EMANCIPATION
Dinah Arbuthnot’s face asked vividly for explanation.
‘Made sure Arbuthnot would be here--that is to say, _our_
Arbuthnot’--Lord Rex stammered; he showed embarrassment that sat on
him oddly, as he apologised for his uninvited presence. ‘The comings
and goings of the Cambridge cousin are, naturally, beyond my powers of
calculation.’
‘Naturally,’ echoed Dinah. She remembered, with a pang of
self-reproach, what manner of errand kept Geoffrey absent.
‘Strolled round here early--by accident, you know--thought I’d ask
myself to dinner with your husband. Clean forgot, till Miller or some
one put it into my head, it was guest night. That was half an hour ago.
Ought to have started off, instanter, to Fort-William.’
‘And why, pray, did you not do so?’
‘Mrs. Arbuthnot, can you ask me!’
Rex Basire’s tone adequately supplemented his words. And Dinah’s pulse
quickened. She was on the threshold, she remembered, of a new, an
emancipated life. A wife who lives apart from her husband must accept
her position, grow used to many things, to every complexion of whisper
among the rest. That is the world’s immutable sentence. Away from
Gaston, divorced from the arm which, during four years, had cradled
her in warm safety--she must learn, like other unloved women, to
rely on her own strength--her strength and the chivalry of all such
knights-errant, such Rex Basires, as should cross her path!
About the chivalry more might have to be learnt, hereafter. Dinah
realised, before the first step of her downward journey was taken,
that her strength was weakness. She felt as though all eyes around the
table must watch her with suspicion, read her secret. Rex Basire’s tone
of assured admiration brought the blood miserably, shamefully to her
cheeks.
He saw and misinterpreted the blush.
‘Thought, you know, as there was a rumour of the cousin’s absence, I
should have a chance of getting next you.’
‘You would have been better amused elsewhere, my lord. With Geff I can
talk or be silent as I like. Geff does not mind.’
Lord Rex on this made some whispered hit at the ‘model cousin’s’
excellence. As he ate his half cold soup murmured comparisons fell from
him as to the men who are made of flesh and blood, poor devils! and
the other men, too good for this world, who are made of ice, yes, ice,
by Jove! But he was not great at covert allusion. The metaphorical ice
got mixed with the metaphorical flesh and blood: his nominatives were
nowhere. Breaking down, rather ignominiously, Lord Rex smothered his
failure under a capacious sigh.
Dinah turned to him, with cheeks still burning. ‘I am afraid I did not
understand. Men of ice! Men of flesh and blood! Were you talking of
Geff or of yourself, Lord Rex?’
Despite her blush, the true eyes stopped him short, as they had so
often done before. Ere Rex Basire had time to double back towards his
starting-point there came an interruption--one of the trivial things
not to be mentioned in heroic story, yet which do, ofttimes, determine
the current of a human life. A plain little man, his large-checked
suit, his open Murray proclaiming the tourist, had during the past two
minutes attentively watched Lord Rex from the other side the table.
Upon hearing Dinah’s mention of the name, the stranger fidgeted with
his knife and fork, cleared his throat, coughed. Finally, leaning
forward with a bow, it was obvious that he expected, was eager for,
aristocratic recognition.
‘Lord Rex Basire, if I mistake not?’
‘Sir! You are politeness itself. But you have the better of me.’
Rex Basire accorded his interrogator a blank and frozen stare.
‘Oh, the top of St. Gothard, Lord Rex. You were travelling with the
Duchess. Her grace’s carriage broke down--something wrong with the
linch-pin--and as I was in the region, botanising, I had the honour of
offering her grace mine. Your lordship will recollect?’
‘Her grace’s carriage is invariably breaking down. Invariably.
Besides,’ drawled Lord Rex, putting up a ferocious pince-nez, and
resolute to nip renewal of acquaintance in the bud, ‘we are not on the
top of the St. Gothard now. Ah, Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ he addressed Dinah in
as low a tone as a man’s voice can sink to without becoming an actual
whisper, ‘_this_ makes up to one for a great deal I have suffered at
your hands.’
‘By _this_,’ said Dinah, whose courage was returning, ‘do you mean the
cold soup we have eaten, or the colder fish to which they are helping
us?’
‘I mean the happiness of sitting beside you, of knowing I am so much
forgiven that----’
‘Her grace travelled on as far as Andermatt in the carriage it was
my privilege to lend her. From Andermatt, if my memory serves me
right----’
‘Your memory is certain to serve you right, sir. The incident which I,
it seems, have forgotten, was more than unimportant.’
Lord Rex’s manner was brutal; no other word would adequately describe
it. The poor little tourist’s eyes dropped to his plate, his face
turned scarlet. Dinah leaned forward on the instant. With the gentle
womanliness which was _her_ breeding, she addressed him in her pleasant
country voice:
‘My husband and I met with just the same kind of accident once.
