. And, -although the stars make a pretence at shining,’ Linda raised her head -with tentative playfulness, ‘the enemy is at hand. I feel fog in the -air.’</p> - -<p>‘The air is clearer than it has been all day. In another three or four -hours the sun will have risen. We shall be in Guernsey——’</p> - -<p>‘In another twenty minutes we shall be outside Alderney harbour. I was -talking matters over, some minutes ago, with Ozanne.’ Linda inspected -the white hand, resting on the bulwark, with attention. ‘And he has -most good-naturedly consented to let me and Robbie land. By signalling -promptly for a boat we shall not detain you <i>Princess</i> people five -minutes. There is the dearest little primitive hotel in Alderney, close -to Maxwell Grimsby’s diggings. You remember my telling you about it?’</p> - -<p>Gaston remembered Mrs. Thorne’s telling him about the dearest little -primitive hotel.</p> - -<p>‘The Doctor will have a good night’s rest to recruit his strength, and -to-morrow afternoon, if the day is warm, we shall make our way back to -our home and infant by the Cherbourg steamer.’</p> - -<p>Now Maxwell Grimsby, a gunner by profession, a painter by love, was -one of Gaston Arbuthnot’s best artist<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> friends—best, too, in the -higher acceptation of the elastic word. Grimsby was no manufacturer -of prettiness, no amateur idler. Did not a series of beach studies -bearing the well-known initials ‘M. G.’ testify to the world how -diligently this very summer’s enforced imprisonment in Alderney was -put to use? During the past fortnight Gaston had constantly vacillated -in his intention of looking up his friend, for ever declaring how -much better work a man might do on the grand old rock, yonder, than -disturbed by the hundred distractions of pleasant, idle, sociable, -little Sarnia—never starting, for ever wishing he were gone! Here was -occasion to his hand, a chance of looking up Grimsby without even the -preliminary trouble of packing one’s portmanteau!</p> - -<p>‘Of course you could not come with us,’ asserted Linda, in her little -undertone of mockery. ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot is such a child! She would -conjure up a dozen possible horrors if you were to be absent from her -so long.’</p> - -<p>‘I am not sure that deserting the <i>Princess</i> would be a courteous -action to our hosts,’ said Gaston Arbuthnot, hesitating under the first -touch of temptation.</p> - -<p>‘You are made of poorer stuff than your cousin,’ thought Linda, -glancing, for a second, at his handsome face. ‘To gain a victory -over Monsieur Geoffrey would be to gain a victory indeed.’ Then, -aloud—‘If we were to carry away any of the younger people I should -feel it treason to desert the <i>Princess</i>,’ she observed. ‘I would not -go, indeed, if Robbie and I were wanted as chaperons. Considering the -existence of Mrs. Verschoyle and Miss Tighe—in talking of chaperons, -Mr. Arbuthnot, you and I must never forget Miss Tighe—I think Doctor -and Mrs. Thorne may very well be spared. For you it is different.’</p> - -<p>‘In what way?’ asked Gaston, wincing inwardly under her sarcasms.</p> - -<p>‘Oh, different, altogether. Too much depends upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> your presence. Pray -do not think of such a revolutionary proceeding as taking flight. -You would never be allow—I mean, I am sure you would not find it -advantageous to run away. What messages do you send to Mr. Grimsby?’</p> - -<p>‘None.’</p> - -<p>‘That is severe. You do not believe in my delivering them intact?’</p> - -<p>‘I mean to deliver them myself.’</p> - -<p>Linda Thorne laughed incredulously. ‘I wish I could make an enormous -wager at this thrilling juncture,’ she remarked with persistence. -‘Come, Mr. Arbuthnot. Will you bet me a single pair of gloves that you -will be ... that you will quit the <i>Princess</i> when we do?’</p> - -<p>‘It would be betting on a certainty,’ said Gaston. ‘My mind is made up. -I am really glad of the chance of seeing old Max.’</p> - -<p>‘You have told me something of the kind already. You refused a wager I -offered you last Monday afternoon, because it would have been “betting -on a certainty.” And yet, as the event proved, I should have won.’</p> - -<p>‘The event will prove that you do not win now.’</p> - -<p>There was more than a threat of impatience in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice.</p> - -<p>‘And you do accept my bet, then? You do stake a pair of gloves that you -are—that you will land at Alderney with Robbie and myself?’</p> - -<p>‘If you are bent upon giving me a pair of gloves, Mrs. -Thorne,—iron-gray, seven and a half,—I shall accept them with -pleasure.’</p> - -<p>‘Done! The bargain is concluded. My number, as you know, is six and a -quarter, Jouvin’s best. I wear eight buttons. And now,’ added Linda, -preparing to move away, ‘I must find our hosts, and make excuses. Had I -not better offer them on your behalf, too?’</p> - -<p>‘You are too kind to me, Mrs. Thorne. I think I have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> just courage -enough to pull through the emergency, unassisted.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex was still lingering in Dinah’s neighbourhood when Linda -tripped airily across to the gangway, Gaston Arbuthnot following her.</p> - -<p>‘Doctor Thorne and I have to thank you, all, for quite one of the -most perfect excursions in the world. I shall put a mark against the -subaltern’s picnic,’ said Linda, diplomatically. ‘It has been one of -the true red-letter days of my life.’</p> - -<p>‘Don’t talk of the picnic as over, Mrs. Thorne. The subalterns look -forward to some hours more of your society, even without the promised -fog.’</p> - -<p>‘Ah, that terrible fog! I must confess, the word makes me nervous, for -the Doctor’s sake. A fog, you know, means damp—that constant bugbear -to us old East Indians.’</p> - -<p>‘But the voyage is half over. Here we are, almost, in Alderney harbour.’</p> - -<p>‘And here, I am afraid, my husband and I ought to bid you all -good-night. Captain Ozanne has offered to signal for a boat. We should -not delay the <i>Princess</i> five minutes. Really and truly, Lord Rex, I -think the wisest course will be for Doctor Thorne to land.’</p> - -<p>‘Doctor Thorne to land? Another mysterious disappearance! And shall -you, Mrs. Thorne, immediately follow suit, as you did at Luc?’</p> - -<p>‘Of course I shall! The whole Luc comedy will be repeated.’ And here -Linda’s voice grew intentionally clear and resonant. ‘The Luc comedy, -with the original cast and decorations, for everybody’s amusement.’</p> - -<p>It was a wantonly cruel speech—Dinah Arbuthnot stood within hearing! -Yet Linda Thorne’s conscience was void of offence. She belonged by -temperament to the irresponsible class of mortals who can never resist -the temptation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> of histrionic effect. For what, save histrionic effect, -had she cajoled the skipper, the old Doctor, Gaston, into this freak of -midnight disembarkation? And when once a woman’s tongue and actions are -ruled by the eternal desire for smart dramatic point, it must be clear -that other women’s sufferings will pay the price of her success.</p> - -<p>Dinah’s heart froze. She divined, without going through any distinct -process of reason, what announcement she was likely to hear next.</p> - -<p>‘If the Luc scene is to be repeated, I conclude you, too, are going to -desert us?’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex Basire addressed himself to Gaston Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘Well, it has been borne in upon one during the last fortnight that it -was a duty to look up old Grimsby,’ began Gaston. ‘And this——’</p> - -<p>‘And this is duty made easy. Go, my dear fellow, if you have had enough -of us,’ cried Lord Rex, lightly. ‘But go on one condition—that you do -not take Mrs. Arbuthnot. Mrs. Arbuthnot is our chaperon-in-chief. We -cannot spare her.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot has Miss Bartrand under her charge—have you not, -Dinah? I am afraid you could scarcely——’</p> - -<p>‘I should, under no circumstances, think of landing at Alderney,’ said -Dinah, in a voice uncomfortably strange to Gaston’s ear. ‘I am not -afraid of fog. I do not wish to see Mr. Maxwell Grimsby. Why should I -leave the <i>Princess</i>?’</p> - -<p>‘Where your presence is the life of the whole party,’ pleaded Lord Rex. -‘You must not let your husband persuade you into throwing us over, Mrs. -Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>Quietly, firmly, came Dinah’s answer:</p> - -<p>‘You need not be afraid. There is no risk of my being persuaded, Lord -Rex. I am a great deal too wise,’ she added, ‘to go away from people -who care to have me.’</p> - -<p>And no further word of explanation or of farewell was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> exchanged -between Dinah and her husband. Into the irrevocable mistakes of life is -it not singular how men and women constantly drift after this blind, -automatic fashion?</p> - -<p>Only at the last moment, when the <i>Princess</i> had slackened speed, when -the boat that had been signalled for was fast approaching from Alderney -harbour—only at this last moment, I say, Gaston addressed a remark to -Geff which Dinah felt might be taken by her, if she chose.</p> - -<p>‘I shall be back to-morrow, unless anything very unforeseen happens. If -it does, I can telegraph for my portmanteau, and——’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey whispered a word or two in his cousin’s ear. ‘Of course, of -course. I have every intention of coming back. I merely said “if.” You -will have a magnificent passage,’ added Gaston, shaking hands heartily -with Lord Rex. ‘Duty takes me to old Max. Inclination would have kept -me with my hosts on board the <i>Princess</i>.’</p> - -<p>Despite the neat turning of this speech, away Mr. Arbuthnot and the -Thornes went,—Linda, with her cachemires, her bouquets of wild -flowers, her fears for Robbie, her wafted kisses to her friends, -creating little theatrical sensations to the last. The boat was visible -for a few seconds only, so swiftly did the <i>Princess</i> again get under -way. There was a profuse waving of handkerchiefs. ‘Good-night, every -one!’ rang cheerily across the water in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice. And -then Dinah awakened to the knowledge that she was forsaken, this time -by no accident, but of cold-blooded, determined forethought—forsaken, -with all the world to see, with Lord Rex Basire persistently talking, -as though nothing of moment had happened, at her elbow.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXII</span> <span class="smaller">ROSE-WATER SOCIALISM</span></h2> - -<p>Dinah did not turn from him. Nay, although her brain was in a whirl, -although her voice was not under command, although her heart was -bursting, Dinah’s lips smiled. She was monosyllabic, Lord Rex felt, but -monosyllabic with a difference. And eager to improve the scantiest, -most meagre encouragement, he began instantly to ransack such memory -and imagination as were his for pertinent subject-matter.</p> - -<p>Frothy small-talk, personal compliments, local gossip, were little -relished, as he had proved, by Dinah Arbuthnot. She did not read -newspaper trials, had never opened a society journal, knew nothing -about actors or actresses, or novels, or prime ministers, or popular -divines. You could not get her even to talk about herself. But -then, that face of hers! If one might, quietly, stand gazing at her -surpassing fairness as one does at a canvas or a marble, Lord Rex -Basire, on this summer night, would have asked nothing more. His duties -as a host, however, the sense that others might construe his silence -into deficiency of wit, forced upon him articulate speech.</p> - -<p>‘Awful hole, Alderney, for an idle man! Now I was stationed there for -three months and got through an awful lot of work. No good letting -circumstances beat you. I coloured a meerschaum first rate—worked at -it, morning,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> noon, and night. I taught two of my terriers to march on -hind legs, while I whistled the “Marseillaise.” Favourite tune of mine, -the “Marseillaise.”’</p> - -<p>‘So your lordship has told me.’</p> - -<p>Dinah thought of their first conversation at the rose-show.</p> - -<p>‘I loathe classic music—loathe everything, in art and literature, but -what I can understand. Ever seen Maxwell Grimsby’s Alderney sketches, -by the bye? Dab of greenish-gray for the sea. Dab of bluish-gray for -the clouds—Storms, Sunsets, Whirlwinds, things you may as well frame -upside down as straight, if you choose.’</p> - -<p>No, Dinah had never seen them.</p> - -<p>‘Maxwell Grimsby’s an old friend, isn’t he, of Arbuthnot’s? That -accounts for your husband throwing over all us people on board the -<i>Princess</i>.’</p> - -<p>To this there was no answer. The balls had, certainly, not broken -well as regarded Alderney. Clearing his throat twice, after a more -redoubtable pause than heretofore, Lord Rex at length sought a wild -and sudden refuge in English politics. He had never in his life talked -politics to a pretty woman, reserving his views, which were of the -rose-water socialistic school, for after-dinner eloquence among his -brother subs. So desperately new an experience as Dinah required -desperate measures! To talk well above this young person’s head, -thought Lord Rex, who held no mean opinion of his own intellect, might -awe her into appreciation. And the subject he chose for his experiment -was that of class inequality.</p> - -<p>The emptiness of all titles, the folly of all social preeminence, -were themes on which Lord Rex waxed hot, exceedingly. Perhaps he was -sincere. Rose-water socialism, I must admit, did not sit without a -certain grace on this sunburnt little dandy, a grace to which his -slinged arm, shot through in the forlorn defence of English Empire, -gave the added zest of piquancy. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p> - -<p>Dinah unthawed at once. She broke into talk. In the matter of class -differences, Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife held fixed opinions, and could -express them incisively. But her ideas were not Lord Rex Basire’s -ideas. Lord Rex had got a vast deal of rabid rhetoric by heart, very -picturesque rhetoric in its way, and coming from the lips of a duke’s -son; Dinah had sharp, clear knowledge, gained at first hand, through -the vicissitudes of her own marriage. To Lord Rex social inequality was -a party question—kind of thing, don’t you know, that, vehemently taken -up, may sometimes land a man, with a following, in the House! To Dinah -it was the hidden enemy, the impalpable barrier that stood between her -and her husband’s heart. Lord Rex had learnt pages of showy axioms to -demonstrate that social inequality should never exist. Dinah’s life was -one long, irrefragable, stubborn proof that it existed.</p> - -<p>‘Your remarks have a terribly Conservative flavour, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’ -When they had talked for some considerable time he told her this. -‘Impossible you can be a Conservative in reality?’</p> - -<p>‘Gaston calls me an old-fashioned Whig. I don’t know the meaning of the -word. I only pretend to understand these things in the humblest way, -from my own standpoint.’</p> - -<p>‘But you are in favour of the nationalisation of the land? You -would do away with the laws of primogeniture? You don’t think a few -thousand loiterers, slave-drivers, should hold big estates—for their -pheasants—because each elder son, let him be fool, knave, or coward, -is heir to them?’</p> - -<p>‘Without such laws where would our English families be, my lord, our -barons, and earls, and great dukes, like your father?’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, where they came from,’ said Lord Rex, disposing of the question -jauntily. ‘Labour was the original purchase-money paid for all things. -You believe that much, at least, Mrs. Arbuthnot?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘If the succession law was swept away we might lose more than we can -afford along with it.’ Dinah had heard ultra-revolutionary notions -freely aired at times among Gaston’s friends, and, in her one-sided -feminine way, had striven, over her cross-stitch, to think them out. -‘I, for one, should not like to see any church or chapel in England -turned into a lecture place for these new unbelievers.’</p> - -<p>‘Unbelievers! Oh, that is quite a different story. We began by talking -about the folly of class differences.’</p> - -<p>Dinah was silent awhile. Then: ‘It would be impossible for you and -me to think alike on all this,’ she told her companion, with a grave -smile. ‘You have seen so much of the world, Lord Rex, perhaps have -heard the debates in the Houses of Parliament!’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex confessed that this intellectual advantage had befallen him.</p> - -<p>‘And I have just watched the lives, the manners of a few more or less -troubled men and women. Class differences, as you call them, may be -folly. They are the hardest facts I know, the....’</p> - -<p>Dinah saved herself, just in time, from adding, ‘the cruellest.’</p> - -<p>‘Beauty is the universal leveller,’ observed Lord Rex, with presence of -mind. ‘A perfectly beautiful woman would grace the steps of any throne -in Europe.’</p> - -<p>‘Leave thrones alone, Lord Rex Basire! If the beautiful woman wanted to -make others happy, she would have most chance to do so in her own class -of life.’</p> - -<p>‘And suppose the beautiful woman wanted to be happy herself, Mrs. -Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>‘Happiness comes naturally if you see it on the faces of the people -round you.’</p> - -<p>Their politics had not taken the turn Lord Rex desired. He harked back, -a little abruptly, upon his first premises.</p> - -<p>‘Yes, I am for absolute equality, Gardener Adam and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> his wife, and that -style of thing. I would make the shopkeeping capitalist, just as much -as the bloated aristocrat, turn over a fresh leaf. If I ever marry,’ -said Lord Rex Basire—‘don’t feel at all like marrying at present, but -if I ever do—I hope to get for my wife some simple little village -barbarian who has never been to a ball, never heard an opera, never -seen a racecourse in her life!’</p> - -<p>‘A village barbarian—of what station?’ asked Dinah Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘Matter of blank indifference. I should marry the girl, not her -station.’</p> - -<p>‘And afterwards? Would the barbarian be accepted by your family? Or -would you accept hers? Or would you, both, give up society?’</p> - -<p>‘That would suit me best! Give up society. United to the woman one -adored,’ said Lord Rex with fervour, ‘what could one want with -artificial pleasures, with the eternal bore of dinners and dances?’</p> - -<p>Dinah gave a chill laugh. She remembered the days when Gaston Arbuthnot -was wont to use the like phrases, as a preface (so, in her present -jealous misery, she thought) to returning to the world and its -pleasures, unhampered by a wife.</p> - -<p>‘When you marry, my lord,’ she observed, distantly, ‘you will, if you -act wisely, choose some duke’s or earl’s daughter for your wife. Give -up that notion of the village barbarian. As time wore on, and ... and -the truth of things grew clear, the duke’s daughter would, at least, -understand you. There could be no discoveries for her to make.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex turned and faced Dinah Arbuthnot, good-humouredly ignoring the -coldness of her bearing towards himself.</p> - -<p>‘Your opinions are desperately mixed, Mrs. Arbuthnot. You may be -Conservative in theory—you would be a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> staunch Republican in practice! -I am afraid, now, that a man with the misfortune—I mean, you know,’ -stammered Lord Rex, lowering his voice, ‘that you could never bring -yourself to care, ever so little, for a man with any wretched sort of -handle to his name.’</p> - -<p>‘I beg your pardon, my lord?’</p> - -<p>‘A man belonging to the most useless class of all—the class that so -many of us who are in it would gladly see done away with! Such a man -would never find favour in your sight?’</p> - -<p>‘Would have found, do you mean, when I was a girl of seventeen?’ Dinah -asked, in tones of ice. ‘I can give no answer to that. Girls’ hearts -are moved by such trifles—a title, even, might turn the balance. But -I and my sisters lived in a little Devonshire village. We saw nothing -whatever of high folks, and——’</p> - -<p>‘I am not talking of Devonshire villages!’ exclaimed Lord Rex, -interrupting her hastily, but dropping his voice still lower. ‘I am not -talking of the time when you were seventeen—I mean now.’</p> - -<p>Dinah recoiled from him on the instant. Idle compliments had moved -her, at length, to an extent Lord Rex dreamed not of. For she could -not forget that this was all part of her lesson, that her companion -was making speeches such as better born women, careless mothers, wives -of the type of Linda Thorne, might just listen lightly to, parry, and -forget. With the thought came a thought of Gaston. A flood of shame -tingled in her cheeks.</p> - -<p>‘You ask me questions beyond my understanding, Lord Rex.’ So after a -strong effort of will she brought herself to speak. ‘My choice was -made, happily, long ago. How could any man but Gaston find favour in my -sight?’</p> - -<p>Now Lord Rex Basire, his tender years notwithstanding, had seen plenty -of good feminine acting, of the kind which dispenses with footlights -and the critics, the acting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> required in the large shifting comedy -of human life. Although his own delicacy was not extreme, or his -perception sensitive, some unspoiled fibre in his heart vibrated, -responsive to the honesty of Dinah’s voice. This woman acted not, could -never act! Her fealty to her light, neglectful husband was part of -herself. Duty and happiness for Dinah were simply exchangeable terms. -She could taste of the one only in the fulfilment of the other.</p> - -<p>‘That was very charmingly expressed, Mrs. Arbuthnot. I hope, when I -marry, my wife will say the same pretty things of me, if I deserve -them, which I shall not! Characters like mine don’t reform.’</p> - -<p>‘There will be more chance of reformation if you marry than if you -don’t—especially if you choose the duke’s daughter,’ added Dinah, -stiffly, ‘not the barbarian.’</p> - -<p>‘And without any marrying at all! If some woman, as good as she is -fair, would hold out her hand to me in friendship, would let me think -that I held a place rather lower than a favourite dog or horse would -hold in her regard! If—if—ah, Mrs. Arbuthnot! if <i>you</i>——’</p> - -<p>But Lord Rex speedily discovered that he was apostrophising the waves -and the stars. At the moment when his eloquence waxed warmest, Dinah -Arbuthnot, village barbarian that she was, had walked away, without one -syllable of excuse, from his lordship’s side.</p> - -<p>He watched the outlines of her figure as long as they were discernible -through the gloom; then, drawing forth his vesuvians and tobacco pouch, -prepared to smoke a lonely pipe of wisdom on the bridge. Lord Rex was -in a fever of perplexity. Until the last five days he had never cared -for living mortal but himself. His brief fealties to the prettiest -face of the hour, Rosie Verschoyle’s among the number, had been so -many offerings at the shrine of small personal vanity. All this was -over. His surrender<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> to Dinah’s nobler beauty, his recognition of -Dinah’s pure and upright nature, had roused him thoroughly out of self, -made him look searchingly at the aims, the pleasures of life, and -acknowledge that there were human affections, human fidelities, high -above the range of his own light and worldly experience. Did happiness -thrive in that loftier, chill atmosphere? Was Gaston Arbuthnot to be -congratulated, wholly, on his lot?</p> - -<p>One thing was certain—so Rex Basire decided, as he betook himself -gloomily to the bridge. However this drama of domestic life might end, -it would be monstrous, impossible, that he, Rex Basire, should be -peremptorily dismissed therefrom, dismissed as one occasionally sees -the frustrated stage villain, long before the final falling of the -curtain!</p> - -<p>‘And even if it is so,’ mused Lord Rex, half aloud, and drawing upon -reminiscences of Nap. in his ill-humour, ‘if no choice lies before one -but to “accept misery,” misery let it be! The man who goes blue does -not invariably find himself in the worst position at the end of the -game.’</p> - -<p>But the lad’s philosophy was lip-deep only. Lord Rex Basire had never -felt less cynically indifferent to loss and gain than in this hour.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXIII</span> <span class="smaller">CLOSE TO PORT</span></h2> - -<p>The short June night drew to its close, and still the weather continued -fair. The sky was full of stars, a solitary lambent planet quivered in -the east. By the time the moon had sunk, with pale metallic glow, above -the motionless Channel, a welcome point of fire was visible over the -starboard bow of the vessel—the beacon of Castle Cornet lighthouse.</p> - -<p>A little flutter ran through the groups of expectant people keeping -watch together upon the deck of the <i>Princess</i>. It was well to have got -back safely, and without fog. And still, whispered the younger ones -regretfully, the most delightful picnic in the world had come to an -end, all too soon! Even Mrs. Verschoyle, emerging with salts-bottle, -with chattering teeth, from the cabin, conceded that, for a yachting -expedition, and although L’Ancresse Common would have been a thousand -times more reasonable, their misadventures had been few. How -comforting, murmured the poor lady, with a shudder, if it were not for -the cold—this curiously increasing cold—to keep one’s eyes on the -familiar harbour light, to realise that in another hour-and-a-half at -latest, they would be all warm and asleep in their beds!</p> - -<p>But the cold increased still, and, for a midsummer night, was, -undoubtedly, no common cold. It found its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span> way through plaids and -waterproofs, it got down throats, it caused fingers to become numbed. -The mate was seen to button up his pilot jacket as he made his way with -precipitate haste to the men on watch, the skipper moved from one foot -to the other as he stood consulting his compass. Both skipper and mate -glanced anxiously ahead, towards the west, where no horizon showed.</p> - -<p>‘One would, scarcely have expected the stars to set so suddenly,’ -observed Mrs. Verschoyle. In this lady’s youth it is probable that -schoolgirls did not, as now, learn the exact sciences. ‘But depend upon -it, the captain knows his way. The sailors are taking precautions, I -heard the steward say so downstairs, by using the lead. And I remarked -that they were seeing most attentively to the small boats. Besides, I -have heard more than one gun fired. No sound so reassuring at sea as -the report of a gun! A skilled old mariner like Ozanne would not be -dependent on anything so chancy as the stars.’</p> - -<p>‘But, mamma, the harbour lighthouse has set, too,’ cried Rosie -Verschoyle, who stood shivering at her mother’s side. ‘Everything is -setting. I don’t see our own funnel. I don’t see the flower in your -bonnet as clearly as I did two minutes ago.’</p> - -<p>‘I wish you would talk soberly, child. You know how much I dislike -this kind of ill-timed chaff. Who ever heard of a lighthouse setting?’ -observed Mrs. Verschoyle, with melancholy commonsense, ‘and why does -the <i>Princess</i> go so slow? The skipper, no doubt, has his reasons, -still he might remember we are not all as fond of the sea as he is. -I was never less nervous in my life, and—Sailor! Sailor!’ Mrs. -Verschoyle flung herself before a figure, wrapped up in tarpaulin, -crowned by a sou’-wester which loomed with gigantic proportions through -the thick air. ‘Would you say, if you please, why the steamer goes so -slow? And are we in danger—off our track or anything? And why does -one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> seem all at once to lose sight of Castle Cornet lighthouse?’</p> - -<p>The sailor was a weatherbeaten old Guernseyman, possessing about twelve -words of Anglo-Saxon in his vocabulary. Mrs. Verschoyle, however, -in her agonised desire for truth, stretched her arms forth in the -direction of the vanished red light. She also articulated the words -Castle Cornet with tolerable distinctness. Her meaning had made itself -clear.</p> - -<p>The answer, proceeding from the depths of a gruff, tobaccoey throat, -was incisive:</p> - -<p>‘<i>Brouillard!</i>’</p> - -<p>And <i>brouillard</i> it proved, clammy, ice-cold, yellow, after the -manner of all mid-Channel fogs. At first every one affected to take -this reverse of fortune as a jest, the little bit of mock danger that -was needed to point a moral to the preceding day’s enjoyment. So -providential, said the ladies, in pious but quavering chorus, that the -<i>Princess</i> lay close on shore before the fog grew thick. The skipper’s -duty, clearly, was to make straight for St. Peter’s harbour and land -them. Only, why lose time? Why steam so slowly? What object could -Captain Ozanne have in exposing them to this mortal cold a moment -longer than was needful?</p> - -<p>Mrs. Verschoyle, after a few minutes’ suspense, voted for independent -action. She had, indeed, broached a project of creeping up to the men -at the wheel and imploring them to ‘turn faster,’ when there came a -general stir among the crew, followed by a rattling sound which most -of the party had sufficient sea-going experience to recognise. The -<i>Princess</i> was about to cast her anchor.</p> - -<p>Just at this juncture appeared Lord Rex, fresh from hurried -consultations with Ozanne and the boatswain. A suspicious unconcern was -on Lord Rex Basire’s face, a note of forced cheerfulness in his tone. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Lucky we have got so near home, is it not, Mrs. Verschoyle? We are -about two miles from shore, they say,—Ozanne, of course, knows every -yard of water,—just within or without the <i>Grunes</i>, whatever the -<i>Grunes</i> may mean. We shall only have to ride half an hour or so at -anchor—awfully jolly sensation, I can tell you, with a south-west -swell. And then, as the mist rises, we shall steam clean into -Petersport.’</p> - -<p>But this show of jauntiness misled no one. The De Carterets, Cassandra -Tighe, Marjorie Bartrand, all understood their position better than did -Lord Rex. And it was a position of the utmost gravity. The <i>Princess</i> -was lying in dense fog, surrounded by shoals, across the very highway -of the Channel night steamers. For an old and wary seaman like Ozanne -to have been forced to anchor at such a strait did but render the fact -of his helplessness more pointed.</p> - -<p>‘What does it all mean? Are we not close to port, madam?’</p> - -<p>The ladies were pressing together in groups. Dinah whispered the -question across Cassandra Tighe’s shoulder.</p> - -<p>‘Close to port—of one kind or another,’ answered Cassandra, vaguely -unorthodox to the last. ‘As long as nothing runs into us we may do well -enough. And dawn is at hand. At sunrise the fog may lift. Your husband -ought to be here with you,’ she added, misinterpreting a certain -vibration of Dinah’s voice.</p> - -<p>‘I thank God that he is not! Alone, there is nothing to be frightened -about. I thank God that Gaston is safe—warmly housed, away in -Alderney!’</p> - -<p>And, in truth, a reasonless, half-pleasurable excitement, the reaction -after so much dull pain, had arisen in Dinah’s heart.</p> - -<p>That a dark ‘Perhaps’ lay straight and immediately before them, became -at each moment more plain. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> continued firing of guns gave token -that other vessels were in the same plight as the <i>Princess</i>—once, -indeed, a steamer drifted so close that they could see the faint -reflection of her signal lamps, could hear the beating of her gong. The -dreary sound of the fog-horn, the muffled tramp of the men on watch, -the lights burning aloft in the ship’s rigging, the partially lowered -boats, the solemn faces of the skipper and the crew, all combined into -one unspoken word—Danger.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXIV</span> <span class="smaller">DEAD ROSE PETALS</span></h2> - -<p>Dinah Arbuthnot thought over the few quarrels, the many -misunderstandings of her married life, grown little, all, before the -hour’s largeness. She thought how, in five or six minutes more—a -collision, in weather like this, would be over briefly—in five or six -minutes more she and Gaston might be parted, with never another kiss -from his lips to hers. He would cherish the thought of her to his last -breath, if she were lost to-night. She recognised the true metal in the -man, was sure enough of that. Possibly, the remembrance of her, calm -and untroubled in her grave, might prove a stronger influence over him -for good, a keener stimulus to his genius, than her restless, jealous -life had ever been!</p> - -<p>On such terms, she asked herself, was death a thing to be met with -craven fear?</p> - -<p>Most of the party, obeying simple bodily wretchedness, crept, one after -another, below—poor frightened, frozen Mrs. Verschoyle at length -confessing that she would sooner be drowned comfortably in the cabin -than stand up longer against the sickening roll of the anchored vessel -on deck. Marjorie Bartrand, Dinah, and Miss Tighe lingered, Lord Rex -and Geoffrey Arbuthnot (forced into comradeship for once) keeping up -their spirits with cheerful talk, with stories well remembered or well -invented, until a pale <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>forecast of daylight began slowly, uncertainly, -to filter through the fog. Then came a new untoward event to crown -this night of misfortune. A lad on the forecastle had stumbled in -the darkness over a coil of chain, and a cry quickly arose that the -surgeon’s hand was wanted. The poor fellow lay in agony, with a twisted -or broken ankle. Was there not some doctor on board among the gentlemen -who could help him?</p> - -<p>Away sped Geoffrey Arbuthnot on the instant, bestowing no consolatory -word—Marjorie’s heart honoured him for the omission—on the ladies -thus abandoned to their terrors and their fate.</p> - -<p>‘And now,’ said old Cassandra Tighe, hollow and far-away her voice -sounded through the blanket of fog, ‘I think we women folk will do well -to betake ourselves elsewhere. Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot has set us an -example of duty. You have been a pattern host,’ she added, addressing -Lord Rex, ‘and it is right you should be set free. We must take our -chance with the others in the cabin. You hear me, Marjorie Bartrand?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie heard, but was stoutly recalcitrant. It was her duty, she -said, to die hard, and according to Act of Parliament. She would in no -wise give up her chance of the boats, should a collision befall the -<i>Princess</i>; could swim like a sea-gull if the worst came to the worst. -Lord Rex, of course, must be considered off duty. For herself, if Mrs. -Arbuthnot would stay with her under one of the covered seats, she asked -nothing better than to stop on deck and watch for sunrise. Cold? How -would it be possible to take cold at midsummer—swathed, too, in all -these wraps, and with the excitement of a first-class adventure to -maintain the circulation of one’s blood.</p> - -<p>And indeed, there burned a flame in Marjorie’s breast that kept her -whole being warm, a flame, pure and delicate, the like of which kindles -in these poor hearts of ours once only, perhaps, between our cradle and -our shroud. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘We are dismissed, Miss Tighe,’ said Lord Rex, gallantly offering his -unwounded arm, as Cassandra tottered to her feet. ‘Cling to me like -grim death. Don’t mind appearances. If Mrs. Arbuthnot and Miss Bartrand -have the courage to freeze, we must leave them to become icicles. I -want to see what can be done for our poor terrified ladies down below.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex must have seen to the terrified ladies expeditiously. Five -minutes later he was at his post again, no rug, no greatcoat about his -shoulders,—with feminine appreciation of detail, Dinah was prompt to -mark this sign of self-forgetfulness,—simply hovering near, ready, -she reluctantly acknowledged, to buy her life with his own should the -moment of peril really come.</p> - -<p>And Gaston Arbuthnot, all this time, was taking his rest, quietly -irresponsible, away in Alderney! Dinah, being a just woman, did not -credit her neglectful husband with the density of the fog. Still, in -danger, as in safety, the master passion possessed her heart. Her -thoughts, at one moment tender, at the next reproachful, were of -Gaston always. And her lips kept silence. Marjorie Bartrand also was -disinclined for talk. In Marjorie’s mind thrilled a remembrance so -sweet, so new, that she was glad passively to rest under it, as we -rest under the influence of a good and wholesome dream—a remembrance -of the half confession made to her in the Langrune lane, whose flower -smells and swaying yellow corn lingered in her senses still. And thus, -happiness being a far likelier narcotic than pain, it came to pass ere -long that while Dinah Arbuthnot watched with ever-increasing vigilance, -the young girl’s eyes grew heavy. The sound of the fog-horn at each -interval roused her up less effectually, her head dropped upon her -companion’s shoulder. ‘Your wish has come true, although I have the -misfortune to be myself, not Gaston.’ The cold and darkness vanished, -blessed sunshine began to shine around<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span> her, the fog-horn changed -to the note of the cricket among the ripening cornfields. Marjorie -Bartrand slept.</p> - -<p>By this time, Dinah judged, the sun must be close upon rising. It -seemed to her that the different objects on board were growing a very -little clearer. Moving with difficulty from her position, she rolled -up a pillow out of one of the plaids, and slipped it under Marjorie’s -sleeping head. She enveloped the girl’s whole figure in the thickest of -their rugs, then began to pace, as sharply as her stiffened limbs would -allow, up and down a short portion of the deck.</p> - -<p>‘We are not to say “ta-ta” to the wicked world this time, Mrs. -Arbuthnot.’ The wise remark was Lord Rex Basire’s. He had been absent -during the last quarter of an hour, and now reappeared bearing a salver -on which stood a cup of smoking coffee. (Looking back in after hours -on the shifting scenes of this night, Dinah often felt, remorsefully, -that her most fragrant and excellent coffee was prepared by Lord Rex’s -own hand.) ‘I overheard the steward talking with the mate just now, and -they prophesy a change of wind. If this comes true the fog will lift in -half an hour. See, I have brought you some coffee.’</p> - -<p>Dinah glanced towards Marjorie.</p> - -<p>‘Oh, Miss Bartrand is fast asleep, dreaming of triposes and Girton! I -watched her nodding before I went below. It would be cruelty to wake -her.’</p> - -<p>‘I must say the coffee smells tempting,’ Dinah admitted. Then, swayed -by quick impulse: ‘Lord Rex, you are very unselfish!’ she exclaimed. -‘You have thought of nothing but other people, and their troubles, all -this night.’</p> - -<p>‘On the contrary, I have thought of myself. I have had a capital time, -Mrs. Arbuthnot—for I have been near you.’ Dinah never looked more -nobly handsome than at this moment. A cold night, passed without sleep, -a greenish-yellow fog, must be fatal adversaries, at 3 <span class="smaller">A.M.</span>, -to all mere prettiness. Dinah’s beauty could stand alone, without<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> -colouring, without animation. The lines of her head and throat, the -full calm eyelids, the lips, the chin, could be no more shorn of their -fair proportions than would those of the Venus Clytie—should the Venus -Clytie chance to be exposed to the mercy of a Channel fog.</p> - -<p>‘You have been near a very stupid person, my lord. I have had too -much heaviness on my heart to talk,’ confessed Dinah. ‘I have scarce -exchanged a dozen words even with Miss Bartrand.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot, have you forgiven me?—do, please, drink your coffee -before it is cold—don’t make me feel that I am in your way—boring -you as usual; have you forgiven a horribly foolish speech I made, just -before you disappeared in the darkness, you know?’</p> - -<p>‘Which foolish speech?’ asked Dinah Arbuthnot, laconically, but -innocent of sarcasm.</p> - -<p>‘Ah, which? I am glad you are good-naturedly inexact. And still,’ went -on Lord Rex, with characteristic straightforwardness, ‘foolish or not, -I meant every word I said. If the woman I loved was free, would look -at me, I should be a changed man, would make my start in the world -to-morrow.’</p> - -<p>‘Make your start?’ repeated Dinah, off her guard.</p> - -<p>‘Yes. Look after sheep in New Zealand, plant canes, or whatever they -do plant, in South America, and feel that with her, and for her, I was -leading a man’s life.’</p> - -<p>And for a moment Dinah Arbuthnot’s pity verged on softness.</p> - -<p>Listening to the genuine emotion in Rex Basire’s tone, glancing at -the lad, in his thin drenched jacket, as he stood, holding the salver -ready for her coffee cup, his devotion—by reason, perhaps, of an -unacknowledged contrast—touched her. For a moment, only. Then she -stood, self-accused, filled with a sickening detestation of her own -weakness. That she was more than indifferent, personally,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> to Rex -Basire, that he would have been distasteful to her in the days when -she was fancy free, the girlish days before she first saw Gaston, -extenuated nothing to Dinah’s sensitive conscience. She had tacitly -condoned the folly of Rex Basire’s talk! Latent in her heart there -must be the same vanity, the same small openness to flattery, which -she had, without stint, condemned in women like Linda Thorne. Was this -self-knowledge a necessary sequel to the abundantly bitter lessons -which the last twenty-four hours had taught her?</p> - -<p>‘Do you forgive me, Mrs. Arbuthnot? Speak one word, only. I should -be the most miserable wretch living if I thought I had offended you, -consciously or unconsciously.’</p> - -<p>‘I have nothing to forgive.’ But the tone was unlike Dinah’s. She, -herself, could detect its artificial ring. ‘On the contrary, you have -done me a service. You have given me hot coffee when I was perishing -with cold.’