And indeed, there burned a flame in Marjorie’s breast that kept her whole being warm, a flame, pure and delicate, the like of which kindles in these poor hearts of ours once only, perhaps, between our cradle and our shroud.
‘We are dismissed, Miss Tighe,’ said Lord Rex, gallantly offering his unwounded arm, as Cassandra tottered to her feet. ‘Cling to me like grim death. Don’t mind appearances. If Mrs. Arbuthnot and Miss Bartrand have the courage to freeze, we must leave them to become icicles. I want to see what can be done for our poor terrified ladies down below.’
Lord Rex must have seen to the terrified ladies expeditiously. Five minutes later he was at his post again, no rug, no greatcoat about his shoulders,—with feminine appreciation of detail, Dinah was prompt to mark this sign of self-forgetfulness,—simply hovering near, ready, she reluctantly acknowledged, to buy her life with his own should the moment of peril really come.
And Gaston Arbuthnot, all this time, was taking his rest, quietly irresponsible, away in Alderney! Dinah, being a just woman, did not credit her neglectful husband with the density of the fog. Still, in danger, as in safety, the master passion possessed her heart. Her thoughts, at one moment tender, at the next reproachful, were of Gaston always. And her lips kept silence. Marjorie Bartrand also was disinclined for talk. In Marjorie’s mind thrilled a remembrance so sweet, so new, that she was glad passively to rest under it, as we rest under the influence of a good and wholesome dream—a remembrance of the half confession made to her in the Langrune lane, whose flower smells and swaying yellow corn lingered in her senses still. And thus, happiness being a far likelier narcotic than pain, it came to pass ere long that while Dinah Arbuthnot watched with ever-increasing vigilance, the young girl’s eyes grew heavy. The sound of the fog-horn at each interval roused her up less effectually, her head dropped upon her companion’s shoulder. ‘Your wish has come true, although I have the misfortune to be myself, not Gaston.’ The cold and darkness vanished, blessed sunshine began to shine around her, the fog-horn changed to the note of the cricket among the ripening cornfields. Marjorie Bartrand slept.
By this time, Dinah judged, the sun must be close upon rising. It seemed to her that the different objects on board were growing a very little clearer. Moving with difficulty from her position, she rolled up a pillow out of one of the plaids, and slipped it under Marjorie’s sleeping head. She enveloped the girl’s whole figure in the thickest of their rugs, then began to pace, as sharply as her stiffened limbs would allow, up and down a short portion of the deck.
‘We are not to say “ta-ta” to the wicked world this time, Mrs. Arbuthnot.’ The wise remark was Lord Rex Basire’s. He had been absent during the last quarter of an hour, and now reappeared bearing a salver on which stood a cup of smoking coffee. (Looking back in after hours on the shifting scenes of this night, Dinah often felt, remorsefully, that her most fragrant and excellent coffee was prepared by Lord Rex’s own hand.) ‘I overheard the steward talking with the mate just now, and they prophesy a change of wind. If this comes true the fog will lift in half an hour. See, I have brought you some coffee.’
Dinah glanced towards Marjorie.
‘Oh, Miss Bartrand is fast asleep, dreaming of triposes and Girton! I watched her nodding before I went below. It would be cruelty to wake her.’
‘I must say the coffee smells tempting,’ Dinah admitted. Then, swayed by quick impulse: ‘Lord Rex, you are very unselfish!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have thought of nothing but other people, and their troubles, all this night.’