A Girton Girl by Annie Edwards - HTML preview

CHAPTER XLIX
FROM DINAH’S HAND

These things sank heavily on Marjorie’s bruised heart. She felt that Geoffrey’s indifference to herself was now an ascertained fact,—nay, that his fancy for her, at no time worthy of a higher name, had turned to repugnance. He had asked her to be his wife under the glamour of a picturesque moment—a friendship, unique in its conditions from the beginning, suddenly taking upon itself a surface likeness to passion! A true lover would not have availed himself so readily of his chance of freedom, would not have magnified his mistress’s heat of temper into a crime, would not have rejected the fullest amends that woman could offer, short of falling upon her knees in the dust before an offended sweetheart!

Mademoiselle Pouchée was overjoyed when the girl announced herself ready, next day, to deliver her letters of introduction.

‘We shall see what such presentations lead to,’ exclaimed the kindly soul, her round face beaming. ‘A dinner here, a lunch there—the highest gentlemen in Cambridge to be met at each! I predict a succès fou! Not all the world, let me tell you, brings such letters to the University. By after to-morrow you will have every evening of your week engaged.’

‘The University will keep its head, dear Pouchée. A singularly insignificant young person from the Channel Islands runs no risk of becoming a sensation. The highest gentlemen in Cambridge will pay Marjorie Bartrand just attention enough to ask her name—and forget it.’

Nevertheless, on the score of invitations, Pouchée’s forecast proved a true one. Before night, arrived a friendly invitation bidding Marjorie to dine at the house of the Master of Matthias next day. As Miss Bartrand looked forward to studying in Cambridge, the note added, a lady high in authority at Girton had been asked to meet her.

‘Of that Girton lady I speak not,’ observed Pouchée, when the hour came on the morrow for Marjorie to dress. ‘About Newnham and Girton I am dumb.’ Imagine Pouchée dumb on any subject, earthly or terrestrial! ‘I have lived by brain work, I have been a teacher over nineteen years. See my whitening hairs, my lost illusions, my disenchantments! In that sad trade the woman’s heart breathes not. Make yourself charming, fillette! The most distinguished society of Cambridge is to be met with at the table of the Master of Matthias. For a child of eighteen there may be better things in store than coming out high in a Tripos; yes, or standing on a level with the first wrangler of them all.’

Marjorie’s presumptive triumphs caused the whole Pouchée household to expand. Wax candles—rare extravagance—stood lit before her mirror. Flowers were on her toilette-table. Her white dinner dress, with its simple adjuncts, was lovingly laid ready for her by Mademoiselle’s hands.

But in Marjorie’s restless heart there was no place for pretty dresses, for anticipation of social success. She drew aside her curtain. She gazed down through a chink of blind upon the street, hoping against hope, as she had so often done before, to discover the face of her false sweetheart among the passers-by.

It was the most crowded hour of the short November day. Athletic men were there, returning, in flannels and wrappers, from the river or the Piece; sporting men from the hunting-field; reading men from their trudge along the Wranglers’ Walk. Of ‘pifflers’ an abundance; men with terriers, men with button-holes, men in dog-carts—the whole many-coloured undergraduate world, alert, self-engrossed. Drawing together the curtain, Marjorie Bartrand moved back to her looking-glass. She stood confronting the pale, serious-eyed vision that met her there with a kind of pity. She was so young, and the years to come were so many; disappointed years under whose weight she must stand upright, give no sign she winced beneath their burthen, wear a brave countenance—work! She felt that she hated Cambridge, this ceaseless ebb and flow, this turmoil of exultant, successful, youthful life! Was not Tintajeux, with its dying woods, its still moorland, a fitter drop-scene for the little played-out drama of her personal happiness?

As Marjorie meditated, the sharp sound of the postman’s knock made her start. No letter of more vital interest than a despatch from the Seigneur was likely to reach her; and yet her breath quickened. Her mood throughout the day had been one of feverish, unreasoning expectancy. Change, for good or for evil, was, she felt, in the air. Opening the door of her room, she listened with vague impatience. Hot controversies anent over-weight and foreign postage were impending between Madame Pouchée and the postman; Madame, in the matter of extra half-pence, standing stoutly on the defensive. After a time there would seem to be a reluctant payment of coin, followed by the brisk shutting of an outer door. Then the old Frenchwoman’s slippered steps began leisurely to ascend the stair. The girl’s breath came faster. She ran out on the landing. The letter was not the size or shape of the Seigneur’s letters, and it bore two postmarks: Florence, Guernsey....

