THE SHUTTLE BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

CHAPTER XXXIII
FOR LADY JANE
There is no one thing on earth of such interest as the study
of the laws of temperament, which impel, support, or entrap
into folly and danger the being they rule. As a child, not
old enough to give a definite name to the thing she watched
and pondered on, in child fashion, Bettina Vanderpoel had
thought much on this subject. As she had grown older, she
had never been ignorant of the workings of her own temperament,
and she had looked on for years at the laws which had wrought in
her father's being--the laws of strength, executive capacity,
and that pleasure in great schemes, which is roused less
by a desire for gain than for a strongly-felt necessity
for action, resulting in success. She mentally followed
other people on their way, sometimes asking herself how far
the individual was to be praised or blamed for his treading
of the path he seemed to choose. And now there was given
her the opportunity to study the workings of the nature of
Nigel Anstruthers, which was a curious thing.
He was not an individual to be envied. Never was man
more tormented by lack of power to control his special devil,
at the right moment of time, and therefore, never was there
one so inevitably his own frustration. This Betty saw after
the passing of but a few days, and wondered how far he was
conscious or unconscious of the thing. At times it appeared
to her that he was in a state of unrest--that he was as a man
wavering between lines of action, swayed at one moment by
one thought, at another by an idea quite different, and that
he was harried because he could not hold his own with himself.
This was true. The ball at Dunholm Castle had been
enlightening, and had wrought some changes in his points of
view. Also other factors had influenced him. In the first
place, the changed atmosphere of Stornham, the fitness and
luxury of his surroundings, the new dignity given to his
position by the altered aspect of things, rendered external
amiability more easy. To ride about the country on a good
horse, or drive in a smart phaeton, or suitable carriage, and to
find that people who a year ago had passed him with the
merest recognition, saluted him with polite intention, was, to
a certain degree, stimulating to a vanity which had been long
ill-fed. The power which produced these results should, of
course, have been in his own hands--his money-making fatherin-
law should have seen that it was his affair to provide for
that--but since he had not done so, it was rather entertaining
that it should be, for the present, in the hands of this
extraordinarily good-looking girl.
He had begun by merely thinking of her in this manner--
as "this extraordinarily good-looking girl," and had not, for a
moment, hesitated before the edifying idea of its not being
impossible to arrange a lively flirtation with her. She was at
an age when, in his opinion, girlhood was poised for flight
with adventure, and his tastes had not led him in the direction
of youth which was fastidious. His Riviera episode had left his
vanity blistered and requiring some soothing application.
His life had worked evil with him, and he had fallen
ill on the hands of a woman who had treated him as a shattered,
useless thing whose day was done and with whom
strength and bloom could not be burdened. He had kept
his illness a hidden secret, on his return to Stornham, his one
desire having been to forget--even to disbelieve in it, but
dreams of its suggestion sometimes awakened him at night with
shudders and cold sweat. He was hideously afraid of death and
pain, and he had had monstrous pain--and while he had lain
battling with it, upon his bed in the villa on the Mediterranean,
he had been able to hear, in the garden outside, the low voices
and laughter of the Spanish dancer and the healthy, strong
young fool who was her new adorer.
When he had found himself face to face with Betty in
the avenue, after the first leap of annoyance, which had suddenly
died down into perversely interested curiosity, he could
have laughed outright at the novelty and odd unexpectedness
of the situation. The ill-mannered, impudently-staring, little
New York beast had developed into THIS! Hang it! No man
could guess what the embryo female creature might result in.
His mere shakiness of physical condition added strength to
her attraction. She was like a young goddess of health and
life and fire; the very spring of her firm foot upon the moss
beneath it was a stimulating thing to a man whose nerves
sprung secret fears upon him. There were sparks between the
sweep of her lashes, but she managed to carry herself with
the air of being as cool as a cucumber, which gave spice to
the effort to "upset" her. If she did not prove suitably
amenable, there would be piquancy in getting the better of her
--in stirring up unpleasant little things, which would make it
easier for her to go away than remain on the spot--if one
should end by choosing to get rid of her. But, for the moment,
he had no desire to get rid of her. He wanted to see what
she intended to do--to see the thing out, in fact. It amused
him to hear that Mount Dunstan was on her track. There
exists for persons of a certain type a pleasure full-fed by the
mere sense of having "got even" with an opponent. Throughout
his life he had made a point of "getting even" with
those who had irritatingly crossed his path, or much disliked
him. The working out of small or large plans to achieve this
end had formed one of his most agreeable recreations. He
had long owed Mount Dunstan a debt, which he had always
meant to pay. He had not intended to forget the episode of
the nice little village girl with whom Tenham and himself
had been getting along so enormously well, when the raging
young ass had found them out, and made an absurdly exaggerated
scene, even going so far as threatening to smash the pair of
them, marching off to the father and mother, and
setting the vicar on, and then scratching together--God knows
how--money enough to pack the lot off to America, where
they had since done well. Why should a man forgive another
who had made him look like a schoolboy and a fool? So, to
find Mount Dunstan rushing down a steep hill into this
thing, was edifying. You cannot take much out of a man
if you never encounter him. If you meet him, you are provided
by Heaven with opportunities. You can find out what
he feels most sharply, and what he will suffer most by being
deprived of. His impression was that there was a good deal
to be got out of Mount Dunstan. He was an obstinate,
haughty devil, and just the fellow to conceal with a fury of
pride a score of tender places in his hide.
At the ball he had seen that the girl's effect had been of
a kind which even money and good looks uncombined with
another thing might not have produced. And she had the
other thing--whatsoever it might be. He observed the way
in which the Dunholms met and greeted her, he marked the
glance of the royal personage, and his manner, when after
her presentation he conversed with and detained her, he saw
the turning of heads and exchange of remarks as she moved
through the rooms. Most especially, he took in the bearing
of the very grand old ladies, led by Lady Alanby of Dole.
Barriers had thrown themselves down, these portentous,
rigorous old pussycats admired her, even liked her.
"Upon my word," he said to himself. "She has a way with
her, you know. She is a combination of Ethel Newcome and
Becky Sharp. But she is more level-headed than either of them,
There's a touch of Trix Esmond, too."
The sense of the success which followed her, and the graduallygrowing
excitement of looking on at her light whirls of
dance, the carnation of her cheek, and the laughter and pleasure
she drew about her, had affected him in a way by which
he was secretly a little exhilarated. He was conscious of a
rash desire to force his way through these laughing, vaunting
young idiots, juggle or snatch their dances away from them,
and seize on the girl himself. He had not for so long a time
been impelled by such agreeable folly that he had sometimes
felt the stab of the thought that he was past it. That it
should rise in him again made him feel young. There was
nothing which so irritated him against Mount Dunstan as
his own rebelling recognition of the man's youth, the strength
of his fine body, his high-held head and clear eye.
These things and others it was which swayed him, as was plain to
Betty in the time which followed, to many changes of mood.
"Are you sorry for a man who is ill and depressed," he
asked one day, "or do you despise him?"
"I am sorry."
"Then be sorry for me."
He had come out of the house to her as she sat on the lawn,
under a broad, level-branched tree, and had thrown himself
upon a rug with his hands clasped behind his head.
"Are you ill?"
"When I was on the Riviera I had a fall." He lied simply.
"I strained some muscle or other, and it has left me
rather lame. Sometimes I have a good deal of pain."
"I am very sorry," said Betty. "Very."
A woman who can be made sorry it is rarely impossible to
manage. To dwell with pathetic patience on your grievances,
if she is weak and unintelligent, to deplore, with honest regret,
your faults and blunders, if she is strong, are not bad ideas.
He looked at her reflectively.
"Yes, you are capable of being sorry," he decided. For
a few moments of silence his eyes rested upon the view spread
before him. To give the expression of dignified reflection
was not a bad idea either.
"Do you know," he said at length, "that you produce an
extraordinary effect upon me, Betty?"
She was occupying herself by adding a few stitches to one
of Rosy's ancient strips of embroidery, and as she answered,
she laid it flat upon her knee to consider its effect
"Good or bad?" she inquired, with delicate abstraction.
He turned his face towards her again--this time quickly.
"Both," he answered. "Both."
His tone held the flash of a heat which he felt should have
startled her slightly. But apparently it did not.
"I do not like `both,' " with composed lightness. "If you
had said that you felt yourself develop angelic qualities when
you were near me, I should feel flattered, and swell with
pride. But `both' leaves me unsatisfied. It interferes with
the happy little conceit that one is an all-pervading, beneficent
power. One likes to contemplate a large picture of one's self--
not plain, but coloured--as a wholesale reformer."
"I see. Thank you," stiffly and flushing. "You do not
believe me."
Her effect upon him was such that, for the moment, he
found himself choosing to believe that he was in earnest. His
desire to impress her with his mood had actually led to this
result. She ought to have been rather moved--a little fluttered,
perhaps, at hearing that she disturbed his equilibrium.
"You set yourself against me, as a child, Betty," he said.
"And you set yourself against me now. You will not give
me fair play. You might give me fair play." He dropped his
voice at the last sentence, and knew it was well done. A
touch of hopelessness is not often lost on a woman.
"What would you consider fair play?" she inquired.
"It would be fair to listen to me without prejudice--to let
me explain how it has happened that I have appeared to you
a--a blackguard--I have no doubt you would call it--and a
fool." He threw out his hand in an impatient gesture--impatient
of himself--his fate--the tricks of bad fortune which it
implied had made of him a more erring mortal than he would
have been if left to himself, and treated decently.
"Do not put it so strongly," with conservative politeness.
"I don't refuse to admit that I am handicapped by a
devil of a temperament. That is an inherited thing."
"Ah!" said Betty. "One of the temperaments one reads
about--for which no one is to be blamed but one's deceased
relatives. After all, that is comparatively easy to deal with.
One can just go on doing what one wants to do--and then
condemn one's grandparents severely."
A repellent quality in her--which had also the trick of
transforming itself into an exasperating attraction--was that
she deprived him of the luxury he had been most tenacious
of throughout his existence. If the injustice of fate has failed
to bestow upon a man fortune, good looks or brilliance, his
exercise of the power to disturb, to enrage those who dare not
resent, to wound and take the nonsense out of those about him,
will, at all events, preclude the possibility of his being passed
over as a factor not to be considered. If to charm and bestow
gives the sense of power, to thwart and humiliate may be
found not wholly unsatisfying.
But in her case the inadequacy of the usual methods had
forced itself upon him. It was as if the dart being aimed
at her, she caught it in her hand in its flight, broke off its
point and threw it lightly aside without comment. Most
women cannot resist the temptation to answer a speech containing
a sting or a reproach. It was part of her abnormality that
she could let such things go by in a detached silence, which
did not express even the germ of comment or opinion upon
them. This, he said, was the result of her beastly sense of
security, which, in its turn, was the result of the atmosphere
of wealth she had breathed since her birth. There had been
no obstacle which could not be removed for her, no law of
limitation had laid its rein on her neck. She had not been
taught by her existence the importance of propitiating opinion.
Under such conditions, how was fear to be learned? She had
not learned it. But for the devil in the blue between her
lashes, he realised that he should have broken loose long ago.
"I suppose I deserved that for making a stupid appeal to
sympathy," he remarked. "I will not do it again."
If she had been the woman who can be gently goaded into
reply, she would have made answer to this. But she allowed
the observation to pass, giving it free flight into space, where
it lost itself after the annoying manner of its kind.
"Have you any objection to telling me why you decided
to come to England this year?" he inquired, with a casual
air, after the pause which she did not fill in.
The bluntness of the question did not seem to disturb her.
She was not sorry, in fact, that he had asked it. She let her
work lie upon her knee, and leaned back in her low garden
chair, her hands resting upon its wicker arms. She turned on
him a clear unprejudiced gaze.
"I came to see Rosy. I have always been very fond of
her. I did not believe that she had forgotten how much we
had loved her, or how much she had loved us. I knew that
if I could see her again I should understand why she had
seemed to forget us."
"And when you saw her, you, of course, decided that I had
behaved, to quote my own words--like a blackguard and a
fool."
"It is, of course, very rude to say you have behaved like
a fool, but--if you'll excuse my saying so--that is what has
impressed me very much. Don't you know," with a moderation,
which singularly drove itself home, "that if you had
been kind to her, and had made her happy, you could have
had anything you wished for--without trouble?"
This was one of the unadorned facts which are like bullets.
Disgustedly, he found himself veering towards an outlook
which forced him to admit that there was probably truth in
what she said, and he knew he heard more truth as she went on.
"She would have wanted only what you wanted, and she
would not have asked much in return. She would not have
asked as much as I should. What you did was not businesslike."
She paused a moment to give thought to it. "You paid
too high a price for the luxury of indulging the inherited
temperament. Your luxury was not to control it. But it was a
bad investment."
"The figure of speech is rather commercial," coldly.
"It is curious that most things are, as a rule. There is
always the parallel of profit and loss whether one sees it or
not. The profits are happiness and friendship--enjoyment of
life and approbation. If the inherited temperament supplies
one with all one wants of such things, it cannot be called a
loss, of course."
"You think, however, that mine has not brought me much?"
"I do not know. It is you who know."
"Well," viciously, "there HAS been a sort of luxury in it
in lashing out with one's heels, and smashing things--and in
knowing that people prefer to keep clear."
She lifted her shoulders a little.
"Then perhaps it has paid."
"No," suddenly and fiercely, "damn it, it has not!"
And she actually made no reply to that.
"What do you mean to do?" he questioned as bluntly as
before. He knew she would understand what he meant.
"Not much. To see that Rosy is not unhappy any more.
We can prevent that. She was out of repair--as the house
was. She is being rebuilt and decorated. She knows that she
will be taken care of."
"I know her better than you do," with a laugh. "She will
not go away. She is too frightened of the row it would make--
of what I should say. I should have plenty to say. I can make
her shake in her shoes."
Betty let her eyes rest full upon him, and he saw that she
was softly summing him up--quite without prejudice, merely
in interested speculation upon the workings of type.
"You are letting the inherited temperament run away with
you at this moment," she reflected aloud--her quiet scrutiny
almost abstracted. "It was foolish to say that."
He had known it was foolish two seconds after the words
had left his lips. But a temper which has been allowed to
leap hedges, unchecked throughout life, is in peril of forming
a habit of taking them even at such times as a leap may land
its owner in a ditch. This last was what her interested eyes
were obviously saying. It suited him best at the moment to
try to laugh.
"Don't look at me like that," he threw off. "As if you
were calculating that two and two make four."
"No prejudice of mine can induce them to make five or
six--or three and a half," she said. "No prejudice of mine--
or of yours."
The two and two she was calculating with were the
likelihoods and unlikelihoods of the inherited temperament, and
the practical powers she could absolutely count on if difficulty
arose with regard to Rosy.
He guessed at this, and began to make calculations himself.
But there was no further conversation for them, as they
were obliged to rise to their feet to receive visitors. Lady
Alanby of Dole and Sir Thomas, her grandson, were being
brought out of the house to them by Rosalie.
He went forward to meet them--his manner that of the
graceful host. Lady Alanby, having been welcomed by him,
and led to the most comfortable, tree-shaded chair, found his
bearing so elegantly chastened that she gazed at him with
private curiosity. To her far-seeing and highly experienced
old mind it seemed the bearing of a man who was "up to
something." What special thing did he chance to be "up
to"? His glance certainly lurked after Miss Vanderpoel oddly.
Was he falling in unholy love with the girl, under his stupid
little wife's very nose?
She could not, however, give her undivided attention to him,
as she wished to keep her eye on her grandson and--outrageously
enough fit happened that just as tea was brought out
and Tommy was beginning to cheer up and quite come out
a little under the spur of the activities of handing bread and
butter and cress sandwiches, who should appear but the two
Lithcom girls, escorted by their aunt, Mrs. Manners, with
whom they lived. As they were orphans without money, if
the Manners, who were rather well off, had not taken them
in, they would have had to go to the workhouse, or into genteel
amateur shops, as they were not clever enough for governesses.
Mary, with her turned-up nose, looked just about as usual,
but Jane had a new frock on which was exactly the colour
of the big, appealing eyes, with their trick of following people
about. She looked a little pale and pathetic, which somehow
gave her a specious air of being pretty, which she really was
not at all. The swaying young thinness of those very slight
girls whose soft summer muslins make them look like delicate
bags tied in the middle with fluttering ribbons, has almost
invariably a foolish attraction for burly young men whose
characters are chiefly marked by lack of forethought, and Lady
Alanby saw Tommy's robust young body give a sort of jerk
as the party of three was brought across the grass. After
it he pulled himself together hastily, and looked stiff and
pink, shaking hands as if his elbow joint was out of order,
being at once too loose and too rigid. He began to be clumsy
with the bread and butter, and, ceasing his talk with Miss
Vanderpoel, fell into silence. Why should he go on talking?
he thought. Miss Vanderpoel was a cracking handsome girl,
but she was too clever for him, and he had to think of all
sorts of new things to say when he talked to her. And--
well, a fellow could never imagine himself stretched out on
the grass, puffing happily away at a pipe, with a girl like
that sitting near him, smiling--the hot turf smelling almost
like hay, the hot blue sky curving overhead, and both the girl
and himself perfectly happy--chock full of joy--though neither
of them were saying anything at all. You could imagine it
with some girls--you DID imagine it when you wakened early
on a summer morning, and lay in luxurious stillness listening
to the birds singing like mad.
Lady Jane was a nicely-behaved girl, and she tried to keep
her following blue eyes fixed on the grass, or on Lady
Anstruthers, or Miss Vanderpoel, but there was something like
a string, which sometimes pulled them in another direction,
and once when this had happened--quite against her will--she
was terrified to find Lady Alanby's glass lifted and fixed upon
her.
As Lady Alanby's opinion of Mrs. Manners was but a poor
one, and as Mrs. Manners was stricken dumb by her combined
dislike and awe of Lady Alanby, a slight stiffness might
have settled upon the gathering if Betty had not made an
effort. She applied herself to Lady Alanby and Mrs. Manners
at once, and ended by making them talk to each other.
When they left the tea table under the trees to look at the
gardens, she walked between them, playing upon the primeval
horticultural passions which dominate the existence of all
respectable and normal country ladies, until the gulf between
them was temporarily bridged. This being achieved, she adroitly
passed them over to Lady Anstruthers, who, Nigel observed
with some curiosity, accepted the casual responsibility without
manifest discomfiture.
To the aching Tommy the manner in which, a few minutes
later, he found himself standing alone with Jane Lithcom in
a path of clipped laurels was almost bewilderingly simple.
At the end of the laurel walk was a pretty peep of the country,
and Miss Vanderpoel had brought him to see it. Nigel
Anstruthers had been loitering behind with Jane and Mary. As
Miss Vanderpoel turned with him into the path, she stooped
and picked a blossom from a clump of speedwell growing
at the foot of a bit of wall.
"Lady Jane's eyes are just the colour of this flower," she
said.
"Yes, they are," he answered, glancing down at the lovely
little blue thing as she held it in her hand. And then, with
a thump of the heart, "Most people do not think she is
pretty, but I--" quite desperately--"I DO." His mood had
become rash.
"So do I," Betty Vanderpoel answered.
Then the others joined them, and Miss Vanderpoel paused
to talk a little--and when they went on she was with Mary
and Nigel Anstruthers, and he was with Jane, walking slowly,
and somehow the others melted away, turning in a perfectly
natural manner into a side path. Their own slow pace became
slower. In fact, in a few moments, they were standing quite
still between the green walls. Jane turned a little aside, and
picked off some small leaves, nervously. He saw the muslin
on her chest lift quiveringly.
"Oh, little Jane!" he said in a big, shaky whisper. The
following eyes incontinently brimmed over. Some shining
drops fell on the softness of the blue muslin.
"Oh, Tommy," giving up, "it's no use--talking at all."
"You mustn't think--you mustn't think--ANYTHING," he falteringly
commanded, drawing nearer, because it was impossible not to do
it.
What he really meant, though he did not know how
decorously to say it, was that she must not think that he could
be moved by any tall beauty, towards the splendour of whose
possessions his revered grandmother might be driving him.
"I am not thinking anything," cried Jane in answer. "But
she is everything, and I am nothing. Just look at her--and
then look at me, Tommy."
"I'll look at you as long as you'll let me," gulped Tommy,
and he was boy enough and man enough to put a hand on each of her
shoulders, and drown his longing in her brimming eyes.
. . . . .
Mary and Miss Vanderpoel were talking with a curious
intimacy, in another part of the garden, where they were
together alone, Sir Nigel having been reattached to Lady Alanby.
"You have known Sir Thomas a long time?" Betty had just said.
"Since we were children. Jane reminded me at the Dunholms' ball
that she had played cricket with him when she was eight."
"They have always liked each other?" Miss Vanderpoel suggested.
Mary looked up at her, and the meeting of their eyes was
frank to revelation. But for the clear girlish liking for
herself she saw in Betty Vanderpoel's, Mary would have known
her next speech to be of imbecile bluntness. She had heard
that Americans often had a queer, delightful understanding of
unconventional things. This splendid girl was understanding her.
"Oh! You SEE!" she broke out. "You left them together on
purpose!"
"Yes, I did." And there was a comprehension so deep in
her look that Mary knew it was deeper than her own, and
somehow founded on some subtler feeling than her own.
"When two people want so much--care so much to be
together," Miss Vanderpoel added quite slowly--even as if the
words rather forced themselves from her, "it seems as if the
whole world ought to help them--everything in the world--
the very wind, and rain, and sun, and stars--oh, things have
no RIGHT to keep them apart."
Mary stared at her, moved and fascinated. She scarcely
knew that she caught at her hand.
"I have never been in the state that Jane is," she poured
forth. "And I can't understand how she can be such a fool,
but--but we care about each other more than most girls do--
perhaps because we have had no people. And it's the kind
of thing there is no use talking against, it seems. It's killing
the youngness in her. If it ends miserably, it will be as if
she had had an illness, and got up from it a faded, done-for
spinster with a stretch of hideous years to live. Her blue
eyes will look like boiled gooseberries, because she will have
cried all the colour out of them. Oh! You UNDERSTAND! I
see you do."
Before she had finished both Miss Vanderpoel's hands were
holding hers.
"I do! I do," she said. And she did, as a year ago she
had not known she could. "Is it Lady Alanby?" she ventured.
"Yes. Tommy will be helplessly poor if she does not leave
him her money. And she won't if he makes her angry. She
is very determined. She will leave it to an awful cousin if
she gets in a rage. And Tommy is not clever. He could never
earn his living. Neither could Jane. They could NEVER marry.
You CAN'T defy relatives, and marry on nothing, unless you are
a character in a book."
"Has she liked Lady Jane in the past?" Miss Vanderpoel
asked, as if she was, mentally, rapidly going over the ground,
that she might quite comprehend everything.
"Yes. She used to make rather a pet of her. She didn't
like me. She was taken by Jane's meek, attentive, obedient
ways. Jane was born a sweet little affectionate worm. Lady
Alanby can't hate her, even now. She just pushes her out of
her path."
"Because?" said Betty Vanderpoel.
Mary prefaced her answer with a brief, half-embarrassed laugh.
"Because of YOU."
"Because she thinks----?"
"I don't see how she can believe he has much of a chance.
I don't think she does--but she will never forgive him if
he doesn't make a try at finding out whether he has one or not."
"It is very businesslike," Betty made observation.
Mary laughed.
"We talk of American business outlook," she said, "but
very few of us English people are dreamy idealists. We are
of a coolness and a daring--when we are dealing with questions
of this sort. I don't think you can know the thing you
have brought here. You descend on a dull country place,
with your money and your looks, and you simply STAY and
amuse yourself by doing extraordinary things, as if there was
no London waiting for you. Everyone knows this won't last.
Next season you will be presented, and have a huge success.
You will be whirled about in a vortex, and people will sit
on the edge, and cast big strong lines, baited with the most
glittering things they can get together. You won't be able
to get away. Lady Alanby knows there would be no chance
for Tommy then. It would be too idiotic to expect it. He
must make his try now."
Their eyes met again, and Miss Vanderpoel looked neither shocked
nor angry, but an odd small shadow swept across her face. Mary,
of course, did not know that she was thinking of the thing she
had realised so often--that it was not easy to detach one's self
from the fact that one was Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter. As a
result of it here one was indecently and unwillingly disturbing
the lives of innocent, unassuming lovers.
"And so long as Sir Thomas has not tried--and found out--
Lady Jane will be made unhappy?"
