‘You have found out a right pleasant spot.’ Geff settled himself coolly into repose among the long wayside grasses that clothed the opposite or field side of the ditch. ‘Our friends, when they have bought themselves each a cross and medal, are going down to watch the Parisians return from fishing. You and I will have the best of it among the barley here.’
‘You—and I!’
‘You—and I! Does the expression displease you, Miss Bartrand?’
‘If you have any intention of remaining, you had better take out your pipe at once, Mr. Arbuthnot.’
‘Why?’
‘Because an idle man, his feet dangling over a ditch, and not smoking, would be a spectacle too wretched to contemplate.’
‘The description may be worse than the fact. I am idle. My feet dangle over a ditch. I am not smoking. I was never less wretched in my life.’
‘I spoke of such a person as an object of painful contemplation.’
‘Is the spectacle painful to you at this moment? Speak frankly.’
‘I—I only wished to let you know that you might smoke, if you chose.’
‘Thanks! I would rather do nothing to alter my present state of feeling.’
And then they came to a full stop: a rather marked one.
Marjorie spoke first. ‘The charm of a spot like this’—she brought out each word with incision—‘is its solitude.’
‘Solitude à deux. The French have such an expression, have they not?’
Geff Arbuthnot asked the question, pronouncing his eu vilely.
‘“Solitude a-doo!” I am hopelessly stupid,’ said Marjorie, holding her head aloft. ‘“A-doo!” Is it meant for a farewell, or what? I really do not see the drift of the idiom—a quotation, perhaps, from one of the classic authors?’
Geoffrey was sensible that she had never been more dangerous than at this juncture, mutinous pride struggling with merriment on her clear girlish face, as she turned his terrible French accent into ridicule. He was sensible, also, of a new, an unexpected pleasure in being laughed at by her.
‘Were you enjoying your solitude (without the “doo”) truly, and thoroughly, when I disturbed you?’
‘Thoroughly, no. I had not got the flavour of folly enough out of my mouth for that. You relished, I hope, the exquisite wit we English people showed in the church, Mr. Arbuthnot? You appreciated the fun of wounding simple beliefs by depositing our Oxford Street finery among the real piteous crutches before La Delivrande? And to think that young women,’ exclaimed Marjorie, waxing warm, ‘are stigmatised, in masses, as frivolous! How can they be anything but frivolous with such examples before them?’
‘Let us cast up both columns of the account. Would a man—no, as we are talking of Lord Rex Basire, let us say would a foolish youth—display his foolishness among a bevy of pretty girls, unless they were ready to give him smiles as an encouragement?’
‘I am sure Mrs. Arbuthnot would not be among the smilers. Her beautiful face looked so good and calm, when the rest of us stood giggling there before the altar.’
‘My cousin is serious—a little over-serious always.’ Geoffrey Arbuthnot gazed attentively at the horizon as he made this remark.
‘It would do your cousin a vast deal of good to run away from that feather-weight husband of hers. Look shocked, if you choose; I am in earnest. I consider,’ said Marjorie, displaying her worldly wisdom with gravity, ‘that Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot’s character is thoroughly spoilt. He is a charming fellow, doubtless. Still, everybody need not remind him of his charm to his face.’
‘And you believe in retributive morality? You think the curative treatment for a charming fellow is—that his wife should run away from him?’
‘My experience of charming fellows would incline me towards heroic treatment. As we walked up from Langrune I asked Mrs. Arbuthnot to start with me on foot for Spain. With twenty francs in our pocket, I told her, and doing a day’s work on the road whenever our resources ran low, we might get down safe to the frontier in time. But Mrs. Arbuthnot did not seem to see it.’
‘Dinah’s is not an adventurous spirit. If you would accept a substitute, Miss Bartrand, perhaps I——’
‘Go on, pray.’
‘Might be allowed to follow, with a thick stick, at a distance.’
‘Keep your stick for England! I would not be afraid on the loneliest road between this and Barcelona.’
‘Without the stick, then—shall we start?’