‘ ... Five half-pence over-weight. I hope, mère, it may be worth its postage,’ observed Mademoiselle Pouchée, busily tying up violets in the salon for the adornment of Marjorie’s dress. ‘The child has never spoken about Italy, still—her heart is somewhere, mère, and I don’t believe that somewhere is in Newnham or Girton. Ah, when I, too, had eighteen summers, when——’

‘Pouchée! Dear, good old Pouchée!’ called out a voice, resonant, hearty, imperious, from the attic floor. ‘Leave the violets. Come upstairs, quick! I have had splendid news. Everything in the world is changed. You must send an excuse to the Master of Matthias at once.’

In a moment the Pouchées, mother and daughter, were at the bottom of the stairs. Marjorie Bartrand, her opened letter in her hand, a flush of wild excitement lighting her face up into its vivid Southern beauty, stood on the landing above.

‘An excuse! Consider what you talk about!’ exclaimed Pouchée solemnly. ‘Have your splendid news, with all my heart! But have your splendid dinner, too. The Master of Matthias keeps the best table in the University. At his house you meet——’

‘The most distinguished society of Cambridge. Oh, Pouchée, what should I find to say to distinguished society ... to any king or emperor in Europe?... Hark! There is Great St. Mary’s clock striking the quarter. We have not a minute to lose. Write a note, Mademoiselle, in your best hand, with your pretty, courteous French grace, and give it to the coachman to deliver. I must read my letter through once more.’

Seven was the appointed time of the Master’s dinner-party. At the moment when Great St. Mary’s clock boomed the hour’s first stroke, Marjorie Bartrand extinguished her candles. She descended with muffled tread to the red baize door at the turning of the stairs. Here she paused, listened until she heard the shrill treble of French voices, knew that the Pouchées were safely talking together downstairs. Then, on tiptoe, she stole to Geoffrey’s quarters. The door stood ajar; a stray reflected flare of gaslight from some shop window in the court beneath enabled her to grope her way across the chill and comfortless room.

The girl paused, irresolute. She remembered Cassandra Tighe’s story, remembered the miniature Bartrands, the confession made in their presence of Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s first love. During a few seconds the old Bartrand pride swayed her—the happiness of her life hung by a thread. Then she took a packet from her breast. She laid it meekly, furtively, on the student’s writing-table and fled, like one who quits the scene of a committed crime, to the light and cheerfulness of the little salon below.

Pouchée was decking the mantelshelf with the violets Marjorie should have worn. ‘Headstrong as ever, child! But I forbear to reason,’ she cried, ‘until you explain yourself. That big Italian letter, re-directed in the Seigneur’s hand, has brought you important news?’

‘I will answer you to-morrow, Pouchée. All I know is that I have lost my chance of distinguished society, and that my heart is the happiest heart in all Cambridge.’

‘Grand ciel! Then you have a dear friend among the Florentines!’ Poor Pouchée’s face brimmed over with curiosity. ‘I accept him, without conditions, for your sake. The Italians are ungrateful as rats. Think of all my country has done for them! Still, if a Florentine is your fate——’

But her imaginary concessions were cut short; the violets slipped through Pouchée’s fingers. There came the sudden click of a latchkey at the house door. A man’s firm step sounded in the passage.

‘It is our gentleman! Save yourself, quick, child! The curtain of the bay window will hide you.’

The words had scarce left Pouchée’s mouth when Geff Arbuthnot entered. He took a rapid glance round him, walked in the direction of the window—Marjorie’s heart thrilled as she crouched, imprisoned, out of sight—then stopped short. There was something of insecurity about his movements.

‘For a moment I was afraid to come in. The front door has become strange to one. But you are really alone, Mademoiselle? Your visitor has started to her party? Then you will let me have five minutes’ chat beside your fire? I have something good to tell you.’

