A SWAGGER AND A SWORD
It was the hottest, most deserted hour of the day when the walking
party reached Langrune plage, an hour when such of the young Parisians
as do not follow _la pêche_ drive donkey-carts--those wonderful,
springless, seatless, Langrune carts--along the country roads, or
start, by rail, to distant Trouville for toilettes and distraction.
Here and there were elderly ladies at work before the doors of their
canvas bathing-sheds. In the road two portly fathers of families were
solemnly sending up ‘messengers’ to a very small Japanese kite some
fifty or sixty feet above their heads. Two other middle-aged gentlemen
played at battledore and shuttlecock. A few irrepressible boulevard
lovers sat over their cards or dominoes outside the restaurant windows
of the principal hotel. The shrill sounds from a fish auction, held
on the monster slab of rough granite which constitutes the Langrune
market-place, alone broke the stillness.
Before one had thought it possible that dress or speech could have
betrayed the nationality of the new-comers, up ran a brown-legged,
tattered sand-imp, holding out a bunch of shore-flowers. He announced
his name, with some pride of birth, as Jean Jacques la Ferté of these
parts, offering his services as cicerone to the English strangers.
‘The gentlemen, without doubt, make a pilgrimage to La Delivrande,
half a league away up the country? At La Delivrande is the church
and the altar where the miracles are wrought. There are the little
ships of the sailors, the crutches left by the cripples who get back
use of their legs. And for the ladies there are the stalls with the
relics. Every one in the country,’ ran on the child, with voluble
distinctness--Jean Jacques, a source of revenue to his parents, was
trained to speak good French with the visitors--‘every one in the
country who is sick gets cured. Every one who has a _grand espoir_ goes
to La Delivrande, and, if he has faith, attains it. Or so the curé
says,’ added Jean Jacques, with a roll of his black eyes and a knowing
shrug of the shoulders.
At seven years of age even sand-imps, in these advanced French days,
like to show we are no longer bound by the priestly superstitions that
were well enough for our grandmothers.
Lord Rex made a free paraphrase of the child’s narrative in English,
and was witty thereupon. ‘Every one who is sick gets cured. Every
one who has a _grand espoir_ goes to La Delivrande, and, if he have
faith, obtains it. Miss Verschoyle, what do you say? Have you a _grand
espoir_? Have you faith? Shall we make our pilgrimage, confess our
little peccadilloes, and get cured together?’
Miss Verschoyle rebuked his flippancy, but with lips less severe
than her words. For Rosie’s mood was a lenient one. Had not Lord Rex
throughout the day conducted himself as well, really, as though that
poor Mrs. Arbuthnot were non-existent? It was decided that every one
had unfulfilled hopes, that every one stood in need of cure, and
that a general confession of peccadilloes would be the best possible
employment of the afternoon! In another five minutes the pilgrims were
on their road, ragged Jean Jacques leading the way, towards the distant
white twin spires of La Delivrande.
The plage, I have said, was deserted; not so the lane, with quaint
wooden houses on either side, which forms the High Street of Langrune.
Here were bare-limbed, dark-faced fisher-lads, busily mending their
nets; clear-starchers plying their delicate craft in the open air;
housewives roasting coffee; pedlars chaffering over their outspread
goods. Huge cats, with sleepy, watchful eyes, the sun shining
comfortably on their ebon-barred coats, reposed on the window-sills.
Lace-makers were at work, their headgear antiquated as their faces,
their bobbins twirling in and out the pins, unerringly, as though they
were the very threads of fate itself. Everywhere was the din of voices.
Everywhere were open doors, open windows; and within, such plentitude
of frugal cleanliness, such polished oak cupboards, such well-scoured
cooking-pans, such snow-white bed draperies, such balsams and geraniums
in brilliant scarlet pots, as might have put a Dutch village to shame.
Marjorie Bartrand and Dinah paused beside one of the lace-makers’
chairs, allowing the more ardent of the pilgrims to get on ahead. A
distinct shade of constraint was holding Marjorie and Geff Arbuthnot
aloof to-day. They had not met since yesterday’s friendly parting. No
further misunderstanding in respect of Geff’s celibacy was possible
between them. But a change had come across Marjorie’s manner towards
her tutor. Geoffrey was sensible that she answered him with pungent
and monosyllabic curtness during the whole of their outward voyage.