Marjorie shifted her posture a little. She became suddenly interested in a plant of marshmallow at her side.
‘When next I enter Spain, Mr. Arbuthnot, it shall be with dignity. When I meet my mother’s people I hope to be armed with degrees, certificates—whatever the English universities will confer on me.’
‘Don’t go until your name has been bracketed high on the list of wranglers.’
As Geoffrey made this venture on thin ice he watched his pupil narrowly. One of the storm-flashes that lit Marjorie Bartrand’s face into such frequent, such perilous beauty, was his reward.
‘You mean—never go at all! Do you feel a pleasure, Mr. Arbuthnot, in throwing cold water over my dearest hopes and ambitions?’
‘An enormous pleasure, Miss Bartrand. I have felt it from that first evening when you were good enough to hire me as your teacher at Tintajeux.’
The girl looked away from him, her colour changing.
‘That evening, when I had to receive you in state, to make formal speeches and curtsies, all my great-aunts and uncles looking on through their Bartrand eyelids! Do you remember our Bon Espoir? He was an omen of better temper, perhaps, than has prevailed between us since. Were you taken aback? Was I quite unlike what you expected?’
She asked these momentous questions with the keen curiosity characteristic of the passion in its earlier days. But all the time she shrank from encountering Geff Arbuthnot’s glance.
‘You really desire to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘I will tell you, on one condition. What was your wish when you curtsied under the cedars to the new moon?’
‘My wish?’ turning farther and farther away from him. ‘Why, folly unrepeatable—the sort of nonsense my nurses taught me to say when I was little. Your memory is inconveniently good.’
‘Accurate to the smallest detail! How clearly one can see the meeting of those four water-lanes, and the flowers you gave me, as I know now, alas! for Mrs. Arbuthnot, and the ribbon you tied them with—the ribbon,’ said Geff coolly, ‘which you will some day send me back for a book-marker! Yes, the fairest summer evening of my life was the one when I first saw Tintajeux Manoir—and you.’
And he believed his own words. Sure sign that the heart within him was sound—healthiest life at its core. Guessing at the confessions of that ingenuous maidenly face as Marjorie, half blushes, half wilfulness, persistently gave him her profile, Geoffrey Arbuthnot had clean forgotten Lesser Cheriton, ay, and a drama played out there in which he took a not unimportant part.
‘I think this Norman evening is to the full as fair,’ said Marjorie. ‘There are bigger sweeps of outline, there is more quality in the air than falls to our lot in the Channel Islands.’
Then, again, there came a pause, broken softly by the occasional hum of an insect on the wing, by the swaying of stalks, the whispers of the ripe and restless grain, by the chirp of the hedge crickets, by the solitary treble of a lark lost somewhere, pouring its heart out in the sea-blue vault above.
Marjorie could not be silent long.
‘To begin at the beginning, what did you think of me when you got my first note—the two lines I sent in answer to yours? Nothing very good, or you would not be so reluctant to tell it.’
‘I thought,’ said Geff, ‘that you required my services as a coach, that there was a little affectation about your Greek “e’s,” and that your name was Marjorie D. Bartrand.’
‘That terrible signature of mine—the one bearable name I possess reduced to a D! You know, Mr. Arbuthnot, I hope, what D. stands for?’
‘Dorcas?’ suggested Geoffrey, ‘or perhaps Deborah? We have a number of fine old Hebrew names beginning with D.’
‘But I am not a fine old Hebrew. I am a Spanish woman, heart and soul, and I bear my mother’s name, Dolores. Grandpapa and I met an American in Paris, when I was younger, who used to call me “Miss Dollars.” The thought of that pronunciation always makes me shy of bringing my beautiful Spanish name to the fore.’
‘Dollars is more beautiful than Dolores.’ Saying this, Geoffrey took studious care to imitate her accent. ‘Dollars is at least suggestive of human activity, of the market-place, not the graveyard. Why should a child, with all the good chances of life open, have such a name as Grief imposed upon her by worldly-wise godfathers and godmothers?’
