HAS HE A WIFE?
‘The battle is to the strong, Marjorie Bartrand; the race to the swift.
Women have been fatally handicapped since the world began. And Nature
understands her own intentions, depend upon it, better than we do.’
‘Does Nature intend one half of the human race to be ciphers?’
‘Nature intends men to have wives. There is no escaping that fact. When
I was a girl we got quite as much education as society required of us.’
‘Society!’
‘We learned modern languages, French and Italian, for of course German
was not in vogue, and I must say I think Italian much the more feminine
accomplishment.’
‘That is paying an exceedingly high compliment to German, ma’am!’
‘And we studied English literature, solidly, not out of little
green-backed handbooks. Never a day passed that I did not read
Addison, or some other fine Queen Anne writer, aloud to my father.
And we knew how to write a letter. And we coloured from Nature, for
the love of the thing, exceedingly well, some of us, though there was
no South Kensington, and we never called ourselves art students, and,
and--Marjorie Bartrand, how did this conversation begin?’
‘Apropos of Spain, did it not?’
‘To be sure. Apropos of your Girton scheme, your wish to see classics
and mathematics pushed into a country where women are still content to
be women, and very womanly ones. University teaching for girls is a
freak that will die out of itself, like coal-scuttle bonnets, bishops’
sleeves, crinoline, or any other mode that is at once cumbersome and
unbeautiful.’
Afternoon sunshine was flooding the weather-beaten lichened walls of
Tintajeux Manoir. The Atlantic glittered, one vast field of diamonds,
until it melted into pallid sky along the southern horizon line. The
keen, cool ocean saltness mingled with and almost overbalanced the
fragrance of the pinks, heliotropes, and roses in the Reverend Andros
Bartrand’s old-fashioned borders. On a garden bench, at some short
distance from the house, were seated two ladies, fresh of face, both;
countrified of dress; fast friends, although more than forty years
stood between their ages. A cedar of Lebanon spread wide its layers of
odorous darkness above their heads. A grass plot, emerald green, close
shorn, was their carpet.
‘If your wits were your fortune, child, such ambitions might be
pardonable.’ So, after a space, the enemy of progress resumed her
parable. ‘In families where the olive branches are in excess of the
exchequer, the governess, Heaven help her, is expected to “ground”
the boys, as they call it, in Latin grammar and Euclid. But with your
grandfather’s position, your own inheritance, putting the idea of your
marriage aside----’
‘As you know I have put it, for ever and ever!’ cried Marjorie
Bartrand, her whole face seeming abruptly transformed into a pair of
passionate eyes. ‘Did we not decide long ago, Miss Tighe, that the word
mar----, the word I detest so heartily, should never be spoken between
us. Allow that I may not be forced, for money, to ground small boys in
Latin grammar. Allow that my visions of raising Spanish girls above the
level of dolls are as laughable as you all seem to find them. May I not
want to bring myself, Marjorie Bartrand, up to the highest improvable
point as a human being? Great in mathematics I shall never be.’
‘I am thankful, indeed, to hear you say so,’ remarked Miss Tighe, with
an air of relief.
‘But even the Seigneur is forced to confess I might become--a
fourth-rate classic! I know French and Spanish, Dogberry wise, by
nature. That must help me a long way on the road to Latin. And I
have learnt seventeen irregular Greek verbs--I’m not sure about the
aorists--and Mademoiselle le Patourel and I went straight through the
Apology of Plato, with Bohn’s crib.’
‘Poor Sophie le Patourel! You have outgrown her, at last, as you
outgrew all your previous dozen or more governesses.’
‘I don’t know about “outgrown.” Grandpapa ridiculed our attempting
Greek, from the first. You know the cruel way we Bartrands have of
ridiculing under cover of a compliment! Well, one day last week,
Mademoiselle le Patourel was reading the text of Plato aloud, not very
flowingly, poor good soul----’
‘Sophie le Patourel had better have kept to the millinery! Her mother
made up a cap like no woman in this island.’
‘And looking round she saw the Seigneur, outside the window, with a
wicked smile about that handsome old mouth of his as he listened.
Grandpapa made her the prettiest speech in the world about her
quantities, her fine classic tastes, and her pupil. And Mademoiselle le
Patourel never gave me another lesson.’
‘So now your scheme is to prepare for Girton by yourself. Ambitious, on
my word!’
