CHAPTER XIV
BROUGHT UP BY THE JESUITS
Dinah Arbuthnot had been more than woman could she have run the gauntlet of this Guernsey rose-show unconscious of her success.
But admiration to Dinah was no new thing. As a girl she never went through that chrysalis or ugly-duckling stage, the remembrance of which to many women puts an edge on after triumphs. Heads were turning after her to-day, she saw, just as heads used to turn when she was a baby toddling along the Devonshire lanes, or a slim maid walking in the procession of ‘young ladies’ from Tiverton boarding-school. She had known since she knew anything that she was beautiful, and rated beauty at a pathetically low standard.
Thanks to roseleaf tint or well-cut features, a sweetheart’s fancy can easily be won. Who should say that cleverness, knowledge of the world, tact, are not the solid gifts that bring happiness, the qualities that might chain a husband—wearied, say, after modelling from hired beauty—to his own fireside?
‘If you do not object, Miss Bartrand, I would like to find some place where we could rest, away from the crowd, a little.’ Bent upon displaying their friendship before the Sarnian world, Marjorie had by this time paraded her companion bravely throughout the length and breadth of the Arsenal. ‘My husband has seen me. He is in the tent near the entrance—the tent where Mrs. Thorne is serving refreshments. As Mr. Arbuthnot does not come forward to meet us, I am afraid he is displeased.’
‘Displeased! That is a great idea,’ cried headstrong Marjorie. ‘Put all the blame on me. I think I shall be strong enough to bear the brunt of Mr. Arbuthnot’s wrath if I rest myself well first.’
They succeeded in finding a bench, withdrawn somewhat from the crowd, yet within sight of the stall at which Linda presided. Here Dinah could pluck up her drooping courage, while Marjorie communed scornfully in her heart as to the pitiful weakness of married women in general, and of this most neglected, most mistaken married woman in particular. Their seclusion lasted for two or three minutes only. Then a blush started up into Dinah’s cheek, vivid, bashful, such as a girl’s face might wear on catching sight unexpectedly of her lover, for she saw Gaston approaching. At his side was a very dandily dressed, sun-tanned youth, his arm in a sling; a youth whom as yet Dinah Arbuthnot knew not.
‘He is coming! Miss Bartrand, I look to you to smooth things over. Just say you pressed me to come to the show, and I refused at first, and——’
‘I will say everything that can decently be compressed into one act of contrition.’ Marjorie’s tone was fraught with ironical seriousness. ‘But your eyes are better than mine, Mrs. Arbuthnot. A guilty conscience perhaps sharpens the external senses. I am looking with the best of my seeing power over the whole Arsenal. I see no Mr. Arbuthnot.’
‘Then his companion must stand in the way—the light-haired gentleman with a plain-like, reddish face,’ whispered Dinah, ‘and who wears his left arm in a sling.’
‘That is our popular hero, Lord Rex Basire, newly returned from South African fighting, and as proud of his gunshot wound as a foolish girl might be of her first conquest.’
‘Well, and there is my husband walking with him.’
‘Your husband! Mrs. Arbuthnot?’
Marjorie’s world was reeling. A possibility—she knew not of what—a wild and passionate hope trembled on the outside edge of her thoughts.
‘Perhaps I am not a fair judge,’ murmured Dinah, the two young men having been arrested on their road by that incorrigible button-seizer, Doctor Thorne, ‘but, to my mind, Gaston must always be the most noticeable man in any company he enters, no matter how high that company may be.’
‘Gaston?’
Marjorie Bartrand was in a state of such bewilderment that the echoing of Dinah Arbuthnot’s words seemed about as great originality in the way of speech as she was mistress of.
‘Geoffrey must have sounded my husband’s praises to you pretty often. That is a right good point of poor Geff’s, his love and admiration for Gaston. At Cambridge he was called the handsome American. I know it,’ said Dinah, with earnestness which became those sweet lips of hers mightily, ‘because Aunt Susan had relations in the town, on Market Hill, you know. Before my marriage we used to hear something flattering of Gaston every day. It is the same in London. The tailors will give him any credit. I believe they would make his coats gratis so long as they got his promise to wear them.’
