CHAPTER XII
YELLOW-BACKED NOVELS
The June rose-show stands second only to Her Majesty’s Birthday among the big events of the Channel Islands’ calendar.
By three o’clock the road between Petersport and the Arsenal plateau was filled with a growing stream of men and women. Simple rose lovers many of them, but some lovers of another kind. And some roses themselves! What buoyant young figures fluttered past the window whence Dinah Arbuthnot, shrouded from view, undreaming of her own future, watched the crowd! What ruddy fine complexions were here, what well-shapen noses and mouths, what dark Norman eyes! Why, you might scour half a dozen English counties before you could bring together as many handsome girls as would soon be within the Guernsey Arsenal’s four walls. Must not excuse be made—the thought was Dinah’s—for an artist who should long to stock his brain’s tablets with so much beauty, even though an idle tear or two, a little discontent in some one left at home, must be the price of his experience?
She strove her best to be magnanimous, to give a valiant ‘yes’ to this self-propounded question. Then, even as she made the effort, a group of persons drew nigh from the direction of Petersport, at the sight of whom poor Dinah’s magnanimity and the wifely heart that beat in her breast stood instantly at variance. Her hands turned cold and rigid. A prophecy, rather than an actual living look of jealous anger, swept all the youthful gentleness from her face.
A group of four persons: Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, Mrs. Thorne, the small daughter Rahnee, and a native nurse. Dazzling was Mrs. Linda in whatever furbelows and head gear local Parisian milliners had impressed on the feminine Sarnian mind as the ‘last thing out.’ Overdecked in embroidery and ribbons was Rahnee, a sorrowfully thin little child, with dark-ringed eyes, sallow cheeks, bangles on wrist. A typical Indian child, perverse, sickly, unruled, and who at the present moment was dancing, knowingly and deliberately, on her mother’s fragile flounces at every second step.
‘I am sure one ought to reform her.’ Thus Linda would make confession among her matron friends. ‘But what is to be done as long as you keep an ayah? You must reform the ayah first. That is just the one enthusiasm of humanity which is outside my reach, to reform an ayah.’
Rahnee, I repeat, danced persistently and with effect on her mother’s cobweb furbelows, as she capered and twisted herself along the street. Linda’s expression was as little honeyed as the expression of a coquette can ever be in the presence of a man she seeks to charm. The ayah vainly gesticulated, vainly uttered expostulations in unknown Eastern tongues from the rear. Breakdown and rout of one or other of the forces seemed imminent. Suddenly, just as they were passing the hotel—perhaps it was this incident stabbed Dinah’s unreasoning heart to the quick—Gaston came to the fore as mediator. Holding out both hands, Gaston Arbuthnot offered small Rahnee a place on his shoulder. Dinah could hear his pleasant voice, indicative of a mind content with its surroundings, as he began some sage nursery talk, all-engrossing, it would seem, to Rahnee’s soul. The thin arms closed round his neck, the tiny primrose-gloved fingers played with his hair. Mrs. Linda, a restored picture of amiable maternity, trotted behind. The ayah followed after; her black orbs pantomiming unspeakable things to such portions of the Guernsey world as had been chance witnesses of the scene. Then, domestic-wise, the group of four persons went their way.
A choking, hysterical lump rose in Dinah’s throat. With a vague sense of her own worthiness, a suspicion that if Dinah Arbuthnot was out of keeping with sunshine and flowers and little children, Dinah Arbuthnot herself must be to blame, she watched Gaston and his friends until they had turned the corner towards the Arsenal. Barely was the final shimmer of Linda’s flounces lost to view, when a clatter of hoofs approached rapidly along the Petersport road. A miniature phaeton with a girl driver, and drawn by a pair of small black ponies, came in sight. A minute later, and Marjorie Bartrand, who had drawn up before the portico of the hotel, was inquiring—yes, there could be no mistake; through the open windows the sound of her own name reached Dinah distinctly—‘If Mrs. Arbuthnot was at home?’
Dinah had not received one morning visitor in Guernsey. How many morning visitors (upon Mrs., not Mr., Arbuthnot) had Dinah received since her marriage? The unexpected respectability of the event—for our Tintajeux Bartrands, mind you, with all their eccentricity, stand on the topmost rung of the social insular ladder—moved Mr. Miller’s mind. A man of tact and discrimination, the host proceeded himself to usher Marjorie in.
The Arbuthnots’ parlour door was thrown open with an air. ‘Miss Bartrand of Tintajeux’ was announced in Miller’s most professional voice. Then came the meeting to which Marjorie had looked forward with resolute conscience, perhaps with lurking doubts as to the cordiality of the reception that should await her.