Our carriage broke down, and we had to spend six hours, in wet and
darkness, between Berne and Vevey. I should not have forgotten any one
who had come to our help that night.’
‘Ah--you know Switzerland, madam? Then may I ask,’ the tourist gave a
piteous glance towards Lord Rex, ‘if you take an interest in the Alpine
flora? I have only time to pursue such things during my holidays.’ It
is possible he pronounced the word without its aspirate. ‘But botany
is my hobby; I get plants enough in my five weeks to fill my leisure
for the rest of the year. Now in that very region you speak of, I have
found two or three specimens that are unique. If you will allow me to
enumerate the Latin names, madam----’
And so on, and so on. The poor man was one of nature’s choicest bores.
His information was stale, his manner of imparting it prosy; his
blindness to the suffering he inflicted, absolute. Dinah’s face wore
a look of kindly interest through everything. Occasionally (Lord Rex
all but groaning aloud over his wasted opportunities) she would strike
in with some question calculated to start the narrator afresh on new
tracks, on new prosiness, if, peradventure, he chanced to lag.
She even bowed courteously to him on leaving the table d’hôte: an
example not followed by Lord Rex.
‘A charming dinner, on my word!’ So he broke forth, the moment he found
himself beside Dinah in the welcome freshness of the garden. ‘May I
ask, Mrs. Arbuthnot, what inhuman whim made you talk to that wretched
snob?’
Rex Basire’s voice went beyond the limits of petulance.
‘Why a snob?’ asked Dinah, meekly. ‘You know I can never catch the
inner meaning of these names.’
‘Why? Because he was a snob. “Her grace’s carriage broke down on the
top of the St. Gothard; he had had the privilege of offering his.”
What the dickens did that matter to me? “Her grace travelled as far as
Andermatt in his carriage.” What the dickens did that matter to him?’
‘Only this, perhaps--that her grace’s misadventure obliged the snob to
go on foot.’
‘Mrs. Arbuthnot!--I never expect a direct answer from any woman,’ Lord
Rex exclaimed with scarcely suppressed temper; ‘still, I should like
to know why during a mortal three-quarters of an hour you allowed that
little wretch to talk to you?’
She paused. A shade of deepened colour touched her cheek. ‘The wretch
was intelligent, Lord Rex.’ (_Aye, and opportune!_ This was a subtle
parenthesis, put in by Dinah’s conscience.) ‘I don’t understand Alpine
plants, but I liked to hear a good deal our tourist said about them.’
‘The ’obby he pursues during his ’olidays,’ observed Lord Rex,
humorously.
Dinah turned swiftly round. A streak of sunset goldened her hair,
and the delicate outlines of her face. She gave a look of farewell
sincerity at Lord Rex Basire.
‘Do you remember,’ she asked him, ‘a conversation you and I had on
board the steamer? It was just after my husband and the Thornes had
landed at Alderney.’
Yes, Lord Rex remembered. He was not likely--this, with a sigh--to
forget any hour or place in which he had had the good fortune to find
himself alone with Mrs. Arbuthnot.
‘We spoke about class distinctions. I believe you called me a
Conservative. Certainly you told me you were the most out-and-out
demagogue in England. You were all for fraternity, Lord Rex. “Gardener
Adam and his wife, and that sort of thing.” Labour was the universal
purchase-money. Dukes and earls had best go back to the place from
whence they came. Well--you meant none of this.’
Lord Rex winced. ‘Unfair on a fellow,’ he observed, ‘to be thus taken
au pied de la lettre, and----’
‘You must speak in English,’ cried Dinah. ‘I have not French enough to
understand your meaning.’
‘My dear Mrs. Arbuthnot! A man may hold theories,--visions of an
impracticable Utopia, don’t you know ... charming--ahem! to air in
exquisite company; impossible to carry out in this rough chaos of a
world we live in.’
Dinah stopped for a minute or more, sedately reflecting, before she
answered.
‘I think I understand. Socialistic opinions, if one is trying to
make talk for a rather stupid woman at a picnic, may be well enough,
especially if the rather stupid woman does not belong to one’s own
station.’
‘Mrs. Arbuthnot! I protest----’
‘The gardener Adam, of reality, is a snob. A wretch, bound, of course,
to lend his carriage to her grace, in distress, so long as he has
not the impertinence to talk of duchesses or linch-pins during the
remainder of his days. I have gained a new bit of wisdom, Lord Rex
Basire. It is not likely I shall meet you in England. If I do, I shall
remember what you said to our poor botanist--“We are not on the St.
Gothard now.” You might say, massacring me through a cruel double
eye-glass, “We are not in Guernsey now.” Good-night, my lord.’
She touched his hand. She passed away out of his life with a smile.
Her step was light. The rose-tints of the sky lent a fictitious
brilliancy to her face. Wonderful how that poor young woman, Mrs.