‘And Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot?’ It cost Marjorie no small effort just then to force Geff’s name from her lips. ‘What relationship is there between him and you?’
‘Geoffrey is our first cousin. His father and my husband’s died, both of them, when their children were young. Gaston has always been Geoffrey’s good genius.’ In saying this Dinah believed herself to be enunciating truth, clear as crystal. ‘They did not meet as boys. Geoffrey spent his young years in a gloomy city school. My husband was brought up—you can tell it, they say, by his accent—in Paris. When they came together in Cambridge nothing could be more different than their positions. Poor Geff, a scholar at John’s, was forced to work without amusements, almost without friends, for his Tripos, while Gaston——’
‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot had livelier things than work to think about,’ suggested Marjorie, as Gaston’s wife paused.
‘He was clever enough to come out first in any Tripos he had read for. But his friends would not let him read. He was sought after, popular,’ said Dinah, with a sigh, ‘just as you see him now. However, that made no difference for Geff. Gaston treated him like a younger brother always. He does so now. I have grown myself to think of Geoffrey as of a brother.’
She stopped short, for Gaston Arbuthnot and Lord Rex Basire were now within hearing distance; Doctor Thorne, adhesive as goose-grass, addressing them by turns as he followed, with his nimble limp, in their steps.
‘Yes, Mr. Arbuthnot, you must grant me my postulate.’ Doctor Thorne packed up all of nature or of books—chiefly of books—that came within his reach in little, neatly-labelled comprehensible forms, dilettante demonstrations of the universe ready for his own daily use and the misery of his fellows. ‘Grant, as a postulate, that the magnitudes we call molecules are realities, and the rest follows as a necessary deduction. Let us look around us at this moment. Evolution teaches us that these bright blooms we behold actually come into being through the colour-sense of insects; and, and——Lord Rex Basire! you, I am sure, are fascinated by the subject!’
Lord Rex had not heard a syllable. Breaking away from Doctor Thorne, Lord Rex stood still, his eyes pointedly avoiding Dinah’s face. Gaston, meanwhile, his hat held low, after the fashion of Broadway or the Boulevards, was saluting the two ladies, making Marjorie Bartrand’s acquaintance, and jesting amicably with Dinah as to the march she had stolen upon himself and an unexpectant Sarnian world.
When two or three minutes had passed Lord Rex gave evidence of his presence. Coming forward, he delivered a set little compliment to Marjorie Bartrand on the Seigneur’s roses. It was a source of agreeable satisfaction to Lord Rex Basire that the ‘Duc de Rohan’ should have taken a first prize. He would like——
‘The Seigneur’s dark roses have taken a prize every June show for the last quarter of a century,’ Marjorie interrupted him cruelly. ‘When once we islanders, flower-show judges included, get into a safe groove, we keep there.’
‘What an improving place Guernsey must be to live in!’ Gaston Arbuthnot remarked. ‘I have been trying vainly through the best years of my life to keep in safe grooves.’
‘To keep in safe grooves!’ repeated Marjorie, with rather stinging emphasis. ‘You would need to get into them first, would you not?’
‘You are severe, Miss Bartrand.’ Gaston came over to the girl’s side. ‘And I like it. Severity gives me a new sensation. Now, I am going to ask a favour which I can tell beforehand you will grant. I want you to show me these conquering Tintajeux roses. Tintajeux is not an unknown name to us.’
Gaston added this last clause in a lower key, then watched to note how much the colour would vary on her ever-varying face.
Under any other circumstances than the present ones Marjorie would, I think, have selected Gaston Arbuthnot as the type of human creature least to be encouraged under heaven. Was he not obtrusively good-looking, a popularity man, a dandy for whom Bond Street tailors would be content, as a flesh-and-blood block, a living advertisement, to stitch gratis? Was he not a coolly neglectful husband, a pleasure-seeker, a frequenter of the afternoon teas of frivolous, attention-loving women?
