The speech was really the best chosen, prettiest thing that a somewhat errant husband could have found to say. In every moral encounter that befel Gaston Arbuthnot, and whether his antagonist floundered in the mud or no, Gaston seemed invariably to find himself, at the last, in a graceful attitude. But Dinah’s heart was no more warmed by honeyed little phrases than by the reconciliatory kiss her husband bestowed on her ere he started to his dinner-party. She was reaching—nay, had reached—the miserable stage when honeyed phrases and reconciliatory kisses are in themselves matters of distrust? How, her lonely dinner over, would she get through the evening hours—long counted-on hours—when she was to have walked, her hand within Gaston’s arm, to distant Roscoff Common for her briar roses.
For a space Dinah looked listlessly forth at the garden. It was full of people who knew each other, who talked together in friendly voices—the boarders of the hotel, with whom Gaston mixed, with whom Gaston was popular. Then she seated herself before her embroidery frame. But recollections of Lord Rex Basire, of the effaced stitches, of Gaston’s commentaries on her ‘patience,’ made the thought of work repugnant to her. If she could only read, she thought! Not after her dull, country pattern, repeating each word to herself as a child cons his task ere he can take in its meaning. If she could read for pleasure, as she had watched Geoffrey read—quickly, easily, with hearty human interest, like one bent on receiving counsel from some well-beloved friend!
A book of Geff’s lay on the mantelshelf. Dinah rose, crossed the room with languid steps, and took it in her hand. Then, as readers invariably do, to whom the shell of a book matters more than the kernel, she fell to a careful examination of the text, binding, title-page.
‘The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. Vol. VI. Dramatis Personæ.’
Well, four years ago, during the brief fortnight of Geoffrey’s madness, it chanced one evening that he walked out to Lesser Cheriton with this very book in his pocket. (Did some ineffaceable rose odour of that dead June cling to the pages still, rendering Vol. VI. dearer in Geff’s imagination than its fellows?) He read ‘James Lee’s Wife’ aloud to Dinah Thurston—a poem totally outside the girl’s comprehension—and during the recital of which her decently suppressed yawns must have rebuffed any man less blindly in love than was Geoffrey Arbuthnot.
At ‘James Lee’s Wife’ the book opened now.
‘Ah, Love, but a day,
And the world has changed!’
Dinah read through the first stanzas untouched. Pretty love-warblings, the cry of a happy woman’s heart,—what had they to say to her, Dinah Arbuthnot? In the last stanza of ‘By the Fireside’ her pulse gave a leap.
‘Did a woman ever—would I knew!—
Watch the man——’
Dinah went back to the window, the volume in her hand. She returned to the beginning of the poem, pored over it, line by line, stanza by stanza, in the fading light.
‘Yet this turns now to a fault—there! there!
That I do love, watch too long,
And wait too well, and weary and wear;
And ’tis all an old story, and my despair
Fit subject for some new song.’
And when she had got thus far, the clouds of her ignorance lightened. She began to understand.
Shortly before ten o’clock, entered Geoffrey. The parlour lamps were not lit. Dinah’s figure was in dense shadow as she leaned, absorbed in her own thoughts, beside the open window. Geoffrey, believing the room empty, sang under his breath, as he groped his way across to the mantelshelf; no very distinguishable tune—an ear for music was not among Geff’s gifts—but with sufficient of a quick, triplet measure in it to recall a Spanish Barcadero that Marjorie Bartrand was fond of singing to herself.
To Dinah’s sick heart the song was consciously wounding.
She had been so long used to Geff’s undivided homage, that sense of power had, little by little, grown into tyranny, gentle rose-leaf tyranny, whose weight Geoffrey’s broad shoulders bore without effort, and yet having in its nature one of tyranny’s inalienable qualities, lack of justice.
‘Always in spirits, Geoffrey!’ The reproach came to him through the gloom. ‘It is good to think, whether the day is dark or shining, our cousin Geoffrey can always sing.’
Geoffrey was at her side in a moment.
‘It is cruel to speak of my horrible groanings as singing, Mrs. Arbuthnot; crueller still to hint of them as betokening good spirits. Where is Gaston? You are back earlier than I expected from your walk to Roscoff.’
‘The walk fell through. I shall have to border my work with a rose pattern bought in the shops. Gaston was obliged to dine at Dr. Thorne’s. He made the engagement, of course, without thinking of our walk. I ought never to have counted on those Roscoff wild roses. I——’
Dinah’s voice lapsed, brokenly, into silence.
‘If you would like the roses, you can have them by breakfast to-morrow,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Few things I should enjoy better than a six-mile trudge in the early morning.’
‘No, Geoffrey, no. Gaston always tells me that my bought patterns are atrocious, and the walk was planned by him, and he was to have sketched from the fresh briars by lamplight. My heart in it all is over. The Roscoff roses may go!’
As so much of weightier delight had been allowed to go, negligently, irrevocably, out of Dinah Arbuthnot’s life. Dinah herself might not suggest the thought, but to Geoffrey’s mind it was a vivid, a pathetic one.
‘And why should you not take my escort? You know I am never burthened with engagements. Let us go to Roscoff to-morrow. You owe Miss Bartrand a visit. Well, we will take Tintajeux on our road, and make Marjorie show us the way to Roscoff Common.’
‘Miss Bartrand will not expect me to return her visit. She came here because—because you, dear Geff, with or without words, bade her come! I should never have courage to face the grandfather. Gaston would be the right person to call on the Seigneur of Tintajeux.’
‘The Seigneur of Tintajeux might think otherwise,’ Geoffrey laughed. ‘Old Andros Bartrand made minute inquiries about Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot the last time I saw him.’
