The outlook continued promising overhead. The tide was at the right ebb for making Barfleur Point. At an earlier hour than had been hoped for, the friendly Casket lights showed, at intervals, above the starboard bow of the Princess. The skipper, cheerful of voice, promised his passengers that in forty minutes more—tide and weather remaining favourable—the vessel would be lying well to leeward of Alderney.
All this time Dinah had found no opportunity for exchanging a conciliatory word with her husband. She felt that Gaston did not so much avoid as ignore her. He always contrived to be deep in talk with some other person when his wife sought to draw near him. He did not address her, did not recognise her presence. At length, abruptly, just as Dinah was nerving herself to make some desperate first advance, Mr. Arbuthnot crossed the deck. He came up to the spot where she and Rex Basire stood together. With the pleasantest air imaginable he put his hand under Dinah’s arm.
‘Suppose you take a turn with me, wife?’ Mr. Arbuthnot made the proposal in his lightest tone, Rex Basire listening. ‘Do you see that revolving beacon? No, my dear, no! Neither aloft on the funnel, nor in my face, but away, far as you can look, to the right. That beacon marks the Casket Rocks. And there, straight ahead, but without any lights showing, as yet, we are to believe is Alderney. Let us make our way to the forecastle. We shall have a better view.’
The fore part of the deck was deserted, save by two or three knots of sailors, talking low together in patois French as they watched the horizon. Gaston and Dinah were practically alone. She felt the heart within her throb uneasily. An icy politeness lay beneath the surface geniality of Gaston Arbuthnot’s manner. Dinah was prompt to recognise it.
‘What a long day this has been, Gaston. I shall want no wider experience in respect of yachting picnics.’
‘You are changeable, Dinah. As we walked from Langrune to Luc, it was agreed between us that the day should be considered a success.’
‘A great deal has happened since then,’ exclaimed Dinah, under her breath.
‘Nothing very notable, surely. If I recollect right, I did my duty to the extent of two waltzes in the Luc ball-room, and you, my dear child, had a long, a most amusing and intellectual conversation, I cannot doubt, with Lord Rex Basire, in one of the doorways.’
‘Lord Rex Basire is never amusing when he talks to me.’
‘Then I congratulate you on your proficiency in seeming amused. It ranks high as a difficult social art, even among veterans.’
‘Gaston!’ she exclaimed, a new and poignant doubt making itself felt.
‘Dinah.’
‘I don’t know what to think of your tone. Why have you never said a word, never looked at me during all these hours? Are you offended?’
‘On the contrary,’ retorted Gaston. They were now out of sight, out of earshot of everybody. As he spoke, Arbuthnot withdrew his hand from his wife’s arm. ‘I am thoroughly your debtor. It was the sense of my indebtedness that made me bring you here. I wished to thank you without an audience, quietly.’
‘To thank me,’ stammered Dinah, in a sort of breathless way. ‘For—for——’ she broke off, reddening violently.
Gaston watched her. ‘For your solicitude, your kindly tact! That idea of despatching the old lady in the scarlet cloak to chaperon me was boldly original, a fine intuition of wifely vigilance——’
‘Gaston! I never——’
‘Yet scarcely the sort of vigilance that passes current in a commonplace and scoffing world. If you had the smallest spark of humour, Dinah—that missing sense! that one little flaw in your character!—you would see things as the commonplace scoffing world sees them.’
‘Should I?’
‘You would divine that, under no possible circumstances—really it would be well to remember this for the rest of our mortal lives—under no circumstances can I require an old lady, with or without a scarlet cloak, as my chaperon.’
A different woman to Dinah might here have turned the tables on Gaston Arbuthnot, have stoutly, truthfully disavowed responsibility as to Cassandra Tighe’s movements. Dinah was too transparently honest to defend herself as to the letter, knowing that she had been an accessory in the spirit.
‘When the time was so short—ten minutes more, Gaston, and the Princess would have started without you—I felt that my heart must stop. Miss Tighe, any one, could have seen on my face what I suffered.’
‘I have no doubt that “any one” could, and did see it,’ said Gaston Arbuthnot, with grave displeasure. ‘It would not occur to you to make an effort at decent self-control, whatever ridicule you might be bringing upon others. Does it never strike you, Dinah,’ he went on, unjustly, ‘that other women have human sensibilities as well as yourself—Linda Thorne, for instance? She rushed off, poor thing, in the greatest agitation at the first whisper of the Doctor’s disappearance, fearing nothing from Mrs. Grundy, fearing all things for her husband. Was it generous, charitable, do you think, to let your disapprobation be written, so that he who ran might read, upon your face?’
‘I think,’ said Dinah, faithfully, ‘that Mrs. Thorne felt no agitation whatsoever.’