But in her rush of joyous surprise, of contradictory relief, in her gratitude to him for not being Geoffrey, the girl was ready to extend a hand of hearty friendship to Dinah’s husband—during the first half hour of their acquaintance, at all events.
‘You wish to see the Tintajeux roses? Come, then, and let me play show-woman. Unfortunately,’ Marjorie added, ‘I don’t know in which quarter of the globe the “Duc de Rohan” lives.’
‘I believe I can guide you. I know the whereabouts of every stall in the Arsenal.’
And Lord Rex neatly affixed himself to the party as Marjorie and Dinah rose.
Dinah’s breath came short. She knew instinctively how the eyes of this pale-haired, sun-burnt youth avoided her face, and in that avoidance read the fact of his admiration. She divined that Lord Rex’s intention was to walk at her side. She foresaw, with terror, the necessity of conversation.
Gaston Arbuthnot gave his wife a quick, comprehensive look—Lord Chesterfield embodied in a glance! Then he went through a brief, informal word of introduction.
‘Lord Rex Basire—my wife. I fancied, Dinah, that you and Basire had met already. Now, Miss Bartrand, let us make an exploring tour of the Arsenal. We shall reach the Seigneur’s dark roses, sooner or later. I look to you,’ Gaston added, ‘for enlightenment as to some of the human elements of the show.’
Marjorie’s mood was abundantly bright; the ‘enlightenment’ was not slow of coming. Her prattle, with its brisk bitterish flavour, amused Gaston as he would have thought it impossible to be amused by any classico-mathematical girl extant. As they passed the bench that still supported Madame the Archdeaconess’s sacerdotal weight, Marjorie broke into a laugh—that hearty, human, unmistakable laugh of hers. For Doctor Thorne stood beside the great female pillar of the Church, delivering an oration in his most verbose little manner, to which not only the Archdeaconess, but the wives of the inferior clergy, listened with respect. And Marjorie’s quick ear had caught his text.
‘One ought not to laugh at our betters, Mr. Arbuthnot, ought one?’
Asking this, Marjorie looked gravely up in Gaston’s face.
‘It is so written in the copy-books, Miss Bartrand. For my part, I think the greatest good a man ever does his fellows is when he furnishes them, consciously or unconsciously, with materials for farce.’
‘At least, one should not laugh loud enough to be heard?’
‘I think you ought to laugh very often, and loud enough for all the world to hear,’ replied Gaston.
‘Doctor Thorne is too much for me; I have an old “Sandford and Merton” among my books, and when I hear him talk, I think of Mr. Barlow moralising at Tommy. Mr. Barlow turned scientist. “Grant as a postulate that the magnitudes we call molecules are realities ...” “Evolution teaches us that these bright blooms ...” etc. Dr. Thorne’s flower-show speech! We had it last autumn with the dahlias. We had it in the spring with the tulips. I heard him addressing it just now to that poor small boy, Lord Rex. Mrs. Corbie is orthodox to the core. I suppose he will make a big jump, as they do over the words in plays, when he gets to anything so brimstony as “evolution.”’
The crowd, as it happened, was setting in the direction of the Tintajeux roses. By the time Gaston and Marjorie had made their way into front places before the stand, they discovered that Dinah and Lord Rex Basire had parted company from them in the crowd.
‘I brought Mrs. Arbuthnot here. It was through my persuasion she laid down her cross-stitch,’ cried Marjorie, ‘and now we have let her fall victim to Lord Rex. How wearied she will be of him!’
‘I am not so sure of that. My wife has the old-fashioned weaknesses of the sex. The sight of a wounded soldier is dear to her. All women, at heart, are thoroughgoing Jingoites.’
‘I am not! I am an ultra, red-hot Radical,’ exclaimed Marjorie. ‘As to Lord Rex—I believe his wound was well long ago. He wears his arm in a sling to get up sympathy.’
