‘Of that I’m ignorant, my lord. I am no French scholar. I thought of the Jesuits’ fearful underminded dealings.’ Dinah gave a half shudder in the warm sunshine. ‘I thought of the doctrines they must have instilled into you.’
Underminded! From what sect or denomination could Arbuthnot have taken his handsome wife? That Dinah was a rustic ‘mixed up with the great bucolic interests,’ Lord Rex felt certain. The Devonshire burr, the staid, shy, village manner betrayed her. What were her tenets? What sort of conscience had she? A Puritanical conscience, of course, but of what shade, what dimensions?
He harked warily back upon the safe subject of Gaston’s songs.
‘Arbuthnot was singing to us magnificently last night. He was in his best form. Faure himself could never have given “A vingt ans” in grander style. And then he was so well accompanied. The accompaniment is half the battle in “A vingt ans.’”
Gaston Arbuthnot, it should be explained, dined on the preceding night at the mess of the Maltshire Royals. He had dined at mess often of late, and on each occasion Dinah’s heart felt that it had got a reprieve. Dinah believed that dining at the mess of the Maltshire Royals meant, for one evening at least, seeing nothing of The Bungalow, and of Doctor and Mrs. Thorne.
‘You have good musicians among you, no doubt. I know,’ she observed, remembering long and not successful practising of her own, ‘that the accompaniment of this song is hard. But it has become the fashion for young men to play the piano lately.’
‘We can most of us get through a polka, played with one finger, or Malbrook. When I am alone,’ said Lord Rex, ‘I execute the Marseillaise, with chords. No man in the regiment could play a true accompaniment to “A vingt ans.”’
‘No? My husband played it for himself, then?’ asked Dinah, unaccountably persistent.
‘Not a bit of it! A singer never sings his best unless he stand, head up, chest expanded.’ Lord Rex dramatised the operatic attitude as they walked. ‘Mrs. Thorne accompanied Arbuthnot—deliciously, as she always does.’