Gaston also thought so. It was a point he would not commit himself to argue out.
‘There are feelings one must take for granted. Mrs. Thorne did the right thing in refusing to start without her husband. I acted as I judged best in determining to remain by her. That ought to have been enough for you.’
‘Yes. It ought to have been enough.’
Dinah gazed before her at the purplish streak faintly dividing the sea-line from the sky. It grew blurred and tremulous. Her eyes had filled with tears.
‘You had plenty of people to bear you company—Geoffrey, Miss Bartrand. It is unbecoming in you, Dinah, to act like a wayward girl. However matters had turned out about Doctor and Mrs. Thorne, what hardship would there have been in your returning to Guernsey with Geoffrey and without me?’
‘None, none! I was wrong from first to last. All this is my lesson, remember. One cannot get a lesson by heart without a little trouble.’
‘One might learn it without making everybody else absurd,’ persisted Gaston. ‘You asked me why I had never addressed a word to you, never looked in your direction, since we put out to sea. I will tell you why, my dear. I considered you dangerous. I was afraid.’
Dinah lifted up her face. She fixed her truthful and transparent gaze full on Gaston Arbuthnot.
‘I don’t understand you, Gaston. You know I never can understand when you speak with a double meaning.’
‘Well, there was a certain electric look about you, a look prophetic of lightning or thunder showers, for neither of which I am in the mood. You ought to have chosen a husband of more heroic mould, Dinah. There is the truth. A man, like the hero of a lady’s novel,’ observed Mr. Arbuthnot, wittily, ‘always equal to a strained attitude. A man fond of the big primeval human passions—love, hatred, jealousy. But you have married me, and I am afraid you must take me as I am. You must also, as often as you can—remember this, Dinah—as often as you can, endeavour not to render me ridiculous.’
When Mr. and Mrs. Arbuthnot re-emerged out of the darkness, Gaston’s hand was resting on his wife’s shoulder, Dinah’s face had recovered its calm. It would have taken a keen observer of countenance to guess that a breeze so stiff as the one we know of had just stirred the surface of these two persons’ lives. Was Linda Thorne such an observer?
Linda was standing alone in the gangway, her attitude one of deliberation, when Gaston and his wife came aft. She kept her position, speaking to no one, until Lord Rex, companionless, like herself, had managed to find his way to Dinah’s elbow. Then Linda Thorne made a move. She crossed to the vessel’s side. Resting her hand on the bulwarks, she gazed heavenward. Such good lines as her throat and shoulders possessed were well outlined against the pallid background of sky.
Gaston Arbuthnot followed her before long.
‘We are fortunate, after all our misadventures, are we not? The mate tells me that we have sighted Alderney. It seems likely that we shall get back to Petersport without fog.’
‘And what, may I ask, do you mean by our misadventure?’
There was a ring of sharpness in Linda Thorne’s tone.
‘Ah—what! The moment,’ said Gaston, ‘when gleams of a scarlet cloak first flashed upon one along the sand-dunes seems, to my own consciousness, about the most serious of them.’
‘You are singularly insincere, Mr. Gaston Arbuthnot!’
‘I cannot agree with you, Mrs. Thorne. My worst enemies, on the contrary, have the grace to credit me with a sort of brutal frankness.’
‘And, supposing no scarlet cloak had appeared? You would willingly have been left, a second Robinson Crusoe, on the desert shores of Luc?’
‘The cases are not parallel. Robinson Crusoe had only the society of his man Friday.’
‘And there were no beaux yeux to weep for him! So many years,’ observed Linda, ‘stand between me and the literature of my childhood that I am uncertain about details. But I don’t think one ever heard of a Mrs. Crusoe!’
Gaston knew that he was being laughed at. He kept his temper charmingly.
‘And there is, very decidedly, a Mrs. Arbuthnot. When I think of Dinah, I cannot call Miss Tighe’s advent a misadventure. Poor Dinah has a child’s quick capacity for unhappiness. Her imagination would have conjured up a dozen possible horrors, by sea and land, if I had not returned to her.’
‘That is all so very, very pretty, is it not?’ Linda stooped, as if watching the rush of the sea; Gaston Arbuthnot could not catch the expression of her face. ‘We professional old travellers are toughened and sun-baked out of all rose-water nervousness. Robbie has told you—whom does he not tell?—the story of my being lost, actually lost, in the Nilgiris? If I were to be mislaid for a fortnight, I really don’t believe the Doctor would suffer a moment’s uneasiness.’
‘And yet you were so cruelly upset by his disappearance. The superiority,’ apostrophised Gaston, ‘of the unselfish sex over ours.’
