‘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 thePrincesswhen 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 havejust 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 thePrincessfive 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 temptationof 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 thePrincess?’
‘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 wasexchanged 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 thePrincesshad 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 thePrincess.’
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 thePrincessagain 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.
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 thePrincess.’
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 andhis 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 astaunch 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 actingrequired 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! ifyou——’
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 surrenderto 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.
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 thePrincess. 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 itsway 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 thePrincessgo 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 oneseem 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!’
Andbrouillardit 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 thePrincesslay 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. ThePrincesswas 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 theGrunes, whatever theGrunesmay 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. ThePrincesswas 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. Thecontinued firing of guns gave token that other vessels were in the same plight as thePrincess—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.
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 paleforecast 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 thePrincess; 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 aroundher, 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 3A.M., to all mere prettiness. Dinah’s beauty could stand alone, withoutcolouring, 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 alreadyvisible on the port bow. Anon, to eastward, came a glow, felt rather than seen by the eager watchers on board thePrincess. 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 thePrincesswas 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 ofcourtship, 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.
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! Ahuman 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 horriblemonsters—“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 thePrincess. 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 cameto 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.
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 harshword, 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 worseEuclid—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 ofMarjoriewoven 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 tohave 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.