A LOVE-LETTER
When Gaston and Marjorie approached the refreshment stall they saw a
picture which many a genre artist, in ink or oils, might have been glad
to study.
For there outside the tent stood Dinah Arbuthnot, fair and flushed. She
and Lord Rex were eating ices, as Gaston, the materialist, predicted.
The western light shone on Dinah’s bright hair. It touched the rose
she wore, and the outline of her lips and chin. Lord Rex, dutifully
attentive, held her sunshade. An Archdeaconess with surroundings of
inferior female clergy loomed large on the horizon. Nearer at hand was
Linda Thorne, patiently enduring long stories of the tiger-slaying
Major’s, while her eyes and ears were elsewhere. Sarnian society
generally, in dubious groups of twos and threes, looked on. It was
Dinah’s first step across the border of a new world.
Gaston Arbuthnot seized the points of the situation at a glance. He
played the part that fell to him with acumen. Towards Dinah his manner
was simply irreproachable. So thought Marjorie, no over-lenient judge;
so, from afar, thought Linda Thorne. It were premature to hint at
any forecasting of storm in Dinah’s own hot heart! He insisted upon
supporting his wife’s plate while she finished her ice. He contrived to
bring her and Linda so far into friendly juxtaposition that at parting
a chilly handshake was exchanged between these ladies. But he also
was true to his colours. He had come to the rose-show in Mrs. Thorne’s
society; in her society he remained. The last glimpse Marjorie got of
her new friends revealed a perspective of Linda with sprightly energy
pointing out distant roses to Mr. Arbuthnot, while Dinah walked slowly
homeward from the Arsenal gates, Lord Rex at her side.
Had the afternoon been one of unmixed good? Had her interference with
the Arbuthnot trio brought about good at all? Marjorie asked herself
these questions as she urged her ponies to a gallop along the Tintajeux
high road. That she had discovered a foolish error appositely might be
matter for congratulation so far as pride went! Had she performed a
very generous or delicate action in bringing untaught Dinah from her
cross-stitch, pushing her into the glare of public notice, obliging her
to tolerate the attention of a man like Rex Basire? If, unprompted by
the Bartrand thirst for governing, she had left destiny to itself, had
been content, as in old times, to help in the hayfield, or the dairy at
home, might not her day’s work have been fruitfuller?
Dinner had waited long when she reached Tintajeux, and the Seigneur
was in the disposition most dreaded of Marjorie throughout the meal.
He talked more than his custom, displayed a genial and grandpaternal
interest in her doings at the Arsenal. Tintajeux had taken a first
prize, of course. And how did the Duc de Rohan look among the baser
herd? Was he well placed? In sun or in shadow? Marjorie, the Seigneur
_supposed_, had scarce found time, among her numerous friends, to give
a glance that way.
‘I looked more at our roses than at any in the show,’ said Marjorie
truthfully. Were not her eyes fixed downcast on the Duc de Rohan when
Gaston Arbuthnot talked to her of Geff? ‘Would you believe, sir, that
the Hauterive Corbies have taken a prize? I think the Archdeaconess
would sooner have been cut out by any farmer in the island than by her
husband’s cousin.’
‘No need to tell me the local tittle-tattle. On that head Cassandra
Tighe has been a more than sufficient oracle. By the bye, witch,’ with
the memory of over-boiled fish strong upon him the Seigneur turned his
piercing old gaze towards his granddaughter, ‘Cassandra informs me that
Mrs. Arbuthnot is an extraordinarily pretty woman; good, too, as she is
pretty. Your tutor shows poor taste in dancing attendance on anything
so vapidly commonplace as Doctor Thorne’s Indian wife.’
Marjorie Bartrand, who, three weeks ago, had never changed colour
before mortal, was conscious, at this moment, of blushing furiously
before the Reverend Andros. Still more did she quail under the eyes of
Sylvestre, who stood, in his faded puce and silver, listening, with the
unabashed frankness that characterises servants of his age and nation,
to their talk. From her grandfather all she need fear was a little
searching banter, directed towards herself. Let the dramatic instincts
of Sylvestre be aroused, and he was capable of waylaying Geoffrey
Arbuthnot--yes, and of inviting confidence respecting the most intimate
family concerns at Geff’s next visit. It needs personal acquaintance
with a Frenchman of Sylvestre’s type to realise how the passion for
scandalettes, smouldering through long years of solitude and disuse,
would be ready at the first handful of fuel supplied to break forth
anew!
‘Doctor and Mrs. Thorne were at the rose-show. The proceeds of the
refreshment stall go, this June, to some sort of charity, so Mrs.