"If he were to let you escape without trying, he would not
be forgiven. His grandmother has had her own way all her
life."
"But suppose after I went away someone else came?"
Mary shook her head.
"People like you don't HAPPEN in one neighbourhood twice in a
lifetime. I am twenty-six and you are the first I have seen."
"And he will only be safe if?"
Mary Lithcom nodded.
"Yes--IF," she answered. "It's silly--and frightful--but
it is true."
Miss Vanderpoel looked down on the grass a few moments,
and then seemed to arrive at a decision.
"He likes you? You can make him understand things?" she
inquired.
"Yes."
"Then go and tell him that if he will come here and ask
me a direct question, I will give him a direct answer--which
will satisfy Lady Alanby."
Lady Mary caught her breath.
"Do you know, you are the most wonderful girl I ever
saw!" she exclaimed. "But if you only knew what I feel about
Janie!" And tears rushed into her eyes.
"I feel just the same thing about my sister," said Miss
Vanderpoel. "I think Rosy and Lady Jane are rather alike."
. . . . .
When Tommy tramped across the grass towards her he was
turning red and white by turns, and looking somewhat like
a young man who was being marched up to a cannon's mouth.
It struck him that it was an American kind of thing he was
called upon to do, and he was not an American, but British
from the top of his closely-cropped head to the rather thick
soles of his boots. He was, in truth, overwhelmed by his
sense of his inadequacy to the demands of the brilliantly
conceived, but unheard-of situation. Joy and terror swept over
his being in waves.
The tall, proud, wood-nymph look of her as she stood under
a tree, waiting for him, would have struck his courage dead
on the spot and caused him to turn and flee in anguish, if she
had not made a little move towards him, with a heavenly,
every-day humanness in her eyes. The way she managed it was an
amazing thing. He could never have managed it at all himself.
She came forward and gave him her hand, and really it was
HER hand which held his own comparatively steady.
"It is for Lady Jane," she said. "That prevents it from being
ridiculous or improper. It is for Lady Jane. Her eyes," with a
soft-touched laugh, "are the colour of the blue speedwell I
showed you. It is the colour of babies' eyes. And hers look as
theirs do--as if they asked everybody not to hurt them."
He actually fell upon his knee, and bending his head over
her hand, kissed it half a dozen times with adoration. Good
Lord, how she SAW and KNEW!
"If Jane were not Jane, and you were not YOU," the words
rushed from him, "it would be the most outrageous--the most
impudent thing a man ever had the cheek to do."
"But it is not." She did not draw her hand away, and
oh, the girlish kindness of her smiling, supporting look. "You
came to ask me if----"
"If you would marry me, Miss Vanderpoel," his head bending
over her hand again. "I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon.
Oh Lord, I do.'
"I thank you for the compliment you pay me," she answered. "I
like you very much, Sir Thomas--and I like you just now more than
ever--but I could not marry you. I should not make you happy,
and I should not be happy myself. The truth is----" thinking a
moment, "each of us really belongs to a different kind of person.
And each of knows the fact."
"God bless you," he said. "I think you know everything
in the world a woman can know--and remain an angel."
It was an outburst of eloquence, and she took it in the
prettiest way--with the prettiest laugh, which had in it no touch
of mockery or disbelief in him.
"What I have said is quite final--if Lady Alanby should
inquire," she said--adding rather quickly, "Someone is coming."
It pleased her to see that he did not hurry to his feet clumsily,
but even stood upright, with a shade of boyish dignity, and did
not release her hand before he had bent his head low over it
again.
Sir Nigel was bringing with him Lady Alanby, Mrs. Manners,
and his wife, and when Betty met his eyes, she knew
at once that he had not made his way to this particular
garden without intention. He had discovered that she was
with Tommy, and it had entertained him to break in upon them.
"I did not intend to interrupt Sir Thomas at his devotions,"
he remarked to her after dinner. "Accept my apologies."
"It did not matter in the least, thank you," said Betty.
. . . . .
"I am glad to be able to say, Thomas, that you did not look
an entire fool when you got up from your knees, as we came
into the rose garden." Thus Lady Alanby, as their carriage
turned out of Stornham village.
"I'm glad myself," Tommy answered.
"What were you doing there? Even if you were asking
her to marry you, it was not necessary to go that far. We
are not in the seventeenth century.
Then Tommy flushed.
"I did not intend to do it. I could not help it. She was
so--so nice about everything. That girl is an angel. I told
her so."
"Very right and proper spirit to approach her in," answered
the old woman, watching him keenly. "Was she angel enough
to say she would marry you?"
Tommy, for some occult reason, had the courage to stare
back into his grandmother's eyes, quite as if he were a man,
and not a hobbledehoy, expecting to be bullied.
"She does not want me," he answered. "And I knew she
wouldn't. Why should she? I did what you ordered me to
do, and she answered me as I knew she would. She might
have snubbed me, but she has such a way with her--such a
way of saying things and understanding, that--that--well, I
found myself on one knee, kissing her hand--as if I was being
presented at court."
Old Lady Alanby looked out on the passing landscape.
"Well, you did your best," she summed the matter up at
last, "if you went down on your knees involuntarily. If you
had done it on purpose, it would have been unpardonable."
CHAPTER XXXIV
RED GODWYN
Stornham Court had taken its proper position in the county
as a place which was equal to social exchange in the matter
of entertainment. Sir Nigel and Lady Anstruthers had given
a garden party, according to the decrees of the law obtaining
in country neighbourhoods. The curiosity to behold Miss
Vanderpoel, and the change which had been worked in the wellknown
desolation and disrepair, precluded the possibility of the
refusal of any invitations sent, the recipient being in his or
her right mind, and sound in wind and limb. That astonishing
things had been accomplished, and that the party was a
successful affair, could not but be accepted as truths. Garden
parties had been heard of, were a trifle repetitional, and
even dull, but at this one there was real music and real dancing,
and clever entertainments were given at intervals in a
green-embowered little theatre, erected for the occasion. These
were agreeable additions to mere food and conversation, which
were capable of palling.
To the garden party the Anstruthers did not confine
themselves. There were dinner parties at Stornham, and they also
were successful functions. The guests were of those who
make for the success of such entertainments.
"I called upon Mount Dunstan this afternoon," Sir Nigel
said one evening, before the first of these dinners. "He might
expect it, as one is asking him to dine. I wish him to be asked.
The Dunholms have taken him up so tremendously that no
festivity seems complete without him."
He had been invited to the garden party, and had appeared, but
Betty had seen little of him. It is easy to see little of a
guest at an out-of-door festivity. In assisting Rosalie to
attend to her visitors she had been much occupied, but she had
known that she might have seen more of him, if he had intended
that it should be so. He did not--for reasons of his own--intend
that it should be so, and this she became aware of. So she
walked, played in the bowling green, danced and talked with
Westholt, Tommy Alanby and others.
"He does not want to talk to me. He will not, if he can
avoid it," was what she said to herself.
She saw that he rather sought out Mary Lithcom, who was not
accustomed to receiving special attention. The two walked
together, danced together, and in adjoining chairs watched the
performance in the embowered theatre. Lady Mary enjoyed her
companion very much, but she wondered why he had
attached himself to her.
Betty Vanderpoel asked herself what they talked to each
other about, and did not suspect the truth, which was that
they talked a good deal of herself.
"Have you seen much of Miss Vanderpoel?" Lady Mary had begun by
asking.
"I have SEEN her a good deal, as no doubt you have."
Lady Mary's plain face expressed a somewhat touched
reflectiveness.
"Do you know," she said, "that the garden parties have
been a different thing this whole summer, just because one
always knew one would see her at them?"
A short laugh from Mount Dunstan.
"Jane and I have gone to every garden party within twenty
miles, ever since we left the schoolroom. And we are very
tired of them. But this year we have quite cheered up. When
we are dressing to go to something dull, we say to each other,
`Well, at any rate, Miss Vanderpoel will be there, and we
shall see what she has on, and how her things are made,' and
that's something--besides the fun of watching people make
up to her, and hearing them talk about the men who want to
marry her, and wonder which one she will take. She will not
take anyone in this place," the nice turned-up nose slightly
suggesting a derisive sniff. "Who is there who is suitable?"
Mount Dunstan laughed shortly again.
"How do you know I am not an aspirant myself?" he said.
He had a mirthless sense of enjoyment in his own brazenness.
Only he himself knew how brazen the speech was.
Lady Mary looked at him with entire composure.
"I am quite sure you are not an aspirant for anybody. And I
happen to know that you dislike moneyed international marriages.
You are so obviously British that, even if I had not been
told that, I should know it was true. Miss Vanderpoel herself
knows it is true."
"Does she?"
"Lady Alanby spoke of it to Sir Nigel, and I heard Sir Nigel
tell her."
"Exactly the kind of unnecessary thing he would be likely
to repeat." He cast the subject aside as if it were a worthless
superfluity and went on: "When you say there is no one suitable,
you surely forget Lord Westholt."
"Yes, it's true I forgot him for the moment. But--" with
a laugh--"one rather feels as if she would require a royal duke
or something of that sort."
"You think she expects that kind of thing?" rather indifferently.
"She? She doesn't think of the subject. She simply thinks
of other things--of Lady Anstruthers and Ughtred, of the work
at Stornham and the village life, which gives her new emotions
and interest. She also thinks about being nice to people. She
is nicer than any girl I know."
"You feel, however, she has a right to expect it?" still
without more than a casual air of interest.
"Well, what do you feel yourself?" said Lady Mary. "Women who
look like that--even when they are not millionairesses--
usually marry whom they choose. I do not believe
that the two beautiful Miss Gunnings rolled into one would
have made anything as undeniable as she is. One has seen
portraits of them. Look at her as she stands there talking to
Tommy and Lord Dunholm!"
Internally Mount Dunstan was saying: "I am looking at
her, thank you," and setting his teeth a little.
But Lady Mary was launched upon a subject which swept
her along with it, and she--so to speak--ground the thing in.
"Look at the turn of her head! Look at her mouth and chin, and
her eyes with the lashes sweeping over them when she looks down!
You must have noticed the effect when she lifts them suddenly to
look at you. It's so odd and lovely that it--it almost----"
"Almost makes you jump," ended Mount Dunstan drily.
She did not laugh and, in fact, her expression became rather
sympathetically serious.
"Ah," she said, "I believe you feel a sort of rebellion
against the unfairness of the way things are dealt out. It does
seem unfair, of course. It would be perfectly disgraceful--if
she were different. I had moments of almost hating her until
one day not long ago she did something so bewitchingly kind
and understanding of other people's feelings that I gave up. It
was clever, too," with a laugh, "clever and daring. If she
were a young man she would make a dashing soldier."
She did not give him the details of the story, but went on
to say in effect what she had said to Betty herself of the
inevitable incidentalness of her stay in the country. If she had
not evidently come to Stornham this year with a purpose, she
would have spent the season in London and done the usual thing.
Americans were generally presented promptly, if they had any
position--sometimes when they had not. Lady Alanby had
heard that the fact that she was with her sister had awakened
curiosity and people were talking about her.
"Lady Alanby said in that dry way of hers that the arrival
of an unmarried American fortune in England was becoming
rather like the visit of an unmarried royalty. People ask each
other what it means and begin to arrange for it. So far, only
the women have come, but Lady Alanby says that is because the
men have had no time to do anything but stay at home and
make the fortunes. She believes that in another generation
there will be a male leisure class, and then it will swoop down
too, and marry people. She was very sharp and amusing about
it. She said it would help them to rid themselves of a plethora
of wealth and keep them from bursting."
She was an amiable, if unsentimental person, Mary Lithcom
--and was, quite without ill nature, expressing the consensus
of public opinion. These young women came to the country
with something practical to exchange in these days, and as
there were men who had certain equivalents to offer, so also
there were men who had none, and whom decency should cause
to stand aside. Mount Dunstan knew that when she had said,
"Who is there who is suitable?" any shadow of a thought of
himself as being in the running had not crossed her mind.
And this was not only for the reasons she had had the ready
composure to name, but for one less conquerable.
Later, having left Mary Lithcom, he decided to take a turn
by himself. He had done his duty as a masculine guest. He
had conversed with young women and old ones, had danced, visited
gardens and greenhouses, and taken his part in all things.
Also he had, in fact, reached a point when a few minutes of
solitude seemed a good thing. He found himself turning into
the clipped laurel walk, where Tommy Alanby had stood with
Jane Lithcom, and he went to the end of it and stood looking
out on the view.
"Look at the turn of her head," Lady Mary had said.
"Look at her mouth and chin." And he had been looking at
them the whole afternoon, not because he had intended to do
so, but because it was not possible to prevent himself from
doing it.
This was one of the ironies of fate. Orthodox doctrine might
suggest that it was to teach him that his past rebellion had
been undue. Orthodox doctrine was ever ready with these
soothing little explanations. He had raged and sulked at
Destiny, and now he had been given something to rage for.
"No one knows anything about it until it takes him by
the throat," he was thinking, "and until it happens to a man
he has no right to complain. I was not starving before. I was
not hungering and thirsting--in sight of food and water. I
suppose one of the most awful things in the world is to feel this
and know it is no use."
He was not in the condition to reason calmly enough to see
that there might be one chance in a thousand that it was of
use. At such times the most intelligent of men and women lose
balance and mental perspicacity. A certain degree of unreasoning
madness possesses them. They see too much and too little.
There were, it was true, a thousand chances against him, but
there was one for him--the chance that selection might be on
his side. He had not that balance of thought left which might
have suggested to him that he was a man young and powerful,
and filled with an immense passion which might count for
something. All he saw was that he was notably in the position
of the men whom he had privately disdained when they helped
themselves by marriage. Such marriages he had held were
insults to the manhood of any man and the womanhood of any
woman. In such unions neither party could respect himself or
his companion. They must always in secret doubt each other,
fret at themselves, feel distaste for the whole thing. Even if a
man loved such a woman, and the feeling was mutual, to whom
would it occur to believe it--to see that they were not gross
and contemptible? To no one. Would it have occurred to
himself that such an extenuating circumstance was possible?
Certainly it would not. Pig-headed pride and obstinacy it
might be, but he could not yet face even the mere thought of
it--even if his whole position had not been grotesque. Because,
after all, it was grotesque that he should even argue with
himself. She--before his eyes and the eyes of all others--the
most desirable of women; people dinning it in one's ears that she
was surrounded by besiegers who waited for her to hold out
her sceptre, and he--well, what was he! Not that his mental
attitude was that of a meek and humble lover who felt himself
unworthy and prostrated himself before her shrine with prayers
--he was, on the contrary, a stout and obstinate Briton finding
his stubbornly-held beliefs made as naught by a certain obsession
--an intolerable longing which wakened with him in the morning,
which sank into troubled sleep with him at night--the longing to
see her, to speak to her, to stand near her, to breathe
the air of her. And possessed by this--full of the overpowering
strength of it--was a man likely to go to a woman and say,
"Give your life and desirableness to me; and incidentally support
me, feed me, clothe me, keep the roof over my head, as if
I were an impotent beggar"?
"No, by God!" he said. "If she thinks of me at all it
shall be as a man. No, by God, I will not sink to that!"
. . . . .
A moving touch of colour caught his eye. It was the rose of
a parasol seen above the laurel hedge, as someone turned into
the walk. He knew the colour of it and expected to see other
parasols and hear voices. But there was no sound, and
unaccompanied, the wonderful rose-thing moved towards him.
"The usual things are happening to me," was his thought
as it advanced. "I am hot and cold, and just now my heart
leaped like a rabbit. It would be wise to walk off, but I shall
not do it. I shall stay here, because I am no longer a reasoning
being. I suppose that a horse who refuses to back out of his
stall when his stable is on fire feels something of the same
thing."
When she saw him she made an involuntary-looking pause,
and then recovering herself, came forward.
"I seem to have come in search of you," she said. "You
ought to be showing someone the view really--and so ought I."
"Shall we show it to each other?" was his reply.
"Yes." And she sat down on the stone seat which had been
placed for the comfort of view lovers. "I am a little tired--
just enough to feel that to slink away for a moment alone
would be agreeable. It IS slinking to leave Rosalie to battle
with half the county. But I shall only stay a few minutes."
She sat still and gazed at the beautiful lands spread before
her, but there was no stillness in her mind, neither was there
stillness in his. He did not look at the view, but at her, and
he was asking himself what he should be saying to her if he
were such a man as Westholt. Though he had boldness enough,
he knew that no man--even though he is free to speak the best
and most passionate thoughts of his soul--could be sure that
he would gain what he desired. The good fortune of Westholt,
or of any other, could but give him one man's fair chance.
But having that chance, he knew he should not relinquish it
soon. There swept back into his mind the story of the marriage
of his ancestor, Red Godwyn, and he laughed low in spite
of himself.
Miss Vanderpoel looked up at him quickly.
"Please tell me about it, if it is very amusing," she said.
"I wonder if it will amuse you," was his answer. "Do you
like savage romance?"
"Very much."
It might seem a propos de rien, but he did not care in the
least. He wanted to hear what she would say.
"An ancestor of mine--a certain Red Godwyn--was a barbarian
immensely to my taste. He became enamoured of rumours of the
beauty of the daughter and heiress of his bitterest
enemy. In his day, when one wanted a thing, one rode forth
with axe and spear to fight for it."
"A simple and alluring method," commented Betty. "What
was her name?"
She leaned in light ease against the stone back of her seat,
the rose light cast by her parasol faintly flushed her. The
silence of their retreat seemed accentuated by its background
of music from the gardens. They smiled a second bravely into
each other's eyes, then their glances became entangled, as they
had done for a moment when they had stood together in Mount
Dunstan park. For one moment each had been held prisoner
then--now it was for longer.
"Alys of the Sea-Blue Eyes."
Betty tried to release herself, but could not.
"Sometimes the sea is grey," she said.
His own eyes were still in hers.
"Hers were the colour of the sea on a day when the sun shines on
it, and there are large fleece-white clouds floating in the blue
above. They sparkled and were often like bluebells under water."
"Bluebells under water sounds entrancing," said Betty.
He caught his breath slightly.
"They were--entrancing," he said. "That was evidently
the devil of it--saving your presence."
"I have never objected to the devil," said Betty. "He is
an energetic, hard-working creature and paints himself an
honest black. Please tell me the rest."
"Red Godwyn went forth, and after a bloody fight took his
enemy's castle. If we still lived in like simple, honest times,
I should take Dunholm Castle in the same way. He also took
Alys of the Eyes and bore her away captive."
"From such incidents developed the germs of the desire for
female suffrage," Miss Vanderpoel observed gently.
"The interest of the story lies in the fact that apparently
the savage was either epicure or sentimentalist, or both. He
did not treat the lady ill. He shut her in a tower chamber
overlooking his courtyard, and after allowing her three days to
weep, he began his barbarian wooing. Arraying himself in
splendour he ordered her to appear before him. He sat upon
the dais in his banquet hall, his retainers gathered about him--
a great feast spread. In archaic English we are told that the
board groaned beneath the weight of golden trenchers and
flagons. Minstrels played and sang, while he displayed all
his splendour."
"They do it yet," said Miss Vanderpoel, "in London and
New York and other places."
"The next day, attended by his followers, he took her with
him to ride over his lands. When she returned to her tower
chamber she had learned how powerful and great a chieftain
he was. She `laye softely' and was attended by many maidens,
but she had no entertainment but to look out upon the great
green court. There he arranged games and trials of strength
and skill, and she saw him bigger, stronger, and more splendid
than any other man. He did not even lift his eyes to her
window. He also sent her daily a rich gift."
"How long did this go on?"
"Three months. At the end of that time he commanded
her presence again in his banquet hall. He told her the gates
were opened, the drawbridge down and an escort waiting to take
her back to her father's lands, if she would."
"What did she do?"
"She looked at him long--and long. She turned proudly away--in
the sea-blue eyes were heavy and stormy tears, which seeing----"
"Ah, he saw them?" from Miss Vanderpoel.
"Yes. And seizing her in his arms caught her to his breast,
calling for a priest to make them one within the hour. I am
quoting the chronicle. I was fifteen when I read it first."
"It is spirited," said Betty, "and Red Godwyn was almost
modern in his methods."
While professing composure and lightness of mood, the spell
which works between two creatures of opposite sex when in
such case wrought in them and made them feel awkward and
stiff. When each is held apart from the other by fate, or will,
or circumstance, the spell is a stupefying thing, deadening even
the clearness of sight and wit.
"I must slink back now," Betty said, rising. "Will you
slink back with me to give me countenance? I have greatly
liked Red Godwyn."
So it occurred that when Nigel Anstruthers saw them again
it was as they crossed the lawn together, and people looked up
from ices and cups of tea to follow their slow progress with
questioning or approving eyes.
CHAPTER XXXV
THE TIDAL WAVE
There was only one man to speak to, and it being the nature
of the beast--so he harshly put it to himself--to be absolutely
impelled to speech at such times, Mount Dunstan laid bare his
breast to him, tearing aside all the coverings pride would have
folded about him. The man was, of course, Penzance, and the
laying bare was done the evening after the story of Red Godwyn
had been told in the laurel walk.
They had driven home together in a profound silence, the
elder man as deep in thought as the younger one. Penzance
was thinking that there was a calmness in having reached sixty
and in knowing that the pain and hunger of earlier years would
not tear one again. And yet, he himself was not untorn by
that which shook the man for whom his affection had grown
year by year. It was evidently very bad--very bad, indeed.
He wondered if he would speak of it, and wished he would, not
because he himself had much to say in answer, but because he
knew that speech would be better than hard silence.
"Stay with me to-night," Mount Dunstan said, as they
drove through the avenue to the house. "I want you to dine
with me and sit and talk late. I am not sleeping well."
They often dined together, and the vicar not infrequently
slept at the Mount for mere companionship's sake. Sometimes
they read, sometimes went over accounts, planned economies,
and balanced expenditures. A chamber still called the Chaplain's
room was always kept in readiness. It had been used
in long past days, when a household chaplain had sat below
the salt and left his patron's table before the sweets were
served. They dined together this night almost as silently as
they had driven homeward, and after the meal they went and sat
alone in the library.
The huge room was never more than dimly lighted, and the
far-off corners seemed more darkling than usual in the
insufficient illumination of the far from brilliant lamps. Mount
Dunstan, after standing upon the hearth for a few minutes
smoking a pipe, which would have compared ill with old Doby's
Sunday splendour, left his coffee cup upon the mantel and
began to tramp up and down--out of the dim light into the
shadows, back out of the shadows into the poor light.
"You know," he said, "what I think about most things-- you know
what I feel."
"I think I do."
"You know what I feel about Englishmen who brand themselves
as half men and marked merchandise by selling themselves
and their houses and their blood to foreign women who
can buy them. You know how savage I have been at the mere
thought of it. And how I have sworn----"
"Yes, I know what you have sworn," said Mr. Penzance.
It struck him that Mount Dunstan shook and tossed his
head rather like a bull about to charge an enemy.
"You know how I have felt myself perfectly within my rights when
I blackguarded such men and sneered at such women--taking it for
granted that each was merchandise of his or her kind and beneath
contempt. I am not a foul-mouthed man, but I have used gross
words and rough ones to describe them."
"I have heard you."
Mount Dunstan threw back his head with a big, harsh
laugh. He came out of the shadow and stood still.
"Well," he said, "I am in love--as much in love as any
lunatic ever was--with the daughter of Reuben S. Vanderpoel.
There you are--and there _I_ am!"
"It has seemed to me," Penzance answered, "that it was
almost inevitable."
"My condition is such that it seems to ME that it would
be inevitable in the case of any man. When I see another man
look at her my blood races through my veins with an awful
fear and a wicked heat. That will show you the point I have
reached." He walked over to the mantelpiece and laid his
pipe down with a hand Penzance saw was unsteady. "In
turning over the pages of the volume of Life," he said, "I
have come upon the Book of Revelations."
"That is true," Penzance said.
"Until one has come upon it one is an inchoate fool," Mount
Dunstan went on. "And afterwards one is--for a time at
least--a sort of madman raving to one's self, either in or out of
a straitjacket--as the case may be. I am wearing the jacket
--worse luck! Do you know anything of the state of a man
who cannot utter the most ordinary words to a woman without
being conscious that he is making mad love to her? This
afternoon I found myself telling Miss Vanderpoel the story of Red
Godwyn and Alys of the Sea-Blue Eyes. I did not make a
single statement having any connection with myself, but
throughout I was calling on her to think of herself and of me
as of those two. I saw her in my own arms, with the tears
of Alys on her lashes. I was making mad love, though she
was unconscious of my doing it."
