CHAPTER XXX
LINDA WARMS TO HER PART
But Dinah was not unobserved, not uncared for.
If Cassandra Tighe’s taste for piquant situation once in a hundred times led her astray, the ninety-nine good offices performed by the kindly old maid in the interval were sufficient, surely, to atone for the single blunder.
Cassandra’s heart went out towards Dinah at the first moment when the fair sad face passed before her in the garden of Miller’s Hotel. She had listened with regret to stories of Gaston’s fickleness—even while her talents as a narrator assisted in giving such stories wider currency—had felt remorse, sharp and hard, for her own unwitting share in the ‘Arbuthnot drama.’ At this hour of which I write, Dinah standing mute, wan, beside her, Cassandra’s breast kindled with renewed compassion towards the simple unbefriended country girl, a compassion none the less genuine in that it went somewhat wide of Dinah’s actual and present trouble.
‘You look thoroughly done up, my dear Mrs. Arbuthnot. I am afraid to-day’s gadding about has been too much for you. Let us see,’ said Cassandra, in a whisper, ‘if we cannot find some quiet corner, you and I, where we may settle down and rest.’
Dinah turned on her a look of blank, unanswering pain. She wanted neither sympathy nor support, wanted only to creep below, out of sight, to avoid all temptation to disobedience, all possibility of bringing down ridicule—on Gaston!
‘I feel chilled—nothing, that is, to speak of. You are very good, Miss Tighe, but I had rather go down to the saloon alone, please. I am used to being alone, and—and I have a cloak which I must look for.’
A note of suppressed passion was in her voice. It betrayed emotion curiously at variance with the commonplace words, the staid reserved manner. And, in a moment, Cassandra Tighe’s valorous spirit had armed itself for action.
‘Dr. Thorne, will you stop that Luc boat, if you please? Never mind my nets, they can go anywhere. Attendez, matelots! Attendez moi,’ cried Cassandra in her own peculiar French, and signalling with her handkerchief to the boat, already a few lengths distant from the steamer. ‘It would scarcely do, Doctor, to let matters shape themselves with such very slight rough-hewing! Some one must go ashore without delay. Think of Linda’s anxiety if the Princess should leave before she had been assured of your safety!’
‘I think of many things,’ said Dr. Thorne, with humour, ‘the dampness of the night pre-eminently. Of course, I must go. Still, Linda might have exercised her reason—such reason as Providence bestows on the sex. Linda is not a child. What possible good could come from this kind of wild-goose chase?’
And the old Doctor moved an inch or two, exceedingly crusty of mien, in the direction of the companion ladder.
But this was not the plan of Cassandra Tighe’s campaign.
‘You will just stay comfortably where you are; you will keep a dry plank under your feet, Dr. Thorne, and give me carte blanche to look after your wife. If the Princess starts without us, Linda and I must find our way back to Guernsey. I have a purse in my pocket, Linda has a brain in her head. We both know how to travel. To you, Mrs. Arbuthnot, I confide my treasure.’ Turning round she gave Dinah a little chip box, clasping the girl’s cold hands for an instant as she did so. ‘Take care of Pontia Daplidice, my dear, and take care of yourself. Look for your cloak by all means. Doctor Thorne, do you persuade Ozanne to give us every possible moment’s law. I have a presentiment that all will come right, that your good wife’s over-anxiety will not lead her into mischief.’
The unwieldy Luc boat was by this time swaying to and fro at the bottom of the ladder. A Luc fisherman stood, with bare brawny arms extended, for Cassandra’s reception. A few seconds later Cassandra and boat, alike, had become a dark spot on the water, luminous now with the quick-moving facets of the rising tide. Dinah was alone, indeed!
She stood, for a time, mechanically watching the row of lights on shore, mechanically listening to the steam as it puffed, with energy unmistakable, from the funnels of the Princess. Then, uncertain of tread, heavy of limb as of heart, she groped her way below, resolved, silently, to endure whatever fate the coming half-hour might have in store for her.
