Never was a man surer of tumbling into little unlooked-for sociabilities than Gaston Arbuthnot. Had he been shipwrecked on a South Sea island I believe Gaston would have chanced upon an acquaintance there, some vanished shade from London Club or Paris café would have seized him by the button-hole before the day was out!
He was button-holed in Langrune-sur-Mer. When the pilgrimage returned from La Delivrande, Linda and her Robbie were found seated with Mrs. Verschoyle on a trio of hired chairs before the hotel, taking their pleasure rather mournfully. Cassandra Tighe, her scarlet cloak conspicuous from afar, was dredging—happy Cassandra—among such rocks as the tide still left uncovered.
Gaston Arbuthnot was invisible.
‘A real case of forcible abduction,’ cried Linda Thorne, addressing herself to Dinah. ‘You are not a foolishly nervous wife, I am sure, Mrs. Arbuthnot? You could philosophically listen to a story of how two pretty French girls carried away an English artist against his will.’
Dinah assented with one of her rare smiles. The knowledge that Gaston was finding amusement otherwise than in the half-clever talk, the too ready, too flattering sympathy of Linda herself, cast retrospective brightness upon the afternoon that his absence had clouded.
From jealousy of a selfish or little kind Dinah’s heart had never bled. Earlier in their married life, when Gaston still affected dancing, and as a matter of course went to balls without his wife, it was her usual next morning’s pleasure to scan his programmes, enjoy his sketches of his partners, his repetitions of their small-talk—all without a shade of hurt feeling. Once or twice she hinted that she would fain accompany him as a looker-on. ‘Nobody looks on long in this wicked world,’ was Gaston’s answer. ‘You do not dance, you do not play whist. You have a brain under your yellow locks, and you are too young to talk scandal. Ball-room atmosphere is unwholesome. I would not hear of such a sacrifice.’ And as it was not Dinah’s habit to pose as martyr, she obeyed, trusting in him always.
Beautiful, pure of soul herself, she simply honoured the beauty, believed in the purity of soul of other women. Gaston was popular, spoilt; an artist with an artist’s—more than this, with an American temperament. A degree of youthful immaturity seemed ever to lurk amidst his astute knowledge of life and of men. He had but a half-share, as he would tell her, of the fibres derived from long lines of bored ancestors. He sought diversion for diversion’s sake. She had made no quarrel with the inexorable facts of her husband’s existence or of her own. If only she had been his equal, intellectually! If she could have supplied him with the mental companionship he needed, or interested him in his childless fireside! Ah, could she thus have risen to his level, Gaston’s heart had been in her keeping still. Hence came the morbid unrest of her present life; hence the dread, increasing daily, hourly, strive with it as she might, of Linda’s influence.
‘I am afraid one gets used to most things, Mrs. Thorne. I have seen Gaston run away with so often that I am not much moved by the thought of these pretty French girls.’