‘The gardener Adam, of reality, is a snob. A wretch, bound, of course, to lend his carriage to her grace, in distress, so long as he has not the impertinence to talk of duchesses or linch-pins during the remainder of his days. I have gained a new bit of wisdom, Lord Rex Basire. It is not likely I shall meet you in England. If I do, I shall remember what you said to our poor botanist—“We are not on the St. Gothard now.” You might say, massacring me through a cruel double eye-glass, “We are not in Guernsey now.” Good-night, my lord.’
She touched his hand. She passed away out of his life with a smile. Her step was light. The rose-tints of the sky lent a fictitious brilliancy to her face. Wonderful how that poor young woman, Mrs. Arbuthnot, kept up her spirits! So opined feminine judges, looking mercifully down upon events from the drawing-room windows of the hotel. And under the sad circumstances—the husband’s indifference to her growing hourly more pointed—to be carried away like a girl by this foolish little lord’s attention! But that is the nature of these pink-and-white, yellow-haired marionettes. The temperament, my dear madam, is not one that feels or sorrows.
Dinah Arbuthnot walked quietly to her room, then rang the bell, and told the waiting-maid that she would require nothing further, and that no one need sit up for Mr. Arbuthnot. She changed her dress for a loose wrapper, rested herself during some minutes, and with her face hidden between her hands, strove to realise the altered condition of things which lay before her.
It had been easy, an outlet to jealous anger, to declare, in the moment’s heat, she would no longer live with Gaston Arbuthnot. During dinner, though the strain was tense, there had been a certain excitement, a sense of perilous adventure, to keep her up. Now came blank reality. She must look at her position, as a stranger would, from outside. If she purposed in good earnest to seek refuge with her Devonshire kinsfolk, she had best benefit by Geoffrey’s escort on Sunday, had best, wisely and soberly, begin to pack to-night.
Well, reader, ‘to pack,’ however chaotic one’s mental condition, means—to use one’s arms, see to the folding of one’s latest intricate furbelows, make sure that one’s newest bonnet shall not be crushed. Dinah got through this part of her work well enough; nay, inasmuch as packing brought her muscles into play, felt the better for it. Then came the bitter beginning of the end. She must sort her trinkets, must decide which things it was right to take with her into exile, which leave.
Gaston was the most careless man living. The key of his dressing-case was in his wife’s hands, everything he owned of value in her keeping. It thus became needful, in looking over her own possessions, that she should take count of his. And in doing so their four years of married life returned, month by month, almost hour by hour before her.
A legacy of two hundred pounds had come to Dinah from a well-to-do farmer uncle a few days after her wedding. ‘Too much, rather, to give to the poor, not enough, certainly, to invest,’ declared Gaston—they were at the time in Paris. ‘We will go shares, my dear child. I will take one of the good uncle’s hundreds for cigarettes and you shall have the other hundred for chiffons.’
Dinah wanted no chiffons—at Gaston’s insistence, possessing more millinery already than she knew what to do with. So her hundred pounds were mainly spent in buying pretty things for her husband. Gaston was fonder of rings and pins than are most born Englishmen. He had also an innocent way of directing Dinah’s admiration to artistic trifles in the jewellers’ windows of the Palais Royal and the Boulevards—trifles which were tolerably sure to find their way to his own dressing-table before the next morning.
Ah, their good laughs when these innocent ways became too bare-faced! Ah, the golden Paris days, when each hour was sweeter than the last, when they used to jest together (little knowing) at the musty axiom which limits a pair of true lovers’ happiness to the shining of a single moon!
All the happiness—on one side, all the love—was gone now, thought Dinah, as trinket after trinket, memorials every one of them, passed through her fingers. She, who, in the bloom of hope, believed all things, trusted all things, had become harsh, unrelenting, a woman bent, of her own free will, though it cost her her heart’s blood, upon leaving her husband’s side. And Gaston—nay, of him she would think no further ill, to-night, at least! The proofs—little needed—of his light faith she had locked away, witnesses against him until the last hour that both should live. But she would think no new evil of him to-night. She would seek her pillow, leave the preparations for her journey as they stood. Midnight was now drawing near. To-morrow, she thought, when sleep should have renewed her strength, this beginning of her changed existence, this saying of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ instead of ‘ours’ might come easier.