‘My scheme,’ said Marjorie, lowering her voice and glancing over her
shoulder to make sure her terrible grandfather, Andros Bartrand, was
not within earshot--‘my scheme is to have a real University coach of my
own. A Cambridge B.A. at the present time residing in Guernsey.’
Cassandra Tighe started up from her seat.
She was a spare, tall, conspicuous spinster, with a face all features,
a figure all angles, a manner all energy. Her hair was bleached, as
much by exposure to weather as by actual age. Her complexion was that
of a frosted apple. Her dress cost her fifteen pounds a year!
Living alone with one woman-servant in a small Guernsey cottage, it may
be affirmed that Miss Tighe made as much of her life as any gentlewoman
of modest income, and more than sixty summers, in the British
dominions. Her intellectual resources were many. She was a thorough, an
inborn naturalist. She played the harp, and with no dilettante touch,
but as ladies early in the Victorian reign were wont to play that
instrument. She drew. On stormy evenings, when she knew her voice could
not penetrate the cottage window shutters, Cassandra confessed that she
sang--such songs as ‘I see them on their winding way,’ ‘The Captive
Knight,’ or ‘Zuleika.’
Her popularity and her influence were widespread. The figure of Miss
Tighe in her red fishing-cloak, with nets, hooks, jars, boxes, bottles,
overflowing from her village cart, was familiar throughout every nook
and corner of the island. If she had not had the sunniest of human
hearts you might have been tempted to dub her a gossip. That good old
English word, however, is associated in these days with a more than
doubtful spice of malice. And men and women who had known Cassandra
Tighe for thirty years averred that they had never heard an unkindly
judgment from her lips. She was simply a _raconteuse_--we lack the
English equivalent--a sympathiser in all the vivid varying doings
that constitute the lives of young and wholesomely happy people; a
chronicler of news; a delighter in love affairs.
Simply this. And yet, not unfrequently, Cassandra Tighe made mischief.
Truthful, as far as conscious veracity went, to a fault, this excellent
lady’s memory was in a chronic state of jumble; so stored, it may be,
with polysyllabic names of plants, grubs, and fishes, that subsidiary
human details had to be packed in pell-mell, and take their chance
of coming out again untwisted. And, depend upon it, these tangled
well-meaners, not your deliberate villains, are the cause of half the
loves marred, the heartburnings, the jealousies, that make up the
actual dramas, the unwritten three-volume novels of this work-a-day
world!
‘You are going to study with a tutor, Marjorie Bartrand! With a
Cambridge B.A.! With a MAN! What does your grandfather say?’
‘I have not told him the news, Miss Tighe. I grudge giving the Seigneur
such intense pleasure. “If you insist on learning Latin and Greek,”
grandpapa has always said, “learn them decently. Send these trashy
governesses to the winds. Be taught by a competent master.” Yes,’ cried
Marjorie, bringing down a very small hand with very great energy on her
knee, ‘I grudge grandpapa his triumph, but the truth must be told. Now
that I have caught him, I shall begin coaching with my B.A., my Cantab,
forthwith.’
Cassandra shook her head, mournfully incredulous. She was of an age
and of a disposition to which revolutionary ideas do not come with
ease. There was really no place in her mental fabric for the picture of
Marjorie Bartrand, here, inside the sacred walls of Tintajeux, reading
classics and mathematics with a University coach.
‘I think it more than likely the plan will fall through. We have no
Cambridge tutors in the island, unless, indeed, you mean good old Mr.
Winkworth from the High Street Academy?’
‘I mean no one belonging to Guernsey. I mean a person who--ah, Miss
Tighe,’ the girl broke off, ‘I see that I must make full confession.
No knowing, as grandpapa says, when you once begin to speak the truth,
where the truth may land you. My B.A. is coming to arrange about terms
and hours this evening.’
‘And how did he--how did any stranger man hear of you?’
‘I put an advertisement in the _Chronique Guernésiaise_, three days
ago.’
‘Without consulting the Seigneur! Child--you did this thing? You gave
your name, unknown to your grandfather, in the public newspaper?’
‘I gave my name in the public newspaper, ma’am, and this afternoon I
got an answer to my advertisement. Wait one second and you shall hear
it.’
Marjorie drew a note from the breast of her frock, and with an air half
of mystery, half of triumph, began to read aloud:--
‘“Miller’s Hotel, Tuesday, June 14th.
‘“Geoffrey Arbuthnot, B.A., Cantab., is willing to read classics
and mathematics with Miss Bartrand. Terms, five shillings an hour.