"How do you know she was unconscious?" remarked Mr.
Penzance. "You are a very strong man."
Mount Dunstan's short laugh was even a little awful,
because it meant so much. He let his forehead drop a moment
on to his arms as they rested on the mantelpiece.
"Oh, my God!" he said. But the next instant his head lifted
itself. "It is the mystery of the world--this thing. A tidal
wave gathering itself mountain high and crashing down upon one's
helplessness might be as easily defied. It is supposed
to disperse, I believe. That has been said so often that there
must be truth in it. In twenty or thirty or forty years one is
told one will have got over it. But one must live through the
years--one must LIVE through them--and the chief feature of
one's madness is that one is convinced that they will last
forever."
"Go on," said Mr. Penzance, because he had paused and
stood biting his lip. "Say all that you feel inclined to say.
It is the best thing you can do. I have never gone through this
myself, but I have seen and known the amazingness of it for
many years. I have seen it come and go."
"Can you imagine," Mount Dunstan said, "that the most
damnable thought of all--when a man is passing through it--
is the possibility of its GOING? Anything else rather than the
knowledge that years could change or death could end it!
Eternity seems only to offer space for it. One knows--but one
does not believe. It does something to one's brain."
"No scientist, howsoever profound, has ever discovered
what," the vicar mused aloud.
"The Book of Revelations has shown to me how--how
MAGNIFICENT life might be!" Mount Dunstan clenched and
unclenched his hands, his eyes flashing. "Magnificent--that is
the word. To go to her on equal ground to take her hands
and speak one's passion as one would--as her eyes answered.
Oh, one would know! To bring her home to this place--having
made it as it once was--to live with her here--to be WITH
her as the sun rose and set and the seasons changed--with the
joy of life filling each of them. SHE is the joy of Life--the
very heart of it. You see where I am--you see!"
"Yes," Penzance answered. He saw, and bowed his head,
and Mount Dunstan knew he wished him to continue.
"Sometimes--of late--it has been too much for me and I
have given free rein to my fancy--knowing that there could
never be more than fancy. I was doing it this afternoon as I
watched her move about among the people. And Mary Lithcom
began to talk about her." He smiled a grim smile.
"Perhaps it was an intervention of the gods to drag me down
from my impious heights. She was quite unconscious that she
was driving home facts like nails--the facts that every man who
wanted money wanted Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter--and
that the young lady, not being dull, was not unaware of the
obvious truth! And that men with prizes to offer were ready
to offer them in a proper manner. Also that she was only a
brilliant bird of passage, who, in a few months, would be
caught in the dazzling net of the great world. And that even
Lord Westholt and Dunholm Castle were not quite what she
might expect. Lady Mary was sincerely interested. She drove
it home in her ardour. She told me to LOOK at her--to LOOK
at her mouth and chin and eyelashes--and to make note of
what she stood for in a crowd of ordinary people. I could
have laughed aloud with rage and self-mockery."
Mr. Penzance was resting his forehead on his hand, his elbow
on his chair's arm.
"This is profound unhappiness," he said. "It is profound
unhappiness."
Mount Dunstan answered by a brusque gesture.
"But it will pass away," went on Penzance, "and not as you fear
it must," in answer to another gesture, fiercely impatient. "Not
that way. Some day--or night--you will stand heretogether, and
you will tell her all you have told me. I KNOW it will be so."
"What!" Mount Dunstan cried out. But the words had been spoken
with such absolute conviction that he felt himself become pale.
It was with the same conviction that Penzance went on.
"I have spent my quiet life in thinking of the forces for
which we find no explanation--of the causes of which we only
see the effects. Long ago in looking at you in one of my
pondering moments I said to myself that YOU were of the Primeval
Force which cannot lose its way--which sweeps a clear pathway
for itself as it moves--and which cannot be held back. I said
to you just now that because you are a strong man you cannot
be sure that a woman you are--even in spite of yourself--
making mad love to, is unconscious that you are doing it. You
do not know what your strength lies in. I do not, the woman
does not, but we must all feel it, whether we comprehend it or
no. You said of this fine creature, some time since, that she
was Life, and you have just said again something of the same
kind. It is quite true. She is Life, and the joy of it. You are
two strong forces, and you are drawing together."
He rose from his chair, and going to Mount Dunstan put hishand on
his shoulder, his fine old face singularly rapt and glowing.
"She is drawing you and you are drawing her, and each is too
strong to release the other. I believe that to be true.
Both bodies and souls do it. They are not separate things. They
move on their way as the stars do--they move on their way."
As he spoke, Mount Dunstan's eyes looked into his fixedly.
Then they turned aside and looked down upon the mantel
against which he was leaning. He aimlessly picked up his pipe
and laid it down again. He was paler than before, but he
said no single word.
"You think your reasons for holding aloof from her are the
reasons of a man." Mr. Penzance's voice sounded to him
remote. "They are the reasons of a man's pride--but that is not
the strongest thing in the world. It only imagines it is. You
think that you cannot go to her as a luckier man could. You
think nothing shall force you to speak. Ask yourself why. It
is because you believe that to show your heart would be to
place yourself in the humiliating position of a man who might
seem to her and to the world to be a base fellow."
"An impudent, pushing, base fellow," thrust in Mount Dunstan
fiercely. "One of a vulgar lot. A thing fancying even
its beggary worth buying. What has a man--whose very name
is hung with tattered ugliness--to offer?"
Penzance's hand was still on his shoulder and his look at
him was long.
"His very pride," he said at last, "his very obstinacy and
haughty, stubborn determination. Those broken because the
other feeling is the stronger and overcomes him utterly."
A flush leaped to Mount Dunstan's forehead. He set both
elbows on the mantel and let his forehead fall on his clenched
fists. And the savage Briton rose in him.
"No!" he said passionately. "By God, no!"
"You say that," said the older man, "because you have not
yet reached the end of your tether. Unhappy as you are, you
are not unhappy enough. Of the two, you love yourself the
more--your pride and your stubbornness."
"Yes," between his teeth. "I suppose I retain yet a sort of
respect--and affection--for my pride. May God leave it to me!"
Penzance felt himself curiously exalted; he knew himself
unreasoningly passing through an oddly unpractical, uplifted
moment, in whose impelling he singularly believed.
"You are drawing her and she is drawing you," he said.
"Perhaps you drew each other across seas. You will stand
here together and you will tell her of this--on this very spot."
Mount Dunstan changed his position and laughed roughly, as
if to rouse himself. He threw out his arm in a big, uneasy
gesture, taking in the room.
"Oh, come," he said. "You talk like a seer. Look about
you. Look! I am to bring her here!"
"If it is the primeval thing she will not care. Why should she?"
"She! Bring a life like hers to this! Or perhaps you mean
that her own wealth might make her surroundings becoming--
that a man would endure that?"
"If it is the primeval thing, YOU would not care. You would
have forgotten that you two had ever lived an hour apart."
He spoke with a deep, moved gravity--almost as if he were
speaking of the first Titan building of the earth. Mount Dunstan
staring at his delicate, insistent, elderly face, tried to laugh
again--and failed because the effort seemed actually irreverent.
It was a singular hypnotic moment, indeed. He himself was
hypnotised. A flashlight of new vision blazed before him and
left him dumb. He took up his pipe hurriedly, and with still
unsteady fingers began to refill it. When it was filled he
lighted it, and then without a word of answer left the hearth
and began to tramp up and down the room again--out of the
dim light into the shadows, back out of the shadows and into
the dim light again, his brow working and his teeth holding
hard his amber mouthpiece.
The morning awakening of a normal healthy human creature
should be a joyous thing. After the soul's long hours of
release from the burden of the body, its long hours spent--
one can only say in awe at the mystery of it, "away, away"--
in flight, perhaps, on broad, tireless wings, beating softly in
fair, far skies, breathing pure life, to be brought back to renew
the strength of each dawning day; after these hours of quiescence
of limb and nerve and brain, the morning life returning
should unseal for the body clear eyes of peace at least. In
time to come this will be so, when the soul's wings are
stronger, the body more attuned to infinite law and the race a
greater power--but as yet it often seems as though the winged
thing came back a lagging and reluctant rebel against its fate
and the chain which draws it back a prisoner to its toil.
It had seemed so often to Mount Dunstan--oftener than
not. Youth should not know such awakening, he was well
aware; but he had known it sometimes even when he had been
a child, and since his return from his ill-starred struggle in
America, the dull and reluctant facing of the day had become
a habit. Yet on the morning after his talk with his friend--
the curious, uplifted, unpractical talk which had seemed to
hypnotise him--he knew when he opened his eyes to the light
that he had awakened as a man should awake--with an unreasoning
sense of pleasure in the life and health of his own body,
as he stretched mighty limbs, strong after the night's rest, and
feeling that there was work to be done. It was all unreasoning--
there was no more to be done than on those other days
which he had wakened to with bitterness, because they seemed
useless and empty of any worth--but this morning the mere
light of the sun was of use, the rustle of the small breeze in
the leaves, the soft floating past of the white clouds, the mere
fact that the great blind-faced, stately house was his own, that
he could tramp far over lands which were his heritage, unfed
though they might be, and that the very rustics who would pass
him in the lanes were, so to speak, his own people: that he had
name, life, even the common thing of hunger for his morning
food--it was all of use.
An alluring picture--of a certain deep, clear bathing pool in
the park rose before him. It had not called to him for many
a day, and now he saw its dark blueness gleam between flags
and green rushes in its encircling thickness of shrubs and trees.
He sprang from his bed, and in a few minutes was striding
across the grass of the park, his towels over his arm, his head
thrown back as he drank in the freshness of the morningscented
air. It was scented with dew and grass and the
breath of waking trees and growing things; early twitters and
thrills were to be heard here and there, insisting on morning
joyfulness; rabbits frisked about among the fine-grassed hummocks
of their warren and, as he passed, scuttled back into their
holes, with a whisking of short white tails, at which he laughed
with friendly amusement. Cropping stags lifted their antlered
heads, and fawns with dappled sides and immense lustrous eyes
gazed at him without actual fear, even while they sidled closer
to their mothers. A skylark springing suddenly from the
grass a few yards from his feet made him stop short once and
stand looking upward and listening. Who could pass by a
skylark at five o'clock on a summer's morning--the little,
heavenly light-heart circling and wheeling, showering down
diamonds, showering down pearls, from its tiny pulsating,
trilling throat?
"Do you know why they sing like that? It is because all
but the joy of things has been kept hidden from them. They
knew nothing but life and flight and mating, and the gold of
the sun. So they sing." That she had once said.
He listened until the jewelled rain seemed to have fallen into
his soul. Then he went on his way smiling as he knew he had
never smiled in his life before. He knew it because he realised
that he had never before felt the same vigorous, light normality
of spirit, the same sense of being as other men. It was as
though something had swept a great clear space about him, and
having room for air he breathed deep and was glad of the
commonest gifts of being.
The bathing pool had been the greatest pleasure of his
uncared-for boyhood. No one knew which long passed away
Mount Dunstan had made it. The oldest villager had told him
that it had "allus ben there," even in his father's time. Since
he himself had known it he had seen that it was kept at its best.
Its dark blue depths reflected in their pellucid clearness the
water plants growing at its edge and the enclosing shrubs and
trees. The turf bordering it was velvet-thick and green, and a
few flag-steps led down to the water. Birds came there to drink
and bathe and preen and dress their feathers. He knew there were
often nests in the bushes--sometimes the nests of nightingales
who filled the soft darkness or moonlight of early June with
the wonderfulness of nesting song. Sometimes a straying fawn
poked in a tender nose, and after drinking delicately stole away,
as if it knew itself a trespasser.
To undress and plunge headlong into the dark sapphire water
was a rapturous thing. He swam swiftly and slowly by turns,
he floated, looking upward at heaven's blue, listening to birds'
song and inhaling all the fragrance of the early day. Strength
grew in him and life pulsed as the water lapped his limbs. He
found himself thinking with pleasure of a long walk he intended
to take to see a farmer he must talk to about his hop gardens;
he found himself thinking with pleasure of other things as simple
and common to everyday life--such things as he ordinarily
faced merely because he must, since he could not afford an
experienced bailiff. He was his own bailiff, his own steward,
merely, he had often thought, an unsuccessful farmer of halfstarved
lands. But this morning neither he nor they seemed
so starved, and--for no reason--there was a future of some sort.
He emerged from his pool glowing, the turf feeling like
velvet beneath his feet, a fine light in his eyes.
"Yes," he said, throwing out his arms in a lordly stretch of
physical well-being, "it might be a magnificent thing--mere
strong living. THIS is magnificent."
CHAPTER XXXVI
BY THE ROADSIDE EVERYWHERE
His breakfast and the talk over it with Penzance seemed good
things. It suddenly had become worth while to discuss the
approaching hop harvest and the yearly influx of the hop
pickers from London. Yesterday the subject had appeared
discouraging enough. The great hop gardens of the estate had
been in times past its most prolific source of agricultural
revenue and the boast and wonder of the hop-growing county.
The neglect and scant food of the lean years had cost them
their reputation. Each season they had needed smaller bands
of "hoppers," and their standard had been lowered. It had
been his habit to think of them gloomily, as of hopeless and
irretrievable loss. Because this morning, for a remote reason,
the pulse of life beat strong in him he was taking a new view.
Might not study of the subject, constant attention and the
application of all available resource to one end produce
appreciable results? The idea presented itself in the form of a
thing worth thinking of.
"It would provide an outlook and give one work to do," he
put it to his companion. "To have a roof over one's head, a
sound body, and work to do, is not so bad. Such things form
the whole of G. Selden's cheerful aim. His spirit is alight
within me. I will walk over and talk to Bolter."
Bolter was a farmer whose struggle to make ends meet was almost
too much for him. Holdings whose owners, either through neglect
or lack of money, have failed to do their duty as landlords in
the matter of repairs of farmhouses, outbuildings, fences, and
other things, gradually fall into poor hands. Resourceful
and prosperous farmers do not care to hold lands under
unprosperous landlords. There were farms lying vacant on the
Mount Dunstan estate, there were others whose tenants were
uncertain rent payers or slipshod workers or dishonest in small
ways. Waste or sale of the fertiliser which should have been
given to the soil as its due, neglect in the case of things whose
decay meant depreciation of property and expense to the landlord,
were dishonesties. But Mount Dunstan knew that if he
turned out Thorn and Fittle, whom no watching could wholly
frustrate in their tricks, Under Mount Farm and Oakfield
Rise would stand empty for many a year. But for his poverty
Bolter would have been a good tenant enough. He was in trouble
now because, though his hops promised well, he faced difficulties
in the matter of "pickers." Last year he had not been able to
pay satisfactory prices in return for labour, and as a result the
prospect of securing good workers was an unpromising one.
The hordes of men, women, and children who flock year after
year to the hop-growing districts know each other. They learn
also which may be called the good neighbourhoods and which
the bad; the gardens whose holders are considered satisfactory
as masters, and those who are undesirable. They know by
experience or report where the best "huts" are provided, where
tents are supplied, and where one must get along as one can.
Generally the regular flocks are under a "captain," who gathers
his followers each season, manages them and looks after their
interests and their employers'. In some cases the same captain
brings his regiment to the same gardens year after year, and
ends by counting himself as of the soil and almost of the
family of his employer. Each hard, thick-fogged winter they
fight through in their East End courts and streets, they look
forward to the open-air weeks spent between long, narrow
green groves of tall garlanded poles, whose wreathings hang
thick with fresh and pungent-scented hop clusters. Children
play " 'oppin" in dingy rooms and alleys, and talk to each
other of days when the sun shone hot and birds were singing
and flowers smelling sweet in the hedgerows; of others when
the rain streamed down and made mud of the soft earth, and
yet there was pleasure in the gipsying life, and high cheer
in the fire of sticks built in the field by some bold spirit, who
hung over it a tin kettle to boil for tea. They never forgot
the gentry they had caught sight of riding or driving by on
the road, the parson who came to talk, and the occasional
groups of ladies from the "great house" who came into the
gardens to walk about and look at the bins and ask queer
questions in their gentry-sounding voices. They never knew
anything, and they always seemed to be entertained. Sometimes
there were enterprising, laughing ones, who asked to be
shown how to strip the hops into the bins, and after being
shown played at the work for a little while, taking off their
gloves and showing white fingers with rings on. They always
looked as if they had just been washed, and as if all of their
clothes were fresh from the tub, and when anyone stood near
them it was observable that they smelt nice. Generally they
gave pennies to the children before they left the garden, and
sometimes shillings to the women. The hop picking was, in
fact, a wonderful blend of work and holiday combined.
Mount Dunstan had liked the "hopping" from his first
memories of it. He could recall his sensations of welcoming a
renewal of interesting things when, season after season, he had
begun to mark the early stragglers on the road. The stragglers
were not of the class gathered under captains. They
were derelicts--tramps who spent their summers on the highways
and their winters in such workhouses as would take
them in; tinkers, who differ from the tramps only because
sometimes they owned a rickety cart full of strange
household goods and drunken tenth-hand perambulators piled
with dirty bundles and babies, these last propelled by robust
or worn-out, slatternly women, who sat by the small roadside
fire stirring the battered pot or tending the battered
kettle, when resting time had come and food must be cooked.
Gipsies there were who had cooking fires also, and hobbled
horses cropping the grass. Now and then appeared a grand
one, who was rumoured to be a Lee and therefore royal, and
who came and lived regally in a gaily painted caravan. During
the late summer weeks one began to see slouching figures
tramping along the high road at intervals. These were men who
were old, men who were middle-aged and some who were
young, all of them more or less dust-grimed, weather-beaten,
or ragged. Occasionally one was to be seen in heavy beery
slumber under the hedgerow, or lying on the grass smoking
lazily, or with painful thrift cobbling up a hole in a garment.
Such as these were drifting in early that they might be on the
ground when pickers were wanted. They were the forerunners
of the regular army.
On his walk to West Ways, the farm Bolter lived on, Mount
Dunstan passed two or three of these strays. They were the
usual flotsam and jetsam, but on the roadside near a hop
garden he came upon a group of an aspect so unusual that it
attracted his attention. Its unusualness consisted in its air of
exceeding bustling cheerfulness. It was a domestic group of
the most luckless type, and ragged, dirty, and worn by an
evidently long tramp, might well have been expected to look
forlorn, discouraged, and out of spirits. A slouching father of
five children, one plainly but a few weeks old, and slung in a
dirty shawl at its mother's breast, an unhealthy looking slattern
mother, two ancient perambulators, one piled with dingy bundles
and cooking utensils, the seven-year-old eldest girl unpacking
things and keeping an eye at the same time on the two
youngest, who were neither of them old enough to be steady
on their feet, the six-year-old gleefully aiding the slouching
father to build the wayside fire. The mother sat upon the
grass nursing her baby and staring about her with an expression
at once stupefied and illuminated by some temporary bliss.
Even the slouching father was grinning, as if good luck had
befallen him, and the two youngest were tumbling about with
squeals of good cheer. This was not the humour in which such
a group usually dropped wearily on the grass at the wayside
to eat its meagre and uninviting meal and rest its dragging
limbs. As he drew near, Mount Dunstan saw that at the woman's
side there stood a basket full of food and a can full of milk.
Ordinarily he would have passed on, but, perhaps because of
the human glow the morning had brought him, he stopped and spoke.
"Have you come for the hopping?" he asked.
The man touched his forehead, apparently not conscious that
the grin was yet on his face.
"Yes, sir," he answered.
"How far have you walked?"
"A good fifty miles since we started, sir. It took us a good
bit. We was pretty done up when we stopped here. But
we've 'ad a wonderful piece of good luck." And his grin
broadened immensely.
"I am glad to hear that," said Mount Dunstan. The good
luck was plainly of a nature to have excited them greatly.
Chance good luck did not happen to people like themselves.
They were in the state of mind which in their class can only
be relieved by talk. The woman broke in, her weak mouth
and chin quite unsteady.
"Seems like it can't be true, sir," she said. "I'd only just
come out of the Union--after this one," signifying the new
baby at her breast. "I wasn't fit to drag along day after
day. We 'ad to stop 'ere 'cos I was near fainting away."
"She looked fair white when she sat down," put in the man.
"Like she was goin' off."
"And that very minute," said the woman, "a young lady
came by on 'orseback, an' the minute she sees me she stops her
'orse an' gets down."
"I never seen nothing like the quick way she done it," said
the husband. "Sharp, like she was a soldier under order.
Down an' give the bridle to the groom an' comes over"
"And kneels down," the woman took him up, "right by me an' says,
`What's the matter? What can I do?' an' finds out in two minutes
an' sends to the farm for some brandy an' all this basketful of
stuff," jerking her head towards the treasure at her side. "An'
gives 'IM," with another jerk towards her mate, "money enough to
'elp us along till I'm fair on my feet. That quick it was--that
quick," passing her hand over her forehead, "as if it wasn't for
the basket," with a nervous, half-hysteric giggle, "I wouldn't
believe but what it was a dream--I wouldn't."
"She was a very kind young lady," said Mount Dunstan,
"and you were in luck."
He gave a few coppers to the children and strode on his way. The
glow was hot in his heart, and he held his head high.
"She has gone by," he said. "She has gone by."
He knew he should find her at West Ways Farm, and he
did so. Slim and straight as a young birch tree, and elate with
her ride in the morning air, she stood silhouetted in her black
habit against the ancient whitewashed brick porch as she talked
to Bolter.
"I have been drinking a glass of milk and asking questions
about hops," she said, giving him her hand bare of glove.
"Until this year I have never seen a hop garden or a hop picker."
After the exchange of a few words Bolter respectfully melted
away and left them together.
"It was such a wonderful day that I wanted to be out
under the sky for a long time--to ride a long way," she
explained. "I have been looking at hop gardens as I rode. I
have watched them all the summer--from the time when there
was only a little thing with two or three pale green leaves
looking imploringly all the way up to the top of each immensely
tall hop pole, from its place in the earth at the bottom of it--
as if it was saying over and over again, under its breath, `Can
I get up there? Can I get up? Can I do it in time? Can
I do it in time?' Yes, that was what they were saying, the
little bold things. I have watched them ever since, putting out
tendrils and taking hold of the poles and pulling and climbing
like little acrobats. And curling round and unfolding leaves
and more leaves, until at last they threw them out as if they
were beginning to boast that they could climb up into the blue
of the sky if the summer were long enough. And now, look
at them!" her hand waved towards the great gardens. "Forests
of them, cool green pathways and avenues with leaf canopies
over them."
"You have seen it all," he said. "You do see things, don't
you? A few hundred yards down the road I passed something
you had seen. I knew it was you who had seen it, though the
poor wretches had not heard your name."
She hesitated a moment, then stooped down and took up in
her hand a bit of pebbled earth from the pathway. There was
storm in the blue of her eyes as she held it out for him to
look at as it lay on the bare rose-flesh of her palm.
"See," she said, "see, it is like that--what we give. It is
like that." And she tossed the earth away.
"It does not seem like that to those others."
"No, thank God, it does not. But to one's self it is the mere
luxury of self-indulgence, and the realisation of it sometimes
tempts one to be even a trifle morbid. Don't you see," a
sudden thrill in her voice startled him, "they are on the
roadside everywhere all over the world."
"Yes. All over the world."
"Once when I was a child of ten I read a magazine article
about the suffering millions and the monstrously rich, who were
obviously to blame for every starved sob and cry. It almost
drove me out of my childish senses. I went to my father and
threw myself into his arms in a violent fit of crying. I clung
to him and sobbed out, `Let us give it all away; let us give
it all away and be like other people!' "
"What did he say?"
"He said we could never be quite like other people. We
had a certain load to carry along the highway. It was the
thing the whole world wanted and which we ourselves wanted
as much as the rest, and we could not sanely throw it away. It
was my first lesson in political economy and I abhorred it. I
was a passionate child and beat furiously against the stone walls
enclosing present suffering. It was horrible to know that they
could not be torn down. I cried out, `When I see anyone who
is miserable by the roadside I shall stop and give him everything
he wants--everything!' I was ten years old, and thought
it could be done."
"But you stop by the roadside even now."
"Yes. That one can do."
"You are two strong creatures and you draw each other,"
Penzance had said. "Perhaps you drew each other across seas.
Who knows?"