</p> - -<p>A smile touched her lips, and, seeing this, and led away by her evasive -answer, Lord Rex took courage.</p> - -<p>‘Whatever evil luck the future may hold in store,’ he exclaimed, ‘I -shall have this moment to look back upon. “Just once,” I shall be able -to say, “on board a Channel steamer in a fog, the most beautiful of her -sex——”’</p> - -<p>‘Beg pardon, sir,’ cried a hearty voice, close at hand. ‘If you and the -young lady’ll just step aside from this rope, here! Beg pardon, little -Miss.’ A stalwart, rough-handed sailor touched Marjorie’s shoulder as -though he were touching a bird. ‘Trouble you all to move a bit out of -this, ladies! Captain’s just a-going to heave anchor. We want a clear -passage down the ship.’</p> - -<p>And as they moved, and while Marjorie was still rubbing the sleep from -her heavy eyes, began one of those gorgeous transformation pageants, -only to be witnessed in the fog districts of Europe. Through the -uncertain twilight, a violet streak that might be taken for coast, was -already<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span> visible on the port bow. Anon, to eastward, came a glow, felt -rather than seen by the eager watchers on board the <i>Princess</i>. A tint -of pinkish-yellow began to filter through the driving mists. Then the -wind strengthened. In another minute an enchantment of solemn flame and -amber rose over the distant table-land of Sark, a sensation of warmth -tingled in the air. The fog wreaths sank, as if drawn down by magic -hands into the waters, and Petersport, its windows twinkling, its red -roofs bathed in purest sunshine, lay disclosed.</p> - -<p>A quarter of an hour later the <i>Princess</i> was in harbour. Not a -carriage, not a luggage truck stood on the deserted quays. One -conveyance only was to be seen, Cassandra Tighe’s village cart. Her -faithful old factotum, Annette, stood at the pony’s head. Among the -smart, Anglicised young island servants it was the fashion to call -Annette a little weak-headed. Tears of joy streamed down the honest -creature’s cheeks—symptoms, one would say, of a strong heart rather -than a weak head—as Cassandra, scarlet cloak, nets, boxes, and all, -crossed the gangway. Mistress and serving-woman kissed each other on -the cheeks. Then arose the question of transport. How many souls could -one tiny village cart be made to carry?</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Verschoyle, of course, and Mrs. Arbuthnot. Oh, from Mrs. -Arbuthnot,’ cried Cassandra, ‘I will receive no denial. Miller’s Hotel -lies on the way to Mrs. Verschoyle’s house, and we would not for -worlds’—Cassandra glanced obliquely at Lord Rex Basire—‘take any of -our tired hosts out of their way. The young ladies can walk safely home -together in a band—a case of mutual chaperonage. All but Marjorie -Bartrand. You, Marjorie,’ said Miss Tighe, ‘are my bad sixpence. I -don’t know how to get you off my hands.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex rather faintly suggested that he should conduct Miss Bartrand -to the Manoir. But Marjorie laughed at the idea of wanting an escort. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I would walk, alone, from the pier to Tintajeux, any dark midnight in -December, and enjoy the walk. Many thanks, Lord Rex, but I prefer my -own company. I—I——</p> - -<p>She hesitated, stopped short. Geoffrey Arbuthnot had joined them. -His patient was going on well, would be carried by his mates to the -hospital as soon as the hospital doors were opened, some two hours -hence. ‘And I am free,’ added Geff. ‘Just in time, I hope, Miss -Bartrand, to walk out with you to Tintajeux?’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, no, Mr. Arbuthnot. Miss Bartrand would prefer her own company,’ -cried a quartette of mischievous girls’ voices in chorus.</p> - -<p>But Marjorie had generally the courage of her opinions. Geff Arbuthnot -got one glance from beneath a sweep of jetty lashes which told him he -was not rejected.</p> - -<p>Away started the village cart, Annette urging the pony to a gallop over -the rough Guernsey quays. In less than ten minutes’ time Dinah had -bidden good-bye to Mrs. Verschoyle and Cassandra, and with nerveless -touch was pushing back the garden gate of Miller’s Hotel.</p> - -<p>Mindful of Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot’s possible return, the servants had -left unbolted an unconspicuous side-door by which Gaston usually came -in when he was out late. Through this door Dinah entered. With weary -steps she made her way to her sitting-room. Then, drawing up the blind, -she looked round her, almost as one might look who, for the first time -after a death, stands face to face with the familiar objects of his -ruined life. Something had, for ever, died since she left this room. -Gaston’s sketch-books, some of his modelling tools, his chalks, were -scattered on a table. A white rose she gave him before they started, -yesterday, lay withered on the window-seat. Dinah took the flower -in her hand mechanically. Its indefinable, delicate aroma, Gaston’s -favourite scent, unlocked a thousand poignant associations in the poor -girl’s brain. Their days of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>courtship, their first married happiness, -nay, her own perfect unswerving loyalty, seemed all to have become as -falsehood to her. She had learnt her lesson over-well, had eaten of the -tree of knowledge, would walk in Eden, at her lover’s side, no more.</p> - -<p>It was a moment of such blank surrender, such total sense of loss, as -comes but once in a lifetime.</p> - -<p>Fortunately, the world’s average of hope remains constant, poor -consolation though an acquaintance with the law may be to the hopeless. -At this moment rapid steps approached along the pavement. There was the -sound of hearty youthful laughter. Looking forth, the rose crushed with -passion between her hands, Dinah beheld a young girl and a man pass the -window. It was Marjorie and Geff, starting away, with buoyant pace, in -the direction of Tintajeux. A prophecy of all the joint to-morrows of -their lives shone brightly on the faces of both.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXV</span> <span class="smaller">A TRAITRESS</span></h2> - -<p>But their speech betrayed them not. Roseate stage of the passion when -unacknowledged lovers are conscious each of the other’s secret, yet -talk upon commonplace subjects, look celibacy, stoutly, in the face, -still. If that hour only lasted! If the clover would not lose its first -honeyed sweetness, if the gold would stop on the wheat-fields, if the -thrushes would sing love-ditties till September, instead of becoming -respectable heads of families in June!</p> - -<p>‘You put forth to sea as a martyr, so I will not ask if you have -enjoyed yourself, Mr. Arbuthnot. I have. Without giving up a prejudice -against military folk in general,’ said Marjorie Bartrand, ‘I pronounce -the subalterns’ picnic to have been a success.’</p> - -<p>‘Success—looked at from whose focus, Miss Bartrand? Poor Jack, with -his twisted ankle, scarcely appreciated the cleverness with which we -managed to kill a day and night of our existence, depend upon it.’</p> - -<p>‘Nor did Mrs. Verschoyle. “If we had only been drinking tea,” so I -heard her make moan through the fog—“drinking tea as we used on -L’Ancresse Common, when the Colonel was in command!”’</p> - -<p>‘Miss Tighe, at least, enjoyed herself. Other conquests may have been -made,’ observed Geoffrey, a little inappositely. ‘Miss Tighe captured a -new butterfly! A<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> human being with a hobby possesses a joy that all the -sorrows and passions of our common nature cannot rob him of.’</p> - -<p>But neither Mrs. Verschoyle nor Cassandra served to open out wider -interests. The conversation flagged sensibly, and Marjorie’s pace -quickened. For the first time since she began to read with Geff, -Marjorie felt that she was at a loss for subjects in talking to her -tutor.</p> - -<p>‘I am afraid your cousin, Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot, did not take much -pleasure out of the day.’</p> - -<p>She made the remark after some deliberation, and without looking round -at Geoffrey’s face.</p> - -<p>‘It was a mistake for Dinah to go,’ Geoffrey answered, keeping his gaze -very straight before him. ‘Dinah’s life is a dull one. The kind of -Bohemian wandering existence which suits Gaston as an artist robs his -wife of the household tasks in which she could take honest heart. If I -were not so mortally afraid of you, Miss Bartrand——’</p> - -<p>‘<i>Of me?</i>’</p> - -<p>‘I should use a French phrase.’</p> - -<p>‘Please do! I delight in your command of modern languages.’</p> - -<p>‘I should call Dinah desœuvrée.’ Geff, you may be sure, pronounced the -word atrociously. ‘But she will never find compensation by frequenting -Gaston’s world. At this moment poor Dinah, I know, feels heavier in -spirit than if she had stayed quietly at home with her book and her -cross-stitch.</p> - -<p>‘She is beautiful beyond praise. In these regions one gets tired of -mere pink and white prettiness. It is a thing of the climate. Every -girl in the Channel Islands has her day of good looks. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s -is a face of which you could never grow tired.’</p> - -<p>‘I believe I am no judge of beauty. Gaston tells me frequently to -admire people who to my taste are horrible<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> monsters—“type Rubens,” -I think he calls them. It requires an education to admire the “type -Rubens.” One does not like a face, or one does like it—too much, -perhaps, for one’s own peace.’</p> - -<p>Geff spoke in a tone that brought the blood into Marjorie’s cheeks. The -girl had blushed with other feelings could she have guessed—she, who -would accept second love from no man—that at this moment his thoughts -had wandered to a remote Cambridgeshire village, and to the peace of -mind he lost there!</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot seems to me so thrown away—you must let me -speak, although I know it is a subject on which you can bear no -contradiction—so cruelly thrown away upon a man like your cousin -Gaston.’</p> - -<p>‘No other woman would suit my cousin Gaston half as well.’</p> - -<p>‘That is the true man’s way of putting things. “Suit Gaston.” Would -not a less Frenchified, less universally popular husband, suit Dinah -better?’</p> - -<p>‘I am quite sure Dinah, who should be a competent judge, would answer -“No.” Miss Bartrand,’ broke off Geoffrey, with notable directness and -point, ‘I wonder why you and I are discussing other people’s happiness -just at an hour when we ought to be thinking about our own?’</p> - -<p>The remark was made with Geff’s usual seriousness. But Marjorie, -reading between the lines, discerned some obvious joke therein. She -laughed until the high-banked road along which they walked re-echoed to -her fresh voice. Then starting at a brisk run, she took flight along -a foot-track which, diverging from the chaussée, led through a couple -of breast-high cornfields, across a corner of the common land, to -Tintajeux.</p> - -<p>Untaught daughter of nature though she was, Marjorie knew that every -moment brought the supreme one nearer in which Geoffrey Arbuthnot -must speak to her of love.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> Although the conclusion was foregone, -although her whole girlish fancy was won, she strove, with such might -as she possessed, to stave that moment off. For she knew that she was -a traitress to her cause, an apostate from the man-despising creed in -which, recollecting the sins of Major Tredennis, she had gloried.</p> - -<p>Fast as her limbs would bear her the girl sped on, Geff Arbuthnot, with -swinging, slow run, nicely adjusted to her pace, following half a dozen -yards behind. ‘Renegade!’ every bush along the familiar path cried -aloud to her. ‘Renegade,’ whispered the stream trickling down between -rushy banks, through beds of thick forget-me-nots, to the shore. The -cornfields were soon passed. They reached the breezy bit of moor above -the Hüets. The ravine where the water-lanes met lay in purple shadow: -all around was warm and joyous sunshine. A scent of fern and wild thyme -filled the air. Far away the tide curled round the dark base of the -Gros Nez range. The choughs and daws were flying across the face of the -cliffs. The gulls poised and swooped, flashes of intense white against -the background of green sea.</p> - -<p>For very want of breath Marjorie presently stopped short. Geff was at -her side in a couple of seconds. The young man caught her in his arms.</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Arbuthnot.... Sir!’</p> - -<p>‘I thought it my duty to steady you.’ He liberated her, partially, and -with reluctance. ‘Your pace, Miss Bartrand, is killing. Do the Guernsey -Sixties ever play hare and hounds? You would make a really respectable -hare, I can tell you.’</p> - -<p>‘I hope not.’ With a little air of ill-maintained stiffness Marjorie -contrived to put a few more inches between Geoffrey and herself. ‘Who -would wish to be anything really respectable, until one gets to the age -of the Seigneur, at least?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘We shall both of us be too stiff for hare and hounds by that time.’</p> - -<p>Perhaps this was the first hour of his life when Geoffrey Arbuthnot -talked nonsense with a child’s sense of enjoyment, a child’s immunity -from care. Hard facts, hard work, had made up the sum of his existence -hitherto. His staunchest friends complained that he was just a little -too grimly lord of himself. In his undergraduate days the men of his -year, despite their recognition of his muscular and sterling qualities, -had a suspicion that there lurked a skeleton in some hidden closet -of Arbuthnot of John’s, a memory, or a dread which rendered the easy -philosophy of youth impossible to him.</p> - -<p>Dinah, who knew him well, Gaston, who knew him better, never saw the -look on Geff Arbuthnot’s strong face which lit it in the red freshness -of this Guernsey morning.</p> - -<p>‘How shamefully we lose the best hours of the day!’ Marjorie’s hand -rested, as she spoke, on a wicket-gate, overgrown by sweetbriar, which -led into the Manoir gardens. ‘Did you ever smell cherry-pie so sweet -before?’ Heliotrope was a passion with old Andros Bartrand. Rows of the -odorous purple bloom, profusely flourishing in this generous climate, -garnished the borders, even, of his kitchen garden. ‘I, for one, mean -to mend my ways. I shall get up with the sun from this day forth.’</p> - -<p>‘Alter my hours, then. We could read together, out of doors, at -sunrise, just as well as in the schoolroom at eleven.’</p> - -<p>‘Do you think we should do much serious work, Mr. Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie asked the question with assurance, then coloured up to the -roots of her hair.</p> - -<p>‘Not unless breakfast were part of the programme,’ said Geoffrey, with -discernment. ‘At this moment,’ he added, ‘I am reminded of my schoolboy -days in the City. I recall,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> forcibly, the starvation pangs that used -to unman us on dreary winter mornings over the pages of our Latin -Grammar and Greek Delectus.’</p> - -<p>It was not a sentimental speech. Even when treading the primrose path, -nineteenth century young people are rarely indifferent, like the heroic -lovers of an older school, to their meals. And these young people had -really eaten nothing since yesterday’s dinner in Langrune. Confessing -that she too was famished, Marjorie proposed an instant sack of the -Tintajeux dairy and larder. There was a broken pane in one of the -dairy casements through which, luck befriending them, a bolt might be -drawn. From the dairy it would be only a step to the larder, and then, -having secured their booty, they could go forth and eat their breakfast -together in Arcadia.</p> - -<p>‘It is a bigger adventure, I can tell you, Mr. Arbuthnot, than any -which befel us on board the <i>Princess</i>. Grandpapa and Sylvestre keep -loaded carbines, and are quite careless as to time and place in the -matter of firing their weapons off.’</p> - -<p>‘I am not fond of carbines—still, hunger overcomes my natural -cowardice,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I would brave Sylvestre—I would brave the -Seigneur himself for a bowl of milk.’</p> - -<p>The dairy, almost hidden from view by thickly-planted alders, lay at -the northern end of the Manoir, immediately under a window of the old -Seigneur’s study.</p> - -<p>‘You hold your life in your hand,’ whispered Marjorie, as they stepped -noiselessly along. ‘Grandpapa is always astir by this hour. If he were -to look through his window, you see, he might fire first and recognise -you afterwards.’</p> - -<p>‘Although you are my accomplice?’</p> - -<p>‘He would be in the right, any way, according to old Norman law. What -is a Seigneur worth if he may not use firearms at discretion? We should -lodge the accident officially, au greffe, plead self-defence, if the -case ever came<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> to be heard, and pay an amende of a few hundred francs -to the island poor.’</p> - -<p>She gave a little shrug of her shoulders, which expressed that the -subject was disposed of satisfactorily.</p> - -<p>The broken pane, shrouded in green leaves, was conveniently near the -casement bolt. Sufficient space existed for Marjorie’s slim hand to -pass through the opening. There came a click as she slipped the bolt -back in its setting, a slight groaning sound as Geoffrey Arbuthnot -lifted the sash guardedly. Then the heiress of Tintajeux made good a -somewhat undignified entrance into her own house, her tutor keeping -watch for possible intruders outside.</p> - -<p>Oh! the ice-cool sweetness of this Guernsey dairy, the air entering -in free currents through gratings in either wall, the big pans filled -with golden cream, the butter of yesterday’s churning standing, in -tempting pats, upon the fair white shelves! Marjorie plunged a jug -boldly into a pan of milk only set last night. It seemed—as she -remembered Suzette, the fiery-tempered dairymaid—like a first plunge -into crime. Conscience, however, as occurs in weightier matters than -pillaging cream, hardened rapidly. To glide on tiptoe, from the dairy -to the larder, to cut some solid trenches from a new-baked raisin loaf -intended for the Seigneur’s lunch-table, was a minute’s work.</p> - -<p>Then Miss Bartrand handed out her spoils to Geoffrey Arbuthnot. She -cleared the window at a jump. The sash was stealthily closed, the -boughs were pulled back into place, and away the pair walked, across -the cedar-shadowed lawn, through the cool and dewy maze, to Arcadia.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXVI</span> <span class="smaller">THE LAST OF ARCADIA</span></h2> - -<p>Never could the spot have justified its name more thoroughly than at -this hour.</p> - -<p>The syringa bloom had fallen during the past week. No odour, save the -delicate, intangible freshness of sea and moor, met the sense. There -was not a wrinkle on the far Atlantic, not a cloud in the arch of -sky. They chose a plot of grass for their breakfast-table so small -of dimensions, it was not possible to sit far apart. They had their -platter of cake, their jug of milk in common. Surely no shepherd or -shepherdess in real Arcadia was ever lighter of spirits than were these -two!</p> - -<p>‘I have learned the taste of nectar,’ said Geff, when the wedges of -cake had vanished, when the milk-jug stood empty. ‘In repayment of your -hospitality, Miss Bartrand, I am going to bring a sharp accusation -against you.’</p> - -<p>‘Which is?’ Marjorie asked, her blue eyes meeting his with steadiness.</p> - -<p>‘The nectar you give may perhaps be poisoned, an enchanted philtre -taking the taste out of all one’s future life.’</p> - -<p>‘I should call that a cruel, an unjust accusation,’ cried the girl, her -cheeks ablaze. ‘Explain yourself! I don’t like a thing of this kind -said, even in jest.’</p> - -<p>‘I was never farther from jesting. Poison is a harsh<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> word, certainly: -still—still,’ broke off Geoffrey, with the abrupt courage of a shy -wooer, ‘do you think a man could ever be as well contented with the -grayness and plainness of English life after an hour spent here, in -Arcadia, at your side?’</p> - -<p>Her face grew graver and graver.</p> - -<p>‘If you mean this for nonsense talk, Mr. Arbuthnot, you offend me. I do -not care for flattery.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie Bartrand rose to her feet. As Geoffrey followed her example, -he took out his watch, then replaced it in his pocket without noticing -the hour. Both were a little pale; both had grown suddenly constrained. -An unaccustomed mist made the familiar objects round her seem blurred -in Marjorie’s sight.</p> - -<p>‘I must go back to the house,’ she faltered. ‘The servants will have -risen by this time. Of course one ought to feel tired, and to want -rest.’</p> - -<p>She stooped, under pretence of picking up the platter and jug, in -reality to hide her face from the man who loved her. But her fingers -were unsteady. An instant more, jug and platter both were slipping -from her grasp, when Geff, quick of eye and touch, caught them, and -Marjorie’s hand as well.</p> - -<p>She did not say again that nonsense talk offended her.</p> - -<p class="space-above">‘I should like you to understand one thing, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ It was -a good while later on when she told Geoffrey this. Her slight hands -rested unresistingly in his, the unmistakable print of love confessed -was on the faces of both. ‘Perhaps what I am going to say will make you -alter your opinion of me; it must be said, all the same. There shall be -no Bluebeard secrets between us to come to light hereafter. There was -a fortnight’s mistake in my life, once. I—I——’ the word seemed to -scorch her lips as they passed them, ‘have been engaged before.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘So the voice of gossip told me, long ago, Miss Bartrand.’</p> - -<p>In an instant Marjorie rested her cheek, with a child’s rather than a -woman’s gesture, against Geoffrey’s arm.</p> - -<p>‘You ought not to say “Miss Bartrand,” now. From this day until death -comes between us I must be “Marjorie” to you.’</p> - -<p>‘Marjorie,’ repeated Geff, with quick obedience. ‘What concern of mine -is it that you were engaged before you knew me? I dare say I shall be -an ogre of jealousy in the future. I cannot be jealous retrospectively. -The evil passion will date from this present hour, only.’</p> - -<p>But Marjorie insisted, whatever pain it cost her, on giving him the -details of her first engagement, yes, even to the ring she accepted, to -the tears she shed over Jock, the setter puppy. And would Geoffrey have -felt no concern, she asked him, with a flush, in conclusion, had things -been different? Could he have felt no retrospective jealousy if she had -happened to care for Major Tredennis?</p> - -<p>‘I like to think you did not care for him. I like supremely to know you -care for me,’ was Geoffrey’s answer.</p> - -<p>‘Because, of course, no human being can, honestly, love twice,’ -observed Marjorie Bartrand, with conviction. ‘It must be all or -nothing. I wish you to know, although I was weak enough to be engaged -to Major Tredennis and to take his presents, and to listen to his -French songs, it was nothing. I could not look into your face as I am -looking now, if I had cared the value of an old glove for him, or for -any man.’</p> - -<p>‘No human being can, honestly, love twice.’ So this was a fixed article -in Marjorie Bartrand’s belief! The reflection made Geoffrey pause. Of -the belief’s fallacy, his own state of feeling was pertinent evidence. -Four years ago he had loved Dinah Thurston with love as ardent as -was ever lavished by man on woman. And now this wayward Southern -child, with her terrible classics and worse<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> Euclid—this child, with -the deep, sweet eyes that promised so much for the future, and the -chiselled sun-kissed hands, and the mouth, and the hair—had filled his -heart to overflowing.</p> - -<p>A certain tacit disingenuousness seemed forced upon him. That -prettily-told episode of her first engagement, of the Major’s French -songs, his presents and his flatteries, was in absolute truth a -challenge. But Geoffrey’s conscience smote him not as he let the -challenge pass. His passion for Dinah was no ‘fortnight’s mistake.’ It -was a part of himself. In losing her he got a wound that he must carry -with him to the grave. He could no more have touched upon the theme, -lightly, than he could have spoken lightly of his dead mother or of the -childish prayers he used to repeat in the shelter of that mother’s arms.</p> - -<p>The girl he sought as his wife was exquisitely fresh and to be desired. -Already, in a brief half-hour, every hope of his future life seemed -to have some silken thread of <i>Marjorie</i> woven in its fabric. She was -unconnected with his past. The passion that had died, the regret that -would never die, were his own. Their history was not to be told, save -under dire necessity, of which the present rose-coloured moment gave no -forewarning.</p> - -<p>‘I knew from the first that you had been engaged to Major Tredennis, -and from the first,’ Geoffrey Arbuthnot drew her towards him, tenderly, -‘I began to fall in love with you.’</p> - -<p>‘Not quite from the first?’ Marjorie questioned, artfully ensuring a -repetition of the honeyed truth. ‘Not on that evening when you put me -through my intellectual paces, when you told me that my classics—save -the mark!—were stronger than my mathematics?’</p> - -<p>‘Yes, on that first evening. It was not because of your prettiness, -only, or your grace. It was not, even, because you snubbed me so -mercilessly. I don’t know why it was.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> It seemed that a new world had -suddenly opened out before me. As I returned along the Gros Nez cliffs, -the Tintajeux roses and heliotropes in my hand, I felt like walking -right above the mire and commonness of my former life.’</p> - -<p>‘And your thoughts?’</p> - -<p>‘Were of Tintajeux, every yard of the road. Yes, I am clear about it,’ -said Geff. ‘I began to fall in love from the first moment that I saw -your sweet Spanish face.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie shook her head at the compliment. Her looks were sceptical.</p> - -<p>‘Your manner, I confess, did not betray you, Mr. Arbuthnot,’ she -remarked drily.</p> - -<p>‘Did you condescend to notice my manner?’ Geff asked. ‘The whole of -that evening, remember, except perhaps for a minute, when you had -wounded yourself among the briars, you held me at arm’s-length.’</p> - -<p>‘I thought you a married man, sir. But I liked—I respected you, -brusque though you were, because I believed you had had the courage -of your opinions, the strength of mind to marry Dinah. How strange,’ -she went on, dreamily abandoning herself to his caress—‘how strange -it will be, when we are old people, to remember that our acquaintance -began in such a comedy of mistakes.’</p> - -<p>Because he had had the strength of mind to marry Dinah! The unconscious -irony of her speech smote Geff Arbuthnot’s heart. He had been credited, -then, as a virtue, with the fulfilment of that mad hope whose -frustration took the keenest edge off his life, the intoxication out of -his youth!</p> - -<p>‘One builds up an ideal, foolishly or wisely,’ went on Marjorie’s -happy voice. ‘I had built up mine since I was eight years old. Well, -when I heard of a Mr. Arbuthnot who was able enough to have taken high -honours, good enough to give up his time to others, brave enough to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> -have married a girl beneath himself in class for the excellent reason -that he loved her, when I heard these things—the personal histories -of the Arbuthnot cousins cleverly mixed and transposed by poor -Cassandra—I felt that my ideal was clothed with flesh and blood. What -could I do but care a little for my new tutor?’</p> - -<p>‘Married though the tutor was?’</p> - -<p>‘That is beside the question. I was thinking of his fine qualities -only. I held out my hand to him in friendship before we met, even, and -I—I know that I was never for one instant in love with Mr. Gaston -Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie Bartrand coloured with slightly illogical vexation.</p> - -<p>‘Are you quite sure that you are in love at all?’ asked Geoffrey.</p> - -<p>For a few seconds an uncertain smile trembled round her lips. She drew -back from him, half ignorant whether his question had been asked in -earnest; then, lifting her eyes, Marjorie encountered the beseeching -entreaty written on Geoffrey’s face. There came impulsive, over-quick -submission.</p> - -<p>‘I mean to love you with my whole soul some day. Does not that content -you? Well, then, I mean—if you will give me breathing space—to love -you now.’</p> - -<p>The midsummer morning was young, the blackbirds called aloud for joy in -the Tintajeux orchards, and Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s age was twenty-four. -Before they parted, ere Marjorie could repulse him or surrender, -he caught the girl in a swift embrace; he kissed her reverently, -passionately on the lips.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXVII</span> <span class="smaller">A STONE FOR BREAD</span></h2> - -<p>The kiss cost him dear. A fledgling girl is not, finally, to be -captured without a struggle, save by a master hand; and Geoffrey’s was -the hand of a prentice.</p> - -<p>Marjorie’s heart leaped with novel tenderness at the contact of his -lips. She suffered him to hold her in his arms. She watched him with -shy pride, with a child’s delight in the new sense of ownership, as he -walked away, along the accustomed path, from Tintajeux. Then, later, -when she found herself in her own little white-draped realm, when, -later still, she had slept and awakened and dressed herself for a fresh -day, the current of feeling swerved. She shivered at realising how -absolutely her life had become entangled with his. She was assailed -by reminiscences, all uncomfortable ones, of Major Tredennis. She was -sensible of a longing, that had almost passion in it, for the liberty -she had been betrayed into relinquishing.</p> - -<p>‘I mean, if you will give me breathing space, to love you now.’ -Here, surely, was what she needed—time for becoming used to the new -phenomenon of a lover.</p> - -<p>During the past fortnight, Geoffrey had filled every thought of her -waking hours; a haunting sense of his nearness had touched her dreams. -At this point she had fain stood still—six months—a year—tacitly -engaged, if need be, but on the same fraternal footing as when they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> -walked together yesterday among the Langrune cornfields. Why hurry into -commonplace? The Bartrands were not a kissing race. Geff ought to have -divined their likes and dislikes, thought the poor child petulantly. -And yet, pleaded another voice in this conscience of seventeen, the -kiss was sweet! It seemed that she had become, suddenly and distinctly, -two persons—one a girl weakly contented, as our grandmothers used to -be, at the prospect of husband and home and fireside; the other, a -strong-headed, Minerva-like young woman coolly criticising the question -of love and marriage from a vantage ground, and liking it ill. Which -of the two,—she asked herself this pretty often throughout the sunny -tedium of the long day,—which was the real, which the artificial -Marjorie Bartrand?</p> - -<p>It had been settled between them that Geoffrey should walk out to -Tintajeux before the Seigneur’s supper-hour that evening. When the time -came, when Geff approached the Manoir, treading lightly, as befits a -man whose heart wells over with hope, he found the friendly schoolroom -window bolted. No youthful flitting figure was to be seen among the -growing shadows of the garden; Arcadia was empty. Andros Bartrand, -leisurely pacing, a cigar between his lips, his terriers at his heels, -possessed the lawn.</p> - -<p>With a dim sensation of chill Geoffrey rang at the front door, and -was ushered in by Sylvestre, a whole lever de rideau in the old -butler’s expressive Norman smile, to the drawing-room. Here Marjorie, -mutinous of spirit, but with a tenderly blushing face, awaited him. The -western lights filtered through the half-closed Venetians. Above the -cedar-shade gleamed as unstained a sweep of Atlantic as on the first -evening that Geoffrey visited Tintajeux. The Petit Trianon baskets were -filled with glorious Ducs de Rohan. The Cupids were hurling rose leaves -at the guillotine. The miniature Bartrands, imperturbable as becomes -mortals who have proved the nothingness of love<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> as of life, seemed to -glance with rather more philosophic amiability than usual from their -frames.</p> - -<p>Well, all that Geoffrey saw or thought of was Marjorie. She looked -prettier than he had ever seen her look, as she moved forward to -greet him—softer, more womanly. For the girl, while she chafed, in -imagination, under her new yoke, had spent a good hour before her glass -ere her lover came. She had put on her one white dress of regulation -length, had clasped an old-fashioned Spanish necklace round her throat, -had pinned a little bunch of heliotrope and sweetbriar, mindful of the -morning’s dominant odours, in her breast.</p> - -<p>A sense of his immense good fortune in having won her filled Geoffrey -Arbuthnot’s heart. He took both her hands, looking down at their -slender carving, with the connoisseurship of possession. He raised them -within an inch of his lips.</p> - -<p>‘I hope, Mr. Arbuthnot, you will pardon me for receiving you here?’ -Marjorie asked him this with forced composure. ‘But I thought—I was -not sure whether we were to read to-night or not.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey Arbuthnot involuntarily drew back. The glance which met him -from his new sweetheart’s eyes was, he felt, cold. During an instant’s -space, mastered by one of those shadowy infidelities of which we repent -ere they take substance, Geff bethought him of eyes that never could -look cold, in happiness or in trouble—English-coloured eyes from -which, perhaps, the fire, the mind of Marjorie’s sapphire glance, were -wanting.</p> - -<p>‘I thought,’ she went on, with almost defiant ease, ‘that after -yesterday’s idleness, our reading to-night must be a sham, so it would -be unnecessary to see you in the schoolroom.’</p> - -<p>‘I can guess what that means,’ said Geoffrey, without letting loose her -hands. ‘You have no work ready for me.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I have done some Virgil, fuller, I know, of faults than ever, but I -thought, for one evening, sir, we might let Greek and Latin go.’</p> - -<p>‘Why not let them go for ever—as things that have had their use!’ -cried Geoffrey Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘As things that have had their use? Are you speaking of <i>my classics</i>? -You, who told me, a fortnight ago, I might come out in the third class -of a tripos?’</p> - -<p>‘A fortnight ago is not to-day.’</p> - -<p>‘Your good opinion has had time to cool? Pray be frank, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ -It was in her mood to quarrel—at least, to reach the brink of a -quarrel with him, if ’twere only for sweet relenting’s sake. ‘I don’t -one bit come up to your ideal of a model woman?’</p> - -<p>‘I abhor models, irrespective of their sex. Marjorie, why are we -talking in this strain?’ And now her fingers reached his lips. ‘I want -you to be like nothing, to be nothing, but yourself.’</p> - -<p>‘And I, myself, shall never alter. I may be too dull-witted to pass -the entrance examination for Girton. That will be my misfortune. I -shall always be athirst for knowing things, for seeing life—on its -seamy side, especially—with my own eyes, for getting to the real worst -of everything! And I shall always,’ added Marjorie, with a look that -indubitably had in it the nature of a challenge, ‘retain my Bartrand -temper.’</p> - -<p>‘I have a temper also,’ answered Geff, drawing her a little closer to -him. ‘Do not omit that item from our prospects of future joy. You are -passionate. I am unforgetting. Stormy elements, these, to be brought -into daily, hourly contact under the same roof.’</p> - -<p>‘And has your ideal of life always been one of conflict?’ asked -Marjorie.</p> - -<p>At the domestic picture, quietly touched in by Geoffrey, the lines of -her lips had softened against her will. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I have had no experience save in conflict,’ answered Geff Arbuthnot, -truthfully.</p> - -<p>‘When you were a really young man, four or five years ago, did you look -forward to the Taming of a Shrew as a likely sequel to your term of -happy bachelorhood?’</p> - -<p>The question was jestingly meant, lightly spoken. But Geoffrey’s dark -cheek reddened.</p> - -<p>‘Oh, if I have said anything indiscreet, forgive me.’ Marjorie watched -him with attention. ‘You must grow used, remember, to the faults of my -fine qualities. One of these is inquisitiveness. It would delight me to -know, precisely, what you used to think and feel when you were twenty -years old. I suppose you were not so preternaturally wise, always, as -you are now?’</p> - -<p>‘I have never been wise at any period of my life,’ said Geoffrey -Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘But when you were nineteen, say, what did you think, what did you -hope, what did you look forward to?’</p> - -<p>‘What I hoped, what I looked forward to, was—madness.’ The unguarded -answer broke from him instantly. ‘If you would be kind to me, -Marjorie,’ he added, ‘let the past rest. There is enough, a great deal -more than enough, to be grateful for in the present.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie, on this, drew herself to her full height. She looked at him -with the instinct of a child who would unriddle a secret by his own -close reading of another’s face. She freed her hands abruptly from his -clasp.</p> - -<p>‘What you hoped, what you looked forward to was—madness! Do you mean -in regard of University laurels?’</p> - -<p>‘We are not talking of University laurels. We are talking,’ said Geff, -honestly, ‘of the happiness beyond happiness, the companionship for -life of two human souls that suit each other.’</p> - -<p>‘And your hopes of these things,’ her lips whitened as she repeated the -words, ‘were madness? Singular <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>contradiction! You have told me that -yours has been a secluded student’s life, that, until a fortnight ago, -you never cared for any society but that of men?’</p> - -<p>‘Whatever I have told you has been true,’ said Geff, with firmness. -Then, instantly relenting, ‘Do not let us have a quarrel,’ he pleaded, -‘on this first day that we are sweethearts.’</p> - -<p>She turned from him, indignant, breathless.</p> - -<p>‘If we quarrel over realities, Mr. Arbuthnot, the pity is we did not -look realities in the face before becoming sweethearts.’</p> - -<p>‘Miss Bartrand—Marjorie!’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, I am thoroughly in earnest. This morning, when first I knew you -cared for me a little, I was open with you. I told you what had to be -said about Major Tredennis, and you forgave me. Bluebeard secrets, bad -always, must be doubly so between people who mean to spend their lives -together. I told you of my miserable weakness——’</p> - -<p>Her frank girlish face burned so hotly that Geff came to her relief.</p> - -<p>‘You were very open with me, Marjorie, true and straightforward, as it -is your nature to be.’</p> - -<p>‘I did not hide from you, whatever the shame of it, that I had bound -myself once before.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey was no social diplomatist. He might, otherwise, with mournful -veracity have retorted that he had been a free man always. But the -statement would have implied a prevarication, and it was not in -Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s upright soul to prevaricate.</p> - -<p>‘You told me you had been engaged. You also gave an opinion as to its -being impossible for people, honestly, to love twice.’</p> - -<p>‘Most certainly I did. I never cared more for Major Tredennis than I do -for this flower I wear—ask Mrs. Arbuthnot! I found courage yesterday -to talk to her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> about that wretched time—and I <i>do</i> care for you,’ -looking straight from her heart at her lover. ‘And it is utterly -impossible for any woman or any man to love twice.’</p> - -<p>‘You think so? I ought to have disagreed with you at once,’ struck in -Geff, promptly. ‘I ought to have told you this morning what I hold to -be truth.’</p> - -<p>‘And this is?’</p> - -<p>‘That women and men may love a second time honestly, although once, -only, with success.’</p> - -<p>She turned away doubtfully, with lowered lids, hesitating a few -moments. Then: ‘Love twice? and why not love three, four, five times?’ -she questioned, looking up at him with a glance of fire. ‘Why hold at -all by constancy, or honour, or good faith? What mystic limitation is -there in the number two?’</p> - -<p>‘A woman troubled is Heaven’s fairest work spoiled.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey believed as devoutly as do most men in the aphorism. But -Marjorie was not a woman, he remembered, only an impetuous girl, with -Southern blood in her veins, with the Bartrand pride on her lips, with -all sweet and modest and maidenly superstitions in her heart.</p> - -<p>He felt he had never loved her more dearly than in this very outburst -of unreasoning, childish wrath against himself.</p> - -<p>‘I know nothing about three, four, or five times. You persisted, -recollect, in making me talk of an uninteresting subject, my own past -life, and——’</p> - -<p>‘And am I to think—are you putting me to the humiliation, now too -late,’ she exclaimed, the thought of his kiss returning to her, ‘the -humiliation of feeling, here, under my grandfather’s roof, that I am -offered your love at second-hand?’</p> - -<p>A few instants ago Geoffrey’s impulse had been to take her in his arms, -to forgive her in spite of her injustice! But her tone had changed. -It was hard, suspicious. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> bespoke pride, not only of race, but of -money. All the inherited baser possibilities of her nature had, under -the moment’s white anger, gained the ascendancy in poor Marjorie’s -breast.</p> - -<p>Geff was sensible of them and recoiled. For the first time to-day, -it occurred to him that the girl he sought to marry was not only a -Bartrand but an heiress, his superior in position as in purse.</p> - -<p>‘I don’t like to hear you say “humiliation.” Such love as I feel for -you,’ confessed Geoffrey Arbuthnot, nobly and simply, ‘could humiliate -no woman.’