‘That is right, sir. Please let me set you a chair.’

In performing this little action Pouchée artfully chose such a point that Marjorie, shadowed herself, might gain a full view of Geff Arbuthnot’s face.

‘Your fire makes one feel we are in November.’

He stretched his hands forth to the blaze. ‘How delightful your salon is to-night, Mademoiselle Pouchée.’

Coming in from the mud and darkness, the dreary prose of Cambridge thoroughfares, he might well think so. The room was redolent with the odour of Marjorie’s discarded violets; morsels of muslin embroidery, a thimble never worn by Pouchée’s finger, lay on a work-table near Geff’s elbow. The warmth, the grace, the nameless sweetness of a young girl’s presence, were everywhere.

‘How well that Guernsey photograph looks in its old place!’ Could it be that Geoffrey shrank from pronouncing the name of Tintajeux? ‘You shall not dismantle your walls again for whim of mine.’

Pouchée stirred the fire into a keener flame. She gave a discreet little cough.

‘We will settle about that another day, sir. I wait impatiently your news. Something good about yourself, I hope?’

‘Something very good.’ His face brightened. ‘You know our poor patient down in Barnwell?’

‘Our Irish bargee, O’Halloran, the dingiest character even Barnwell can show.’

‘But whom, when he was at his worst, Mademoiselle Pouchée tended like a sister.’

‘I sat up one or two nights. I helped—because the good-for-nothing is of my religion. Our priest advised an act of contrition. I had my motives.’

‘As I had mine,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Never condescend, Mademoiselle, to become a motive-monger. Do you think no experimental zeal mingles with a medical student’s attention to his pauper fellows?’

‘O’Halloran rewards you, I trust, with gratitude. That, at least,’ observed Pouchée, with a touch of cynicism, ‘would be a new experience among ces messieurs of the gutters!’

‘O’Halloran rewards me with gratitude. The bandages were off him this afternoon for the first time, as you know. Well, he was sitting, propped up in bed, looking at my face with such poor remnant of sight as remains to him, when suddenly—“Doctor! I’m darned,” he cried in his hollow voice, “if it be’ant my Varsity man, after all!”’

‘Modestly spoken! His Varsity man, indeed!’

‘I should have thought the fever had come back,’ said Geff, ‘if I had not had my finger on his pulse two minutes before. “Your Varsity man, Mike—what are you talking about?” I asked him. “What have you to do with the University or its men?” “I had to do,” he said, “with a Varsity man one accursed November night that you must remember, doctor. There was a lot of chaps together, rough river chaps—you know the sort, sir—and three or four of the Varsity gentlemen came across ’em, down Petty Cury. The gentlemen wasn’t of the fighting kind, so far as I can recollect, but anyways they got into a Town and Gown row—a bad one.... Doctor, I say”—the poor fellow put out his big weak hand to me—“I was the leader of the roughs. I struck a foul coward’s blow when the gentlemen was fighting honourable and unarmed. It was me give you the devil’s mark you’ll take with you into the coffin.”’

‘Scélérat—misérable!’ put in Pouchée, between her closed teeth.

‘I tried to joke him out of his fancy,’ went on Geff Arbuthnot, ‘but in vain. Mike had seen my face, before he struck the blow—and afterwards. He had never forgotten me. The scar which you, Mademoiselle, have lamented over, as marring my beauty, put my identification beyond doubt. “My Varsity man—my Varsity man,” he moaned. “I’ve thought of him many a time in the black years since.... And now, at last, I’ve found him. Doctor, you’ve saved my life—you’ve looked after me when I should have died, else, like a dog on this miserable floor, here—there’s one favour more I durstn’t, no, I durstn’t ask of you.... Give me your hand in token of forgiveness.”’

‘And you gave it him,’ cried Pouchée, whose face had turned a queer shade of colour as she listened.

‘I gave him my hand, and Mike, who I suspect has cared neither for God nor man in his life, caught it to his lips. My dear Mademoiselle, you can guess that it was a good moment. To pull one’s patient round, in body, is much. O’Halloran will have a human heart in that dark breast of his from to-day forth.’

