And all this time an offer of truce lay on the mantelshelf of Dinah’s parlour; an offer directed to himself in the handwriting whose Greek e’s, whose girlish assumption of scholarship, Geoffrey’s heart knew!
Can we wonder at the pagan notion that the gods must needs hold their sides for laughter when they gaze down on the ever-twisted plot of our little lives? Geoffrey and Dinah were within a hundred feet of Miller’s house. Five minutes more and Geff must have been lifted—this time into quite other than a Fool’s Paradise, when, abruptly, a new actor, jauntily floating in cobweb Indian silk, gleaming under a scarlet sunshade, with eight-buttoned gloves, with airs, with graces innumerable, made her entrance upon the scene.
Mrs. Thorne’s manner was confident to-day, as of one with whom the world goes well. She ran skittishly down the steps leading from the hotel garden. She paused, tapping a high-heeled shoe in pretty impatience on the gravel. She looked this way and that, expectantly; at length, it would seem, decided, with a little merry shake of the head, for the chances of town over country. Then, with such ease of tread as high-heeled shoes are apt to confer on ladies whose summers are increasing, she commenced the steep descent of the hill.
‘I hope Mrs. Thorne has not been calling on me. I hope, if we stop, she will make me no pretty speeches,’ said Dinah under her breath. ‘I could not bear them just now. If Mrs. Thorne makes pretty speeches, I shall say something true to her.’
Geoffrey, man-like, showed signs of instant flight on hearing the ultimatum. He was in no vein, he said, for Linda Thorne’s fine spirits (was in no vein, I fear, for the better sex at all, in its liveliness or its asperity); he had an appointment to keep, a case of life and death, at the bedside of one of the quarry workers—would not be back till late—it was time for him to be on his road and——
‘In short,’ interrupted Dinah, ‘you have not courage to meet Mrs. Thorne!’
‘If you like to say so—yes,’ was Geff’s answer. ‘But don’t tell Mrs. Thorne the truth.’ He whispered this to Dinah at parting. ‘Or tell her such truth only as affects herself, not you.’
Dinah, however, was not in a temper for advice, even Geoffrey’s. Erect of carriage, with a flush of the cheeks, a sparkle in the eyes, Dinah walked grandly up the hill, determined, at every cost, that final truth should be spoken between her and Mrs. Thorne, did opportunity offer.
‘So our philosopher shows valour’s better part,’ thought Linda, as Geff vanished down a turning to the right. ‘Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot positively declines to face me! We have never been rapturously fond of each other. Now it is to be war to the knife. Excellent, detestable young man! I accept the challenge.’
And Mrs. Thorne mentally kissed her pale buff finger tips in the direction taken by Geoffrey.
Dinah, meanwhile, had breasted the hill. Her head was held aloft, her fine arms were folded in one of those attitudes of natural repose that had always been the despair of Gaston’s pencil. To the artist who has no ‘wood notes wild,’ the virtuoso with whom craft, workmanship, style, are all in all, is not perfect naturalness the most difficult to woo among the graces!
Linda spoke first. ‘So very glad to meet you. I have this moment called at Miller’s and found you absent. We can have our chat out of doors.’
She was serenely void of conscience. It was probably a mere physical sensation of antagonism that hindered Mrs. Thorne from offering poor magnificent Dinah her hand.
‘To begin with, I must unburthen my soul by confession.’ So she ran on gaily. ‘My visit was, really and truly, to your husband.’
Not a change of colour, not a shade of expression passed across the face of Gaston’s wife. She possessed the self-preserving instincts of many weaker creatures, and of her sex in general; could conceal, feign, dissemble—except under the eyes, and at the voice of him she loved.
‘The other night, at sea, just before the steamer stopped at Alderney, you must know that he and I made a bet, a very foolish one.’ Linda had the grace to redden as she remembered what that bet was about. ‘And Mr. Arbuthnot won. He wins in everything, it seems?’
A compliment may have been implied by the tone. It fell dead on Dinah Arbuthnot’s prejudiced ears.
‘And so I thought I would run up this afternoon to discharge my debt. I deposited the stakes on a corner of your mantelpiece. If you see Mr. Arbuthnot before I do, tell him, from me, that he has won,—that I am bankrupt! You will forgive me for invading your sitting-room, without leave, will you not?’
Still Dinah did not speak. Her eyes glowed, deepened until their soft English hazel seemed turned to black.
‘I have known you long enough—we are sufficiently intimate,’ went on Linda, feeling that she was being forced into the fencing attitude—‘for me to venture on such a liberty?’
‘You can venture where you choose.’ Forth came the reply in Dinah’s full, rounded tones. ‘The room is Gaston’s. How can I question your right of entering it? But I must ask you not to speak of intimacy. If I saw you daily, until the last day I live, I should never be intimate with you.’
Her voice was crystal clear, by reason of its low pitch. Every word was weighted by passionate, long pent-up feeling. Linda Thorne shifted about, ill at ease, on the feet that a minute ago had danced under her weight so airily.
‘We ought, positively, to see more of each other! I think it quite too charming of you to be so sincere—quite. I always say to my friends—“Mrs. Arbuthnot has that most refreshing, that rarest of gifts, sincerity.”’