</p> - -<p>‘And if it comes at second-hand, if some one else before my time has -appraised its value, and flung it aside?’</p> - -<p>‘Miss Bartrand, you must explain to me what you mean by that question.’</p> - -<p>‘I mean,’ flamed forth Marjorie, her whole angry soul throbbing in her -voice, ‘that I must be first—first, Mr. Arbuthnot, in the heart of the -man I marry.’</p> - -<p>‘Would you not be first in mine?’</p> - -<p>‘I should give him all. I could accept nothing short of all in return. -If, afterwards, I found that I had been deceived—you understand me, if -I knew that I had been chosen from other motives than love—I should -make his life and my own most miserable!’</p> - -<p>And, indeed, the passion of her voice and face gave to the prophecy -only too much an air of certitude.</p> - -<p>Geoffrey Arbuthnot walked to a neighbouring window. Pushing back the -half-closed shutters he saw before him a wide expanse of the Manoir -gardens; through an arch of cedar boughs he caught a goodly vista of -fields and orchards beyond. And all that he looked upon would one day -be Marjorie’s! With crushing force came the conviction that he had -fallen into a desperate error, had walked blindfolded, a second time, -into a Fool’s Paradise. Marjorie Bartrand’s youth, the intimacy into -which they had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> thrown, his own absolute want of premeditation -might be excused. The facts were there, looking, as disagreeable -facts have a knack of doing, with transparent clearness in his face. -He had walked into a Fool’s Paradise. To accept the position, give -Marjorie Bartrand back her freedom, unconditionally, were the moment’s -immediate and exceeding bitter duties. The wilful hot-headed child of -seventeen—conquered at one moment, at the next resisting—repented -her, already, of her bargain. Let that bargain be cancelled.</p> - -<p>‘Your life shall never become miserable through fault of mine, Miss -Bartrand.’ Turning round, Geff looked at her gravely. ‘Pardon me -whatever foolish words I spoke this morning. In a week or two forget my -existence! You are bound to me by no promise——’</p> - -<p>‘And it costs you nothing to give me up? You can talk of forgetting in -this airy fashion?’ interrupted Marjorie, with vehement recollection of -her own surrender. ‘Then you never sought me from liking. I have had a -second experience of the same cruel story. The acres of Tintajeux, few -though they be, are matters, it seems, better worth caring for than -Marjorie Bartrand, herself.’</p> - -<p>From her cradle to her grave it would be safe to aver that speech so -ignoble never issued from Marjorie Bartrand’s lips. She recognised its -meanness before the last word was spoken. Her cheeks crimsoned. She -could have flung herself at the feet of the lover her suspicion had -dishonoured.</p> - -<p>‘I was wrong ... forgive me for speaking like this,’ she began to -stammer brokenly.</p> - -<p>But Geoffrey Arbuthnot could not condone a paltry accusation, even from -her. With two strides he reached the girl’s chair. He stood before her, -pale and strongly moved. She hardly recognised the expression of his -face.</p> - -<p>‘And so you think that I, with the full use of my muscles and brain, -sought to marry you for money’s sake,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> the poor little handful of -money that goes with Tintajeux Manoir. The slight to my intelligence -is severe. Had I been a fortune-hunter, Miss Bartrand, I should have -struck for a larger stake.’</p> - -<p>‘Then why did you look at me? Why did you not let me go my way?’ She -clasped her hands together, piteously. ‘For you have never loved me. -You confessed as much just now?’</p> - -<p>‘Did I? I can only remember a confession in which I spoke the truth—a -confession you believed this morning,’ added Geoffrey, with as much -steadiness as he could muster.</p> - -<p>‘All this is waste of time,’ she said, with a miserable little laugh. -‘We have the habit of plain speaking—you and I. Let us keep it up to -the last. Your heart is not your own, Mr. Arbuthnot. You have liked -some other person better than you like me. <i>Have</i> liked, did I say? You -like her, I doubt not, to this day.’</p> - -<p>‘This day when I have asked you, wisely or unwisely, to be my wife?’</p> - -<p>‘If your conscience were clear you could not trifle with me like this. -You would say No, or Yes.’</p> - -<p>And, thus urged, Geoffrey Arbuthnot said ‘Yes’—with unmitigated -frankness, without a hint either at penitence or remorse. Long ago, in -his undergraduate days—thus the confession ran—he had fallen in love -... possibly as men do not fall in love twice during their lives! He -was rough, plain, a student as Marjorie saw him now, no suitor to win a -young girl’s fancy. And so——</p> - -<p>‘And so,’ broke in Marjorie with trembling interest, ‘she was false to -you?’</p> - -<p>‘She was neither false nor true,’ he answered; ‘I had no place at -all in her heart. My own best friend’—and here Geff’s voice sank, -each word of his avowal seemed wrung from him with pain—‘became, -unconsciously, my rival.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Your best friend,’ stammered Marjorie, upon whom a first flicker of -light was beginning to dawn.</p> - -<p>‘Best, then, and I hope for ever—just as she whom he married will, -I know, be my ideal of all sweet and womanly qualities till I die. -Although I lost her,’ exclaimed Geff Arbuthnot, ‘I owe her everything! -It is using a commonplace to say that I would at any hour start to the -other side of the world, if by so starting I could confer on her the -smallest service. But it is the truth.’</p> - -<p>He was a man, ordinarily, of demeanour so reticent, of emotions so -controlled, that this little outburst struck on Marjorie Bartrand with -double force. Alas! there could not be room for another instant’s -doubt. She recalled the morning when she had lectured her tutor on his -frivolity, she remembered his embarrassment when she spoke of Dinah as -his wife—his absence of mind, his pallor. The story of his past life -was laid open, a clear page, for her to read. The confession of her -engagement to Major Tredennis had met with an over-full equivalent.</p> - -<p>‘At last, then,’ she murmured, ‘I have got to the truth of things. It -might have been juster if I had not been deceived so long.’</p> - -<p>‘Will you hear me out to the end?’ There was a ring of command rather -than of pleading in Geoffrey’s tone. ‘Four years ago it was my fate, I -can never say my misfortune, to come across a girl whom it was madness -for me to love. I lost. I suffered. But many a man has met with a like -overthrow, and got firmly to his feet in time. I am very firm on my -feet,’ said Geff Arbuthnot. ‘I have grown young again in knowing you. -If you had chosen to become my wife, I could have loved you well. -Yes, I do love you—too well! Now, when it seems we are like bidding -good-bye for ever.’</p> - -<p>And Geoffrey rested his hands for an instant upon the girl’s graceful -down-bent head. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘And the dream is over—over.’ She repeated the words huskily, not so -much thinking of Geff as seeking to bring home to herself the extremity -of her own pain. ‘We are to be nothing to each other from this hour -forth, not even friends.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey Arbuthnot walked a few steps away. The movement was prompted -by a definite and conscious weakness. This saying good-bye for ever was -no easy thing, he found, so long as his hand rested upon the silken -hair, so long as the slender figure palpitated close to him, the -heliotrope sent its odour to his brain from Marjorie’s breast.</p> - -<p>‘The dream is over, because you discovered it to be a dream. You must -acknowledge, Miss Bartrand, that you have taken the matter wholly out -of my keeping.’</p> - -<p>‘We might see each other, as friends,’ she stammered—true to a -time-worn instinct of her sex, offering a stone for bread, friendship -to the man she loved, and who loved her. ‘Surely our work need not be -dropped because of this I As long as you stay in the island you will -come out to read with me at Tintajeux?’</p> - -<p>‘I shall return to Tintajeux, once more, after to-night,’ was Geff -Arbuthnot’s answer. ‘I shall return to shake hands with the Seigneur, -and to be paid my money. Good-bye for ever are hard words to speak,’ he -went on. ‘But we shall not make the hardness easier by trying to shirk -them. We have, virtually, said good-bye already.’</p> - -<p>‘And we are never to be nearer reconciliation than this? You are not a -man to change?’</p> - -<p>There came a furtive play of feeling upon her mouth. Deep in her heart -lurked a formless hope that Geoffrey was not in earnest, that at a -smile, a touch of hers, he must yield, if she so willed it.</p> - -<p>‘I am a man,’ he answered, ‘to change upon the day you bid me do so. -If, at some future time, you think less vile things of me——’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Mr. Arbuthnot!’</p> - -<p>‘Well, or without that. If it should be your whim, in some idle hour, -to remember my existence—dare I say, to send me a flower you have -worn, a bit of ribbon, a sheet of paper with a single relenting word -written on it—you will have only to address your envelope to St. -John’s, Cambridge.’</p> - -<p>‘And now, for the remainder of this summer?’ asked Marjorie, drear -visions rising before her of a silent schoolroom, of work laboured -through without the poignant desire of Geoffrey’s praise. ‘Is it -possible that you mean—that you have no other course than to leave -Guernsey at once?’</p> - -<p>Something in her manner made it seem that she referred their quarrel -to him for final arbitration. But Geff Arbuthnot tried his utmost to -congeal. His present temper indisposed him for compromise. He had -been cut to the quick by that one scornful imputation, that one base -utterance of Marjorie’s lips—‘The acres of Tintajeux, few though -they be, are matters better worth caring for than Marjorie Bartrand, -herself.’</p> - -<p>He felt it impossible to forgive her.</p> - -<p>‘I shall certainly not leave Guernsey without calling on the -Seigneur—to be paid.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey was not superior to a feeling of pleasure in the repetition -of these words. They were horribly cruel ones. It might well be, -afterwards, that he remembered with remorse how the girl’s slender -figure drooped, how her cheeks burned, how her hands fell listlessly -upon her knee, one in the other’s palm.</p> - -<p>‘And then—for the rest of the vacation, what are your plans?’ she -repeated, presently.</p> - -<p>‘I have no plans, now. The summer has gone out of my year! Maybe I -shall follow in the footsteps of Gaston and his wife. Dinah, I know, -would not be sorry to leave this place.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p> - -<p>He spoke without premeditation. It had, perhaps, not occurred to Geff -Arbuthnot’s coarser masculine perception that his meagre outline of the -past had revealed a secret of which Dinah was, herself, ignorant. To -Marjorie, in her despair, the mention of Dinah’s name was a last blow: -the heavier, perhaps, in that Geoffrey gave it with such calmness, was -prepared, as a matter of course, to seek refuge in the friendship of -the fair and gentle woman to whom, although she had never loved him, he -‘owed everything.’</p> - -<p>‘Or I may cross at once to England. That is likeliest. In England one -can always fall back on work. I have had enough of idleness. A boat -calls here on Sunday morning that will suit me well enough.’</p> - -<p>‘On Saturday, then, grandpapa and I will look for your visit. Could you -not,’ suggested Marjorie, with magnanimity, ‘ask Mr. and Mrs. Gaston -Arbuthnot to come with you to Tintajeux?’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey had a moment’s hesitation. There was a note in her fresh and -youthful voice which he had never before distinguished, and which, I -think, wrung his heart. But he would not allow himself to soften. He -would not forgive her until she repented her of the thing which she had -uttered.</p> - -<p>‘Gaston has not returned, Miss Bartrand. There are heavy fog-banks -still at sea. The Cherbourg boat was not signalled when I left town, -and Dinah—well, Dinah, of course, will be miserable until she sees her -husband’s face.’</p> - -<p>Geff took up his hat in readiness for departure, and Marjorie rose from -her chair.</p> - -<p>‘The Cherbourg boat will be back before Saturday, but, in any -case, grandpapa and I will count upon seeing <i>you</i>. Good-night, -Mr. Arbuthnot. This is not your last visit to Tintajeux. I do not -acknowledge that we are saying good-bye for ever.’</p> - -<p>She kept herself under singular control. For a second<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> or two she -yielded her cold hand, bravely, into Geff’s keeping. As he left the -drawing-room she accorded him a lofty <i>minuet de la cour</i> curtsey, -learnt, in her babyhood, from her first French governess. Then, when -he was gone, when the figure she had watched so often had rounded the -last turning in the Tintajeux avenue, the poor child, with leaden -steps, made her way to the schoolroom. Sinking in her place beside the -ink-stained table, Marjorie Bartrand rested her face upon a heap of -books, then burst into a very thunder-shower of tears.</p> - -<p>Her scene with Geoffrey had swept away all sense of the dual -personality that troubled her before his coming. The strong-minded -Minerva, criticising love and marriage with acerbity, had vanished, -and in her place was a commonplace little girl sobbing her heart out, -as Rosie Verschoyle, as Ada de Carteret might have done, for the -sweetheart her own unruly tongue had estranged.</p> - -<p>If Geoffrey would but come back, take her in his arms, kiss and forgive -her! So, dumbly, cried Marjorie’s heart.</p> - -<p>But supper-time came and went. The sun dipped under the fading sea -line, the twilight waned, the yellow stars stole forth, one by one, -from the gray: Geoffrey Arbuthnot returned not.</p> - -<p>She had acted with family pride, perhaps from virtue, conceivably from -jealousy, without doubt, as became a Bartrand. These cold consolations -were all that the universe, just at present, seemed likely to offer.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXVIII</span> <span class="smaller">TEMPTATION</span></h2> - -<p>When the Cherbourg boat reached Guernsey, twenty-four hours behind her -time, no Dinah, with radiant expectant face, waited on the quay to bid -Gaston Arbuthnot good-morning.</p> - -<p>It was the first occasion since their marriage that she had in like -manner failed. After ever so short a separation it was Dinah’s habit to -go bravely to the fore on harbour side or platform with a welcome for -the husband she loved. No Dinah was to be seen this morning. And Gaston -Arbuthnot’s spirit sat more lightly on its throne by reason of her -absence.</p> - -<p>He was honestly glad to return. A day and a night’s detention on a -rock, with a thick sea-fog, and without one’s dressing-case, was a -test, of sentiment and of friendship alike, which Gaston had felt to -be beyond his strength. But it was a relief to him that poor Dinah, -effusive, reproachful—Dinah, half sunshine, half tears—should not be -on the pier to enact a little scene of domestic interest beneath the -sharp, uncomprehending eyes of Linda Thorne.</p> - -<p>‘Useless to ask you to breakfast with us,’ murmured that lady, from -beneath her treble gauze mask, as she and Gaston were passing across -the gangway. ‘Dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, I am sure, will be in a fever of -anxiety about your return.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Scarcely. Every one in Guernsey must have known that fog detained us. -If you will be at home this afternoon,’ Gaston added, when their hands -met at parting, ‘I will give you the latest bulletin as to Dinah’s -condition.’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, I make no promises,’ cried Linda, carelessly. ‘“He who will not -when he may”—you know the rest of the proverb. Long before five -o’clock to-day some tragic event may have changed us’—in after times -this prophecy, made in jest, might possibly return to Linda Thorne’s -memory—‘changed us for ever into enemies. Robbie, love, accept my arm. -As you are quite determined that two shillings’ worth of cab would -bring us to bankruptcy, we will return to our home and infant on foot.’</p> - -<p>Doctor and Mrs. Thorne turned, on leaving the quay, into a narrow -street leading towards the Old Town and The Bungalow. Gaston Arbuthnot, -with the lightheartedness born of recovered freedom, ran quickly up the -hundred-and-eighty steps that formed the shortest cut from the pier -road to Miller’s Hotel. At the summit of these steps a new temptation -assailed him in the person of old Colonel de Gourmet, the bachelor -proprietor of the most luxurious little house, the best cellar, and the -best cook in the Channel Archipelago.</p> - -<p>‘Why, Arbuthnot! Some one told me you were at the bottom of the sea. -You and Linda Thorne. Locksley Hall sort of thing! So goes the story of -the moment. You are the very man I could have wished to meet, sir. Come -back to breakfast with me. I have two of the finest mullet ever caught -in this Channel, and Kutscheel, my black fellow, could dress a mullet -with Brillat Savarin himself. Now, I’ll hear of no refusal.’</p> - -<p>‘I have a wife, Colonel. The argument, naturally, does not carry weight -with you. Still, it is an argument. I have a wife, and she expects me.’</p> - -<p>‘Send up a line from my house telling Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span> Arbuthnot where you are. -I positively wouldn’t waste such fish on a man of less cultivated -taste.’ In the Colonel’s lack-lustre eye there came a momentary glow of -feeling. ‘In my time we used to look upon a palate—a palate, sir, as -one of the essentials of a gentleman. The young men nowadays don’t know -a mullet from a stickleback.’</p> - -<p>Well, reader, a dual breakfast with old de Gourmet was a temptation, -after its sort, that Gaston Arbuthnot ranked high. The Colonel’s -admirably arranged house was screened by just sufficient leafy shadow -from the eastern sun, refreshed by just sufficient air on the side -where it opened to the sea. The Colonel’s black fellow was a finished -artist; his cellar the long result of half a lifetime. To Gaston—true -Parisian in all the more important business of existence—a noontide -breakfast was the crowning meal of the day. Man dines, he would -contend, as dogs or horses feed, because his body needs replenishment. -Breakfast, with its delicate light dishes, fine wine, fruits and -coffee,—breakfast succeeded by a prime cigar, morning sunshine, and -morning talk—is, essentially, a refined, a human repast. The nine -o’clock tea and toast, the marmalade, bloaters, or bacon, sacred to -the British householder, were scarcely less horrible to him than the -buckwheat cakes and maple syrup, the porridge, the pie, the ‘shad’ of -American breakfast-tables.</p> - -<p>‘If you can give me half an hour’s law, Colonel de Gourmet, time to -have a bath, to get a change of apparel, and hear my wife’s version of -the Locksley Hall episode, I will come to you. Otherwise, I know the -nature of mullet, and——’</p> - -<p>‘I appreciate your delicacy, my dear sir. But my black fellow and I -thoroughly understand each other. Those mullet,’ said the Colonel, with -a quiver of the lips, ‘are now reposing, each in its paper shroud, -buttered,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> flavoured to a nicety. They will not approach the fire -until Kutscheel sees me turn yonder corner beneath the Arsenal gates. -I will wait for you here—putting the last finishing touch, alas! to a -poorish appetite—as I limp up and down in the shade. But don’t exceed -thirty-five minutes. We owe it to our cook, a human being with passions -and weaknesses like unto our own, to have a conscience in these -matters.’</p> - -<p>A minute or two later, Gaston’s alert step had brought him to the outer -gate of Miller’s Hotel. He loitered for a few seconds in the garden, -enjoying its double sensation of warmth and flower scents. Then, with -hesitation for which he would have found it hard to account, Gaston -Arbuthnot entered the house. He traversed a passage, and opened the -door of Dinah’s sitting-room.</p> - -<p>It was empty. Her work-frame was shrouded in silver paper. A bouquet -of hot-house flowers lay, with petals browned and faded, on the table, -a card of Lord Rex Basire’s beside them. Gaston felt that the room had -not been lived in since they left it last on Wednesday morning.</p> - -<p>‘Madame had gone out,’ volunteered the black-eyed French waitress, -peeping in at him through the half-open door—the black-eyed waitress -building up dramatic likelihoods on the spot, possibly from the -recollection of Madame’s tears of yesterday, possibly from Milor’s -neglected bouquet on the table, possibly from a certain blank look on -Arbuthnot’s face. ‘Madame had gone out—there was a good hour at least. -Madame had left no message for Monsieur.’</p> - -<p>For the first time since their marriage, thought Gaston Arbuthnot, not -without a pang, as he walked off in silence to his dressing-room!</p> - -<p>Well, there must be a first time, he supposed, in all one’s -disillusionments. From to-day forth, he need never more expect a -passionate greeting, perhaps never dread<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> a passionate reproach from -Dinah. And it was best so. Gaston had seen Clesinger’s rival statues -of Rachel; one, the ‘Phèdre,’ the other, ‘Lesbia with her Sparrow.’ He -infinitely preferred the Lesbia, sparrow, silliness, and all. Still, -mused Mr. Arbuthnot, whose emotions had a trick of mounting quickly -from the heart to the head, it might be a little stroke of wise and -kindly diplomacy for him to exhibit discerning mortification, make -Dinah feel that she had been forgetful of him. <i>Forgetful!</i> For the -first time, surely, since that morning in the rustic Cambridgeshire -church when she walked down the aisle, in her white straw bonnet, her -simple cambric gown—his wife.</p> - -<p>Accordingly, when he re-entered their sitting-room presently—Dinah -absent still—Mr. Arbuthnot pencilled the following note, curtly -amative, as was ever one of Captain Steele’s to his Prue!</p> - -<blockquote><p>‘<span class="smcap">My dearest Girl</span>—My existence, I perceive, has slipped -your memory. But I do exist. I am, at this moment, going out to -breakfast—not in high spirits.</p> - -<p class="right">‘Your devoted<span class="s3"> </span><br />‘G. A.’</p></blockquote> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot pencilled this note. Then, with affections, it must be -confessed, undividedly centred on red mullet, he started off, lightsome -of mien, elastic of step, in the direction of Colonel de Gourmet’s -house. At the first turning of the road a girl with golden hair, with -a face fair, despite its pallor, as the summer morning, stood opposite -to him—Dinah. A basket of strawberries hung on Mrs. Arbuthnot’s arm, a -bunch of white moss-roses, her husband’s favourite flower, was between -her hands.</p> - -<p>‘Dinah, my love, this is fortunate. I have been hunting everywhere -for you,’ said Gaston, hitting without effort<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> upon one of those airy -little nothings which float men of his weight, like corks, over half -the whirlpools of life.</p> - -<p>‘I am glad, in spite of all that has happened, to see you back.’</p> - -<p>And Dinah, who had never uttered an airy nothing since she was born, -looked hard at him. Traces, unmistakable, of tear-shedding gave an -expression Gaston Arbuthnot liked not to her eyes.</p> - -<p>‘Yet you did not show your gladness by meeting me on the pier—grim -and dirty objects we must all have been after our twenty-four hours’ -discomfort! Perhaps I deserved to be neglected,’ said Gaston, in a tone -of resignation. ‘But remember, darling, I am not accustomed to miss -your face when I have been away. The punishment, coming immediately -after a course of Alderney and fog, struck me as rough.’</p> - -<p>‘Don’t talk of punishment,’ Dinah answered, her voice betraying the -strong effort by which she kept it controlled. ‘Your staying away has -been hard to bear ... and now, now I wish to forget everything but that -you are back safe.’</p> - -<p>‘And what did you do with your time, yesterday? Of course you were not -anxious. You knew that fog, and fog alone, was keeping me in Alderney.’</p> - -<p>‘Yesterday was the blackest day I have ever lived through.’</p> - -<p>And Dinah lifted her face, courting rather than turning from her -husband’s scrutiny.</p> - -<p>‘Blackest? Why, I thought you had had sunshine in Guernsey, that the -fog concentrated itself with vile partiality upon our horrible rock -yonder! And what did you do with your time, then,’ went on Gaston, with -unabated cheerfulness. ‘Where was Geoffrey?’</p> - -<p>‘I did not think of Geoffrey. I had heart for nothing but to stay in my -own room.’</p> - -<p>‘Substituting tea for dinner, close air for oxygen, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> Woman loves to -do when she is in trouble—or has manufactured trouble for herself. And -had you no visitors at all to lighten your darkness?’</p> - -<p>‘Lord Rex Basire seems to have called. His card was lying this morning -on the parlour table.’</p> - -<p>‘And you have no wider sympathies, Dinah, no desire to know how we, -miserable deserters, got along in Alderney?’</p> - -<p>‘I like, of course, to hear everything that concerns you.’</p> - -<p>Dinah accentuated the pronoun stoutly.</p> - -<p>‘Although you had not sufficient curiosity to meet me when I landed?’</p> - -<p>As Gaston thus adroitly harked back upon his grievance his wife’s eyes -sank. She turned from him with a movement of impatience.</p> - -<p>‘The moment the steamer was signalled I got ready, Gaston. I went -straight down to the pier road and watched her come into harbour. Oh, -you never saw me,’ Dinah added quickly. ‘I was standing behind some -piles of timber at the entrance to the pier, a hundred yards distant. -And when I saw you and the Thornes land together, I felt certain you -would walk with them to their house, and I lost courage and got away.’</p> - -<p>‘To avoid the deadly risk of saying good-morning to Mrs. Thorne and the -Doctor?’</p> - -<p>‘I—I remembered there were no strawberries for breakfast,’ she -stammered, determined upon not giving him fresh offence, ‘no roses to -last us until to-morrow. Don’t you see,’ holding out her hands, which -trembled a little, ‘I have been marketing?’</p> - -<p>‘Alone? But I need hardly ask the question. You always do your -marketing alone.’</p> - -<p>His skilfully marshalled questions perplexed her vaguely. She felt the -same aching doubt which overcame her, once, on board the <i>Princess</i>, a -doubt as to Gaston’s belief in her perfect truthfulness. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Yes, and no,’ she answered, a piteous deprecation in her tone. ‘Lord -Rex Basire was in the market-place. His company was so wearisome that -I could scarcely answer a civil word. Yet he followed me from stall to -stall. A lord, it seems, will not be affronted as a gentleman would. I -never shook him off till I turned the corner beneath the Arsenal gates.’</p> - -<p>‘From which point Lord Rex no doubt caught a glimpse of me,’ said -Gaston with his unfathomable candour. ‘’Tis a good enough little -creature in its way, although brainless! We must be tolerant of all -men, Dinah. If one only frequented the society one loves best,’ he -pursued, ‘I should certainly not be going out to breakfast at this -moment.’</p> - -<p>‘Going out!’</p> - -<p>‘I saw de Gourmet at the bottom of the hill, and he invited me to eat -red mullet with him thirty-five minutes later. You must admit, Dinah, -that the temptation was strong?</p> - -<p>To this she made no answer.</p> - -<p>‘For when de Gourmet talks of red mullet he implies a menu. (Our food -in Alderney was barbarous.) Rougets en papillottes, accompanied by fine -old Graves. Tartines de caviar. Poulet sauté—with Château Margaux, -of ’58. A soufflé aux fraises. A glass of wonderful Tokai after one’s -morsel of Stilton! Still,’ added Gaston, ‘if <i>you</i> had met me on the -pier I could never have said Yes—especially as I am obliged to dine at -the Fort to-night.’</p> - -<p>Again Dinah was mute. She rested her hand upon the garden railing -beside which they stood. She kept the tears back, bravely, in their bed.</p> - -<p>‘It is guest night at mess, and there will be a larger party than -usual. My engagement dates, really, from a week ago. I made some idle -promise, it seems, of giving the Maltshire youngsters a lesson in -poker. By the bye,’ ran on Mr. Arbuthnot, with an air of spontaneous -<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>reminiscence, ‘I remember! Little Oscar Jones offered to put me up. -Very lucky I thought of telling you.’</p> - -<p>‘You intend to be away till to-morrow? Is that your meaning, Gaston?’</p> - -<p>‘Till to-morrow, certainly. When can one get away from a mess-dinner -before midnight! This time, however, you will not be disturbed, my -love. Instead of being roused at an unearthly hour of the morning, you -will have your rest unbroken. And you want it, Dinah. Do you know that -you are losing your colour, that your eyes are beginning to look dark -under the lower lid?’</p> - -<p>‘And your evening dress? When you breakfast with Colonel de Gourmet, I -generally see nothing of you for the remainder of the day.’</p> - -<p>‘My dearest girl, you are all thoughtfulness. Just put together what -I shall want in my Gladstone. Miller will see that it goes up to the -Fort. And do not keep in your own room, Dinah, and do eat dinner, -instead of drinking tea, for my sake.’</p> - -<p>By this time Gaston Arbuthnot had progressed some paces along the -descending path. Dinah had no choice but to return to the hotel, -then settle down, after a scarcely tasted breakfast, to one of her -accustomed days of loneliness and embroidery.</p> - -<p>Alas! the mere mechanical business of cross-stitch irritated her -cruelly. This conscientious sorting of coloured wools, this rigid -counting of threads, this hour-long stabbing of a needle in and out of -canvas—what good could be the outcome of it? She asked herself the -question ere her needle had taken a dozen stitches. What ill has been -lessened, thought Dinah, what pleasure added to mortal lot by all the -collective pieces of wool-work which patient, dull-hearted women have -executed since the world began?</p> - -<p>A keen, eager soul like Marjorie Bartrand’s would have settled the -question, unhelped, and finally, at about the age<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> of eleven. Dinah’s -nature was essentially averse to revolution. She was slow at imagining -new futures, and an existence without cross-stitch would, to her, have -been the newest of all possible existences. But pain was beginning to -sting her, not only into rebellion, but into quickened intelligence. -It was not merely the emptiness of wool-work as an occupation that -overcame her. She felt humiliated by its want of art. She pictured -the tasteless adornment of Aunt Susan’s humble parlour rendered a few -shades more tasteless by the added pinks and greens and reds of her own -laborious ottoman! She divined, as she had never done before, what her -‘pieces’ must seem like in the fastidious sight of Gaston and of his -friends.</p> - -<p>With a sensation of disgust poor Dinah pinned a screen of silver paper -over her forget-me-nots and auriculas. Then she took Geoffrey’s volume -of Browning from the table. Seating herself in a corner of the room -farthest away from the fresh air, the enlivening summer odours and -warmth which floated in from the garden, she began to read.</p> - -<p>The book opened at ‘James Lee’s Wife.’</p> - -<p>During the past twenty-fours hours she had pondered deeply over the -wisdom to be gained at the hands of polite society. What was the -Langrune expedition for her but an experiment, a lesson whereby she -might acquire the manners, the temper, the ideas (if such existed) -of her husband’s world! The experiment had taught her much. Yet, I -think, ‘James Lee’s Wife,’ read and re-read, through tears, had taught -her more. She had discovered no transcendental meaning, as a learned -Browning Society might have done, in Browning’s words. But she was -growing to look at life otherwise than by her own small rushlight of -personal experience, to know that it was no new thing for a man’s fancy -to die while his wife’s love burned at white heat, to realise that -there was a wide world lying outside her own narrow embittered lot—a -world to whose beauty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> and whose teachings the most self-engrossed soul -must open itself or perish.</p> - -<p>Dinah Arbuthnot did not want to perish. She could be content, she -thought, although delight was gone out of her days, if use survived; -ready to spin the wool and bake the bread; to return to the plain, -sweet wholesomeness of workaday existence from which the hapless good -fortune of marrying a gentleman had divorced her.</p> - -<p>To part from Gaston, in short!</p> - -<p>For an instant she had a physical longing to breathe the air of the -Devonshire moorlands. A wild hope crossed her that she might go back to -her father’s people, live their village lives, earn her own bread—be -Dinah Thurston again. Then her heart smote her with violence. The -volume fell to the floor. Could parting from Gaston be a beginning of -better things, a turning towards the straight path of duty—that path -along which so many a wife has to walk, uncomplaining, through the -after years of a marriage to which happiness has not been granted? Her -existence at his side was more, now, than a long, slow disappointment. -It was a growing anguish, a combat in which ignorant, plain-speaking -love on one side had no chance against a succession of sympathetic -rivals all uttering perfect little flatteries, all giving perfect -little dinners, on the other. And she, Dinah, was not two-and-twenty, -and her young heart craved, insistently, for sunshine. And such a -slender change, it seemed, in the eternal foreordering of events, a -child at her knee, a husband loving the quiet of his own fireside, -would have made up the sum of her prosaic ambition!</p> - -<p>Yet she must go on enduring. She must not part from Gaston until -the dark final curtain shut his face for ever from her sight. What -taste could she have for the Devonshire moorlands, the country joys -which contented her when she was a girl? No human soul can serve two<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> -masters. After knowing passionate love, passionate jealousy, how could -she go back to a life of no emotion at all, how share the village -interests of people like her father’s folk; simple souls with whom it -was a vital point whether the next cake should be made with carraways -or with raisins, who could speculate through half a winter as to who -would be ‘asked,’ and who wear new bonnets on Easter Sunday, and in -whose minds a visit to Exeter, or the yearly house-cleaning, ranked -among the larger events of mortal destiny!</p> - -<p>The poor girl was reluctantly coming to the conclusion—a hard one -to realise at her age—that she would not be extraordinarily welcome -anywhere, when Geff Arbuthnot, unannounced, as was his habit, entered -the parlour.</p> - -<p>He took in the position of affairs promptly. Dinah’s colourless face, -her unoccupied hands, the book lying, as it had fallen, on the floor, -told him, with gist passing that of words, that she was in some fresh -misery of which Gaston was the cause.</p> - -<p>Geoffrey’s own heart was sore, his spirit troubled, to-day. A thought -distantly akin to that which had newly traversed Dinah’s mind for a -moment overcame him. What a little change in the foreordering of things -might have re-written the story of both lives! If Dinah Thurston had -chanced to love him before his cousin Gaston crossed her path....</p> - -<p>‘Alone—and indoors, Dinah?’ Her Christian name for once slipped from -his lips. ‘It is a day,’ quoted Geff, ‘“when it were a sullenness -against Nature not to go abroad and see her riches.” Has Gaston -returned?’</p> - -<p>‘Gaston and the Thornes have returned. The Cherbourg boat came in long -ago. And I have been out—I went down to market before breakfast. I -enjoyed the morning wonderfully.’</p> - -<p>There was the kind of discrepancy between voice and statement that -you might detect in the speech of a man who should declare he had -‘wonderfully enjoyed’ a funeral. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘And what are you going to do with yourself this afternoon?’</p> - -<p>‘I scarcely know—I am in an idle mood—write to one of the good old -aunts in Devonshire, perhaps.’</p> - -<p>‘And Gaston?’</p> - -<p>‘Gaston will not be seen till to-morrow. He has, in the first place, -gone out to breakfast. I was not on the pier when they landed, and -Gaston ran quickly up here to dress. I only spoke to him for a few -minutes outside the hotel. Colonel de Gourmet had waylaid him on the -road, it seems, and invited him to breakfast—off red mullet! The -temptation, Gaston said, was irresistible.’</p> - -<p>A touch of sarcasm was in Mrs. Arbuthnot’s voice.</p> - -<p>‘The Guernsey red mullet is not a bad fish,’ retorted Geff with -appreciation.</p> - -<p>‘Breakfasting, of course, means spending the day at Colonel de -Gourmet’s house—until the hour comes round for afternoon teas! And -to-night there is a dinner-party at the Fort. Gaston is forced to be -there ... to give some of the Maltshire subalterns a lesson in poker. -He will not be back till to-morrow, quite out of consideration for me! -Gaston thought me looking pale. He did not wish me to have another -broken night.’</p> - -<p>The speech was delivered with a kind of staccato airiness. Geoffrey -Arbuthnot’s face became graver and graver while Dinah made it.</p> - -<p>‘You are reading, I see, as usual. Why, you will be a confirmed -bookworm before long.’</p> - -<p>Coming closer, he picked up the volume from the floor. He examined the -page at which it opened.</p> - -<p>‘“James Lee’s Wife;” I should say you would soon know Mrs. Lee’s -history by heart?’</p> - -<p>‘I find something new in it, always. Don’t you think, Geff, so much -writing must have gone far to ease her sorrow? Or would writing just -come natural to an educated, born<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span> lady? In my class,’ said Dinah, ‘if -trouble cut us very keen, we should not feel like taking a copy-book to -write it down.’</p> - -<p>The criticism, from Dinah’s point of view, was just. Geff sought not to -controvert it.</p> - -<p>‘The prettiest part of all is “Beside the drawing-board.” I was -thinking, before you came in, I’d rather be the little girl with the -poor coarse hand than write the best poetry ever printed.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey followed the drift of her remark.</p> - -<p>‘And Gaston?’ he asked with point. ‘How about his opinion? We cannot -look at a single small morsel of our lot, forgetting the rest. If there -is one thing Gaston admires more than another in a woman, it is the -whiteness and delicacy of her hand.’</p> - -<p>‘All the same, Geff, I hate to live without work, common household work -that makes the hands rough and red. Work is the same to me as your -books are to you. And you know,’ added Dinah, ‘there must always be a -world full of ladies, delicate, white-skinned, fond of idleness, whose -finger-tips Gaston could admire.’</p> - -<p>The observation gave Geff an inconveniently straight glimpse behind -the domestic curtain of his friends’ lives. Moving to the table he -became suddenly interested in Dinah’s marketing—the strawberries were -in their wicker basket still; the roses hung their heads, as though -conscious of neglect, over the rim of an ugly water-jug.</p> - -<p>You may, generally, prognosticate safely as to the state of a woman’s -heart when she treats her flowers lovelessly.</p> - -<p>‘They were all for Gaston. You know how he likes to see fresh fruit and -flowers on the breakfast-table.’</p> - -<p>‘I know that the strawberries smell uncommonly good. They are to be -kept, of course, for Gaston’s return?’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, no.’ Dinah’s voice was blankly indifferent. ‘I don’t care now what -becomes of them.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘You would do well to care!’ exclaimed Geoffrey, looking round on -her, shortly. ‘There are a good many millions of people in the world, -remember, besides Gaston Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘Geoffrey!’</p> - -<p>‘Yes, a good many millions, the majority of them poor, an enormous -percentage—suffering. Gaston and you, and I, are surfeited with good -things. We are certain every day we live that we shall dine—think -of that, Mrs. Arbuthnot, <i>dine</i>, with the accompaniment of as many -strawberries and roses as we choose to buy.’</p> - -<p>The blood mantled hot over Dinah Arbuthnot’s weary face.</p> - -<p>‘You mean to remind me that I am selfish?’ she said, very low. ‘I know -it, Geoffrey. I know that I am sinking fast into everything that is -bad.’</p> - -<p>‘In the common meaning of the words, you are the least selfish woman -living. But you are self-absorbed—no, even that is saying too -much—you are Gaston-absorbed. If you could see how some half-starved -people manage to get along—yes, and to be cheerful over their -crust—you might think less of strawberries and roses for Gaston’s -breakfast-table.’</p> - -<p>The admonition looks rougher, set down in black and white, than it -sounded. Dinah’s face grew animated.</p> - -<p>‘I know that to be useful in any way would do me good. Long -ago I should have liked district-visiting in England, only you -see’—hesitating—‘we never stop long enough to explain ... I mean, for -the clergyman of the place quite to know about one.’</p> - -<p>Her tone was tentative. She had an uneasy dread that young women who -marry men above them in rank are likely, if ‘unexplained,’ to be -suspect in orthodox eyes. In their early married days she recollected -a visit paid to them by a seaside curate with a subscription-list, -recollected the seaside curate’s glance when Gaston introduced her, -with her country speech and manners, as ‘my wife.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span></p> - -<p>And Dinah’s being the order of mind that generalises, for ever after, -from one experience, that glance haunted her still, an uncomfortable -reminder as to the likely sentiments of the clergy at large regarding -herself.</p> - -<p>‘Not long enough to explain! I don’t catch your meaning. What on earth -has any clergyman in England to do with you, Dinah Arbuthnot? Could -you not feel for miserable people, work for them, serve them heartily, -although you travelled round the country, a heathen, in a caravan, -although you had never spoken to a clergyman in your life!’