And--seeing that among the knot of pretty Sarnian girls excellent
temper reigned supreme, also that Geoffrey had joined the party for
other motives than his own pleasure--one can scarcely wonder that
this philosopher of four-and-twenty suffered himself, without over
difficulty, to be consoled.
At the present moment, disappearing in the perspective of Langrune
village, Geoffrey walked, to all outward seeming, well content, beside
the prettiest and least wise of the three Miss de Carterets. Of which
fact Marjorie took a brief and scornful note in her heart.
‘One can imagine a man’s becoming a senior wrangler.’ She made the
remark to Dinah as they watched the everlasting bobbins whirl. ‘Yes,
even I, with my halting Euclid and weak algebra (of which, no doubt,
Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot has spoken), can imagine a man’s becoming a
senior wrangler. I can no more conceive of bobbin-turning than I could
of a world in which two and two shall make five.’
Dinah’s slower brain needed time for reflection. ‘There could not be a
world where two and two make five,’ she observed with certainty. ‘And
lace-making, once you have served your time, steadily, is easy enough.
Two of my cousins, down Honiton way, are lace-makers, and I learned a
little of it when I was a child. The number of threads looks hard to
strangers, Miss Bartrand, but it just gets to one twirl of the bobbins
in time. Many of the workers keep to the same pattern for life, when
they know it well. After a bit, your fingers work without your eyes.’
‘How horrible! One twirl of the bobbins, one pattern, for life! And to
think that lace-makers do not commit suicide by scores!’
‘I don’t know that there’s much difference between lacework, or
wool-work, or plain sewing,’ said Dinah Arbuthnot. ‘We have, all of us,
to go through with our day’s task, whatever the stitch may be.’
The speech came so naturally, was so fraught with unconscious womanly
humility, that Marjorie felt abashed. What real heroism, of an
incomprehensible kind, must not Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife possess? This
girl of two-and-twenty who worked perpetual cross-stitch, who kept
her tongue and spirit calm, who loved, with soul and might, yonder
_débonnaire_ gentleman, of the handsome eyes and decorative smile,
sketching charming Parisian fisher-girls on the beach--under Linda
Thorne’s criticism!
‘If I speak hotly against needlework, it is that I am thinking of
Spain, my mother’s country. In Spain, you must know, the miserable
girls, to this hour, scarcely learn more than embroidery in their
schools and convents, with reading enough, perhaps, to stumble
through the announcement of a bull-fight, or decipher a love-letter.
Of course,’ admitted Marjorie Bartrand coldly, ‘it is said that when
a woman marries, in England or in Spain, she must do as her husband
wills. I never see the force of that “must.” I think a woman should do
what is right for herself, with large trust in Providence as to the
rest! The question is not one that concerns me. Still, Mrs. Arbuthnot,
one cannot help feeling indignant about all very crushed people. I am
dead against slavery, especially when slavery puts on a domestic garb.’
By this time they had passed the last straggling houses of Langrune.
Fair level country, the fields already on the edge of harvest, spread
around their road. Along the wayside path was a very mosaic of
brilliantly blended hues, the corn-flowers blue and purple, the scarlet
poppies, the white and gold of the wild camomile making up the purest
chord of colour. A slight south-west wind, dry and elastic after its
transit over so many a league of sunny land, was invigorating as wine.
‘How the spirit rises the moment one treads real solid earth!’ cried
Marjorie Bartrand. ‘I feel at this moment like walking straight off to
Spain, the country I love and where my life will be spent! Why, with
twenty francs apiece in our pockets, and camping out by night under
stacks or hedges, you and I might easily reach the Peninsula on foot,
Mrs. Arbuthnot.’
Dinah’s geography did not embolden her to hazard a contradiction.
Something in Marjorie Bartrand’s tone jarred on her reasonlessly. It
were hard to believe that she considered Geff a man likely to fall in
love. Had not the conditions of her life for years put speculations
as to Geoffrey’s future happiness on one side? And still, a true
daughter of Eve in every weakness belonging to the passion, Dinah was
an inchoate match-maker. She would fain have seen the whole world blest
with such fireside beatitude as constituted her own ideal of highest
good. With firm and true perception she had noticed a dozen trivial
things of late, all proving Geff’s imagination, if not his heart, to
be in his teaching of Latin and Greek at Tintajeux Manoir. She had
hoped that the notice taken of herself by Marjorie was an earnest of
the pupil’s liking for her master, had furtively and with misgiving dug
the foundations of many an air-castle that Marjorie and Geff, at some
far-off day, might jointly inhabit.