‘Do you say this? Saying this, do you mean to speak well of me?’
‘Dearest Mrs. Arbuthnot! Can you doubt the honesty of my intentions?’
‘Never say it again. Be generous enough at least to spare me your praise.’
The rapier points had lost their buttons. Linda Thorne fell into position quickly. That Dinah, good Griselda-like woman, loved her careless husband to the pitch of jealous idolatry, had been patent to her long before. Still, viewing the Arbuthnot household from her own level, Linda’s judgment was—that Griselda had consolations. Mild ones, if you will: the devotion of Lord Rex Basire, impartially offered to every pink-and-white nonentity he came across; the constant society, tinged by that glamour which beautiful women confer on all their relationships, of the excellent, detestable Scotch cousin, Geoffrey Arbuthnot. But consolations, nevertheless.
And this judgment sharpened her reply.
‘If I were to refrain from praising you, my dear creature, I should lay myself open to the charge of envy, the one vice,’ observed Linda, with pathetic self-depreciation, ‘which I am free from. Every man in this island, my own good husband included, sounds your praise. You have absolutely a queue—I mean,’ considerately translating, ‘a little train of conquests! Lord Rex Basire, Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’
‘I ask you to stop! In the class of life I come from,’ exclaimed Dinah, aflame, ‘we hold it unworthy for a married woman to make conquests.’
‘Rather severe, surely! Cleopatra may never have known she had conquered, until Anthony’s peace was gone.’
‘Just as we hold it unworthy in any woman, married or single, to beguile the husband of another.’
A tiny pink-hued veil reached to the tip of Linda’s nose. We may assume that the veil concealed Linda’s usual percentage of well-applied rice powder. But a gleam of white anger showed through veil and powder alike. A nervous quiver worked around her thin lips. For a moment it seemed as though Mrs. Thorne’s vulnerable point were found, as though her antagonist’s last thrust had gone home.
Then she recovered herself without too palpable effort. She laughed good-humouredly.
‘Our strain is getting over-tragic. We live in the day of little things. Sensation is out of vogue. Nobody pushes husbands down wells. Nobody “beguiles” the husbands of worthier people. Even if it were otherwise, if Viviens were as the sands of yonder Channel, your happiness, dear Mrs. Arbuthnot, would be secure.’ It must be confessed that Linda made her counter-stroke with admirable neatness. ‘A beautiful woman married to an artist holds him in chains, rose-decked ones, of course, but chains—chains.’
She forced Dinah to touch fingers. She covered her retreat under a little roulade of interjections sent back, with grimace of friendliness, across an expressive shoulder. ‘So fortunate we left the Princess! Never could dear Robbie have stood the terrors of that night! One hears whispers on all sides of heroic courage! Mrs. Arbuthnot’s name foremost!’ Then Linda Thorne tripped down the hill, by virtue of superior coolness mistress, outwardly, of the situation, but with her heart thumping uneasily, with the queerest, hottest sense experience had ever brought her of discomfiture and defeat.
That Dinah’s temper had reached the point which chemists call flashing point was certain. Another encounter like this, with sharpened memories on both sides, probably with the added element of an audience, and either Linda Thorne or Dinah Arbuthnot must become ridiculous.
It was a dilemma, thought Linda, out of which the finest tact, the cleverest self-effacement, could scarcely help one. She was like a prime minister—the presumptuous simile tickled her—a prime minister who, having lost the lead of the House, would fain transfer his power, gracefully, to the chief of the Opposition.
Dinah was that chief; and she, Linda Thorne, was genuinely ready to abdicate. There was in Linda’s nature a thin stratum of Bohemianism; the bulk of the woman was Philistine. She liked small popularities, to air her domestic excellences, her devotion to her Robbie! She liked to talk serious talk. She liked to dine with the Archdeacon! Sooner than run the risk of scandal, or go through scenes of such dimensions as this scene with Dinah, she felt that it would be well to take Robbie and the infant, pack up her portmanteau, and fly. Oh, if Mrs. Arbuthnot—a bright thought striking her—could but be made to pack up hers and go—never to return! Even if poor Dinah took the worshipped Gaston with her, Mrs. Thorne felt that the price would not be too high. She would forfeit every sentimental friendship in the world sooner than again encounter the scorn, the passion of Dinah’s girlish face. Above all—with an audience!
It was, really, this vision of an audience, of public battles-royal, of ridicule, perhaps of acknowledged defeat, which fired Linda Thorne’s conscience to the height of renunciation.
Arriving at the garden gate of The Bungalow she heard, no unfamiliar sound, the voices of Rahnee and of Gaston Arbuthnot, at high play within. Before discovering herself, the mistress of the house peeped for a minute through the ivy-covered railings. She saw Rahnee aloft on Arbuthnot’s tall shoulder, one little skinny hand clutching tight round his neck, the other beating him stoutly with a switch.
‘Faster! Missy But’not! Dallop, dallop!’ shrieked Rahnee.
The child’s vigorous kicks were testifying to her delicious sense of power over her slave, when the unwelcome gleam of a scarlet sunshade caught her eyes.
