But no such good thing as reconciliation fell to Marjorie Bartrand.
Within a week of Geoffrey’s departure Dinah and her husband, bride and bridegroom once more, started joyously on their way to Italy. There was a little wonder among the few people who had known them, a little hypothetic gossip, an unjust suspicion, perhaps, that Linda Thorne could clear up more secrets than one, ‘as she listed.’ And then Guernsey knew the name of Arbuthnot no more. Marjorie Bartrand must take up life at its old point before love, before disappointment made acquaintance with her—must stand, chill and alone, in the same Arcadia where she stood beside Geoffrey on the morning of their one day’s engagement; must work under a new teacher in the schoolroom where every book, every window-pane, spoke to her of the past, and of the sharp irrevocableness of her loss.
Autumn faded, monotonously, into the season of soft weather which in the Channel archipelago does duty for winter. March came again with its outside show of hope; all Tintajeux busy at farm work—the Seigneur, alert of step, taking part in his potato-planting and his vraic harvest, like a man of five-and-twenty. Later on, the cuckoo flower blushed anew, the rooks vociferated from the tree-tops. And then, a little later, the roses reddened. Marjorie Bartrand, conning over the entries in her last year’s pocket-book, began to know the meaning of the sombre word anniversary.
‘To-day,’ after this fashion the record ran, ‘commenced my reading with Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’
‘Many faults in my Latin exercise. Geoffrey Arbuthnot stern and inhuman.’
‘Have resolved to lecture a certain person on his neglect of his wife. And on frivolity.’
‘This day received my first letter from Geoffrey Arbuthnot.’
And so through the brief drama, until a final entry on Sunday, July the 3d—‘To-day Geoffrey Arbuthnot left Guernsey for ever.’ After which all was blank—in the pocket-book, as elsewhere.
There were sombre anniversaries, I say, for Marjorie Bartrand. For two or three of the young women who have flitted across the background of this story, summer brought the sound of jocund bells, brought a day which to each must henceforth be the one crowning anniversary, dark or sunny, of life. Rosie Verschoyle took to herself a mate, happily for Rosie, a worthier man than Rex Basire. Ada de Carteret became the wife of little Oscar Jones. Marjorie enacted bridesmaid until the sight and smell of orange blossoms were a weariness to her. She felt glad when weddings and summer were alike over, when the scents of blown syringa and heliotrope belonged definitely to the past, glad when the equinox had stript the woods, and November, grave and pale, approached, like a friend who knew her trouble, and had solace in store for her.
For Marjorie’s character had opened out rather than altered. She was a Bartrand—high-handed as ever; during the past fifteen months had worked with a courage betokening of what tough fibre her spirit was made. In November a decisive step towards the Alma Mater was to be taken. Mademoiselle Pouchée, the earliest on the Tintajeux list of governesses, had long besought Marjorie to stay with her in Cambridge, and the Seigneur, with exceeding bad grace, had tardily consented to the visit. For Cambridge meant Girton! Marjorie, of late, had been coaching with a Girton graduate who held high office in the Guernsey college, and was promised credentials to the highest feminine magnates of the University. ‘Women who, in achieving renown, had lost the fairest ornament of their sex.’ Thus spoke old Andros, stirred by the irreconcilable antipathies of his youth, antipathies which sixty subsequent years amidst a world in full progress had failed to modify.
‘The best person you could come across would be that tutor of yours—Arbuthnot.’ The Seigneur brought the blood into Marjorie’s cheeks by telling her this, one day. ‘We must conclude that I shall die some time. It is given to few men to draw breath in three centuries. When I am gone you will need a husband more than the Higher Education. I liked Arbuthnot. He was a shallowish classic and over-full of this modern “know-all, know-nothing” spirit. But he was a man—so many honest English stone, moral and physical, in him! A good make-weight for a bit of wandering thistle-down like you.’
The speech lingered in Marjorie’s penitent soul. If things had gone differently, then, Old Andros would not have said nay to Geoffrey’s suit! Her own passionate temper, the jealousy that could brook no rival, present or in the past, were alone answerable for love forfeited, for a vista of long years, out of which the sweet fulness of youth, at youth’s best, should be wanting.
And blood warm and generous ran in Marjorie’s veins. Her object in visiting Cambridge was, of course, to make personal acquaintance with Girton. Her hopes and fears must be centred on the august ladies who in future days would be her Dons. But the remembrance of her lost sweetheart plucked ever at her heart. If by accident Geoffrey crossed her path, what would be her duty? That was the thing to consider—duty. Simply as an old comrade, might she not hold out her hand, seek a final word of explanation? At what nice point should self-respect, a due sense of wounded Bartrand pride, draw the line of unforgiveness?
These were not questions she could propound to her Girton coach, a lady of fair exterior, young in years, but who had recently come out well in two Triposes. Cassandra Tighe, with her lowlier range of thought, stood nearer to one, Marjorie felt, her sixty winters notwithstanding, in such trivial human perplexities as belong to love and lovers. In these poor matters, ignorance would seem to possess a spurious wisdom of its own. The higher sciences assist one moderately. And so, on the vigil of her English journey, the girl started away between the lights, alone, and with an overflowing heart, to seek her old friend’s counsel.
