CHAPTER XXVIII
FOR AULD LANG SYNE
Meantime, whilst this mature pair of sentimentalists recalled the past under the starlight, the younger people, sound of heart and limb, were making the most of the present inside the walls of Luc Casino. Fine weather for their voyage, an excellent French dinner, and now a ball, with distractingly pretty girls for partners, what further enjoyment could hearts as light as the hearts of the subaltern hosts desire?
Lord Rex, only, played spectator. While Rosie Verschoyle danced waltz, polka, American, to outward seeming in gayer spirits than her wont, Lord Rex remained fixed in his attendance on Mrs. Arbuthnot, beside one of the open ball-room doors. Dinah was curiously staunch of purpose, about trifles as about serious things. She clung to ‘first principles.’ It was a first principle with her never to enter a casino, English or French, and Rex Basire vainly expended his best special pleading in seeking to change her.
Mrs. Arbuthnot objected, perhaps, to waltz with a one-armed man? Would she give him a polka, then? Would she ‘rush’ an American quadrille? It made it ever so much more diverting if one did not know the figures of an American. Well, if she would not dance at all, would she take his arm and walk round the rooms? ‘Simply to put them in their place, Mrs. Arbuthnot. I have my British vanity. I want these bragging Frenchmen, accustomed to nothing handsomer than lay figures out of the pattern books, to see you.’
All in vain. Dinah wished neither to dance nor to dazzle. Only, if Lord Rex pleased—thus, after a space, she admonished him—it would be wise for his lordship to join the rest of his party. Miss Verschoyle was standing out; there could not be a likelier time than the present for him to secure Miss Verschoyle’s hand.
His lordship, however, did not please. And so, when Gaston and Linda Thorne returned, later on, from their walk, the first fact patent to both on entering the ball-room was Dinah’s absence. With a quick look around, Linda discerned Rosie Verschoyle standing at her mother’s side, partnerless.
‘Rosie Verschoyle a wall-flower? Oh, this is too bad! What can Lord Rex be thinking of?’ exclaimed Linda, ingenuously. ‘Mr. Arbuthnot, I insist upon your asking poor little Rosie to dance at once.’
‘I thought you and I were to take pity on each other, Mrs. Thorne, for auld lang syne?’
‘Think of Rosie, not me. It is positively wicked for old married women to monopolise the dancing men while girls stand out.’
‘Are you sure Miss Verschoyle would care to have a man with deposited affections for her partner? a veteran whose waltz step dates from the reign of Louis Philippe?’
‘Try her. In my young days girls would sooner dance with anybody than remain partnerless.’
‘That “anybody” gives me confidence. It is good to know the exact compartment in which one is pigeon-holed.’
Gaston crossed the room. He made his bow before Rosie, who moved forward graciously. Now that Mr. Arbuthnot had asked her, said the girl, in her thin staccato, she would have the enjoyment of one really good waltz. Something in Gaston’s looks made her certain that he was a splendid dancer. Louis Philippe? Mr. Arbuthnot’s step dated from the days of Louis Philippe? ‘Why, that,’ cried Rosie, ‘was before we were all born!’ She confessed to never remembering about those ‘horrid French Revolution people,’ but had a notion Louis Philippe came next to the king who got his head cut off. Or was he Egalité, the man who insisted upon dying in his boots?’
‘Louis Philippe came next to the king who got his head cut off,’ said Gaston, as his arm clasped her well-rounded waist. ‘I had no idea, Miss Verschoyle, that you were such a profound historian.’
Linda Thorne took the chair left vacant beside Rosie’s mother.
‘Your dear child is looking her best, Mrs. Verschoyle. I think our Guernsey roses do us national credit. We ought to produce an effect upon the foreign mind.’
‘The young people are too much flushed, every one of them. A day like this may lay the seeds of lifelong malady. I know, as a fact, Mrs. Thorne, that Rosie is dancing in wet shoes.’
‘Better dance than sit still in them,’ remarked Linda, cheerfully. ‘You never catch cold while you are amused.’
‘Could we not have been amused at a quarter the cost? I have been trying in my own mind to reckon up the expenses of the expedition. Putting everything at the lowest, I bring it to something fabulous—fabulous! If these young subalterns, sons, no doubt, of needy men, had only given us a tea-drinking on L’Ancresse Common! When Colonel Verschoyle was in command——’
The time when her colonel commanded a regiment in Guernsey was Mrs. Verschoyle’s one unchequered recollection, the standard by which all subsequent mortal events must be judged!
‘When poor Colonel Verschoyle was in command, that is what the officers used to do. Give us a tea-drinking at L’Ancresse and a dance for the young people afterwards. No show. Very little expense. Everybody pleased. Then, of course, if you got your shoes wet you could change them.’
The advantages of L’Ancresse over Langrune as a spot whereat to change your shoes seemed to touch Mrs. Verschoyle nearly. Her eyes filled.
‘The money that has gone on all this,’ she mourned; ‘not to speak of the doctors’ bills we may have to pay hereafter! When first the plan was chalked out I foresaw how everything would end. I entreated Rosie to reason with Lord Rex. Unfortunately I can never get my children to listen to me.’
