A stronger word was very near escaping Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s lips.
‘You are taken in by our picturesqueness,’ said Marjorie with decision. ‘England must be an astonishing ugly country, judging from the effect our bit of Channel rock appears to make upon English people. Now, to me, who have seen Spain, it is all so cramped, so sea-weedy. Look away to the left there—sea. To the right—sea. Move a little step nearer—close here, don’t be afraid, and look where I point across the moor—sea again. Let an out-and-out big wave come some day, and the whole nation would be submerged, like Victor Hugo’s hero.’
The glimpse of silver-gray tranquil moor brought back before Geoffrey the thyme-grown bank, the falcon high poised, the tuft of wood-rush—associated with the last rose visions of the squalid Barnwell pavements, of the men and women, forced deserters from the army of progress, who dragged out their span of human existence there.
‘I should like to know what you are thinking about,’ Marjorie asked, noting with a child’s acumen the changed expression of his face.
‘I am thinking about England, about the hard battles some English men and women have to go through with. A night like this,’ said Geff, ‘brings sharp thoughts before one of one’s own life, one’s own uselessness.’
In an instant Marjorie was softened. Tears almost rushed to her eyes. Her thoughts, true to her better self, followed Geoffrey’s as if by instinct. Then the good impulse passed. It entered her wilful head that this excellent young gentleman from Cambridge meant to sermonise her. She resolved to shock him.
‘I used to feel goody-goody myself, very long ago. You would not believe it, sir, but as a child I was pious.’
‘I believe it thoroughly,’ answered Geff, grave of countenance.
‘When I wanted my lettuce-seed to come up I would perform little acts of propitiatory contrition to Pouchée, the poor old Pouchée who lives in Cambridge now. When grandpapa went out shooting I carried his game-bag, and used to offer fervent prayers, whenever the dogs came to a point, that he might kill his bird. Facts undermined my faith. Sometimes the point was false. Sometimes grandpapa missed his aim. Chaffinches and slugs ate my lettuce-seed. I turned infidel. I have remained one. Grandpapa says I have the hardest flint soul in, or out of, Christendom. Still, that is one Bartrand judging of another.’
‘I am not a Bartrand,’ remarked Geff Arbuthnot. ‘I do not think you have a hard flint soul. You believe in wishes addressed to a strip of new moon, for instance?’ They were standing at the highest point of Tintajeux; a small plateau, the approach to which was fashioned on the exploded system of puzzle or maze. Long before Marjorie’s lifetime this plateau—who shall say on what morning of youthful human hope—had been christened Arcadia! The country-folk around Tintajeux called it Arcadia still. Cool draughts of air were stirring from the moorland. They brought fragrance of distant hayfields, honeyed whiffs of the syringa hedges that formed the maze. Would Marjorie ever curtsey to future moons without the scent of hay, the over-sweetness of blown syringa returning on her senses?