CHAPTER XXII
LINDA AS AN ART CRITIC
Wednesday morning’s sun rose cloudless. A few persistent fog wreaths lay, even as the day advanced, to leeward of the islands. There was an undue ground-swell, although the surface of the water glistened, smooth as oil, when the high spring tide began to flow in from the Atlantic. None but an inveterate croaker could, however, prophesy actual mischief from signs so trivial. Lord Rex Basire declared aloud—certain of his guests arriving not as the time for departure drew nigh—that the day must have been manufactured expressly for the subaltern’s picnic. No wind, no sea, a nicely-tempered sun above one’s head, a favourable tide—‘What more,’ asked Lord Rex, ‘especially if one add the item of a powerful steamer, could the never satisfied heart of woman require?’
The heart of the most Venerable woman in the island required that there should be neither ground-swell nor fog-bank. At the eleventh hour came an excuse, on the score of weather, from Madame Corbie. The post of chaperon-in-chief stood vacant. Happily for the youthful hosts, Rosie Verschoyle’s mother was faithful—a little white passive lady, accustomed to the iron rule of grown-up daughters, who only stipulated that she should lie down, within reach of smelling-salts, before leaving Guernsey harbour, and neither be spoken to nor looked at until they arrived in smooth water off the coast of France. Old Cassandra, in her scarlet cloak, was to the fore, with cans for fish, with crooks for sea-weed, with a butterfly-net, with stoppered bottles—Cassandra, burthened by a sole regret—that she had left her harp behind. If these young people had wished, in mid ocean, to dance, how willingly would Cassandra have harped to them! Doctor Thorne and his Linda were punctual; so were the trio of pretty de Carteret sisters whom poor Mrs. Verschoyle, according to a trite figure of speech, was to ‘look after.’ And still Rex Basire glanced vainly along the harbour road for the only guests concerning whose advent he cared. The steam was up; the skipper stood ready on the bridge. In another ten minutes the Princess of necessity must quit her moorings, and still the sunshine of Dinah Arbuthnot’s face was wanting.
‘You look frightfully careworn, Lord Rex,’ said Rosie Verschoyle with malicious intonation, as she followed the direction of his glances. Pray, has your lobster salad not arrived? Is your ice melting? Or does some anxiety even yet more tragic disturb your peace?’
‘There they are—no, by Jove! only the men. Twelve feet two of the Arbuthnot cousins!’ exclaimed Lord Rex, with frank disrespect of Rosie’s sympathy. ‘Is it possible Mrs. Arbuthnot can have thrown us over? The thought is too atrocious!’
The tall figures of Gaston and Geoffrey—twelve feet two of the Arbuthnot cousins—were descending by quick strides the stepway that forms a short cut from the High Town of Petersport to the quay. Before Rex Basire’s disappointment had had time to formulate itself more coherently a clatter of ponies’ hoofs, a rush of wheels, made themselves heard round the corner of the adjacent harbour road. A few instants later and the welcomest sight the world could, just then, have offered to Lord Rex was before him: Marjorie Bartrand, in her pony carriage, and at Marjorie’s side, fairer than all summer mornings that ever dawned, the blushing lovely face of Dinah Arbuthnot.
‘Have we to apologise? Are we really behind our time?’ cried Gaston, as Lord Rex came forward to welcome them at the gangway. ‘It has been a case of the fox and the goose and the bunch of grapes. My wife would not start without Miss Bartrand; Geff would not start without my wife. I was not allowed to start alone. The most delightful weather!—and the most delightful party,’ added Gaston, looking at the sunlit world around him with his pleasantest expression. ‘Miss Verschoyle, the Miss de Carterets—Marjorie Bartrand! Why, all the pretty faces in Guernsey are assembled on board the Princess!’
The four or five hours that followed were hours destined to be marked with a red letter in the calendar of Dinah’s life. She felt the youth at her heart, enjoyed the salt freshness of the morning, entered into the mirth and spirit of the expedition like a child. Gaston’s conduct was unexceptionable. Before they had quitted the harbour he took his place beside his wife—jotting down each new effect of sky or wave or passing fishing-boat in his note-book. He remained beside her throughout the voyage. The pretty island girls, capital sailors all of them, chatted in picturesque twos and threes with their bachelor hosts. Lord Rex Basire devoted himself, with a show of perfect impartiality, to every one.
If this was growing used to the perils of a factitious world, the first plunge into a social vortex where more neophytes sink than swim, Dinah found the process distinctly pleasant. And I am afraid the thought of Linda, effaced for once, in grim earnestness, by all-effacing sea-sickness down below, failed to take the edge off Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot’s enjoyment.
Herm, with its fringe of shell-spangled sands, was soon left behind. The high table-land of Sark became a fairy-like vision, hanging suspended, as on Mahomet’s thread, between heaven and sea, ere it vanished out of ken. After an hour’s steady steaming Alderney’s tall cliffs were sighted through the haze; and then, shortly before one, the south-west swell gave signs of lessening. The Princess was to leeward of the Point of Barfleur, and lunch, served after a desultory and scrambling fashion, began to find hearty welcome among the watchers on deck.