Coming to West Ways on a chance errand he had, as it
were, found her awaiting him on the threshold. On her part
she had certainly not anticipated seeing him there, but--when
one rides far afield in the sun there are roads towards which
one turns as if answering a summoning call, and as her horse
had obeyed a certain touch of the rein at a certain point her
cheek had felt momentarily hot.
Until later, when the "picking" had fairly begun, the kilns
would not be at work; but there was some interest even now
in going over the ground for the first time.
"I have never been inside an oast house," she said; "Bolter
is going to show me his, and explain technicalities."
"May I come with you?" he asked.
There was a change in him. Something had lighted in his
eyes since the day before, when he had told her his story of
Red Godwyn. She wondered what it was. They went together
over the place, escorted by Bolter. They looked into
the great circular ovens, on whose floors the hops would be
laid for drying, they mounted ladder-like steps to the upper
room where, when dried, the same hops would lie in soft, light
piles, until pushed with wooden shovels into the long "pokes"
to be pressed and packed into a solid marketable mass. Bolter
was allowed to explain the technicalities, but it was plain that
Mount Dunstan was familiar with all of them, and it was he
who, with a sentence here and there, gave her the colour of
things.
"When it is being done there is nearly always outside a
touch of the sharp sweetness of early autumn," he said "The
sun slanting through the little window falls on the pale yellow
heaps, and there is a pungent scent of hops in the air which is
rather intoxicating."
"I am coming later to see the entire process," she answered.
It was a mere matter of seeing common things together and
exchanging common speech concerning them, but each was so
strongly conscious of the other that no sentence could seem
wholly impersonal. There are times when the whole world is
personal to a mood whose intensity seems a reason for all
things. Words are of small moment when the mere sound
of a voice makes an unreasonable joy
"There was that touch of sharp autumn sweetness in the
air yesterday morning," she said. "And the chaplets of briony
berries that look as if they had been thrown over the hedges
are beginning to change to scarlet here and there. The wild
rose-haws are reddening, and so are the clusters of berries on
the thorn trees and bushes."
"There are millions of them," Mount Dunstan said, "and
in a few weeks' time they will look like bunches of crimson
coral. When the sun shines on them they will be wonderful
to see."
What was there in such speeches as these to draw any two
nearer and nearer to each other as they walked side by side--
to fill the morning air with an intensity of life, to seem to
cause the world to drop away and become as nothing? As
they had been isolated during their waltz in the crowded
ballroom at Dunholm Castle, so they were isolated now. When
they stood in the narrow green groves of the hop garden, talking
simply of the placing of the bins and the stripping and
measuring of the vines, there might have been no human thing
within a hundred miles--within a thousand. For the first
time his height and strength conveyed to her an impression of
physical beauty. His walk and bearing gave her pleasure.
When he turned his red-brown eyes upon her suddenly she
was conscious that she liked their colour, their shape, the power
of the look in them. On his part, he--for the twentieth time--
found himself newly moved by the dower nature had bestowed
on her. Had the world ever held before a woman creature so
much to be longed for?--abnormal wealth, New York and Fifth
Avenue notwithstanding, a man could only think of folding
arms round her and whispering in her lovely ear--follies, oaths,
prayers, gratitude.
And yet as they went about together there was growing in
Betty Vanderpoel's mind a certain realisation. It grew in
spite of the recognition of the change in him--the new thing
lighted in his eyes. Whatsoever he felt--if he felt anything--
he would never allow himself speech. How could he? In
his place she could not speak herself. Because he was the
strong thing which drew her thoughts, he would not come to
any woman only to cast at her feet a burden which, in the
nature of things, she must take up. And suddenly she
comprehended that the mere obstinate Briton in him--even apart
from greater things--had an immense attraction for her. As
she liked now the red-brown colour of his eyes and saw beauty
in his rugged features, so she liked his British stubbornness and
the pride which would not be beaten.
"It is the unconquerable thing, which leads them in their
battles and makes them bear any horror rather than give in.
They have taken half the world with it; they are like bulldogs
and lions," she thought. "And--and I am glorying in it."
"Do you know," said Mount Dunstan, "that sometimes you
suddenly fling out the most magnificent flag of colour--as if
some splendid flame of thought had sent up a blaze?"
"I hope it is not a habit," she answered. "When one has a
splendid flare of thought one should be modest about it."
What was there worth recording in the whole hour they spent
together? Outwardly there had only been a chance meeting and a
mere passing by. But each left something with the other and each
learned something; and the record made was deep.
At last she was on her horse again, on the road outside the
white gate.
"This morning has been so much to the good," he said. "I
had thought that perhaps we might scarcely meet again this
year. I shall become absorbed in hops and you will no doubt
go away. You will make visits or go to the Riviera--or to
New York for the winter?"
"I do not know yet. But at least I shall stay to watch the
thorn trees load themselves with coral." To herself she was
saying: "He means to keep away. I shall not see him."
As she rode off Mount Dunstan stood for a few moments,
not moving from his place. At a short distance from the
farmhouse gate a side lane opened upon the highway, and as
she cantered in its direction a horseman turned in from it--
a man who was young and well dressed and who sat well a
spirited animal. He came out upon the road almost face to
face with Miss Vanderpoel, and from where he stood Mount
Dunstan could see his delighted smile as he lifted his hat in
salute. It was Lord Westholt, and what more natural than
that after an exchange of greetings the two should ride
together on their way! For nearly three miles their homeward
road would be the same.
But in a breath's space Mount Dunstan realised a certain
truth--a simple, elemental thing. All the exaltation of the
morning swooped and fell as a bird seems to swoop and fall
through space. It was all over and done with, and he understood
it. His normal awakening in the morning, the physical
and mental elation of the first clear hours, the spring of his
foot as he had trod the road, had all had but one meaning.
In some occult way the hypnotic talk of the night before had
formed itself into a reality, fantastic and unreasoning as it had
been. Some insistent inner consciousness had seized upon and
believed it in spite of him and had set all his waking being in
tune to it. That was the explanation of his undue spirits and
hope. If Penzance had spoken a truth he would have had a
natural, sane right to feel all this and more. But the truth
was that he, in his guise--was one of those who are "on the
roadside everywhere--all over the world." Poetically figurative
as the thing sounded, it was prosaic fact.
So, still hearing the distant sounds of the hoofs beating in
cheerful diminuendo on the roadway, he turned about and went
back to talk to Bolter.
CHAPTER XXXVII
CLOSED CORRIDORS
To spend one's days perforce in an enormous house alone is a
thing likely to play unholy tricks with a man's mind and lead
it to gloomy workings. To know the existence of a hundred
or so of closed doors shut on the darkness of unoccupied rooms;
to be conscious of flights of unmounted stairs, of stretches of
untrodden corridors, of unending walls, from which the
pictured eyes of long dead men and women stare, as if seeing
things which human eyes behold not--is an eerie and unwholesome
thing. Mount Dunstan slept in a large four-post bed in
a chamber in which he might have died or been murdered a
score of times without being able to communicate with the
remote servants' quarters below stairs, where lay the one man
and one woman who attended him. When he came late to his
room and prepared for sleep by the light of two flickering
candles the silence of the dead in tombs was about him; but it
was only a more profound and insistent thing than the silence
of the day, because it was the silence of the night, which is a
presence. He used to tell himself with secret smiles at the fact
that at certain times the fantasy was half believable--that there
were things which walked about softly at night--things which
did not want to be dead. He himself had picked them out
from among the pictures in the gallery--pretty, light, petulant
women; adventurous-eyed, full-blooded, eager men. His theory
was that they hated their stone coffins, and fought their way
back through the grey mists to try to talk and make love and
to be seen of warm things which were alive. But it was not
to be done, because they had no bodies and no voices, and when
they beat upon closed doors they would not open. Still they
came back--came back. And sometimes there was a rustle and
a sweep through the air in a passage, or a creak, or a sense of
waiting which was almost a sound.
"Perhaps some of them have gone when they have been
as I am," he had said one black night, when he had sat in
his room staring at the floor. "If a man was dragged out when
he had not LIVED a day, he would come back I should come
back if--God! A man COULD not be dragged away--like THIS!"
And to sit alone and think of it was an awful and a lonely
thing--a lonely thing.
But loneliness was nothing new, only that in these months
his had strangely intensified itself. This, though he was not
aware of it, was because the soul and body which were the
completing parts of him were within reach--and without it.
When he went down to breakfast he sat singly at his table,
round which twenty people might have laughed and talked.
Between the dining-room and the library he spent his days
when he was not out of doors. Since he could not afford
servants, the many other rooms must be kept closed. It was a
ghastly and melancholy thing to make, as he must sometimes,
a sort of precautionary visit to the state apartments. He was
the last Mount Dunstan, and he would never see them opened
again for use, but so long as he lived under the roof he might
by prevision check, in a measure, the too rapid encroachments
of decay. To have a leak stopped here, a nail driven or a
support put there, seemed decent things to do.
"Whom am I doing it for?" he said to Mr. Penzance. "I
am doing it for myself--because I cannot help it. The place
seems to me like some gorgeous old warrior come to the end of
his days It has stood the war of things for century after
century--the war of things. It is going now I am all that is
left to it. It is all I have. So I patch it up when I can
afford it, with a crutch or a splint and a bandage."
Late in the afternoon of the day on which Miss Vanderpoel
rode away from West Ways with Lord Westholt, a stealthy
and darkly purple cloud rose, lifting its ominous bulk against
a chrysoprase and pink horizon. It was the kind of cloud
which speaks of but one thing to those who watch clouds, or
even casually consider them. So Lady Anstruthers felt some
surprise when she saw Sir Nigel mount his horse before the
stone steps and ride away, as it were, into the very heart of
the coming storm.
"Nigel will be caught in the rain," she said to her sister.
"I wonder why he goes out now. It would be better to wait
until to-morrow."
But Sir Nigel did not think so. He had calculated matters
with some nicety. He was not exactly on such terms with
Mount Dunstan as would make a casual call seem an entirely
natural thing, and he wished to drop in upon him for a casual
call and in an unpremeditated manner. He meant to reach
the Mount about the time the storm broke, under which
circumstance nothing could bear more lightly an air of being
unpremeditated than to take refuge in a chance passing.
Mount Dunstan was in the library. He had sat smoking
his pipe while he watched the purple cloud roll up and spread
itself, blotting out the chrysoprase and pink and blue, and when
the branches of the trees began to toss about he had looked on
with pleasure as the rush of big rain drops came down and
pelted things. It was a fine storm, and there were some imposing
claps of thunder and jagged flashes of lightning. As one
splendid rattle shook the air he was surprised to hear a
summons at the great hall door. Who on earth could be turning
up at this time? His man Reeve announced the arrival a few
moments later, and it was Sir Nigel Anstruthers. He had, he
explained, been riding through the village when the deluge
descended, and it had occurred to him to turn in at the park
gates and ask a temporary shelter. Mount Dunstan received
him with sufficient courtesy. His appearance was not a thing
to rejoice over, but it could be endured. Whisky and soda and
a smoke would serve to pass the hour, if the storm lasted so
long.
Conversation was not the easiest thing in the world under
the circumstances, but Sir Nigel led the way steadily after
he had taken his seat and accepted the hospitalities offered.
What a place it was--this! He had been struck for the hundredth
time with the impressiveness of the mass of it, the sweep
of the park and the splendid grouping of the timber, as he had
ridden up the avenue. There was no other place like it in the
county. Was there another like it in England?
"Not in its case, I hope," Mount Dunstan said.
There were a few seconds of silence. The rain poured down
in splashing sheets and was swept in rattling gusts against the
window panes.
"What the place needs is--an heiress," Anstruthers observed
in the tone of a practical man. "I believe I have heard that
your views of things are such that she should preferably NOT
be an American."
Mount Dunstan did not smile, though he slightly showed his
teeth.
"When I am driven to the wall," he answered, "I may not
be fastidious as to nationality."
Nigel Anstruthers' manner was not a bad one. He chose
that tone of casual openness which, while it does not wholly
commit itself, may be regarded as suggestive of the amiable half
confidence of speeches made as "man to man."
"My own opportunity of studying the genus American heiress
within my own gates is a first-class one. I find that it knows
what it wants and that its intention is to get it." A short
laugh broke from him as he flicked the ash from his cigar on
to the small bronze receptacle at his elbow. "It is not many
years since it would have been difficult for a girl to be frank
enough to say, `When I marry I shall ask something in exchange
for what I have to give.' "
"There are not many who have as much to give," said
Mount Dunstan coolly.
"True," with a slight shrug. "You are thinking that men
are glad enough to take a girl like that--even one who has not
a shape like Diana's and eyes like the sea. Yes, by George,"
softly, and narrowing his lids, "she IS a handsome creature."
Mount Dunstan did not attempt to refute the statement, and
Anstruthers laughed low again.
"It is an asset she knows the value of quite clearly. That
is the interesting part of it. She has inherited the far-seeing
commercial mind. She does not object to admitting it. She
educated herself in delightful cold blood that she might be
prepared for the largest prize appearing upon the horizon. She
held things in view when she was a child at school, and obviously
attacked her French, German, and Italian conjugations
with a twelve-year-old eye on the future."
Mount Dunstan leaning back carelessly in his chair, laughed--
as it seemed--with him. Internally he was saying that the man
was a liar who might always be trusted to lie, but he knew with
shamed fury that the lies were doing something to his
soul--rolling dark vapours over it--stinging him, dragging away
props, and making him feel they had been foolish things to lean
on. This can always be done with a man in love who has slight
foundation for hope. For some mysterious and occult reason
civilisation has elected to treat the strange and great passion
as if it were an unholy and indecent thing, whose dominion over
him proper social training prevents any man from admitting
openly. In passing through its cruelest phases he must bear
himself as if he were immune, and this being the custom, he may
be called upon to endure much without the relief of striking out
with manly blows. An enemy guessing his case and possessing the
infernal gift whose joy is to dishearten and do hurt with
courteous despitefulness, may plant a poisoned arrow here and
there with neatness and fine touch, while his bound victim can,
with decency, neither start, nor utter brave howls, nor guard
himself, but must sit still and listen, hospitably supplying
smoke and drink and being careful not to make an ass of himself.
Therefore Mount Dunstan pushed the cigars nearer to his
visitor and waved his hand hospitably towards the whisky and
soda. There was no reason, in fact, why Anstruthers--or any
one indeed, but Penzance, should suspect that he had become
somewhat mad in secret. The man's talk was marked merely
by the lightly disparaging malice which was rarely to be missed
from any speech of his which touched on others. Yet it might
have been a thing arranged beforehand, to suggest adroitly
either lies or truth which would make a man see every
sickeningly good reason for feeling that in this contest he did
not count for a man at all.
"It has all been pretty obvious," said Sir Nigel. "There
is a sort of cynicism in the openness of the siege. My
impression is that almost every youngster who has met her has
taken a shot. Tommy Alanby scrambling up from his knees in one
of the rose-gardens was a satisfying sight. His much-talked-ofpassion
for Jane Lithcom was temporarily in abeyance."
The rain swirled in a torrent against the window, and
casually glancing outside at the tossing gardens he went on.
"She is enjoying herself. Why not? She has the spirit of
the huntress. I don't think she talks nonsense about friendship
to the captives of her bow and spear. She knows she can
always get what she wants. A girl like that MUST have an
arrogance of mind. And she is not a young saint. She is one
of the women born with THE LOOK in her eyes. I own I should
not like to be in the place of any primeval poor brute who
really went mad over her--and counted her millions as so much
dirt."
Mount Dunstan answered with a shrug of his big shoulders:
"Apparently he would seem as remote from the reason of
to-day as the men who lived on the land when Hengist and
Horsa came--or when Caesar landed at Deal."
"He would seem as remote to her," with a shrug also.
"I should not like to contend that his point of view would not
interest her or that she would particularly discourage him. Her
eyes would call him--without malice or intention, no doubt, but
your early Briton ceorl or earl would be as well understood
by her. Your New York beauty who has lived in the market
place knows principally the prices of things."
He was not ill pleased with himself. He was putting it
well and getting rather even with her. If this fellow with his
shut mouth had a sore spot hidden anywhere he was giving him
"to think." And he would find himself thinking, while,
whatsoever he thought, he would be obliged to continue to keep
his ugly mouth shut. The great idea was to say things WITHOUT
saying them, to set your hearer's mind to saying them for you.
"What strikes one most is a sort of commercial brilliance
in her," taking up his thread again after a smilingly reflective
pause. "It quite exhilarates one by its novelty. There's spice
in it. We English have not a look-in when we are dealing
with Americans, and yet France calls us a nation of shopkeepers.
My impression is that their women take little
inventories of every house they enter, of every man they meet. I
heard her once speaking to my wife about this place, as if she
had lived in it. She spoke of the closed windows and the state
of the gardens--of broken fountains and fallen arches. She
evidently deplored the deterioration of things which represented
capital. She has inventoried Dunholm, no doubt. That will
give Westholt a chance. But she will do nothing until after
her next year's season in London--that I'd swear. I look forward
to next year. It will be worth watching. She has been
training my wife. A sister who has married an Englishman
and has at least spent some years of her life in England has a
certain established air. When she is presented one knows she
will be a sensation. After that----" he hesitated a moment,
smiling not too pleasantly.
"After that," said Mount Dunstan, "the Deluge."
"Exactly. The Deluge which usually sweeps girls off their
feet--but it will not sweep her off hers. She will stand quite
firm in the flood and lose sight of nothing of importance which
floats past."
Mount Dunstan took him up. He was sick of hearing the
fellow's voice.
"There will be a good many things," he said; "there will be
great personages and small ones, pomps and vanities, glittering
things and heavy ones."
"When she sees what she wants," said Anstruthers, "she
will hold out her hand, knowing it will come to her. The
things which drown will not disturb her. I once made the
blunder of suggesting that she might need protection against
the importunate--as if she had been an English girl. It was
an idiotic thing to do."
"Because?" Mount Dunstan for the moment had lost his
head. Anstruthers had maddeningly paused.
"She answered that if it became necessary she might
perhaps be able to protect herself. She was as cool and frank as
a boy. No air pince about it--merely consciousness of being
able to put things in their right places. Made a mere male
relative feel like a fool."
"When ARE things in their right places?" To his credit be
it spoken, Mount Dunstan managed to say it as if in the mere
putting together of idle words. What man likes to be reminded
of his right place! No man wants to be put in his right place.
There is always another place which seems more desirable.
"She knows--if we others do not. I suppose my right place
is at Stornham, conducting myself as the brother-in-law of a
fair American should. I suppose yours is here--shut up among
your closed corridors and locked doors. There must be a lot
of them in a house like this. Don't you sometimes feel it too
large for you?"
"Always," answered Mount Dunstan.
The fact that he added nothing else and met a rapid side
glance with unmoving red-brown eyes gazing out from under
rugged brows, perhaps irritated Anstruthers. He had been
rather enjoying himself, but he had not enjoyed himself enough.
There was no denying that his plaything had not openly
flinched. Plainly he was not good at flinching. Anstruthers
wondered how far a man might go. He tried again.
"She likes the place, though she has a natural disdain for
its condition. That is practical American. Things which are
going to pieces because money is not spent upon them--mere
money, of which all the people who count for anything have
so much--are inevitably rather disdained. They are `out of
it.' But she likes the estate." As he watched Mount Dunstan
he felt sure he had got it at last--the right thing. "If
you were a duke with fifty thousand a year," with a distinctly
nasty, amicably humorous, faint laugh, "she would--by the
Lord, I believe, she would take it over--and you with it."
Mount Dunstan got up. In his rough walking tweeds he
looked over-big--and heavy--and perilous. For two seconds
Nigel Anstruthers would not have been surprised if he had
without warning slapped his face, or knocked him over, or
whirled him out of his chair and kicked him. He would not
have liked it, but--for two seconds--it would have been no
surprise. In fact, he instinctively braced his not too firm
muscles. But nothing of the sort occurred. During the two
seconds--perhaps three--Mount Dunstan stood still and looked
down at him. The brief space at an end, he walked over to the
hearth and stood with his back to the big fireplace.
"You don't like her," he said, and his manner was that of a man
dealing with a matter of fact. "Why do you talk about her?"
He had got away again--quite away.
An ugly flush shot over Anstruthers' face. There was one
more thing to say--whether it was idiotic to say it or not.
Things can always be denied afterwards, should denial appear
necessary--and for the moment his special devil possessed him.
"I do not like her!" And his mouth twisted. "Do I not?
I am not an old woman. I am a man--like others. I chance to
like her--too much."
There was a short silence. Mount Dunstan broke it.
"Then," he remarked, "you had better emigrate to some
country with a climate which suits you. I should say that
England--for the present--does not."
"I shall stay where I am," answered Anstruthers, with a
slight hoarseness of voice, which made it necessary for him
to clear his throat. "I shall stay where she is. I will have
that satisfaction, at least. She does not mind. I am only a
racketty, middle-aged brother-in-law, and she can take care
of herself. As I told you, she has the spirit of the huntress."
"Look here," said Mount Dunstan, quite without haste,
and with an iron civility. "I am going to take the liberty
of suggesting something. If this thing is true, it would be as
well not to talk about it."
"As well for me--or for her?" and there was a serene
significance in the query.
Mount Dunstan thought a few seconds.
"I confess," he said slowly, and he planted his fine blow
between the eyes well and with directness. "I confess that
it would not have occurred to me to ask you to do anything
or refrain from doing it for her sake."
"Thank you. Perhaps you are right. One learns that one
must protect one's self. I shall not talk--neither will you. I
know that. I was a fool to let it out. The storm is over.
I must ride home." He rose from his seat and stood smiling.
"It would smash up things nicely if the new beauty's appearance
in the great world were preceded by chatter of the unseemly
affection of some adorer of ill repute. Unfairly enough
it is always the woman who is hurt."
"Unless," said Mount Dunstan civilly, "there should arise
the poor, primeval brute, in his neolithic wrath, to seize on the
man to blame, and break every bone and sinew in his damned body."
"The newspapers would enjoy that more than she would,"
answered Sir Nigel. "She does not like the newspapers.
They are too ready to disparage the multi-millionaire, and
cackle about members of his family."
The unhidden hatred which still professed to hide itself in
the depths of their pupils, as they regarded each other, had its
birth in a passion as elemental as the quakings of the earth,
or the rage of two lions in a desert, lashing their flanks in the
blazing sun. It was well that at this moment they should
part ways.
Sir Nigel's horse being brought, he went on the way which
was his.
"It was a mistake to say what I did," he said before going.
"I ought to have held my tongue. But I am under the same
roof with her. At any rate, that is a privilege no other man
shares with me."
He rode off smartly, his horse's hoofs splashing in the rain
pools left in the avenue after the storm. He was not so sure
after all that he had made a mistake, and for the moment
he was not in the mood to care whether he had made one or not.
His agreeable smile showed itself as he thought of the obstinate,
proud brute he had left behind, sitting alone among his
shut doors and closed corridors. They had not shaken hands
either at meeting or parting. Queer thing it was--the kind
of enmity a man could feel for another when he was upset
by a woman. It was amusing enough that it should be
she who was upsetting him after all these years--impudent little
Betty, with the ferocious manner.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
AT SHANDY'S
On a late-summer evening in New York the atmosphere
surrounding a certain corner table at Shandy's cheap restaurant
in Fourteenth Street was stirred by a sense of excitement.
The corner table in question was the favourite meeting place
of a group of young men of the G. Selden type, who usually
took possession of it at dinner time--having decided that
Shandy's supplied more decent food for fifty cents, or even for
twenty-five, than was to be found at other places of its order.
Shandy's was "about all right," they said to each other, and
patronised it accordingly, three or four of them generally dining
together, with a friendly and adroit manipulation of "portions"
and "half portions" which enabled them to add variety
to their bill of fare.
The street outside was lighted, the tide of passers-by was
less full and more leisurely in its movements than it was
during the seething, working hours of daylight, but the electric
cars swung past each other with whiz and clang of bell almost
unceasingly, their sound being swelled, at short intervals,
by the roar and rumbling rattle of the trains dashing by on
the elevated railroad. This, however, to the frequenters of
Shandy's, was the usual accompaniment of every-day New
York life and was regarded as a rather cheerful sort of thing.
This evening the four claimants of the favourite corner
table had met together earlier than usual. Jem Belter, who
"hammered" a typewriter at Schwab's Brewery, Tom Wetherbee,
who was "in a downtown office," Bert Johnson, who
was "out for the Delkoff," and Nick Baumgarten, who having
for some time "beaten" certain streets as assistant salesman
for the same illustrious machine, had been recently elevated to
a "territory" of his own, and was therefore in high spirits.