The girl’s diatribes against domestic slavery, her open avowal of love
for Spain and of her hopes of spending her life among Spanish people,
caused a troubled look to come on Dinah’s face.
‘Your plans don’t point towards an English home, Miss Bartrand. Yet I
think Geoffrey has told me you mean to study at Girton?’
‘To fit myself for my future work--yes. The Spanish school-boards
are just as conservative as English ones. A young woman armed with
Cambridge certificates would have more chance of coming to the front
than another, equally strong-minded, who should rely on her own merits.’
‘Strong-minded!’ Dinah ejaculated with horror. ‘At your age, with all
the sweet happiness of life still to come, you talk, as though you
approved such things, of being strong-minded?’
Marjorie swept off the heads from a cluster of wayside camomile flowers
with the stick of her sunshade. An expression of will which yet was
neither unlovely nor unfeminine glowed upon her girlish face.
‘Let us understand each other better, Mrs. Arbuthnot. It may well be
that our notions of “sweet happiness” are not the same.’
Dinah looked uneasy, and kept silent.
‘Power--I will make a confession to you such as I never made
before--power is my ideal of happiness. I want to rule, we will hope
for good; in any case, to rule, to be needed on all sides, sought
after, distinguished--to see my name in print! That is the truth, no
matter how I may wrap truth up in fine-sounding words,’ said Marjorie
Bartrand. ‘That is the secret of my enthusiasm for humanity, and of
my personal ambition. To lead others, _to command_, is my ideal of
happiness.’
‘And mine,’ exclaimed Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife unhesitatingly, ‘is--to
obey. For a woman to look up to another stronger life, to be ruled
by a stronger will, gladly to take all little household worries on
herself--I speak badly, Miss Bartrand, but you guess my meaning--and
feel more than paid by one kind look or word in return, to know that
as much as she wants of the world is safe between four lowly walls,
to have her hours filled with the care of others, to keep her parlour
bright and cheerful, to hear the voices of the children----’
Dinah’s own voice broke; and Marjorie, who had watched her with looks
of lofty compassion, softened involuntarily.
‘So far from speaking badly, Mrs. Arbuthnot, you speak with very pretty
eloquence. You draw a picture of constant giving up, which, if one
could believe it to be from life, would, I confess, be attractive. It
is drawn from life, perhaps?’
‘Oh--no; I said only that would be my ideal of happiness,’ faltered
Dinah, with a pang.
‘Fancied or real, such an existence would never do for me. I have not
much taste for obedience. I have none at all for household worries.
Babies I bar.’
‘Miss Bartrand!’
‘Yes, I do. Grandpapa and I visit about in our Pagan way among the
Guernsey country people, and I know that I absolutely bar babies of
every shade and degree. I am not sure I would go so far as to _injure_
one,’ said Marjorie, stealing a glance at her companion’s shocked face;
‘but I feel that they are safest kept out of my sight. I tell the
mothers so.’
‘You are too young to know what you feel, Miss Bartrand.’ There was a
standstill of some moments ere Dinah recovered herself enough to speak.
‘Long before you are my age you’ll begin to see things differently.
Young girls are a bit hard, I’ve sometimes thought, in all classes of
life, until the time comes.’
‘What time, may I ask?’
‘The time for having a sweetheart and getting married,’ said Dinah
Arbuthnot.
From any other lips Marjorie would have regarded such a suggestion
as an indignity. Dinah was so true a woman, had a soul so whitely
delicate, that the speech carried with it no possible suspicion of
offence. It was homely common sense, kindly and simply uttered.
‘What you say might be true of most girls of my age. If I am hard, it
is not because of my youth, or my inexperience. I have had’--Marjorie’s
face flamed to the hue of the poppies in the corn--‘what the world is
pleased to call a sweetheart. But for the interposition of Providence
(I remember that interposition, night and morning, on my knees) I
should be married now.’
‘Unless he loved you above everything, you are best as you are, Miss
Bartrand. In marriage it is all or nothing. I mean--I mean,’ Dinah
hesitated, ‘no wife could be happy with half a heart bestowed on her.’