At the cheery whizzing of champagne corks old Doctor Thorne aroused himself from a comfortable siesta he had been enjoying in the bows, and came aft. The sight of Linda’s husband, a tumbler of Moet in his hand, his puggareed hat pushed back from his sun-shrivelled Indian visage, brought back the thought of Linda Thorne to the general mind.
‘Mrs. Thorne! Shall Mrs. Thorne not have champagne sent to her?’ cried Gaston, who was reclining, a picture of virtuous contentment, beside his wife. ‘Or, better still, now that we have a smooth deck, Doctor, shall Mrs. Thorne not come up into the light of day?’
The old Doctor shook his head as he accepted a goodly plate of lobster salad from the steward’s boy.
‘Poor girl! My poor dear Lin! A typically severe case of mal de mer always. Stop a bit—no hurry—just give me a trifle more of the dressing. I have collected a mass of data about sea-sick persons,’ observed the Doctor, draining down his champagne, with relish, ‘and I am wholly against any attempt at nourishing them. Quite a mistake to administer stimulants. (Thank you, Lord Rex, you may give me another quarter of a tumbler of your excellent Moet.) A mistake to imagine persons as sea-sick as my poor wife can digest anything.’
‘I think you are disgracefully heartless, Doctor,’ cried Rosie Verschoyle, in her thin, gay accents. ‘Mrs. Thorne and dear mamma must require wine much more than all we well people. I declare it is positively shameful to think how we have been enjoying the voyage while they were in misery. Now, who will help me carry something to our poor martyrs below?’
‘Who,’ of course, meant Lord Rex Basire. Following the airy flutter of Rosie Verschoyle’s dress, Lord Rex dutifully assisted in conveying biscuits, champagne, and sympathetic messages to the martyrs—as far as the cabin door. Though the deck was smooth, Linda showed coyness as to returning thither. Her belief in human nature, especially in Gaston Arbuthnot’s human nature, was, I fear, frailish. The livid cheeks, pale lips, and sunken eyes of recent sea-sickness were tests to which Linda, under no conditions, would have dreamt of exposing a sentimental friendship!
‘Mrs. Thorne is quite too good—the dearest, most unselfish creature living!’ Rosie Verschoyle announced these little facts before all hearers, on her return to upper air. ‘Doctor Thorne, I hope you are listening to my praises of your wife. Mrs. Thorne is not ill, not very ill herself, but she will not leave my poor frightened mother for a moment. I call that real, quiet heroism. In glorious weather like this to remain shut up in the cabin of a steamer for another person’s sake!’
‘Our good Smeet! She knows so well to efface herself.’
There was a twinkle in Gaston Arbuthnot’s shrewd eyes. Possibly, as Rosie Verschoyle spoke, the words of Madame Benjamin’s eulogy came back to him.
A league or two beyond Barfleur a French pilot was signalled for, the pilotage from the Point to Langrune being tortuous and difficult. Does the reader know the fairness of that little-visited strip of Norman coast? Fairness at its zenith, perhaps, in April, when the orchards bordering the shore are heavy with white pear, or rose-pink apple bloom; when the black-thorn blossoms so lavishly that, if the wind be south, you may distinguish whiffs of the wild, half-bitter aroma far out at sea. But exquisite, too, on a late June day like this, the yellow colza in full harvest, the barley-fields ready for the sickle, the Caen-stone spires and homesteads standing out in white relief against the level horizon-line of sky.
A French pilot was signalled for. After his coming the Princess steamed slower and ever slower eastward. By and by—Langrune already visible across the expanse of yellowish sea—it became observable that the vessel’s movement could scarce be felt by those on board. The skipper stood consulting with the pilot on the bridge, the figures of the men at the wheel were motionless. There was a simultaneous hush in everybody’s talk, a momentary tension of the breath at the thought of something happening! And then came the blank, unmistakable order, ‘Stop her!’ Before leaving Petersport wrong reckoning had been made as to the difference between the hour of ebb in Guernsey and along the coast of France; the skipper had no choice but to anchor. Would the passengers await the turn of the tide and deeper water, or land, by help of the boats, on some rocks within easy reach, and trust to getting ashore across a tract of wide wet sand as best they might?
The stout-nerved Guernsey girls, accustomed to scores of bigger adventures at sand-eeling parties and conger expeditions, laughed at the horrors of the position. With Cassandra Tighe as leader, these young women announced their determination of reaching the shore forthwith, though not dry-footed. Among the chaperons arose murmurs of contumacy. Poor Mrs. Verschoyle, a ghastly figure, emerging tremulously from the cabin, observed that she looked on all voluntary sea-going excursions as a tempting of Providence. With a spot like L’Ancresse Common, not three miles from Petersport—L’Ancresse Common, where one could have had the society of our excellent Archdeacon and of Madame Corbie—why, said Mrs. Verschoyle, with the acerbity of mortal digestive revolt—why put one’s self at the mercy of tides and pilots at all?