</p> - -<p>‘I want some one to show me the way,—that is another weakness of my -character,—I want some one to show me the way in everything good, -Geff.’</p> - -<p>‘Let me show you the way, to-day. You remember the sailor lad who got -his ankle hurt as we were coming back from France?’</p> - -<p>That wretched passage in the fog? Yes, Dinah remembered every incident -of it, too well.</p> - -<p>‘There was worse mischief done than the surgeons feared, at first. Poor -Jack is at present Number 28 in the accident ward of the hospital. He -will have to remain there for a good many more weeks than he thinks. -Well, one may safely assert, Mrs. Arbuthnot, that though you and I and -Gaston have roses and strawberries to spare, Jack has none.’</p> - -<p>‘Take them to him, of course,’ Dinah exclaimed. ‘Surely, Geff, you -might have done that, without asking.’</p> - -<p>‘And do you suppose Jack would not value such gifts more if they came -from a woman’s hand, the delicate white hand whose uses you despise! -To-day is Friday. On Friday afternoon the patients’ friends are -admitted to see them. But Jack’s friends are far away in Devonshire. -You will be his only visitor if you consent to come.’</p> - -<p>Dinah rose, acquiescently, rather than with any initiative<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> warmth. She -had a moment’s hesitation. Gaston held such contradictory opinions, at -times.... No knowing if Gaston would approve of her putting herself -forward. There was the Archdeaconess ... there were the island clergy? -Then, encountering a look that had a command in it from Geoffrey’s -eyes, she moved lingeringly towards the adjoining room.</p> - -<p>‘If I dressed to please myself, you need not wait two minutes, Geff. -But the powers that be,’ the little malice flashed from her unawares, -‘are sensitive—as to millinery! I could not run the terrible risk of -meeting Mrs. Thorne and Gaston in my morning gown.’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XXXIX</span> <span class="smaller">THAT LITTLE DIVINITY</span></h2> - -<p>The project roused her, at least, into physical brightness. As -she walked at Geoffrey’s side towards the hospital, the basket of -strawberries hanging from her arm, her hands filled with roses, a -stranger, meeting them, would have taken Dinah Arbuthnot for some April -cheeked girl, ignorant of passion as of disappointment; a girl needing -no apologist! She wore, on this fateful afternoon, a dove-coloured -Quaker gown, a Gainsborough hat tied beneath her chin by black velvet -strings; <i>item</i>, a large plain cambric tippet, with cambric half -sleeves reaching to the elbows. It was the latest costume invented by -her husband in an idle moment. And Geoffrey had lost exactly half an -hour while she put it on.</p> - -<p>But what man would grudge a lost half-hour after one glance at that for -which he had waited!</p> - -<p>The road from Miller’s Hotel to the hospital led through Petersport -High Street, and close to the north entrance of Colonel de Gourmet’s -garden. At the moment when Dinah and Geff walked along, it chanced -that the Colonel, himself, reclined under the shaded verandah of -his drawing-room,—the Colonel, smoking his third cheroot, and -offering unsentimental criticisms on the dress and looks of such -feminine passers-by as came within range of a pair of languidly held -opera-glasses. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span></p> - -<p>Of an afternoon Colonel de Gourmet’s drawing-room was generally full. -Lacking many, let us say lacking all the more solid human qualities, -the old East Indian sybarite had one virtue—he was universally -hospitable. Nothing pleased him better than that a man he had invited -to breakfast should loiter on till dinner. Nothing pleased him better -than that other men whom he had not invited should drop in, at any hour -they chose, make free with his rare cigars, rarer wines, and entertain -each other with ideas, or with that best discovered substitute for the -trivial masculine mind—cards.</p> - -<p>In a garrison town, sea on three sides, and barely available space on -the other for a polo match or a herring run, it may be believed that -old Colonel de Gourmet was in no lack of callers.</p> - -<p>Six or eight men, young enough, most of them, to be their host’s -grandsons, were lounging, this July afternoon, in various attitudes of -idleness about his pleasant bachelor drawing-room. The air was lightly -impregnated with tobacco smoke, so good of its kind that, mingled -with the wafted garden sweets, it scarcely seemed grosser than some -finely distilled odour of musk flower or of tea-rose. Gaston Arbuthnot -was on the point of finishing a match at écarté with little Oscar -Jones—two or three of Oscar’s brother officers forming a silent and -discriminative gallery.</p> - -<p>Cards, simply as cards, Gaston Arbuthnot disliked, although he had -an inborn knack of playing most things successfully. The childish -intricacies of a game like Nap., beloved of all the Maltshire -subalterns, were to him a weariness of spirit.</p> - -<p>‘We can use your English Nap. as a means,’ he would tell them, -frankly, ‘just as we can use blind hookey or, simpler than either, -chicken hazard, if we want to transfer money from one man’s pocket -to another. As a matter of amusement, I would sooner play euchre -or poker for counters:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> in poker especially, all our natural human -instincts—bluster, bluffing, intent to deceive, etc.—come agreeably -to the fore.’</p> - -<p>Whist, Gaston confessed, he played well. At écarté he was moderately -good. This moderate goodness his antagonist was about to test -practically.</p> - -<p>‘Four, all!’ cried little Oscar, eager over a just-dealt, brilliant -hand of trumps.</p> - -<p>‘The king,’ said Gaston, quietly laying down his cards. ‘Some one tell -de Gourmet it is his turn to cut in.’</p> - -<p>The Colonel had now risen to his feet. He was watching an object, -evidently of paramount interest, through his opera-glasses.</p> - -<p>‘A throat—an ankle—shoulders! Tell you what it is, sir,—she is -the prettiest woman in the island—not one of our society beauties -can hold a candle to her! And she’s not a woman one meets at any of -the parties.—By and by, Arbuthnot, by and by.’ For Gaston with a -presentiment of the truth, sat, restlessly, shuffling and re-shuffling -the cards. ‘To view the Queen of Hearts in flesh and blood is better, -surely, than handling her in pasteboard. Now where did one see that -little divinity before? At Saturday’s rose-show, of course. Asked -Linda Thorne about her. Mrs. Linda—true type of her sex—affected not -to know her name. Luckily, such a paragon does not need a name. An -Archdeaconess, if I mistake not, threw her little pebble. “The young -person with the yellow hair was—nobody one knew.”’</p> - -<p>Every man in the room, with the exception of Arbuthnot, had by this -time crowded to the window. One of the youngsters hazarded a bold -whisper in the host’s ear. It was old de Gourmet’s deafer ear. He -caught the note of warning imperfectly. He resumed his parable with -warmth:</p> - -<p>‘French woman, do you say? Cannot believe it, sir. No French woman had -ever such a complexion, such hair. But the dress, with its complex -simplicity, comes from Paris,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> doubtless. Dove coloured <i>mousseline -de laine</i>.’ The Colonel made these things as much a study as his -Brillat Savarin. ‘A tippet, designedly plain, such as Perfection, only, -dare put on. A little black velvet knot beneath the dainty chin.... -(Directly, Arbuthnot, directly—calm your impatience.) And look at her -teeth, now she smiles, and her dimples! The young fellow with her seems -disposed to make the best of his opportunities—small blame to him!’</p> - -<p>Throughout the listeners there ran a flash of hideous silence. At last -some one passed a slip of paper, on which a name had been hastily -scribbled, into Colonel de Gourmet’s gouty fingers, and then arose -general conversation, mainly as to the weather prospects. After this -fog that had been hanging about the Channel for days, and with the -glass running down fast, what were the chances we should not have a -thunderstorm in the course of the next twenty-four hours?</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot arranged the cards in two neat packs on the table and -waited silently for his host. He felt morally certain that the little -divinity was his wife, also that Lord Rex Basire was her companion. -And a wholesomely bitter contrition filled his soul, a feeling widely -differing from the vague disrelish with which he had watched her -teaching Basire cross-stitch five days before. Probably he never knew -how dear Dinah’s white name was to him, never realised how culpably he -had left her in the shade, until this moment’s humiliation.</p> - -<p>And still Gaston’s countenance betrayed him not. An instant later, he -was rallying the Colonel on his boyish enthusiasm, confessing that, -for his own part, he was too staid a Benedict to exert himself, at the -present state of the thermometer, merely because a nice-looking woman -happened to pass along the street.</p> - -<p>‘And what are our stakes—the usual fiver?’ asked de Gourmet, looking -immensely tickled as he hobbled across<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> the room to the card-table. ‘I -am afraid of you though, Arbuthnot! You are just the man to be in luck.’</p> - -<p>‘I don’t believe in luck. Conduct is fate.’ Gaston lifted his handsome -face. He fixed his clear steely glance on the somewhat Silenus features -over against him. ‘Champagne?—I thank you, Colonel. No brain-enemy, -just at present. Don’t you know that we Yankees keep our heads cool——’</p> - -<p>‘On purpose to rook the Britishers,’ interrupted de Gourmet, still with -a suppressed chuckle in his voice.</p> - -<p>‘On purpose to rook the Britishers. Now, let us attend to business, -sir,’ said Gaston cheerfully. ‘The best of three games for a five-pound -note—good!’</p> - -<p class="space-above">The little divinity and her companion had by this time reached the -hospital gates.</p> - -<p>‘I hope I shall use the proper words, Geff,’ whispered Dinah, looking -flushed and nervous. ‘The kind of <i>exhortation</i>, you know, that -clergymen’s wives would give to sick people.’</p> - -<p>‘Impossible!’ Geoffrey disencouraged her promptly. ‘Orthodoxy cannot be -learnt at a moment’s notice. You must be content to be—yourself! And -that is much,’ he added, watching her beautiful, earnest face. ‘Your -sermon may well be a silent one. Look, just as you are looking at this -moment, and leave the rest to the patient’s human nature. Jack may be -a miserable sinner, needing homilies. That is a fact you and I have no -certitude about. We know that he is a poor lad, far from his people, -laid low in pain and weakness. Depend upon it, the sound of a tender -voice, the sight of Dinah Arbuthnot’s face, must prove good medicine, -both for his soul and body.’</p> - -<p>The tears started to Dinah’s eyes. She was just at that tension point -of suppressed emotion when a kindly accent, a word or two of praise, -are as hands extended to a drowning man. If Gaston only esteemed her -poor personal gifts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> as Geoffrey did—for, of whatever she thought, -to-day, Gaston still was beneath the current of her thinking! Nay (this -followed by a descending, yet inevitable sequence of ideas), if Gaston -could only hold the opinion of her held—Dinah, remembering events, had -a little thrill of shame—by a man like Lord Rex Basire!</p> - -<p>Perhaps the sum-total of yoked infelicity might be lessened if careless -husbands would reckon with themselves, sometimes, concerning the number -of their deserved rivals—such husbands, I mean, as possess wives of -Dinah Arbuthnot’s mould. For must not the answer be trumpet-tongued: -‘The whole seeing world!’ Does not every man, save the purblind, range -himself by intuition on the side of a young and beautiful and neglected -woman? But careless husbands may not have imagination enough for such -a stretch, or there may be sympathisers ... outside feminine judges -... mature sirens ... a clever whisper, even, now and then. And so the -wife’s heart continues to ache to the last—or gives up aching of a -sudden: deeper tragedy, by far.</p> - -<p>Dinah’s colour went and came as she traversed the corridors of the -hospital beside Geoffrey. The moment they entered Ward A., the men’s -accident room, she forgot her want of knowledge, of orthodoxy. -‘Explanation’ was not needed here. She saw only the rows of beds, -each bed with its pallid inmate. She felt only that she was Dinah -Thurston—among the poor, the simple, the suffering,—among her equals.</p> - -<p>The patients in the ward were mostly working-men in the springtime -of their strength, the majority of them victims of the late quarry -accident. A few, like poor Jack, had been struck down by mishap at sea -or in the harbour. Beside nearly every bed was a visitor. Here might -be seen a country girl talking in whispers to her sweetheart. Here a -pale wife clasped her husband’s hand, or a mother in silent anguish -watched her lad’s changed face. On every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span> pillow was a little posy of -sweet-smelling cottage flowers, reminding the gaunt sufferers who lay -there, patient and uncomplaining, of blue summer sky, of the freshness -of fields and gardens, of home.</p> - -<p>Number 28 had neither visitor nor posy. Poor Jack came from a remote -hamlet among the Devonshire moors. His mates on board the <i>Princess</i> -were afloat again. The lad had no friends, save the surgeons and nurses -of the Guernsey hospital—and Geff Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘Speak to him about his own country,’ Geoffrey whispered, as his -companion drew back a little; ‘Jack will dispense with any formal -introduction.’</p> - -<p>And on this, Dinah, her face overflowing with sweetest womanly -compassion, stooped over the low pallet and spoke—a commonplace word -or two, unworthy of raising to the dignity of print—a word or two -whose homely Devonshire lilt called the blood up to Jack’s temples as -though some voice from the old familiar home addressed him.</p> - -<p>Since her marriage, Dinah had learnt to speak English, ‘with a foreign -pronunciation,’ Gaston would tell her, ‘yet scarcely strong enough to -be disagreeable.’ Although a tell-tale cadence was traceable, ever and -again, in her speech, she had tardily succeeded in putting away the -Devonshire burr that was strong on her tongue when Geoffrey met her -first. Here, at Jack’s bedside, no Gaston near to be put to shame, -she fell back, instinctively, upon the West Country accent, the soft, -half-strange, half-familiar o’s and u’s of her childhood.</p> - -<p>‘It’s so bad to be sick, for a young fellow like you, and away from -home. We just thought you might like a talk with some one Devonshire -born and bred. I wonder, now, do you and I come from the same part?’</p> - -<p>‘I was born at Torrhill, a village out away beyond Chagford. A poor -place, ma’am, on the borders of the moor—quite a poor place,’ repeated -Jack apologetically. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Why, that is near to my own town, Tavistock!’ said Dinah. ‘We used to -pass Torrhill going along the Vale of Widdicombe every autumn when we -went out whortleberrying. “Torrhill, in the cold country.” I mind we -children used to say, when we got snowstorms in winter, “the Widdicombe -folk were picking their geese.”’</p> - -<p>Well, and as he listened to her simple talk, to the soft West Country -accent, it came to pass that Geff Arbuthnot’s heart knew a thrill of -its old infatuation. No man can possibly hold two women dear at the -same time. And Geoffrey was in love—the warm flesh and blood love of -four-and-twenty—with an actuality, not a remembrance. But his heart -thrilled at Dinah’s voice. Something in his temperament forbade him -to outlive the past, wholly. It was a book that could not be clasped. -A word, an accent, and the enchantment cast upon him in the long dead -summer days at Lesser Cheriton would be revitalised. This was his -weakness (a conscious one) always; and now he was in the dangerous -state of wounded feeling when a man’s tenderness is easily arrested at -rebound....</p> - -<p>Those Devonshire o’s and u’s brought back before him in its fiery -ardour the fortnight when he worshipped Dinah Thurston’s footsteps, -the fortnight ending on that evening when Gaston and his friends drove -past in the twilight on their return from Ely. Standing here, in the -Guernsey hospital ward, Geoffrey’s senses recalled the rush of wheels -down the village street, the lingering daylight in the low fields of -Cambridgeshire sky. He remembered how Dinah’s head and throat stood out -in waxen relief against the dusky arbutus hedge of the cottage garden.</p> - -<p>And he decided, there and then,—yes, while she was chatting, -low-voiced, smiling, to the lad about the moors, and the ‘cold -country,’ and the autumn huckle-berrying—to return to England -forthwith.</p> - -<p>A French steamer was to touch at Petersport on Sunday<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> morning. That -would give him to-morrow for winding up his small affairs, for taking -leave of his patients, for visiting Tintajeux. He would kiss, in -coldest fancy, the hair, the lips that should have made up to him for -the unattainable heaven of his youth’s desire. He would look once again -in Marjorie’s eyes, and go. It was possible—here, at least, might be -a gleam of comfort—that Gaston and Dinah would steer clearer through -their difficulties if left absolutely alone than they were doing now.</p> - -<p>He told her of his intention when they were on their way back to the -hotel.</p> - -<p>‘And, remember, you know your way to the hospital,’ he added quickly, -as Dinah was about to speak. ‘I hope when I am gone you will pay Jack -many a kind little visit, your hands as full of fruits and flowers as -they were to-day.’</p> - -<p>‘When you are gone!’ echoed Dinah, blankly. The fear smote her that -with Geoffrey’s going, such slack hold as she still had upon Gaston -must be loosened. ‘I hoped you would remain here ... as long, at least, -as I must. Think of all the sick people who will miss you, Geff. Think -of Miss Bartrand.’</p> - -<p>‘I shall find sick people everywhere. In the matter of doctors, -Guernsey is full of better men than I.’</p> - -<p>‘And Marjorie Bartrand?’</p> - -<p>‘Ah! that is a different side of the question. I am conceited enough to -think Miss Bartrand’s mathemathics will suffer.’</p> - -<p>‘And you don’t care—you are not one bit sorry at giving her up? Do you -know, Geoffrey, I had begun to hope——’</p> - -<p>‘Miss Bartrand will be a Girton girl before long,’ interrupted -Geoffrey. ‘Happily,’—he paused—‘she is not without self-reliance, has -more than a woman’s share, perhaps, of ambition. When we see each other -next it will be as fellow-students in Cambridge.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span></p> - -<p>Dinah knew the tone of his voice. It was not a tone that invited -discussion.</p> - -<p>‘Your leaving is an ill stroke of luck for me, Geff. Day by day -Gaston’s engagements seem to grow upon him. My time will be emptier -than ever when you are gone.’</p> - -<p>‘You may fill it, full as time can hold. I thought as I watched you -charming poor Jack out of knowledge of his pain that you had missed -your vocation. You should be a nurse. Yours are the ideal face and -voice and tread that we want in the hospitals. If you ever harbour -thoughts of emancipation, or of a mission,’ said Geoffrey, ‘remember my -hint.’</p> - -<p>‘When Gaston has used the last line that can be modelled from my face, -for instance?’</p> - -<p>The smile was flickering with which Dinah hazarded the surmise.</p> - -<p>‘When Gaston has got his last inspiration from your face! Unluckily for -the hospitals, that day will not come quite yet. A woman with a mission -should have no such vexatious encumbrance as a husband or a lover.’</p> - -<p>For once, Geoffrey’s tone was cynical. He recalled his parting with -Marjorie Bartrand over-night.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XL</span> <span class="smaller">AT THE BUNGALOW</span></h2> - -<p>And all this time an offer of truce lay on the mantelshelf of Dinah’s -parlour; an offer directed to himself in the handwriting whose Greek -e’s, whose girlish assumption of scholarship, Geoffrey’s heart knew!</p> - -<p>Can we wonder at the pagan notion that the gods must needs hold their -sides for laughter when they gaze down on the ever-twisted plot of -our little lives? Geoffrey and Dinah were within a hundred feet of -Miller’s house. Five minutes more and Geff must have been lifted—this -time into quite other than a Fool’s Paradise, when, abruptly, a new -actor, jauntily floating in cobweb Indian silk, gleaming under a -scarlet sunshade, with eight-buttoned gloves, with airs, with graces -innumerable, made her entrance upon the scene.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Thorne’s manner was confident to-day, as of one with whom the -world goes well. She ran skittishly down the steps leading from -the hotel garden. She paused, tapping a high-heeled shoe in pretty -impatience on the gravel. She looked this way and that, expectantly; at -length, it would seem, decided, with a little merry shake of the head, -for the chances of town over country. Then, with such ease of tread -as high-heeled shoes are apt to confer on ladies whose summers are -increasing, she commenced the steep descent of the hill. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I hope Mrs. Thorne has not been calling on me. I hope, if we stop, she -will make me no pretty speeches,’ said Dinah under her breath. ‘I could -not bear them just now. If Mrs. Thorne makes pretty speeches, I shall -say something true to her.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey, man-like, showed signs of instant flight on hearing the -ultimatum. He was in no vein, he said, for Linda Thorne’s fine spirits -(was in no vein, I fear, for the better sex at all, in its liveliness -or its asperity); he had an appointment to keep, a case of life and -death, at the bedside of one of the quarry workers—would not be back -till late—it was time for him to be on his road and——</p> - -<p>‘In short,’ interrupted Dinah, ‘you have not courage to meet Mrs. -Thorne!’</p> - -<p>‘If you like to say so—yes,’ was Geff’s answer. ‘But don’t tell Mrs. -Thorne the truth.’ He whispered this to Dinah at parting. ‘Or tell her -such truth only as affects herself, not you.’</p> - -<p>Dinah, however, was not in a temper for advice, even Geoffrey’s. Erect -of carriage, with a flush of the cheeks, a sparkle in the eyes, Dinah -walked grandly up the hill, determined, at every cost, that final truth -should be spoken between her and Mrs. Thorne, did opportunity offer.</p> - -<p>‘So our philosopher shows valour’s better part,’ thought Linda, as -Geff vanished down a turning to the right. ‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot -positively declines to face me! We have never been rapturously fond of -each other. Now it is to be war to the knife. Excellent, detestable -young man! I accept the challenge.’</p> - -<p>And Mrs. Thorne mentally kissed her pale buff finger tips in the -direction taken by Geoffrey.</p> - -<p>Dinah, meanwhile, had breasted the hill. Her head was held aloft, her -fine arms were folded in one of those attitudes of natural repose that -had always been the despair of Gaston’s pencil. To the artist who has -no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span> ‘wood notes wild,’ the virtuoso with whom craft, workmanship, -style, are all in all, is not perfect naturalness the most difficult to -woo among the graces!</p> - -<p>Linda spoke first. ‘So very glad to meet you. I have this moment called -at Miller’s and found you absent. We can have our chat out of doors.’</p> - -<p>She was serenely void of conscience. It was probably a mere physical -sensation of antagonism that hindered Mrs. Thorne from offering poor -magnificent Dinah her hand.</p> - -<p>‘To begin with, I must unburthen my soul by confession.’ So she ran on -gaily. ‘My visit was, really and truly, to your husband.’</p> - -<p>Not a change of colour, not a shade of expression passed across the -face of Gaston’s wife. She possessed the self-preserving instincts of -many weaker creatures, and of her sex in general; could conceal, feign, -dissemble—except under the eyes, and at the voice of him she loved.</p> - -<p>‘The other night, at sea, just before the steamer stopped at Alderney, -you must know that he and I made a bet, a very foolish one.’ Linda had -the grace to redden as she remembered what that bet was about. ‘And Mr. -Arbuthnot won. He wins in everything, it seems?’</p> - -<p>A compliment may have been implied by the tone. It fell dead on Dinah -Arbuthnot’s prejudiced ears.</p> - -<p>‘And so I thought I would run up this afternoon to discharge my debt. -I deposited the stakes on a corner of your mantelpiece. If you see Mr. -Arbuthnot before I do, tell him, from me, that he has won,—that I am -bankrupt! You will forgive me for invading your sitting-room, without -leave, will you not?’</p> - -<p>Still Dinah did not speak. Her eyes glowed, deepened until their soft -English hazel seemed turned to black.</p> - -<p>‘I have known you long enough—we are sufficiently intimate,’ -went on Linda, feeling that she was being forced into the fencing -attitude—‘for me to venture on such a liberty?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘You can venture where you choose.’ Forth came the reply in Dinah’s -full, rounded tones. ‘The room is Gaston’s. How can I question your -right of entering it? But I must ask you not to speak of intimacy. If -I saw you daily, until the last day I live, I should never be intimate -with you.’</p> - -<p>Her voice was crystal clear, by reason of its low pitch. Every word -was weighted by passionate, long pent-up feeling. Linda Thorne shifted -about, ill at ease, on the feet that a minute ago had danced under her -weight so airily.</p> - -<p>‘We ought, positively, to see more of each other! I think it quite -too charming of you to be so sincere—quite. I always say to my -friends—“Mrs. Arbuthnot has that most refreshing, that rarest of -gifts, sincerity.”’</p> - -<p>‘Do you say this? Saying this, do you mean to speak well of me?’</p> - -<p>‘Dearest Mrs. Arbuthnot! Can you doubt the honesty of my intentions?’</p> - -<p>‘Never say it again. Be generous enough at least to spare me your -praise.’</p> - -<p>The rapier points had lost their buttons. Linda Thorne fell into -position quickly. That Dinah, good Griselda-like woman, loved her -careless husband to the pitch of jealous idolatry, had been patent to -her long before. Still, viewing the Arbuthnot household from her own -level, Linda’s judgment was—that Griselda had consolations. Mild ones, -if you will: the devotion of Lord Rex Basire, impartially offered to -every pink-and-white nonentity he came across; the constant society, -tinged by that glamour which beautiful women confer on all their -relationships, of the excellent, detestable Scotch cousin, Geoffrey -Arbuthnot. But consolations, nevertheless.</p> - -<p>And this judgment sharpened her reply.</p> - -<p>‘If I were to refrain from praising you, my dear creature,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span> I should -lay myself open to the charge of envy, the one vice,’ observed Linda, -with pathetic self-depreciation, ‘which I am free from. Every man in -this island, my own good husband included, sounds your praise. You have -absolutely a queue—I mean,’ considerately translating, ‘a little train -of conquests! Lord Rex Basire, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘I ask you to stop! In the class of life I come from,’ exclaimed Dinah, -aflame, ‘we hold it unworthy for a married woman to make conquests.’</p> - -<p>‘Rather severe, surely! Cleopatra may never have known she had -conquered, until Anthony’s peace was gone.’</p> - -<p>‘Just as we hold it unworthy in any woman, married or single, to -beguile the husband of another.’</p> - -<p>A tiny pink-hued veil reached to the tip of Linda’s nose. We may assume -that the veil concealed Linda’s usual percentage of well-applied rice -powder. But a gleam of white anger showed through veil and powder -alike. A nervous quiver worked around her thin lips. For a moment it -seemed as though Mrs. Thorne’s vulnerable point were found, as though -her antagonist’s last thrust had gone home.</p> - -<p>Then she recovered herself without too palpable effort. She laughed -good-humouredly.</p> - -<p>‘Our strain is getting over-tragic. We live in the day of little -things. Sensation is out of vogue. Nobody pushes husbands down wells. -Nobody “beguiles” the husbands of worthier people. Even if it were -otherwise, if Viviens were as the sands of yonder Channel, your -happiness, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, would be secure.’ It must be confessed -that Linda made her counter-stroke with admirable neatness. ‘A -beautiful woman married to an artist holds him in chains, rose-decked -ones, of course, but chains—<i>chains</i>.’</p> - -<p>She forced Dinah to touch fingers. She covered her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span> retreat under -a little roulade of interjections sent back, with grimace of -friendliness, across an expressive shoulder. ‘So fortunate we left -the <i>Princess</i>! Never could dear Robbie have stood the terrors of -that night! One hears whispers on all sides of heroic courage! Mrs. -Arbuthnot’s name foremost!’ Then Linda Thorne tripped down the hill, -by virtue of superior coolness mistress, outwardly, of the situation, -but with her heart thumping uneasily, with the queerest, hottest sense -experience had ever brought her of discomfiture and defeat.</p> - -<p>That Dinah’s temper had reached the point which chemists call flashing -point was certain. Another encounter like this, with sharpened memories -on both sides, probably with the added element of an audience, and -either Linda Thorne or Dinah Arbuthnot must become ridiculous.</p> - -<p>It was a dilemma, thought Linda, out of which the finest tact, the -cleverest self-effacement, could scarcely help one. She was like a -prime minister—the presumptuous simile tickled her—a prime minister -who, having lost the lead of the House, would fain transfer his power, -gracefully, to the chief of the Opposition.</p> - -<p>Dinah was that chief; and she, Linda Thorne, was genuinely ready to -abdicate. There was in Linda’s nature a thin stratum of Bohemianism; -the bulk of the woman was Philistine. She liked small popularities, to -air her domestic excellences, her devotion to her Robbie! She liked -to talk serious talk. She liked to dine with the Archdeacon! Sooner -than run the risk of scandal, or go through scenes of such dimensions -as this scene with Dinah, she felt that it would be well to take -Robbie and the infant, pack up her portmanteau, and fly. Oh, if Mrs. -Arbuthnot—a bright thought striking her—could but be made to pack up -<i>hers</i> and go—never to return! Even if poor Dinah took the worshipped -Gaston with her, Mrs. Thorne felt that the price would not be too high. -She would forfeit every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span> sentimental friendship in the world sooner -than again encounter the scorn, the passion of Dinah’s girlish face. -Above all—with an audience!</p> - -<p>It was, really, this vision of an audience, of public battles-royal, of -ridicule, perhaps of acknowledged defeat, which fired Linda Thorne’s -conscience to the height of renunciation.</p> - -<p>Arriving at the garden gate of The Bungalow she heard, no unfamiliar -sound, the voices of Rahnee and of Gaston Arbuthnot, at high play -within. Before discovering herself, the mistress of the house peeped -for a minute through the ivy-covered railings. She saw Rahnee aloft on -Arbuthnot’s tall shoulder, one little skinny hand clutching tight round -his neck, the other beating him stoutly with a switch.</p> - -<p>‘Faster! Missy But’not! Dallop, dallop!’ shrieked Rahnee.</p> - -<p>The child’s vigorous kicks were testifying to her delicious sense of -power over her slave, when the unwelcome gleam of a scarlet sunshade -caught her eyes.</p> - -<p>‘Rahnee—terrible infant!’ cried Linda, falling back on the tired -Indian voice that had been absent during her colloquy with Dinah. ‘Come -down, naughty girl. Think how you must be teasing Mr. Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘No, me not tease Missy But’not. Go away!’ The thin arms imperiously -motioned Linda’s dismissal. ‘We not want nobody—Missy But’not and -Rahnee!’</p> - -<p>‘My visit is to Rahnee exclusively,’ observed Gaston. ‘Remember, -Mrs. Thorne! You warned me not to come to The Bungalow. A mysterious -something might happen before five o’clock converting us for ever into -enemies. But I will not have Rahnee included in the feud.’</p> - -<p>‘Did I talk such nonsense—really?’ cried Linda, with a forced laugh. -‘Well, who knows? Perhaps it will turn out that I was a prophetess, -after all. Rahnee, little tyrant, come down this instant.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span></p> - -<p>At a signal from Mrs. Thorne the ayah, who had been placidly dozing on -her square of carpet in the shade, arose. With a quick flank movement -the black woman bore down on Rahnee. Upon this, Rahnee, clinging closer -to Gaston, raised her shrill voice to its topmost limits.</p> - -<p>‘Rahnee, I command! Oh! dear—dear, what a trial children are at a high -temperature! Well, then, if you won’t be good,’—Linda drew from her -pocket a little silvery packet tied with cherry-coloured ribbon—‘if -Rahnee won’t be a good girl.... What does she think mamma has brought -her from town?’</p> - -<p>‘Tandy!’ cried Rahnee, with a sudden accession of repentant wisdom. -‘Rahnee not tease poor Missy But’not no more.’</p> - -<p>And bestowing two or three resonant kisses on Gaston, the child slid -down out of his arms. She gave her mother a careless caress, then -vanished, hiding herself and her ‘tandy’ under the ayah’s ample cotton -cloak, into The Bungalow.</p> - -<p>‘She really is not a bad little monkey,’ said Linda, who thoroughly -believed in her own system of education. ‘Touch Rahnee’s feelings and -you can at once bring her to obedience. Feeling is the grand requisite -in a child’s nature.’</p> - -<p>‘Who would not be virtuous,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot, ‘if virtue were -always rewarded by providential sugar candy?’</p> - -<p>‘And I so wanted to have a few minutes’ quiet talk with you. Do you -know, Mr. Arbuthnot, I am ... seriously afraid’—for once Linda -Thorne’s words came slow and haltingly—‘seriously afraid ... you will -pardon me, I hope, for saying this—that Mrs. Arbuthnot cannot be well.’</p> - -<p>‘<i>Dinah!</i> Why, she was fresh as a lily when I parted from her this -morning. I have indirectly heard of her looking her best since——’</p> - -<p>But Gaston’s face was unsmiling. The moment when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span> he shuffled and -re-shuffled the écarté packs, half a dozen men crowding to the -verandah of Colonel de Gourmet’s drawing-room, returned upon him with -significant and disagreeable clearness.</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot is looking exquisite. I thought I had never admired her -so much as in her Quaker dress, her simple country hat! Still, there -may be a bloom which exceeds health, a white which is too transparent. -Your wife strikes me—how shall I describe her state—as low-spirited, -hysterical!’</p> - -<p>‘She eats and sleeps well. She can walk half round the island. -Difficult to conceive of a young woman with Dinah’s magnificent -constitution as hysterical!’</p> - -<p>‘But she is so. I met Mrs. Arbuthnot on my way down from Miller’s -Hotel. I told her about our foolish wager, and how I had honestly -called to discharge my debt. A propos de bottes, you will find your -gloves on a corner of the mantlepiece.’</p> - -<p>‘And Dinah?’</p> - -<p>‘Dinah, I was afraid, looked like weeping, under the broad light of -day, in the open street.’</p> - -<p>‘Impossible! She is little given to idle tears, even when cause exists -for shedding them.’</p> - -<p>Gaston had reddened. He made the statement in the quiet tone of a man -sure of his facts.</p> - -<p>‘I felt as though I had committed some horrible crime—and of course, -when people’s nerves are unstrung, it is sheer cruelty to attempt -to argue with them. Our soft Guernsey air may be at the root of the -mischief. Half the disorders in these Channel places are nervous ones.’</p> - -<p>‘My wife does not know the meaning of nerves. Your kindheartedness, -dear Mrs. Thorne, for once leads you wide of the mark. Will you let -me smoke a cigarette?’ asked Gaston, consulting his watch. ‘In ten -minutes’ time I must be on my way to the Fort.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span></p> - -<p>They walked up and down, amicably chatting among the pleasant blue-gray -shadows of the lawn. Neither was ignorant of the art by which speech -can be used for the concealment of thought, and Dinah’s name was not -mentioned until the moment came for Gaston’s departure. Then Linda -Thorne spoke again, and to the point.</p> - -<p>‘I meant every word I uttered, Mr. Arbuthnot, and my best advice to you -is, give your wife change. Why not try Sark? It is the lightest air we -have in the Archipelago. Or, better still, run over for ten days to -Brittany.’ In saying this, she glanced at him through her eyelashes. -‘You must, at least, allow that I am unselfish?’</p> - -<p>‘I allow only that you want to get rid of us,’ laughed Gaston -Arbuthnot, with imperturbable neutrality. ‘Also, that your way of -working the scheme out is charming. You pack up wise counsel, Mrs. -Thorne, in silver paper, tied with rose-coloured ribbon, as you do -Rahnee’s candy!’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XLI</span> <span class="smaller">ONE WORD</span></h2> - -<p>The French waitress met Dinah as she entered the hotel.</p> - -<p>Madame Thorne had called—there was scarce five minutes since. The -visitor insisted ... but insisted on entering. A thousand amiabilities -were to be transmitted by the tongue of Louise, and something—the -Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders vaguely—had been left in Madame’s -salon for Monsieur.</p> - -<p>‘I know all about it,’ cried Dinah, with readiness. ‘Mrs. Thorne and I -have just been talking together. It is quite right, Louise.’</p> - -<p>She assumed the lightest, most cheerful tone of which she was mistress, -feeling, with inward smart, that the French shrug was over-vague, -that a glimmer of suspicious knowledge showed on the serving-woman’s -face. Then she walked, her step mock-elastic, a poorly counterfeited -smile upon her lips, to her sitting-room. Shutting the door, with the -automatic care human beings bestow on trivial actions in times when -their hearts are fullest, Dinah walked straight to the fireplace. The -‘something’ left for Monsieur was evidently before her. A letter, -almost amounting to a packet, stood on the mantelpiece. It was -addressed in large decisive handwriting to ‘Mr. G. Arbuthnot, Miller’s -Hotel, Guernsey.’</p> - -<p>(Cette chère Smeet! Elle sait si bien s’effacer! A pair of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span> iron-gray -men’s gloves, lying, modestly, on the farther corner of the shelf did -not arrest Dinah Arbuthnot’s sight.)</p> - -<p>‘Mr. G. Arbuthnot, Miller’s Hotel, Guernsey.’</p> - -<p>Well, reader, if Dinah had possessed only a few grains more of -worldly experience it must have been clear to her that this letter -never issued from The Bungalow. In the first place, by reason of the -handwriting—when did a woman of Linda’s culture affect the Greek e’s, -the up and down characters of an undergraduate? In the second, by the -ignorance of common English etiquette which the use of the title ‘Mr.’ -betrayed.</p> - -<p>But Dinah had no worldly experience at all, neither had she the -imaginativeness which renders some equally untaught people nimble at -guessing. In her mind was one engrossing thought—Gaston. In her ears -rang the text of Mrs. Thorne’s message. ‘I deposited the stakes on a -corner of your mantleshelf. Tell your husband from me that he has won, -that I am bankrupt.’</p> - -<p>There was no room, in her tempest of heart and brain, for doubts that -could have been favourable to her own peace.</p> - -<p>‘Mr. G. Arbuthnot, Miller’s Hotel.’ She took the letter—at first with -unwillingness—in her hands. She turned it over and over. The envelope -was too small for all that the sender had forced it to contain; it -adhered on one side, only. A touch, Dinah thought, shrinking from -her thought, and the edges must come asunder. Her hands trembled so -violently that she let the letter fall, with some force, on the ground. -As she picked it up she saw that the narrow edge of adhering envelope -had become narrower. An instant more of dalliance—and the temptation, -strong and imperious, to open it altogether, had taken hold of her.</p> - -<p>‘Be true to yourself,’ whispered a still small voice, the voice of -Dinah’s better nature, ‘loyal, upright, as you have striven to be -from the day you married Gaston Arbuthnot. Go away from him to-night, -to-morrow, if you have not wifely courage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span> to live your life out at his -side. But go, with head erect, looking neither to the right hand nor -the left, till the last.’</p> - -<p>Then rose another voice, bolder of tone, of strain less heroic.</p> - -<p>‘Poor, foolish, hot-hearted woman! Is it not possible that you are -brewing a thunderstorm in a tea-cup? Why these turns and twistings of -conscience? Linda Thorne, Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, thinking no evil, make -one of the silly wagers common among idle people who inhabit an idle -world. The lady is the loser, calls at her friend’s hotel to discharge -her debt, and meeting the friend’s wife, confesses, playfully, that -she is bankrupt! Open that quarter-inch of yawning envelope, as Linda -Thorne, no doubt, intended you to do. In Gaston’s absence, you have -often opened letters addressed to him, by his own desire. Where is -the fancied line between former right and present wrong. How could it -matter to Gaston if you did see the contents of a packet in which there -is probably not a syllable of writing?’</p> - -<p>And Dinah’s heart was vanquished by the meanness of opportunity. She -opened it.