Geoffrey Arbuthnot will call at Tintajeux Manoir, on approval,
between the hours of seven and eight this evening.”’
‘Arbuthnot? Why, this is fatality.’ Cassandra discerned a special
providence, an inchoate stroke of destiny in most things. ‘I was
looking in at Miller’s Hotel last night. That reasonless creature,
Mrs. Miller, has one of her throats again, and I did so want her to
take some of my globules, but in vain. The ignorance of uneducated
people----’
‘And you saw my coach of the future,’ interrupted Marjorie, knowing
that when Miss Tighe got into such engrossing interests as throats and
globules, she must be brought back to her subject with a run.
‘Yes, I saw Mr. Arbuthnot. A rough diamond, my dear, to speak truth.’
‘That is so much in his favour,’ said Marjorie, peeling, shred from
shred, the petals of a carnation that she held between her fingers. ‘I
want to do my work for Girton steadily, unvexed by the sight or thought
of that most irritating of God’s creatures--a beauty-man.’
Cassandra looked hard at the girl, remembering days, perhaps, when
a beauty-man, in the fullest sense of the contemptuous epithet, had
scathed rather than softened Marjorie Bartrand’s heart.
‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot, on the score of ugliness, will meet your
wishes, my dear. A rough-hewn Scotchman of the Carlyle stamp. A man
who looks as though he ought to do big things in the world. A man with
a scar--got, I am told, in a Quixotic pavement fight--traversing his
forehead.’
‘I like the sketch. Proceed.’
‘As regards Geoffrey Arbuthnot himself I have done. Walking at his
side, the evening light falling on her uncovered head and fair
face, was the loveliest sight these old eyes have beheld for many a
year--Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s wife.’
‘Geoffrey Arbuthnot--has he a wife?’ cried Marjorie in an altered
voice. ‘My Cambridge B.A.--married! I hope you are sure of your facts,
Miss Tighe. You know that sometimes--rarely, of course--mistakes occur
in our little bits of Sarnian intelligence. You are perfectly certain
that Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot is a married man?’
‘I have seen his wife. How can you ask me if I am certain? “A daughter
of the gods,”’ Cassandra quoted, “divinely tall,” fair-skinned,
large-eyed, with a look of repressed sadness about her mouth that makes
her bloom and youth the more noticeable. I was sitting in poor Mrs.
Miller’s parlour, endeavouring to argue the woman out of taking Doctor
Thorne’s drugs. As a human creature, a father, a husband, I have not
one word to say against Doctor Thorne----’
‘I have!’ exclaimed Marjorie Bartrand imperatively. ‘As a human
creature, a father, a husband--most especially as a husband--I have
everything imaginable to say against Doctor Thorne.’
‘As a physician I consider him a man-slaughterer. Yes,’ repeated
Cassandra, with pious warmth, ‘a man-slaughterer. Indeed, if I had sat
at the inquest on more than one of Doctor Thorne’s departed patients,
Heaven knows what verdict I should not have returned against him.’
‘But your story, Miss Tighe? The man like Carlyle; the beautiful wife.
Return, please, to the Arbuthnots.’
‘Well, just as I was trying to put reason into Mrs. Miller’s weak mind,
I was startled by the sight I told you of. This lovely young woman went
past the window, not two yards from where I sat.’
‘With her husband. Was she leaning on Mr. Arbuthnot’s arm?’ asked
Marjorie. ‘Did they look as if they had ever had a quarrel? Was she in
white--bridal looking? Did you hear them murmur to each other? Miss
Tighe, be dramatic! At Tintajeux we have not the joy, remember, of
eventful living.’
‘Mrs. Arbuthnot was dressed in black. Her hair lay in short blonde
waves on her forehead. She wore not a flower, not an ornament about
her person. As they passed the window her husband remarked that he
considered the roast duck and peas of which they had partaken for
dinner were excellent.’
‘So much,’ said Marjorie, affecting cynicism, ‘for a chapter of married
romance.’
‘Ah, that has been. The key of our common life is C major--roast duck
and green peas--whatever accidental sharps and flats we may deviate
into occasionally. The romance has been. I was overcome by the young
woman’s singular beauty,’ went on Cassandra. ‘I asked her name, and was
rewarded by hearing such an account of them as warmed my heart. The
girl belonged to the humblest class of life--a gardener’s daughter,
or something of the kind; and Arbuthnot, while he was still an
undergraduate at Cambridge, married her.’
‘Geoffrey Arbuthnot?’