The cabin lamps were as yet unlighted. Dinah entered the ladies’ saloon, at hazard. She sank down on the couch nearest the door. Then, burying her face between her hands, she strove, with might, to collect her thoughts, to stifle the resentment against Gaston which conscience, sternly just, already condemned as paltry—ungenerous.
It was of her own perverse will that she accepted Rex Basire’s invitation. How often had Gaston warned her that, with her temper, her opinions, she would find ‘society’ a dangerous experiment; a game in which she would be likely to stake gold against other players’ counters! She had come here to-day to please herself. She had no right of control over her husband’s actions. Gaston lived according to the light of his own conscience, not hers. He was courteous by temperament, fond of little unforeseen deviations from any laid-down programme, prompt, always, in putting his time, his energy, himself, at the service of his friends.
‘Langrune is not the end of the earth.’ She recalled his cheery, amused tone, as he was vanishing with Linda across the dunes. ‘If the Princess should start without us, we must get back by Cherbourg to-morrow. It will fit in very well.’ She remembered Doctor Thorne—his self-possession, his confidence in Gaston. ‘If my friend Arbuthnot is there, one’s fears are set at rest.’ She could imagine Linda’s witty reproduction of the whole too delicious accident when they should get back to Guernsey. Oh, let her gain mastery over herself—mastery! Let to-day’s lesson be a deeper one than can be gained by nice observance of tone, or look, or manner. Let her have learned to conquer small jealousies, to be wary of quick judgments, to construe the actions, the intentions of others, nobly.
Dinah resolved in the spirit to be strong. Meanwhile, she realised, with growing certitude, that she was weak, exceedingly, in the flesh. Her breath came with greater effort, her hands grew colder and more clammy. Rising with difficulty, she set herself to search for her cloak among a pyramid of wraps that lay, disordered, on a neighbouring couch, dimly discernible by aid of a newly-lighted lamp from the main cabin. Dinah Arbuthnot’s cloak lay (can Fate not be ironical even in the disposition of a heap of shawls?) immediately above a soft, long Indian scarf belonging to Mrs. Thorne. As she lifted it, the subtle Eastern perfume, associated always with Linda’s presence, seemed to Dinah, in a second, to fill the cabin. A feeling of sickness, a sudden access of keen personal repulsion, took hold of her—all-powerful hold; for, this time, it was instinct, not reason, that moved her anger. She flung down her cloak, with a childish sense of disgust at having handled it. She sank back, passively, upon the sofa....
A few minutes later came in the steward to light the centre lamp. Seeing one of the guests alone, and deathly white, he took the commonsense, or steward’s view of the situation. Feeling queer, already? Let him get the lady a brandy-and-soda, a glass of wine, then? Settle the system before they got into rough water—though, for the matter of that, they would have a splendid passage. Sea like a millpond, tide favourable. Nothing but running into one of these here Channel fogs to be feared.
‘I will take some soda-water, if you please.’ Odd and far away Dinah’s voice sounded to herself. ‘I am a good sailor in general. I would rather have a rough sea than a smooth one. But this evening I am a little tired. I feel thirsty.’
She drank the soda-water with a sense of refreshment. ‘The wretchedest preparation, without the B., that could be made for a voyage,’ thought the steward, as he stood, salver in hand, waiting for her glass. Then, when the man had again left her alone, she crept back into her place, held her hands tight to her throat to relieve the cruel sensation that well-nigh choked her, and waited.
Waited—how long she knew not—perhaps, a short ten minutes only. In recalling the whole scene, later—the swell of the rising water, the murmur of voices in the adjacent cabin, the clinging, overpowering Indian perfume—in summing up, I say, each external detail of that miserable evening, it would afterwards seem to Dinah Arbuthnot that no year of her life ever took so much hard living through as those mortal minutes.
At length they came to an end. Doubt was to be set at rest, or turned into yet sharper certainty. For she could tell, first by the muffled thud of rowlocks, then by the splash of oar blades in the water, that the second boat was arriving. She could distinguish Geoffrey’s voice, Lord Rex Basire’s, old Doctor Thorne’s—very loud this last, and didactic, but yielding Dinah’s heart no consolation. Would not Doctor Thorne talk loud and didactically whether his Linda had returned from her quest of him or not?