"Say!" he said. "Let's give him a fine dinner. We can
make it between us. Beefsteak and mushrooms, and potatoes
hashed brown. He likes them. Good old G. S. I shall be
right glad to see him. Hope foreign travel has not given him
the swell head."
"Don't believe it's hurt him a bit. His letter didn't sound
like it. Little Georgie ain't a fool," said Jem Belter.
Tom Wetherbee was looking over the letter referred to.
It had been written to the four conjointly, towards the
termination of Selden's visit to Mr. Penzance. The young man
was not an ardent or fluent correspondent; but Tom Wetherbee
was chuckling as he read the epistle.
"Say, boys," he said, "this big thing he's keeping back
to tell us when he sees us is all right, but what takes me is
old George paying a visit to a parson. He ain't no Young
Men's Christian Association."
Bert Johnson leaned forward, and looked at the address
on the letter paper.
"Mount Dunstan Vicarage," he read aloud. "That looks
pretty swell, doesn't it?" with a laugh. "Say, fellows, you
know Jepson at the office, the chap that prides himself on
reading such a lot? He said it reminded him of the names
of places in English novels. That Johnny's the biggest snob
you ever set your tooth into. When I told him about the
lord fellow that owns the castle, and that George seemed to
have seen him, he nearly fell over himself. Never had any use
for George before, but just you watch him make up to him
when he sees him next."
People were dropping in and taking seats at the tables.
They were all of one class. Young men who lived in hall
bedrooms. Young women who worked in shops or offices, a
couple here and there, who, living far uptown, had come to
Shandy's to dinner, that they might go to cheap seats in some
theatre afterwards. In the latter case, the girls wore their
best hats, had bright eyes, and cheeks lightly flushed by their
sense of festivity. Two or three were very pretty in their
thin summer dresses and flowered or feathered head gear,
tilted at picturesque angles over their thick hair. When each
one entered the eyes of the young men at the corner table
followed her with curiosity and interest, but the glances at
her escort were always of a disparaging nature.
"There's a beaut!" said Nick Baumgarten. "Get onto
that pink stuff on her hat, will you. She done it because it's
just the colour of her cheeks."
They all looked, and the girl was aware of it, and began to
laugh and talk coquettishly to the young man who was her
companion.
"I wonder where she got Clarence?" said Jem Belter in
sarcastic allusion to her escort. "The things those lookers
have fastened on to them gets ME."
"If it was one of US, now," said Bert Johnson. Upon which
they broke into simultaneous good-natured laughter.
"It's queer, isn't it," young Baumgarten put in, "how a
fellow always feels sore when he sees another fellow with
a peach like that? It's just straight human nature, I guess."
The door swung open to admit a newcomer, at the sight
of whom Jem Belter exclaimed joyously: "Good old Georgie!
Here he is, fellows! Get on to his glad rags."
"Glad rags" is supposed to buoyantly describe such attire
as, by its freshness or elegance of style, is rendered a suitable
adornment for festive occasions or loftier leisure moments.
"Glad rags" may mean evening dress, when a young gentleman's
wardrobe can aspire to splendour so marked, but it also
applies to one's best and latest-purchased garb, in
contradistinction to the less ornamental habiliments worn every
day, and designated as "office clothes."
G. Selden's economies had not enabled him to give himself
into the hands of a Bond Street tailor, but a careful study of
cut and material, as spread before the eye in elegant coloured
illustrations in the windows of respectable shops in less
ambitious quarters, had resulted in the purchase of a well-made
suit of smart English cut. He had a nice young figure, and
looked extremely neat and tremendously new and clean, so
much so, indeed, that several persons glanced at him a little
admiringly as he was met half way to the corner table by his
friends.
"Hello, old chap! Glad to see you. What sort of a voyage? How
did you leave the royal family? Glad to get back?"
They all greeted him at once, shaking hands and slapping
him on the back, as they hustled him gleefully back to the
corner table and made him sit down.
"Say, garsong," said Nick Baumgarten to their favourite
waiter, who came at once in answer to his summons, "let's
have a porterhouse steak, half the size of this table, and with
plenty of mushrooms and potatoes hashed brown. Here's Mr.
Selden just returned from visiting at Windsor Castle, and if
we don't treat him well, he'll look down on us."
G. Selden grinned. "How have you been getting on,
Sam?" he said, nodding cheerfully to the man. They were
old and tried friends. Sam knew all about the days when
a fellow could not come into Shandy's at all, or must satisfy
his strong young hunger with a bowl of soup, or coffee and a
roll. Sam did his best for them in the matter of the size
of portions, and they did their good-natured utmost for him in
the affair of the pooled tip.
"Been getting on as well as can be expected," Sam grinned
back. "Hope you had a fine time, Mr. Selden?"
"Fine! I should smile! Fine wasn't in it," answered
Selden. "But I'm looking forward to a Shandy porterhouse
steak, all the same."
"Did they give you a better one in the Strawnd?" asked
Baumgarten, in what he believed to be a correct Cockney
accent.
"You bet they didn't," said Selden. "Shandy's takes a lot
of beating." That last is English.
The people at the other tables cast involuntary glances at
them. Their eager, hearty young pleasure in the festivity of
the occasion was a healthy thing to see. As they sat round
the corner table, they produced the effect of gathering close
about G. Selden. They concentrated their combined attention
upon him, Belter and Johnson leaning forward on their folded
arms, to watch him as he talked.
"Billy Page came back in August, looking pretty bum,"
Nick Baumgarten began. "He'd been painting gay Paree
brick red, and he'd spent more money than he'd meant to, and
that wasn't half enough. Landed dead broke. He said he'd
had a great time, but he'd come home with rather a dark brown
taste in his mouth, that he'd like to get rid of."
"He thought you were a fool to go off cycling into the
country," put in Wetherbee, "but I told him I guessed that
was where he was 'way off. I believed you'd had the best time
of the two of you."
"Boys," said Selden, "I had the time of my life." He
said it almost solemnly, and laid his hand on the table. "It
was like one of those yarns Bert tells us. Half the time I
didn't believe it, and half the time I was ashamed of myself
to think it was all happening to me and none of your fellows
were in it."
"Oh, well," said Jem Belter, "luck chases some fellows,
anyhow. Look at Nick, there."
"Well," Selden summed the whole thing up, "I just FELL
into it where it was so deep that I had to strike out all I knew
how to keep from drowning."
"Tell us the whole thing," Nick Baumgarten put in; "from
beginning to end. Your letter didn't give anything away."
"A letter would have spoiled it. I can't write letters
anyhow. I wanted to wait till I got right here with you fellows
round where I could answer questions. First off," with the
deliberation befitting such an opening, "I've sold machines
enough to pay my expenses, and leave some over."
"You have? Gee whiz! Say, give us your prescription.
Glad I know you, Georgy!"
"And who do you suppose bought the first three?" At
this point, it was he who leaned forward upon the table--his
climax being a thing to concentrate upon. "Reuben S.
Vanderpoel's daughter--Miss Bettina! And, boys, she gave me a
letter to Reuben S., himself, and here it is."
He produced a flat leather pocketbook and took an envelope
from an inner flap, laying it before them on the tablecloth.
His knowledge that they would not have believed him if he
had not brought his proof was founded on everyday facts.
They would not have doubted his veracity, but the possibility
of such delirious good fortune. What they would have
believed would have been that he was playing a hilarious joke
on them. Jokes of this kind, but not of this proportion, were
common entertainments.
Their first impulse had been towards an outburst of laughter, but
even before he produced his letter a certain truthful
seriousness in his look had startled them. When he laid the
envelope down each man caught his breath. It could not be
denied that Jem Belter turned pale with emotion. Jem had
never been one of the lucky ones.
"She let me read it," said G. Selden, taking the letter from
its envelope with great care. "And I said to her: `Miss
Vanderpoel, would you let me just show that to the boys the first
night I go to Shandy's?' I knew she'd tell me if it wasn't
all right to do it. She'd know I'd want to be told. And she
just laughed and said: `I don't mind at all. I like "the
boys." Here is a message to them. `Good luck to you all.' "
"She said that?" from Nick Baumgarten.
"Yes, she did, and she meant it. Look at this."
This was the letter. It was quite short, and written in a
clear, definite hand.
"DEAR FATHER: This will be brought to you by Mr. G.
Selden, of whom I have written to you. Please be good to
him.
"Affectionately,
"BETTY."
Each young man read it in turn. None of them said
anything just at first. A kind of awe had descended upon them--
not in the least awe of Vanderpoel, who, with other multimillionaires,
were served up each week with cheerful
neighbourly comment or equally neighbourly disrespect, in huge
Sunday papers read throughout the land--but awe of the
unearthly luck which had fallen without warning to good old
G. S., who lived like the rest of them in a hall bedroom on
ten per, earned by tramping the streets for the Delkoff.
"That girl," said G. Selden gravely, "that girl is a
winner from Winnersville. I take off my hat to her. If it's the
scheme that some people's got to have millions, and others
have got to sell Delkoffs, that girl's one of those that's
entitled to the millions. It's all right she should have 'em.
There's no kick coming from me."
Nick Baumgarten was the first to resume wholly normal
condition of mind.
"Well, I guess after you've told us about her there'll be
no kick coming from any of us. Of course there's something
about you that royal families cry for, and they won't be
happy till they get. All of us boys knows that. But what
we want to find out is how you worked it so that they saw
the kind of pearl-studded hairpin you were."
"Worked it!" Selden answered. "I didn't work it. I've
got a good bit of nerve, but I never should have had enough
to invent what happened--just HAPPENED. I broke my leg
falling off my bike, and fell right into a whole bunch of them
--earls and countesses and viscounts and Vanderpoels. And
it was Miss Vanderpoel who saw me first lying on the ground.
And I was in Stornham Court where Lady Anstruthers lives
--and she used to be Miss Rosalie Vanderpoel."
"Boys," said Bert Johnson, with friendly disgust, "he's
been up to his neck in 'em."
"Cheer up. The worst is yet to come," chaffed Tom Wetherbee.
Never had such a dinner taken place at the corner table, or,
in fact, at any other table at Shandy's. Sam brought beefsteaks,
which were princely, mushrooms, and hashed brown
potatoes in portions whose generosity reached the heart. Sam
was on good terms with Shandy's carver, and had worked
upon his nobler feelings. Steins of lager beer were ventured
upon. There was hearty satisfying of fine hungers. Two of
the party had eaten nothing but one "Quick Lunch" throughout
the day, one of them because he was short of time, the
other for economy's sake, because he was short of money.
The meal was a splendid thing. The telling of the story
could not be wholly checked by the eating of food. It
advanced between mouthfuls, questions being asked and details
given in answers. Shandy's became more crowded, as the
hour advanced. People all over the room cast interested looks
at the party at the corner table, enjoying itself so hugely.
Groups sitting at the tables nearest to it found themselves
excited by the things they heard.
"That young fellow in the new suit has just come back
from Europe," said a man to his wife and daughter. "He
seems to have had a good time."
"Papa," the daughter leaned forward, and spoke in a low
voice, "I heard him say `Lord Mount Dunstan said Lady
Anstruthers and Miss Vanderpoel were at the garden party.'
Who do you suppose he is? "
"Well, he's a nice young fellow, and he has English clothes
on, but he doesn't look like one of the Four Hundred. Will
you have pie or vanilla ice cream, Bessy?"
Bessy--who chose vanilla ice cream--lost all knowledge of
its flavour in her absorption in the conversation at the next
table, which she could not have avoided hearing, even if she
had wished.
"She bent over the bed and laughed--just like any other
nice girl--and she said, `You are at Stornham Court, which
belongs to Sir Nigel Anstruthers. Lady Anstruthers is my
sister. I am Miss Vanderpoel.' And, boys, she used to come
and talk to me every day."
"George," said Nick Baumgarten, "you take about seventyfive
bottles of Warner's Safe Cure, and rub yourself all over
with St. Jacob's Oil. Luck like that ain't HEALTHY!"
. . . . .
Mr. Vanderpoel, sitting in his study, wore the interestedly
grave look of a man thinking of absorbing things. He had
just given orders that a young man who would call in the
course of the evening should be brought to him at once, and he
was incidentally considering this young man, as he reflected
upon matters recalled to his mind by his impending arrival.
They were matters he had thought of with gradually increasing
seriousness for some months, and they had, at first, been
the result of the letters from Stornham, which each "steamer
day" brought. They had been of immense interest to him--
these letters. He would have found them absorbing as a
study, even if he had not deeply loved Betty. He read in
them things she did not state in words, and they set him
thinking.
He was not suspected by men like himself of concealing
an imagination beneath the trained steadiness of his
exterior, but he possessed more than the world knew, and it
singularly combined itself with powers of logical deduction.
If he had been with his daughter, he would have seen, day
by day, where her thoughts were leading her, and in what
direction she was developing, but, at a distance of three
thousand miles, he found himself asking questions, and
endeavouring to reach conclusions. His affection for Betty was
the central emotion of his existence. He had never told himself
that he had outgrown the kind and pretty creature he had
married in his early youth, and certainly his tender care for
her and pleasure in her simple goodness had never wavered,
but Betty had given him a companionship which had counted
greatly in the sum of his happiness. Because imagination
was not suspected in him, no one knew what she stood for
in his life. He had no son; he stood at the head of a great
house, so to speak--the American parallel of what a great
house is in non-republican countries. The power of it counted
for great things, not in America alone, but throughout the
world. As international intimacies increased, the influence
of such houses might end in aiding in the making of history.
Enormous constantly increasing wealth and huge financial
schemes could not confine their influence, but must reach far.
The man whose hand held the lever controlling them was
doing well when he thought of them gravely. Such a man
had to do with more than his own mere life and living.
This man had confronted many problems as the years had
passed. He had seen men like himself die, leaving behind them
the force they had controlled, and he had seen this force--
controlled no longer--let loose upon the world, sometimes a power
of evil, sometimes scattering itself aimlessly into nothingness
and folly, which wrought harm. He was not an ambitious
man, but--perhaps because he was not only a man of thought,
but a Vanderpoel of the blood of the first Reuben--these were
things he did not contemplate without restlessness. When
Rosy had gone away and seemed lost to them, he had been
glad when he had seen Betty growing, day by day, into a strong
thing. Feminine though she was, she sometimes suggested
to him the son who might have been his, but was not. As
the closeness of their companionship increased with her years,
his admiration for her grew with his love. Power left in
her hands must work for the advancement of things, and would
not be idly disseminated--if no antagonistic influence wrought
against her. He had found himself reflecting that, after all
was said, the marriage of such a girl had a sort of parallel in
that of some young royal creature, whose union might make
or mar things, which must be considered. The man who must
inevitably strongly colour her whole being, and vitally mark
her life, would, in a sense, lay his hand upon the lever also.
If he brought sorrow and disorder with him, the lever would
not move steadily. Fortunes such as his grow rapidly, and
he was a richer man by millions than he had been when
Rosalie had married Nigel Anstruthers. The memory of
that marriage had been a painful thing to him, even before
he had known the whole truth of its results. The man had
been a common adventurer and scoundrel, despite the facts
of good birth and the air of decent breeding. If a man who
was as much a scoundrel, but cleverer--it would be necessary
that he should be much cleverer--made the best of himself to
Betty----! It was folly to think one could guess what a
woman--or a man, either, for that matter--would love. He
knew Betty, but no man knows the thing which comes, as it
were, in the dark and claims its own--whether for good or
evil. He had lived long enough to see beautiful, strongspirited
creatures do strange things, follow strange gods, swept
away into seas of pain by strange waves.
"Even Betty," he had said to himself, now and then. "Even
my Betty. Good God--who knows! "
Because of this, he had read each letter with keen eyes.
They were long letters, full of detail and colour, because she
knew he enjoyed them. She had a delightful touch. He
sometimes felt as if they walked the English lanes together.
His intimacy with her neighbours, and her neighbourhood, was
one of his relaxations. He found himself thinking of old
Doby and Mrs. Welden, as a sort of soporific measure, when
he lay awake at night. She had sent photographs of Stornham,
of Dunholm Castle, and of Dole, and had even found an
old engraving of Lady Alanby in her youth. Her evident
liking for the Dunholms had pleased him. They were people
whose dignity and admirableness were part of general
knowledge. Lord Westholt was plainly a young man of many
attractions. If the two were drawn to each other--and what
more natural--all would be well. He wondered if it would
be Westholt. But his love quickened a sagacity which needed
no stimulus. He said to himself in time that, though she liked
and admired Westholt, she went no farther. That others
paid court to her he could guess without being told. He had
seen the effect she had produced when she had been at home,
and also an unexpected letter to his wife from Milly Bowen
had revealed many things. Milly, having noted Mrs. Vanderpoel's
eager anxiety to hear direct news of Lady Anstruthers,
was not the person to let fall from her hand a useful
thread of connection. She had written quite at length, managing
adroitly to convey all that she had seen, and all that she
had heard. She had been making a visit within driving
distance of Stornham, and had had the pleasure of meeting
both Lady Anstruthers and Miss Vanderpoel at various parties.
She was so sure that Mrs. Vanderpoel would like to hear
how well Lady Anstruthers was looking, that she ventured
to write. Betty's effect upon the county was made quite
clear, as also was the interested expectation of her appearance
in town next season. Mr. Vanderpoel, perhaps, gathered more
from the letter than his wife did. In her mind, relieved
happiness and consternation were mingled.
"Do you think, Reuben, that Betty will marry that Lord
Westholt?" she rather faltered. "He seems very nice, but
I would rather she married an American. I should feel as
if I had no girls at all, if they both lived in England."
"Lady Bowen gives him a good character," her husband
said, smiling. "But if anything untoward happens, Annie,
you shall have a house of your own half way between Dunholm
Castle and Stornham Court."
When he had begun to decide that Lord Westholt did not
seem to be the man Fate was veering towards, he not
unnaturally cast a mental eye over such other persons as the
letters mentioned. At exactly what period his thought first
dwelt a shade anxiously on Mount Dunstan he could not
have told, but he at length became conscious that it so dwelt.
He had begun by feeling an interest in his story, and had asked
questions about him, because a situation such as his suggested
query to a man of affairs. Thus, it had been natural that the
letters should speak of him. What she had written had
recalled to him certain rumours of the disgraceful old scandal.
Yes, they had been a bad lot. He arranged to put a casualsounding
question or so to certain persons who knew English
society well. What he gathered was not encouraging. The
present Lord Mount Dunstan was considered rather a surly
brute, and lived a mysterious sort of life which might cover
many things. It was bad blood, and people were naturally
shy of it. Of course, the man was a pauper, and his place a
barrack falling to ruin. There had been something rather
shady in his going to America or Australia a few years ago.
Good looking? Well, so few people had seen him. The lady,
who was speaking, had heard that he was one of those big,
rather lumpy men, and had an ill-tempered expression. She
always gave a wide berth to a man who looked nasty-tempered.
One or two other persons who had spoken of him had conveyed
to Mr. Vanderpoel about the same amount of vaguely
unpromising information. The episode of G. Selden had been
interesting enough, with its suggestions of picturesque
contrasts and combinations. Betty's touch had made the junior
salesman attracting. It was a good type this, of a young
fellow who, battling with the discouragements of a hard life,
still did not lose his amazing good cheer and patience, and
found healthy sleep and honest waking, even in the hall
bedroom. He had consented to Betty's request that he would
see him, partly because he was inclined to like what he had
heard, and partly for a reason which Betty did not suspect.
By extraordinary chance G. Selden had seen Mount Dunstan
and his surroundings at close range. Mr. Vanderpoel had liked
what he had gathered of Mount Dunstan's attitude towards a
personality so singularly exotic to himself. Crude, uneducated,
and slangy, the junior salesman was not in any degree a fool.
To an American father with a daughter like Betty, the summingup
of a normal, nice-natured, common young denizen of the
United States, fresh from contact with the effete, might be
subtly instructive, and well worth hearing, if it was
unconsciously expressed. Mr. Vanderpoel thought he knew how,
after he had overcome his visitor's first awkwardness--if he
chanced to be self-conscious--he could lead him to talk. What
he hoped to do was to make him forget himself and begin
to talk to him as he had talked to Betty, to ingenuously reveal
impressions and points of view. Young men of his clean,
rudimentary type were very definite about the things they liked
and disliked, and could be trusted to reveal admiration, or
lack of it, without absolute intention or actual statement.
Being elemental and undismayed, they saw things cleared of
the mists of social prejudice and modification. Yes, he felt
he should be glad to hear of Lord Mount Dunstan and the
Mount Dunstan estate from G. Selden in a happy moment of
unawareness.
Why was it that it happened to be Mount Dunstan he was
desirous to hear of? Well, the absolute reason for that he
could not have explained, either. He had asked himself
questions on the subject more than once. There was no wellfounded
reason, perhaps. If Betty's letters had spoken of Mount
Dunstan and his home, they had also described Lord Westholt
and Dunholm Castle. Of these two men she had certainly
spoken more fully than of others. Of Mount Dunstan she
had had more to relate through the incident of G. Selden. He
smiled as he realised the importance of the figure of G. Selden.
It was Selden and his broken leg the two men had ridden over
from Mount Dunstan to visit. But for Selden, Betty might
not have met Mount Dunstan again. He was reason enough
for all she had said. And yet----! Perhaps, between Betty
and himself there existed the thing which impresses and
communicates without words. Perhaps, because their affection was
unusual, they realised each other's emotions. The half-defined
anxiety he felt now was not a new thing, but he confessed to
himself that it had been spurred a little by the letter the last
steamer had brought him. It was NOT Lord Westholt, it
definitely appeared. He had asked her to be his wife, and she
had declined his proposal.
"I could not have LIKED a man any more without being in
love with him," she wrote. "I LIKE him more than I can say
--so much, indeed, that I feel a little depressed by my certainty
that I do not love him."
If she had loved him, the whole matter would have been
simplified. If the other man had drawn her, the thing would
not be simple. Her father foresaw all the complications--and
he did not want complications for Betty. Yet emotions were
perverse and irresistible things, and the stronger the creature
swayed by them, the more enormous their power. But, as he
sat in his easy chair and thought over it all, the one feeling
predominant in his mind was that nothing mattered but
Betty--nothing really mattered but Betty.
In the meantime G. Selden was walking up Fifth Avenue, at
once touched and exhilarated by the stir about him and his
sense of home-coming. It was pretty good to be in little old
New York again. The hurried pace of the life about him
stimulated his young blood. There were no street cars in Fifth
Avenue, but there were carriages, waggons, carts, motors, all
pantingly hurried, and fretting and struggling when the
crowded state of the thoroughfare held them back. The
beautifully dressed women in the carriages wore no light air of
being at leisure. It was evident that they were going to keep
engagements, to do things, to achieve objects.
"Something doing. Something doing," was his cheerful
self-congratulatory thought. He had spent his life in the
midst of it, he liked it, and it welcomed him back.
The appointment he was on his way to keep thrilled him
into an uplifted mood. Once or twice a half-nervous chuckle
broke from him as he tried to realise that he had been given
the chance which a year ago had seemed so impossible that
its mere incredibleness had made it a natural subject for jokes.
He was going to call on Reuben S. Vanderpoel, and he was
going because Reuben S. had made an appointment with him.
He wore his London suit of clothes and he felt that he
looked pretty decent. He could only do his best in the matter
of bearing. He always thought that, so long as a fellow
didn't get "chesty" and kept his head from swelling, he was
all right. Of course he had never been in one of these swell
Fifth Avenue houses, and he felt a bit nervous--but Miss
Vanderpoel would have told her father what sort of fellow
he was, and her father was likely to be something like herself.
The house, which had been built since Lady Anstruthers'
marriage, was well "up-town," and was big and imposing.
When a manservant opened the front door, the square hall
looked very splendid to Selden. It was full of light, and of
rich furniture, which was like the stuff he had seen in one
or two special shop windows in Fifth Avenue--places where
they sold magnificent gilded or carven coffers and vases, pieces
of tapestry and marvellous embroideries, antiquities from
foreign palaces. Though it was quite different, it was as swell
in its way as the house at Mount Dunstan, and there were
gleams of pictures on the walls that looked fine, and no mistake.
He was expected. The man led him across the hall to Mr.
Vanderpoel's room. After he had announced his name
he closed the door quietly and went away. Mr. Vanderpoel
rose from an armchair to come forward to meet his visitor.
He was tall and straight--Betty had inherited her slender
height from him. His well-balanced face suggested the
relationship between them. He had a steady mouth, and eyes
which looked as if they saw much and far.