‘Half! What do you say to a quarter, a fraction?’ exclaimed Marjorie,
hotly. ‘What do you say to a creature stuffed as the dolls are, with
sawdust, in lieu of a human heart at all? A creature well set up as
regards shoulders, six feet in measurement, with fine white teeth, blue
eyes, yellow moustache, a swagger and a sword? His would scarcely be
the larger soul, Mrs. Arbuthnot, the stronger will which it should be a
woman’s crown of honour to obey!’
Down went another head of clustering camomile, felled by a well-aimed
stroke from Marjorie’s hand. Her eyes flashed fire.
‘And yet a wayward girl, scarcely past sixteen, and with no mother to
give her counsel, might for two or three weeks, you know, be hurried
into thinking such a man a hero. I was that girl, Mrs. Arbuthnot.
Vanity blinded me, or the love of power, or something stronger than
either. At all events, when Major Tredennis asked me, one fine morning,
to be engaged to him, I said “Yes.”’
‘And the Seigneur of Tintajeux?’ asked Dinah, looking round at the
dimpled, indignant face of seventeen.
‘“Major Tredennis comes of a race of gentlemen,” said grandpapa. “If
Major Tredennis can make adequate settlements, and my granddaughter
elects to spend her life with a popinjay, she may do so.”’
‘And, with no better advice than that, you were engaged?’
‘I was engaged. Major Tredennis used to write me foolish notes. He
gave me a ring I never wore. He gave me chocolate creams, and a setter
puppy. He sang French songs to me in an English accent. Looking back at
it all now, I think the chocolate creams were the best part of that bad
time, except, of course, the setter, _whom I loved_. When it was all
broken off--for the owner of the white teeth and the sword was a right
wicked craven, and should have married a girl in England who cared for
him, without once looking at me;--when it was all broken off, and I
had to send Jock back, I did weep, scalding tears, at parting from
him. The only tears I have ever shed, or shall shed, in connection with
love-matters.’
‘Wait!’ was Dinah Arbuthnot’s answer. ‘If I see you, as I hope to do,
two or three years hence, it may be you will tell a different story.’
Marjorie glanced at the yachting party, sauntering contentedly, a
hundred yards or so in front, among the lights and shadows of the
orchard-bordered road. There was Lord Rex, outrageously devoted
in manner to Rosie Verschoyle, with whom he loitered apart. And
there, a little divided also from the rest, was Geff Arbuthnot, well
entertained, one must surmise, by the shallow talk, fascinated by the
pink-and-white charms of Ada, the most soulless and the prettiest of
the de Carteret family.
‘If such a revolution takes place, a dozen years hence, that I marry,’
she observed, after consideration, ‘the husband I choose shall be
a head-and-shoulders taller than myself, morally. No singer of
ballad sentiment, no popinjay, with yellow moustache, and a sword,
and uniform, next time. If I take to myself a master, he shall be a
man--with a temper, a will, a purpose in life, all nobler than my own.’
Such a husband as Geoffrey would be! The thought obeyed the wish in
Dinah’s heart.
‘And I must be first--first in his affection. I would have no rivals,
past or present. If Bayard himself walked the earth and wished to
marry me, Marjorie Bartrand, I would ask him if I was first. Yes, Mrs.
Arbuthnot, I would ask Chevalier Bayard himself if he had looked at
any other woman before he loved me; and if he had, and though my heart
broke for it, I would refuse him.’
A red light broke on Marjorie’s cheeks, her eyes dilated. The likeness
to old Andros, which came out in every moment of strong emotion, was
never more marked than now.
‘If we ask too much we may lose all,’ said Dinah, not perhaps without a
pang of dread as visions of Geoffrey’s youth rose before her. ‘I never
heard anything about this gentleman.’
‘Chevalier Bayard? the first gentleman the world has known!’
‘But if he was put upon his word, yes, and though he stood with his
bride before the altar, I think Chevalier Bayard might have to confess
to some foolish fancy in the past.’
‘I spoke of love, not of foolishness,’ exclaimed Marjorie Bartrand.
Then, as though quickly repenting of her warmth: ‘We have talked more
than enough,’ she cried, ‘about a peradventure that will never become
fact. Let us forget, with all speed, that so much nonsense has been
spoken.’
But the conversation was one which neither of these young women could,
by any means, forget while she lived.