Dinah Arbuthnot’s face asked vividly for explanation.
‘Made sure Arbuthnot would be here—that is to say, our Arbuthnot’—Lord Rex stammered; he showed embarrassment that sat on him oddly, as he apologised for his uninvited presence. ‘The comings and goings of the Cambridge cousin are, naturally, beyond my powers of calculation.’
‘Naturally,’ echoed Dinah. She remembered, with a pang of self-reproach, what manner of errand kept Geoffrey absent.
‘Strolled round here early—by accident, you know—thought I’d ask myself to dinner with your husband. Clean forgot, till Miller or some one put it into my head, it was guest night. That was half an hour ago. Ought to have started off, instanter, to Fort-William.’
‘And why, pray, did you not do so?’
‘Mrs. Arbuthnot, can you ask me!’
Rex Basire’s tone adequately supplemented his words. And Dinah’s pulse quickened. She was on the threshold, she remembered, of a new, an emancipated life. A wife who lives apart from her husband must accept her position, grow used to many things, to every complexion of whisper among the rest. That is the world’s immutable sentence. Away from Gaston, divorced from the arm which, during four years, had cradled her in warm safety—she must learn, like other unloved women, to rely on her own strength—her strength and the chivalry of all such knights-errant, such Rex Basires, as should cross her path!
About the chivalry more might have to be learnt, hereafter. Dinah realised, before the first step of her downward journey was taken, that her strength was weakness. She felt as though all eyes around the table must watch her with suspicion, read her secret. Rex Basire’s tone of assured admiration brought the blood miserably, shamefully to her cheeks.
He saw and misinterpreted the blush.
‘Thought, you know, as there was a rumour of the cousin’s absence, I should have a chance of getting next you.’
‘You would have been better amused elsewhere, my lord. With Geff I can talk or be silent as I like. Geff does not mind.’
Lord Rex on this made some whispered hit at the ‘model cousin’s’ excellence. As he ate his half cold soup murmured comparisons fell from him as to the men who are made of flesh and blood, poor devils! and the other men, too good for this world, who are made of ice, yes, ice, by Jove! But he was not great at covert allusion. The metaphorical ice got mixed with the metaphorical flesh and blood: his nominatives were nowhere. Breaking down, rather ignominiously, Lord Rex smothered his failure under a capacious sigh.
Dinah turned to him, with cheeks still burning. ‘I am afraid I did not understand. Men of ice! Men of flesh and blood! Were you talking of Geff or of yourself, Lord Rex?’
Despite her blush, the true eyes stopped him short, as they had so often done before. Ere Rex Basire had time to double back towards his starting-point there came an interruption—one of the trivial things not to be mentioned in heroic story, yet which do, ofttimes, determine the current of a human life. A plain little man, his large-checked suit, his open Murray proclaiming the tourist, had during the past two minutes attentively watched Lord Rex from the other side the table. Upon hearing Dinah’s mention of the name, the stranger fidgeted with his knife and fork, cleared his throat, coughed. Finally, leaning forward with a bow, it was obvious that he expected, was eager for, aristocratic recognition.
‘Lord Rex Basire, if I mistake not?’
‘Sir! You are politeness itself. But you have the better of me.’
Rex Basire accorded his interrogator a blank and frozen stare.
‘Oh, the top of St. Gothard, Lord Rex. You were travelling with the Duchess. Her grace’s carriage broke down—something wrong with the linch-pin—and as I was in the region, botanising, I had the honour of offering her grace mine. Your lordship will recollect?’
‘Her grace’s carriage is invariably breaking down. Invariably. Besides,’ drawled Lord Rex, putting up a ferocious pince-nez, and resolute to nip renewal of acquaintance in the bud, ‘we are not on the top of the St. Gothard now. Ah, Mrs. Arbuthnot,’ he addressed Dinah in as low a tone as a man’s voice can sink to without becoming an actual whisper, ‘this makes up to one for a great deal I have suffered at your hands.’
‘By this,’ said Dinah, whose courage was returning, ‘do you mean the cold soup we have eaten, or the colder fish to which they are helping us?’
‘I mean the happiness of sitting beside you, of knowing I am so much forgiven that——’
‘Her grace travelled on as far as Andermatt in the carriage it was my privilege to lend her. From Andermatt, if my memory serves me right——’
‘Your memory is certain to serve you right, sir. The incident which I, it seems, have forgotten, was more than unimportant.’
Lord Rex’s manner was brutal; no other word would adequately describe it. The poor little tourist’s eyes dropped to his plate, his face turned scarlet. Dinah leaned forward on the instant. With the gentle womanliness which was her breeding, she addressed him in her pleasant country voice:
‘My husband and I met with just the same kind of accident once. Our carriage broke down, and we had to spend six hours, in wet and darkness, between Berne and Vevey. I should not have forgotten any one who had come to our help that night.’