After a time the voices began to disperse. There came the measured yoy-a-hoy of the sailors, the shuffle of feet, the fall of cable on deck. Then Dinah heard the steward saying to one of the boys that they had weighed anchor. And not a moment too soon. With the air so thick, and the glass nohow, the skipper ought to have started, on this badly buoyed coast, a couple of hours ago. A French pilot might be all very well, but to his, the steward’s mind, English daylight was better.
Dinah knelt upon a sofa, inclined her face to the cool air of an open porthole, and watched the receding French coast. There lay the villages of Luc and Langrune, a line of lights flickering, misty and irregular, above the shimmer of the sea. Far away in the distance rose one larger light, the signal lantern in the tower of La Delivrande. Dinah watched, automatically. She noted scarcely more than a playgoer, carried away by excitement, notes the scene-painting at the most thrilling situation of a drama. To her, as to a child, the whole world was concentrated under the passion that governed herself. Had Gaston come back? She longed to know this with a longing which one must call to mind her narrow past life, her more than girlish simplicity, rightly to understand. And still she did not attempt to leave the cabin. Her strength, moral and physical, seemed paralysed. How should she make her way, alone, up on deck, search in the darkness for Gaston, ask questions, parry, with a jest, such airy explanation of her husband’s disappearance as might, on all sides, be offered her?
A voice, close at her elbow, made her start guiltily.
‘No one in the ladies’ saloon? Well, then, Mrs. Gaston Arbuthnot must have tumbled overboard. Her husband and I have vainly searched the Princess for her.’ Oh, kindly Cassandra! Was no small bit of embroidery tacked on, just at this juncture, over the bare truth? ‘So much for trusting valuable entomological specimens out of one’s own hands!’
‘Miss Tighe, I am here. I have been trying to get a little warm. Your moth is safe,’ stammered Dinah.
She scarcely knew in what fashion the words left her dry and trembling lips.
‘Moth? A country-bred girl like you not to know that a speckled white, although, by luck, we caught him out of hours, is a butterfly! Well, I have brought back our other pair of butterflies, safe and sound.’ Before saying this Cassandra had put on her spectacles and carried her box beneath the doorway lamp. She made a great show of examining its contents, critically, thus allowing Dinah to recover her self-possession, unnoticed. ‘From certain murmurings I overheard among the sailors I believe we, all three, narrowly escaped being abandoned to our fate.’
‘Mrs. Thorne had begun to think that her husband was on board?’
Dinah’s constrained tone was one of doubt rather than inquiry.
‘My dear, nobody ever knows what Mrs. Thorne thinks. Linda is a charming woman, the pleasantest companion, when she chooses, in the world. But, as the Doctor says, Linda might reason. These electric transitions, from gay to grave, and back to gay again, are embarrassing in a world where the rest of us walk by rule. Linda Thorne is all impulse.’
‘Ah!’
‘At the first word of the Doctor’s disappearance, to run off, helter-skelter, like a schoolgirl ... yes, Linda Thorne,’ cried Cassandra, peering round at some person or persons across her shoulder, ‘I am talking of you. Come down and hear all the wicked things I have to say. At the first word of the Doctor’s disappearance to run off like a schoolgirl, taking somebody else’s husband with her! It was atrocious! Who is that behind you, Linda? Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot. Tell Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot, from me, that everything worth looking after on board the Princess is found.’
As Cassandra Tighe scored her point, not without a little air of triumph, Linda tripped gaily down into the cabin.
‘We are to have the very finest weather, Miss Tighe, and all the world means to remain on deck. Only, of course, one wants shawls. What! Mrs. Arbuthnot?’
Pausing in her search among the heap of wraps, it would seem that Linda recognised Dinah’s presence with amiable surprise. But Dinah was coldly silent.
‘Surely you, of all people, are not going to become a cabin passenger? My dear creature, I have just escaped the quaintest little adventure in the world! But for Miss Tighe’s advent, I should have eloped, yes, run clean, straight away, with your husband. We were planning it all out, from a commercial standpoint, as we flew, frantically, along the sandhills after Robbie. Were we not, Miss Tighe?’
