CHAPTER IX
HALF WAY TOWARDS LITTLE GO
‘Sixties’ and ‘forties’ are traditions, happily, of the past. Although Sarnian spinsters may still go out to tea with a maid and a hand-lanthorn, the number of their candles is no longer a rigorous type of their social condition.
But the society of an island, twelve miles long by four broad, must always be cousin-german to the society of a ship. Wherever choice is circumscribed, human nature tends to eclecticism. Sixties and forties may have had their day. A stranger is amazed, still, at the number of island families who do not visit other island families, seemingly from hereditary topographical reasons. The Eastern people have not much to say to those of the West. The country districts hold scanty intercourse with the townsfolk.
At the time I write of the remote little peninsula of Tintajeux was probably the most exclusive parish in the island.
‘While we were on terms with the Rector of Noirmont we had four people in our set,’ Marjorie would say. ‘The Rector of Noirmont, his wife, the Seigneur of Tintajeux, Marjorie Bartrand. Since grandpapa and M. Noirmont had their big Latin fight we have split up into further faction. Our set consists of the Seigneur of Tintajeux and Marjorie Bartrand. We are a nation of two.’
Of the things done and left undone by the Petersport inhabitants, this nation of two was ofttimes as ignorant as though some dark continent divided them. The dances, picnics, military bands, garden parties, and general gossip of urban life, concerned the Bartrands languidly. Old Andros had his farming, his dogs, his classic authors, and a curiously mixed performance which he called parochial work, to occupy him. Marjorie had her study, a boat, fishing-tackle, gardening tools; in days not so very far distant, had a carpenter’s bench; all the wholesome outdoor interests of a country-nurtured child. If Cassandra Tighe chanced occasionally to rattle round in her village cart and communicate to them the last town news, they heard it; rarely, otherwise.
It thus happened, Cassandra remaining away with her nets and her sea-monsters in Sark, that the comedy in course of rehearsal between Geff and Marjorie went on for several days without interruption. The master and pupil met seldom, save during the hours of work, when Geff, professionally severe, discouraged idle conversation. It did not become easier to Marjorie than it had seemed on the first night of their acquaintance to say the words, Your wife. The terms on which they met were frank; slightly stiffer, perhaps, under the broad sun of noon than they had been among the syringa blossoms by starlight! They stood, on the outside, at least, in the position of any commonly dense freshman, and of a coach, conscientiously minded to get his man, if possible, through Previous.
On the outside. Growing to know Marjorie’s transparent nature better and better, deriving keen refreshment from the badly-trained, fine intelligence which might have risen so high above the commonly dense freshman’s level, Geoffrey grew, hourly, more sensible that their seasons for meeting were ’ower lang o’ comin’,’ that each intervening day was a space of time to be lived through! At this point stood Geff. Secure, she was fain to think contented, in the knowledge of a Mrs. Arbuthnot’s existence, Marjorie worked with an unstinted zeal, a vivid delight, such as the whole defunct race of governesses, morning or resident, had failed to awaken in her.
So things progressed through half a dozen lessons. Then, one sunless afternoon, sky and sea and speck of island painted in half-tones, misty, dubious as the happiness of human life, came the rattle as of a score of chained captives along the avenue of Tintajeux. Marjorie, pacing up and down the schoolroom as she boldly struggled with the irregularities of a Greek verb, recognised the sound of Cassandra’s cart-wheels. Pushing Delectus and exercise books aside, she ran forth joyfully to meet her friend. Had not important news to be told? Our Cambridge B.A. thinking good things possible in the direction of Girton, the emancipation of those benighted Spanish women, who only know how to manage their house or fold their mantilla gracefully, a few prospective inches advanced!
‘You are inkier than ever, Marjorie Bartrand.’
This was Miss Tighe’s first personal observation, thrown back over her shoulder as she knotted Midge, the unkempt Brittany pony, to a rail, with one of the sundry odds and ends of rope stowed away in readiness within that all-containing cart of hers.
‘Only about the wrists,’ Marjorie pleaded, holding out the sleeve of her holland pinafore.
‘But I don’t see that University teaching puts flesh on your bones. You are growing too much like that picture of your mother. Eyes are all very well, especially handsome ones, but one wants something more than eyes in a face. You would have done much better’—who shall say Cassandra was not right—‘much better to come with Annette and me to Sark, jelly-fish hunting.’
The speech gave an impression of being double-shotted. But Marjorie, with unwonted meekness, made no retort until she and her visitor were within shelter of the drawing-room. There, in the familiar presence of the buhl Cupids, of the miniature Bartrands, who had danced, loved or hated each other, and gone to the guillotine with such easy grace, the girl felt herself protected—oh, Marjorie, from what dim vision of a sin could that white soul need protection? She began the story of her days, and of her intercourse with Geff Arbuthnot, bravely.