‘I was not only upset by his disappearance,’ said Linda, still taking an interest in the waves, ‘I am disturbed about him, in my conscience, still. If Doctor Thorne takes the slightest chill to-night, we shall be having the old jungle fever back upon him.’
Gaston sympathised as to this contingency, not, as yet, perceiving the drift of Linda’s alarms.
‘At Robbie’s age one cannot be too prudent. To run into one of these cold Channel fogs might end in something quite too serious. And, although the stars make a pretence at shining,’ Linda raised her head with tentative playfulness, ‘the enemy is at hand. I feel fog in the air.’
‘The air is clearer than it has been all day. In another three or four hours the sun will have risen. We shall be in Guernsey——’
‘In another twenty minutes we shall be outside Alderney harbour. I was talking matters over, some minutes ago, with Ozanne.’ Linda inspected the white hand, resting on the bulwark, with attention. ‘And he has most good-naturedly consented to let me and Robbie land. By signalling promptly for a boat we shall not detain you Princess people five minutes. There is the dearest little primitive hotel in Alderney, close to Maxwell Grimsby’s diggings. You remember my telling you about it?’
Gaston remembered Mrs. Thorne’s telling him about the dearest little primitive hotel.
‘The Doctor will have a good night’s rest to recruit his strength, and to-morrow afternoon, if the day is warm, we shall make our way back to our home and infant by the Cherbourg steamer.’
Now Maxwell Grimsby, a gunner by profession, a painter by love, was one of Gaston Arbuthnot’s best artist friends—best, too, in the higher acceptation of the elastic word. Grimsby was no manufacturer of prettiness, no amateur idler. Did not a series of beach studies bearing the well-known initials ‘M. G.’ testify to the world how diligently this very summer’s enforced imprisonment in Alderney was put to use? During the past fortnight Gaston had constantly vacillated in his intention of looking up his friend, for ever declaring how much better work a man might do on the grand old rock, yonder, than disturbed by the hundred distractions of pleasant, idle, sociable, little Sarnia—never starting, for ever wishing he were gone! Here was occasion to his hand, a chance of looking up Grimsby without even the preliminary trouble of packing one’s portmanteau!
‘Of course you could not come with us,’ asserted Linda, in her little undertone of mockery. ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot is such a child! She would conjure up a dozen possible horrors if you were to be absent from her so long.’
‘I am not sure that deserting the Princess would be a courteous action to our hosts,’ said Gaston Arbuthnot, hesitating under the first touch of temptation.
‘You are made of poorer stuff than your cousin,’ thought Linda, glancing, for a second, at his handsome face. ‘To gain a victory over Monsieur Geoffrey would be to gain a victory indeed.’ Then, aloud—‘If we were to carry away any of the younger people I should feel it treason to desert the Princess,’ she observed. ‘I would not go, indeed, if Robbie and I were wanted as chaperons. Considering the existence of Mrs. Verschoyle and Miss Tighe—in talking of chaperons, Mr. Arbuthnot, you and I must never forget Miss Tighe—I think Doctor and Mrs. Thorne may very well be spared. For you it is different.’
‘In what way?’ asked Gaston, wincing inwardly under her sarcasms.
‘Oh, different, altogether. Too much depends upon your presence. Pray do not think of such a revolutionary proceeding as taking flight. You would never be allow—I mean, I am sure you would not find it advantageous to run away. What messages do you send to Mr. Grimsby?’
‘None.’
‘That is severe. You do not believe in my delivering them intact?’
‘I mean to deliver them myself.’
Linda Thorne laughed incredulously. ‘I wish I could make an enormous wager at this thrilling juncture,’ she remarked with persistence. ‘Come, Mr. Arbuthnot. Will you bet me a single pair of gloves that you will be ... that you will quit the Princess when we do?’
‘It would be betting on a certainty,’ said Gaston. ‘My mind is made up. I am really glad of the chance of seeing old Max.’
‘You have told me something of the kind already. You refused a wager I offered you last Monday afternoon, because it would have been “betting on a certainty.” And yet, as the event proved, I should have won.’
‘The event will prove that you do not win now.’
There was more than a threat of impatience in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice.
‘And you do accept my bet, then? You do stake a pair of gloves that you are—that you will land at Alderney with Robbie and myself?’
‘If you are bent upon giving me a pair of gloves, Mrs. Thorne,—iron-gray, seven and a half,—I shall accept them with pleasure.’
‘Done! The bargain is concluded. My number, as you know, is six and a quarter, Jouvin’s best. I wear eight buttons. And now,’ added Linda, preparing to move away, ‘I must find our hosts, and make excuses. Had I not better offer them on your behalf, too?’
‘You are too kind to me, Mrs. Thorne. I think I have just courage enough to pull through the emergency, unassisted.’