‘About me—always the same story!’ cried Dinah, uneasily. ‘Why should people talk of us? What is there in my life, or in Gaston’s, that need arouse so much curiosity?’
‘Shall I answer as your friend, Lord Rex, would do?’
‘Answer truly, Geff, not like Lord Rex Basire, but like yourself.’
‘Why should the good people of Guernsey talk about you, do you ask? Because, Mrs. Arbuthnot, even in this country of fair faces, yours may have gained the reputation of being the fairest.’
The speech would have fitted Lord Rex better. Geff was sensible in the darkness that his cheek reddened.
‘The fairest!’ echoed poor Dinah, petulantly. ‘Oh, I sicken of the very word “fair.” Shades of hair or of eyes, a white skin, a straight profile, how can people think twice of these trivial things? The woman best worth speaking about in Guernsey or elsewhere should be she, not with the fairest, but the happiest face.’
Her own, certainly, was not happy to-night. Growing accustomed to the parlour’s darkness, fitfully broken by a reflected light from one of the garden lamps outside, Geff could note her exceeding pallor. He could note, also, that Dinah Arbuthnot’s eyes revealed no trace of tear-shedding, that a look rather of newly-stirred interest, of awakening excitement, was in their depths.
‘And you have spent your evening not only without Gaston, but without cross-stitch? It is a fresh experience,’ he told her gravely, ‘for you to be idle.’
‘I read until the light went—don’t you see—I have got hold of a book of yours? A book of verses that I did not understand when you tried to read it aloud to me at Lesser Cheriton.’
Ah, how the old name, spoken by her tongue, stabbed him always! Geoffrey Arbuthnot bent his face above the volume in Dinah’s hand.
‘“Robert Browning.” But for my bad reading, you ought to have liked these poems four years ago.’
‘I think not, Geff. Uneducated people can like only where they feel. And in those young days’—oh, unconsciously cruel Dinah!—‘I felt so little. But I have an object now in learning. I want to learn on all subjects, out of books as well as from life. That reminds me of something I had to say to you, Geff. Lord Rex Basire was calling on me this afternoon.’
‘Lord Rex Basire was calling on you the greater part of yesterday.’
‘And I took upon myself to accept an invitation for you. There will be a picnic party on Wednesday. It is some yachting expedition to the French coast, got up by the officers of the regiment, to which you will be asked——’
‘But to which I shall certainly not go. I can get as far out to sea as I like with the fisher people. Wednesday is one of my busiest days.’
‘Miss Bartrand will be invited, too, if you are thinking of her.’
‘Miss Bartrand can do as she chooses. I have more important work than my two hours’ reading at Tintajeux.’
‘If I ask you, Geff, will you refuse?’
‘I refuse, unconditionally. I hate gay parties. What mortal interest could I have in the society of men like Lord Rex Basire and his brother officers?’
‘Only that I am going, that Gaston ... I mean, I looked upon it as a matter of course you would accept, and——’
The words died on Dinah’s lips. She had an unreasoning sensation that her firmest safety ground was at this moment cut abruptly from her feet.
As she stood, faltering, uncertain, Geoffrey took the volume of Browning from her. It opened at page 58.
‘Little girl with the poor coarse hand.’
There was just sufficient light for him to make out the letters of the first line.
‘Is this the poem you have been reading, Mrs. Arbuthnot? Why, I distinctly remember your pronouncing “James Lee’s Wife” to be meaningless.’
‘I have my lesson—shall understand,’ said Dinah. ‘“James Lee’s Wife” is the story of a woman whose heart is broken.’
And she turned from him. Geoffrey could only see her face in extreme profile. The cheek with its drawn oval, the exquisite, sad lips, showed in strong relief, like a cheek, like lips of marble, against the night sky.
He first broke silence.
‘Do you care, seriously—do you care a fraction, one way or the other—about my accepting this invitation of Basire’s for Wednesday?’ he asked her. ‘Is it possible my going could be of help to you?’
A big lump in poor Dinah’s throat kept her, during some moments, from speaking. Then with trembling eagerness her answer broke forth. She cared more seriously than she could say ‘about Geoffrey’s not forsaking her.’ Gaston, of course, would be of the party, but then Gaston was so popular, so sure to be unapproachable! She would never, never want Geoffrey to martyrise himself again. It was the first great favour she had asked him. When she was once launched in the world, said Dinah, rallying with effort, she would know what to say and do and look, unhelped by a prompter.
And all Geff’s hatred for gay parties, and for men like Lord Rex Basire and his brother officers, went to the winds. That Dinah was beginning to anatomise her pain unhelped by suggestion from without, that Dinah had grasped the subtle meaning of ‘James Lee’s Wife,’ were facts that could not be lightly put aside. Her cry to himself, Geoffrey thought, was that of a child who seeks succour, from instinct, rather than from knowledge of his danger.
‘The martyrdom would not last long,’ urged Dinah, misjudging his intention. ‘To any one so fond of the sea as you, Geff, twelve or fifteen hours on board a steamer are not much. We are to leave early in the morning and be back in Guernsey the following night. If you know what a kindness you would be doing me!’
‘I mean to go,’ said Geff Arbuthnot shortly.
Twelve hours! He felt, just then, that he would pass twelve weeks, or months, on a steamer, if by so doing he could lighten one ounce of Dinah’s burthens to her!
‘And Gaston’s conscience will be at rest,’ she exclaimed. ‘The truth is, you see, Gaston was not well pleased at my accepting at all. He bade me ask you, Geoffrey, to look after me.’
To a more sophisticated mind than Geff’s it might have occurred that the most fitting man to look after Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife would be—Gaston Arbuthnot himself.