Thorne, of course, presided there. But Mrs. Thorne is one of the people
I never can find two words to say to.’
‘Our solemn-eyed Cantab finds a great many more than two words, it
would appear. Let me help you to a merry-thought, witch. You have
nothing but bones on your plate.’
Marjorie picked her merry-thought, as she finished her dinner, in
silence. Over dessert, however--Sylvestre’s inquisitive face fairly
vanished from the scene--she plucked up courage and spoke:
‘We have been making nimble but ridiculous conjectures, sir. One could
not well speak of this before Sylvestre. Miss Tighe made sure of the
Arbuthnot family history, you know, and----’
‘Avoid expletives. I know nothing, until it is your pleasure to inform
my ignorance.’
‘I mean Cassandra believed, from whispers she heard in Petersport, that
Mrs. Arbuthnot was kept too much in the background. It would be a right
and kindly thing, we thought, for me to call on her, and so--and so----’
‘Take your time, Marjorie; slur over nothing. We have a long evening
before us.’
‘Well, sir,’ desperately, ‘I called. And our solemn-eyed Cantab is not
a married man at all. The name of the Mr. Arbuthnot who dances attend
... who visits at Dr. Thorne’s house, is Gaston. He is a cousin of
Geff’s, I--I mean of my tutor’s.’
The Seigneur looked deliberately at his granddaughter’s face. Then, as
though politely reluctant to take further notice of her embarrassment,
he lifted his gaze to a full-length portrait in pastels of some
bewigged and powdered Bartrand on the opposite wall.
‘And why should we not speak of Miss Tighe’s mistake, of Mr. Geoffrey
Arbuthnot’s celibacy, before Sylvestre? Remember the rascal’s Gallican
blood--Sylvestre requires an occasional bit of comedy more than any of
us. And so you have been acting a charade, my love, solemn-eyed tutor
and all. A very pretty charade, upon my word!
The Reverend Andros Bartrand laughed drily. It was about the first time
on record that he had addressed his granddaughter as ‘my love,’ and
Marjorie was prompt to recognise latent sarcasm under the endearment.
How terrible to reach old age, thought the child of seventeen--to read,
to think, and yet outlive the power of loving; intellect surviving
heart by many a year, as bodily strength in the end must survive all.
What had she ever been to him but a plaything! From the hour she
arrived at Tintajeux with her tempers, her four-year-old tongue, her
foreign ways, the necessity of keeping a kitten to gambol before the
Seigneur’s study fire had possibly been done away with. Just that! She
had diverted him. At the present day she might be picturesque, shed the
pleasing charm of youth upon his lawn and dinner-table. She understood
the arrangement of his books. She could dust his library to admiration.
And she was not afraid of him! (Marjorie omitted this, the leading
clause, from her mental summing-up of personal virtues.) She was not
afraid of him! When did fearlessness fail of carrying weight with a
cold, strong nature like the Seigneur’s? Though her colour went and
came, though her lips quivered under his irony, the girl was not afraid
of him at this moment.
‘I might have known, sir, that if I was distressed it would furnish you
with amusement. That is our amiable Bartrand spirit, our way of showing
sympathy with others.’
‘Distressed? You astonish me. Distressed at finding that an
intelligent, studious young man is in possession of his freedom? The
charade, we may almost call it the Arbuthnot drama, grows mightily
puzzling to me, a spectator. Let our worthy Cantab be bachelor or
Benedict. What concern is it of ours?’
Marjorie rose from the table, with difficulty choking back her tears.
‘I love gossip as little as any one,’ she said, coldly. ‘You introduced
the Arbuthnots’ name, sir, so I chose to mention that the Thornes’
friend and my tutor are two distinct persons. And I have no interest
in Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s concerns! And if a drama is being acted,
let me tell you, grandpapa, that I, for one, play no part in it. Like
yourself, I am a spectator only.’
Her tone was high, but when she reached the schoolroom--friendly
sanctuary in many a dumb pain of her childhood--when she looked at the
ink-stained desk, the piles of books, the window through which the
China roses peeped, her humour changed. Marjorie stood a self-convicted
impostor in her own sight. For she knew that she was not a spectator
only in the Arbuthnot drama, that she was not unmoved by the discovery
of Geoffrey’s freedom. ‘Bachelor or Benedict, what concern is it of
ours?’ She knew, also, that under the Seigneur’s irony lurked wholesome
truth. Pluming herself on her own strength, on the Bartrand immunity
from vulgar human error, she had drifted into a position from which
the pride of any simple village maiden must recoil. She remembered her
airs of easy patronage towards Geoffrey, from the first evening when
he walked out to Tintajeux on approval, until this morning. What could
she have seemed like in his sight? Had he rated her as an over-forward
Miss-in-her-teens, a hoyden wearing her heart--ah, shame!--upon her
sleeve? Or had he doubted her, worse humiliation still, as every honest
man must doubt a girl who, under the convenient shield of Greek and
Euclid, could lend herself to the small meanness of coquetry?