Lord Rex was still lingering in Dinah’s neighbourhood when Linda tripped airily across to the gangway, Gaston Arbuthnot following her.
‘Doctor Thorne and I have to thank you, all, for quite one of the most perfect excursions in the world. I shall put a mark against the subaltern’s picnic,’ said Linda, diplomatically. ‘It has been one of the true red-letter days of my life.’
‘Don’t talk of the picnic as over, Mrs. Thorne. The subalterns look forward to some hours more of your society, even without the promised fog.’
‘Ah, that terrible fog! I must confess, the word makes me nervous, for the Doctor’s sake. A fog, you know, means damp—that constant bugbear to us old East Indians.’
‘But the voyage is half over. Here we are, almost, in Alderney harbour.’
‘And here, I am afraid, my husband and I ought to bid you all good-night. Captain Ozanne has offered to signal for a boat. We should not delay the Princess five minutes. Really and truly, Lord Rex, I think the wisest course will be for Doctor Thorne to land.’
‘Doctor Thorne to land? Another mysterious disappearance! And shall you, Mrs. Thorne, immediately follow suit, as you did at Luc?’
‘Of course I shall! The whole Luc comedy will be repeated.’ And here Linda’s voice grew intentionally clear and resonant. ‘The Luc comedy, with the original cast and decorations, for everybody’s amusement.’
It was a wantonly cruel speech—Dinah Arbuthnot stood within hearing! Yet Linda Thorne’s conscience was void of offence. She belonged by temperament to the irresponsible class of mortals who can never resist the temptation of histrionic effect. For what, save histrionic effect, had she cajoled the skipper, the old Doctor, Gaston, into this freak of midnight disembarkation? And when once a woman’s tongue and actions are ruled by the eternal desire for smart dramatic point, it must be clear that other women’s sufferings will pay the price of her success.
Dinah’s heart froze. She divined, without going through any distinct process of reason, what announcement she was likely to hear next.
‘If the Luc scene is to be repeated, I conclude you, too, are going to desert us?’
Lord Rex Basire addressed himself to Gaston Arbuthnot.
‘Well, it has been borne in upon one during the last fortnight that it was a duty to look up old Grimsby,’ began Gaston. ‘And this——’
‘And this is duty made easy. Go, my dear fellow, if you have had enough of us,’ cried Lord Rex, lightly. ‘But go on one condition—that you do not take Mrs. Arbuthnot. Mrs. Arbuthnot is our chaperon-in-chief. We cannot spare her.’
‘Mrs. Arbuthnot has Miss Bartrand under her charge—have you not, Dinah? I am afraid you could scarcely——’
‘I should, under no circumstances, think of landing at Alderney,’ said Dinah, in a voice uncomfortably strange to Gaston’s ear. ‘I am not afraid of fog. I do not wish to see Mr. Maxwell Grimsby. Why should I leave the Princess?’
‘Where your presence is the life of the whole party,’ pleaded Lord Rex. ‘You must not let your husband persuade you into throwing us over, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’
Quietly, firmly, came Dinah’s answer:
‘You need not be afraid. There is no risk of my being persuaded, Lord Rex. I am a great deal too wise,’ she added, ‘to go away from people who care to have me.’
And no further word of explanation or of farewell was exchanged between Dinah and her husband. Into the irrevocable mistakes of life is it not singular how men and women constantly drift after this blind, automatic fashion?
Only at the last moment, when the Princess had slackened speed, when the boat that had been signalled for was fast approaching from Alderney harbour—only at this last moment, I say, Gaston addressed a remark to Geff which Dinah felt might be taken by her, if she chose.
‘I shall be back to-morrow, unless anything very unforeseen happens. If it does, I can telegraph for my portmanteau, and——’
Geoffrey whispered a word or two in his cousin’s ear. ‘Of course, of course. I have every intention of coming back. I merely said “if.” You will have a magnificent passage,’ added Gaston, shaking hands heartily with Lord Rex. ‘Duty takes me to old Max. Inclination would have kept me with my hosts on board the Princess.’
Despite the neat turning of this speech, away Mr. Arbuthnot and the Thornes went,—Linda, with her cachemires, her bouquets of wild flowers, her fears for Robbie, her wafted kisses to her friends, creating little theatrical sensations to the last. The boat was visible for a few seconds only, so swiftly did the Princess again get under way. There was a profuse waving of handkerchiefs. ‘Good-night, every one!’ rang cheerily across the water in Gaston Arbuthnot’s voice. And then Dinah awakened to the knowledge that she was forsaken, this time by no accident, but of cold-blooded, determined forethought—forsaken, with all the world to see, with Lord Rex Basire persistently talking, as though nothing of moment had happened, at her elbow.