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.