‘This is very good of you.’ Dinah spoke in her usual voice. She came forward with the simplicity that draws so near to De Vere repose. ‘Geoffrey never warned me I was to look for such a pleasure. I take it very kind of you to come, Miss Bartrand.’
Dinah’s trouble had just reached that level when the smallest act of good will, from friend or stranger, may cause the cup to overflow. Her eyes suffused, her colour heightened.
‘Mr. Arbuthnot thought I should be likely to find you at home this afternoon. I wanted to see you long ago!’ cried Marjorie, her gaze fixed on the face whose delicate beauty so far overpassed her expectations. ‘But I waited—I thought,’ stammered the girl, for the first time since she could remember feeling an excuse needed for her conduct ‘I thought, of course, Mr. Arbuthnot might ask me to call.’
‘Who—Geff?’ answered Dinah, with a fleeting, shy smile. ‘No, indeed, Miss Bartrand. Geoffrey would not make so bold. He knows too well that I live retired.’
Dinah’s phrases were certainly not those of the educated world. But Marjorie, looking open-eyed at the mouth and throat and golden hair, was in no mood to be critical.
‘I have lived retired pretty well from the time I married. My husband does whatever visiting is required of us.’
‘That is unfair to the world at large!’ cried Marjorie Bartrand, drawing up a chair to the table, where wools and silks lay heaped beside Dinah’s patiently progressing canvas. ‘Whatever hermit rules you observe elsewhere we shall make you break through them in Guernsey. I may look at your work? What intricate shading!’ She scanned the pathetic mass of Dinah’s stitches. ‘What a labour of love embroidery must be to you!’
‘It helps pass the time,’ said Dinah Arbuthnot. Wool-work fills up long hours that must else be empty. For I am not a scholar like you, Miss Bartrand, or like Geoffrey. And I only learnt the piano for two years at boarding school, not enough to play well.’
‘Still, you do play?’
Marjorie glanced across at a piano that stood open. A goodly heap of music scores lay on a neighbouring ottoman.
‘Not in such a public place as an hotel. The notes you see there are my husband’s. Mr. Arbuthnot sings, as I dare say you know. He was thought, once on a time, to have the best tenor voice in Cambridge. Some day,’ said Dinah doubtfully, ‘I may play just well enough to accompany him. Unfortunately for me, the most beautiful of his songs are in French.’
Marjorie bethought her of Geoffrey’s accent, and was silent.
‘You will have good opportunities of learning French in Guernsey, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’
‘Geff wants me to take lessons. We have a French waitress here in the hotel, but she speaks too quick for me, so do my husband and—and Mrs. Thorne. I only understand the sort of French we learned at boarding school—the sort of French the girls talked together,’ said poor Dinah modestly.
No books, no languages, no music; only cross-stitch, the counting of canvas threads, to fill one’s existence and one’s heart. And for life companion, thought Marjorie, a husband who frequented afternoon teas, who warbled ‘beautiful’ French ditties, in a bad accent, to audiences of women on the level of Linda Thorne!
This vision of Geoffrey, as a singer, added the crowning touch to the girl’s disappointment in his character. Throughout the brief, bitter-tasting epoch when her unwilling hand wore an engagement-ring, she was accustomed to hear French sentiment in an English accent, and an English tenor voice, during at least three hours out of each twenty-four. At this moment the tinkling burthen of one frequent song came back, with a sense of repulsion that was pain, upon her heart.
‘Si vous n’avez rien à me dire
Pourquoi passez-vous par ici?’
She remembered how the white hands of Major Tredennis used to rattle out the accompaniment of that song. She remembered the flower Major Tredennis wore at his button-hole the last day he visited Tintajeux—remembered, when she got knowledge of his treachery, how instant and far-reaching was her scorn.
With what honesty did she now scorn all human creatures of the Tredennis stamp! How loyally would she put herself forward as Dinah’s friend; yes, although she must forfeit the reading of mathematics and classics with Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot as her reward!
‘You have not been here long enough to see much of the island. Of course you are fond of the country?’
‘Well, I was country born and bred. Real country folk, my husband says, set less store upon green fields and hedgerows than the town people.’
‘But you like being out of doors? You will walk or drive with me sometimes? I have a pair of Welsh ponies, capital at scrambling up and down our Guernsey lanes.’
‘You are very kind, Miss Bartrand, but I can’t quite give an answer. You see I should have to speak to Mr. Arbuthnot.’