"I am glad to see you, Mr. Selden," he said, shaking hands
with him. "You have seen my daughters, and can tell me
how they are. Miss Vanderpoel has written to me of you
several times."
He asked him to sit down, and as he took his chair Selden
felt that he had been right in telling himself that Reuben
S. Vanderpoel would be somehow like his girl. She was a
girl, and he was an elderly man of business, but they were like
each other. There was the same kind of straight way of doing
things, and the same straight-seeing look in both of them.
It was queer how natural things seemed, when they really
happened to a fellow. Here he was sitting in a big leather
chair and opposite to him in its fellow sat Reuben S.
Vanderpoel, looking at him with friendly eyes. And it seemed
all right, too--not as if he had managed to "butt in," and
would find himself politely fired out directly. He might have
been one of the Four Hundred making a call. Reuben S.
knew how to make a man feel easy, and no mistake. This
G. Selden observed at once, though he had, in fact, no knowledge
of the practical tact which dealt with him. He found
himself answering questions about Lady Anstruthers and her
sister, which led to the opening up of other subjects. He
did not realise that he began to express ingenuous opinions
and describe things. His listener's interest led him on, a
question here, a rather pleased laugh there, were encouraging.
He had enjoyed himself so much during his stay in England, and
had felt his experiences so greatly to be rejoiced over, that
they were easy to talk of at any time--in fact, it was even a
trifle difficult not to talk of them--but, stimulated by the
look which rested on him, by the deft word and ready smile,
words flowed readily and without the restraint of
self-consciousness.
"When you think that all of it sort of began with a robin,
it's queer enough," he said. "But for that robin I shouldn't
be here, sir," with a boyish laugh. "And he was an English
robin--a little fellow not half the size of the kind that hops
about Central Park."
"Let me hear about that," said Mr. Vanderpoel.
It was a good story, and he told it well, though in his own
junior salesman phrasing. He began with his bicycle ride into
the green country, his spin over the fine roads, his rest under
the hedge during the shower, and then the song of the robin
perched among the fresh wet leafage, his feathers puffed out,
his red young satin-glossed breast pulsating and swelling. His
words were colloquial enough, but they called up the picture.
"Everything sort of glittering with the sunshine on the
wet drops, and things smelling good, like they do after rain--
leaves, and grass, and good earth. I tell you it made a fellow
feel as if the whole world was his brother. And when Mr.
Rob. lit on that twig and swelled his red breast as if he knew
the whole thing was his, and began to let them notes out, calling
for his lady friend to come and go halves with him, I
just had to laugh and speak to him, and that was when Lord
Mount Dunstan heard me and jumped over the hedge. He'd
been listening, too."
The expression Reuben S. Vanderpoel wore made it an
agreeable thing to talk--to go on. He evidently cared to
hear. So Selden did his best, and enjoyed himself in doing
it. His style made for realism and brought things clearly
before one. The big-built man in the rough and shabby shooting
clothes, his way when he dropped into the grass to sit
beside the stranger and talk, certain meanings in his words
which conveyed to Vanderpoel what had not been conveyed
to G. Selden. Yes, the man carried a heaviness about with
him and hated the burden. Selden quite unconsciously brought
him out strongly.
"I don't know whether I'm the kind of fellow who is
always making breaks," he said, with his boy's laugh again,
"but if I am, I never made a worse one than when I asked
him straight if he was out of a job, and on the tramp. It
showed what a nice fellow he was that he didn't get hot about
it. Some fellows would. He only laughed--sort of short--
and said his job had been more than he could handle, and
he was afraid he was down and out."
Mr. Vanderpoel was conscious that so far he was somewhat
attracted by this central figure. G. Selden was also proving
satisfactory in the matter of revealing his excellently simple
views of persons and things.
"The only time he got mad was when I wouldn't believe
him when he told me who he was. I was a bit hot in the
collar myself. I'd felt sorry for him, because I thought he
was a chap like myself, and he was up against it. I know what
that is, and I'd wanted to jolly him along a bit. When he
said his name was Mount Dunstan, and the place belonged
to him, I guessed he thought he was making a joke. So I
got on my wheel and started off, and then he got mad for
keeps. He said he wasn't such a damned fool as he looked,
and what he'd said was true, and I could go and be hanged."
Reuben S. Vanderpoel laughed. He liked that. It sounded
like decent British hot temper, which he had often found
accompanied honest British decencies.
He liked other things, as the story proceeded. The
picture of the huge house with the shut windows, made him
slightly restless. The concealed imagination, combined with
the financier's resentment of dormant interests, disturbed him.
That which had attracted Selden in the Reverend Lewis
Penzance strongly attracted himself. Also, a man was a good deal
to be judged by his friends. The man who lived alone in
the midst of stately desolateness and held as his chief intimate
a high-bred and gentle-minded scholar of ripe years, gave, in
doing this, certain evidence which did not tell against him.
The whole situation meant something a splendid, vivid-minded
young creature might be moved by--might be allured by, even
despite herself.
There was something fantastic in the odd linking of
incidents--Selden's chance view of Betty as she rode by, his
next day's sudden resolve to turn back and go to Stornham,
his accident, all that followed seemed, if one were fanciful
--part of a scheme prearranged
"When I came to myself," G. Selden said, "I felt like
that fellow in the Shakespeare play that they dress up and put
to bed in the palace when he's drunk. I thought I'd gone off
my head. And then Miss Vanderpoel came." He paused
a moment and looked down on the carpet, thinking. "Gee
whiz! It WAS queer," he said.
Betty Vanderpoel's father could almost hear her voice as
the rest was told. He knew how her laugh had sounded, and
what her presence must have been to the young fellow. His
delightful, human, always satisfying Betty!
Through this odd trick of fortune, Mount Dunstan had
begun to see her. Since, through the unfair endowment of
Nature--that it was not wholly fair he had often told himself--
she was all the things that desire could yearn for, there
were many chances that when a man saw her he must long to
see her again, and there were the same chances that such an
one as Mount Dunstan might long also, and, if Fate was
against him, long with a bitter strength. Selden was not
aware that he had spoken more fully of Mount Dunstan
and his place than of other things. That this had been the
case, had been because Mr. Vanderpoel had intended it should
be so. He had subtly drawn out and encouraged a detailed
account of the time spent at Mount Dunstan vicarage. It was
easily encouraged. Selden's affectionate admiration for the
vicar led him on to enthusiasm. The quiet house and garden,
the old books, the afternoon tea under the copper beech, and
the long talks of old things, which had been so new to the
young New Yorker, had plainly made a mark upon his life,
not likely to be erased even by the rush of after years.
"The way he knew history was what got me," he said.
"And the way you got interested in it, when he talked. It
wasn't just HISTORY, like you learn at school, and forget, and
never see the use of, anyhow. It was things about men, just
like yourself--hustling for a living in their way, just as we're
hustling in Broadway. Most of it was fighting, and there are
mounds scattered about that are the remains of their forts and
camps. Roman camps, some of them. He took me to see
them. He had a little old pony chaise we trundled about in,
and he'd draw up and we'd sit and talk. `There were men
here on this very spot,' he'd say, `looking out for attack,
eating, drinking, cooking their food, polishing their weapons,
laughing, and shouting--MEN--Selden, fifty-five years before
Christ was born--and sometimes the New Testament times
seem to us so far away that they are half a dream.' That was
the kind of thing he'd say, and I'd sometimes feel as if I
heard the Romans shouting. The country about there was full
of queer places, and both he and Lord Dunstan knew more
about them than I know about Twenty-third Street."
"You saw Lord Mount Dunstan often?" Mr. Vanderpoel suggested.
"Every day, sir. And the more I saw him, the more I got
to like him. He's all right. But it's hard luck to be fixed
as he is--that's stone-cold truth. What's a man to do? The
money he ought to have to keep up his place was spent before
he was born. His father and his eldest brother were a bum
lot, and his grandfather and great-grandfather were fools.
He can't sell the place, and he wouldn't if he could. Mr.
Penzance was so fond of him that sometimes he'd say things.
But," hastily, "perhaps I'm talking too much."
"You happen to be talking about questions I have been
greatly interested in. I have thought a good deal at times
of the position of the holders of large estates they cannot
afford to keep up. This special instance is a case in point."
G. Selden felt himself in luck again. Reuben S., quite
evidently, found his subject worthy of undivided attention.
Selden had not heartily liked Lord Mount Dunstan, and lived
in the atmosphere surrounding him, looking about him with
sharp young New York eyes, without learning a good deal.
He had seen the practical hardship of the situation, and laid
it bare.
"What Mr. Penzance says is that he's like the men that
built things in the beginning--fought for them--fought
Romans and Saxons and Normans--perhaps the whole lot at
different times. I used to like to get Mr. Penzance to tell
stories about the Mount Dunstans. They were splendid. It
must be pretty fine to look back about a thousand years and
know your folks have been something. All the same its
pretty fierce to have to stand alone at the end of it, not able
to help yourself, because some of your relations were crazy
fools. I don't wonder he feels mad."
"Does he?" Mr. Vanderpoel inquired.
"He's straight," said G. Selden sympathetically. "He's all
right. But only money can help him, and he's got none, so he
has to stand and stare at things falling to pieces. And--well,
I tell you, Mr. Vanderpoel, he LOVES that place--he's crazy
about it. And he's proud--I don't mean he's got the swellhead,
because he hasn't--but he's just proud. Now, for
instance, he hasn't any use for men like himself that marry
just for money. He's seen a lot of it, and it's made him sick.
He's not that kind."
He had been asked and had answered a good many questions
before he went away, but each had dropped into the
talk so incidentally that he had not recognised them as queries.
He did not know that Lord Mount Dunstan stood out a
clearly defined figure in Mr. Vanderpoel's mind, a figure to
be reflected upon, and one not without its attraction.
"Miss Vanderpoel tells me," Mr. Vanderpoel said, when
the interview was drawing to a close, "that you are an agent
for the Delkoff typewriter."
G. Selden flushed slightly.
"Yes, sir," he answered, "but I didn't----"
"I hear that three machines are in use on the Stornham
estate, and that they have proved satisfactory."
"It's a good machine," said G. Selden, his flush a little
deeper.
Mr. Vanderpoel smiled.
"You are a business-like young man," he said, "and I
have no doubt you have a catalogue in your pocket."
G. Selden was a business-like young man. He gave Mr.
Vanderpoel one serious look, and the catalogue was drawn forth.
"It wouldn't be business, sir, for me to be caught out
without it," he said. "I shouldn't leave it behind if I went to
a funeral. A man's got to run no risks."
"I should like to look at it."
The thing had happened. It was not a dream. Reuben S.
Vanderpoel, clothed and in his right mind, had, without pressure
being exerted upon him, expressed his desire to look at the
catalogue--to examine it--to have it explained to him at length.
He listened attentively, while G. Selden did his best. He
asked a question now and then, or made a comment. His
manner was that of a thoroughly composed man of business,
but he was remembering what Betty had told him of the
"ten per," and a number of other things. He saw the flush
come and go under the still boyish skin, he observed that G.
Selden's hand was not wholly steady, though he was making
an effort not to seem excited. But he was excited. This
actually meant--this thing so unimportant to multi-millionaires
--that he was having his "chance," and his young fortunes
were, perhaps, in the balance.
"Yes," said Reuben S., when he had finished, "it seems
a good, up-to-date machine."
"It's the best on the market," said G. Selden, "out and out,
the best."
"I understand you are only junior salesman?"
"Yes, sir. Ten per and five dollars on every machine I
sell. If I had a territory, I should get ten."
"Then," reflectively, "the first thing is to get a territory."
"Perhaps I shall get one in time, if I keep at it," said Selden
courageously.
"It is a good machine. I like it," said Mr. Vanderpoel.
"I can see a good many places where it could be used. Perhaps,
if you make it known at your office that when you
are given a good territory, I shall give preference to the
Delkoff over other typewriting machines, it might--eh?"
A light broke out upon G. Selden's countenance--a light
radiant and magnificent. He caught his breath. A desire
to shout--to yell--to whoop, as when in the society of "the
boys," was barely conquered in time.
"Mr. Vanderpoel," he said, standing up, "I--Mr.
Vanderpoel--sir--I feel as if I was having a pipe dream. I'm
not, am I?"
"No," answered Mr. Vanderpoel, "you are not. I like
you, Mr. Selden. My daughter liked you. I do not mean
to lose sight of you. We will begin, however, with the
territory, and the Delkoff. I don't think there will be any
difficulty about it."
. . . . .
Ten minutes later G. Selden was walking down Fifth
Avenue, wondering if there was any chance of his being
arrested by a policeman upon the charge that he was reeling,
instead of walking steadily. He hoped he should get back to
the hall bedroom safely. Nick Baumgarten and Jem Bolter
both "roomed" in the house with him. He could tell them
both. It was Jem who had made up the yarn about one of
them saving Reuben S. Vanderpoel's life. There had been
no life-saving, but the thing had come true.
"But, if it hadn't been for Lord Mount Dunstan," he
said, thinking it over excitedly, "I should never have seen
Miss Vanderpoel, and, if it hadn't been for Miss Vanderpoel,
I should never have got next to Reuben S. in my life. Both
sides of the Atlantic Ocean got busy to do a good turn to
Little Willie. Hully gee!"
In his study Mr. Vanderpoel was rereading Betty's letters.
He felt that he had gained a certain knowledge of Lord Mount
Dunstan.
CHAPTER XXXIX
ON THE MARSHES
THE marshes stretched mellow in the autumn sun, sheep wandered
about, nibbling contentedly, or lay down to rest in groups,
the sky reflecting itself in the narrow dykes gave a blue colour
to the water, a scent of the sea was in the air as one breathed
it, flocks of plover rose, now and then, crying softly. Betty,
walking with her dog, had passed a heron standing at the edge
of a pool.
From her first discovery of them, she had been attracted by
the marshes with their English suggestion of the Roman
Campagna, their broad expanse of level land spread out to the
sun and wind, the thousands of white sheep dotted or clustered
as far as eye could reach, the hues of the marsh grass and the
plants growing thick at the borders of the strips of water. Its
beauty was all its own and curiously aloof from the softlywooded,
undulating world about it. Driving or walking along
the high road--the road the Romans had built to London town
long centuries ago--on either side of one were meadows, farms,
scattered cottages, and hop gardens, but beyond and below
stretched the marsh land, golden and grey, and always alluring
one by its silence.
"I never pass it without wanting to go to it--to take solitary
walks over it, to be one of the spots on it as the sheep are. It
seems as if, lying there under the blue sky or the low grey
clouds with all the world held at bay by mere space and
stillness, they must feel something we know nothing of. I want
to go and find out what it is."
This she had once said to Mount Dunstan.
So she had fallen into the habit of walking there with her
dog at her side as her sole companion, for having need for time
and space for thought, she had found them in the silence and
aloofness.
Life had been a vivid and pleasurable thing to her, as far
as she could look back upon it. She began to realise that she
must have been very happy, because she had never found herself
desiring existence other than such as had come to her day
by day. Except for her passionate childish regret at Rosy's
marriage, she had experienced no painful feeling. In fact,
she had faced no hurt in her life, and certainly had been
confronted by no limitations. Arguing that girls in their teens
usually fall in love, her father had occasionally wondered that
she passed through no little episodes of sentiment, but the fact
was that her interests had been larger and more numerous than
the interests of girls generally are, and her affectionate
intimacy with himself had left no such small vacant spaces as are
frequently filled by unimportant young emotions. Because she
was a logical creature, and had watched life and those living
it with clear and interested eyes, she had not been blind to the
path which had marked itself before her during the summer's
growth and waning. She had not, at first, perhaps, known
exactly when things began to change for her--when the clarity
of her mind began to be disturbed. She had thought in the
beginning--as people have a habit of doing--that an instance
--a problem--a situation had attracted her attention because
it was absorbing enough to think over. Her view of the matter
had been that as the same thing would have interested her
father, it had interested herself. But from the morning when
she had been conscious of the sudden fury roused in her by
Nigel Anstruthers' ugly sneer at Mount Dunstan, she had
better understood the thing which had come upon her. Day
by day it had increased and gathered power, and she realised
with a certain sense of impatience that she had not in any
degree understood it when she had seen and wondered at its
effect on other women. Each day had been like a wave
encroaching farther upon the shore she stood upon. At the outset
a certain ignoble pride--she knew it ignoble--filled her with
rebellion. She had seen so much of this kind of situation, and
had heard so much of the general comment. People had learned
how to sneer because experience had taught them. If she gave
them cause, why should they not sneer at her as at things? She
recalled what she had herself thought of such things--the folly
of them, the obviousness--the almost deserved disaster. She
had arrogated to herself judgment of women--and men--who
might, yes, who might have stood upon their strip of sand, as
she stood, with the waves creeping in, each one higher, stronger,
and more engulfing than the last. There might have been those
among them who also had knowledge of that sudden deadly
joy at the sight of one face, at the drop of one voice. When
that wave submerged one's pulsing being, what had the world
to do with one--how could one hear and think of what its
speech might be? Its voice clamoured too far off.
As she walked across the marsh she was thinking this first
phase over. She had reached a new one, and at first she looked
back with a faint, even rather hard, smile. She walked straight
ahead, her mastiff, Roland, padding along heavily close at her
side. How still and wide and golden it was; how the cry of
plover and lifting trill of skylark assured one that one was
wholly encircled by solitude and space which were more
enclosing than any walls! She was going to the mounds to which
Mr. Penzance had trundled G. Selden in the pony chaise, when
he had given him the marvellous hour which had brought
Roman camp and Roman legions to life again. Up on the
largest hillock one could sit enthroned, resting chin in hand and
looking out under level lids at the unstirring, softly-living
loveliness of the marsh-land world. So she was presently seated,
with her heavy-limbed Roland at her feet. She had come here to
try to put things clearly to herself, to plan with such reason as
she could control. She had begun to be unhappy, she had begun
--with some unfairness--to look back upon the Betty Vanderpoel
of the past as an unwittingly self-sufficient young woman,
to find herself suddenly entangled by things, even to know a
touch of desperateness.
"Not to take a remnant from the ducal bargain counter,"
she was saying mentally. That was why her smile was a little
hard. What if the remnant from the ducal bargain counter
had prejudices of his own?
"If he were passionately--passionately in love with me," she
said, with red staining her cheeks, "he would not come--he
would not come--he would not come. And, because of that,
he is more to me--MORE! And more he will become every day
--and the more strongly he will hold me. And there we stand."
Roland lifted his fine head from his paws, and, holding it
erect on a stiff, strong neck, stared at her in obvious inquiry.
She put out her hand and tenderly patted him.
"He will have none of me," she said. "He will have none
of me." And she faintly smiled, but the next instant shook her
head a little haughtily, and, having done so, looked down with
an altered expression upon the cloth of her skirt, because she
had shaken upon it, from the extravagant lashes, two clear
drops.
It was not the result of chance that she had seen nothing of
him for weeks. She had not attempted to persuade herself of
that. Twice he had declined an invitation to Stornham, and
once he had ridden past her on the road when he might have
stopped to exchange greetings, or have ridden on by her side.
He did not mean to seem to desire, ever so lightly, to be counted
as in the lists. Whether he was drawn by any liking for her
or not, it was plain he had determined on this.
If she were to go away now, they would never meet again.
Their ways in this world would part forever. She would not
know how long it took to break him utterly--if such a man
could be broken. If no magic change took place in his fortunes
--and what change could come?--the decay about him would
spread day by day. Stone walls last a long time, so the house
would stand while every beauty and stateliness within it fell
into ruin. Gardens would become wildernesses, terraces and
fountains crumble and be overgrown, walls that were to-day
leaning would fall with time. The years would pass, and his
youth with them; he would gradually change into an old man
while he watched the things he loved with passion die slowly
and hard. How strange it was that lives should touch and pass
on the ocean of Time, and nothing should result--nothing at
all! When she went on her way, it would be as if a ship loaded
with every aid of food and treasure had passed a boat in
which a strong man tossed, starving to death, and had not even
run up a flag.
"But one cannot run up a flag," she said, stroking Roland.
"One cannot. There we stand."
To her recognition of this deadlock of Fate, there had been
adding the growing disturbance caused by yet another thing
which was increasingly troubling, increasingly difficult to face.
Gradually, and at first with wonderful naturalness of bearing,
Nigel Anstruthers had managed to create for himself a singular
place in her everyday life. It had begun with a certain
personalness in his attitude, a personalness which was a thing to
dislike, but almost impossible openly to resent. Certainly, as
a self-invited guest in his house, she could scarcely protest
against the amiability of his demeanour and his exterior
courtesy and attentiveness of manner in his conduct towards
her. She had tried to sweep away the objectionable quality in
his bearing, by frankness, by indifference, by entire lack of
response, but she had remained conscious of its increasing as a
spider's web might increase as the spider spun it quietly over
one, throwing out threads so impalpable that one could not
brush them away because they were too slight to be seen. She
was aware that in the first years of his married life he had
alternately resented the scarcity of the invitations sent them
and rudely refused such as were received. Since he had
returned to find her at Stornham, he had insisted that no
invitations should be declined, and had escorted his wife and
herself wherever they went. What could have been conventionally
more proper--what more improper than that he should have
persistently have remained at home? And yet there came a
time when, as they three drove together at night in the closed
carriage, Betty was conscious that, as he sat opposite to her in
the dark, when he spoke, when he touched her in arranging the
robe over her, or opening or shutting the window, he subtly,
but persistently, conveyed that the personalness of his voice,
look, and physical nearness was a sort of hideous confidence
between them which they were cleverly concealing from
Rosalie and the outside world.
When she rode about the country, he had a way of appearing
at some turning and making himself her companion, riding too
closely at her side, and assuming a noticeable air of being
engaged in meaningly confidential talk. Once, when he had been
leaning towards her with an audaciously tender manner, they
had been passed by the Dunholm carriage, and Lady Dunholm
and the friend driving with her had evidently tried not to look
surprised. Lady Alanby, meeting them in the same way at
another time, had put up her glasses and stared in open
disapproval. She might admire a strikingly handsome American
girl, but her favour would not last through any such vulgar
silliness as flirtations with disgraceful brothers-in-law. When
Betty strolled about the park or the lanes, she much too often
encountered Sir Nigel strolling also, and knew that he did not
mean to allow her to rid herself of him. In public, he made
a point of keeping observably close to her, of hovering in her
vicinity and looking on at all she did with eyes she rebelled
against finding fixed on her each time she was obliged to turn in
his direction. He had a fashion of coming to her side and
speaking in a dropped voice, which excluded others, as a favoured
lover might. She had seen both men and women glance at her
in half-embarrassment at their sudden sense of finding
themselves slightly de trop. She had said aloud to him on one
such occasion--and she had said it with smiling casualness for
the benefit of Lady Alanby, to whom she had been talking:
"Don't alarm me by dropping your voice, Nigel. I am easily
frightened--and Lady Alanby will think we are conspirators."
For an instant he was taken by surprise. He had been pleased
to believe that there was no way in which she could defend
herself, unless she would condescend to something stupidly like a
scene. He flushed and drew himself up.
"I beg your pardon, my dear Betty," he said, and walked
away with the manner of an offended adorer, leaving her to
realise an odiously unpleasant truth--which is that there are
incidents only made more inexplicable by an effort to explain.
She saw also that he was quite aware of this, and that his
offended departure was a brilliant inspiration, and had left her,
as it were, in the lurch. To have said to Lady Alanby: "My
brother-in-law, in whose house I am merely staying for my
sister's sake, is trying to lead you to believe that I allow him
to make love to me," would have suggested either folly or
insanity on her own part. As it was--after a glance at Sir
Nigel's stiffly retreating back--Lady Alanby merely looked away
with a wholly uninviting expression.
When Betty spoke to him afterwards, haughtily and with
determination, he laughed.
"My dearest girl," he said, "if I watch you with interest
and drop my voice when I get a chance to speak to you, I only
do what every other man does, and I do it because you are an
alluring young woman--which no one is more perfectly aware
of than yourself. Your pretence that you do not know you
are alluring is the most captivating thing about you. And what
do you think of doing if I continue to offend you? Do you
propose to desert us--to leave poor Rosalie to sink back again
into the bundle of old clothes she was when you came? For
Heaven's sake, don't do that!"
All that his words suggested took form before her vividly.
How well he understood what he was saying. But she
answered him bravely.
"No. I do not mean to do that."
