It was of her own perverse will that she accepted Rex Basire’s invitation. How often had Gaston warned her that, with her temper, her opinions, she would find ‘society’ a dangerous experiment; a game in which she would be likely to stake gold against other players’ counters! She had come here to-day to please herself. She had no right of control over her husband’s actions. Gaston lived according to the light of his own conscience, not hers. He was courteous by temperament, fond of little unforeseen deviations from any laid-down programme, prompt, always, in putting his time, his energy, himself, at the service of his friends.
‘Langrune is not the end of the earth.’ She recalled his cheery, amused tone, as he was vanishing with Linda across the dunes. ‘If the Princess should start without us, we must get back by Cherbourg to-morrow. It will fit in very well.’ She remembered Doctor Thorne—his self-possession, his confidence in Gaston. ‘If my friend Arbuthnot is there, one’s fears are set at rest.’ She could imagine Linda’s witty reproduction of the whole too delicious accident when they should get back to Guernsey. Oh, let her gain mastery over herself—mastery! Let to-day’s lesson be a deeper one than can be gained by nice observance of tone, or look, or manner. Let her have learned to conquer small jealousies, to be wary of quick judgments, to construe the actions, the intentions of others, nobly.
Dinah resolved in the spirit to be strong. Meanwhile, she realised, with growing certitude, that she was weak, exceedingly, in the flesh. Her breath came with greater effort, her hands grew colder and more clammy. Rising with difficulty, she set herself to search for her cloak among a pyramid of wraps that lay, disordered, on a neighbouring couch, dimly discernible by aid of a newly-lighted lamp from the main cabin. Dinah Arbuthnot’s cloak lay (can Fate not be ironical even in the disposition of a heap of shawls?) immediately above a soft, long Indian scarf belonging to Mrs. Thorne. As she lifted it, the subtle Eastern perfume, associated always with Linda’s presence, seemed to Dinah, in a second, to fill the cabin. A feeling of sickness, a sudden access of keen personal repulsion, took hold of her—all-powerful hold; for, this time, it was instinct, not reason, that moved her anger. She flung down her cloak, with a childish sense of disgust at having handled it. She sank back, passively, upon the sofa....
A few minutes later came in the steward to light the centre lamp. Seeing one of the guests alone, and deathly white, he took the commonsense, or steward’s view of the situation. Feeling queer, already? Let him get the lady a brandy-and-soda, a glass of wine, then? Settle the system before they got into rough water—though, for the matter of that, they would have a splendid passage. Sea like a millpond, tide favourable. Nothing but running into one of these here Channel fogs to be feared.
‘I will take some soda-water, if you please.’ Odd and far away Dinah’s voice sounded to herself. ‘I am a good sailor in general. I would rather have a rough sea than a smooth one. But this evening I am a little tired. I feel thirsty.’
She drank the soda-water with a sense of refreshment. ‘The wretchedest preparation, without the B., that could be made for a voyage,’ thought the steward, as he stood, salver in hand, waiting for her glass. Then, when the man had again left her alone, she crept back into her place, held her hands tight to her throat to relieve the cruel sensation that well-nigh choked her, and waited.
Waited—how long she knew not—perhaps, a short ten minutes only. In recalling the whole scene, later—the swell of the rising water, the murmur of voices in the adjacent cabin, the clinging, overpowering Indian perfume—in summing up, I say, each external detail of that miserable evening, it would afterwards seem to Dinah Arbuthnot that no year of her life ever took so much hard living through as those mortal minutes.
At length they came to an end. Doubt was to be set at rest, or turned into yet sharper certainty. For she could tell, first by the muffled thud of rowlocks, then by the splash of oar blades in the water, that the second boat was arriving. She could distinguish Geoffrey’s voice, Lord Rex Basire’s, old Doctor Thorne’s—very loud this last, and didactic, but yielding Dinah’s heart no consolation. Would not Doctor Thorne talk loud and didactically whether his Linda had returned from her quest of him or not?
After a time the voices began to disperse. There came the measured yoy-a-hoy of the sailors, the shuffle of feet, the fall of cable on deck. Then Dinah heard the steward saying to one of the boys that they had weighed anchor. And not a moment too soon. With the air so thick, and the glass nohow, the skipper ought to have started, on this badly buoyed coast, a couple of hours ago. A French pilot might be all very well, but to his, the steward’s mind, English daylight was better.
Dinah knelt upon a sofa, inclined her face to the cool air of an open porthole, and watched the receding French coast. There lay the villages of Luc and Langrune, a line of lights flickering, misty and irregular, above the shimmer of the sea. Far away in the distance rose one larger light, the signal lantern in the tower of La Delivrande. Dinah watched, automatically. She noted scarcely more than a playgoer, carried away by excitement, notes the scene-painting at the most thrilling situation of a drama. To her, as to a child, the whole world was concentrated under the passion that governed herself. Had Gaston come back? She longed to know this with a longing which one must call to mind her narrow past life, her more than girlish simplicity, rightly to understand. And still she did not attempt to leave the cabin. Her strength, moral and physical, seemed paralysed. How should she make her way, alone, up on deck, search in the darkness for Gaston, ask questions, parry, with a jest, such airy explanation of her husband’s disappearance as might, on all sides, be offered her?