</p> - -<p>A length of folded ribbon met her sight; a tiny bouquet, odorous still -with yesterday’s sweetness, of briar and of heliotrope; a sheet of -notepaper upon which one word was written. Bare hints—outlines of -some unknown story, which jealous passion might easily colour, fill up -with vivid detail, endow with pulsating life! After the first moment’s -shock, Dinah stood like a woman petrified. Her eyes were fixed on the -<i>one word</i>—never meant for their perusal! Her face was bloodless. She -felt cold, stupefied with anger. It seemed to her that she could not -drag herself from the spot where this hateful, sure light had dispelled -her darkness for ever. She waited—as though waiting could avail her! -At last the striking of a clock caused her to start. She had got to -dress, she remembered, to face men and women, to dine—for Gaston’s -sake. With<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span> an effort that almost cost her bodily pain, Dinah made her -way into her bedroom. She locked, double locked the door. Then holding -the envelope and its contents between her shivering hands, she tried -to force herself into calmness, to resolve on conduct, if that were -possible, which should be just to herself and to her husband.</p> - -<p>He was guilty of no actual wrong-doing. This thought presented itself, -in clear pure light, amidst all the dusky half-shades of her mind. -Gaston was fickle, neglectful of herself, too easily led captive along -the road of pleasure. Worse things than these she could never think of -him. To the moment of her death he must remain her best beloved and -her lord; the one man, could the hour of choosing come again, whom she -would choose out of ten thousand. She did not accuse Gaston of wrong. -She sought not to blacken Linda. For aught she knew, these delicately -sentimental friendships, these intimacies which permitted tender -expression—the yielding of a ribbon or a flower!—might, in the world -above her head, be held innocent.</p> - -<p>What she did know was that she, Dinah, belonged not to that world, -desired no further education in its usages. A comedy ... an amusing -drawing-room charade, perhaps ... was in course of rehearsal between a -tired Indian lady, needing sensation, and her husband. She would not -passively, ignobly stand by, a spectator. She would drag out her life -of paltry distrust no longer. Gaston’s formal leave must be asked for, -before she started; money also—enough to take her from Guernsey to -the Devonshire moors. This would be all. Briefly, if Heaven would help -her, honestly, she would tell Gaston what wish lay next her heart. And -Gaston was not likely to thwart her! By Monday—oh, that it could be -earlier—she would go back to her own people, to a life shone on by no -sun, watered by no shower, a life shut out from keen pleasure as from -keen humiliation for evermore. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span></p> - -<p>Dinah sank into a chair and fell to examining the hue and texture of -the ribbon, curiosity, for the moment, out-balancing cold repugnance. -It was of foreign make, she saw; a relic, doubtless, of those days -when two people, <i>who might have suited each other</i>, used to meet, to -exchange furtive whispers in a Paris salon; a memento sufficiently -precious to have survived through a decade of divided years, and to -become the object of a keenly contested wager between them now.</p> - -<p>‘Tell your husband,’ with fresh purport Linda’s message returned to -her, ‘that he has won, and I am bankrupt.’</p> - -<p>She put back the enclosures in their cover, not suffering herself to -smell the flowers’ languid odour, or look again on the one word whose -import her jealousy divined and magnified. Then, just as she had hidden -the letter away in a secret drawer of her dressing-case, the first -dinner-bell was set ringing, and Dinah bethought her that, if she would -carry out Gaston’s parting request, she must go into the dining-room, -alone.</p> - -<p>No further shirking of that ‘alone’ was practicable. On former -occasions she had quietly contrived to absent herself from the public -table when Gaston dined abroad, pleading headaches for heartaches, -preferring tea to food, ringing the changes by which neglected wives, -when they have common sense, keep their own sad counsel apart from -the world. The time was past for deceits now, either towards herself, -or others. Dinner, to-day, like all her future dinners, for twenty or -thirty years, say, must, perforce, be eaten without Gaston.</p> - -<p>To drift—here, in truth, seemed that which lay before her! To drift! -At the present moment to speculate on possible effects—to vacillate -over a tucker, a locket, the colour of one’s dinner dress. A despairing -human soul, perplexed over the rival merits of pink, white, or blue; a -soul which, when love shone on it, had less than its feminine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span> share of -toilet vanity! As poor Dinah hesitated, her thoughts travelled back, -by no road she knew, to Saturday’s rose-show, her first meeting with -Rex Basire, her earliest distinct doubt of Gaston’s truthfulness. She -decided to put on the black dress she wore that day, to pin a white -rose, Gaston’s flower by predilection, in her hair, to wear a silver -bracelet, Gaston’s first present after their marriage, on her wrist.</p> - -<p>How fair, how marvellously fair she was! The fact struck Dinah with a -sense of newness as she stood, waiting for the last dinner-bell, before -her glass. Surely her looks, joined to such lavish love as she had -given, might have contented the heart, the pride of the most exacting -husband. If she had only had more mind. There was the flaw, the -fatal deficiency to a man with whom mind was all in all, like Gaston -Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>She scrutinised the moulding of her temples, the lines of her perfectly -cut head. In outward proportion she thought there was not much amiss. -It must be the quality of the brain that was poor. There must be -an inherited peasant slowness, a bluntness of perception or wit, -<i>something</i> which disabled her from holding her own against the taught -graces, the pliant, inexhaustible lightness of such an one as Linda -Thorne. She might, if lowlier duties had fallen to her, have been -clever enough to manage a house, to look after her husband’s interests, -to bring up children. Amongst ladies and gentlemen—oh, the bitterness -with which she uttered the titles of gentility half aloud—amongst -ladies and gentlemen she had no place, no chance.</p> - -<p>And in her nature, not thoroughly sounded as yet, but of whose depths -the last few days had vaguely informed her—in her innermost nature -were evil things that a constant pressure of temptation might bring to -the surface. She was not like Geoffrey. No ministering to others could -fill her life, at any rate not while she was young, while the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span> cry for -love had the double keenness of a physical and of a moral want. If -she continued a hanger-on of the world that Gaston loved,—‘some one -who must be asked, don’t you know, occasionally, on sufferance,’—she -would, one day, meet with homage, differently offered, and from a -different man to Rex Basire. Was she sure that gratitude would not be -awakened in her, then vanity? Was she sure she might not decline, step -by step, to the condition of that most pitiable among women—a wife, -true to the cold letter of her fealty, who has at once outlived her -husband’s affection and the stings of her own self-contempt?</p> - -<p>Dinah started, guiltily, as the sharp clang of the dinner-bell -roused her into final action. It took a good many minutes before -she could recover sufficiently to face the ordeal that lay before -her. At last, arming herself by the reflection that henceforth all -life’s common actions must be gone through alone, and under a certain -cloud of suspicion, she made her way to the dining-room. After a -moment’s trembling heartsickness, she pushed back one of the double -doors—entered.</p> - -<p>A hush, an involuntary suspension of knife and fork greeted her. The -light through a western window fell full upon her golden head. The -whiteness of her throat and hands was thrown into brilliant relief by -the sombre dress she wore.</p> - -<p>‘A saint of Holman Hunt’s—Early manner,’ thought a high-church curate, -away on his four weeks’ holiday, and who never would know more of -Dinah than the large sad eyes, the lips’ carnation, the nimbus of -sunlight-coloured hair.</p> - -<p>‘Can the complexion be absolutely real?’ floated through the brain of -more than one duly aged and authorised feminine critic.</p> - -<p>Miller, with his professional little run and smile, came forward. He -ushered Dinah Arbuthnot to her place. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">[Pg 406]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot not expected, I believe?’ asked the host, as -Dinah prepared to take her seat.</p> - -<p>‘No, Mr. Arbuthnot is dining at the Fort.’</p> - -<p>‘And Mr. Geoffrey will not return till late. Then I may be allowed to -fill this vacant chair? Thank you, madam. I should not have ventured to -place a stranger next Mrs. Arbuthnot without permission.’</p> - -<p>A minute later Dinah discovered—no stranger, but her husband’s friend, -Lord Rex Basire, at her side.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">[Pg 407]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XLII</span> <span class="smaller">EMANCIPATION</span></h2> - -<p>Dinah Arbuthnot’s face asked vividly for explanation.</p> - -<p>‘Made sure Arbuthnot would be here—that is to say, <i>our</i> -Arbuthnot’—Lord Rex stammered; he showed embarrassment that sat on -him oddly, as he apologised for his uninvited presence. ‘The comings -and goings of the Cambridge cousin are, naturally, beyond my powers of -calculation.’</p> - -<p>‘Naturally,’ echoed Dinah. She remembered, with a pang of -self-reproach, what manner of errand kept Geoffrey absent.</p> - -<p>‘Strolled round here early—by accident, you know—thought I’d ask -myself to dinner with your husband. Clean forgot, till Miller or some -one put it into my head, it was guest night. That was half an hour ago. -Ought to have started off, instanter, to Fort-William.’</p> - -<p>‘And why, pray, did you not do so?’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot, can you ask me!’</p> - -<p>Rex Basire’s tone adequately supplemented his words. And Dinah’s pulse -quickened. She was on the threshold, she remembered, of a new, an -emancipated life. A wife who lives apart from her husband must accept -her position, grow used to many things, to every complexion of whisper -among the rest. That is the world’s immutable sentence. Away from -Gaston, divorced from the arm which, during four years, had cradled -her in warm safety—she must<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">[Pg 408]</a></span> learn, like other unloved women, to -rely on her own strength—her strength and the chivalry of all such -knights-errant, such Rex Basires, as should cross her path!</p> - -<p>About the chivalry more might have to be learnt, hereafter. Dinah -realised, before the first step of her downward journey was taken, -that her strength was weakness. She felt as though all eyes around the -table must watch her with suspicion, read her secret. Rex Basire’s tone -of assured admiration brought the blood miserably, shamefully to her -cheeks.</p> - -<p>He saw and misinterpreted the blush.</p> - -<p>‘Thought, you know, as there was a rumour of the cousin’s absence, I -should have a chance of getting next you.’</p> - -<p>‘You would have been better amused elsewhere, my lord. With Geff I can -talk or be silent as I like. Geff does not mind.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex on this made some whispered hit at the ‘model cousin’s’ -excellence. As he ate his half cold soup murmured comparisons fell from -him as to the men who are made of flesh and blood, poor devils! and -the other men, too good for this world, who are made of ice, yes, ice, -by Jove! But he was not great at covert allusion. The metaphorical ice -got mixed with the metaphorical flesh and blood: his nominatives were -nowhere. Breaking down, rather ignominiously, Lord Rex smothered his -failure under a capacious sigh.</p> - -<p>Dinah turned to him, with cheeks still burning. ‘I am afraid I did not -understand. Men of ice! Men of flesh and blood! Were you talking of -Geff or of yourself, Lord Rex?’</p> - -<p>Despite her blush, the true eyes stopped him short, as they had so -often done before. Ere Rex Basire had time to double back towards his -starting-point there came an interruption—one of the trivial things -not to be mentioned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">[Pg 409]</a></span> in heroic story, yet which do, ofttimes, determine -the current of a human life. A plain little man, his large-checked -suit, his open Murray proclaiming the tourist, had during the past two -minutes attentively watched Lord Rex from the other side the table. -Upon hearing Dinah’s mention of the name, the stranger fidgeted with -his knife and fork, cleared his throat, coughed. Finally, leaning -forward with a bow, it was obvious that he expected, was eager for, -aristocratic recognition.</p> - -<p>‘Lord Rex Basire, if I mistake not?’</p> - -<p>‘Sir! You are politeness itself. But you have the better of me.’</p> - -<p>Rex Basire accorded his interrogator a blank and frozen stare.</p> - -<p>‘Oh, the top of St. Gothard, Lord Rex. You were travelling with the -Duchess. Her grace’s carriage broke down—something wrong with the -linch-pin—and as I was in the region, botanising, I had the honour of -offering her grace mine. Your lordship will recollect?’</p> - -<p>‘Her grace’s carriage is invariably breaking down. Invariably. -Besides,’ drawled Lord Rex, putting up a ferocious pince-nez, and -resolute to nip renewal of acquaintance in the bud, ‘we are not on the -top of the St. Gothard now. Ah, Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ he addressed Dinah in -as low a tone as a man’s voice can sink to without becoming an actual -whisper, ‘<i>this</i> makes up to one for a great deal I have suffered at -your hands.’</p> - -<p>‘By <i>this</i>,’ said Dinah, whose courage was returning, ‘do you mean the -cold soup we have eaten, or the colder fish to which they are helping -us?’</p> - -<p>‘I mean the happiness of sitting beside you, of knowing I am so much -forgiven that——’</p> - -<p>‘Her grace travelled on as far as Andermatt in the carriage it was -my privilege to lend her. From Andermatt, if my memory serves me -right——’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">[Pg 410]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Your memory is certain to serve you right, sir. The incident which I, -it seems, have forgotten, was more than unimportant.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex’s manner was brutal; no other word would adequately describe -it. The poor little tourist’s eyes dropped to his plate, his face -turned scarlet. Dinah leaned forward on the instant. With the gentle -womanliness which was <i>her</i> breeding, she addressed him in her pleasant -country voice:</p> - -<p>‘My husband and I met with just the same kind of accident once. -Our carriage broke down, and we had to spend six hours, in wet and -darkness, between Berne and Vevey. I should not have forgotten any one -who had come to our help that night.’</p> - -<p>‘Ah—you know Switzerland, madam? Then may I ask,’ the tourist gave a -piteous glance towards Lord Rex, ‘if you take an interest in the Alpine -flora? I have only time to pursue such things during my holidays.’ It -is possible he pronounced the word without its aspirate. ‘But botany -is my hobby; I get plants enough in my five weeks to fill my leisure -for the rest of the year. Now in that very region you speak of, I have -found two or three specimens that are unique. If you will allow me to -enumerate the Latin names, madam——’</p> - -<p>And so on, and so on. The poor man was one of nature’s choicest bores. -His information was stale, his manner of imparting it prosy; his -blindness to the suffering he inflicted, absolute. Dinah’s face wore -a look of kindly interest through everything. Occasionally (Lord Rex -all but groaning aloud over his wasted opportunities) she would strike -in with some question calculated to start the narrator afresh on new -tracks, on new prosiness, if, peradventure, he chanced to lag.</p> - -<p>She even bowed courteously to him on leaving the table d’hôte: an -example not followed by Lord Rex. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">[Pg 411]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘A charming dinner, on my word!’ So he broke forth, the moment he found -himself beside Dinah in the welcome freshness of the garden. ‘May I -ask, Mrs. Arbuthnot, what inhuman whim made you talk to that wretched -snob?’</p> - -<p>Rex Basire’s voice went beyond the limits of petulance.</p> - -<p>‘Why a snob?’ asked Dinah, meekly. ‘You know I can never catch the -inner meaning of these names.’</p> - -<p>‘Why? Because he was a snob. “Her grace’s carriage broke down on the -top of the St. Gothard; he had had the privilege of offering his.” -What the dickens did that matter to me? “Her grace travelled as far as -Andermatt in his carriage.” What the dickens did that matter to him?’</p> - -<p>‘Only this, perhaps—that her grace’s misadventure obliged the snob to -go on foot.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot!—I never expect a direct answer from any woman,’ Lord -Rex exclaimed with scarcely suppressed temper; ‘still, I should like -to know why during a mortal three-quarters of an hour you allowed that -little wretch to talk to you?’</p> - -<p>She paused. A shade of deepened colour touched her cheek. ‘The wretch -was intelligent, Lord Rex.’ (<i>Aye, and opportune!</i> This was a subtle -parenthesis, put in by Dinah’s conscience.) ‘I don’t understand Alpine -plants, but I liked to hear a good deal our tourist said about them.’</p> - -<p>‘The ’obby he pursues during his ’olidays,’ observed Lord Rex, -humorously.</p> - -<p>Dinah turned swiftly round. A streak of sunset goldened her hair, -and the delicate outlines of her face. She gave a look of farewell -sincerity at Lord Rex Basire.</p> - -<p>‘Do you remember,’ she asked him, ‘a conversation you and I had on -board the steamer? It was just after my husband and the Thornes had -landed at Alderney.’</p> - -<p>Yes, Lord Rex remembered. He was not likely—this, with a sigh—to -forget any hour or place in which he had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">[Pg 412]</a></span> had the good fortune to find -himself alone with Mrs. Arbuthnot.</p> - -<p>‘We spoke about class distinctions. I believe you called me a -Conservative. Certainly you told me you were the most out-and-out -demagogue in England. You were all for fraternity, Lord Rex. “Gardener -Adam and his wife, and that sort of thing.” Labour was the universal -purchase-money. Dukes and earls had best go back to the place from -whence they came. Well—you meant none of this.’</p> - -<p>Lord Rex winced. ‘Unfair on a fellow,’ he observed, ‘to be thus taken -au pied de la lettre, and——’</p> - -<p>‘You must speak in English,’ cried Dinah. ‘I have not French enough to -understand your meaning.’</p> - -<p>‘My dear Mrs. Arbuthnot! A man may hold theories,—visions of an -impracticable Utopia, don’t you know ... charming—ahem! to air in -exquisite company; impossible to carry out in this rough chaos of a -world we live in.’</p> - -<p>Dinah stopped for a minute or more, sedately reflecting, before she -answered.</p> - -<p>‘I think I understand. Socialistic opinions, if one is trying to -make talk for a rather stupid woman at a picnic, may be well enough, -especially if the rather stupid woman does not belong to one’s own -station.’</p> - -<p>‘Mrs. Arbuthnot! I protest——’</p> - -<p>‘The gardener Adam, of reality, is a snob. A wretch, bound, of course, -to lend his carriage to her grace, in distress, so long as he has -not the impertinence to talk of duchesses or linch-pins during the -remainder of his days. I have gained a new bit of wisdom, Lord Rex -Basire. It is not likely I shall meet you in England. If I do, I shall -remember what you said to our poor botanist—“We are not on the St. -Gothard now.” You might say, massacring me through a cruel double -eye-glass, “We are not in Guernsey now.” Good-night, my lord.’</p> - -<p>She touched his hand. She passed away out of his life<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">[Pg 413]</a></span> with a smile. -Her step was light. The rose-tints of the sky lent a fictitious -brilliancy to her face. Wonderful how that poor young woman, Mrs. -Arbuthnot, kept up her spirits! So opined feminine judges, looking -mercifully down upon events from the drawing-room windows of the -hotel. And under the sad circumstances—the husband’s indifference to -her growing hourly more pointed—to be carried away like a girl by -this foolish little lord’s attention! But that is the nature of these -pink-and-white, yellow-haired marionettes. The temperament, my dear -madam, is not one that feels or sorrows.</p> - -<p>Dinah Arbuthnot walked quietly to her room, then rang the bell, and -told the waiting-maid that she would require nothing further, and that -no one need sit up for Mr. Arbuthnot. She changed her dress for a loose -wrapper, rested herself during some minutes, and with her face hidden -between her hands, strove to realise the altered condition of things -which lay before her.</p> - -<p>It had been easy, an outlet to jealous anger, to declare, in the -moment’s heat, she would no longer live with Gaston Arbuthnot. -During dinner, though the strain was tense, there had been a certain -excitement, a sense of perilous adventure, to keep her up. Now came -blank reality. She must look at her position, as a stranger would, -from outside. If she purposed in good earnest to seek refuge with her -Devonshire kinsfolk, she had best benefit by Geoffrey’s escort on -Sunday, had best, wisely and soberly, begin to pack to-night.</p> - -<p>Well, reader, ‘to pack,’ however chaotic one’s mental condition, -means—to use one’s arms, see to the folding of one’s latest intricate -furbelows, make sure that one’s newest bonnet shall not be crushed. -Dinah got through this part of her work well enough; nay, inasmuch as -packing brought her muscles into play, felt the better for it. Then -came the bitter beginning of the end. She must sort<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">[Pg 414]</a></span> her trinkets, must -decide which things it was right to take with her into exile, which -leave.</p> - -<p>Gaston was the most careless man living. The key of his dressing-case -was in his wife’s hands, everything he owned of value in her keeping. -It thus became needful, in looking over her own possessions, that she -should take count of his. And in doing so their four years of married -life returned, month by month, almost hour by hour before her.</p> - -<p>A legacy of two hundred pounds had come to Dinah from a well-to-do -farmer uncle a few days after her wedding. ‘Too much, rather, to give -to the poor, not enough, certainly, to invest,’ declared Gaston—they -were at the time in Paris. ‘We will go shares, my dear child. I will -take one of the good uncle’s hundreds for cigarettes and you shall have -the other hundred for chiffons.’</p> - -<p>Dinah wanted no chiffons—at Gaston’s insistence, possessing more -millinery already than she knew what to do with. So her hundred pounds -were mainly spent in buying pretty things for her husband. Gaston was -fonder of rings and pins than are most born Englishmen. He had also an -innocent way of directing Dinah’s admiration to artistic trifles in -the jewellers’ windows of the Palais Royal and the Boulevards—trifles -which were tolerably sure to find their way to his own dressing-table -before the next morning.</p> - -<p>Ah, their good laughs when these innocent ways became too bare-faced! -Ah, the golden Paris days, when each hour was sweeter than the last, -when they used to jest together (little knowing) at the musty axiom -which limits a pair of true lovers’ happiness to the shining of a -single moon!</p> - -<p>All the happiness—on one side, all the love—was gone now, thought -Dinah, as trinket after trinket, memorials every one of them, passed -through her fingers. She, who, in the bloom of hope, believed all -things, trusted all things, had become harsh, unrelenting, a woman -bent, of her own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">[Pg 415]</a></span> free will, though it cost her her heart’s blood, upon -leaving her husband’s side. And Gaston—nay, of him she would think -no further ill, to-night, at least! The proofs—little needed—of his -light faith she had locked away, witnesses against him until the last -hour that both should live. But she would think no new evil of him -to-night. She would seek her pillow, leave the preparations for her -journey as they stood. Midnight was now drawing near. To-morrow, she -thought, when sleep should have renewed her strength, this beginning -of her changed existence, this saying of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ instead of -‘ours’ might come easier.</p> - -<p>To-day was still to-day. They belonged outwardly, in the world’s sight, -to each other yet.</p> - -<p>There on the bedroom mantelshelf was an unfinished model Gaston had -made of her, a sketch which, had it reached marble, might some day -have worked its way inside the walls of the Academy. Among the neat -proprieties of her dressing-table were two of his modelling tools, -not altogether innocent of clay. There lay a half-burnt cigarette ... -a glove that he had worn.... Ah, heaven! And with this passionate -affection at her heart, she was unloved of him, had no child with tiny -tender clasp to make up to her for her husband’s coldness! And she was -still only a girl in years; and life but yesterday, it seemed, was -sweet.</p> - -<p>If Gaston, with clairvoyant power, could have seen her at this moment -in her extremity of pain, doubt not that the couple of hilly miles -between Fort-William and Miller’s Hotel had proved an insufficient -barrier to keep him from her side. Common men, however, have common -lights to guide them. They reap even as they sow.</p> - -<p>When twelve o’clock struck and Dinah’s aching head sank on its pillow, -Gaston Arbuthnot, with unburthened conscience, was settling himself -placidly down to poker—the little game of draw in which he had -vouchsafed to act as mentor to the youngsters of the Maltshire Royals.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">[Pg 416]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XLIII</span> <span class="smaller">GEOFFREY CALLS TO BE PAID</span></h2> - -<p>It was a custom, dating farther back than Andros Bartrand’s childhood, -that the Seigneurs of Tintajeux should hold a stiff and formal levée on -the first Saturday of every alternate month.</p> - -<p>The ceremony, shorn of its former old-world stiffness, lingered -on, and to the feminine mind was one of the most popular Sarnian -entertainments. For Andros Bartrand, with his fine manner, his handsome -face, his learning, his temper, was scarcely less a favourite with the -sex at fourscore than he had been in the flower of his age, half a -century earlier.</p> - -<p>‘Will this generation of progress, will the coming democracy ever -produce men of eighty like our Seigneur?’ the Guernsey ladies, -Conservative to a woman, would ask.</p> - -<p>And he who had argued that there may be higher ideals of an -octogenarian than are comprised by culture, originality, vigorous -health, an arrogant profile, and a courtly bow, would have stood poor -chance of escaping without scar from their hands.</p> - -<p>‘The Seigneur grows robuster every year,’ remarked Mrs. Verschoyle to -Cassandra Tighe, on the afternoon of July 2. The ‘Tintajeux levée’ had -opened. The elder ladies were ranged along the row of white and gold -arm-chairs that surrounded the drawing-room. ‘Time stands still with -Andros Bartrand. Look at him talking—flirting, I call it—with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">[Pg 417]</a></span> Rosie. -The child declares, if the Seigneur would only ask her, she is quite -prepared to answer “Yes.”’</p> - -<p>‘What would Lord Rex Basire say to that?’ whispered Cassandra, warming -up at the faintest suggestion of a love affair.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Verschoyle looked mournfully perplexed, the chronic state of her -good, maternal, overburdened soul.</p> - -<p>‘Lord Rex Basire? One certainly seems,’ said poor Mrs. Verschoyle -inappositely, ‘to have seen less of him since the picnic. But then we -have no gentleman to leave a card at the Fort! That is the worst of an -unmarried colonel in a regiment. One really can <i>not</i> do the polite -thing. Does any one know, I wonder,’ a faint pink blush suffused the -whiteness of Mrs. Verschoyle’s cheek as some misty sequence of ideas -ran through her brain—‘does any one know if there is truth in this -rumour of the Arbuthnot family leaving the island?’</p> - -<p>‘I can give reliable information about one member of the Arbuthnot -family,’ cried the prettiest, least wise, of the de Carterets. This -young lady, in the absence of better amusement, had been listening to -the exchange of confidences between her elders. ‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot -leaves Guernsey to-morrow. I am sure of my facts, because papa went to -inquire at Miller’s after a room for Fred. You know, Mrs. Verschoyle, -that we have had a telegram from Lloyd’s? Fred will be home on Monday.’</p> - -<p>‘I hope your poor mother will get no shock when she sees him,’ Mrs. -Verschoyle answered sadly. ‘Not one young man in fifty brings back a -constitution from India.’</p> - -<p>‘And Miller said the younger Mr. Arbuthnot’s room would be vacant -to-morrow. I appreciated Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot highly at the -subalterns’ picnic, and should like to have seen more of him, only -Marjorie Bartrand would not let me! Yes, Miss Bartrand,’ ran on Ada -de Carteret guilelessly, but putting additional meaning in her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">[Pg 418]</a></span> tone -as Marjorie came within earshot, ‘and—although this is not meant for -you to hear—I can tell by your face that you are listening, that your -conscience pricks you.’</p> - -<p>Listening! Ay, that was Marjorie Bartrand, in truth, outwardly -listening, with strained sense, to the even hum of small-talk that -filled the rooms, inwardly awaiting, with the keen expectancy that -hardly needs the help of bodily hearing, for the step, the voice whose -absence already made the world blank to her.</p> - -<p>‘I shall certainly not leave Guernsey without calling on the -Seigneur—to be paid.’</p> - -<p>To the cruel words, to such remote and slender hope of reconciliation -as they might hold forth, Marjorie’s heart clung tenaciously. She was -softer of manner to-day than was her wont, played her part of hostess -with studied dutifulness towards her grandfather’s visitors. The annual -Sunday School treat would come on next week, said the rectoress of some -remote country parish. Of course one might count on Marjorie Bartrand -to lead the games? Had the great St. Laurens scandal reached Tintajeux, -asked another? Maître Giroflée and his wife, the best church people in -the parish, gone over to Salem because the rector had cut down their -pew—good solid oak, it must be confessed, worth so much a foot—in -making his chancel restorations!</p> - -<p>Oh, with what weary patience the poor child listened to it all, making -occasional random answer, when answer was needed. How utterly had her -vivid child’s life lost its interest! How flat, how dissonant was every -sound on this planet to Marjorie Bartrand, so long as the footstep for -whose approach she yearned was silent!</p> - -<p>‘Why—witch! Your cheeks are as white as your gown,’ remarked the -Reverend Andros, happening, presently, to come across her. ‘We must -get our Cambridge Esculapius to prescribe for you. What is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">[Pg 419]</a></span> Arbuthnot -doing with himself?’ added the Seigneur, with a hard look at his -granddaughter. ‘We are short of the inferior sex to-day. Why is -Arbuthnot not here to make himself useful among the tea-cups?’</p> - -<p>‘Afternoon parties are not much in my tutor’s way. But I believe—yes,’ -faltered Marjorie, with one of her dark blushes, ‘I believe—at this -moment—I see a figure like Mr. Arbuthnot’s crossing the moor. We will -put a tea-cup in each of his hands, sir, as soon as we feel certain of -having caught him.’</p> - -<p>She fled into the recess of a window in the smaller drawing-room. -Standing there, shrouded by the lace draperies, she wondered if <i>more</i> -than a dozen pair of eyes had noticed her change of colour! She -clenched her hands until the nails impressed her soft palms painfully. -She essayed, with will, to keep her rebel cheeks from flaming, her lips -from weakness. She marvelled by what art she could render her manner -passive—Marjorie Bartrand, who during her seventeen years of life had, -at every pass, gone aggressively to the fore, for good or for evil—on -her tutor’s entrance.</p> - -<p>His ring came at the front-door bell. ‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,’ was -ceremoniously announced by Sylvestre. The French windows stood open. -With the occult sixth sense which, in lovers, supplements the ordinary -ones of sight and hearing, Marjorie divined that Geoffrey walked at -once to the lawn in search of the Seigneur. After a time she could -hear his voice—excellent spirits Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot seemed to be -in—as he made his way through the crowded outer room. She caught the -laughter of Ada de Carteret, the thin gay tones of Rosie Verschoyle. A -sharp cross fire of raillery was being levelled against Geoffrey on the -subject of his abrupt departure. Marjorie could detect and misconstrue -the coolness with which he turned this raillery aside. By and by came a -new <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">[Pg 420]</a></span>excitement. The Maltshire dandies were arriving in force, and in -the general flutter which ensued upon this important crisis no single -voice was longer distinguishable. Marjorie’s pulse went quicker. She -knew that her time had come. Three or four seconds passed breathlessly, -then a hand drew back the curtain behind which she was half concealed. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot stood beside her.</p> - -<p>‘I have kept my word. I am here to wish you and the Seigneur good-bye.’ -His composed speech stirred every fibre of Marjorie’s repentant, -passionate heart. ‘It is a surprise,’ Geff added, ‘to find half the -Guernsey world at Tintajeux Manoir. But I hope, Miss Bartrand, you can -spare me five minutes’ quiet talk?’</p> - -<p>Marjorie, on this, had no choice but to look up at him. Tears, despite -pride, despite principle, were in her eyes.</p> - -<p>‘To say good-bye!’ she repeated, holding out her hand, then, with -cheeks going from rosy-red to white, shrinking back ere he could grasp -it. ‘I—I never thought you could be so cruel.’</p> - -<p>So the girl cared something for him, after all, thought Geoffrey. She -would brush a tear away to-morrow, perhaps, when those who travel by -land or water were courteously alluded to by old Andros in the Litany, -would regret him a little, as long as this summer’s roses lasted. She -would remember him until her heart, if heart she possessed, should be -touched in earnest. No more than this. It was not her time to love, -poor Marjorie! And he ... must part from her as a strong man ought; -must say ‘this is,’ not ‘this might have been.’ There should be neither -recrimination nor bitterness. A touch of the sunburnt chiselled hand, -a look into the eyes which had wounded him, as children wound, from -ignorance, and then a brave and loyal farewell, this time a final one.</p> - -<p>A table on which lay books and photographs stood at hand. Geoffrey took -up a photograph of the Gouliots,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">[Pg 421]</a></span> Sark—some glistening boulders, a -fishing-net stretched on the shingle, a break of wave. How indelibly -the bit of sun-etching transferred itself to his brain’s tablets! How -often, in dull future hours, would those boulders, that break of wave, -stand out in crisp relief before Geff’s memory?</p> - -<p>‘Yes.’ He spoke in a key that only Marjorie could hear. ‘For just five -minutes I should like to claim you. When I was at Tintajeux the day -before yesterday, I was atrociously churlish to you, Miss Bartrand. I -have been brought to see it since. Will you accept my apology?’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey had ‘been brought to see’ his churlishness! Then he held at -nought her offer of truce—the word it had cost her pride so dear to -write! He offered her this cutting rejoinder, an apology!</p> - -<p>‘You are hard upon me, Mr. Arbuthnot.’ There was a piteous deprecation -in her voice. ‘When you were my master, I used to think you severe; but -that was the worst. I believed you to be <i>human</i>.’</p> - -<p>‘I am afraid I am very human.’ Geoffrey took up a fresh photograph; he -examined it at a curiously shortsighted focus. ‘So human,’ he added, -softening, ‘that I have not altogether given up the hope of your some -day writing to me.’</p> - -<p>‘A formal, set letter, do you mean?’</p> - -<p>‘A letter,’ said Geff, very low, ‘in which no thought of the Tintajeux -acres has place.’</p> - -<p>For a moment her face showed one of its old bright flashes. In the -world of story books it had ever been Marjorie’s pleasure to scoff at -the frail impediments, arising from the necessity of a third volume, -which keep true lovers apart. Should paltry reserve—the thought came -upon her abruptly—should schoolgirl cowardice divide her, as though -three hundred pages of ‘copy’ depended upon the quarrel, from Geoffrey?</p> -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">[Pg 422]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I don’t know what you would have me say. I can’t see why you should be -off so quick! I tried—I hoped——’</p> - -<p>But while the monosyllables came haltingly from Marjorie’s tongue, a -stir had arisen in the larger drawing-room. It was plain that a group -of people, young men and maidens taking counsel together in a corner, -were bent on some kind of action. Their project matured quickly. Rosie -Verschoyle shot a beseeching glance at old Andros as she went through a -meaning pantomime of the waltz step. Little Oscar Jones, with the air -of a man upon whom rests an onerous embassy, made his way across both -rooms to Marjorie.</p> - -<p>‘Ten thousand pardons, Miss Bartrand! Would not intrude for the world -on a tête-à-tête. Fact is, you see, some of them want to get up a dance -on the lawn.’</p> - -<p>‘A dance! Absurdity!’ cried Marjorie, bestowing on him an -ultra-Bartrand look. Then, recollecting their position as hostess and -guest, ‘I mean, would not tennis amuse you just as well?’ she observed, -with show of interest. ‘Or ask Gertrude de Carteret to sing, or——’</p> - -<p>‘But, dear Miss Bartrand, we all of us want to <i>dance</i>,’ persisted -the handsome little lieutenant, with a smile that he had grounds for -believing irresistible. ‘Miss Tighe volunteers to play for us beside -an open window. Powerful backstairs interest is at this moment bearing -down on the Seigneur. We only want an encouraging word from you.’</p> - -<p>‘I never say encouraging words. It is too foolish,’ cried Marjorie, -detecting, in her misery, that Geoffrey showed signs of flight. ‘To -begin with, we have so few gentlemen.’</p> - -<p>‘Few; why, there are five at least of Ours. There is Mr. Geoffrey -Arbuthnot.... Ah! going already? Then we must reckon without Mr. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot. And it seems some of the clergy dance, a mild -square dance, and——’</p> - -<p>‘Yes, yes, Marjorie!’ exclaimed a bevy of young girls,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">[Pg 423]</a></span> coming up and -surrounding her like the chorus in an opera. ‘It is useless for you to -be wise. Rosie has won the Seigneur to say Yes. Miss Tighe is ready. -The piano is on its journey to the window.’</p> - -<p>‘Will you be my partner for the first waltz, Miss Bartrand?’ pleaded -Oscar Jones.</p> - -<p>Now, at any prior moment of her life, Marjorie Bartrand, deficient -neither in temper nor in courage, would, thus attacked, have held her -ground stoutly. But the girl saw, or fancied she saw, that Geoffrey -was eager to get away. Her spirit was charged to overflowing. The -eyes of half the people in the room were fixed upon her expectantly. -Easier, she thought, before Geoffrey, before them all, to give a coldly -assenting bow than trust her voice to speak; so she gave it.</p> - -<p>Oscar Jones looked radiant. ‘Thank you, awfully, Miss Bartrand. This is -a victory worth scoring. I will just go and start the corps de ballet, -ask the orchestra to strike up some gay old waltz tune, and return to -you.’</p> - -<p>The corps de ballet was already setting towards the lawn. Cassandra -Tighe had taken her place at the piano beside an open window. Geoffrey -Arbuthnot and Marjorie, with youth, with love, with the heaviness -of parting at their hearts, were alone. But their good chance was -gone. The thread had snapped which bound together poor Marjorie’s -monosyllables. Two minutes later she would be treading a waltz measure, -the arm of Mr. Oscar Jones round her waist. And Geff (the conqueror, -to whom <i>all</i>, in whitest, girlish faith, had been conceded) felt his -blood rebel. He took the reprisals of his nobler sex, offered prompt, -italicised repetition of the crushing word, apology.</p> - -<p>‘You have accepted mine, have you not, Miss Bartrand?’ He held his hand -out, steadily, for a last good-bye.</p> - -<p>‘I accept the blame you choose to force on me,’ said Marjorie, turning -aside her face. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">[Pg 424]</a></span></p> - -<p>Cold, fettered, was the speech of both. Still, in this interval -there was an encounter of pulses. Their hands had met; the farewell -pressure was a lingering one. Propinquity—unspiritual god of youthful -lovers—might, even at this supreme moment, have set things straight, -had not old Andros Bartrand passed by, looked at them, smiled.</p> - -<p>Marjorie moved away with a start. She felt as much divided from her -sweetheart as though the Channel already rolled between them.</p> - -<p>‘What is this I hear about your leaving us, Arbuthnot? The little witch -has been plaguing you, I suspect, with her false quantities. My dear -sir, not one in a thousand of the sex has an ear. Music is an art in -which they have had more opportunities than we, and there has never -been even a third-rate female composer. You are going to England next -week? To-morrow! Nay, if it is to be to-morrow we must have business -talk together. Come with me, Arbuthnot, to the library.’</p> - -<p>The situation was a crucial one for Marjorie Bartrand. Scarcely had -Geoffrey gone away with the Seigneur—her heart told her, ‘to be -paid’—before a dapper figure tripped, alertly, across the rooms. The -well satisfied voice of little Oscar Jones reminded her that the first -waltz was beginning, that they were engaged to dance it together. -Her cheeks tingled with the sense of her humiliation and of her -helplessness.