He watched her for a few seconds. There was curiosity in
his eyes.
"Don't make the mistake of imagining that I will let my
wife go with you to America," he said next. "She is as far
off from that as she was when I brought her to Stornham. I
have told her so. A man cannot tie his wife to the bedpost in
these days, but he can make her efforts to leave him so decidedly
unpleasant that decent women prefer to stay at home and take
what is coming. I have seen that often enough `to bank on it,'
if I may quote your American friends."
"Do you remember my once saying," Betty remarked, "that
when a woman has been PROPERLY ill-treated the time comes
when nothing matters--nothing but release from the life she
loathes?"
"Yes," he answered. "And to you nothing would matter
but--excuse my saying it--your own damnable, headstrong
pride. But Rosalie is different. Everything matters to her.
And you will find it so, my dear girl."
And that this was at least half true was brought home to
her by the fact that late the same night Rosy came to her white
with crying.
"It is not your fault, Betty," she said. "Don't think that I
think it is your fault, but he has been in my room in one of
those humours when he seems like a devil. He thinks you will
go back to America and try to take me with you. But, Betty,
you must not think about me. It will be better for you to go.
I have seen you again. I have had you for--for a time. You
will be safer at home with father and mother."
Betty laid a hand on her shoulder and looked at her fixedly.
"What is it, Rosy?" she said. "What is it he does to you
--that makes you like this?"
"I don't know--but that he makes me feel that there is
nothing but evil and lies in the world and nothing can help
one against them. Those things he says about everyone--men
and women--things one can't repeat--make me sick. And when
I try to deny them, he laughs."
"Does he say things about me?" Betty inquired, very
quietly, and suddenly Rosalie threw her arms round her.
"Betty, darling," she cried, "go home--go home. You
must not stay here."
"When I go, you will go with me," Betty answered. "I
am not going back to mother without you."
She made a collection of many facts before their interview
was at an end, and they parted for the night. Among the first
was that Nigel had prepared for certain possibilities as wise
holders of a fortress prepare for siege. A rather long sitting
alone over whisky and soda had, without making him loquacious,
heated his blood in such a manner as led him to be less
subtle than usual. Drink did not make him drunk, but malignant,
and when a man is in the malignant mood, he forgets his
cleverness. So he revealed more than he absolutely intended.
It was to be gathered that he did not mean to permit his wife
to leave him, even for a visit; he would not allow himself to
be made ridiculous by such a thing. A man who could not
control his wife was a fool and deserved to be a laughing-stock.
As Ughtred and his future inheritance seemed to have become
of interest to his grandfather, and were to be well nursed and
taken care of, his intention was that the boy should remain under
his own supervision. He could amuse himself well enough at
Stornham, now that it had been put in order, if it was kept
up properly and he filled it with people who did not bore
him. There were people who did not bore him--plenty of
them. Rosalie would stay where she was and receive his guests.
If she imagined that the little episode of Ffolliott had been
entirely dormant, she was mistaken. He knew where the man
was, and exactly how serious it would be to him if scandal was
stirred up. He had been at some trouble to find out. The
fellow had recently had the luck to fall into a very fine living.
It had been bestowed on him by the old Duke of Broadmorlands,
who was the most strait-laced old boy in England.
He had become so in his disgust at the light behaviour of the
wife he had divorced in his early manhood. Nigel cackled
gently as he detailed that, by an agreeable coincidence, it
happened that her Grace had suddenly become filled with pious
fervour--roused thereto by a good-looking locum tenens--
result, painful discoveries--the pair being now rumoured to be
keeping a lodging-house together somewhere in Australia. A
word to good old Broadmorlands would produce the effect of a
lighted match on a barrel of gunpowder. It would be the end
of Ffolliott. Neither would it be a good introduction to Betty's
first season in London, neither would it be enjoyed by her
mother, whom he remembered as a woman with primitive views
of domestic rectitude. He smiled the awful smile as he took out
of his pocket the envelope containing the words his wife had
written to Mr. Ffolliott, "Do not come to the house. Meet
me at Bartyon Wood." It did not take much to convince people,
if one managed things with decent forethought. The
Brents, for instance, were fond neither of her nor of Betty, and
they had never forgotten the questionable conduct of their locum
tenens. Then, suddenly, he had changed his manner and had
sat down, laughing, and drawn Rosalie to his knee and kissed
her--yes, he had kissed her and told her not to look like a
little fool or act like one. Nothing unpleasant would happen if
she behaved herself. Betty had improved her greatly, and she had
grown young and pretty again. She looked quite like a child
sometimes, now that her bones were covered and she dressed
well. If she wanted to please him she could put her arms
round his neck and kiss him, as he had kissed her.
"That is what has made you look white," said Betty.
"Yes. There is something about him that sometimes makes
you feel as if the very blood in your veins turned white,"
answered Rosy--in a low voice, which the next moment rose.
"Don't you see--don't you see," she broke out, "that to
displease him would be like murdering Mr. Ffolliott--like
murdering his mother and mine--and like murdering Ughtred,
because he would be killed by the shame of things--and by being
taken from me. We have loved each other so much--so much.
Don't you see?"
"I see all that rises up before you," Betty said, "and I
understand your feeling that you cannot save yourself by bringing
ruin upon an innocent man who helped you. I realise that
one must have time to think it over. But, Rosy," a sudden ring
in her voice, "I tell you there is a way out--there is a way
out! The end of the misery is coming--and it will not be what
he thinks."
"You always believe----" began Rosy.
"I know," answered Betty. "I know there are some things
so bad that they cannot go on. They kill themselves through
their own evil. I KNOW! I KNOW! That is all."
CHAPTER LX
"DON'T GO ON WITH THIS"
Of these things, as of others, she had come to her solitude to
think. She looked out over the marshes scarcely seeing the
wandering or resting sheep, scarcely hearing the crying plover,
because so much seemed to confront her, and she must look it
all well in the face. She had fulfilled the promise she had
made to herself as a child. She had come in search of Rosy,
she had found her as simple and loving of heart as she had ever
been. The most painful discoveries she had made had been
concealed from her mother until their aspect was modified.
Mrs. Vanderpoel need now feel no shock at the sight of the
restored Rosy. Lady Anstruthers had been still young enough
to respond both physically and mentally to love, companionship,
agreeable luxuries, and stimulating interests. But for Nigel's
antagonism there was now no reason why she should not be
taken home for a visit to her family, and her long-yearned-for
New York, no reason why her father and mother should not
come to Stornham, and thus establish the customary social
relations between their daughter's home and their own. That this
seemed out of the question was owing to the fact that at the
outset of his married life Sir Nigel had allowed himself to
commit errors in tactics. A perverse egotism, not wholly normal
in its rancour, had led him into deeds which he had begun to
suspect of having cost him too much, even before Betty herself
had pointed out to him their unbusinesslike indiscretion. He
had done things he could not undo, and now, to his mind, his
only resource was to treat them boldly as having been the
proper results of decision founded on sound judgment, which
he had no desire to excuse. A sufficiently arrogant loftiness of
bearing would, he hoped, carry him through the matter. This
Betty herself had guessed, but she had not realised that this
loftiness of attitude was in danger of losing some of its
effectiveness through his being increasingly stung and spurred by
circumstances and feelings connected with herself, which were at
once exasperating and at times almost overpowering. When, in
his mingled dislike and admiration, he had begun to study his
sister-in-law, and the half-amused weaving of the small plots
which would make things sufficiently unpleasant to be used as
factors in her removal from the scene, if necessary, he had not
calculated, ever so remotely, on the chance of that madness
besetting him which usually besets men only in their youth. He
had imagined no other results to himself than a subtly-exciting
private entertainment, such as would give spice to the dullness
of virtuous life in the country. But, despite himself and his
intentions, he had found the situation alter. His first
uncertainty of himself had arisen at the Dunholm ball, when he
had suddenly realised that he was detesting men who, being young
and free, were at liberty to pay gallant court to the new beauty.
Perhaps the most disturbing thing to him had been his
consciousness of his sudden leap of antagonism towards Mount
Dunstan, who, despite his obvious lack of chance, somehow
especially roused in him the rage of warring male instinct.
There had been admissions he had been forced, at length, to make
to himself. You could not, it appeared, live in the house with a
splendid creature like this one--with her brilliant eyes, her
beauty of line and movement before you every hour, her bloom,
her proud fineness holding themselves wholly in their own
keeping--without there being the devil to pay. Lately he had
sometimes gone hot and cold in realising that, having once told
himself that he might choose to decide to get rid of her, he now
knew that the mere thought of her sailing away of her own
choice was maddening to him. There WAS the devil to pay!
It sometimes brought back to him that hideous shakiness of
nerve which had been a feature of his illness when he had been
on the Riviera with Teresita.
Of all this Betty only knew the outward signs which, taken
at their exterior significance, were detestable enough, and drove
her hard as she mentally dwelt on them in connection with other
things. How easy, if she stood alone, to defy his evil insolence
to do its worst, and leaving the place at an hour's notice, to
sail away to protection, or, if she chose to remain in England,
to surround herself with a bodyguard of the people in whose eyes
his disrepute relegated a man such as Nigel Anstruthers to
powerless nonentity. Alone, she could have smiled and turned
her back upon him. But she was here to take care of Rosy.
She occupied a position something like that of a woman who
remains with a man and endures outrage because she cannot
leave her child. That thought, in itself, brought Ughtred to
her mind. There was Ughtred to be considered as well as his
mother. Ughtred's love for and faith in her were deep and
passionate things. He fed on her tenderness for him, and had
grown stronger because he spent hours of each day talking,
reading, and driving with her. The simple truth was that
neither she nor Rosalie could desert Ughtred, and so long as
Nigel managed cleverly enough, the law would give the boy to
his father.
"You are obliged to prove things, you know, in a court of
law," he had said, as if with casual amiability, on a certain
occasion. "Proving things is the devil. People lose their
tempers and rush into rows which end in lawsuits, and then
find they can prove nothing. If I were a villain," slightly
showing his teeth in an agreeable smile--"instead of a man of
blameless life, I should go in only for that branch of my
profession which could be exercised without leaving stupid
evidence behind."
Since his return to Stornham the outward decorum of his
own conduct had entertained him and he had kept it up with
an increasing appreciation of its usefulness in the present
situation. Whatsoever happened in the end, it was the part of
discretion to present to the rural world about him an
appearance of upright behaviour. He had even found it amusing
to go to church and also to occasionally make amiable calls
at the vicarage. It was not difficult, at such times, to refer
delicately to his regret that domestic discomfort had led him
into the error of remaining much away from Stornham. He
knew that he had been even rather touching in his expression
of interest in the future of his son, and the necessity of the
boy's being protected from uncontrolled hysteric influences.
And, in the years of Rosalie's unprotected wretchedness, he
had taken excellent care that no "stupid evidence" should be
exposed to view.
Of all this Betty was thinking and summing up definitely,
point after point. Where was the wise and practical course
of defence? The most unthinkable thing was that one could
find one's self in a position in which action seemed inhibited.
What could one do? To send for her father would surely end
the matter--but at what cost to Rosy, to Ughtred, to Ffolliott,
before whom the fair path to dignified security had so newly
opened itself? What would be the effect of sudden confusion,
anguish, and public humiliation upon Rosalie's carefully rebuilt
health and strength--upon her mother's new hope and happiness?
At moments it seemed as if almost all that had been done
might be undone. She was beset by such a moment now, and
felt for the time, at least, like a creature tied hand and foot
while in full strength.
Certainly she was not prepared for the event which
happened. Roland stiffened his ears, and, beginning a rumbling
growl, ended it suddenly, realising it an unnecessary precaution.
He knew the man walking up the incline of the mound from the
side behind them. So did Betty know him. It was Sir Nigel
looking rather glowering and pale and walking slowly. He had
discovered where she had meant to take refuge, and had
probably ridden to some point where he could leave his horse
and follow her at the expense of taking a short cut which saved
walking.
As he climbed the mound to join her, Betty rose to her feet.
"My dear girl," he said, "don't get up as if you meant to
go away. It has cost me some exertion to find you."
"It will not cost you any exertion to lose me," was her
light answer. "I AM going away."
He had reached her, and stood still before her with scarcely
a yard's distance between them. He was slightly out of breath
and even a trifle livid. He leaned on his stick and his look
at her combined leaping bad temper with something deeper.
"Look here!" he broke out, "why do you make such a point
of treating me like the devil?"
Betty felt her heart give a hastened beat, not of fear, but
of repulsion. This was the mood and manner which subjugated
Rosalie. He had so raised his voice that two men in the
distance, who might be either labourers or sportsmen, hearing
its high tone, glanced curiously towards them.
"Why do you ask me a question which is totally absurd?"
she said.
"It is not absurd," he answered. "I am speaking of facts,
and I intend to come to some understanding about them."
For reply, after meeting his look a few seconds, she simply
turned her back and began to walk away. He followed and
overtook her.
"I shall go with you, and I shall say what I want to say,"
he persisted. "If you hasten your pace I shall hasten mine.
I cannot exactly see you running away from me across the
marsh, screaming. You wouldn't care to be rescued by those
men over there who are watching us. I should explain myself
to them in terms neither you nor Rosalie would enjoy. There!
I knew Rosalie's name would pull you up. Good God! I wish
I were a weak fool with a magnificent creature protecting me
at all risks."
If she had not had blood and fire in her veins, she might
have found it easy to answer calmly. But she had both, and
both leaped and beat furiously for a few seconds. It was only
human that it should be so. But she was more than a passionate
girl of high and trenchant spirit, and she had learned, even in
the days at the French school, what he had never been able to
learn in his life--self-control. She held herself in as she
would have held in a horse of too great fire and action. She was
actually able to look--as the first Reuben Vanderpoel would
have looked--at her capital of resource. But it meant taut
holding of the reins.
"Will you tell me," she said, stopping, "what it is you want?"
"I want to talk to you. I want to tell you truths you would
rather be told here than on the high road, where people are
passing--or at Stornham, where the servants would overhear
and Rosalie be thrown into hysterics. You will NOT run
screaming across the marsh, because I should run screaming
after you, and we should both look silly. Here is a rather
scraggy tree. Will you sit on the mound near it--for Rosalie's
sake?"
"I will not sit down," replied Betty, "but I will listen,
because it is not a bad idea that I should understand you. But
to begin with, I will tell you something." She stopped
beneath the tree and stood with her back against its trunk.
"I pick up things by noticing people closely, and I have
realised that all your life you have counted upon getting
your own way because you saw that people--especially women
--have a horror of public scenes, and will submit to almost
anything to avoid them. That is true very often, but not
always."
Her eyes, which were well opened, were quite the blue of steel,
and rested directly upon him. "I, for instance, would let you
make a scene with me anywhere you chose--in Bond Street--
in Piccadilly--on the steps of Buckingham Palace, as I was
getting out of my carriage to attend a drawing-room--and you
would gain nothing you wanted by it--nothing. You may place
entire confidence in that statement."
He stared back at her, momentarily half-magnetised, and then
broke forth into a harsh half-laugh.
"You are so damned handsome that nothing else matters.
I'm hanged if it does!" and the words were an exclamation.
He drew still nearer to her, speaking with a sort of savagery.
"Cannot you see that you could do what you pleased with
me? You are too magnificent a thing for a man to withstand.
I have lost my head and gone to the devil through you.
That is what I came to say."
In the few seconds of silence that followed, his breath came
quickly again and he was even paler than before.
"You came to me to say THAT?" asked Betty.
"Yes--to say it before you drove me to other things."
Her gaze was for a moment even slightly wondering. He
presented the curious picture of a cynical man of the world, for
the time being ruled and impelled only by the most primitive
instincts. To a clear-headed modern young woman of the
most powerful class, he--her sister's husband--was making
threatening love as if he were a savage chief and she a savage
beauty of his tribe. All that concerned him was that he should
speak and she should hear--that he should show her he was
the stronger of the two.
"Are you QUITE mad?" she said.
"Not quite," he answered; "only three parts--but I am
beyond my own control. That is the best proof of what has
happened to me. You are an arrogant piece and you would
defy me if you stood alone, but you don't, and, by the Lord! I
have reached a point where I will make use of every lever I
can lay my hand on--yourself, Rosalie, Ughtred, Ffolliott--
the whole lot of you!"
The thing which was hardest upon her was her knowledge
of her own strength--of what she might have allowed herself
of flaming words and instant action--but for the memory of
Rosy's ghastly little face, as it had looked when she cried out,
"You must not think of me. Betty, go home--go home!"
She held the white desperation of it before her mental vision
and answered him even with a certain interested deliberateness.
"Do you know," she inquired, "that you are talking to me
as though you were the villain in the melodrama?"
"There is an advantage in that," he answered, with an
unholy smile. "If you repeat what I say, people will only think
that you are indulging in hysterical exaggeration. They don't
believe in the existence of melodrama in these days."
The cynical, absolute knowledge of this revealed so much
that nerve was required to face it with steadiness.
"True," she commented. "Now I think I understand."
"No, you don't," he burst forth. "You have spent your
life standing on a golden pedestal, being kowtowed to, and you
imagine yourself immune from difficulties because you think
you can pay your way out of anything. But you will find that
you cannot pay your way out of this--or rather you cannot pay
Rosalie's way out of it."
"I shall not try. Go on," said the girl. "What I do not
understand, you must explain to me. Don't leave anything
unsaid."
"Good God, what a woman you are!" he cried out
bitterly. He had never seen such beauty in his life as he saw in
her as she stood with her straight young body flat against the
tree. It was not a matter of deep colour of eye, or high spirit
of profile--but of something which burned him. Still as she
was, she looked like a flame. She made him feel old and bodyworn,
and all the more senselessly furious.
"I believe you hate me," he raged. "And I may thank my
wife for that." Then he lost himself entirely. "Why cannot
you behave well to me? If you will behave well to me, Rosalie
shall go her own way. If you even looked at me as you look
at other men--but you do not. There is always something
under your lashes which watches me as if I were a wild beast
you were studying. Don't fancy yourself a dompteuse. I am
not your man. I swear to you that you don't know what you
are dealing with. I swear to you that if you play this game with
me I will drag you two down if I drag myself with you. I
have nothing much to lose. You and your sister have everything."
"Go on," Betty said briefly.
"Go on! Yes, I will go on. Rosalie and Ffolliott I hold
in the hollow of my hand. As for you--do you know that
people are beginning to discuss you? Gossip is easily stirred in
the country, where people are so bored that they chatter in
self-defence. I have been considered a bad lot. I have become
curiously attached to my sister-in-law. I am seen hanging about
her, hanging over her as we ride or walk alone together. An
American young woman is not like an English girl--she is
used to seeing the marriage ceremony juggled with. There's
a trifle of prejudice against such young women when they
are too rich and too handsome. Don't look at me like that!" he
burst forth, with maddened sharpness, "I won't have it!"
The girl was regarding him with the expression he most
resented--the reflection of a normal person watching an
abnormal one, and studying his abnormality.
"Do you know that you are raving?" she said, with quiet
curiosity--"raving?"
Suddenly he sat down on the low mound near him, and as he
touched his forehead with his handkerchief, she saw that his
hand actually shook.
"Yes," he answered, panting, "but 'ware my ravings!
They mean what they say."
"You do yourself an injury when you give way to them"--
steadily, even with a touch of slow significance--"a physical
injury. I have noticed that more than once."
He sprang to his feet again. Every drop of blood left his
face. For a second he looked as if he would strike her. His
arm actually flung itself out--and fell.
"You devil!" he gasped. "You count on that? You she-devil!"
She left her tree and stood before him.
"Listen to me," she said. "You intimate that you have
been laying melodramatic plots against me which will injure
my good name. That is rubbish. Let us leave it at that. You
threaten that you will break Rosy's heart and take her child
from her, you say also that you will wound and hurt my
mother to her death and do your worst to ruin an honest
man----"
"And, by God, I will!" he raged. "And you cannot stop
me, if----"
"I do not know whether I can stop you or not, though you
may be sure I will try," she interrupted him, "but that is not
what I was going to say." She drew a step nearer, and there
was something in the intensity of her look which fascinated and
held him for a moment. She was curiously grave. "Nigel, I
believe in certain things you do not believe in. I believe black
thoughts breed black ills to those who think them. It is not a
new idea. There is an old Oriental proverb which says,
`Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.' I believe also that
the worst--the very worst CANNOT be done to those who think
steadily--steadily--only of the best. To you that is merely
superstition to be laughed at. That is a matter of opinion.
But--don't go on with this thing--DON'T GO ON WITH IT. Stop
and think it over."
He stared at her furiously--tried to laugh outright, and
failed because the look in her eyes was so odd in its strength
and stillness.
"You think you can lay some weird spell upon me," he
jeered sardonically.
"No, I don't," she answered. "I could not if I would. It
is no affair of mine. It is your affair only--and there is
nothing weird about it. Don't go on, I tell you. Think better
of it."
She turned about without further speech, and walked away
from him with light swiftness over the marsh. Oddly enough,
he did not even attempt to follow her. He felt a little weak--
perhaps because a certain thing she had said had brought back
to him a familiar touch of the horrors. She had the eyes of
a falcon under the odd, soft shade of the extraordinary lashes.
She had seen what he thought no one but himself had realised.
Having watched her retreating figure for a few seconds, he sat
down--as suddenly as before--on the mound near the tree.
"Oh, damn her!" he said, his damp forehead on his hands.
"Damn the whole universe!"
. . . . .
When Betty and Roland reached Stornham, the wicker-work
pony chaise from the vicarage stood before the stone entrance
steps. The drawing-room door was open, and Mrs. Brent was
standing near it saying some last words to Lady Anstruthers
before leaving the house, after a visit evidently made with an
object. This Betty gathered from the solemnity of her manner.
"Betty," said Lady Anstruthers, catching sight of her, "do
come in for a moment."
When Betty entered, both her sister and Mrs. Brent looked
at her questioningly.
"You look a little pale and tired, Miss Vanderpoel," Mrs.
Brent said, rather as if in haste to be the first to speak. "I
hope you are not at all unwell. We need all our strength just
now. I have brought the most painful news. Malignant
typhoid fever has broken out among the hop pickers on the
Mount Dunstan estate. Some poor creature was evidently
sickening for it when he came from London. Three people died
last night."
CHAPTER XLI
SHE WOULD DO SOMETHING
Sir Nigel's face was not a good thing to see when he appeared
at the dinner table in the evening. As he took his seat the two
footmen glanced quickly at each other, and the butler at the
sideboard furtively thrust out his underlip. Not a man or
woman in the household but had learned the signal denoting
the moment when no service would please, no word or movement
be unobjectionable. Lady Anstruthers' face unconsciously
assumed its propitiatory expression, and she glanced at her
sister more than once when Betty was unaware that she did so.
Until the soup had been removed, Sir Nigel scarcely spoke,
merely making curt replies to any casual remark. This was one
of his simple and most engaging methods of at once enjoying
an ill-humour and making his wife feel that she was in some way
to blame for it.
"Mount Dunstan is in a deucedly unpleasant position," he
condescended at last. "I should not care to stand in his shoes."
He had not returned to the Court until late in the afternoon,
but having heard in the village the rumour of the outbreak of
fever, he had made inquiries and gathered detail.
"You are thinking of the outbreak of typhoid among the
hop pickers?" said Lady Anstruthers. "Mrs. Brent thinks it
threatens to be very serious."
"An epidemic, without a doubt," he answered. "In a
wretched unsanitary place like Dunstan village, the wretches
will die like flies."
"What will be done?" inquired Betty.
He gave her one of the unpleasant personal glances and
laughed derisively.
"Done? The county authorities, who call themselves
`guardians,' will be frightened to death and will potter about
and fuss like old women, and profess to examine and protect
and lay restrictions, but everyone will manage to keep at a
discreet distance, and the thing will run riot and do its worst.
As far as one can see, there seems no reason why the whole place
should not be swept away. No doubt Mount Dunstan has
wisely taken to his heels already."
"I think that, on the contrary, there would be much doubt
of that," Betty said. "He would stay and do what he could."
Sir Nigel shrugged his shoulders.
"Would he? I think you'll find he would not."
"Mrs. Brent tells me," Rosalie broke in somewhat hurriedly,
"that the huts for the hoppers are in the worst possible
condition. They are so dilapidated that the rain pours into
them. There is no proper shelter for the people who are ill, and
Lord Mount Dunstan cannot afford to take care of them."
"But he WILL--he WILL," broke forth Betty. Her head lifted
itself and she spoke almost as if through her small, shut teeth.