‘I feel half way towards Little Go, Miss Tighe. I get my six hours’ teaching a week, and——’
‘You have always had teaching in abundance,’ remarked Cassandra, wilfully misinterpreting her. ‘Since you were twelve, you have had Madame Briquebec six hours a week.’
‘Madame Briquebec—a music mistress!’
‘Six hours’ lessons, and twelve hours’ practice. It would require a Cambridge mathematician,’ observed Cassandra, ‘to reckon how many years’ solid capital, out of a lifetime, are given by young women to such an instrument as the piano!’
‘I am not talking of the piano, as you know, Miss Tighe,’ cried Marjorie, the heart within her rallying at the scent of coming strife. ‘I never practised less for poor old Madame Briquebec than I do now. I talk of my six hours’ solid reading with Mr. Arbuthnot.’
‘Ah! I trust you find Mr. Arbuthnot solidly satisfactory?
‘My tutor thinks well of my staying power. Mr. Arbuthnot sees no reason why, if I gave my life up to it for four years, I should not, some day, come out low in a Tripos.’
‘Mr. Arbuthnot, like the rest of the world, knows perhaps upon which side his bread is buttered.’
The suggestion was Cassandra’s.
‘Bread—buttered! Let me tell you, ma’am, I think that a most harsh speech! Yes!’ cried Marjorie Bartrand, her face aflame, ‘and verging on spiteful. A speech most unworthy of Cassandra Tighe.’
‘To my mind the subject scarcely necessitates so much indignation, Marjorie.’
‘And to mine, it does. If you implied anything, it must be that Mr. Arbuthnot flatters me from motives of self-interest, which is vile.’
Old Cassandra took off her leather driving gloves; she pressed out their folds slowly. Then she examined a signet-ring, masculine in size and device, which was always worn by her on the third finger of the left hand.
‘Mr. Arbuthnot comes to visit you, professionally, three days a week.’ Speaking thus she did not lift her eyes to the young girl’s face. ‘He comes to Tintajeux at other times, naturally?’
‘He came on that first evening when we engaged him—I mean, when Mr. Arbuthnot was good enough to promise to read with me. It was fine warm weather, you must remember—the night before you left for Sark. Grandpapa invited Mr. Arbuthnot to drink tea with us, and afterwards I walked as far as the Hüets, to put him on the right track for getting home by Gros Nez.’
‘He speaks to you, frequently, of the poor, stay-at-home Griselda wife, I make no doubt.’
The blood rose up, less at the question than at Cassandra’s way of putting it, to Marjorie’s cheeks.
‘My tutor has never spoken to me of Mrs. Arbuthnot. You decided, Miss Tighe, that day when we talked it over under the cedars, that there might be an indelicacy in my mentioning her too abruptly. And during our hours of reading we work, and work hard. I think,’ said Marjorie, lifting her small face aloft, ‘that as regards the learning of classics and Euclid, it matters nothing to me whether Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot stay at home or walk abroad.’
‘Mrs. Geoffrey!’ repeated Cassandra. ‘Oh, that certainly is not the name. I may have led you wrong in the first instance. Geoffrey is not the name of the man people talk so much about.’
Marjorie walked off to the schoolroom, from whence she presently returned with Geoffrey’s card, one that he had enclosed in his first stiff business note to the heiress of Tintajeux.
‘Samson, Samuel, Cyril. I am nearly sure of Samson,’ mused Cassandra. ‘Accuracy as to names and dates was a kind of heirloom in our family.’
‘The name of my coach is Geoffrey,’ said Marjorie Bartrand. ‘Behold it, Miss Tighe, in black and white—Geoffrey Arbuthnot, B.A., Cantab.’
‘I cannot make this out at all. The whole thing is so fresh in my memory. Coming up from the harbour I called in at Miller’s. It was but human to ask that poor, weak, unreliable woman about her throat. Well, although she has swallowed Dr. Thorne’s drugs, Marjorie, she is recovering. Nature is so perverse in these chronic invalids.’
‘Recovering sufficiently to retail a fruity bit of gossip, which Miss Tighe enjoyed. I wonder whether the world was as scandal-loving in your days?’ said Marjorie, addressing the calm-eyed group of Bartrands beside the chimneypiece. ‘You were not a moral generation. Perhaps when glass heads were universal, stone-throwing was less in vogue.’
‘Poor Mrs. Miller threw no stones. She told me plain and sad facts about these young Arbuthnot people. The husband for ever philandering in the train of certain idle ladies belonging to our island society, the wife watching up for him till all hours of the morning, people, very naturally, speculating right and left——’
But Cassandra Tighe stopped short. Like an arrow from a bow Marjorie’s slip of a figure had shot across the drawing-room. She stood at her old friend’s knee. A pair of eyes glowing with all the force of strong, fiery, yet most generous temper, looked down upon Cassandra’s face.