‘You should have gained over Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ said Linda, with a spice of malice. ‘As the picnic was got up for her, no doubt she could have amended the programme.’
Mrs. Verschoyle looked more like a little bewildered white mouse than usual, as this newly propounded idea made its way slowly to her intelligence.
‘It is a most unprecedented thing! To get up a party of pleasure for a married lady without daughters! Mrs. Arbuthnot, I believe, has no daughters?—at all events not of an age to be introduced. Well, she is a very sweet-looking young woman,’ said the meek, motherly soul, through whose lips no breath of scandal ever passed. ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot has just that fair, placid, large look that used to be so much admired in my Flo. But the complexion is too transparent for health. Did I tell you Flo’s husband was ordered to Malta? His regiment is on this season’s reliefs, and Flo talks of coming over to me with the children—four babies, and a native nurse. I suppose I shall be able to take them all in?’
‘Easily. You have only to give up your own room and sleep in the conservatory. When Rahnee is married and offers to come home, with four babies and a native nurse, sleeping in the conservatory,’ observed Linda, ‘is just the kind of sacrifice I shall be prepared to make.’
‘You would have the old jungle ague back upon you in twenty-four hours if you did. Neither you nor Doctor Thorne are people who should take liberties with yourselves. Indeed, I think you have both been looking sadly this spring. Rosie, my dear, come here.’ For the waltz had ended. Gaston Arbuthnot was walking past, English fashion, his partner on his arm. ‘Come and sit down by me out of the draught. I do hope this is the last dance we shall stay for, Mr. Arbuthnot?’
‘No, indeed, mamma. We are to stay for the next. It is another waltz, and I am engaged for it to Lord Rex;’ Rosie glanced, a little ruefully, towards the door where Dinah and Lord Rex still stood. ‘Thank you so much, Mr. Arbuthnot, for our beautiful waltz. I hope,’ said Rosie Verschoyle, ‘all my partners, as long as I live, will have taken dancing lessons in the reign of Louis Philippe.’
When the opening bars of the waltz sounded, Lord Rex, with no very great alacrity, came across the room to claim Rosie’s hand. Gaston Arbuthnot bent over Linda.
‘“For auld lang syne.” Is this to be our dance, Mrs. Thorne?’
Linda Thorne was not a pretty, not by natural gift a graceful, woman. She was a perfect dancer. Poor Dinah, from her hiding-place, had found a genuine pleasure in watching Gaston waltz with dimpled, smiling Rosie Verschoyle. For Dinah, like all wholesome-minded mortals, had unmixed sympathy with the spirits and enjoyment of light-hearted girlhood. She looked with very different perceptions at Linda Thorne, looked at her with something of the feeling a true but unpopular artist might know on watching the facile successes of meretricious talent. This tinselled, pleasure-loving Linda, with her clinging draperies, her Indian perfumes—this wife whose heart was not with her husband, this mother who contentedly could leave her child to servants—was so far below the ideal towards which, since her marriage, Dinah Arbuthnot had faithfully striven.
Below an ideal standard. And yet, in such vital points as talking amusing talk, in dancing, dressing, dinner-giving, in the all-important matter of pleasing men difficult to please like Gaston Arbuthnot, how immeasurably was Linda her superior! Dinah’s heart contracted. She was just going to shift away into deeper shadow, when a hand touched her arm with friendly purpose. Turning, she saw Marjorie Bartrand—Cassandra Tighe, laden with nets and specimen boxes, in the rear.
Marjorie’s face glowed damask. ‘A pity you were not with us, Mrs. Arbuthnot. We have been having a glorious time, moth-hunting in the Luc lanes, Miss Tighe and I, and—and—every now and then Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot condescended to join when the chase got warm. What are you all about here?’ Marjorie ascended a step; she took a smiting glance round the ball-room. ‘Well, this is as good as a sermon. Miss Tighe, come and be edified. Is it not fine to see middle-aged couples waltzing for the public good?’
With a little scornful gesture of the head Marjorie indicated Gaston and-his partner.
‘Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot may be doing his steps from personal motives, perhaps because he has the “artistic temperament,” whatever,’ said Marjorie, ‘that elastic term may mean. Nothing but severe principles, the determination to point a moral, could make Linda Thorne go through violent exercise on a night like this.’
‘Linda Thorne is considered the best waltzer in Guernsey,’ said Cassandra. ‘Your tongue is over-sharp. You speak before you think, Marjorie Bartrand.’
‘I feel before I do either,’ whispered the girl, her hand stealing back, with half-shy kindness, to Dinah’s arm.
‘If Mrs. Arbuthnot had been with us,’ said Cassandra, ‘she would have witnessed a sight worth laughing at. Marjorie scoffs at middle-aged partners. What would you think, Mrs. Arbuthnot, of a white-haired woman flying across hedges and ditches—breathless with excitement, over the capture of a butterfly? Scarce a dozen specimens of Pontia Daplidice have been seen in Northern Europe during the last twenty years,’ went on old Cassandra, flushed still with victory. ‘And of these six only were netted, like mine, on the wing. Why, it would be worth staying a week here—a week, a month, on the outside chance of sighting a second Pontia Daplidice!’