‘It will secure Mrs. Arbuthnot’s,’ said Gaston. Then: ‘What a world of good it will do my wife to have been here,’ he added warmly. ‘That is just what poor Dinah needs, to come out more, mix more with her fellow-creatures, brighten up her ideas; to lay down her cross-stitch, in short. That hits the nail on the head—to lay down her cross-stitch! It was charming of you to call on us, Miss Bartrand! I take it for granted, you see, that you have called. You heard of our existence probably from Geff?’
‘I heard from Mr. Geoffrey that Mrs. Arbuthnot was staying at Miller’s Hotel.’
But Marjorie’s voice faltered. Her soul clothed itself in sackcloth and ashes as she thought of her own error, of the generous, delicate motives which had prompted her—Pharisee that she was!—to call on Dinah.
‘Whatever Geff does comes to good. He cannot take a mile-long walk without some man or woman being the better for it. Geff has a kind of genius for bringing about the welfare of other people.’
At the mention of Geoffrey every artificial trace left Gaston’s manner. The best of the man showed always, no matter how trifling the occasion, in the honest regard he bore his cousin.
‘Now, look, Miss Bartrand, at the way Geff is spending his time in this island!’
Where Marjorie had suspected him of easy-going callousness, of philandering in the train of idle, fine ladies, of singing French songs, of putting himself on the social and intellectual plane of a Major Tredennis.
‘Six hours a week must, I own, be grudged to him—the hours he spends at Tintajeux Manoir.’
‘Spare yourself the trouble of being polite, Mr. Arbuthnot. If you knew how I detest politeness!’
‘But remember all his other hours.’ The art of thought-reading was certainly to be reckoned among Gaston’s accomplishments. Within ten minutes of his introduction to this little classico-mathematical girl, behold him discoursing with cunning naturalness on the subject likeliest to interest her in the world—Geff’s virtues! ‘Remember how his days, often his nights, are really passed.’
‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot reads, does he not?’
Marjorie gazed into the heart of a glorious Duc de Rohan with interest.
‘Geoffrey reads as I,’ said Gaston, passing into a lighter strain, ‘meant to read, once. You look sceptical, Miss Bartrand! There was a time when I had bookish ambition. Yes, I talked, like many a fool before me, of going in for two Triposes, and left Cambridge without a degree. But Geff has a gigantic physique, a real hunger for hard work. He simply does not know the meaning of taking a holiday.
As they chatted Gaston’s eyes dwelt with artistic satisfaction on the girl’s slender figure and hands, on the chiselled Southern face overkissed by sea and sun for some English tastes, but pure, fresh, as the wine-dark roses over which she bent.
‘I am a sculptor by trade,’ he went on. ‘It might be truer to say a poor manufacturer of statuettes for the London market. Geff has told you how we get our daily bread, has he not?’
‘My tutor speaks of little—beyond my reading,’ stammered Marjorie, still without meeting the penetrating glance of Gaston Arbuthnot.
‘Well, even after work as light as mine, I find,’ said Gaston, with a clear conscience, ‘that amusement, varied in kind and ample of quantity, is needful. The heartiness of one’s work seems determined to a nicety by the heartiness of one’s play. Geoffrey takes his recreation just now in the wards of the Guernsey hospital. There was a bad quarry accident the day after our arrival here——’
‘I know,’ exclaimed Marjorie, paling. ‘The worst accident we have ever had at St. Sampson’s.’
‘Geoffrey, I need not say, went to the fore as a volunteer. Between the poor lads in hospital and those who lie still in the houses to which they were carried from the quarry his hands are full. That is the way Geff recreates himself.’
For a good many seconds Marjorie was speechless. Could it be that conscious weakness—weakness in her, a Bartrand—hindered the girl from trusting her own voice? Then, giving Gaston her profile still, she turned brusquely aside from the Tintajeux roses and from the discussion of Geoffrey’s qualities. She remembered her grandfather’s dinner-hour. The sun was getting low. It would be only human to search for Mrs. Arbuthnot, and deliver her out of the hands of Lord Rex.
