CUT AND THRUST
Never was a man surer of tumbling into little unlooked-for
sociabilities than Gaston Arbuthnot. Had he been shipwrecked on a South
Sea island I believe Gaston would have chanced upon an acquaintance
there, some vanished shade from London Club or Paris café would have
seized him by the button-hole before the day was out!
He was button-holed in Langrune-sur-Mer. When the pilgrimage returned
from La Delivrande, Linda and her Robbie were found seated with
Mrs. Verschoyle on a trio of hired chairs before the hotel, taking
their pleasure rather mournfully. Cassandra Tighe, her scarlet cloak
conspicuous from afar, was dredging--happy Cassandra--among such rocks
as the tide still left uncovered.
Gaston Arbuthnot was invisible.
‘A real case of forcible abduction,’ cried Linda Thorne, addressing
herself to Dinah. ‘You are not a foolishly nervous wife, I am sure,
Mrs. Arbuthnot? You could philosophically listen to a story of how two
pretty French girls carried away an English artist against his will.’
Dinah assented with one of her rare smiles. The knowledge that Gaston
was finding amusement otherwise than in the half-clever talk, the too
ready, too flattering sympathy of Linda herself, cast retrospective
brightness upon the afternoon that his absence had clouded.
From jealousy of a selfish or little kind Dinah’s heart had never bled.
Earlier in their married life, when Gaston still affected dancing, and
as a matter of course went to balls without his wife, it was her usual
next morning’s pleasure to scan his programmes, enjoy his sketches
of his partners, his repetitions of their small-talk--all without a
shade of hurt feeling. Once or twice she hinted that she would fain
accompany him as a looker-on. ‘Nobody looks on long in this wicked
world,’ was Gaston’s answer. ‘You do not dance, you do not play whist.
You have a brain under your yellow locks, and you are too young to talk
scandal. Ball-room atmosphere is unwholesome. I would not hear of such
a sacrifice.’ And as it was not Dinah’s habit to pose as martyr, she
obeyed, trusting in him always.
Beautiful, pure of soul herself, she simply honoured the beauty,
believed in the purity of soul of other women. Gaston was popular,
spoilt; an artist with an artist’s--more than this, with an American
temperament. A degree of youthful immaturity seemed ever to lurk amidst
his astute knowledge of life and of men. He had but a half-share, as
he would tell her, of the fibres derived from long lines of bored
ancestors. He sought diversion for diversion’s sake. She had made no
quarrel with the inexorable facts of her husband’s existence or of her
own. If only she had been his equal, intellectually! If she could have
supplied him with the mental companionship he needed, or interested him
in his childless fireside! Ah, could she thus have risen to his level,
Gaston’s heart had been in her keeping still. Hence came the morbid
unrest of her present life; hence the dread, increasing daily, hourly,
strive with it as she might, of Linda’s influence.
‘I am afraid one gets used to most things, Mrs. Thorne. I have seen
Gaston run away with so often that I am not much moved by the thought
of these pretty French girls.’
Linda Thorne rose. She rested her hand confidentially within Dinah’s
arm, much to Dinah’s chagrin, and proposed that they should walk
together along the sands to look for Mr. Arbuthnot.
‘Yes, I must positively tell you the whole story. Your husband had
finished his sketch of the lovely fisher-girl. The young person was not
at all lovely, in fact. But she was striking. She had distinct genre.
Artists care for genre, you know, much more than for beauty.’
Dinah resolved to question Gaston as to the truth of this. She resolved
to cultivate distinct genre in herself for the remainder of her days.
‘Striking--that word sums up all. The big cobalt-blue eyes, that say
about as much, in reality, as a china tea-saucer, and are supposed
by imaginative men to say everything--blonde hair worn in a pigtail,
palpably not original, to her heels; complexion carefully toned to
a shade one point short of freckles; bare arms, akimbo--excellently
shaped arms, of course; a native prawn basket, and a fishing-dress from
Worth’s. I got to know the type so well,’ said Linda, ‘in my governess
days, during one summer, especially, when the Benjamin sent me to
Houlgate with her children.’
Dinah, who, as we have seen, had no genius for supplying the hooks and
eyes of conversation, remained chillingly silent.
‘Your husband had finished his sketch of her--an admirably idealised
one. I have it here.’ And Dinah, for the first time, perceived that
Mrs. Thorne held possession of Gaston’s sketch-book. ‘Let us look at
it together!’ impulsively, ‘or are you--no doubt you are--blasée about
sketches? Well, well, it may be natural. Married to an artist, if one
has no real, strong, natural talent for art----’
‘I have no real, strong, natural talent for anything,’ interrupted poor
Dinah petulantly.