It was a typical autumn evening of this mid-channel region. A north-west wind shivered and sobbed among the poplars that hedged the entrance way of Cassandra’s domain. The garden dahlias drooped their heads, the chrysanthemums with their thin, half-bitter odour, showed wan and ghostly in the thickening dusk. An irresistible sense of decay was conveyed by the fitful rustle of the falling leaves. The surrounding fields and copses were shrouded in vague mist. Loss and uncertainty ... these seemed the dominant notes in the pallid landscape. They suited Marjorie Bartrand’s mood. Were not loss and uncertainty the dominant notes of her own changed life?
The cottage door stood open. No sound stirred within, save the ticking of the old Dutch clock on the stairs. Unannounced, she made her way into Miss Tighe’s home-like ground-floor drawing-room. The weather was too mild for more than a pretence at fire, the hour not late enough for lamp or candle. Cassandra sat, unoccupied, beside the scarce-lighted hearth. The kindly lady jumped up at the sound of Marjorie’s step, then, almost with an air of shame, began to excuse herself for her idleness. She had had a busy gardening day, little credit though her borders did her, and after dinner meant to practise for a couple of hours at her harp. ‘But even Cassandra Tighe,’ she added, ‘must be tired, sometimes. I am an old woman, Marjorie. It is the prerogative of all old people, save the Reverend Andros Bartrand, to sit when the day draws in with hands folded. At such times we live in the past, as you young ones love to do in the future.’
‘The future,’ repeated Marjorie, in an under-breath; ‘that is what I want to speak to you about. I chose this hour on purpose. The best time to talk of difficult things is entre chien et loup, as the Guernsey folk say.’
She sat down somewhat dejectedly on the opposite side the hearth. The young woman and the old one could just discern each other’s faces by the flicker of the slow-burning fire.
‘So you start for Cambridge to-morrow! And your grandfather, I hear, gives you a letter to the Master of Matthias. Well, Marjorie, though you should fail to Girtonise the Spanish nation eventually, I must praise you for your present cleverness in Girtonising the Seigneur of Tintajeux.’
‘The Seigneur was never more obdurate. “If it pleased my granddaughter to roam the country with an organ and a monkey, she would do it; I could only see that the organ and the monkey were good of their kind.” This is his charming way of putting things—his excuse for giving me an introduction outside of Newnham or Girton.’
‘And your coach, Miss Travers, is to be your escort. She is comelier than one could have expected, poor thing. I have no prejudices, as everybody knows,’ said old Cassandra. ‘When I heard a Girtonite was coming to our college, I held my peace. If one of these emancipated young women has regular features or a bright complexion, I acknowledge the fact. Still, one wonders——’
‘How such a girl as Miss Travers could choose the higher life, instead of marrying—some man like Lord Rex Basire, say, or Mr. Oscar Jones!’
‘Those two are not the only types of man extant,’ observed Cassandra.
To this there succeeded a sufficiently pregnant silence. Marjorie broke it with effort. Her voice had become unsteady. Her sentences were disjointed.
‘We are to stay one night in London—I don’t know whether grandpapa told you about the plans? Next day we shall see whatever sights are visible through the November fog, and late in the afternoon I shall run down to Cambridge. It is high time I learned to knock about the world alone! If I work steadily when we come back to Guernsey, very likely I may go up to Girton as a bye-term man in January.’
‘Is this the future you wanted to talk about?’ Cassandra Tighe bent forward. She looked hard at the slim girlish figure, the delicately feminine face of Marjorie Bartrand. ‘You must learn to knock about the world alone! You will go up in January as a bye-term man! These prospects may be intoxicating. We require, I think, no assistance from the friendly half-light to discuss them in.’
The remark went home. Marjorie’s ill-fated love affair had long been an open secret between her and old Cassandra Tighe, and in a few minutes’ time half confidences were over, reserve had gone to the winds. Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s name, for the first time for months, was on the girl’s trembling lips.
‘I am not likely to be over forward again, Miss Tighe. But, strive as I will, the longing overcomes me to see Mr. Arbuthnot—before he marries some one else—to give him a last chance of explanation. The word—the one word—I wrote that miserable afternoon may never have reached him. When I heard Mrs. Arbuthnot was out,’ Marjorie made confession, ‘my courage went from me—I had hoped to leave my packet safe in Dinah’s hands—and I just gave it, without a message, to the servant who answered my ring. Then I drove away—fast, for fear Geoffrey should meet me and see my face.’
‘The Arbuthnot people were a singular trio.’ Cassandra made the remark with an irrelevant neutrality savouring of the serpent’s wisdom. ‘The best looking of the men, not your tutor, Marjorie, is doing good things, it seems, as an artist. Colonel de Gourmet has a correspondent in Florence, where the Gaston Arbuthnots live, and the accounts of them are favourable. You know, of course, that there is a Miss Arbuthnot?’