‘We shall find them perfectly happy, and eating ices,’ said Gaston. ‘Dinah’s is not such a critical spirit as yours, Miss Bartrand. Let us bend our steps to the refreshment tent.’
Dinah and Lord Rex were all this time advancing, haltingly, monosyllabically, towards acquaintanceship. Gaston’s happy many-sidedness, his power of adapting himself, without effort, to the tastes and moods of others, were gifts in no manner shared by Lord Rex Basire. Dinah’s intelligence differed about as widely from Marjorie Bartrand’s as does placid English moonlight from a flash of tropical lightning.
Thus,—starting, as a cleverer man might do, along beaten tracks, the first remark made by Lord Rex was meteorological:
‘Splendid day this, isn’t it, for a rose-show?’
‘Certainly.’
The chilling assent was not spoken for some seconds, Dinah’s education having failed to inform her that the smallest platitude uttered by men and women when they meet in the world needs instant answer.
‘As a rule, you see, one gets beastly weather for this sort of thing.’
Silence.
‘Festive gatherings, I mean, und so weiter. Speech-day at Eton was always the wettest day of the three hundred and sixty-five.’
‘Was it indeed, Lord Rex Basire?’
Dinah’s gentle nature prompted her to be civil to all created beings. She would be civil, kindly even, to this plain and sun-scorched boy who had elected to walk beside her, and whose eyes took so many covert glances of admiration at her face. In the heart of Eve’s simplest daughter were such glances, one short quarter of an hour after introduction, ever registered as crime? Not only would Dinah be civil,—knowing little of titles, and less as to their modes of application, she would fain give Lord Rex Basire the fullest benefit of his.
He paused, and doing so looked with a straighter gaze than heretofore at Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife. She was surpassingly beautiful, fairer than any woman he had seen with his fleshly eyes or dreamed about in such soul as he possessed. Was she stupid? Not one whit for the higher feminine intelligence or the higher feminine culture did Lord Rex care. In society he held it Woman’s duty to supply him, Rex Basire, with straw for his conversational brick-making; hooks and eyes, don’t you know! gleanings from the comic papers, hints at politics, easy openings for unsentimental sentiment. A distinctly stupid woman frightened him. ‘Makes one feel like being on one’s legs for a speech,’ Lord Rex Basire would say.
‘You are looking forward to a long stay in the island, I hope, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’
At the italicised verb Dinah’s eyes turned on her companion with a vague distrust. Then she changed colour. A rose-flush, vivid as sunset on snow, overspread her face. For she thought of Gaston.
‘If you are a friend of my husband’s, I can understand your wishing to keep us here.’
There was a smile on her lips. The stiffness of her manner began visibly to relax.
Lord Rex for a moment was taken aback. Then he plucked up heart of grace. To see a married woman blush like a school-girl at the mention of her husband’s name was a new and puzzling spectacle to him. He could scarcely flatter his vanity that he, personally, was receiving encouragement. Still, Dinah had smiled. And with the burthen of conversation-making resting heavily on him, he was glad enough to follow any cue that might present itself.
‘Friend? I should think so! Best fellow in the world, Arbuthnot—and a man of genius, too; good-all-round sort of man. Never heard a Briton sing French songs as he does. Rather proud of my own accent.’ As Lord Rex progressed in confidence his speech grew more and more elliptic. ‘Sent to Paris in my infancy. Brought up by the Jesuits—there were Jesuits in those days, you know—till I went to Eton. But Arbuthnot puts me in the shade, ra-ther.’
‘Your lordship was brought up by the Jesuits!’
Side by side with many wholesomer qualities, Dinah had inherited not a few of her yeoman forefathers’ prejudices. At the word ‘Jesuit’ she regarded Lord Rex with an interest that had in it almost the tenderer element of pity.
‘I was. You look doubtful, you don’t think the fathers could give one such a Parisian roll of the “r” as your husband’s?’
‘Of that I’m ignorant, my lord. I am no French scholar. I thought of the Jesuits’ fearful underminded dealings.’ Dinah gave a half shudder in the warm sunshine. ‘I thought of the doctrines they must have instilled into you.’