‘Rahnee—terrible infant!’ cried Linda, falling back on the tired Indian voice that had been absent during her colloquy with Dinah. ‘Come down, naughty girl. Think how you must be teasing Mr. Arbuthnot.’
‘No, me not tease Missy But’not. Go away!’ The thin arms imperiously motioned Linda’s dismissal. ‘We not want nobody—Missy But’not and Rahnee!’
‘My visit is to Rahnee exclusively,’ observed Gaston. ‘Remember, Mrs. Thorne! You warned me not to come to The Bungalow. A mysterious something might happen before five o’clock converting us for ever into enemies. But I will not have Rahnee included in the feud.’
‘Did I talk such nonsense—really?’ cried Linda, with a forced laugh. ‘Well, who knows? Perhaps it will turn out that I was a prophetess, after all. Rahnee, little tyrant, come down this instant.’
At a signal from Mrs. Thorne the ayah, who had been placidly dozing on her square of carpet in the shade, arose. With a quick flank movement the black woman bore down on Rahnee. Upon this, Rahnee, clinging closer to Gaston, raised her shrill voice to its topmost limits.
‘Rahnee, I command! Oh! dear—dear, what a trial children are at a high temperature! Well, then, if you won’t be good,’—Linda drew from her pocket a little silvery packet tied with cherry-coloured ribbon—‘if Rahnee won’t be a good girl.... What does she think mamma has brought her from town?’
‘Tandy!’ cried Rahnee, with a sudden accession of repentant wisdom. ‘Rahnee not tease poor Missy But’not no more.’
And bestowing two or three resonant kisses on Gaston, the child slid down out of his arms. She gave her mother a careless caress, then vanished, hiding herself and her ‘tandy’ under the ayah’s ample cotton cloak, into The Bungalow.
‘She really is not a bad little monkey,’ said Linda, who thoroughly believed in her own system of education. ‘Touch Rahnee’s feelings and you can at once bring her to obedience. Feeling is the grand requisite in a child’s nature.’
‘Who would not be virtuous,’ observed Gaston Arbuthnot, ‘if virtue were always rewarded by providential sugar candy?’
‘And I so wanted to have a few minutes’ quiet talk with you. Do you know, Mr. Arbuthnot, I am ... seriously afraid’—for once Linda Thorne’s words came slow and haltingly—‘seriously afraid ... you will pardon me, I hope, for saying this—that Mrs. Arbuthnot cannot be well.’
‘Dinah! Why, she was fresh as a lily when I parted from her this morning. I have indirectly heard of her looking her best since——’
But Gaston’s face was unsmiling. The moment when he shuffled and re-shuffled the écarté packs, half a dozen men crowding to the verandah of Colonel de Gourmet’s drawing-room, returned upon him with significant and disagreeable clearness.
‘Mrs. Arbuthnot is looking exquisite. I thought I had never admired her so much as in her Quaker dress, her simple country hat! Still, there may be a bloom which exceeds health, a white which is too transparent. Your wife strikes me—how shall I describe her state—as low-spirited, hysterical!’
‘She eats and sleeps well. She can walk half round the island. Difficult to conceive of a young woman with Dinah’s magnificent constitution as hysterical!’
‘But she is so. I met Mrs. Arbuthnot on my way down from Miller’s Hotel. I told her about our foolish wager, and how I had honestly called to discharge my debt. A propos de bottes, you will find your gloves on a corner of the mantlepiece.’
‘And Dinah?’
‘Dinah, I was afraid, looked like weeping, under the broad light of day, in the open street.’
‘Impossible! She is little given to idle tears, even when cause exists for shedding them.’
Gaston had reddened. He made the statement in the quiet tone of a man sure of his facts.
‘I felt as though I had committed some horrible crime—and of course, when people’s nerves are unstrung, it is sheer cruelty to attempt to argue with them. Our soft Guernsey air may be at the root of the mischief. Half the disorders in these Channel places are nervous ones.’
‘My wife does not know the meaning of nerves. Your kindheartedness, dear Mrs. Thorne, for once leads you wide of the mark. Will you let me smoke a cigarette?’ asked Gaston, consulting his watch. ‘In ten minutes’ time I must be on my way to the Fort.’
They walked up and down, amicably chatting among the pleasant blue-gray shadows of the lawn. Neither was ignorant of the art by which speech can be used for the concealment of thought, and Dinah’s name was not mentioned until the moment came for Gaston’s departure. Then Linda Thorne spoke again, and to the point.
‘I meant every word I uttered, Mr. Arbuthnot, and my best advice to you is, give your wife change. Why not try Sark? It is the lightest air we have in the Archipelago. Or, better still, run over for ten days to Brittany.’ In saying this, she glanced at him through her eyelashes. ‘You must, at least, allow that I am unselfish?’
‘I allow only that you want to get rid of us,’ laughed Gaston Arbuthnot, with imperturbable neutrality. ‘Also, that your way of working the scheme out is charming. You pack up wise counsel, Mrs. Thorne, in silver paper, tied with rose-coloured ribbon, as you do Rahnee’s candy!’