‘I leave these matters to your own conscience,’ was the dry answer. Possibly, Cassandra recollected that the butterflies were not flying very frantically at the moment when she captured them on the starlit dunes. ‘If you had run away with Mrs. Arbuthnot’s husband, I should have taken good care to run with you. I warned the Doctor of my intentions before I left the Princess.’
‘It was quite too unselfish, Miss Tighe, and, pecuniarily, most àpropos. I possessed five sous in copper (Guernsey currency); Mr. Arbuthnot was worth something under twenty francs. We should have had to leave our watches at the Mont de Piété, for me, alas! no novel experience, the moment we reached Cherbourg. Things have turned out, under Providence, for the best. Only, I think, I think,’ admitted Linda, with arch frankness, ‘the Doctor rather regrets having to retire into insignificance. If I had not come back, Robbie would have remained the hero of the situation.’
Mrs. Thorne ran through all this in her accustomed little tired, inconsequential way of talking, winding up, finally, with a long and earnest yawn. She then danced up to a strip of mirror at the best lighted end of the cabin and settled herself to the contemplation of her own image with interest. She dabbed her cheeks first with rice powder, then with eau-de-cologne, then with powder again, producing these cosmetics without a show of disguise from a tiny gilt case that hung at her waist-belt. She arranged the folds of her cachemire scarf above her sleek head in a certain Gitana mode, which, like all good art, gave an idea of unpremeditation, and became her mightily; she pinned a knot of feathery grass, a memento, doubtless, of the starlit dunes, in her breast.
Easy to predict that Linda Thorne would not be sea-sick to-night! She was warming to the situation, intended to work up her part—everything in human life was a part to Linda Thorne—with spirit.
‘Come up on deck, Mrs. Arbuthnot, will you not? Surely, with your splendid sea-going qualities, you are not going to stop down in this Black Hole of Calcutta?’
‘Mrs. Arbuthnot will come up when I do,’ cried Cassandra, who, with an added pair of spectacles on her nose, was pinning out insects under a lamp. ‘Go your ways, Linda Thorne, wise ones if you can, and leave Mrs. Arbuthnot and me to follow ours.’
‘I would not be wise if I might,’ said Linda, giving an expressive backward glance across her shoulder. ‘If I were wise ... I should see myself as other people see me.’
And having uttered this, the acutest speech that ever left her lips, away floated Mrs. Thorne, with her powdered cheeks, her cachemires, and her Indian fragrance, from the cabin.
Dinah could hear the languid accents, the little stage laugh (learnt from the stalls), for a good many seconds later. She could distinguish the voices, too, of Gaston, and of Rosie Verschoyle. How heart-whole they all seemed. How frequent was their laughter! What a light time the past hours had been to every one of the party but herself! Gaston’s philosophy, thought Dinah, taking an unconscious downward step, might be the true one after all, then. Live while we live! What had she profited by a strain of feeling too tall for the occasion, by the tiptoe attitude, by throwing away gold where a more reasonable member of society would have quietly staked counters?
‘Any admittance here?’ exclaimed a masculine voice, as an impatient hand pushed back the cabin door. ‘Why, Mrs. Arbuthnot, I have been searching for you everywhere. I want you to come up on deck at once, please, and see a comet. Not a comet really, you know,’ Lord Rex went on, looking hard at Dinah’s white face. ‘Some kind of Japanese fire balloon sent up by the French people. However, it does just as well as one.’
‘Yes, my dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, go,’ cried old Cassandra, glancing up, over her double spectacles, from her pinning. ‘It will take me an hour’s work to bring all my specimens straight. And your colour shows you want oxygen. You are right, Lord Rex. Take Mrs. Arbuthnot on deck to see this comet which is not a comet. I shall follow by and by.’
And Dinah Arbuthnot obeyed. She did more. Dinah allowed the tips of her cold fingers to rest within Rex Basire’s hand as he pioneered her up the cabin stairs into the semi-darkness of the night.