‘Neither do I.’ In truth, Marjorie wore one of the plain washed frocks, the sunburnt straw hat, that she wore on the moor at Tintajeux. ‘What do smart things or smart people matter to you and me? Dress as you choose, Mrs. Arbuthnot. You will look better than every woman in the Arsenal.’
‘I had best put on black. My husband, fortunately, has lovely taste, even in ladies’ dress. He tells me black is always the safest thing for me to wear.’ (‘Black cachemire and silence.’ Dinah remembered those were the requisites Gaston advocated, obliquely—the hint concealed by charming flowers of speech—on the solitary occasion when he introduced her to some female members of his family in London.) ‘I shall ask you to tell me, Miss Bartrand, about my gloves and ribbons.’
Thus speaking, Dinah passed away through a side door into her own chamber. For Gaston, with his knack of organising daily life after the manner that best suited himself, had taken a compact little suite of apartments on Mr. Miller’s ground floor. And Marjorie, left to her meditations, glanced around the parlour—in writing of Guernsey, and of Dinah, the old-fashioned word must be excused—for land-marks that should point out its present possessor’s tastes.
Dinah was not a woman whose affections tended towards ornament, in art or in dress. Had they done so, Dinah’s life had probably been happier. Her work-basket, with its outlying heaps of silk and wool, was the only sign Marjorie could detect of feminine occupation. What of Dinah’s husband? Pipes and cigarette-holders of varying patterns were ranged on either side the mantelpiece. A tobacco jar stood in unabashed evidence on a table. An odour not to be mistaken clung round the draperies of the windows. So this man smoked, thought Marjorie irefully—smoked in his beautiful, refined wife’s living-room! Yellow-backed French novels abounded (French novels, I must confess, were an abiding inspiration of Gaston’s genius). The neighbourhood of the piano was strewn with French songs. A volume of Greek poetry, lent to Geoffrey by old Andros Bartrand, lay on a bookshelf. In a corner by the door Marjorie discerned a rough briar walking-stick, which she recognised as her tutor’s property.
As she looked around the room her impulse was to burst into tears. It was but an inn’s best parlour. You could not expect the perfume, the grace of Tintajeux under good Mr. Miller’s roof. But it was not Louis Seize furniture, or Pompadour cabinets, or Trianon rose-baskets, that Marjorie missed. To pipes and tobacco smoke her life with the Seigneur had accustomed her. Yellow-backed novels did not disturb her conscience. Within limits she could endure French songs. The room repulsed her because it destroyed every dream she had had of Geoffrey! Without the Greek volume, she thought, without the briar stick even, her disenchantment had been less vivid. She had not been forced to remember him, to admit the lapse into bathos of her own ridiculously high-pitched ideal.
But so the facts stood. ‘One may be made a fool twice,’ the girl told herself. ‘First by a sweetheart, secondly by a friend. Happily Dinah Arbuthnot, not Marjorie Bartrand, must this time pay the reckoning.’
And the tears were in her eyes still. In spite of all disillusionment, her liking for Geff lingered obstinately. She thought she could never again be glad of heart as on that mid-summer night when she curtsied to the moon and wished a wish by her tutor’s side on the lawn at Tintajeux.
It took Dinah Arbuthnot fifteen minutes—a real ‘quarter of an hour of Rabelais’ for Marjorie—to put on hat and gown; fifteen minutes ere she could be sure her appearance would pass muster in the eyes of Linda Thorne. The best and simplest women infrequently dress for the other sex, or for the world at large, or for themselves. They dress for each other, oftenest of all for one especial feminine criticism which they have reason to fear.
‘Shall I do, Miss Bartrand?’ Dinah peeped, her exquisite face aflush, through the half-opened door, then she crossed the room to Marjorie; instinct, true as a child’s, informing her that in Geoffrey’s pupil she had found a friend. ‘I want you to pick me to pieces, find as much fault with me as you can. Shall I do?’
‘Do!’ repeated Marjorie.