Poor Dinah coloured with actual shame at the proposal.
‘Now, to-day. Why are you not enjoying yourself with the rest of the world at the show? Guernsey roses, I can tell you, are worth looking at.’
‘I asked Geff, in joke, of course, to take me,’ Dinah answered. ‘But he was not polite enough to say “Yes.”’
‘Will you come with me?’ cried Marjorie. ‘As I drove in from Tintajeux I was getting my courage up all the way to ask you this. I have no chaperon, and now that I am seventeen, nearly a grown-up woman, the old ladies tell my grandfather it is improper I should go about without one. I, who know the island like a cat! You would be doing an act of charity by coming with me to the Arsenal.’
Dinah’s face grew irresolute at this piece of special pleading. She crossed to the window, and looked with wistful eyes up the street. She recalled the group which had passed along a quarter of an hour before. She heard Gaston’s voice again, saw the tiny primrose hands clasped round his throat. She thought of Linda Thorne’s rainbow-coloured flounces, and of Linda Thorne herself.
‘I should like to go.’ The truth broke from her after a minute more of hesitation. ‘I was feeling duller than usual when you came, Miss Bartrand, and I do like a flower-show above all things. We used to go to the Tiverton shows when my sister and I were girls. Uncle William, who lived bailiff at Lord Lufton’s, would take us when the gentlepeople were gone. But that,’ Dinah interrupted herself hastily, ‘was different. We were with Uncle William, we were in our place. I should not be in my place with you. Perhaps you are too young, Miss Bartrand, to see this. My husband is at the Arsenal with his friends, and——’
‘Wherever a husband goes is a place for his wife, according to my ideas of matrimony,’ said Marjorie, in a careless tone, but with her veracious face aflame. ‘I will not hear another excuse. It will be a curiously pleasant surprise for Mr. Arbuthnot when he sees you in my society.’
‘The ladies are dressed so elegantly,’ objected Dinah, at the same time moving towards the door. ‘And I never wear smart things.’
‘Neither do I.’ In truth, Marjorie wore one of the plain washed frocks, the sunburnt straw hat, that she wore on the moor at Tintajeux. ‘What do smart things or smart people matter to you and me? Dress as you choose, Mrs. Arbuthnot. You will look better than every woman in the Arsenal.’
‘I had best put on black. My husband, fortunately, has lovely taste, even in ladies’ dress. He tells me black is always the safest thing for me to wear.’ (‘Black cachemire and silence.’ Dinah remembered those were the requisites Gaston advocated, obliquely—the hint concealed by charming flowers of speech—on the solitary occasion when he introduced her to some female members of his family in London.) ‘I shall ask you to tell me, Miss Bartrand, about my gloves and ribbons.’
Thus speaking, Dinah passed away through a side door into her own chamber. For Gaston, with his knack of organising daily life after the manner that best suited himself, had taken a compact little suite of apartments on Mr. Miller’s ground floor. And Marjorie, left to her meditations, glanced around the parlour—in writing of Guernsey, and of Dinah, the old-fashioned word must be excused—for land-marks that should point out its present possessor’s tastes.
Dinah was not a woman whose affections tended towards ornament, in art or in dress. Had they done so, Dinah’s life had probably been happier. Her work-basket, with its outlying heaps of silk and wool, was the only sign Marjorie could detect of feminine occupation. What of Dinah’s husband? Pipes and cigarette-holders of varying patterns were ranged on either side the mantelpiece. A tobacco jar stood in unabashed evidence on a table. An odour not to be mistaken clung round the draperies of the windows. So this man smoked, thought Marjorie irefully—smoked in his beautiful, refined wife’s living-room! Yellow-backed French novels abounded (French novels, I must confess, were an abiding inspiration of Gaston’s genius). The neighbourhood of the piano was strewn with French songs. A volume of Greek poetry, lent to Geoffrey by old Andros Bartrand, lay on a bookshelf. In a corner by the door Marjorie discerned a rough briar walking-stick, which she recognised as her tutor’s property.
As she looked around the room her impulse was to burst into tears. It was but an inn’s best parlour. You could not expect the perfume, the grace of Tintajeux under good Mr. Miller’s roof. But it was not Louis Seize furniture, or Pompadour cabinets, or Trianon rose-baskets, that Marjorie missed. To pipes and tobacco smoke her life with the Seigneur had accustomed her. Yellow-backed novels did not disturb her conscience. Within limits she could endure French songs. The room repulsed her because it destroyed every dream she had had of Geoffrey! Without the Greek volume, she thought, without the briar stick even, her disenchantment had been less vivid. She had not been forced to remember him, to admit the lapse into bathos of her own ridiculously high-pitched ideal.