‘Oh--naughty! You must not say such things. I will not allow you to be
modest. Mr. Arbuthnot tells me your needlework is’--Linda looked about
her as though an encomium were hard to find--‘most elaborate! In these
days needlework ranks among the fine arts. Of course you are wild about
this exquisite new stitch from Vienna?’
‘I have not seen it. The only wool-work I do is old-fashioned
cross-stitch.’
‘Just fancy! And Mr. Arbuthnot, I am convinced, spends his time--half
his time--in designing quite lovely patterns for you?’
Dinah’s breast swelled as a vision of the Roscoff wild roses overcame
her. She made no attempt at a parry.
‘If I had married an artist I would never have gone to the shops for
patterns. Or rather, if I had married an artist I would never have
embroidered at all. I should have thrown myself into his ambitions, his
work--have spent my life so utterly at his side.’
Dinah stooped to pick up a little pink shell from the strand, by this
action freeing herself from Linda Thorne. She put the shell inside her
glove, thinking she would keep it as a memento of Langrune and of this
summer day that had passed so nearly without a cloud. So nearly--but
the summer day was not over yet!
‘All this time I am not accounting to you for your husband’s
disappearance, am I? My dear creature, it was really the drollest
thing! Robbie had not as yet floated up with the tide, and Mrs.
Verschoyle and I, your husband with us, had made our slippery way
across the rocks to mainland. Well, just as Gast ... I mean, as Mr.
Arbuthnot was putting a last touch to his sketch, up ran a little
Frenchman, full dress, a rose-and-white daughter in each hand, and an
enormously stout wife, with a bouquet, following. He threw his arms
round your husband’s neck, and but for Mr. Arbuthnot’s presence of
mind would certainly have kissed him.’
‘Kissed!’
‘Of course. Have you never lived among French people? It was some old
artist companion of Gast ... of your husband’s bachelor life. You
can imagine the recollections of former joyous days spent in Paris
as students together, the inquiries for mutual friends, now dead or
married, the history each had to give of his marriage and present
happiness!’
‘I cannot. I am not imaginative.’
It must be confessed that a tinge of displeasure was audible in Dinah’s
voice. Every syllable of Mrs. Thorne’s unpremeditated chatter had
wounded her like a stiletto prick.
‘Ah--and I am imaginative to my finger tips. We seem the very
antithesis of each other, in character, as we are in looks.’ Linda
had really a very graceful way of admitting her own plainness, when
occasion offered. ‘I can assure you I filled up a dozen little blanks
in our Benedicts’ exchange of confidences. I traced out a full and
rounded whole most satisfactorily. People may slur over half a dozen
years in as many words. If nature has endowed you with imagination,
you read between the lines. The barest outline suggests the finished
picture.’
Something in her tone would seem to imply that Gaston Arbuthnot’s
married life had been a spoiled life, or so it seemed to Dinah’s
irritated heart. Dinah felt that the half dozen words must have yielded
latent hints of her own intellectual shortcomings, hints which Linda
Thorne’s talent for filling up blanks had developed into certainty.
‘The next part of the ceremony was the introduction to Madame de Camors
and the children--two small Parisian coquettes, about the age of my
Rahnee, who fell in love with Mr. Arbuthnot on the spot.’
‘Little children fall in love with Gaston always,’ said Dinah hastily.
‘The family party was taking its departure, it seemed, under the
broiling sun, to a children’s ball at Luc Casino. At a word from
papa the small imps seized a hand each of Gas ..., of Mr. Arbuthnot,
and dragged him away _nolens volens_. All children are tyrants,’
generalised Linda, with a dismal yawn, occasioned probably by the
recollection of her virtuously spent afternoon, ‘but these terrible
French children are the worst of all. Perhaps it is in imitation of the
Americans. I consider the way American infants are brought forward in
public places is a disgrace to the century.’
‘You think children without exception should be kept in their
nurseries’?’
Dinah called to mind a group of four that passed her window on their
road to the rose-show. She remembered a small figure dancing with
exultation on rainbow-hued flounces.
‘My dear soul! Fancy putting such a question to me, a mother! Of course
I make an exception of my own daughter. She is a good quiet little
monkey,’ added Linda; ‘although Mr. Arbuthnot is positively spoiling
her fast--I hope I impose her on no one. Children, as a rule, I look
upon from the governess point of view. You know how my bread was earned
when I was young?’
