CHAPTER XLIV KISMET
‘To a naturally industrious man these islands would be the mischief.’ The characteristic remark came from Gaston, who was entering his wife’s sitting-room just about the hour when Geoffrey quitted Tintajeux. ‘Yes, Mrs. Arbuthnot, these bachelor breakfasts, these picnics, these summer nights given up to card-playing, might well despatch many an excellent fellow along the road to ruin. Happily,’ said Gaston, ‘I have the capacity for large waste of time. I am in no sense of the word an excellent fellow.’
His tone was blithe; the fact of his calling Dinah ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot’ showed a willingness to meet contingent domestic trouble with good temper. Stooping down, Gaston Arbuthnot snatched a kiss from his wife’s pale lips; he pressed her drooping golden head between his hands. Dinah wavered not in her resolves. His caresses were sweet to her as ever. But was not the dearness of this man’s presence her danger; that which should nerve her in righteous sternness towards herself—and him?
‘No kiss for me, my darling! And pale cheeks again—swollen eyes! Dinah, you are ill. Something in the place really disagrees with you. We will leave it. You cannot stand the climate. I half believe I want a change of air myself.’
Sinking down in an American rocking-chair, the easiest location the room possessed, Gaston Arbuthnot propelled himself to and fro until he reached a point at which his heels were on a level with his breast. He rested the tips of his boots on the corner of an adjacent couch, he folded his arms in an attitude of leisurely repose upon his breast. Then, the primary point of comfort exhaustively seen to, he looked, with closer heed than he had yet bestowed upon her, at his wife.
Dinah was dressed in a dark travelling serge. Her hair was brushed back tightly from her temples. Her face was bloodless, the outline of her delicate features blurred by a night of tears. It was impossible for her to be unlovely, even with pink eyelids and swollen lips. (If Gaston Arbuthnot’s chisel could have compassed the tragic, how exquisite a Niobe had lain here to his hand!) It was impossible, I say, for Dinah to be unlovely. She seemed transformed, rather—a woman of harder, colder texture than her old self. When at length she raised her head slowly, the eyes that looked her husband through and through were fraught with an expression that his soul knew not.
‘I want change, you tell me, Gaston, and that’s true. We want change, both of us.’
‘Oh, I was not in earnest about myself,’ said Gaston, a little uneasily. ‘As far as health goes, the place suits me well enough. Only one positively cannot work here! Now, look how this week has gone!’ He took a note-book from his breast pocket, he turned over page after page with a marked abandonment of his first sprightly manner. ‘This week, too, when I was to have got on with your bust, to have begun I don’t know how much besides. Where are you, by the bye, Dinah—I mean, where is your model? There is a tidy look one doesn’t like about the room.’