‘Yes, I have heard the news. It is good to think that Dinah must be a happier woman now.’
‘We shall not see such a face again on our shores. Do you remember my mistake about her, Marjorie—the lecture I made you read your tutor on his frivolity?’
‘You ask me questions instead of answering mine, Miss Tighe. If I should meet him—if through blind accident I should speak to Geoffrey again, would it be delicate, would it show proper womanly pride, for me to attempt one last explanation?’
Cassandra did not instantly reply. The sobbing of the wind had died among the poplars. The leaves fell noiselessly to the damp earth. Only the ticking of the clock on the stairs broke silence.
‘For ever—never!’
‘Never—for ever!’
And with each second, thought Marjorie, how many human loves must be laid low, how many hearts must begin to ache for all time as hers was aching now!
Miss Tighe sat calm and placid, as when the girl first entered, her hands folded on her knee. ‘And what earthly inducement had Pouchée to settle in a University town?’ she observed at length. ‘Why does the woman live alone?’
‘Her father was maître d’escrime in Cambridge. She and her mother live on in the house where he died. I rather think Mademoiselle gives French lessons still.’
‘Oh, Mademoiselle gives French lessons still, does she?’ Cassandra’s tone was absent. She rose, moved closer to the hearth. Her face was level with the miniature portrait of a lad in old-fashioned uniform that hung there. By and by, ‘I am going,’ she said very low, ‘to tell you something about which I have been silent for forty years.’
‘Miss Tighe——’
‘Don’t be afraid of an old woman’s prosy history, or of a sermon. You will have neither. Forty years ago, child, there lived, in the far north of England, a girl, somewhere about your present age. This girl was on the eve of being married. Her wedding dress was ordered, the guests were bidden. Well, at the eleventh hour she chose, in a flame of paltry jealousy, to resent some fancied want of devotion in her lover. He was single-minded, loyal—of finer stuff, altogether, than herself. They might have been reconciled in an hour if she would have let her heart speak, have returned to the arms outheld to receive her. The girl would make not an inch of concession. She came, as you do, Marjorie, of people who look upon unforgiveness as a virtue. She heard around her the old stock phrases—delicacy, family pride—the righteousness of subordinating feeling to will! And so it came to pass that the lover, having neither wealth nor title, was allowed to go. He exchanged into a regiment under orders for India. Our troops were then in Afghanistan, engaged in hot fighting, and——’
Miss Tighe’s voice—the brave, kind voice that Marjorie had always known—broke down. Marjorie felt herself turn chill with a vague terror. To hear of this white-haired woman’s love seemed, in her overstrained mood, like receiving a message from the world of ghosts. She awaited the sequel of the story, not speaking, not lifting her eyes to the narrator’s face.
‘The lad fell—a locket his sweetheart had once given him hidden in his breast. It came back to her, through a brother officer who knew something of the dead man’s story—and with a stain on it. That stain has marked every day of a lonely life throughout forty years. You will not speak of this again, remember.’
‘Never, Miss Tighe, I promise you.’
‘But keep my words in your memory. If you meet Geoffrey Arbuthnot, if a moment comes when happiness beckons one way, the Bartrand pride another, they may, perhaps, be of use to you.’
So human hearts can remain true to their griefs for forty years! Marjorie pondered on this fact as she walked back through the November-smelling, dark country to Tintajeux. She felt, with the certainty of morbid eighteen, that her own life would be a counterpart of Cassandra Tighe’s. She would never love any other man than Geoffrey, would never marry where she did not love. She was not likely to die. In the glow of her young health, feeling her limbs so lithe—the mere act of walking and breathing an ever renewed bodily pleasure—death lay over an horizon which she had not yet sighted. Ah, if she could hear Geff’s step approaching now, if she could feel his hand-clasp, strong, friendly as in the days of old, the collective pride of the whole Bartrand race would not long stand between them!
But the mirk lanes were forsaken; no human step save her own was to be heard. The lights were lit in the scattered cottage homesteads, the children at play round the fire, the elders resting after their day’s work. Through the low windows Marjorie could see one family group after another as she passed along, and felt her own loneliness the greater. As she came near Tintajeux the cry of the owls, than which no more freezing sound exists in nature, was all that gave her welcome.
‘That stain has marked every day of a lonely life throughout forty years.’
The moral of Miss Tighe’s story lingered in Marjorie’s heart. As she and her grandfather sat for the last time together over dessert, old Andros took not unkindly notice of her white cheeks and darkened eyes.
‘You must get back your good looks before you show yourself in Cambridge. Women are sent into the world to be graceful. When they fail in that, they fail in everything. Be a senior wrangler if you will, but keep your complexion. You have grown much more like your father of late.’ This was the highest form of praise Andros Bartrand could offer her. ‘Don’t go back to the little skinny Spanish witch of former days.’
‘I wish I could, sir,’ cried Marjorie, a flash of quickly-roused mutiny in her eyes. ‘The days when I was a little skinny Spanish witch were better than any I am likely to know again in this world.’