</p> - -<p>Oscar was in high spirits. ‘Coach gone, I suppose? Dancing not much -in Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s line. Confess now, Miss Bartrand’—by -this time they had reached the dancers on the lawn, Mr. Jones’s arm -encircled the girl’s lithe slip of a waist—‘confess, in your heart, -that you rate enjoyment higher than you do Euclid and Plato?’</p> - -<p>‘I do not understand your question. I cannot deal in generalities.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie Bartrand held herself as stiffly at bay from her partner as -was possible. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">[Pg 425]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Well, you’ll enjoy our dance, for instance, better than being shut up -in a schoolroom over musty books and figures with Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>‘I shall not enjoy it at all.’ Without a second’s hesitation came the -answer. ‘Hostesses do not dance. See, there is Ada de Carteret standing -out. Give me my freedom, pray, and ask her.’</p> - -<p>‘Your freedom—to go indoors, to “work a last problem, write one Latin -line,” with Arbuthnot? No, no, Miss Bartrand, you are the best dancer -in Guernsey, and I don’t often get the chance of a waltz with you.’</p> - -<p>For Oscar Jones, like bigger men, had his vanities. The thought of -cutting out Geoffrey Arbuthnot was tasteful to him. It may be added -that, although Marjorie’s tongue had not lost its sharpness, she -was at this moment the sweetest-looking girl among the little crowd -of dancers. The fire of strong emotion glittered in her large eyes. -Her cheeks glowed damask. Her slim, white-clad figure showed up, -in exceedingly agreeable relief, against the dense background of -cedar-shaded lawn.</p> - -<p>That there was a certain dramatic interest connected with Geoffrey’s -going seemed divined by all. The divination rose to a whisper among the -non-dancers, elderly men and women who, gathering on the drawing-room -steps, enjoyed the pleasant sensations which bright sunshine, a -garden of flowers, blue sky, and the sight of young people moving to -dance-music, can scarce fail of producing.</p> - -<p>‘The child has a hectic flush that I do not like,’ observed the -plaintive voice of Mrs. Verschoyle. ‘I wish any one dared ask the -Seigneur if the mother died of heart-complaint. All that class of -disease is hereditary, and poor Marjorie is so little cared for! Not a -creature to see whether she wears a thick sole or a thin one.’</p> - -<p>The Archdeaconess was standing close at hand, looking on at the -sunshine, the flowers, the lightly moving figures,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">[Pg 426]</a></span> through her -accustomed smoke-coloured medium. Madame Corbie turned round with slow -severity on Mrs. Verschoyle.</p> - -<p>‘Marjorie Bartrand is not a girl to die of heart disease!’ The -assertion was made with such suggestive profundity that mild little -Mrs. Verschoyle recoiled a step. ‘Marjorie Bartrand wants the refined -observance, the scrupulous exactness, the dignified correctness of -manner which can only be obtained at school. None of your Girtons. None -of your Newnhams. A strictly disciplined school, such as prevailed in -my young days, for the formation of character and the affections. I do -not consider,’ said Madame Corbie, ‘that Marjorie’s study of Greek and -mathematics has been to her advantage.’</p> - -<p>‘And yet Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot appears so charming, so thoroughly -reliable.’</p> - -<p>Seeing her Rosie joyously dancing in the distance, Mrs. Verschoyle’s -motherly heart was disposed towards optimism on most points.</p> - -<p>‘Has a word been uttered against the reliability of any member of the -Arbuthnot family?’</p> - -<p>The question was an innocent one. And still did something in its tone, -something in the added blankness of Mrs. Corbie’s smoke-coloured gaze, -seem to reduce the character of each of the Arbuthnot trio to a ghostly -possibility.</p> - -<p>Marjorie and her partner floated past the window at this juncture.</p> - -<p>‘Give us one more round, Miss Tighe,’ cried Oscar, in breathless -staccato. ‘Never danced to such a splendid tune in my life!’ Cassandra -was labouring, hot with her exertions, through ‘Strauss’s First Set,’ -‘Les Hirondelles,’ or some other long buried favourite of her youth. -‘Capital turf, capital music, a first-rate partner! If a dance like -this,’ he proceeded, ‘could only last for ever, Miss Bartrand!’</p> - -<p>‘Thank Heaven it draws to an end,’ said Marjorie, in a voice of steel. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">[Pg 427]</a></span></p> - -<p>A hundred yards distant, across velvet lawns and beds of flower bloom, -she could discern the figure of Geoffrey Arbuthnot. He walked away, -firm of tread, erect of head, from the acres of Tintajeux and from her. -And her partner’s arm clasped her waist, her steps twirled lightly. She -was hostess of the party, must go through other dances, must entertain -the Seigneur’s guests to the end.</p> - -<p>From this time forth Marjorie knew that she could never more feel as a -girl feels, never enjoy with a girl’s enjoyment. She would be a woman, -with the bitter taste of grown-up life in her mouth, from this hour -onward till she died.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">[Pg 428]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XLIV</span> <span class="smaller">KISMET</span></h2> - -<p>‘To a naturally industrious man these islands would be the mischief.’ -The characteristic remark came from Gaston, who was entering his wife’s -sitting-room just about the hour when Geoffrey quitted Tintajeux. -‘Yes, Mrs. Arbuthnot, these bachelor breakfasts, these picnics, these -summer nights given up to card-playing, might well despatch many an -excellent fellow along the road to ruin. Happily,’ said Gaston, ‘I have -the capacity for large waste of time. I am in no sense of the word an -excellent fellow.’</p> - -<p>His tone was blithe; the fact of his calling Dinah ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot’ -showed a willingness to meet contingent domestic trouble with good -temper. Stooping down, Gaston Arbuthnot snatched a kiss from his wife’s -pale lips; he pressed her drooping golden head between his hands. Dinah -wavered not in her resolves. His caresses were sweet to her as ever. -But was not the dearness of this man’s presence her danger; that which -should nerve her in righteous sternness towards herself—and him?</p> - -<p>‘No kiss for me, my darling! And pale cheeks again—swollen eyes! -Dinah, you are ill. Something in the place really disagrees with you. -We will leave it. You cannot stand the climate. I half believe I want a -change of air myself.’</p> - -<p>Sinking down in an American rocking-chair, the easiest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">[Pg 429]</a></span> location the -room possessed, Gaston Arbuthnot propelled himself to and fro until he -reached a point at which his heels were on a level with his breast. He -rested the tips of his boots on the corner of an adjacent couch, he -folded his arms in an attitude of leisurely repose upon his breast. -Then, the primary point of comfort exhaustively seen to, he looked, -with closer heed than he had yet bestowed upon her, at his wife.</p> - -<p>Dinah was dressed in a dark travelling serge. Her hair was brushed back -tightly from her temples. Her face was bloodless, the outline of her -delicate features blurred by a night of tears. It was impossible for -her to be unlovely, even with pink eyelids and swollen lips. (If Gaston -Arbuthnot’s chisel could have compassed the tragic, how exquisite a -Niobe had lain here to his hand!) It was impossible, I say, for Dinah -to be unlovely. She seemed transformed, rather—a woman of harder, -colder texture than her old self. When at length she raised her head -slowly, the eyes that looked her husband through and through were -fraught with an expression that his soul knew not.</p> - -<p>‘I want change, you tell me, Gaston, and that’s true. We want change, -both of us.’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, I was not in earnest about myself,’ said Gaston, a little -uneasily. ‘As far as health goes, the place suits me well enough. Only -one positively cannot work here! Now, look how this week has gone!’ He -took a note-book from his breast pocket, he turned over page after page -with a marked abandonment of his first sprightly manner. ‘This week, -too, when I was to have got on with your bust, to have begun I don’t -know how much besides. Where are you, by the bye, Dinah—I mean, where -is your model? There is a tidy look one doesn’t like about the room.’</p> - -<p>‘The model is on the top shelf in your working place.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">[Pg 430]</a></span> Although you -don’t like tidiness, I have been putting everything as straight as I -could get it to-day.’</p> - -<p>‘Like the good forgiving girl that you are! My dear child, I confess I -have idled through this week disgracefully. Not to speak of yesterday’s -dinner, of the old Colonel’s breakfast, of the best hours wasted—those -wretched cards again—to-day, there was the initial mistake of being -left behind in Alderney.’</p> - -<p>‘You were left behind there, I think, for your own pleasure?’</p> - -<p>‘I am not so sure of that. The scheme, any way, did not turn out -a success. Max Grimsby is the best fellow living—but one-ideaed. -You cannot get him to move, save in a circle. He is tethered to Max -Grimsby’s pictures. If the sun had shone he would have taken me round, -among rocks and places, to ‘verify’ his sketches, as he says, by -nature. There was a most disgusting fog. I could be taken nowhere. I -bored myself to extinction in Alderney. I——’</p> - -<p>‘Gaston,’ exclaimed Dinah, fierily, ‘don’t say things of this kind, if -you please. The time is past for them. I know about the wager you had -with Mrs. Thorne before you left the steamer.’</p> - -<p>‘Then you know about a very foolish matter.’ Gaston spoke with prompt -self-control, although he reddened. ‘You have certainly been tidying -with a vengeance, my love,’ he went on, looking round him. ‘I miss -a dozen landmarks. What has become of my own priceless portraits?’ -Wherever they lived poor Dinah loved to hang Gaston’s three or four -latest photographs upon the walls of her sitting-room. ‘I do not see -your embroidery frame, or——’</p> - -<p>‘Yes,’ she again interrupted. ‘I know about Mrs. Thorne’s wager, about -everything. It is a relief to speak plain at last. I have known, for a -good long time past, that you deceived me.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">[Pg 431]</a></span></p> - -<p>Down came Gaston Arbuthnot’s feet to their normal level. Away flew -all his assumption of serenity. A couple of quick strides brought him -across the room.</p> - -<p>‘If you are bent on having one of our wretched scenes, Dinah, look, -pray, to your language, as far as I am concerned. Say what you choose -about Mrs. Thorne, if it gives you pleasure. Say what you like, of -course, about yourself. Don’t use disagreeable expressions when you -speak of me! I’m the kind of conceited fellow whose love really won’t -stand rough usage. My love for you is the best possession I have. I -don’t want to risk my best possession. You understand?’</p> - -<p>No, she did not, that was the worst of it. She could not see that her -strong direct nature, craving and athirst for affection, imposed a -strain beyond endurance upon a temperament at once ease-loving and -volatile like Gaston’s.</p> - -<p>‘I have never deceived you, as far as I can remember, Dinah. I have not -sufficient energy of character, I should imagine, to be deceitful.’</p> - -<p>‘No? We may have different notions of deceit, perhaps.’</p> - -<p>‘One may deviate, now and then, from veracity,’ said Gaston, recovering -his good humour. ‘Suppressions of fact, in minor matters, are forced -upon us all. The man would be a wretch, not fit for civilised society, -who should for ever blurt out what he considered truth, regardless of -the feelings he hurt, the toes he trod upon.’</p> - -<p>‘For instance—to speak of something I understand—if you had gone to -Mrs. Thorne’s house after a mess dinner it would be forced on you not -to tell me of it next morning?’</p> - -<p>‘To Mrs. Thorne’s house ... after a mess dinner! Such an unimportant -thing may have happened once—twice, perhaps, during the weeks we have -been here. But did I not mention it? Well, then, I do so now, and ask -forgiveness,’ resting his hand upon her shoulder, ‘for the heinousness -of my crime.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">[Pg 432]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘And your wager—was that, too, unimportant? Your wager, made at a time -when my heart was breaking! And the feelings with which Linda Thorne -regards your winning it——’ Dinah’s voice choked.</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot was, habitually, a man of mild speech. His most -familiar men friends had never heard an English expletive escape him. -When he was strongly moved his tongue went back, instinctively, to -the language of his youth. And he was moved to sudden and keen anger -at this moment. Three or four French expressions, fortunately not -understanded of his wife, rolled from his lips.</p> - -<p>‘You make me detest the sound of Linda Thorne’s name. But take -care—take care, in this matter of hating, that you do not force me -farther than you intend.’</p> - -<p>‘I would rather you hated than tolerated me,’ cried Dinah, her -tear-worn eyes looking bravely up into Arbuthnot’s face.</p> - -<p>Some new note in her voice startled him. It was a note, Gaston -Arbuthnot felt, that might well prove the prelude to dangerous -self-assertion. Was a <i>tu quoque</i> possible?</p> - -<p>‘You do not wish me to be tolerant. The husband of any excessively -pretty woman must be so, whether he will or not. Now yesterday—suppose -the medal reversed, Dinah, that I begin to cross-question you—how -did you spend your afternoon, yesterday? You forget. Let me refresh -your memory. With whom were you walking down the High Street, towards -four o’clock, in the dove-coloured dress I invented for you, the -Gainsborough hat, the cambric collar?’</p> - -<p>‘I am not jesting, though you are.’ Dinah started to her feet, her eyes -were level with her husband’s. ‘Geoffrey came in after you had gone -away; I was idle and dull as usual, and Geff asked me to carry some -fruit and flowers to the hospital. The walk did me good. We visited a -Devonshire sailor-lad—like one of my own people, he seemed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">[Pg 433]</a></span> to me—and -I was able to talk with him, the old country talk I love so well. And -afterwards, coming back—perhaps with my heart a little lightened—I -met ... your friend.’</p> - -<p>‘Poor, ill-fated Linda Thorne?’</p> - -<p>‘And everything went dark again. It was then I heard about your bet, -how you had won, how Mrs. Thorne was bankrupt! Mrs. Thorne had made her -way into the parlour while I was out. Your winnings were left for you -by her own hand. Gaston, I found them!’</p> - -<p>‘The situation, my dear girl, grows poignant. You found them!’</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot checked himself. The dimensions of this domestic -tragedy—this storm of wifely passion over a pair of iron-gray -gloves—overcame him with a fatal sense of the ridiculous.</p> - -<p>Dinah saw that he repressed a smile. Her righteous anger waxed hotter.</p> - -<p>‘And I intend to keep them until I die. If ... I mean when you see Mrs. -Thorne, you can tell her so.’</p> - -<p>‘I will do nothing of the sort,’ said Arbuthnot, thoroughly incensed at -last. ‘This constant Inquisition business grows unbearable! There will -be no living with you, Dinah, if you go on nursing these puerile, these -childish jealousies. I would no more offer an impertinence to Mrs. -Thorne than to any other lady of my acquaintance. You must learn to be -reasonable.’</p> - -<p>‘Must I? I have tried to learn much the last few days, without success. -It is because I can’t learn, because I am ignorant’—her voice had -grown hoarse, her eyes dilated—‘that I shall go away.’</p> - -<p>‘We can go as soon as you like; I have told you so already,’ said -Gaston, coldly. ‘We can go the beginning of next week, if you choose. -You would not object very much to my leaving cards on the few people -who have been civil to me?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">[Pg 434]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘I would like to go to-morrow, if—if you will give me money enough -for the journey. Geff will be crossing. He can see me as far as -Southampton. After that, I can easily make my way on to Tavistock -Moor——’</p> - -<p>‘You—alone?’</p> - -<p>‘Why not? In the old days, before I married, I needed no looking after.’</p> - -<p>‘And I am to follow with the luggage,’ suggested Mr. Arbuthnot. ‘You -are quite sure there is room on Tavistock Moor for such luggage as -ours?’</p> - -<p>But his tone was doubtful. Less and less could he understand the look, -yearning yet steadfast, that encountered him from his wife’s eyes.</p> - -<p>‘I will take my luggage with me. As near as might be, I have tried to -divide things. I have put all belonging to you in order, Gaston, as you -will find.’</p> - -<p>‘You want to visit your people without me? Say it out!’ Gaston -Arbuthnot’s colour heightened. ‘This is rough—harder punishment than -I deserve, and a risky experiment! Think it over twice. I’ve been in -the world thirty years, Dinah, and have seen somewhat of most things. -I have never seen any good come of man and wife trying their hand at -these little imitation divorces.’</p> - -<p>‘I cannot live up to your life,’ answered Dinah, unshrinkingly. ‘I -cannot understand you, or your friends, or the feelings you have for -each other. If I stayed, I might grow myself to be—well, something -I don’t care to think of. I was meant for the ways of common working -people. It suits me to be told things plain and straightforward, to -keep to my duty, to find my happiness there.’</p> - -<p>‘My poor Dinah! Have you not always kept to duty?’ For once in his -life, Gaston Arbuthnot spoke from impulse.</p> - -<p>‘Up to this time, because my heart has been full. I have loved you so -much ... there has been no room for any feeling but love! This could -not last for ever, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">[Pg 435]</a></span> you always away, and others—ladies born and -educated—not ashamed to take you from me. I might grow hard. I might -grow vain—worse! Yes, Gaston, down in my heart I feel all this is -possible. And so, if you please——’</p> - -<p>‘Don’t hesitate. Let everything he absolutely clear between us.’</p> - -<p>‘I will go home. My father’s sisters, I know, would be willing to take -me in while they live, and I can work at my trade as I used, of course, -if you will give me leave.’</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot stood for a few seconds motionless. Then, without a -word, he walked to the farthest end of the room. He stood, gazing upon -some local oil-painting of an impossible First Napoleon, mounted on a -still more impossible charger, as intently as though he gazed upon one -of Raphael’s masterpieces. Let anger, wounded pride—ah, more dreaded -than either, let easy acquiescence be on her husband’s face, Dinah -could see it not!</p> - -<p>She waited for him to speak, with the tension of nerves that is a -bodily pain; hoping nothing—the time for hope was past—fearing only -lest, under the sting of her proposal, he should <i>tell</i> her that he no -longer loved her. The truth, itself, had, in that moment, seemed small -beside the possibility of his confessing it.</p> - -<p>But Gaston Arbuthnot was not a man of coarse or cruel words.</p> - -<p>‘I never looked for such a scene—I am not good at these high passions! -Your vehemence forces me into the sort of position I detest. I have -told you often, Dinah, that in everything,’—he leaned sideways, as -though seeking a point whence the impossible Napoleon might be more -advantageously viewed—‘in everything I am a light weight. No use -asking from me the feats of an athlete. In life, I walk quietly. In -art, I can produce nothing bigger or intenser than I experience in -life. I am, what you would call, poor all round.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">[Pg 436]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Poor—in feeling, most of all,’ said Dinah with irrepressible -bitterness.</p> - -<p>‘In the constant exhibition of feeling, you mean, in reiterations of “I -love you.”’ Gaston turned, having got thus far; he walked back to her -with marked deliberation. ‘In the art of quarrelling about nothing—in -showy expenditure of emotion on trifles ... emotion of which, I take -it, only a limited quantity is dealt to each of us, and which we should -store up for large occasions—in capacity of this kind I am, doubtless, -poor. If I were a moral nonentity, Dinah, no human heart in my breast -at all, it would seem strange, after four years’ companionship, close -as ours, that you should love me still!’</p> - -<p>There was an inflection in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice that overstepped -the line of tenderness. His face, though it was calm, wore an unwonted -flush. To Dinah, burning with passionate sense of injury, the very -reasonableness of his speech was an offence. To Dinah his quiet -pleading seemed fine words—altogether beside the present grave issue -of their lives.</p> - -<p>‘Love! Ah, I love you, well as ever, to my misfortune! I shall love you -till my death. Do we measure love out by the meagre quantity of it we -get in return?’</p> - -<p>‘And loving me, after this strong fashion, you desire that we should -spend our lives apart? You tempt me to say a cutting thing,’ broke -forth Gaston with warmth, ‘yet I believe it to be a true one. A man -had better be loved less, Dinah, and that his wife should remain -contentedly at his side.’</p> - -<p>‘No doubt of it. If you had married an educated woman you might have -been happy with her—according to your notions of happiness. But -there’s no going back on that now. I exist, you see.’</p> - -<p>‘Yes, Dinah, you exist.’</p> - -<p>‘And I am two-and-twenty. And since we came to this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">[Pg 437]</a></span> place, I scarce -know why, I have awakened. I see my ignorance. I know that I want more -than I used to want in life. Gaston—I cannot fall asleep again. If you -let me return among my own people I shall take to their plain country -ways—in time, perhaps, shall find a little peace. At least I shall -have work, real work, such as I was brought up to. I could never plod, -patiently, at cross-stitch flowers for days and days together as I have -done. And I can never rise to being a lady, as a week ago I thought I -might.’</p> - -<p>‘Then the only outlook would seem to be Tavistock Moor. It is not a -brilliant one for either of us—for myself, in particular.’ Turning -away from her, Gaston took up his hat, he moved aimlessly, and with a -dull step towards the door. ‘If I do not cry “Kismet” with a better -grace,’ he added, ‘you must remember this sentence of widowerhood -has come upon one suddenly—as I think, without justice. But I -shall not seek to stay you. I wish you to take back your freedom, -unconditionally.’</p> - -<p>And so speaking, and while the coldness of death seized Dinah’s -tortured heart, he left her.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">[Pg 438]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XLV</span> <span class="smaller">LABELLED AND CORDED</span></h2> - -<p>‘No argument can help us, Geff. A woman without a tithe of my poor -wife’s noble qualities but possessing even a faint sense of the -ridiculous, might be reached: Dinah, never! Oh, it is the absurdity of -the thing which humiliates one! A French song sung after a dinner-party -... the winning of a pair of gloves!’ said Gaston Arbuthnot bitterly. -‘And to think, out of such materials, that the jealousy of the most -impracticable woman living could evolve serious tragedy!’</p> - -<p>‘Tragedy,’ returned Geff, ‘of which the fifth act is, as yet, -unconditioned.’</p> - -<p>Dinner was over; a meal at which Dinah had not appeared. The Arbuthnot -cousins, side by side, were pacing a remote walk of the hotel garden. -And Geoffrey, little by little, had made out the truth in respect of -Dinah’s crowning misery. With his heart sore as a brave man’s heart -could be over keen personal disappointment, Geoffrey knew that he must -arbitrate between the two people who stood nearest to him on earth, and -with whose lives his own, by some fantastic stroke of destiny, seemed, -for good and for evil, to be interwoven.</p> - -<p>‘I don’t believe in rash judgments, formed when the blood is hot,’ went -on Gaston Arbuthnot. ‘When Dinah burst upon me with this new proposal -I felt as if ten years<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">[Pg 439]</a></span> of my youth had been taken from me. My anger -was at white heat, and if I had spoken as I felt.... Well, I did not -so speak. I accepted my fate with a decent show of self-command. -Reviewing the position—yes, and remembering every word you have been -saying, Geff—I believe it may be best for my poor Dinah to leave me, -on probation. Let her stay for a couple of months with her people in -Devonshire, see how things go on, and——’</p> - -<p>‘They will go on vilely! They will go from bad to worse.’ Geoffrey was -in no humour for putting ornamental polish on his words. ‘When does -good come from a tentative separation between man and wife?’</p> - -<p>‘Exactly what I said to Dinah. These little imitation divorces, I told -her, are risky experiments. Impossible to make her hear me.’</p> - -<p>‘Your eloquence must have been at fault. You have had perfect -happiness, Gaston—there is the truth! You have had such a lot as does -not fall to one man in a million, and you have grown careless of it.’</p> - -<p>Geoffrey’s voice was set in a lower key than usual. Glancing round at -him, Gaston surprised an expression on the strong features, a glow in -the dark eyes that he remembered. Not wholly unlike this did Geff look -on the late June evening when he came, four years ago, to his rooms -in Jesus, and congratulated him, Gaston, on his engagement to Dinah -Thurston.</p> - -<p>‘You have always been Dinah’s friend. I thank God she will have you for -her friend in the future. Towards myself, perhaps, you are a little -less than kind. Some French proverb explains to us, does it not, how a -man’s friendship can never be perfectly equal for a husband and for his -wife?’</p> - -<p>‘The French proverb is at fault, as far as I am concerned,’ said -Geoffrey. ‘I am your friend. I am Dinah’s. At this present hour I -reprobate the conduct of both with strict impartiality.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">[Pg 440]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘My conduct is negative. I find myself placed by an outburst of the -eternal feminine injustice in a ridiculous position. I must, as men -have done before me, live a ridiculous position out. Whatever my wife -desires in the way of money arrangements shall be hers. On the day when -she is tired of Tavistock Moor I shall be at her feet.’</p> - -<p>‘All this might be aptly said if you were in a stage-box, a critic -looking on at the histrionic break-up of other people’s lives, with a -view to the morning papers.’</p> - -<p>‘I have tried, since I was a boy, to regard everything concerning -myself from an indifferent person’s point of view. The habit has become -second nature, and——’</p> - -<p>‘Shake yourself free of it to-night. You are not an indifferent person. -You are not criticising a scene in a mixed drama. You have to decide -whether you, Gaston Arbuthnot, intend, at thirty, to be a failure or a -success.’</p> - -<p>‘A failure!’ repeated Gaston, his pride galled instantly. ‘In your -office of peacemaker, Geff, don’t allow your good will to run away with -you. We have a score of big examples—Byron, if you choose, at their -head—to show how men of shipwrecked lives can give the world the best -of their genius.’</p> - -<p>‘When you come to genius,’ said Geff, grimly truthful, ‘we are off our -lines. We are talking of common men, not of giants. For a man of your -calibre, Gaston, to forfeit his domestic happiness is to forfeit all. -In losing Dinah, whatever her folly in proposing the Quixotic scheme, -you would lose your right hand. Up to this time, even with a good and -beautiful and long-suffering woman at your side, your backslidings have -been many. Do you think you are going to work onward and upward without -an influence such as Dinah’s has been to hold you straight?’</p> - -<p>‘You speak hotly, Geff.’</p> - -<p>‘I feel hotly,’ answered Geoffrey, without an effort at a fence. ‘My -own life has been spoilt—I—I would say,’ he corrected himself, ‘the -happiness which men like you,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">[Pg 441]</a></span> Gaston, can throw away or keep as they -choose, is not likely to come near me. Mine must be sought for in -such commonplace daily work as I have strength to do. This gives me a -selfish interest in the welfare of the people I love. Your fireside and -Dinah’s,’ he attempted a lighter tone, ‘is the only one to which I can -look forward in my old age.’</p> - -<p>Again Gaston watched his face curiously. Perhaps in the moment’s keen -illumination he read aright the larger nature than his own, apprehended -with his balanced mixture of worldly depth and moral airiness, a page -whose intricacies should never, in this life, be wholly deciphered by -poor Geff himself.</p> - -<p>‘You were right as to genius, Geoffrey. There is an ingredient wanting -in me! If I had had your heart I should not at thirty be a manufacturer -of third-rate prettinesses for the dealers.’</p> - -<p class="space-above">Engrossed in talk, the cousins paced to and fro among the falling -shadows of the garden for another hour. It was an hour, a talk, which -neither of the Arbuthnots would be likely to refer to, which neither -certainly would forget this side the grave. By and by, when night had -come in earnest, when the roses and jasmines that clung round the -hotel verandahs smelt dewy sweet, Gaston returned to the house alone. -He entered through the little court that had been fitted up as his -studio. Here a flicker of starlight overhead showed him his tools, his -unfinished models, his working blouse, all the implements of his craft, -neatly set in order as Dinah’s hand left them. Passing on into the -parlour he found himself in darkness, silence. For a moment a nameless -fear—the possibility that she was gone—contracted Gaston Arbuthnot’s -heart. Then, with soft, eager step he made his way to his wife’s -bedroom, laid his hand on the lock, and opened the door by an inch. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">[Pg 442]</a></span></p> - -<p>A solitary light burned there.</p> - -<p>‘May I come in, Dinah? Can I be of use to you in your packing?’</p> - -<p>To this she answered not, or answered in so low a voice that Gaston’s -ear could not catch the sound. He pushed back the door wide and -entered, making fast the lock behind him. Dinah’s packing, to the -smallest detail, was complete. Her boxes, labelled and corded, stood in -a row; her wraps were put up; her travelling bag was strapped. Dinah -herself sat in a low chair beside the curtained half-open window. -The light from a hand lamp on the mantelshelf just enabled Gaston to -discern the dead whiteness of her tired face.</p> - -<p>‘Your packing done?’ he asked her. ‘And have you moved these heavy -boxes by yourself?’</p> - -<p>‘The Frenchwoman helped me. I had no need of her—my arms are -strong—but when she insisted, I thought it would look strange to -refuse longer. I tried to speak to her lightly—just saying that I had -to go away, of a sudden, to stay with friends in England.’</p> - -<p>‘That was wise. It were a pity that idle tongues should begin to talk -of us already.’</p> - -<p>No answer came to this. Gaston saw that her hands trembled as they lay -tightly clasped together on her knee.</p> - -<p>‘And about money, Dinah?’</p> - -<p>Crossing the room, Mr. Arbuthnot shut down the window, then placed -himself at the distance of two or three feet from his wife. He looked -at her long and tenderly, looked as though on that white, strained face -he saw some beauty which the dulness of his senses, the selfishness of -his heart, had never during the past four years let him discover.</p> - -<p>‘Geoffrey and I have just had a long talk. I believe, as far as -Southampton, you had better let Geff be purse-holder. Then we must -think of the future. We must plan as to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">[Pg 443]</a></span> permanent settlement. I am -a poor man, you know, Dinah, or rich only by fits and starts. If I can -secure to you two hundred pounds a year, could you make it enough?’</p> - -<p>Dinah raised her clasped hands deprecatingly. Her speech failed her. -Now, in the moment when she needed strength, self-control most, they -proved traitors. She could only sit, faint, cold, sick, only hear the -details of her own passionate wish put into calm, reasonable—ay, and -generous detail by Gaston.</p> - -<p>‘For the first year,’ he repeated, ‘until I become a steadier worker, -could you make an allowance of two hundred pounds suffice?’</p> - -<p>‘I want nothing but a few pounds at first,’ said Dinah, with a -desperate effort. ‘After that I will work—plain sewing, out-door work, -anything they can find for me to do.’</p> - -<p>‘You might get plain sewing and out-door work, too, without going as -far as Tavistock Moor.’</p> - -<p>‘But I am known there. I am not the sort of woman—I mean as yet—to -make my way alone among strangers.’</p> - -<p>‘You shall neither go to Tavistock Moor nor among strangers. You shall -remain with me.’ Gaston said this with slow emphasis. ‘The law is on my -side.’</p> - -<p>Poor Dinah started up. The world seemed to float away from before her. -A piteous look in which—yes, amidst all its anguish—there was a -tremble of hope, went across her blanched face.</p> - -<p>‘My sins have been grievous enough, the sins of carelessness and -selfishness—they have not gone deeper. Let the future make up for -them. Forgive me, Dinah!’ Arbuthnot’s arms were opened wide. ‘I could -not work, I could not live without you. I love you better than my life.’</p> - -<p>With a cry as of a child taken back, unexpectedly, to the lost shelter -of home, Dinah fell upon his breast.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">[Pg 444]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XLVI</span> <span class="smaller">A BYE-TERM MAN</span></h2> - -<p>But no such good thing as reconciliation fell to Marjorie Bartrand.</p> - -<p>Within a week of Geoffrey’s departure Dinah and her husband, bride -and bridegroom once more, started joyously on their way to Italy. -There was a little wonder among the few people who had known them, a -little hypothetic gossip, an unjust suspicion, perhaps, that Linda -Thorne could clear up more secrets than one, ‘as she listed.’ And then -Guernsey knew the name of Arbuthnot no more. Marjorie Bartrand must -take up life at its old point before love, before disappointment made -acquaintance with her—must stand, chill and alone, in the same Arcadia -where she stood beside Geoffrey on the morning of their one day’s -engagement; must work under a new teacher in the schoolroom where every -book, every window-pane, spoke to her of the past, and of the sharp -irrevocableness of her loss.</p> - -<p>Autumn faded, monotonously, into the season of soft weather which in -the Channel archipelago does duty for winter. March came again with its -outside show of hope; all Tintajeux busy at farm work—the Seigneur, -alert of step, taking part in his potato-planting and his vraic -harvest, like a man of five-and-twenty. Later on, the cuckoo flower -blushed anew, the rooks vociferated from the tree-tops. And then, a -little later, the roses reddened. Marjorie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">[Pg 445]</a></span> Bartrand, conning over the -entries in her last year’s pocket-book, began to know the meaning of -the sombre word anniversary.</p> - -<p>‘To-day,’ after this fashion the record ran, ‘commenced my reading with -Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>‘Many faults in my Latin exercise. Geoffrey Arbuthnot stern and -inhuman.’</p> - -<p>‘Have resolved to lecture a certain person on his neglect of his wife. -And on frivolity.’</p> - -<p>‘This day received my first letter from Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’</p> - -<p>And so through the brief drama, until a final entry on Sunday, July the -3d—‘To-day Geoffrey Arbuthnot left Guernsey for ever.’ After which all -was blank—in the pocket-book, as elsewhere.</p> - -<p>There were sombre anniversaries, I say, for Marjorie Bartrand. For two -or three of the young women who have flitted across the background of -this story, summer brought the sound of jocund bells, brought a day -which to each must henceforth be the one crowning anniversary, dark or -sunny, of life. Rosie Verschoyle took to herself a mate, happily for -Rosie, a worthier man than Rex Basire. Ada de Carteret became the wife -of little Oscar Jones. Marjorie enacted bridesmaid until the sight and -smell of orange blossoms were a weariness to her. She felt glad when -weddings and summer were alike over, when the scents of blown syringa -and heliotrope belonged definitely to the past, glad when the equinox -had stript the woods, and November, grave and pale, approached, like a -friend who knew her trouble, and had solace in store for her.</p> - -<p>For Marjorie’s character had opened out rather than altered. She was -a Bartrand—high-handed as ever; during the past fifteen months had -worked with a courage betokening of what tough fibre her spirit was -made. In November a decisive step towards the Alma Mater was to be -taken.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">[Pg 446]</a></span> Mademoiselle Pouchée, the earliest on the Tintajeux list of -governesses, had long besought Marjorie to stay with her in Cambridge, -and the Seigneur, with exceeding bad grace, had tardily consented to -the visit. For Cambridge meant Girton! Marjorie, of late, had been -coaching with a Girton graduate who held high office in the Guernsey -college, and was promised credentials to the highest feminine magnates -of the University. ‘Women who, in achieving renown, had lost the -fairest ornament of their sex.’ Thus spoke old Andros, stirred by -the irreconcilable antipathies of his youth, antipathies which sixty -subsequent years amidst a world in full progress had failed to modify.</p> - -<p>‘The best person you could come across would be that tutor of -yours—Arbuthnot.’ The Seigneur brought the blood into Marjorie’s -cheeks by telling her this, one day. ‘We must conclude that I shall die -some time. It is given to few men to draw breath in three centuries. -When I am gone you will need a husband more than the Higher Education. -I liked Arbuthnot. He was a shallowish classic and over-full of this -modern “know-all, know-nothing” spirit. But he was a <i>man</i>—so many -honest English stone, moral and physical, in him! A good make-weight -for a bit of wandering thistle-down like you.’</p> - -<p>The speech lingered in Marjorie’s penitent soul. If things had gone -differently, then, Old Andros would not have said nay to Geoffrey’s -suit! Her own passionate temper, the jealousy that could brook -no rival, present or in the past, were alone answerable for love -forfeited, for a vista of long years, out of which the sweet fulness of -youth, at youth’s best, should be wanting.</p> - -<p>And blood warm and generous ran in Marjorie’s veins. Her object in -visiting Cambridge was, of course, to make personal acquaintance with -Girton. Her hopes and fears must be centred on the august ladies -who in future days would be her Dons. But the remembrance of her -lost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">[Pg 447]</a></span> sweetheart plucked ever at her heart. If by accident Geoffrey -crossed her path, what would be her duty? That was the thing to -consider—<i>duty</i>. Simply as an old comrade, might she not hold out -her hand, seek a final word of explanation? At what nice point should -self-respect, a due sense of wounded Bartrand pride, draw the line of -unforgiveness?</p> - -<p>These were not questions she could propound to her Girton coach, a lady -of fair exterior, young in years, but who had recently come out well in -two Triposes. Cassandra Tighe, with her lowlier range of thought, stood -nearer to one, Marjorie felt, her sixty winters notwithstanding, in -such trivial human perplexities as belong to love and lovers. In these -poor matters, ignorance would seem to possess a spurious wisdom of its -own. The higher sciences assist one moderately. And so, on the vigil of -her English journey, the girl started away between the lights, alone, -and with an overflowing heart, to seek her old friend’s counsel.</p> - -<p>It was a typical autumn evening of this mid-channel region. A -north-west wind shivered and sobbed among the poplars that hedged -the entrance way of Cassandra’s domain. The garden dahlias drooped -their heads, the chrysanthemums with their thin, half-bitter odour, -showed wan and ghostly in the thickening dusk. An irresistible sense -of decay was conveyed by the fitful rustle of the falling leaves. -The surrounding fields and copses were shrouded in vague mist. Loss -and uncertainty ... these seemed the dominant notes in the pallid -landscape. They suited Marjorie Bartrand’s mood. Were not loss and -uncertainty the dominant notes of her own changed life?</p> - -<p>The cottage door stood open. No sound stirred within, save the -ticking of the old Dutch clock on the stairs. Unannounced, she made -her way into Miss Tighe’s home-like ground-floor drawing-room. The -weather was too mild for more than a pretence at fire, the hour not -late enough for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">[Pg 448]</a></span> lamp or candle. Cassandra sat, unoccupied, beside -the scarce-lighted hearth. The kindly lady jumped up at the sound of -Marjorie’s step, then, almost with an air of shame, began to excuse -herself for her idleness. She had had a busy gardening day, little -credit though her borders did her, and after dinner meant to practise -for a couple of hours at her harp. ‘But even Cassandra Tighe,’ she -added, ‘must be tired, sometimes. I am an old woman, Marjorie. It is -the prerogative of all old people, save the Reverend Andros Bartrand, -to sit when the day draws in with hands folded. At such times we live -in the past, as you young ones love to do in the future.’</p> - -<p>‘The future,’ repeated Marjorie, in an under-breath; ‘that is what I -want to speak to you about. I chose this hour on purpose. The best time -to talk of difficult things is entre chien et loup, as the Guernsey -folk say.’