Old Dr. Thorne was flatly rebellious. There was good champagne on board the Princess, thought the Doctor. There were Burmese cheroots—a warm sun. There was the ultimate certainty of floating up with the tide.
‘If any one be at a loss how to pass the afternoon hours let him take a siesta, or inquire if the skipper have a pack of cards stowed away. You see the wisdom of my remarks, I am sure, Lin, do you not?’
‘I see the wisdom of them for you and me, my dear,’ said Lin, graciously. Under cover of a doubly-folded gauze veil, protected by rice powder, a parasol, a well-adjusted Indian shawl, Linda Thorne had at length committed herself to the cruel eye of noon. ‘My own election is to abide by Mrs. Verschoyle, whatever happens. I am afraid we shall hardly win over the young ones, Robbie, to our staid philosophy.’
‘If Rosie and the Miss de Carterets land I shall land,’ said Mrs. Verschoyle, with dreary resignation.
The poor little lady’s elder daughters were married. She had three girls in the schoolroom still. She had also boys. Chaperonage at balls and picnics, nursing of measles or scarlatina, love affairs, school bills, breakages, all came to Mrs. Verschoyle as the burthens of her widowed, many childrened lot—heavy burthens to be borne under sorrowful protest. ‘If the picnic had only been at L’Ancresse Common,’ she repeated, ‘we should have the Archdeacon and Madame Corbie with us, and need never have got wet shoes at all.’
A consultation with the skipper resulted in a general lowering of the boats. A quarter of an hour later the whole of the party, save the Doctor, were landed on the Smaller Cancale, a reef of rock separated by a mile of treacherous sands from terra firma, and upon whose limited area a crowd of Parisians of both sexes were fishing—no, were following ‘la pêche’ (the terms are not convertible)—after the guise and in the vestments sacred to the Parisian heart.
Mrs. Verschoyle sank down on the first slippery point of rock that presented itself, vainly wishing, little though she loved the steamer, that her maternal duties had allowed her to remain there with the Doctor and the sailors. Cassandra Tighe started off, the lightest-hearted of the party, perhaps, to hunt for zoophytes and molluscs among the tide pools. The younger people, all, pronounced themselves in favour of an exploring walk inland before dinner—all except Mrs. Thorne.
‘I mean to look after your mother, Rosie,’ said Linda, removing her double folds of gauze, as she took her place at the elder lady’s side. ‘Please let me indulge my Indian laziness. Some one, positively, ought to stay with dear Mrs. Verschoyle, and I like to be that some one. It makes me remember my queer old governess days to find myself among Parisians.’ Linda was prone to these little bursts of retrospective humility. ‘And then, there is my husband! Robbie, no doubt, will eventually drift up with the tide. Quite too charming to leave all us, sober elders, together.’
‘Sober elders’—so Dinah realised, with a contracting heart—was a sufficiently elastic term to embrace Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. Before landing from the boats, Gaston, with keen artistic vision, had descried some marvellously pretty fisher-girl among the crowd of French people on the rocks. Not a real red-handed, rough-haired fisher-girl, but the latest Worth idea of a duly got-up pêcheuse, the very subject, Gaston declared, for his own meretricious pencil. He must make a stealthy study of her forthwith. And indeed, at this present moment, not many paces distant from Mrs. Verschoyle and her devoted friend, Gaston Arbuthnot, sketch-book in hand, was already at work.
Dinah lingered aimlessly. The desire of her heart was to stay beside her husband. Her pleasure would have been to watch his quick, clever pencil, to hear him discourse, in his light strain, about these foreigners, whose theatrical manners and dress, overwhelming to her in her ignorance, must to him be familiar. She felt that the brightness of her day would be clouded if she left Gaston! And yet, mused Dinah, troubled of spirit, do wives, in society, hang jealously at their husband’s elbow, or watch their pencil, or listen to their talk with delight? Would she expose herself—far worse, would she expose Gaston to ridicule, by shirking the walking party?
An expressive glance, shot from Mr. Arbuthnot’s eyes, set these questionings only too sharply at rest.
‘Look carefully in through the cottage windows, Dinah.’ He bestowed on her a little valedictory wave of two fingers. ‘Capital bits of ware are still to be unearthed in these parts of the world. If you see a likely cup or saucer, get Geoffrey to talk French for you.’ Gaston Arbuthnot was a dabbler in most branches of bric-à-brac, and up to the present date had never lost money by his dealings. ‘Mrs. Thorne, when we have got rid of these young people, I want you to criticise me. My beautiful fishing-girl grows too much like a figure from the mode-books.’
Linda Thorne, promptly obedient, took up her position at the artist’s side.