‘How horrible! One twirl of the bobbins, one pattern, for life! And to think that lace-makers do not commit suicide by scores!’
‘I don’t know that there’s much difference between lacework, or wool-work, or plain sewing,’ said Dinah Arbuthnot. ‘We have, all of us, to go through with our day’s task, whatever the stitch may be.’
The speech came so naturally, was so fraught with unconscious womanly humility, that Marjorie felt abashed. What real heroism, of an incomprehensible kind, must not Gaston Arbuthnot’s wife possess? This girl of two-and-twenty who worked perpetual cross-stitch, who kept her tongue and spirit calm, who loved, with soul and might, yonder débonnaire gentleman, of the handsome eyes and decorative smile, sketching charming Parisian fisher-girls on the beach—under Linda Thorne’s criticism!
‘If I speak hotly against needlework, it is that I am thinking of Spain, my mother’s country. In Spain, you must know, the miserable girls, to this hour, scarcely learn more than embroidery in their schools and convents, with reading enough, perhaps, to stumble through the announcement of a bull-fight, or decipher a love-letter. Of course,’ admitted Marjorie Bartrand coldly, ‘it is said that when a woman marries, in England or in Spain, she must do as her husband wills. I never see the force of that “must.” I think a woman should do what is right for herself, with large trust in Providence as to the rest! The question is not one that concerns me. Still, Mrs. Arbuthnot, one cannot help feeling indignant about all very crushed people. I am dead against slavery, especially when slavery puts on a domestic garb.’
By this time they had passed the last straggling houses of Langrune. Fair level country, the fields already on the edge of harvest, spread around their road. Along the wayside path was a very mosaic of brilliantly blended hues, the corn-flowers blue and purple, the scarlet poppies, the white and gold of the wild camomile making up the purest chord of colour. A slight south-west wind, dry and elastic after its transit over so many a league of sunny land, was invigorating as wine.
‘How the spirit rises the moment one treads real solid earth!’ cried Marjorie Bartrand. ‘I feel at this moment like walking straight off to Spain, the country I love and where my life will be spent! Why, with twenty francs apiece in our pockets, and camping out by night under stacks or hedges, you and I might easily reach the Peninsula on foot, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’
Dinah’s geography did not embolden her to hazard a contradiction. Something in Marjorie Bartrand’s tone jarred on her reasonlessly. It were hard to believe that she considered Geff a man likely to fall in love. Had not the conditions of her life for years put speculations as to Geoffrey’s future happiness on one side? And still, a true daughter of Eve in every weakness belonging to the passion, Dinah was an inchoate match-maker. She would fain have seen the whole world blest with such fireside beatitude as constituted her own ideal of highest good. With firm and true perception she had noticed a dozen trivial things of late, all proving Geff’s imagination, if not his heart, to be in his teaching of Latin and Greek at Tintajeux Manoir. She had hoped that the notice taken of herself by Marjorie was an earnest of the pupil’s liking for her master, had furtively and with misgiving dug the foundations of many an air-castle that Marjorie and Geff, at some far-off day, might jointly inhabit.
The girl’s diatribes against domestic slavery, her open avowal of love for Spain and of her hopes of spending her life among Spanish people, caused a troubled look to come on Dinah’s face.
‘Your plans don’t point towards an English home, Miss Bartrand. Yet I think Geoffrey has told me you mean to study at Girton?’