Arbuthnot, kept up her spirits! So opined feminine judges, looking
mercifully down upon events from the drawing-room windows of the
hotel. And under the sad circumstances--the husband’s indifference to
her growing hourly more pointed--to be carried away like a girl by
this foolish little lord’s attention! But that is the nature of these
pink-and-white, yellow-haired marionettes. The temperament, my dear
madam, is not one that feels or sorrows.
Dinah Arbuthnot walked quietly to her room, then rang the bell, and
told the waiting-maid that she would require nothing further, and that
no one need sit up for Mr. Arbuthnot. She changed her dress for a loose
wrapper, rested herself during some minutes, and with her face hidden
between her hands, strove to realise the altered condition of things
which lay before her.
It had been easy, an outlet to jealous anger, to declare, in the
moment’s heat, she would no longer live with Gaston Arbuthnot.
During dinner, though the strain was tense, there had been a certain
excitement, a sense of perilous adventure, to keep her up. Now came
blank reality. She must look at her position, as a stranger would,
from outside. If she purposed in good earnest to seek refuge with her
Devonshire kinsfolk, she had best benefit by Geoffrey’s escort on
Sunday, had best, wisely and soberly, begin to pack to-night.
Well, reader, ‘to pack,’ however chaotic one’s mental condition,
means--to use one’s arms, see to the folding of one’s latest intricate
furbelows, make sure that one’s newest bonnet shall not be crushed.
Dinah got through this part of her work well enough; nay, inasmuch as
packing brought her muscles into play, felt the better for it. Then
came the bitter beginning of the end. She must sort her trinkets, must
decide which things it was right to take with her into exile, which
leave.
Gaston was the most careless man living. The key of his dressing-case
was in his wife’s hands, everything he owned of value in her keeping.
It thus became needful, in looking over her own possessions, that she
should take count of his. And in doing so their four years of married
life returned, month by month, almost hour by hour before her.
A legacy of two hundred pounds had come to Dinah from a well-to-do
farmer uncle a few days after her wedding. ‘Too much, rather, to give
to the poor, not enough, certainly, to invest,’ declared Gaston--they
were at the time in Paris. ‘We will go shares, my dear child. I will
take one of the good uncle’s hundreds for cigarettes and you shall have
the other hundred for chiffons.’
Dinah wanted no chiffons--at Gaston’s insistence, possessing more
millinery already than she knew what to do with. So her hundred pounds
were mainly spent in buying pretty things for her husband. Gaston was
fonder of rings and pins than are most born Englishmen. He had also an
innocent way of directing Dinah’s admiration to artistic trifles in
the jewellers’ windows of the Palais Royal and the Boulevards--trifles
which were tolerably sure to find their way to his own dressing-table
before the next morning.
Ah, their good laughs when these innocent ways became too bare-faced!
Ah, the golden Paris days, when each hour was sweeter than the last,
when they used to jest together (little knowing) at the musty axiom
which limits a pair of true lovers’ happiness to the shining of a
single moon!
All the happiness--on one side, all the love--was gone now, thought
Dinah, as trinket after trinket, memorials every one of them, passed
through her fingers. She, who, in the bloom of hope, believed all
things, trusted all things, had become harsh, unrelenting, a woman
bent, of her own free will, though it cost her her heart’s blood, upon
leaving her husband’s side. And Gaston--nay, of him she would think
no further ill, to-night, at least! The proofs--little needed--of his
light faith she had locked away, witnesses against him until the last
hour that both should live. But she would think no new evil of him
to-night. She would seek her pillow, leave the preparations for her
journey as they stood. Midnight was now drawing near. To-morrow, she
thought, when sleep should have renewed her strength, this beginning
of her changed existence, this saying of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ instead of
‘ours’ might come easier.
To-day was still to-day. They belonged outwardly, in the world’s sight,
to each other yet.
There on the bedroom mantelshelf was an unfinished model Gaston had
made of her, a sketch which, had it reached marble, might some day
have worked its way inside the walls of the Academy. Among the neat
proprieties of her dressing-table were two of his modelling tools,
not altogether innocent of clay. There lay a half-burnt cigarette ...
a glove that he had worn.... Ah, heaven! And with this passionate
affection at her heart, she was unloved of him, had no child with tiny
tender clasp to make up to her for her husband’s coldness! And she was
still only a girl in years; and life but yesterday, it seemed, was
sweet.
If Gaston, with clairvoyant power, could have seen her at this moment
in her extremity of pain, doubt not that the couple of hilly miles
between Fort-William and Miller’s Hotel had proved an insufficient
barrier to keep him from her side. Common men, however, have common
lights to guide them. They reap even as they sow.
When twelve o’clock struck and Dinah’s aching head sank on its pillow,
Gaston Arbuthnot, with unburthened conscience, was settling himself
placidly down to poker--the little game of draw in which he had
vouchsafed to act as mentor to the youngsters of the Maltshire Royals.