‘I speak of Dolores, not Grief, and—and you have no poetry in you, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot! You don’t know all that a word says to us southern people. Think of plain Marjorie Bartrand—nothing but “ar, ar!” If I could only change Bartrand for a name with no “ar” in it, I——’
The supposition was rushing forth with velocity. Then, in a trice, Marjorie stopped. She coloured to the roots of her hair. And then she and Geoffrey laughed so loud that the stilly air rang with their laughter. If these two young people did not actually tread the primrose path, they were within a stone’s-throw of it, ignorant though both might be of the route which lay so near them.
‘That “ar” is the worst of all your cruelties,’ said Geff presently. ‘To show my greatness of mind I will return evil for good. I will tell you what you wish to know. As I walked out for the first time to Tintajeux, I had you constantly before my mind’s eye, Miss Bartrand. I saw you, with the vision of the spirit, every inch an heiress.’
‘Every inch an heiress!’ repeated Marjorie, abashed.
‘With rigid manners, hair drawn back, Chinese fashion, and overwhelming dignity. Whenever people are of more than common volume—I fancy that is the euphemistic term, is it not?—dignity!’
‘And you found me—a scarecrow.’ She measured, mentally, and with self-abasement, the leanness of her unfledged figure. ‘What did you think when a lank country child, in a cotton gown, and without either dignity or manner, appeared before you?’
‘I felt it was my duty to accept facts as they came. I summoned up courage, and mastered my disappointment with tolerable ease,’ said Geoffrey Arbuthnot.
His face supplied a postscript to the admission which caused Marjorie’s heart to beat faster.
‘We must not stop here all day!’ she cried, springing promptly to her feet. ‘Although, if one had something to eat, it might be pleasant to do so. Yonder, to the left, is Courseulles spire. We saw it—no, you were hemmed in by sunshades—I saw it from the steamer. If we take this footpath through the cornfields, we might visit Courseulles and make a small turn round the country before going back to our company and our dinner at Langrune.’
But Geoffrey did not move.
‘I will have my bond,’ he uttered with tragic emphasis. ‘I will never stir from this spot until you tell me what your wish was when you curtsied to the moon.’
‘I would rather not say. You have the right to insist, of course—it was a bargain. But, please, let me off. Why should I repeat such puerility here, in the wise and sober light of day?’
‘I will have my bond,’ repeated Geoffrey Arbuthnot tenaciously. ‘I have made my confession in full. Now, do you make yours. What was your wish?’
A flood of shame by this time suffused Marjorie’s cheeks. But Geoffrey was stubborn. He exacted his pound of flesh to the uttermost.
‘I curtsied, as the children do, thrice ... and each time, while you were talking solemnly to grandpapa, I said, quite in a whisper——’
‘Don’t mind punctuation, Miss Bartrand. It will be the sooner over.’
‘“I like my coach—may my coach like me!”’ cried Marjorie, nearly in tears, but giving to the refrain the true sing-song of the nursery. ‘Remember, sir, when I was so inane I had only known you two hours, and—and I believed you to be the other Mr. Arbuthnot.’
Geoffrey slipped down to his feet. As Marjorie was standing on the bank, it thus happened that their faces were on a level, and very near each other. Geoffrey observed, more closely than he had done before, the texture of her skin—delicate, in spite of sunburn, as perfect health and Guernsey air could render it. He looked into the depths of her gray eyes, even in their quietest expression touched with fire. He admired the character, so superior to all mere prettiness, of her serious large mouth.
‘The wish has come true,’ he whispered, in a tone never to be forgotten by Marjorie Bartrand, ‘although I have the misfortune of being myself, not Gaston. Let me help you.’
He held out his hands, but Marjorie, with her agile young strength, had cleared the ditch almost before his assistance was proffered. They paused a moment or two irresolute, they discussed a little as to latitude and longitude, and then away the two started, in the direction of Courseulles, across the cornfields.
A third figure, dove-winged, golden-quivered, walked with them, although they might not discern his presence.