But so the facts stood. ‘One may be made a fool twice,’ the girl told herself. ‘First by a sweetheart, secondly by a friend. Happily Dinah Arbuthnot, not Marjorie Bartrand, must this time pay the reckoning.’
And the tears were in her eyes still. In spite of all disillusionment, her liking for Geff lingered obstinately. She thought she could never again be glad of heart as on that mid-summer night when she curtsied to the moon and wished a wish by her tutor’s side on the lawn at Tintajeux.
It took Dinah Arbuthnot fifteen minutes—a real ‘quarter of an hour of Rabelais’ for Marjorie—to put on hat and gown; fifteen minutes ere she could be sure her appearance would pass muster in the eyes of Linda Thorne. The best and simplest women infrequently dress for the other sex, or for the world at large, or for themselves. They dress for each other, oftenest of all for one especial feminine criticism which they have reason to fear.
‘Shall I do, Miss Bartrand?’ Dinah peeped, her exquisite face aflush, through the half-opened door, then she crossed the room to Marjorie; instinct, true as a child’s, informing her that in Geoffrey’s pupil she had found a friend. ‘I want you to pick me to pieces, find as much fault with me as you can. Shall I do?’
‘Do!’ repeated Marjorie.
And a volume of hearty admiration was in the monosyllable.
Dinah Thurston, in her girlhood, had learnt dressmaking as a trade. Of dress as a difficult social art Dinah Arbuthnot knew not the initial letters. Here her husband was an unfailing monitor. Gaston had an artist’s knowledge of colour and effect. He had the sense of fitness belonging to a man of the world. Dinah’s apparel might not accurately follow the fashion books. It bore the seal of distinction at all times.
Thus the ‘safe’ black dress was absolutely perfect of its kind; plain of make, as was meet for such a bust, such shoulders as Dinah’s, but draped by a Parisian hand that knew its cunning. A ruffle of Mechlin lace enhanced the sweet whiteness of the wearer’s throat. A velvet-lined hat threw up the outline of the head, the waves of short-cut English-coloured hair in rich relief.
‘You are lovelier than any picture!’ cried Marjorie, looking at Dinah Arbuthnot with as generous a pleasure, surely, as ever woman felt in the beauty of another.
‘Advise me about my gloves.’ Dinah blushed and drew back at the girl’s frank praise. ‘Here are cream-coloured ones, you see, the same shade as my ruffle, and here is a box of long black silk gloves. My husband had them sent from Paris with the gown. Of course, the cream-coloured are the dressiest.’ The tone of Dinah’s voice betrayed her own leaning. ‘Mr. Arbuthnot warns me generally against light gloves. My hands, he says, are half a size too large. Still for a flower-show——’
‘You must wear the black gloves, Mrs. Arbuthnot. No shadow of doubt about it! As you see, I don’t go in for dandy dress myself,’ said Marjorie, ‘but one can’t help hearing the whispers of the milliners. These long silk gloves are at present the one righteous thing to wear in London and in Paris.’
‘And no ribbons, no ornament? I have a gold necklace that looks nice on black, and——’
‘You want no ornament at all. You must take our little world by storm just as you stand at this moment. Miller has some crimson roses in his garden. We will cut one as we pass. The black of your hat would be better for a single spot of colour.’
By the time Marjorie’s fiery Welsh ponies had rushed up to the Arsenal four o’clock was striking. The rose-show festivities were, for the weak and frivolous, at their culminating point. It was the hour when staid flower-lovers—sensible souls who came to see the real, not the human roses—were leaving, Cassandra Tighe among them.
‘I am starting off to Tintajeux,’ she told Marjorie, as they passed each other at the entrance. ‘The Seigneur’s “Duc de Rohan” has taken a prize, and I must be first to carry the news to the Manoir.’ Then, with a kindly glance at Dinah, ‘You have done the right thing, have paid your visit,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t see the necessity of mixing yourself up with it all in public. Linda Thorne presides at the refreshment tent, and that wretched man is simply infatuated in his attentions. But the error is generous. Being a Bartrand, you can, I suppose, do nothing by halves.’
‘I consider myself honoured by appearing with Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ returned Marjorie, very low. ‘I want to judge of that wretched man’s conduct at first hand, see facts alive, and extract their meaning by the light of my own common sense.’