Marjorie repeated the name softly; a question in her tone rather than
in her words.
‘Geoffrey, I presume; that is to say, most decidedly and beyond
question, Geoffrey,’ answered Cassandra, with the fatal certitude of
inaccuracy. ‘I am the more positive because I felt a kind of love
at first sight for the two young people, and made Mrs. Miller give
me details. A party of Cambridge men were staying in the hotel when
first the Arbuthnots arrived; and some of these men knew the husband
by sight. He is looked upon as rather eccentric among his fellows. I
am afraid, Marjorie, whenever a man leads a nobler life than other
people the tendency of the day is to call him eccentric. And Geoffrey
Arbuthnot’s life must be very noble.’
‘Because he had the courage of his opinions in choosing a wife?’
‘Not that only. Arbuthnot is a student still at the Cambridge medical
school, and gives such time as he has over from study to the most
miserable people in the Cambridge streets. Not proselytising, not
preaching--for my part I don’t believe much in a preaching young man,’
said old Cassandra, whose opinions tended towards the broad; ‘simply
binding up their wounds as men and women. Doing the Master’s work, not
talking about it.’
‘And his beautiful wife helps him!’ exclaimed Marjorie, her sensitive
Southern face aglow. ‘Ah, Miss Tighe, thank you again and again for
your visit and for telling me this news. In my foolish, trivial, wasted
existence, what a splendid bit of good fortune that I should have the
chance of knowing two such people!’
Cassandra Tighe looked a little uncomfortable. She prided herself on
her freedom from the prejudices of her sex; within limits, really
did startle her friends, sometimes, by the free exercise of private
judgment. But the liberality of a white-haired lady, whose sixty years
of life have run in the safest, narrowest, conventional trammels,
may differ widely from the liberality of a hot head, an eager,
self-forgetting young heart like Marjorie Bartrand’s.
‘It will be a fine thing for your Girton prospects, capital for your
Greek and Latin, to read with Mr. Arbuthnot. But I gathered--you must
take this as I mean it, Marjorie Bartrand; you have no mother to tell
you things--I gathered from different small hints that Mrs. Arbuthnot
is not exactly in society. That she is good and sweet and honest,’ said
Cassandra, ‘you have only to look in her face to know; still if I were
in Marjorie Bartrand’s place, I should wait to see what the island
ladies did in the matter of calling.’
Marjorie paled round the lips--sign infallible, throughout the Bartrand
race, of rising tempest. Cassandra, knowing the family storm-signals,
prepared to take a hasty departure.
‘I forget time always under the Tintajeux cedars. And there is plenty
for me to do at home. To-morrow Annette and I are off to Sark for five
days’ shore-work. Our talk about your new tutor has been an interesting
one.’
‘Especially the clause that prohibits my calling on the new tutor’s
wife!’
‘There is no prohibition at all. The Seigneur might safely leave
his card on Mr. Arbuthnot. It would be a very pretty piece of
condescension, and of course a gentleman calling upon a gentleman can
lead to nothing,’ added Cassandra, rather ignobly temporising.
‘Exactly. Thank you very much, Miss Tighe, for your advice. As you say,
I have no mother to enlighten me as to the dark mysteries of calling
or not calling. And as I consider the island ladies too frisky for
pioneers----’
‘Marjorie! Our archdeaconess, our irreproachable Guernsey matrons,
_frisky_?’
‘I shall just have to act for myself. As Mrs. Arbuthnot, you tell
me, has all good qualities written on her face, and knowing the fine
things we do know of her husband’s life, it must be a credit to any
woman--above all to an archdeaconess--to make their acquaintance.’
‘Still, if she is unused----’
‘Oh, I shall not put myself forward. If their merit is unrecognised,
if narrow-minded, irreproachable people hold back from calling on
them, I can understand that there may be shyness on my tutor’s part in
mentioning his wife. I shall simply bide his time. I shall be silent
until he chooses, himself, to speak to me of Mrs. Arbuthnot.’
‘That will be wise. Treat him, honest gentleman, as though one had not
heard of his marriage. Meantime we can find out if our leading ladies,
Madame Corbie especially, intend to notice her----’
‘But in my own self, I honour Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot,’ interrupted
Marjorie, her face colouring like a rose at sunset. ‘I admire, honour,
_love_ him! I wish the world were full of such men. I hold out both
hands in fellowship to him at this moment.’
Cassandra, for once, showed prescience worthy of her name. Cassandra
argued no more.