‘Ah—you know Switzerland, madam? Then may I ask,’ the tourist gave a piteous glance towards Lord Rex, ‘if you take an interest in the Alpine flora? I have only time to pursue such things during my holidays.’ It is possible he pronounced the word without its aspirate. ‘But botany is my hobby; I get plants enough in my five weeks to fill my leisure for the rest of the year. Now in that very region you speak of, I have found two or three specimens that are unique. If you will allow me to enumerate the Latin names, madam——’
And so on, and so on. The poor man was one of nature’s choicest bores. His information was stale, his manner of imparting it prosy; his blindness to the suffering he inflicted, absolute. Dinah’s face wore a look of kindly interest through everything. Occasionally (Lord Rex all but groaning aloud over his wasted opportunities) she would strike in with some question calculated to start the narrator afresh on new tracks, on new prosiness, if, peradventure, he chanced to lag.
She even bowed courteously to him on leaving the table d’hôte: an example not followed by Lord Rex.
‘A charming dinner, on my word!’ So he broke forth, the moment he found himself beside Dinah in the welcome freshness of the garden. ‘May I ask, Mrs. Arbuthnot, what inhuman whim made you talk to that wretched snob?’
Rex Basire’s voice went beyond the limits of petulance.
‘Why a snob?’ asked Dinah, meekly. ‘You know I can never catch the inner meaning of these names.’
‘Why? Because he was a snob. “Her grace’s carriage broke down on the top of the St. Gothard; he had had the privilege of offering his.” What the dickens did that matter to me? “Her grace travelled as far as Andermatt in his carriage.” What the dickens did that matter to him?’
‘Only this, perhaps—that her grace’s misadventure obliged the snob to go on foot.’
‘Mrs. Arbuthnot!—I never expect a direct answer from any woman,’ Lord Rex exclaimed with scarcely suppressed temper; ‘still, I should like to know why during a mortal three-quarters of an hour you allowed that little wretch to talk to you?’
She paused. A shade of deepened colour touched her cheek. ‘The wretch was intelligent, Lord Rex.’ (Aye, and opportune! This was a subtle parenthesis, put in by Dinah’s conscience.) ‘I don’t understand Alpine plants, but I liked to hear a good deal our tourist said about them.’
‘The ’obby he pursues during his ’olidays,’ observed Lord Rex, humorously.
Dinah turned swiftly round. A streak of sunset goldened her hair, and the delicate outlines of her face. She gave a look of farewell sincerity at Lord Rex Basire.
‘Do you remember,’ she asked him, ‘a conversation you and I had on board the steamer? It was just after my husband and the Thornes had landed at Alderney.’
Yes, Lord Rex remembered. He was not likely—this, with a sigh—to forget any hour or place in which he had had the good fortune to find himself alone with Mrs. Arbuthnot.
‘We spoke about class distinctions. I believe you called me a Conservative. Certainly you told me you were the most out-and-out demagogue in England. You were all for fraternity, Lord Rex. “Gardener Adam and his wife, and that sort of thing.” Labour was the universal purchase-money. Dukes and earls had best go back to the place from whence they came. Well—you meant none of this.’
Lord Rex winced. ‘Unfair on a fellow,’ he observed, ‘to be thus taken au pied de la lettre, and——’
‘You must speak in English,’ cried Dinah. ‘I have not French enough to understand your meaning.’
‘My dear Mrs. Arbuthnot! A man may hold theories,—visions of an impracticable Utopia, don’t you know ... charming—ahem! to air in exquisite company; impossible to carry out in this rough chaos of a world we live in.’
Dinah stopped for a minute or more, sedately reflecting, before she answered.
‘I think I understand. Socialistic opinions, if one is trying to make talk for a rather stupid woman at a picnic, may be well enough, especially if the rather stupid woman does not belong to one’s own station.’
‘Mrs. Arbuthnot! I protest——’
‘The gardener Adam, of reality, is a snob. A wretch, bound, of course, to lend his carriage to her grace, in distress, so long as he has not the impertinence to talk of duchesses or linch-pins during the remainder of his days. I have gained a new bit of wisdom, Lord Rex Basire. It is not likely I shall meet you in England. If I do, I shall remember what you said to our poor botanist—“We are not on the St. Gothard now.” You might say, massacring me through a cruel double eye-glass, “We are not in Guernsey now.” Good-night, my lord.’