</p> - -<p>She sat down somewhat dejectedly on the opposite side the hearth. The -young woman and the old one could just discern each other’s faces by -the flicker of the slow-burning fire.</p> - -<p>‘So you start for Cambridge to-morrow! And your grandfather, I hear, -gives you a letter to the Master of Matthias. Well, Marjorie, though -you should fail to Girtonise the Spanish nation eventually, I must -praise you for your present cleverness in Girtonising the Seigneur of -Tintajeux.’</p> - -<p>‘The Seigneur was never more obdurate. “If it pleased my granddaughter -to roam the country with an organ and a monkey, she would do it; I -could only see that the organ and the monkey were good of their kind.” -This is his charming way of putting things—his excuse for giving me an -introduction outside of Newnham or Girton.’</p> - -<p>‘And your <i>coach</i>, Miss Travers, is to be your escort. She is comelier -than one could have expected, poor thing. I have no prejudices, as -everybody knows,’ said old Cassandra.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">[Pg 449]</a></span> ‘When I heard a Girtonite was -coming to our college, I held my peace. If one of these emancipated -young women has regular features or a bright complexion, I acknowledge -the fact. Still, one wonders——’</p> - -<p>‘How such a girl as Miss Travers could choose the higher life, instead -of marrying—some man like Lord Rex Basire, say, or Mr. Oscar Jones!’</p> - -<p>‘Those two are not the only types of man extant,’ observed Cassandra.</p> - -<p>To this there succeeded a sufficiently pregnant silence. Marjorie broke -it with effort. Her voice had become unsteady. Her sentences were -disjointed.</p> - -<p>‘We are to stay one night in London—I don’t know whether grandpapa -told you about the plans? Next day we shall see whatever sights are -visible through the November fog, and late in the afternoon I shall run -down to Cambridge. It is high time I learned to knock about the world -alone! If I work steadily when we come back to Guernsey, very likely I -may go up to Girton as a bye-term man in January.’</p> - -<p>‘Is this the future you wanted to talk about?’ Cassandra Tighe bent -forward. She looked hard at the slim girlish figure, the delicately -feminine face of Marjorie Bartrand. ‘You must learn to knock about -the world alone! You will go up in January as a bye-term man! These -prospects may be intoxicating. We require, I think, no assistance from -the friendly half-light to discuss them in.’</p> - -<p>The remark went home. Marjorie’s ill-fated love affair had long been an -open secret between her and old Cassandra Tighe, and in a few minutes’ -time half confidences were over, reserve had gone to the winds. -Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s name, for the first time for months, was on the -girl’s trembling lips.</p> - -<p>‘I am not likely to be over forward again, Miss Tighe. But, strive -as I will, the longing overcomes me to see Mr. Arbuthnot—before he -marries some one else—to give him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">[Pg 450]</a></span> a last chance of explanation. -The word—<i>the one word</i>—I wrote that miserable afternoon may never -have reached him. When I heard Mrs. Arbuthnot was out,’ Marjorie made -confession, ‘my courage went from me—I had hoped to leave my packet -safe in Dinah’s hands—and I just gave it, without a message, to -the servant who answered my ring. Then I drove away—fast, for fear -Geoffrey should meet me and see my face.’</p> - -<p>‘The Arbuthnot people were a singular trio.’ Cassandra made the remark -with an irrelevant neutrality savouring of the serpent’s wisdom. ‘The -best looking of the men, not your tutor, Marjorie, is doing good -things, it seems, as an artist. Colonel de Gourmet has a correspondent -in Florence, where the Gaston Arbuthnots live, and the accounts of them -are favourable. You know, of course, that there is a Miss Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>‘Yes, I have heard the news. It is good to think that Dinah must be a -happier woman now.’</p> - -<p>‘We shall not see such a face again on our shores. Do you remember my -mistake about her, Marjorie—the lecture I made you read your tutor on -his frivolity?’</p> - -<p>‘You ask me questions instead of answering mine, Miss Tighe. If I -should meet him—if through blind accident I should speak to Geoffrey -again, would it be delicate, would it show proper womanly pride, for me -to attempt one last explanation?’</p> - -<p>Cassandra did not instantly reply. The sobbing of the wind had died -among the poplars. The leaves fell noiselessly to the damp earth. Only -the ticking of the clock on the stairs broke silence.</p> - -<p>‘For ever—never!’</p> - -<p>‘Never—for ever!’</p> - -<p>And with each second, thought Marjorie, how many human loves must be -laid low, how many hearts must begin to ache for all time as hers was -aching now! </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">[Pg 451]</a></span></p> - -<p>Miss Tighe sat calm and placid, as when the girl first entered, her -hands folded on her knee. ‘And what earthly inducement had Pouchée to -settle in a University town?’ she observed at length. ‘Why does the -woman live alone?’</p> - -<p>‘Her father was maître d’escrime in Cambridge. She and her mother live -on in the house where he died. I rather think Mademoiselle gives French -lessons still.’</p> - -<p>‘Oh, Mademoiselle gives French lessons still, does she?’ Cassandra’s -tone was absent. She rose, moved closer to the hearth. Her face was -level with the miniature portrait of a lad in old-fashioned uniform -that hung there. By and by, ‘I am going,’ she said very low, ‘to tell -you something about which I have been silent for forty years.’</p> - -<p>‘Miss Tighe——’</p> - -<p>‘Don’t be afraid of an old woman’s prosy history, or of a sermon. You -will have neither. Forty years ago, child, there lived, in the far -north of England, a girl, somewhere about your present age. This girl -was on the eve of being married. Her wedding dress was ordered, the -guests were bidden. Well, at the eleventh hour she chose, in a flame of -paltry jealousy, to resent some fancied want of devotion in her lover. -He was single-minded, loyal—of finer stuff, altogether, than herself. -They might have been reconciled in an hour if she would have let her -heart speak, have returned to the arms outheld to receive her. The girl -would make not an inch of concession. She came, as you do, Marjorie, of -people who look upon unforgiveness as a virtue. She heard around her -the old stock phrases—delicacy, family pride—the righteousness of -subordinating feeling to will! And so it came to pass that the lover, -having neither wealth nor title, was allowed to go. He exchanged into a -regiment under orders for India. Our troops were then in Afghanistan, -engaged in hot fighting, and——’</p> - -<p>Miss Tighe’s voice—the brave, kind voice that Marjorie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">[Pg 452]</a></span> had always -known—broke down. Marjorie felt herself turn chill with a vague -terror. To hear of this white-haired woman’s love seemed, in her -overstrained mood, like receiving a message from the world of ghosts. -She awaited the sequel of the story, not speaking, not lifting her eyes -to the narrator’s face.</p> - -<p>‘The lad fell—a locket his sweetheart had once given him hidden in -his breast. It came back to her, through a brother officer who knew -something of the dead man’s story—<i>and with a stain on it</i>. That stain -has marked every day of a lonely life throughout forty years. You will -not speak of this again, remember.’</p> - -<p>‘Never, Miss Tighe, I promise you.’</p> - -<p>‘But keep my words in your memory. If you meet Geoffrey Arbuthnot, -if a moment comes when happiness beckons one way, the Bartrand pride -another, they may, perhaps, be of use to you.’</p> - -<p class="space-above">So human hearts can remain true to their griefs for forty years! -Marjorie pondered on this fact as she walked back through the -November-smelling, dark country to Tintajeux. She felt, with the -certainty of morbid eighteen, that her own life would be a counterpart -of Cassandra Tighe’s. She would never love any other man than Geoffrey, -would never marry where she did not love. She was not likely to die. -In the glow of her young health, feeling her limbs so lithe—the mere -act of walking and breathing an ever renewed bodily pleasure—death lay -over an horizon which she had not yet sighted. Ah, if she could hear -Geff’s step approaching now, if she could feel his hand-clasp, strong, -friendly as in the days of old, the collective pride of the whole -Bartrand race would not long stand between them!</p> - -<p>But the mirk lanes were forsaken; no human step save her own was to be -heard. The lights were lit in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">[Pg 453]</a></span> scattered cottage homesteads, the -children at play round the fire, the elders resting after their day’s -work. Through the low windows Marjorie could see one family group after -another as she passed along, and felt her own loneliness the greater. -As she came near Tintajeux the cry of the owls, than which no more -freezing sound exists in nature, was all that gave her welcome.</p> - -<p>‘That stain has marked every day of a lonely life throughout forty -years.’</p> - -<p>The moral of Miss Tighe’s story lingered in Marjorie’s heart. As she -and her grandfather sat for the last time together over dessert, old -Andros took not unkindly notice of her white cheeks and darkened eyes.</p> - -<p>‘You must get back your good looks before you show yourself in -Cambridge. Women are sent into the world to be graceful. When they fail -in that, they fail in everything. Be a senior wrangler if you will, -but keep your complexion. You have grown much more like your father of -late.’ This was the highest form of praise Andros Bartrand could offer -her. ‘Don’t go back to the little skinny Spanish witch of former days.’</p> - -<p>‘I wish I could, sir,’ cried Marjorie, a flash of quickly-roused mutiny -in her eyes. ‘The days when I was a little skinny Spanish witch were -better than any I am likely to know again in this world.’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">[Pg 454]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XLVII</span> <span class="smaller">BESIDE THE CRADLE</span></h2> - -<p>‘I just feel we are too happy. It makes me tremble, Gaston. I would -rather see the speck of cloud no bigger than a man’s hand than for ever -live in dread of it.’</p> - -<p>‘You would rather have anything than the actual, my dear. That is a -little weakness of the sex. Surely your daughter ought to fill every -crevice of your dissatisfied heart!’</p> - -<p>‘She fills it, fuller than my heart can hold—my own sweet baby. She -is a wonderfully forward child, is she not? So strong of her age,—so -intelligent—so beautiful!’</p> - -<p>‘Not beautiful, Dinah. I am no amateur of infants, although I can -tolerate their presence after the age of two years. As regards the -particular infant sleeping in the cradle, yonder, even my knowledge of -the subject enables me to say she is unornamental—as unornamental a -child as could be found in Florence.’</p> - -<p>‘She is your living portrait,’ returned the mother, unconscious of -irony. ‘Yes, even to her shrewd looks, to the firm way she clasps her -fingers. And already—in that,’ murmured Dinah, penitently, ‘it may be -she favours me—already, Baby has a temper.’</p> - -<p>These exceedingly domestic confidences were interchanged in a vast old -Florentine room, fitted up by Gaston Arbuthnot as a studio, and on a -November night, some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">[Pg 455]</a></span> forty-eight hours later than the gray evening -when Marjorie paid her farewell visit to Cassandra Tighe.</p> - -<p>But November in Florence is a different season to November in the -English Channel. The dry nipping touch of Italian winter had already -made itself felt beside the banks of the Arno, and the blaze from -an up-piled heap of olive-faggots cast a ruddy glow upon the room -and its occupants. Gaston Arbuthnot, his day’s work done, reclined, -outstretched, in one of his favourite American chairs beside the -hearth. On the other side the fire was a cradle, wickered, capacious, -of the genuine Italian build that you may remember in many a -sixteenth-century picture. And beside this cradle stood Dinah, serious -of mien, gazing with rapt, Madonna-like devotion at the little English -child who slept there.</p> - -<p>At Gaston’s last remark she stooped and drew a muslin curtain tenderly -over her daughter’s face. Then she came across to her husband, she sank -on her knees beside him. Stealing a soft arm round Mr. Arbuthnot’s -neck, Dinah brought his cheek within reach of her lips.</p> - -<p>‘Honestly and without jesting, you can say you think the child <i>ugly</i>?’</p> - -<p>‘I think she will never be as handsome as her mother—the better for -herself, perhaps. Beauty is a snare. Who should know that better than -Dinah Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>‘If I had been—well, plainer than I am, would you have sought me out, -I wonder, in Aunt Sarah’s little cottage that summer?’</p> - -<p>‘Difficult to speculate backwards! I had thought some plainish women -charming before I heard the name of Lesser Cheriton.’</p> - -<p>‘That is a matter of course. You had been the friend of Linda Thorne.’</p> - -<p>‘Linda Smythe, as she was at that time. I don’t know that “cette chère -Smeet” could ever be called charming.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">[Pg 456]</a></span> She was lively, apt, a thorough -mistress of situation and inexhaustively talkative—to a boy fresh from -school that gift of talkativeness goes for much! She lacked charm. I -have heard her mourn over the deficiency, in her plaintive little way, -poor soul, with tears.’</p> - -<p>How calmly they spoke of Linda’s qualities—this Darby and Joan of -nearly six years’ standing, to whom romance, in its earliest, sweetest -bloom, would seem to have returned! From what a different standpoint -Dinah could review the sentimental dilemmas of Gaston’s youth! How the -renewal of their love had bettered them, man and woman alike!</p> - -<p>‘Sometimes when I look back upon our Guernsey days, the days, I mean, -which followed on that Langrune picnic, I feel a great remorse. Things -ended happily ... because you would not let my jealous temper ruin both -our lives.’</p> - -<p>Possibly, thought Gaston Arbuthnot, because of Geff. He remembered -their talk when the summer eve was sinking into darkness, the eve upon -whose morrow Dinah would fain have quitted him for ever.</p> - -<p>‘But I deserved the heaviest punishment that could have fallen upon me. -Jealousy, such as mine was then, means selfishness, not love.’</p> - -<p>‘Spoken from a fine moral height! All the same, Dinah, I think you did -love me, slightly.’</p> - -<p>‘I was unjust to Linda Thorne about your wager. When I opened the -packet she left for you I was dishonourable. The whole thing may have -been a jest—may have belonged to a time before you knew me at all. I -recollect telling you I would keep that packet always. Well, Gaston—I -wish now I had never seen it. There is a drawer in my dressing-case I -have not once since had courage to open.’</p> - -<p>Gaston Arbuthnot turned his head. Studying his wife’s face closely, -some suspicion of possible mistake began to dawn upon him. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">[Pg 457]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Are you certain as to your facts, Dinah? A drawer, you say, in your -dressing-case which you never have found courage to open? And why -not? I confess to being out of my depth. Linda’s gloves, honestly -lost by her, honestly paid, lay on the parlour mantelshelf. Of this I -am positive. From the mantelshelf I naturally transferred them to my -pocket.’</p> - -<p>‘Gloves!’</p> - -<p>‘What else? You do not suppose poor Linda and I made bets of twenty -pound notes?’</p> - -<p>‘But the word she wrote for you—the flower, the ribbon.... Ah, -Gaston,’ cried Dinah, hurriedly, ‘let us never have another -misunderstanding. I was wrong—criminal, if you choose—in opening -a cover that was not directed to myself. But I suffered for my -wrong-doing—you should know that—and you may be frank with me now. I -am not so weak that you need hide a syllable of the truth.’</p> - -<p>‘I put the gloves in my pocket,’ Gaston Arbuthnot reasserted, ‘and to -the best of my remembrance wore them out in about a fortnight. They -were iron-gray. A pair of iron-gray gloves would last one ten days or a -fortnight, would they not?’</p> - -<p>On this Dinah Arbuthnot started to her feet. She remembered Gaston’s -talent, of old, for calm mystification, and her heart fired.</p> - -<p>‘I have not re-opened the subject for amusement, Gaston. To show you -that I would make amends in earnest, I will fetch the packet this -moment. I shall feel easier when it is in your keeping, to destroy or -keep, as you choose.’</p> - -<p>Taking up a hand-lamp, Dinah passed into a neighbouring chamber. When -she returned, in three or four minutes’ time, there was a pallor about -her lips, a threatening of tears (the like of which during the past -fifteen months had been happily absent) in her voice. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">[Pg 458]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Baby has moved—has she not! I thought I heard her from my room.’</p> - -<p>‘The infant sneezed,’ answered Gaston Arbuthnot with gravity. ‘Much to -my terror. Sneezing might suggest waking. And to be alone with a waking -baby recalls Dr. Johnson and the tower. Bring your wonderful packet -here’—she had paused for a moment beside the child’s cradle—‘and let -us have the scene out.’</p> - -<p>‘We will never have a scene again while we live.’ Poor Dinah sank -into her former kneeling position; she rested her cheek against her -husband’s coat-sleeve. ‘Indeed, I think it might be fairer to you, more -generous to Linda Thorne, to close the matter—thus.’</p> - -<p>She held the packet in the direction of the flames.</p> - -<p>With a quick movement Gaston Arbuthnot’s hand stayed her. He drew the -contents forth from the envelope. He read Marjorie Bartrand’s ‘one -word.’ Then he glanced at the blackened flower-stalks, at the bit of -tarnished Spanish ribbon.</p> - -<p>‘And could you believe—in the full possession of your reason, -wife—that this was meant for me?’</p> - -<p>Dinah’s head drooped lower. She coloured violently.</p> - -<p>‘Could you believe that Linda Thorne, a woman who has travelled -over half the habitable globe alone, picking up experience -everywhere—Linda, a woman of tact, a woman of the world—would commit -herself to sentiment of doubtful application, set down in black and -white?’</p> - -<p>‘I never stopped to reason—the heart within me was too sore. I knew -Linda Thorne had called. I saw that the envelope was directed to you.’</p> - -<p>‘Or to Geoffrey—which? It is, as you see, addressed simply “Mr. G. -Arbuthnot.”’</p> - -<p>‘But Mrs. Thorne and Geff disliked each other. Do you think, even in -jest, she would——’</p> - -<p>‘My best Dinah—let a molehill which, during fifteen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">[Pg 459]</a></span> months, has been -assuming gigantic size, return, forthwith, to molehill proportions? -This handwriting may be Marjorie Bartrand’s. One can imagine a -classico-mathematical girl making that kind of “e.” It is certainly not -Linda’s.’</p> - -<p>‘And the meaning of the solitary word “<span class="smcap">Repentance</span>!”’</p> - -<p>‘Ah! you must read your own riddles,’ answered Gaston, with suavity. -‘Poor Linda and myself made an innocent wager of gloves, which I won. I -know no more.’</p> - -<p>Dinah rose hastily. She turned her face away from the fire’s light. -Amidst the full happiness of the last year, in her wifely rejoicing -over Gaston’s progress in his art, in the flood of charity towards -all men which had come upon her with the new delights of motherhood, -she had always dreaded the cloud ‘no bigger than a man’s hand,’ had -always remembered the secret which a jealously locked drawer of her -dressing-case hid out of sight. Her moral attitude towards Gaston -had perforce been a stooping one, an attitude of dumb forgiveness. -Believing in the present, hoping all things for the future, it had not -been possible for her wholly to forget the past. In this moment’s sharp -enlightenment, this unlooked-for vindication of Gaston’s loyalty, her -first sensation was one of relief. Succeeding it—so swiftly that Dinah -distinguished not where relief ended and pain began—there swept across -her the keenest shame which in her fair untarnished life her soul had -ever known.</p> - -<p>‘You believe that the letter came from Marjorie Bartrand?’</p> - -<p>The question fell from her lips almost unconsciously.</p> - -<p>‘One suspects the Greek “e’s,” and see—here, in this corner is the -Bartrand crest, an eagle with a bad-tempered beak and upheld claw. Take -back your own, wife, your cherished <i>vendetta</i>. I will have none of it.’</p> - -<p>‘And you think she cared, really, for poor Geff?’</p> - -<p>‘Marjorie was seventeen years old. The season of the year was June. -They bent their heads together over the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">[Pg 460]</a></span> same schoolroom table. -Even I—I, who have been so long out of the running, saw whither -things tended as early as the rose-show. Geff, no doubt, after a -Platonic mode, admired the budding Girton girl—a girl,’ said Gaston, -narrow-mindedly, ‘far too pretty for her calling! There came a breeze -between them,—Geoffrey hinted as much to me the night before he left -Guernsey,—a threatening of storm which, if a certain letter had not -been kidnapped, might have cost him his life, I mean his liberty, there -and then.’</p> - -<p>By this time the blood had gone from Dinah’s cheeks. ‘And all this was -brought about through me, through my small, self-engrossed jealousy. -Oh, Gaston, how sinful I was, how guilty I am still! But for me, -Geoffrey might long ago have come to happiness. He was our best friend -always, and I betrayed him. I am the veriest wretch on earth.’</p> - -<p>Tears of repentance rushed to Dinah’s eyes.</p> - -<p>‘You do not mention a slight reparation you owe to Linda Thorne,’ -observed Gaston, with his shrewd smile. ‘You forget that something may -be due also to me, even me, a husband.’</p> - -<p>‘I was ill, body and mind, that miserable day. I had scarce had an -hour’s sleep since I came back from Langrune without you. A flimsy -excuse,’ poor Dinah faltered, ‘and yet the only one I have to offer.’</p> - -<p>‘It is the excuse in vogue. The big social scientists put just the -same plea forward for the criminal classes. Crime is an illness. A man -may run a knife into another simply because his digestion, reacting on -the nerve centres, happened to be out of order. Probably, like you, my -dear, the poor fellow had been suffering from insomnia! Such excuses,’ -added Gaston, ‘are comforting enough for the man with the knife, but -scarcely so consolatory to him stabbed.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">[Pg 461]</a></span></p> - -<p>Dinah touched the flower stalks wistfully. She folded the ribbon with -care before returning it to the envelope. Her hands trembled in her -excitement.</p> - -<p>‘You talk about reparation.... I shall not let an hour be lost. I -shall write to Miss Bartrand at once, send back her own letter, and -confess—oh, Gaston, the hard word is yours—that ’twas I kidnapped it.’</p> - -<p>‘You mean to perform this act of contrition for Geoffrey’s sake?’</p> - -<p>‘I do.’</p> - -<p>‘Poor Geff! After getting decently out of danger once (and his letters -don’t savour of a broken heart), it seems a trifle rough on him to have -the thing revived.’</p> - -<p>‘<i>Poor</i> Geff!’ echoed Dinah, her eyes glistening through their tears. -‘You call a man poor who has a chance of winning Marjorie Bartrand’s -love? Does our happiness make you such an egotist,’—the reader will -note that Dinah’s vocabulary was enlarging,—‘such an egotist you do -not care for other people to marry?’</p> - -<p>‘Or are you like the fox in the fable, my dear child—which?’</p> - -<p>Dinah rested her clasped hands upon her husband’s shoulder, and -cogitated softly.</p> - -<p>‘Yes, I shall write to Tintajeux to-night. If it is not too late, -if the hearts of both are free, Miss Bartrand will find some way of -letting Geoffrey know the truth.’</p> - -<p>‘Of that you may be assured. If two women are to conspire together in -league against him, I say “poor Geff” with still more marked emphasis.’</p> - -<p>And rising, Gaston moved in the direction of the door. In these later -days, in the confidence of established love, Dinah had thought it no -grievance that her husband should join the Florentine Artists’ Club, or -spend a portion of every evening in other society than hers.</p> - -<p>‘Like all true women you are a remorseless <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">[Pg 462]</a></span>match-maker,’ he told her. -‘Unless the flame between these two victims is clean burnt out, you -will contrive by your letter to re-kindle it.’</p> - -<p>‘I wish I were a better scribe—that I could put my heart between the -lines! Oh, I must begin at once. Baby shall be left—for the first -time—with old Giacintha, and I will run round to the Piazza, and post -the letter myself.’</p> - -<p>‘Five years hence, I hope Geoffrey will bless you for having written -it. There was a flash of temper not to be forgotten in Marjorie -Bartrand’s handsome eyes.’</p> - -<p>‘And if there was! If a woman has a temper, even a jealous one, is it -impossible for her husband’s life to be happy?’</p> - -<p>Dinah had followed Gaston to the door. She held up her face—the -loveliest face in Florence, said the artists who worked therein—for -his kiss.</p> - -<p>‘All men are not philosophers,’ Gaston Arbuthnot made reply. ‘I have -learnt—tolerably dear the lesson cost me—not only to exist in a -stormy atmosphere, but to flourish there.’</p> - -<p class="space-above">And this is what Dinah wrote, not troubling herself over possible -faults of Syntax, not making a fair copy in the slanting pointed -handwriting to which, after much labour, she had tediously attained. -This is what Dinah wrote, straight out from her heart—</p> - -<blockquote> - -<p class="right">‘Florence, November 15.</p> - -<p>‘<span class="smcap">My dear Miss Bartrand</span>,</p> - -<p>‘I have just found, <i>with shame and remorse</i>, that I did you -grievous wrong, last July twelvemonth. You were the kindest -friend, save Geff, that ever I met, and I repaid you, little -meaning it, with treachery. Perhaps when you <i>see the enclosed</i> -you will guess what bitter confession I have got to make. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">[Pg 463]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Dear Miss Bartrand—I found your envelope on the mantelpiece of -our parlour at Miller’s Hotel, and I committed the meanest action -of my life. I broke it open—and because I was blind with selfish -trouble, and thought of my own suffering before all things, I kept -the letter. I have had it in my possession till this hour.</p> - -<p>‘It would be poor excuse to say I mistook the <i>person</i> it was -meant for, as well as the <i>hand</i> that wrote it. It would be -cowardice to say my heart was too hot, too miserable to reason. -I sinned, and if my sin has stood between my best friends and -happiness, my punishment will last me my life.</p> - -<p>‘Unless I make too bold, may I hope, some future time, you will -let Geoffrey read what I now write? Ask him to think of July the -1st, the day I went with him to Guernsey hospital. It was on that -day, a quarter of an hour after Geoffrey left me, at the sight of -<i>some one he will remember</i>, that I found your letter.</p> - -<p>‘Dear Miss Bartrand, I am the penitent and humble well-wisher of -your happiness,</p> - -<p class="right">‘<span class="smcap">Dinah</span>.’</p></blockquote> - -<p>The letter was directed to Tintajeux Manoir, Guernsey, and posted by -the writer’s hand on the night of November 15. A sharp Italian night, -with the swollen Arno swirling, the moonlight lying in ebon and ivory -patterns along the Florentine streets, with only one person—so it -seemed to Dinah’s beating heart—abroad in the sleeping city.</p> - -<p class="space-above">At the same hour Marjorie’s eager eyes looked forth, through rain and -fog, through the blurred obscurity of a Great Eastern carriage window, -upon the lamps of Cambridge.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">[Pg 464]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XLVIII</span> <span class="smaller">HAPPINESS</span></h2> - -<p>Madame Pouchée’s house, the goal of the girl’s journey, belonged to -history; a thatched, lozenge-windowed structure, of which the pargeted -gables, the black oak joints, and plaster panels abutted, with -pathetically incongruous air, as of some aged spinster at a ball, on -one of the brisk, modern thoroughfares of the town.</p> - -<p>A brass plate engraved ‘Pouchée’ was on the front door, conferring a -semi-professional character upon the mouldering household. Although -the fencing-master, honest man, had lain for twenty years in Père -la Chaise, and Madame Pouchée had no more ostensible livelihood -than such small sums as Mademoiselle gained by the teaching of her -language, their plate raised them to the plane of citizens. The mother -and daughter formed units in that curious gathering of poor French -people which exists in our University towns, decayed families of -fencing-masters, hair-dressers, or cooks, once prosperous, who shiver -through English fog and cold to the end of their existence because they -are ‘dans leurs meubles,’ ratepayers!</p> - -<p>To quit her dark old home, to forego the sound of Great St. Mary’s -curfew, to submit her furniture to the hammer of the auctioneer, would, -to Madame Pouchée, have seemed little short of sacrilege. She passed -her life with no larger pleasure than knitting, no acuter pain than -rheumatism.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">[Pg 465]</a></span> She could go to Mass on Sundays and festivals with more -security in Cambridge than in France. Pouchée’s foils and masks were -suspended in the raftered entrance hall. Pouchée’s portrait, as a -glossy bachelor of twenty, with black frock coat, turn-down collar, and -gamboge gloves, hung in the salon. Upstairs, in one of the low-ceiled -attics, were her crucifix and bénitier, just as she brought them from -far Provence before her first child saw the light.</p> - -<p>Such things to an aged woman are more than climate, more than -nationality. Madame Pouchée’s lot had not been rose-coloured during the -fencing-master’s life. At the time of his death, even, Monsieur was in -Paris, led thither by some of the unexplained affairs which perennially -drew him from his own fireside. But his widow clung to the foils and -masks and portrait with as much patient fidelity as though he had loved -her always. The careless husband who lay in Père la Chaise belonged to -Madame Pouchée’s middle age. The foils, the masks, the glossy bachelor -with gamboge gloves and turn-down collar, were relics of her youth.</p> - -<p>Every corner of the house was burnished to that vanishing point of -cleanliness which only French housewives understand, on the evening -of November 15. Ere Marjorie had well alighted from her cab, an -unforgotten figure rushed forth through wet and darkness to meet her, a -pair of kind solid arms held her fast.</p> - -<p>‘But you are tall—but you are fresh and vermeille!’ Mademoiselle -Pouchée hurried the girl across the strip of pavement to the house. ‘I -see no more the little Cendrillon of old days. Come, then, mère, leave -thy kitchen. Come, that I may present thee to our future Girton girl.’</p> - -<p>Madame Pouchée’s cheeks were swarthy as the olives of her native -country. An ample checked apron was tied round her neat black dress. -She wore the provincial linen head-dress of her youth. Genuine French -people do not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">[Pg 466]</a></span> shake hands on every occasion of human life, and fifty -English years had left Madame Pouchée a genuine Frenchwoman still. The -old lady came forward, not with a hand outstretched, but with such -natural courtesy, such charming welcome written on her Southern face as -reminded Marjorie of Spain, and caused her somewhat flagging spirit to -rally.</p> - -<p>‘I feel six years old again, dear Pouchée.’ This she said when -Mademoiselle had led her into the salon, a tiny panelled room where a -table was cosily spread for a dinner of two before the fire. ‘Surely -we had our lessons this morning! Surely I was wicked—when was I not -wicked?—and you gave me a double row of spelling for my penitence.’</p> - -<p>Throughout the evening a mysterious sense of having gone back to her -childhood fell balmily on Marjorie’s heart. Madame Pouchée gave them a -little dinner, as exquisitely cooked, I dare to say, as was any dinner -in Trinity or Magdalen that night. For dessert were Tintajeux pears, -of which a goodly hamper had come over as a present from the Seigneur. -Their coffee was served in Sèvres cups, dislodged for the occasion from -Madame Pouchée’s inlaid cabinet—the costliest ornament of the salon, -brought with her in bridal days from Paris, when the nineteenth century -was in its teens.</p> - -<p>‘It is like a Tintajeux holiday,’ cried Marjorie, as she and Pouchée -sat, hand clasped in hand, beside the fire. ‘Do you remember every 29th -of May we used to eat our dinner under the big oak in honour, you said, -of le martyr Protestant, Charles?’ The prayer-books in the Tintajeux -family pew were of ancient date. Pouchée, honest creature, was wont to -entangle herself among the various Stuart and Orange services, greatly -to the Seigneur’s edification. ‘Ah, Pouchée, we are wiser now. We have -learnt history from loftier historians than Lady Callcott. And I, for -one, am not happier.’</p> - -<p>‘Whenever I look at Tintajeux I see a small Marjorie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">[Pg 467]</a></span> with temper, with -eyes, with a determined Spanish face—and whom I loved much. There are -no figures in the picture. Still, whenever I look at Tintajeux——’</p> - -<p>Mademoiselle Pouchée’s voluble tongue stopped abruptly.</p> - -<p>‘No figures in the picture?’ Marjorie glanced round the empty walls. -‘And what picture are you talking of? Where is the photograph of the -Manoir I sent you last Christmas?’</p> - -<p>As she spoke Madame Pouchée entered, bearing a fresh-trimmed lamp—for -this little household boasted of no parlour-maid. The old Frenchwoman -lingered a while, her quick septuagenarian eyes watching the faces of -her daughter and of their guest. She had caught Marjorie’s last words.</p> - -<p>‘The photograph of Tintajeux Manoir? Why, it has been moved upstairs. -It hangs in the salon of our gentleman, notre bon locataire—pas vrai, -ma fille?’</p> - -<p>Mademoiselle Pouchée put the interruption quietly aside.</p> - -<p>‘Mère loses her memory. We must not always heed her,’ she observed to -Marjorie, presently. ‘In bygone days, when the good papa was living, -our family received undergraduates as lodgers. Mère has the old time in -her heart still.’</p> - -<p>‘Jesuitry, Pouchée! I remember your talents in that line. In bygone -days, when the good papa was living, no photograph of Tintajeux Manoir -existed.’</p> - -<p>The remark was accompanied by a Bartrand look, as familiar, as smiting -to poor Pouchée as though she and Marjorie had done battle over some -delicate point of moral faithfulness that very morning.</p> - -<p>‘There are accidents—contingencies—nay, times being hard, -there is necessity. As well confess the truth. We do not take -lodgers.’ Pouchée’s eyes dwelt fondly on the inlaid cabinet, the -porcelain, the exquisite order of the little salon. ‘We are private -citizens—rentières, living on our means.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">[Pg 468]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘And there is no one in the house save yourselves?’</p> - -<p>A flourish of Pouchée’s fingers hinted negation. ‘The old place is, in -fact, two houses, as you will see by daylight. There are rooms at the -back that can be entered by a flight of open-air steps—steps dating -from the fourteenth century, ma mie.’</p> - -<p>‘You promised me truth—not history, Mademoiselle.’</p> - -<p>‘And by hazard—for the moment—we have a locataire. Not an -undergraduate. We spare a room or two, on occasion, to some quiet -gentleman—some resident M.A.—some student from the Art Schools. No -undergraduate sets foot within our doors. <i>We are not licensed.</i>’</p> - -<p>So keen a sense of distinction was conveyed by the italicised -words that Marjorie forebore from further questioning. An hour -later, however, when they were parting for the night in the fresh, -chintz-draped attic which was the guest-chamber of the house, she -ventured on a last surmise.</p> - -<p>‘As we passed a certain baize door at the turning of the stairs I -smelt the smell of a pipe. Our bon locataire must live somewhere in -that neighbourhood, Mademoiselle—our quiet gentleman, who is not an -undergraduate, and who has the photograph of Tintajeux Manoir on his -walls?’</p> - -<p>But Pouchée was blankly uncommunicative. The gentleman went in and out -by the other staircase. Marjorie would neither see nor hear him during -her stay in Cambridge. As to the photograph—it would certainly return -to its place in the salon to-morrow morning.</p> - -<p>‘If you are afraid of University ghosts,’ added the Frenchwoman, as she -bade her guest a final good-night, ‘you will do wisely to bolt your -door. Sleep well, ma mie, and dream that we are making cowslip balls, -as we used a dozen years ago, in the woods of Tintajeux.’</p> - -<p>The first five days of her Cambridge visit were resolutely spent by -Marjorie in sight-seeing. It was well for her, she said, to come under -the external influences of the Alma<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">[Pg 469]</a></span> Mater, watch the cheerful flow of -undergraduate life, look at Newnham and Girton from without, before -delivering her letters of introduction.... It was well for her, while -she still stood uncommitted to the future, to run a last forlorn chance -of meeting the man she loved!</p> - -<p>Here was the truth, unrecognised, perhaps, as truth, even in Marjorie -Bartrand’s moments of sternest self-questioning. Day after day, -however, slipped vainly by. A dozen times in each twenty-four hours -her heart would leap, her pulses throb as men of Geoffrey’s height or -build went past her in the crowded streets. Geoffrey Arbuthnot appeared -not. She fell to quarrelling with herself over her own folly. Geoffrey -might be at the other side of the world—married—contented: in every -case must have learnt long ago to live his life, to do his work without -<i>her</i>. Happily, there were reprisals....</p> - -<p>On the morning of the sixth day she determined to put her sweetheart -away from her remembrance for ever.</p> - -<p>‘I have come to the end of my sight-seeing.’ This she told the Pouchées -at breakfast. ‘I have heard a University sermon and the services at -King’s and Trinity. We have visited Trumpington churchyard and the -Backs. I have seen Milton’s tree and Gray’s fire-escape, and—and the -Girton girls playing tennis. When I have gone over your house, Madame -Pouchée, when I know what kind of rooms reading gentlemen inhabit, my -experience will be complete.’</p> - -<p>The speech fell from her idly. Small curiosity in the affairs of others -was never a sin to be reckoned among the Bartrand qualities.</p> - -<p>But Mademoiselle Pouchée’s manner gave it purpose. Mademoiselle changed -colour, fidgeted with her coffee-spoon, contradicted herself. ‘The -rooms were the plainest rooms in Cambridge. No knowing at what time our -gentleman went out or might return. For herself, she seldom entered his -part of the house, and——’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">[Pg 470]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Pouchée,’ exclaimed Marjorie, the old spirit of contradiction taking -possession of her, ‘there is a mystery about our excellent lodger which -I mean to solve. You seldom enter his part of the house, you say? You -were in his rooms last evening. I saw you enter through the baize door, -as I have seen you do pretty often already. I heard your voice as you -talked to him. Explain these things.’</p> - -<p>‘Enfin! It would be better if the truth were told,’ said old Madame -Pouchée in her own language. ‘Our gentleman is an enemy of the sex. -What will you have! When he heard a young lady was coming to visit -us——’</p> - -<p>‘He offered, of free will, to go in and out by the other stairs,’ -interrupted Pouchée, adroitly. ‘He showed the finest, most delicate -consideration. Since that first evening when Marjorie perceived his -pipe our gentleman has not smoked. He goes out early. He does not -return until he is worn out with work—such work as his is, too—at -night!’</p> - -<p>‘Then it is impossible we can disturb him,’ exclaimed Marjorie, rising -briskly from the table. ‘As a matter of architecture I am interested in -the fourteenth-century stairs. The rooms they lead to must be equally -curious. You need not chaperon me.’ She looked back at Pouchée across -her shoulder. ‘I shall push back the mysterious red baize, and walk -straight into Bluebeard’s chamber without knocking.’</p> - -<p>And running up the stairs, she was about to put her threat into -execution when Pouchée, by a dexterous flank movement, cut off her -advance.</p> - -<p>‘There may be a litter of papers. Grand ciel! there may be the bones, -the skull.’ With her hands upon the lock, Mademoiselle Pouchée barred -Marjorie’s progress by her own solid person; then, opening two inches -of door, she peered in, cautiously. ‘No; we are in order. We have -locked up our skeleton for once. You may enter, child—Barbe-bleu is -not here to eat you.’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">[Pg 471]</a></span></p> - -<p>Marjorie Bartrand stopped short upon the threshold. Something in the -meagrely furnished room, the piles of books, the small fireless grate, -the absence of any pretence at decoration or cheerfulness, affected her -strongly. She shrank from intruding, unbidden, on such valiantly borne -poverty as was here in evidence before her.</p> - -<p>‘And you have robbed him of Tintajeux Manoir!’ She glanced round at the -bare, damp-stained walls. ‘Tintajeux at least gives one a notion of -quick and wholesome air, of honest sunshine!’</p> - -<p>‘Our gentleman robbed himself. When I told him the morning after your -arrival that you had asked for it, he took the photograph from his wall -with his own hand.’</p> - -<p>‘And you can give him no other picture to fill its place?’</p> - -<p>‘He has a magnifique picture here, facing the window. See,’ -Pouchée adjusted herself into a favourable light with an air of -connoisseurship, ‘a magnifique portrait, just a little mildewed, of -King William the Fourth. The fur on his Majesty’s cloak has been the -admiration of many artists. Come in, ma mie, entrez. What are you -afraid of?’