And having told his story, Geff Arbuthnot rose. With a lingering look he took in the home-like suggestiveness of the little salon, the violets on the mantelshelf, the morsel of embroidery, the slender implements of needlework on the table. Then he bade Mademoiselle Pouchée good-night. Marjorie listened while his remembered step ran up the stairs, listened until she knew by the opening and shutting of a distant door that he had gained his study. Then she crept forth, uncertain of mien, from her hiding-place.

‘Have I committed a dishonourable action? Was there anything I should not have heard? Oh, Mademoiselle,’ she went on, incoherently, ‘is not Geoffrey Arbuthnot the noblest man in the whole world?’

And Marjorie clasped the mantelshelf, steadying herself thereby. She bent down over a cup of violets, hiding the face from which she felt all trace of colour must have vanished.

‘You look tired, ma mie. The news from Florence has not brought back your roses. Now, what shall I get for you?’ cried Pouchée, stealing a kind arm round the girl’s shoulder. ‘Thanks to your Italian letter, remember, you have been cheated out of dinner.’

‘I should like some tea,’ Marjorie answered, plausibly. ‘Tea and a plate of tartines, cut after the fashion that only you, dear Pouchée, understand.’

If the flattery were a trick of war to effect the Frenchwoman’s absence, I hold that, in a moment supreme as this, it was pardonable.

Off went Pouchée to the kitchen, unsuspecting to the last of the love story in which she had played a part, and Marjorie, her heart on fire, awaited her fate. For the first two or three minutes all was quiet. Then she heard the impetuous opening of Geoffrey Arbuthnot’s door. Her limbs well-nigh failed her, her spirit sank. Through a few seconds of suspense the past fifteen months seemed to unroll themselves, one by one, before her sight.... At last the salon door opened and closed. Marjorie moved a step forward—she held out a hand that trembled violently. A moment more and strong arms held her close, her blushes were hidden on Geff Arbuthnot’s breast.

There was a long space of silence, an interchange of such words, such broken attempts at explanation as pen and ink can ill put into form. Then Geoffrey led his sweetheart into the broader light of lamp and fire. He looked at her tall figure, her altered softened face, with wondering eyes.

‘You have grown several inches, Miss Bartrand. You have become beautiful. Tell me I am not asleep—dreaming, as I have done so often—that I hold your hand. Tell me my good luck is real!’

‘Don’t talk of good luck yet. I have not lost my Bartrand temper. Plenty of bad times may be in store for both of us.’

‘And when was this sent to me’ Geoffrey touched his breast-pocket, in token that Marjorie’s ribbon and letter lay there. ‘The address is an enigma. There is a faded look I cannot interpret about the handwriting.’

‘I left the packet fifteen months ago at your hotel in Guernsey.’ The girl’s face drooped. ‘You ought to have had it on the day after—after my vile temper drove you away from Tintajeux. I wrote ... one word ... as you wished; I sent you the bit of Spanish ribbon for a book-marker. But fortune was against me. I forgot that you and your cousin Gaston had the same initial.’

‘If Gaston had opened a letter wrongly he would have brought it to me on the spot.’

‘There was mistake within mistake—at that time poor Dinah’s heart was near to breaking—so she writes me now.’

‘Dinah! You have heard from Mrs. Arbuthnot? Let me see her explanation.’

‘I will read a passage or two aloud.’ Marjorie Bartrand drew the Italian letter from her pocket.

‘No. You will let me read every word of it for myself.’

And Geoffrey Arbuthnot took the letter, unfolded, and read it through.

‘Dinah was tried beyond her strength,’ said Marjorie, instinctively deciphering a pained expression on Geoffrey’s face. ‘But she has no need to feel so contrite. It will make our happiness doubly sweet to know it has come to us, in the end, from Dinah’s hand.’

The tone, the generous words, smote Geoffrey to the quick.

‘Can you give up everything for me?’ he asked her presently. ‘Your dream for years has been Girton. Do you desire still to become a Girton student, or....’

‘I desire that you shall guide me,’ was the prompt answer. ‘I need no other life, no other wisdom, no other ambition than yours.’

A finis commonplace as daylight, reader, old as the foundation of the Gogmagog Hills. Gaston’s prediction was verified—Marjorie Bartrand had proved herself a very woman after all.

THE END