Underminded! From what sect or denomination could Arbuthnot have taken his handsome wife? That Dinah was a rustic ‘mixed up with the great bucolic interests,’ Lord Rex felt certain. The Devonshire burr, the staid, shy, village manner betrayed her. What were her tenets? What sort of conscience had she? A Puritanical conscience, of course, but of what shade, what dimensions?
He harked warily back upon the safe subject of Gaston’s songs.
‘Arbuthnot was singing to us magnificently last night. He was in his best form. Faure himself could never have given “A vingt ans” in grander style. And then he was so well accompanied. The accompaniment is half the battle in “A vingt ans.’”
Gaston Arbuthnot, it should be explained, dined on the preceding night at the mess of the Maltshire Royals. He had dined at mess often of late, and on each occasion Dinah’s heart felt that it had got a reprieve. Dinah believed that dining at the mess of the Maltshire Royals meant, for one evening at least, seeing nothing of The Bungalow, and of Doctor and Mrs. Thorne.
‘You have good musicians among you, no doubt. I know,’ she observed, remembering long and not successful practising of her own, ‘that the accompaniment of this song is hard. But it has become the fashion for young men to play the piano lately.’
‘We can most of us get through a polka, played with one finger, or Malbrook. When I am alone,’ said Lord Rex, ‘I execute the Marseillaise, with chords. No man in the regiment could play a true accompaniment to “A vingt ans.”’
‘No? My husband played it for himself, then?’ asked Dinah, unaccountably persistent.
‘Not a bit of it! A singer never sings his best unless he stand, head up, chest expanded.’ Lord Rex dramatised the operatic attitude as they walked. ‘Mrs. Thorne accompanied Arbuthnot—deliciously, as she always does.’
It was seldom Dinah’s policy to discover her feelings by speech. So much worldly wisdom she had learnt, through most unworldly forbearance towards Gaston. Her complexion showed one of its over-quick changes, her mouth fell. But she spoke not. That there must be deviation from truth somewhere, she divined, with a bitter personal sense of humiliation. But where? She shrank from the possible answer to this question.
A good-humoured epitome of the dinner-party had been given by Gaston, over this morning’s breakfast-table, for her own and Geoffrey’s benefit. ‘The usual guest-night at mess. Curious how precisely alike all mess dinners are. The Engineer Colonel’s never finished commencement, “When we were in the lines before Sebastopol;” the Major’s tiger-slaying adventures in Bengal; the elderly Captain’s diatribes against Liberal Governments and enforced retirements, “A man in the very prime—no, sir, a man before he is in the prime of life put on the shelf.” And the Irishman’s story. And the subaltern’s witticisms.’ Gaston, I say, had enlivened the breakfast-table with his lively putting together of these oft-used materials. He had made no reference to the singing of French songs, or to Linda Thorne.
Then Lord Rex Basire’s memory must be at fault.
‘You cannot mean last night. You must be thinking of some former time. Mr. Arbuthnot dined with you at mess yesterday.’
‘Of course he did. After dinner we adjourned—we, the favoured few—as our manner is, to The Bungalow.’
‘Where Mrs. Thorne played accompaniments for Gaston.’
Dinah made the observation with mechanical self-control, hardly knowing what cold repetition of words this was that escaped her.
‘Yes; we had quite a chamber concert. A lot of rehearsing that accompanying business seems to want! Hardly ever drop in at The Bungalow of an afternoon without finding them at the piano.’
Dinah knew a moment’s cruel pain. There was a proud, hurt expression on her face. She stopped short, involuntarily. Then: ‘It would take much rehearsal,’ she said, ‘before I should play well enough to accompany Mr. Arbuthnot in public. But Mrs. Thorne seems clever nearly in everything. I wish I had her talents.’
And she resumed her walk, and began to speak—the village shyness thawing fast away—about the flowers, and the music, and the people.
It became clear as daylight to Lord Rex Basire that his society was duly valued.