‘Mr. Arbuthnot has told me that he first met you in Paris.’
‘Yes, in the domestic service of Madame Moïse Benjamin. I got twenty
pounds a year and my washing. I had to sleep under the roof, to play
dance music, to remodel Madame’s dresses, to teach English to the three
girl Benjamins and a boy--ah, that boy!’ said Linda, between her teeth.
‘If you think me like Becky Sharpe ... confess now, you _do_ think me
like Becky Sharpe?’
‘I do not, indeed.’ Dinah’s manner grew colder and colder. ‘I never
heard of Becky Sharpe before.’
‘Well, if you had,’ said Linda, in high good humour, and storing up
all the little scene against future dramatisation--‘if you had heard
of Becky Sharpe, and had thought me like her, where would be the
wonder? I was brought up just as Becky was, to live by my wits. My
mamma--I connect her hazily with sofa cushions, much white embroidery,
an Italian greyhound, doctors, and the smell of ether--my mamma died
when I was four years old. She lies in Brussels cemetery,’ ran on
Linda, drawing a hasty outline of a tombstone on the sand, ‘with Lady
Constantia Smythe, and more than one side allusion to the peerage
graven above her head. At the time she died we had not very definite
daily bread. Still, my grandfather was an earl, and poor papa found one
of his few consolations in making much of our nobility.’
Frankness, it would seem, was Linda Thorne’s strong point, but Dinah
was unmoved by it. The earldom dazzled Gaston Arbuthnot’s lowly-born
wife no more than Linda’s personal confidences propitiated her. Dinah
had a child’s instinct for friends and for enemies. She liked, she
disliked, unerringly, and was too transparently honest to mask her
feelings.
Stooping down, she picked up another shell from the sea’s smooth
edge. She sought once more to widen the space between herself and her
companion. Linda Thorne’s quick brain observed the movement, divined
the intention.
‘Excellent, stupid, well-meaning, ill-acting young woman. And I have
not a reprehensible sentiment at all towards her!’ Thoughts like this
shot through Linda’s mind--Linda who really had it not in her to know
sterner passion than a drawing-room malignity. ‘With her youth, her
goodness, her complexion, her upper lip, to be jealous of poor, plain,
cynical, elderly me! She needs a pretty sharp lesson. Children who cry
for the moon deserve to get something worth crying for.’ Then, sweetly,
‘You seem interested in shells, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ she observed
aloud. ‘You study conchology as a science, perhaps, under the Platonic
auspices of that severe-looking cousin of yours, Geoffrey Arbuthnot of
John’s.’
‘I study nothing, unfortunately for myself. I am quite ignorant,’ said
Dinah, lifting her face and meeting her tormentor’s eyes full. ‘I am
picking up a shell or two,’ she added, ‘to keep as a remembrance of my
day in Langrune.’
‘I should say you would remember Langrune without any tangible
memento,’ remarked Linda. ‘Rather ungrateful, you know, if you did not.’
‘How, ungrateful?’
‘Well, because the picnic was given unconditionally in honour of
you----’
‘I do not understand you,’ interrupted Dinah, with ill-judged warmth.
‘The party was planned before any one in Guernsey knew of my existence.
I was asked accidentally--because I could be of use. Four or five girls
had promised these young officers to come, and they wanted a married
woman as a chaperon. This was what Lord Rex Basire said when he invited
me on Monday.’
‘And you believed him? You accepted out of pure kindness to faire
tapisserie! Mrs. Arbuthnot, you are too amiable.’
By this time Dinah Arbuthnot’s face blazed from brow to chin. Her
conscience, over-sensitive in the lightest matter, smote her sore. Was
not a selfish longing for widened experience--nay, was not a certain
distrust of Gaston, a contemptible sense of triumph over Linda--at the
bottom of her acquiescence?
‘What unusually correct taste Dame Nature displays in her colouring
this evening.’ Mrs. Thorne gazed with decent vacuity at the sky, and
away from Dinah’s face. ‘Soft primrose, fading into pearly-green, with
just those few vivid touches of deep crimson. It suggests thoughts for
a ball dress. And still, beautiful though the effect is, I would rather
not see that sort of shimmer on the water. If we come in for fog-banks
somewhere about the Race of Alderney, it will matter little whether the
picnic originated for the chaperons, or the chaperons for the picnic!
How atrociously hungry this sort of thing makes one! Surely dinner-time
must be drawing nigh.’