‘Well, sir,’ desperately, ‘I called. And our solemn-eyed Cantab is not a married man at all. The name of the Mr. Arbuthnot who dances attend ... who visits at Dr. Thorne’s house, is Gaston. He is a cousin of Geff’s, I—I mean of my tutor’s.’
The Seigneur looked deliberately at his granddaughter’s face. Then, as though politely reluctant to take further notice of her embarrassment, he lifted his gaze to a full-length portrait in pastels of some bewigged and powdered Bartrand on the opposite wall.
‘And why should we not speak of Miss Tighe’s mistake, of Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s celibacy, before Sylvestre? Remember the rascal’s Gallican blood—Sylvestre requires an occasional bit of comedy more than any of us. And so you have been acting a charade, my love, solemn-eyed tutor and all. A very pretty charade, upon my word!
The Reverend Andros Bartrand laughed drily. It was about the first time on record that he had addressed his granddaughter as ‘my love,’ and Marjorie was prompt to recognise latent sarcasm under the endearment. How terrible to reach old age, thought the child of seventeen—to read, to think, and yet outlive the power of loving; intellect surviving heart by many a year, as bodily strength in the end must survive all. What had she ever been to him but a plaything! From the hour she arrived at Tintajeux with her tempers, her four-year-old tongue, her foreign ways, the necessity of keeping a kitten to gambol before the Seigneur’s study fire had possibly been done away with. Just that! She had diverted him. At the present day she might be picturesque, shed the pleasing charm of youth upon his lawn and dinner-table. She understood the arrangement of his books. She could dust his library to admiration. And she was not afraid of him! (Marjorie omitted this, the leading clause, from her mental summing-up of personal virtues.) She was not afraid of him! When did fearlessness fail of carrying weight with a cold, strong nature like the Seigneur’s? Though her colour went and came, though her lips quivered under his irony, the girl was not afraid of him at this moment.
‘I might have known, sir, that if I was distressed it would furnish you with amusement. That is our amiable Bartrand spirit, our way of showing sympathy with others.’
‘Distressed? You astonish me. Distressed at finding that an intelligent, studious young man is in possession of his freedom? The charade, we may almost call it the Arbuthnot drama, grows mightily puzzling to me, a spectator. Let our worthy Cantab be bachelor or Benedict. What concern is it of ours?’
Marjorie rose from the table, with difficulty choking back her tears. ‘I love gossip as little as any one,’ she said, coldly. ‘You introduced the Arbuthnots’ name, sir, so I chose to mention that the Thornes’ friend and my tutor are two distinct persons. And I have no interest in Mr. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s concerns! And if a drama is being acted, let me tell you, grandpapa, that I, for one, play no part in it. Like yourself, I am a spectator only.’
Her tone was high, but when she reached the schoolroom—friendly sanctuary in many a dumb pain of her childhood—when she looked at the ink-stained desk, the piles of books, the window through which the China roses peeped, her humour changed. Marjorie stood a self-convicted impostor in her own sight. For she knew that she was not a spectator only in the Arbuthnot drama, that she was not unmoved by the discovery of Geoffrey’s freedom. ‘Bachelor or Benedict, what concern is it of ours?’ She knew, also, that under the Seigneur’s irony lurked wholesome truth. Pluming herself on her own strength, on the Bartrand immunity from vulgar human error, she had drifted into a position from which the pride of any simple village maiden must recoil. She remembered her airs of easy patronage towards Geoffrey, from the first evening when he walked out to Tintajeux on approval, until this morning. What could she have seemed like in his sight? Had he rated her as an over-forward Miss-in-her-teens, a hoyden wearing her heart—ah, shame!—upon her sleeve? Or had he doubted her, worse humiliation still, as every honest man must doubt a girl who, under the convenient shield of Greek and Euclid, could lend herself to the small meanness of coquetry?
She walked to the window, buried her face amongst the cold, swift-falling rose-petals, then looked out on the landscape. Something strange had crept into its familiarity. There trotted Sylvestre, rake in hand, his livery exchanged for a fustian jacket, to the clover field. There were the farm buildings, there was the row of poplars, showing distinct against the sunset. The China roses gave out their faint evanescent odour; the big vault of Northern sky was stainless. And here was Marjorie Bartrand, to all outward seeming the same Marjorie Bartrand as yesterday, but out of tune, for some queer reason, with her surroundings. The dew-smelling roses, the poplars, the farm buildings, yes, old Sylvestre himself, had been her friends through her whole span of childish life. With the new life that was awakening, with the stir of alien emotion in her breast, they were unsympathetic. Geoffrey Arbuthnot—what Geoffrey thought of her, what Geoffrey felt towards her—these were the questions burning in Marjorie’s soul, transforming her, as no lengthening of skirts or plaiting of hair had ever done, from a child to a woman.
Suddenly a man’s quick step advanced along the gravel road that led from the side lodge to the Manoir. The step stopped; Marjorie heard her grandfather’s voice. She put her head forth through the window, hoping, dreading that Geff, repentant after their half quarrel of the forenoon, might have walked out to Tintajeux—to be forgiven. In lieu of Geff’s stalwart outline, the diminutive figure of the country postman met her sight. The Seigneur, ready always as a boy for the moment’s amusement, was overlooking the contents of the village letter bag.