</p> - -<p>And Marjorie entered. She looked for a few seconds at the time-stained -mezzotint which, with its black frame, its cheap glass, seemed but to -make the wall whereon it hung more sorrowfully ugly. Then she crossed -to the room’s one window—a diamond leaded casement through whose small -dulled panes the side view of a crowded alley, of the corner of a still -more crowded churchyard, was attainable.</p> - -<p>A ponderous book lay on a chair beside the window. Marjorie Bartrand -lifted it.</p> - -<p>‘Marjorie, I forbid you to touch a book! Our gentleman studies for -medicine. Medical works are not for the perusal of young girls.’</p> - -<p>‘The girl of the future peruses everything! Quain’s “Elements of -Anatomy,”’ cried Marjorie, holding the volume as high out of Pouchée’s -reach as its weight would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">[Pg 472]</a></span> allow. ‘I wonder whether our gentleman would -lend it to us, if we asked him prettily? We might study our bones -together, Pouchée. Who knows, in days to come, that I may not go for a -Natural Science Tripos?’</p> - -<p>And—with the book still held aloft—her nimble fingers found their way -to the title-page. In the top right-hand corner was a name, written in -characters she knew:</p> - -<p>‘<span class="smcap">Geoffrey Arbuthnot</span>, <i>January</i>, 1880.’</p> - -<p>For an instant Marjorie Bartrand turned ashen pale. Then as she -recalled her position, as she realised that she had forced herself, -unasked, into Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s room, the poor child crimsoned from -throat to brow. She felt that the very soul within her had cause to -blush over her temerity.</p> - -<p>‘Let us come away this moment. I am taken by surprise—there has been -some cruel mistake.’</p> - -<p>The book almost fell out of her grasp. Swiftly as her limbs would carry -her she made her way out of the room and down the stairs. Then, when -they were safe again in the little salon, she caught Pouchée’s hand -with passion.</p> - -<p>‘I look to you, Mademoiselle, for an explanation,’ she cried with -impetuous voice, with flaming eyes. ‘What right had you to conceal from -me that Geoffrey Arbuthnot lived here?’</p> - -<p>But Pouchée had the strength of conscious innocence. All further need -of mystification was over now. Regarding their lodger as a shy recluse, -an enemy of the sex, the two poor French ladies had striven with will -to keep him and their visitor from meeting. This was the secret of -their reticence, the sum of their offending. Mademoiselle Pouchée met -Marjorie’s lightning glance calmly.</p> - -<p>‘Mère and I had nothing to conceal. How could it have interested you to -hear a stranger’s name?’</p> - -<p>‘And you have never spoken of me in his presence?’</p> - -<p>‘If we did, it was by hazard. Why should Marjorie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">[Pg 473]</a></span> Bartrand of -Tintajeux be more than any other young lady to Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>‘Simply,’ returned Marjorie, closely watching Pouchée’s unmoved -face,—‘simply because Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot had the picture of -Tintajeux hanging on his walls.’</p> - -<p>‘By hazard, also. He took a fancy to the photograph from the first day -he came to lodge with us. It had a look of Scotland,—it recalled some -place where he had known good times. And so, to give him pleasure, -I said that while he lodged here, Tintajeux should hang above his -chimney-piece.’</p> - -<p>‘From whence it was unhung, by his own hand, to please the caprice of -an unknown visitor. Mr. Arbuthnot is very generous!’</p> - -<p>‘Mr. Arbuthnot,’ cried Pouchée, warming on the instant, ‘is the most -noble-hearted man living. Yes, and I have travelled! I have had my -experiences widened. I know my world. That he should work hard at the -hospital or over his books, I comprehend. A high degree is at stake. -Men have their ambition. Mr. Arbuthnot goes into courts and alleys, -vile places, left alone by the police, and where priests or parsons -might get their throats cut. He searches out the worst outcasts in -Barnwell and Chesterton, only to serve them.’</p> - -<p>‘Now—at this present time?’ stammered Marjorie, conscience-stricken.</p> - -<p>‘Now, while you and I, mon enfant, have been sight-seeing. His last -protégé,’ went on Pouchée, ‘is a miserable bargeman, one of the worst -characters on the river. This man was struck over the head by some -falling timber two or three weeks ago. He was too nearly gone, so his -mates thought, to be carried to hospital, and our gentleman just saved -his life. He has nursed him day and night since, as one of your great -London doctors would nurse a Prince of the Blood. If Mr. Arbuthnot were -of our religion I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">[Pg 474]</a></span> could understand it. I visit in Barnwell myself a -very little.’</p> - -<p>This was Pouchée’s account of her own charities. She visited in -Barnwell a great deal. Beside fever-stricken, dying pallets, her -acquaintance with Geoffrey Arbuthnot had first begun.</p> - -<p>‘But we, Catholics, see in the poor our own sick soul. We hope, in -saving them, to save ourselves.’</p> - -<p>‘And Geoffrey Arbuthnot?’</p> - -<p>‘He serves them, gives them his time, his money—what do I know! his -heart—simply <i>because</i> they are castaway men and women. “Sisters and -brothers in a queer disguise.” You should hear him say that, with his -grave smile! It was to talk over some of the sisters and brothers, -Marjorie, that I went to our gentleman’s rooms last night.’</p> - -<p>‘Our gentleman ought to be a happy man,’ said Marjorie, with a sigh.</p> - -<p>The Frenchwoman’s shoulders were sceptically expressive.</p> - -<p>‘A hair-shirt is never worn for pleasure, child. It is not in nature -that a man of six-and-twenty should care for other people’s lives more -than for his own. Geoffrey Arbuthnot might have made a good servant of -the Church,—an Ignatius Loyola, a Francis Xavier. But if one speaks -about happiness—allez!’</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">[Pg 475]</a></span></p> - -<h2><span>CHAPTER XLIX</span> <span class="smaller">FROM DINAH’S HAND</span></h2> - -<p>These things sank heavily on Marjorie’s bruised heart. She felt that -Geoffrey’s indifference to herself was now an ascertained fact,—nay, -that his fancy for her, at no time worthy of a higher name, had turned -to repugnance. He had asked her to be his wife under the glamour of a -picturesque moment—a friendship, unique in its conditions from the -beginning, suddenly taking upon itself a surface likeness to passion! A -true lover would not have availed himself so readily of his chance of -freedom, would not have magnified his mistress’s heat of temper into -a crime, would not have rejected the fullest amends that woman could -offer, short of falling upon her knees in the dust before an offended -sweetheart!</p> - -<p>Mademoiselle Pouchée was overjoyed when the girl announced herself -ready, next day, to deliver her letters of introduction.</p> - -<p>‘We shall see what such presentations lead to,’ exclaimed the kindly -soul, her round face beaming. ‘A dinner here, a lunch there—the -highest gentlemen in Cambridge to be met at each! I predict a <i>succès -fou</i>! Not all the world, let me tell you, brings such letters to the -University. By after to-morrow you will have every evening of your week -engaged.’</p> - -<p>‘The University will keep its head, dear Pouchée. A<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">[Pg 476]</a></span> singularly -insignificant young person from the Channel Islands runs no risk of -becoming a sensation. The highest gentlemen in Cambridge will pay -Marjorie Bartrand just attention enough to ask her name—and forget it.’</p> - -<p>Nevertheless, on the score of invitations, Pouchée’s forecast proved a -true one. Before night, arrived a friendly invitation bidding Marjorie -to dine at the house of the Master of Matthias next day. As Miss -Bartrand looked forward to studying in Cambridge, the note added, a -lady high in authority at Girton had been asked to meet her.</p> - -<p>‘Of that Girton lady I speak not,’ observed Pouchée, when the hour came -on the morrow for Marjorie to dress. ‘About Newnham and Girton I am -dumb.’ Imagine Pouchée dumb on any subject, earthly or terrestrial! ‘I -have lived by brain work, I have been a teacher over nineteen years. -See my whitening hairs, my lost illusions, my disenchantments! In that -sad trade the woman’s heart breathes not. Make yourself charming, -fillette! The most distinguished society of Cambridge is to be met with -at the table of the Master of Matthias. For a child of eighteen there -may be better things in store than coming out high in a Tripos; yes, or -standing on a level with the first wrangler of them all.’</p> - -<p>Marjorie’s presumptive triumphs caused the whole Pouchée household to -expand. Wax candles—rare extravagance—stood lit before her mirror. -Flowers were on her toilette-table. Her white dinner dress, with its -simple adjuncts, was lovingly laid ready for her by Mademoiselle’s -hands.</p> - -<p>But in Marjorie’s restless heart there was no place for pretty dresses, -for anticipation of social success. She drew aside her curtain. She -gazed down through a chink of blind upon the street, hoping against -hope, as she had so often done before, to discover the face of her -false sweetheart among the passers-by.</p> - -<p>It was the most crowded hour of the short November<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">[Pg 477]</a></span> day. Athletic -men were there, returning, in flannels and wrappers, from the river -or the Piece; sporting men from the hunting-field; reading men from -their trudge along the Wranglers’ Walk. Of ‘pifflers’ an abundance; -men with terriers, men with button-holes, men in dog-carts—the -whole many-coloured undergraduate world, alert, self-engrossed. -Drawing together the curtain, Marjorie Bartrand moved back to her -looking-glass. She stood confronting the pale, serious-eyed vision that -met her there with a kind of pity. She was so young, and the years to -come were so many; disappointed years under whose weight she must stand -upright, give no sign she winced beneath their burthen, wear a brave -countenance—work! She felt that she hated Cambridge, this ceaseless -ebb and flow, this turmoil of exultant, successful, youthful life! -Was not Tintajeux, with its dying woods, its still moorland, a fitter -drop-scene for the little played-out drama of her personal happiness?</p> - -<p>As Marjorie meditated, the sharp sound of the postman’s knock made -her start. No letter of more vital interest than a despatch from -the Seigneur was likely to reach her; and yet her breath quickened. -Her mood throughout the day had been one of feverish, unreasoning -expectancy. Change, for good or for evil, was, she felt, in the air. -Opening the door of her room, she listened with vague impatience. Hot -controversies anent over-weight and foreign postage were impending -between Madame Pouchée and the postman; Madame, in the matter of extra -half-pence, standing stoutly on the defensive. After a time there -would seem to be a reluctant payment of coin, followed by the brisk -shutting of an outer door. Then the old Frenchwoman’s slippered steps -began leisurely to ascend the stair. The girl’s breath came faster. She -ran out on the landing. The letter was <i>not</i> the size or shape of the -Seigneur’s letters, and it bore two postmarks: Florence, Guernsey.... </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">[Pg 478]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘ ... Five half-pence over-weight. I hope, mère, it may be worth its -postage,’ observed Mademoiselle Pouchée, busily tying up violets in -the salon for the adornment of Marjorie’s dress. ‘The child has never -spoken about Italy, still—her heart is somewhere, mère, and I don’t -believe that somewhere is in Newnham or Girton. Ah, when I, too, had -eighteen summers, when——’</p> - -<p>‘Pouchée! Dear, good old Pouchée!’ called out a voice, resonant, -hearty, imperious, from the attic floor. ‘Leave the violets. Come -upstairs, quick! I have had splendid news. Everything in the world is -changed. You must send an excuse to the Master of Matthias at once.’</p> - -<p>In a moment the Pouchées, mother and daughter, were at the bottom of -the stairs. Marjorie Bartrand, her opened letter in her hand, a flush -of wild excitement lighting her face up into its vivid Southern beauty, -stood on the landing above.</p> - -<p>‘An excuse! Consider what you talk about!’ exclaimed Pouchée solemnly. -‘Have your splendid news, with all my heart! But have your splendid -dinner, too. The Master of Matthias keeps the best table in the -University. At his house you meet——’</p> - -<p>‘The most distinguished society of Cambridge. Oh, Pouchée, what should -I find to say to distinguished society ... to any king or emperor in -Europe?... Hark! There is Great St. Mary’s clock striking the quarter. -We have not a minute to lose. Write a note, Mademoiselle, in your best -hand, with your pretty, courteous French grace, and give it to the -coachman to deliver. I must read my letter through once more.’</p> - -<p class="space-above">Seven was the appointed time of the Master’s dinner-party. At the -moment when Great St. Mary’s clock boomed the hour’s first stroke, -Marjorie Bartrand extinguished her candles. She descended with muffled -tread to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">[Pg 479]</a></span> the red baize door at the turning of the stairs. Here she -paused, listened until she heard the shrill treble of French voices, -knew that the Pouchées were safely talking together downstairs. Then, -on tiptoe, she stole to Geoffrey’s quarters. The door stood ajar; a -stray reflected flare of gaslight from some shop window in the court -beneath enabled her to grope her way across the chill and comfortless -room.</p> - -<p>The girl paused, irresolute. She remembered Cassandra Tighe’s story, -remembered the miniature Bartrands, the confession made in their -presence of Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s first love. During a few seconds the -old Bartrand pride swayed her—the happiness of her life hung by a -thread. Then she took a packet from her breast. She laid it meekly, -furtively, on the student’s writing-table and fled, like one who quits -the scene of a committed crime, to the light and cheerfulness of the -little salon below.</p> - -<p>Pouchée was decking the mantelshelf with the violets Marjorie should -have worn. ‘Headstrong as ever, child! But I forbear to reason,’ -she cried, ‘until you explain yourself. That big Italian letter, -re-directed in the Seigneur’s hand, has brought you important news?’</p> - -<p>‘I will answer you to-morrow, Pouchée. All I know is that I have lost -my chance of distinguished society, and that my heart is the happiest -heart in all Cambridge.’</p> - -<p>‘Grand ciel! Then you have a dear friend among the Florentines!’ Poor -Pouchée’s face brimmed over with curiosity. ‘I accept him, without -conditions, for your sake. The Italians are ungrateful as rats. Think -of all my country has done for them! Still, if a Florentine is your -fate——’</p> - -<p>But her imaginary concessions were cut short; the violets slipped -through Pouchée’s fingers. There came the sudden click of a latchkey at -the house door. A man’s firm step sounded in the passage. </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">[Pg 480]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘It is our gentleman! Save yourself, quick, child! The curtain of the -bay window will hide you.’</p> - -<p>The words had scarce left Pouchée’s mouth when Geff Arbuthnot entered. -He took a rapid glance round him, walked in the direction of the -window—Marjorie’s heart thrilled as she crouched, imprisoned, out of -sight—then stopped short. There was something of insecurity about his -movements.</p> - -<p>‘For a moment I was afraid to come in. The front door has become -strange to one. But you are really alone, Mademoiselle? Your visitor -has started to her party? Then you will let me have five minutes’ chat -beside your fire? I have something good to tell you.’</p> - -<p>‘That is right, sir. Please let me set you a chair.’</p> - -<p>In performing this little action Pouchée artfully chose such a point -that Marjorie, shadowed herself, might gain a full view of Geff -Arbuthnot’s face.</p> - -<p>‘Your fire makes one feel we are in November.’</p> - -<p>He stretched his hands forth to the blaze. ‘How delightful your salon -is to-night, Mademoiselle Pouchée.’</p> - -<p>Coming in from the mud and darkness, the dreary prose of Cambridge -thoroughfares, he might well think so. The room was redolent with the -odour of Marjorie’s discarded violets; morsels of muslin embroidery, a -thimble never worn by Pouchée’s finger, lay on a work-table near Geff’s -elbow. The warmth, the grace, the nameless sweetness of a young girl’s -presence, were everywhere.</p> - -<p>‘How well that Guernsey photograph looks in its old place!’ Could it be -that Geoffrey shrank from pronouncing the name of Tintajeux? ‘You shall -not dismantle your walls again for whim of mine.’</p> - -<p>Pouchée stirred the fire into a keener flame. She gave a discreet -little cough.</p> - -<p>‘We will settle about that another day, sir. I wait impatiently your -news. Something good about yourself, I hope?’ </p> - -<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">[Pg 481]</a></span></p> - -<p>‘Something very good.’ His face brightened. ‘You know our poor patient -down in Barnwell?’</p> - -<p>‘Our Irish bargee, O’Halloran, the dingiest character even Barnwell can -show.’</p> - -<p>‘But whom, when he was at his worst, Mademoiselle Pouchée tended like a -sister.’</p> - -<p>‘I sat up one or two nights. I helped—because the good-for-nothing -is of my religion. Our priest advised an act of contrition. I had my -motives.’</p> - -<p>‘As I had mine,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Never condescend, Mademoiselle, to -become a motive-monger. Do you think no experimental zeal mingles with -a medical student’s attention to his pauper fellows?’</p> - -<p>‘O’Halloran rewards you, I trust, with gratitude. <i>That</i>, at least,’ -observed Pouchée, with a touch of cynicism, ‘would be a new experience -among ces messieurs of the gutters!’</p> - -<p>‘O’Halloran rewards me with gratitude. The bandages were off him this -afternoon for the first time, as you know. Well, he was sitting, -propped up in bed, looking at my face with such poor remnant of sight -as remains to him, when suddenly—“Doctor! I’m darned,” he cried in his -hollow voice, “if it be’ant my Varsity man, after all!”’</p> - -<p>‘Modestly spoken! His Varsity man, indeed!’</p> - -<p>‘I should have thought the fever had come back,’ said Geff, ‘if I -had not had my finger on his pulse two minutes before. “Your Varsity -man, Mike—what are you talking about?” I asked him. “What have you -to do with the University or its men?” “I had to do,” he said, “with -a Varsity man one accursed November night that <i>you</i> must remember, -doctor. There was a lot of chaps together, rough river chaps—you know -the sort, sir—and three or four of the Varsity gentlemen came across -’em, down Petty Cury. The gentlemen wasn’t of the fighting kind, so far -as I can recollect, but anyways they got into a Town and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">[Pg 482]</a></span> Gown row—a -bad one.... Doctor, I say”—the poor fellow put out his big weak hand -to me—“I was the leader of the roughs. I struck a foul coward’s blow -when the gentlemen was fighting honourable and unarmed. It was me give -you the devil’s mark you’ll take with you into the coffin.”’</p> - -<p>‘Scélérat—misérable!’ put in Pouchée, between her closed teeth.</p> - -<p>‘I tried to joke him out of his fancy,’ went on Geff Arbuthnot, ‘but in -vain. Mike had seen my face, before he struck the blow—and afterwards. -He had never forgotten me. The scar which you, Mademoiselle, have -lamented over, as marring my beauty, put my identification beyond -doubt. “My Varsity man—my Varsity man,” he moaned. “I’ve thought -of him many a time in the black years since.... And now, at last, -I’ve found him. Doctor, you’ve saved my life—you’ve looked after me -when I should have died, else, like a dog on this miserable floor, -here—there’s one favour more I durstn’t, no, I durstn’t ask of you.... -Give me your hand in token of forgiveness.”’</p> - -<p>‘And you gave it him,’ cried Pouchée, whose face had turned a queer -shade of colour as she listened.</p> - -<p>‘I gave him my hand, and Mike, who I suspect has cared neither for God -nor man in his life, caught it to his lips. My dear Mademoiselle, you -can guess that it was a good moment. To pull one’s patient round, in -body, is much. O’Halloran will have a human heart in that dark breast -of his from to-day forth.’</p> - -<p>And having told his story, Geff Arbuthnot rose. With a lingering look -he took in the home-like suggestiveness of the little salon, the -violets on the mantelshelf, the morsel of embroidery, the slender -implements of needlework on the table. Then he bade Mademoiselle -Pouchée good-night. Marjorie listened while his remembered step ran -up the stairs, listened until she knew by the opening and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">[Pg 483]</a></span> shutting -of a distant door that he had gained his study. Then she crept forth, -uncertain of mien, from her hiding-place.</p> - -<p>‘Have I committed a dishonourable action? Was there anything I should -not have heard? Oh, Mademoiselle,’ she went on, incoherently, ‘is not -Geoffrey Arbuthnot the noblest man in the whole world?’</p> - -<p>And Marjorie clasped the mantelshelf, steadying herself thereby. She -bent down over a cup of violets, hiding the face from which she felt -all trace of colour must have vanished.</p> - -<p>‘You look tired, ma mie. The news from Florence has not brought back -your roses. Now, what shall I get for you?’ cried Pouchée, stealing a -kind arm round the girl’s shoulder. ‘Thanks to your Italian letter, -remember, you have been cheated out of dinner.’</p> - -<p>‘I should like some tea,’ Marjorie answered, plausibly. ‘Tea and a -plate of tartines, cut after the fashion that only you, dear Pouchée, -understand.’</p> - -<p>If the flattery were a trick of war to effect the Frenchwoman’s -absence, I hold that, in a moment supreme as this, it was pardonable.</p> - -<p>Off went Pouchée to the kitchen, unsuspecting to the last of the love -story in which she had played a part, and Marjorie, her heart on fire, -awaited her fate. For the first two or three minutes all was quiet. -Then she heard the impetuous opening of Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s door. Her -limbs well-nigh failed her, her spirit sank. Through a few seconds of -suspense the past fifteen months seemed to unroll themselves, one by -one, before her sight.... At last the salon door opened and closed. -Marjorie moved a step forward—she held out a hand that trembled -violently. A moment more and strong arms held her close, her blushes -were hidden on Geff Arbuthnot’s breast.</p> - -<p>There was a long space of silence, an interchange of such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">[Pg 484]</a></span> words, such -broken attempts at explanation as pen and ink can ill put into form. -Then Geoffrey led his sweetheart into the broader light of lamp and -fire. He looked at her tall figure, her altered softened face, with -wondering eyes.</p> - -<p>‘You have grown several inches, Miss Bartrand. You have become -beautiful. Tell me I am not asleep—dreaming, as I have done so -often—that I hold your hand. Tell me my good luck is real!’</p> - -<p>‘Don’t talk of good luck yet. I have not lost my Bartrand temper. -Plenty of bad times may be in store for both of us.’</p> - -<p>‘And when was this sent to me’ Geoffrey touched his breast-pocket, in -token that Marjorie’s ribbon and letter lay there. ‘The address is an -enigma. There is a faded look I cannot interpret about the handwriting.’</p> - -<p>‘I left the packet fifteen months ago at your hotel in Guernsey.’ The -girl’s face drooped. ‘You ought to have had it on the day after—after -my vile temper drove you away from Tintajeux. I wrote ... one word ... -as you wished; I sent you the bit of Spanish ribbon for a book-marker. -But fortune was against me. I forgot that you and your cousin Gaston -had the same initial.’</p> - -<p>‘If Gaston had opened a letter wrongly he would have brought it to me -on the spot.’</p> - -<p>‘There was mistake within mistake—at that time poor Dinah’s heart was -near to breaking—so she writes me now.’</p> - -<p>‘Dinah! You have heard from Mrs. Arbuthnot? Let me see her explanation.’</p> - -<p>‘I will read a passage or two aloud.’ Marjorie Bartrand drew the -Italian letter from her pocket.</p> - -<p>‘No. You will let me read every word of it for myself.’</p> - -<p>And Geoffrey Arbuthnot took the letter, unfolded, and read it through.</p> - -<p>‘Dinah was tried beyond her strength,’ said Marjorie, instinctively -deciphering a pained expression on Geoffrey’s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">[Pg 485]</a></span> face. ‘But she has no -need to feel so contrite. It will make our happiness doubly sweet to -know it has come to us, in the end, from Dinah’s hand.’</p> - -<p>The tone, the generous words, smote Geoffrey to the quick.</p> - -<p class="space-above">‘Can you give up everything for me?’ he asked her presently. ‘Your -dream for years has been Girton. Do you desire still to become a Girton -student, or....’</p> - -<p>‘I desire that you shall guide me,’ was the prompt answer. ‘I need no -other life, no other wisdom, no other ambition than yours.’</p> - -<p>A finis commonplace as daylight, reader, old as the foundation of the -Gogmagog Hills. Gaston’s prediction was verified—Marjorie Bartrand had -proved herself a very woman after all.</p> - -<p class="center space-above">THE END</p> - -<p class="center space-above"><i>G. C. & Co.</i><br /><i>Printed by</i> <span class="smcap">R. & R. Clark</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="center"><img src="images/ad1.jpg" alt="FAVOURITE NOVELS" /></div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="center"><img src="images/ad2.jpg" alt="FAVOURITE NOVELS 2" /></div> - -<hr /> - -<div lang='en' xml:lang='en'> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK <span lang='' xml:lang=''>A GIRTON GIRL</span> ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following -the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use -of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for -copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very -easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation -of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project -Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may -do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected -by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark -license, especially commercial redistribution. -</div> - -<div style='margin:0.83em 0; font-size:1.1em; text-align:center'>START: FULL LICENSE<br /> -<span style='font-size:smaller'>THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE<br /> -PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK</span> -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free -distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work -(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project -Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full -Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at -www.gutenberg.org/license. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> -Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ -electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to -and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property -(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all -the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or -destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your -possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a -Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound -by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person -or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be -used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who -agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few -things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works -even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See -paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project -Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this -agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ -electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the -Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection -of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual -works in the collection are in the public domain in the United -States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the -United States and you are located in the United States, we do not -claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, -displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as -all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope -that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting -free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ -works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the -Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily -comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the -same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when -you share it without charge with others. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern -what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are -in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, -check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this -agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, -distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any -other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no -representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any -country other than the United States. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other -immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear -prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work -on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the -phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, -performed, viewed, copied or distributed: -</div> - -<blockquote> - <div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> - This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most - other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions - whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms - of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online - at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you - are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws - of the country where you are located before using this eBook. - </div> -</blockquote> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is -derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not -contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the -copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in -the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are -redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project -Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply -either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or -obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ -trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted -with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution -must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any -additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms -will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works -posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the -beginning of this work. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ -License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this -work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this -electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without -prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with -active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project -Gutenberg™ License. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, -compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including -any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access -to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format -other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official -version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website -(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense -to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means -of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain -Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the -full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, -performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works -unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing -access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works -provided that: -</div> - -<div style='margin-left:0.7em;'> - <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> - • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from - the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method - you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed - to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has - agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid - within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are - legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty - payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project - Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in - Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg - Literary Archive Foundation.” - </div> - - <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> - • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies - you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he - does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ - License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all - copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue - all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ - works. - </div> - - <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> - • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of - any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the - electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of - receipt of the work. - </div> - - <div style='text-indent:-0.7em'> - • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free - distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works. - </div> -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project -Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than -are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing -from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of -the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set -forth in Section 3 below. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable -effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread -works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project -Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ -electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may -contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate -or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other -intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or -other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or -cannot be read by your equipment. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right -of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project -Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project -Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all -liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal -fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT -LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE -PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE -TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE -LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR -INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH -DAMAGE. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a -defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can -receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a -written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you -received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium -with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you -with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in -lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person -or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second -opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If -the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing -without further opportunities to fix the problem. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth -in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO -OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT -LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied -warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of -damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement -violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the -agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or -limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or -unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the -remaining provisions. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the -trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone -providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in -accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the -production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ -electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, -including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of -the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this -or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or -additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any -Defect you cause. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> -Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™ -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of -electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of -computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It -exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations -from people in all walks of life. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the -assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s -goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will -remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project -Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure -and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future -generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see -Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> -Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit -501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the -state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal -Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification -number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by -U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, -Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up -to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website -and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact -</div> - -<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> -Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread -public support and donations to carry out its mission of -increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be -freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest -array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations -($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt -status with the IRS. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating -charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United -States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a -considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up -with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations -where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND -DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state -visit <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/donate/">www.gutenberg.org/donate</a>. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we -have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition -against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who -approach us with offers to donate. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make -any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from -outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation -methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other -ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To -donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate -</div> - -<div style='display:block; font-size:1.1em; margin:1em 0; font-weight:bold'> -Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project -Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be -freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and -distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of -volunteer support. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed -editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in -the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Most people start at our website which has the main PG search -facility: <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. -</div> - -</div> -</div> -</body> -</html> diff --git a/old/67733-h/images/ad1.jpg b/old/67733-h/images/ad1.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index fa8e561..0000000 --- a/old/67733-h/images/ad1.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/67733-h/images/ad2.jpg b/old/67733-h/images/ad2.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 7d5fd73..0000000 --- a/old/67733-h/images/ad2.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/67733-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/67733-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 6dd6539..0000000 --- a/old/67733-h/images/cover.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/67733-h/images/logo.jpg b/old/67733-h/images/logo.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index b3300d0..0000000 --- a/old/67733-h/images/logo.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/67733-h/images/title.jpg b/old/67733-h/images/title.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index b498213..0000000 --- a/old/67733-h/images/title.jpg +++ /dev/null |