She touched his hand. She passed away out of his life with a smile. Her step was light. The rose-tints of the sky lent a fictitious brilliancy to her face. Wonderful how that poor young woman, Mrs. Arbuthnot, kept up her spirits! So opined feminine judges, looking mercifully down upon events from the drawing-room windows of the hotel. And under the sad circumstances—the husband’s indifference to her growing hourly more pointed—to be carried away like a girl by this foolish little lord’s attention! But that is the nature of these pink-and-white, yellow-haired marionettes. The temperament, my dear madam, is not one that feels or sorrows.
Dinah Arbuthnot walked quietly to her room, then rang the bell, and told the waiting-maid that she would require nothing further, and that no one need sit up for Mr. Arbuthnot. She changed her dress for a loose wrapper, rested herself during some minutes, and with her face hidden between her hands, strove to realise the altered condition of things which lay before her.
It had been easy, an outlet to jealous anger, to declare, in the moment’s heat, she would no longer live with Gaston Arbuthnot. During dinner, though the strain was tense, there had been a certain excitement, a sense of perilous adventure, to keep her up. Now came blank reality. She must look at her position, as a stranger would, from outside. If she purposed in good earnest to seek refuge with her Devonshire kinsfolk, she had best benefit by Geoffrey’s escort on Sunday, had best, wisely and soberly, begin to pack to-night.
Well, reader, ‘to pack,’ however chaotic one’s mental condition, means—to use one’s arms, see to the folding of one’s latest intricate furbelows, make sure that one’s newest bonnet shall not be crushed. Dinah got through this part of her work well enough; nay, inasmuch as packing brought her muscles into play, felt the better for it. Then came the bitter beginning of the end. She must sort her trinkets, must decide which things it was right to take with her into exile, which leave.
Gaston was the most careless man living. The key of his dressing-case was in his wife’s hands, everything he owned of value in her keeping. It thus became needful, in looking over her own possessions, that she should take count of his. And in doing so their four years of married life returned, month by month, almost hour by hour before her.
A legacy of two hundred pounds had come to Dinah from a well-to-do farmer uncle a few days after her wedding. ‘Too much, rather, to give to the poor, not enough, certainly, to invest,’ declared Gaston—they were at the time in Paris. ‘We will go shares, my dear child. I will take one of the good uncle’s hundreds for cigarettes and you shall have the other hundred for chiffons.’
Dinah wanted no chiffons—at Gaston’s insistence, possessing more millinery already than she knew what to do with. So her hundred pounds were mainly spent in buying pretty things for her husband. Gaston was fonder of rings and pins than are most born Englishmen. He had also an innocent way of directing Dinah’s admiration to artistic trifles in the jewellers’ windows of the Palais Royal and the Boulevards—trifles which were tolerably sure to find their way to his own dressing-table before the next morning.
Ah, their good laughs when these innocent ways became too bare-faced! Ah, the golden Paris days, when each hour was sweeter than the last, when they used to jest together (little knowing) at the musty axiom which limits a pair of true lovers’ happiness to the shining of a single moon!
All the happiness—on one side, all the love—was gone now, thought Dinah, as trinket after trinket, memorials every one of them, passed through her fingers. She, who, in the bloom of hope, believed all things, trusted all things, had become harsh, unrelenting, a woman bent, of her own free will, though it cost her her heart’s blood, upon leaving her husband’s side. And Gaston—nay, of him she would think no further ill, to-night, at least! The proofs—little needed—of his light faith she had locked away, witnesses against him until the last hour that both should live. But she would think no new evil of him to-night. She would seek her pillow, leave the preparations for her journey as they stood. Midnight was now drawing near. To-morrow, she thought, when sleep should have renewed her strength, this beginning of her changed existence, this saying of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ instead of ‘ours’ might come easier.
To-day was still to-day. They belonged outwardly, in the world’s sight, to each other yet.
There on the bedroom mantelshelf was an unfinished model Gaston had made of her, a sketch which, had it reached marble, might some day have worked its way inside the walls of the Academy. Among the neat proprieties of her dressing-table were two of his modelling tools, not altogether innocent of clay. There lay a half-burnt cigarette ... a glove that he had worn.... Ah, heaven! And with this passionate affection at her heart, she was unloved of him, had no child with tiny tender clasp to make up to her for her husband’s coldness! And she was still only a girl in years; and life but yesterday, it seemed, was sweet.
If Gaston, with clairvoyant power, could have seen her at this moment in her extremity of pain, doubt not that the couple of hilly miles between Fort-William and Miller’s Hotel had proved an insufficient barrier to keep him from her side. Common men, however, have common lights to guide them. They reap even as they sow.
When twelve o’clock struck and Dinah’s aching head sank on its pillow, Gaston Arbuthnot, with unburthened conscience, was settling himself placidly down to poker—the little game of draw in which he had vouchsafed to act as mentor to the youngsters of the Maltshire Royals.