She walked to the window, buried her face amongst the cold,
swift-falling rose-petals, then looked out on the landscape. Something
strange had crept into its familiarity. There trotted Sylvestre, rake
in hand, his livery exchanged for a fustian jacket, to the clover
field. There were the farm buildings, there was the row of poplars,
showing distinct against the sunset. The China roses gave out their
faint evanescent odour; the big vault of Northern sky was stainless.
And here was Marjorie Bartrand, to all outward seeming the same
Marjorie Bartrand as yesterday, but out of tune, for some queer
reason, with her surroundings. The dew-smelling roses, the poplars,
the farm buildings, yes, old Sylvestre himself, had been her friends
through her whole span of childish life. With the new life that was
awakening, with the stir of alien emotion in her breast, they were
unsympathetic. Geoffrey Arbuthnot--what Geoffrey thought of her,
what Geoffrey felt towards her--these were the questions burning in
Marjorie’s soul, transforming her, as no lengthening of skirts or
plaiting of hair had ever done, from a child to a woman.
Suddenly a man’s quick step advanced along the gravel road that led
from the side lodge to the Manoir. The step stopped; Marjorie heard her
grandfather’s voice. She put her head forth through the window, hoping,
dreading that Geff, repentant after their half quarrel of the forenoon,
might have walked out to Tintajeux--to be forgiven. In lieu of Geff’s
stalwart outline, the diminutive figure of the country postman met her
sight. The Seigneur, ready always as a boy for the moment’s amusement,
was overlooking the contents of the village letter bag.
‘A letter for you, witch.’ Clear, resonant, rang the old voice, as
Andros Bartrand caught sight of Marjorie. ‘A letter, and a bulky one.
The address is written in a hand that savours of the Alma Mater. The
postmark is “Local.” I am to open it for you, of course?’
‘If you do I start for Spain to-night--this moment!’ cried Marjorie,
with fine, Bartrand presence of temper; her grandfather meanwhile
proceeding, in pantomime, to carry out his suggestion. ‘If you do,
sir----’
But the sequel of the threat remained unspoken. Away flew Marjorie
through the low schoolroom window, away, without drawing breath, over
flower border, over lawn, till she reached the Seigneur. A few seconds
later her letter--her first love-letter, whispered a voice in the white
and girlish conscience--lay with seal unbroken between her hands.
She could not read it here, under this open largeness of air and
sky, with her grandfather’s searching eyes fixed on her face. She
must heighten her pleasure, as not so many summers back she was wont
to heighten the coveted flavour of peach or nectarine, by eked-out
anticipation. Not here, not in the schoolroom, peopled by commonplace
remembrances of Sophie le Patourel and all the long train of Sophie’s
predecessors. In this ineffable moment (are not our mistakes the
sweetest things we taste on earth?) she must be alone, must know that
a bolt was drawn between her happiness and the world. She entered the
house with eager limbs, sped up the stairs, light still with the brief
flicker that comes between sunset and dusk. She sought the shelter of
her own room; a little white-draped room, where fragrant alder-blooms,
flecks of foam on a deep green sea of foliage, brushed the casement,
where you could feel the coolness from the orchards, where only the
tired evening call of the cuckoo, the murmur of late bees, still awork
in blossom dust, broke silence.
‘Miss Marjorie Bartrand, Tintajeux Manoir, Guernsey.’
Prolonging her suspense to the utmost, Marjorie ran over aloud each
syllable that Geff Arbuthnot’s hand had traced. Then, with fast-beating
pulse, she opened the envelope, drew forth its contents, and prepared,
delightedly, to read.
The love-letter was written upon blue, most unloverlike foolscap, and
consisted of three words: ‘Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s compliments.’ Within,
carefully folded, lay Marjorie’s waist-belt, intact, as when she looped
it to his bunch of roses and heliotropes in the moonlight.
So she had won obedience. Even in the light matter of keeping or not
keeping a bit of ribbon she had had her way. And her breast swelled
with disappointment, the hot tears rushed to her eyes. In this moment
Marjorie Bartrand’s illogical heart owned Geoffrey as its master.