‘I hate the speculations of malicious tongues, Miss Tighe. I will never believe that Geoffrey Arbuthnot “philanders,” whatever the term means, or treats his wife neglectfully. I know him to be manly, straightforward, true. I think Griselda ought to be happy, oh! happy quite beyond the common lot.’
The last words were not uttered without a quiver of Marjorie Bartrand’s lip.
Miss Tighe finished, we may well believe, with the theme of love and lovers some thirty-five or forty years before the present time. Was the subject ever of vital personal moment to her? A jealously worn signet-ring, the portrait of a scarlet-coated, dark-eyed lad that hung in her drawing-room, were the only evidence to warrant intimate friends in hazarding a tentative ‘yes.’ Her present interests, said the people of a young and irreverent generation, were of fish, fishy. Are fibres discernible under the microscope in a dogfish’s brain? Can a mollusc see, or only distinguish, between light and darkness? One thing was certain. In Cassandra Tighe’s breast lingered all tender, all womanly sympathy in the troubles of humanity at large. And something in Marjorie’s voice touched her, not to distrust, but compassion. She looked, with the pain that is half foreboding, at the young girl’s ardent, indignant face.
‘Marjorie Bartrand, we are old friends. You always take the lectures I give you in good part.’
‘I may do so occasionally, Miss Tighe, very occasionally. Let us keep to facts.’
‘I hope you will take a little lecture in good part now. Drive to Petersport to-morrow, and call on Mrs. Samson Arbuthnot.’
‘Mrs. Geoffrey Arbuthnot. With so many fables afloat, let us snatch, ma’am, pray, at whatever truth we may.’
‘Mrs. Geoffrey, if you choose. Although my conviction is unshaken. Drive in to Petersport to-morrow. Call upon your tutor’s wife. Remember her want of birth and education, imagine a little excusable jealousy. Put yourself, in short, in her place, and I am sure your good heart——’
‘I have no heart. Grandpapa, the whole of my governesses have impressed that upon me often.’
‘Your good common sense, then, will teach you how you can best befriend her. That is my lecture.’
Marjorie moved away into the nearest window. She looked out, athwart garden, orchard, moor, towards the Atlantic, gray, sullen, as though the season had gone back from June to December. A sense of deeply wounded pride, of cruel, inexplicable disappointment mingled in the girl’s heart.
‘I ought to have done the right thing,’ so she communed with herself. ‘I ought to have done it at once. I have just drifted into meanness. As though it could matter to us Bartrands if every woman in the island declined to call on Mrs. Arbuthnot. It was you, Miss Tighe,’ she turned round incisively on Cassandra, ‘who preached to me the gospel of Mammon.’
‘And one hears such nice things said of her, poor dear. The faults are so obviously the husband’s. Really, if I could have known all one knows now, my wisest advice would have been—keep clear of them both! In these prickly affairs, in anything connected with a mésalliance, you are pretty sure to get your hand stung, whichever way you grasp your nettle.’
‘Too late in the day for pensive regrets, Miss Tighe. I have not kept clear of Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’
‘The more the pity. As matters stand, Marjorie, I know that your conduct will be full of the sweetest tact. We have a few old-fashioned rules,’ said good, well-meaning Cassandra, ‘to guide us in our perplexities. The first is, to do unto others as we would they should do unto us.’
‘To-day is not Sunday.’ Marjorie’s foot tapped a quick little tune on the polished floor. ‘Please don’t let us have Sunday talk.’
‘How should we feel if we were Mrs. Arbuthnot? If you were Mrs. Arbuthnot, how would you wish Marjorie Bartrand should do unto you?’
Cassandra’s tone was plaintively sentimental, infalliblest tone of all to stir up mischief, never far from the surface, in Marjorie Bartrand’s heart.
‘How should I feel if I were Mrs. Arbuthnot? Wish that I had my precious liberty back, of course, and envy every girl I met hers—the natural feelings, one would hope, of all well-conducted, sensible married women. Ah,’ ejaculated Marjorie, folding her lithe arms, and with darkness like that of a swiftly-gathered thunder-cloud on her Southern face, ‘and to hear people talk as though such things as roaming husbands and weeping wives were necessities, as though the doom of the serpent was laid upon every son and daughter of Adam. A Dieu ne plaise that it should be so! There is one girl,’ striking her breast emphatically, ‘in Her British Majesty’s dominions who will shed tears for no man while she lives!’
‘We will hope so, Marjorie,’ said Cassandra, as she put on her driving gloves. ‘A good many of us have held the same opinions at seventeen, and yet had occasion to modify them later on.’