A wave of intense belief--high, proud, and obstinate, swept
through her. It was a feeling so strong and vibrant that she
felt as if Mount Dunstan himself must be reached and upborne
by it--as if he himself must hear her.
Rosalie looked at her half-startled, and, for the moment held
fascinated by the sudden force rising in her and by the splendid
spark of light under her lids. She was reminded of the fierce
little Betty of long ago, with her delicate, indomitable
small face and the spirit which even at nine years old had
somehow seemed so strong and straitly keen of sight that one
had known it might always be trusted. Actually, in one way,
she had not changed. She saw the truth of things. The next
instant, however, inadvertently glancing towards her husband,
she caught her breath quickly. Across his heavy-featured face
had shot the sudden gleam of a new expression. It was as if
he had at the moment recognised something which filled him
with a rush of fury he himself was not prepared for. That he
did not wish it to be seen she knew by his manner. There was
a brief silence in which it passed away. He spoke after it, with
disagreeable precision.
"He has had an enormous effect on you--that man," he said
to Betty.
He spoke clearly so that she might have the pleasure of being
certain that the menservants heard. They were close to the
table, handing fruit--professing to be automatons, eyes down,
faces expressing nothing, but as quick of hearing as it is said
that blind men are. He knew that if he had been in her place
and a thing as insultingly significant had been said to him,
he should promptly have hurled the nearest object--plate, wineglass,
or decanter--in the face of the speaker. He knew, too,
that women cannot hurl projectiles without looking like viragos
and fools. The weakly-feminine might burst into tears or
into a silly rage and leave the table. There was a distinct
breath's space of pause, and Betty, cutting a cluster from a
bunch of hothouse grapes presented by the footman at her side,
answered as clearly as he had spoken himself.
"He is strong enough to produce an effect on anyone," she said.
"I think you feel that yourself. He is a man who will not be
beaten in the end. Fortune will give him some good thing."
"He is a fellow who knows well enough on which hand of him good
things lie," he said. "He will take all that offers itself."
"Why not?" Betty said impartially.
"There must be no riding or driving in the neighbourhood
of the place," he said next. "I will have no risks run." He
turned and addressed the butler. "Jennings, tell the servants
that those are my orders."
He sat over his wine but a short time that evening, and when
he joined his wife and sister-in-law in the drawing-room he
went at once to Betty. In fact, he was in the condition when
a man cannot keep away from a woman, but must invent some
reason for reaching her whether it is fatuous or plausible.
"What I said to Jennings was an order to you as well as to
the people below stairs. I know you are particularly fond of
riding in the direction of Mount Dunstan. You are in my
care so long as you are in my house."
"Orders are not necessary," Betty replied. "The day is
past when one rushed to smooth pillows and give the wrong
medicine when one's friends were ill. If one is not a properlytrained
nurse, it is wiser not to risk being very much in the
way."
He spoke over her shoulder, dropping his voice, though Lady
Anstruthers sat apart, appearing to read.
"Don't think I am fool enough not to understand. You
have yourself under magnificent control, but a woman passionately
in love cannot keep a certain look out of her eyes."
He was standing on the hearth. Betty swung herself lightly
round, facing him squarely. Her full look was splendid.
"If it is there--let it stay," she said. "I would not keep it
out of my eyes if I could, and, you are right, I could not if I
would--if it is there. If it is--let it stay."
The daring, throbbing, human truth of her made his brain
whirl. To a man young and clean and fit to count as in the
lists, to have heard her say the thing of a rival would have been
hard enough, but base, degenerate, and of the world behind her
day, to hear it while frenzied for her, was intolerable. And
it was Mount Dunstan she bore herself so highly for. Whether
melodrama is out of date or not there are, occasionally, some
fine melodramatic touches in the enmities of to-day.
"You think you will reach him," he persisted. "You think you
will help him in some way. You will not let the thing alone."
"Excuse my mentioning that whatsoever I take the liberty
of doing will encroach on no right of yours," she said.
But, alone in her room, after she went upstairs, the face
reflecting itself in the mirror was pale and its black brows were
drawn together.
She sat down at the dressing-table, and, seeing the paled face,
drew the black brows closer, confronting a complicating truth.
"If I were free to take Rosalie and Ughtred home to-morrow," she
thought, "I could not bear to go. I should suffer too much."
She was suffering now. The strong longing in her heart
was like a physical pain. No word or look of this one man had
given her proof that his thoughts turned to her, and yet it was
intolerable--intolerable--that in his hour of stress and need
they were as wholly apart as if worlds rolled between them.
At any dire moment it was mere nature that she should give
herself in help and support. If, on the night at sea, when they
had first spoken to each other, the ship had gone down, she
knew that they two, strangers though they were, would have
worked side by side among the frantic people, and have been
among the last to take to the boats. How did she know? Only
because, he being he, and she being she, it must have been so
in accordance with the laws ruling entities. And now he stood
facing a calamity almost as terrible--and she with full hands
sat still.
She had seen the hop pickers' huts and had recognised their
condition. Mere brick sheds in which the pickers slept upon
bundles of hay or straw in their best days; in their decay they
did not even provide shelter. In fine weather the hop gatherers
slept well enough in them, cooking their food in gypsy-fashion
in the open. When the rain descended, it must run down walls
and drip through the holes in the roofs in streams which would
soak clothes and bedding. The worst that Nigel and Mrs.
Brent had implied was true. Illness of any order, under such
circumstances, would have small chance of recovery, but malignant
typhoid without shelter, without proper nourishment or
nursing, had not one chance in a million. And he--this one
man--stood alone in the midst of the tragedy--responsible and
helpless. He would feel himself responsible as she herself
would, if she were in his place. She was conscious that
suddenly the event of the afternoon--the interview upon the
marshes, had receded until it had become an almost unmeaning
incident. What did the degenerate, melodramatic folly
matter----!
She had restlessly left her chair before the dressing-table, and
was walking to and fro. She paused and stood looking down
at the carpet, though she scarcely saw it.
"Nothing matters but one thing--one person," she owned
to herself aloud. "I suppose it is always like this. Rosy,
Ughtred, even father and mother--everyone seems less near
than they were. It is too strong--too strong. It is----" the
words dropped slowly from her lips, "the strongest thing--
in the world."
She lifted her face and threw out her hands, a lovely young
half-sad smile curling the deep corners of her mouth. "Sometimes
one feels so disdained," she said--"so disdained with all
one's power. Perhaps I am an unwanted thing."
But even in this case there were aids one might make an
effort to give. She went to her writing-table and sat thinking
for some time. Afterwards she began to write letters. Three
or four were addressed to London--one was to Mr. Penzance.
. . . . .
Mount Dunstan and his vicar were walking through the
village to the vicarage. They had been to the hop pickers' huts
to see the people who were ill of the fever. Both of them
noticed that cottage doors and windows were shut, and that
here and there alarmed faces looked out from behind latticed
panes.
"They are in a panic of fear," Mount Dunstan said, "and
by way of safeguard they shut out every breath of air and
stifle indoors. Something must be done."
Catching the eye of a woman who was peering over her
short white dimity blind, he beckoned to her authoritatively.
She came to the door and hesitated there, curtsying nervously.
Mount Dunstan spoke to her across the hedge.
"You need not come out to me, Mrs. Binner. You may
stay where you are," he said. "Are you obeying the orders
given by the Guardians?"
"Yes, my lord. Yes, my lord," with more curtsys.
"Your health is very much in your own hands," he added.
"You must keep your cottage and your children cleaner than
you have ever kept them before, and you must use the disinfectant
I sent you. Keep away from the huts, and open your
windows. If you don't open them, I shall come and do it for
you. Bad air is infection itself. Do you understand?"
"Yes, my lord. Thank your lordship."
"Go in and open your windows now, and tell your neighbours
to do the same. If anyone is ill let me know at once.
The vicar and I will do our best for everyone."
By that time curiosity had overcome fear, and other cottage
doors had opened. Mount Dunstan passed down the row and
said a few words to each woman or man who looked out.
Questions were asked anxiously and he answered them. That
he was personally unafraid was comfortingly plain, and the
mere sight of him was, on the whole, an unexplainable support.
"We heard said your lordship was going away," put in a
stout mother with a heavy child on her arm, a slight testiness
scarcely concealed by respectful good-manners. She was a
matron with a temper, and that a Mount Dunstan should
avoid responsibilities seemed highly credible.
"I shall stay where I am," Mount Dunstan answered.
"My place is here."
They believed him, Mount Dunstan though he was. It
could not be said that they were fond of him, but gradually
it had been borne in upon them that his word was to be relied
on, though his manner was unalluring and they knew he was
too poor to do his duty by them or his estate. As he walked
away with the vicar, windows were opened, and in one or two
untidy cottages a sudden flourishing of mops and brooms began.
There was dark trouble in Mount Dunstan's face. In the
huts they had left two men stiff on their straw, and two
women and a child in a state of collapse. Added to these
were others stricken helpless. A number of workers in the
hop gardens, on realising the danger threatening them, had
gathered together bundles and children, and, leaving the harvest
behind, had gone on the tramp again. Those who remained
were the weaker or less cautious, or were held by some tie
to those who were already ill of the fever. The village doctor
was an old man who had spent his blameless life in bringing
little cottagers into the world, attending their measles and
whooping coughs, and their father's and grandfather's
rheumatics. He had never faced a village crisis in the course
of his seventy-five years, and was aghast and flurried with
fright. His methods remained those of his youth, and were
marked chiefly by a readiness to prescribe calomel in any
emergency. A younger and stronger man was needed, as well
as a man of more modern training. But even the most
brilliant practitioner of the hour could not have provided
shelter and nourishment, and without them his skill would have
counted as nothing. For three weeks there had been no rain,
which was a condition of the barometer not likely to last.
Already grey clouds were gathering and obscuring the blueness
of the sky.
The vicar glanced upwards anxiously.
"When it comes," he said, "there will be a downpour, and
a persistent one."
"Yes," Mount Dunstan answered.
He had lain awake thinking throughout the night. How
was a man to sleep! It was as Betty Vanderpoel had known
it would be. He, who--beggar though he might be--was
the lord of the land, was the man to face the strait of these
poor workers on the land, as his own. Some action must
be taken. What action? As he walked by his friend's side
from the huts where the dead men lay it revealed itself that
he saw his way.
They were going to the vicarage to consult a medical book,
but on the way there they passed a part of the park where,
through a break in the timber the huge, white, blind-faced
house stood on view. Mount Dunstan laid his hand on Mr.
Penzance's shoulder and stopped him
"Look there!" he said. "THERE are weather-tight rooms
enough."
A startled expression showed itself on the vicar's face.
"For what?" he exclaimed
"For a hospital," brusquely "I can give them one thing,
at least--shelter."
"It is a very remarkable thing to think of doing," Mr.
Penzance said.
"It is not so remarkable as that labourers on my land
should die at my gate because I cannot give them decent
roofs to cover them. There is a roof that will shield them
from the weather. They shall be brought to the Mount."
The vicar was silent a moment, and a flush of sympathy
warmed his face.
"You are quite right, Fergus," he said, "entirely right."
"Let us go to your study and plan how it shall be done,"
Mount Dunstan said.
As they walked towards the vicarage, he went on talking.
"When I lie awake at night, there is one thread which
always winds itself through my thoughts whatsoever they are.
I don't find that I can disentangle it. It connects itself with
Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughter. You would know that
without my telling you. If you had ever struggled with an
insane passion----"
"It is not insane, I repeat," put in Penzance unflinchingly.
"Thank you--whether you are right or wrong," answered
Mount Dunstan, striding by his side. "When I am awake,
she is as much a part of my existence as my breath itself.
When I think things over, I find that I am asking myself
if her thoughts would be like mine. She is a creature of
action. Last night, as I lay awake, I said to myself, `She
would DO something. What would she do?' She would not
be held back by fear of comment or convention. She would
look about her for the utilisable, and she would find it
somewhere and use it. I began to sum up the village resources
and found nothing--until my thoughts led me to my own
house. There it stood--empty and useless. If it were hers,
and she stood in my place, she would make it useful. So I
decided."
"You are quite right," Mr. Penzance said again.
They spent an hour in his library at the vicarage, arranging
practical methods for transforming the great ballroom into
a sort of hospital ward. It could be done by the removal of
pieces of furniture from the many unused bedrooms. There
was also the transportation of the patients from the huts to be
provided for. But, when all this was planned out, each found
himself looking at the other with an unspoken thought in
his mind. Mount Dunstan first expressed it.
"As far as I can gather, the safety of typhoid fever patients
depends almost entirely on scientific nursing, and the caution
with which even liquid nourishment is given. The
woman whose husband died this morning told me that he had
seemed better in the night, and had asked for something to eat.
She gave him a piece of bread and a slice of cold bacon,
because he told her he fancied it. I could not explain to her,
as she sat sobbing over him, that she had probably killed him.
When we have patients in our ward, what shall we feed them
on, and who will know how to nurse them? They do not know
how to nurse each other, and the women in the village would
not run the risk of undertaking to help us."
But, even before he had left the house, the problem was
solved for them. The solving of it lay in the note Miss
Vanderpoel had written the night before at Stornham.
When it was brought to him Mr. Penzance glanced up
from certain calculations he was making upon a sheet of notepaper.
The accumulating difficulties made him look worn
and tired. He opened the note and read it gravely, and
then as gravely, though with a change of expression, handed
it to Mount Dunstan.
"Yes, she is a creature of action. She has heard and
understood at once, and she has done something. It is immensely
practical--it is fine--it--it is lovable."
"Do you mind my keeping it?" Mount Dunstan asked, after he had
read it.
"Keep it by all means," the vicar answered. "It is worth
keeping."
But it was quite brief. She had heard of the outbreak of
fever among the hop pickers, and asked to be allowed to give
help to the people who were suffering. They would need
prompt aid. She chanced to know something of the requirements
of such cases, and had written to London for certain
supplies which would be sent to them at once. She had also
written for nurses, who would be needed above all else.
Might she ask Mr. Penzance to kindly call upon her for
any further assistance required.
"Tell her we are deeply grateful," said Mount Dunstan,
"and that she has given us greater help than she knows."
"Why not answer her note yourself?" Penzance suggested.
Mount Dunstan shook his head.
"No," he said shortly. "No."
CHAPTER XLII
IN THE BALLROOM
Though Dunstan village was cut off, by its misfortune,
from its usual intercourse with its neighbours, in some mystic
manner villages even at twenty miles' distance learned all
it did and suffered, feared or hoped. It did not hope greatly,
the rustic habit of mind tending towards a discouraged
outlook, and cherishing the drama of impending calamity. As
far as Yangford and Marling inmates of cottages and farmhouses
were inclined to think it probable that Dunstan would
be "swep away," and rumours of spreading death and disaster
were popular. Tread, the advanced blacksmith at Stornham,
having heard in his by-gone, better days of the Great Plague
of London, was greatly in demand as a narrator of illuminating
anecdotes at The Clock Inn.
Among the parties gathered at the large houses Mount
Dunstan himself was much talked of. If he had been a
popular man, he might have become a sort of hero; as he was
not popular, he was merely a subject for discussion. The
fever-stricken patients had been carried in carts to the Mount
and given beds in the ballroom, which had been made into a
temporary ward. Nurses and supplies had been sent for from
London, and two energetic young doctors had taken the place
of old Dr. Fenwick, who had been frightened and overworked
into an attack of bronchitis which confined him to his bed.
Where the money came from, which must be spent every day
under such circumstances, it was difficult to say. To the
simply conservative of mind, the idea of filling one's house
with dirty East End hop pickers infected with typhoid seemed
too radical. Surely he could have done something less
extraordinary. Would everybody be expected to turn their houses
into hospitals in case of village epidemics, now that he had
established a precedent? But there were people who approved,
and were warm in their sympathy with him. At the first dinner
party where the matter was made the subject of argument,
the beautiful Miss Vanderpoel, who was present, listened
silently to the talk with such brilliant eyes that Lord Dunholm,
who was in an elderly way her staunch admirer, spoke to her
across the table:
"Tell us what YOU think of it, Miss Vanderpoel," he suggested.
She did not hesitate at all.
"I like it," she answered, in her clear, well-heard voice.
"I like it better than anything I have ever heard."
"So do I," said old Lady Alanby shortly. "I should never
have done it myself--but I like it just as you do."
"I knew you would, Lady Alanby," said the girl. "And
you, too, Lord Dunholm."
"I like it so much that I shall write and ask if I cannot be
of assistance," Lord Dunholm answered.
Betty was glad to hear this. Only quickness of thought
prevented her from the error of saying, "Thank you," as if
the matter were personal to herself. If Mount Dunstan was
restive under the obviousness of the fact that help was so
sorely needed, he might feel less so if her offer was only one
among others.
"It seems rather the duty of the neighbourhood to show
some interest," put in Lady Alanby. "I shall write to him
myself. He is evidently of a new order of Mount Dunstan.
It's to be hoped he won't take the fever himself, and die of it
He ought to marry some handsome, well-behaved girl, and refound
the family."
Nigel Anstruthers spoke from his side of the table, leaning
slightly forward.
"He won't if he does not take better care of himself.
He passed me on the road two days ago, riding like a lunatic.
He looks frightfully ill--yellow and drawn and lined. He
has not lived the life to prepare him for settling down to a
fight with typhoid fever. He would be done for if he caught
the infection."
"I beg your pardon," said Lord Dunholm, with quiet
decision. "Unprejudiced inquiry proves that his life has been
entirely respectable. As Lady Alanby says, he seems to be
of a new order of Mount Dunstan."
"No doubt you are right," said Sir Nigel suavely. "He
looked ill, notwithstanding."
"As to looking ill," remarked Lady Alanby to Lord
Dunholm, who sat near her, "that man looks as if he was going
to pieces pretty rapidly himself, and unprejudiced inquiry would
not prove that his past had nothing to do with it."
Betty wondered if her brother-in-law were lying. It was
generally safest to argue that he was. But the fever burned
high at Mount Dunstan, and she knew by instinct what its
owner was giving of the strength of his body and brain. A
young, unmarried woman cannot go about, however, making
anxious inquiries concerning the welfare of a man who has
made no advance towards her. She must wait for the chance
which brings news.
. . . . .
The fever, having ill-cared for and habitually ill fed bodies
to work upon, wrought fiercely, despite the energy of the two
young doctors and the trained nurses. There were many dark
hours in the ballroom ward, hours filled with groans and wild
ravings. The floating Terpsichorean goddesses upon the lofty
ceiling gazed down with wondering eyes at haggard faces
and plucking hands which sometimes, behind the screen drawn
round their beds, ceased to look feverish, and grew paler and
stiller, until they moved no more. But, at least, none had
died through want of shelter and care. The supplies needed
came from London each day. Lord Dunholm had sent a generous
cheque to the aid of the sufferers, and so, also, had old
Lady Alanby, but Miss Vanderpoel, consulting medical
authorities and hospitals, learned exactly what was required, and
necessities were forwarded daily in their most easily utilisable
form.
"You generously told me to ask you for anything we found
we required," Mr. Penzance wrote to her in his note of thanks.
"My dear and kind young lady, you leave nothing to ask for.
Our doctors, who are young and enthusiastic, are filled with
delight in the completeness of the resources placed in their
hands."
She had, in fact, gone to London to consult an eminent
physician, who was an authority of world-wide reputation.
Like the head of the legal firm of Townlinson & Sheppard, he
had experienced a new sensation in the visit paid him by an
indubitably modern young beauty, who wasted no word, and
whose eyes, while he answered her amazingly clear questions,
were as intelligently intent as those of an ardent and serious
young medical student. What a surgical nurse she would
have made! It seemed almost a pity that she evidently
belonged to a class the members of which are rich enough to
undertake the charge of entire epidemics, but who do not
usually give themselves to such work, especially when they
are young and astonishing in the matter of looks.
In addition to the work they did in the ballroom ward,
Mount Dunstan and the vicar found much to do among the
villagers. Ignorance and alarm combined to create dangers,
even where they might not have been feared. Daily instruction
and inspection of the cottages and their inmates was
required. The knowledge that they were under control and
supervision was a support to the frightened people and prevented
their lapsing into careless habits. Also, there began to
develop among them a secret dependence upon, and desire to
please "his lordship," as the existing circumstances drew him
nearer to them, and unconsciously they were attracted and
dominated by his strength. The strong man carries his power
with him, and, when Mount Dunstan entered a cottage and
talked to its inmates, the anxious wife or surlily depressed
husband was conscious of feeling a certain sense of security.
It had been a queer enough thing, this he had done--bundling
the infected hoppers out of their leaking huts and carrying
them up to the Mount itself for shelter and care. At the
most, gentlefolk generally gave soup or blankets or hospital
tickets, and left the rest to luck, but, "gentry-way" or not,
a man who did a thing like that would be likely to do other
things, if they were needed, and gave folk a feeling of being
safer than ordinary soup and blankets and hospital tickets
could make them.
But "where did the money come from?" was asked during
the first days. Beds and doctors, nurses and medicine, fine
brandy and unlimited fowls for broth did not come up from
London without being paid for. Pounds and pounds a day
must be paid out to get the things that were delivered
"regular" in hampers and boxes. The women talked to one another
over their garden palings, the men argued together over their
beer at the public house. Was he running into more debt?
But even the village knew that Mount Dunstan credit had
been exhausted long ago, and there had been no money at the
Mount within the memory of man, so to speak.
One morning the matron with the sharp temper found out
the truth, though the outburst of gratitude to Mount Dunstan
which resulted in her enlightenment, was entirely spontaneous
and without intention. Her doubt of his Mount Dunstan
blood had grown into a sturdy liking even for his short speech
and his often drawn-down brows.
"We've got more to thank your lordship for than common
help," she said. "God Almighty knows where we'd all ha'
been but for what you've done. Those poor souls you've nursed
and fed----"
"I've not done it," he broke in promptly. "You're
mistaken; I could not have done it. How could I?"
"Well," exclaimed the matron frankly, "we WAS wondering
where things came from."
"You might well wonder. Have any of you seen Lady
Anstruthers' sister, Miss Vanderpoel, ride through the village?
She used sometimes to ride this way. If you saw her you
will remember it.'
"The 'Merican young lady!" in ejaculatory delight. "My
word, yes! A fine young woman with black hair? That rich,
they say, as millions won't cover it."
"They won't," grimly. "Lord Dunholm and Lady Alanby
of Dole kindly sent cheques to help us, but the American
young lady was first on the field. She sent both doctors and
nurses, and has supplied us with food and medicine every day.
As you say, Mrs. Brown, God Almighty knows what would
have become of us, but for what she has done."
Mrs. Brown had listened with rather open mouth. She
caught her breath heartily, as a sort of approving exclamation.
"God bless her!" she broke out. "Girls isn't generally
like that. Their heads is too full of finery. God bless her,
'Merican or no 'Merican! That's what I say."
Mount Dunstan's red-brown eyes looked as if she had
pleased him.
"That's what I say, too," he answered. "God bless her!"
There was not a day which passed in which he did not
involuntarily say the words to himself again and again. She
had been wrong when she had said in her musings that
they were as far apart as if worlds rolled between them.
Something stronger than sight or speech drew them together.
The thread which wove itself through his thoughts grew
stronger and stronger. The first day her gifts arrived and he
walked about the ballroom ward directing the placing of hospital
cots and hospital aids and comforts, the spirit of her
thought and intelligence, the individuality and cleverness of
all her methods, brought her so vividly before him that it was
almost as if she walked by his side, as if they spoke together,
as if she said, "I have tried to think of everything. I want
you to miss nothing. Have I helped you? Tell me if there is
anything more." The thing which moved and stirred him
was his knowledge that when he had thought of her she
had also been thinking of him, or of what deeply concerned
him. When he had said to himself, tossing on his pillow,
"What would she DO?" she had been planning in such a way
as answered his question. Each morning, when the day's supplies
arrived, it was as if he had received a message from her.
As the people in the cottages felt the power of his
temperament and depended upon him, so, also, did the patients
in the ballroom ward. The feeling had existed from the outset
and increased daily. The doctors and nurses told one another
that his passing through the room was like the administering
of a tonic. Patients who were weak and making no effort,
were lifted upon the strong wave of his will and carried
onward towards the shore of greater courage and strength.
Young Doctor Thwaite met him when he came in one
morning, and spoke in a low voice:
"There is a young man behind the screen there who is
very low," he said. "He had an internal haemorrhage towards
morning, and has lost his pluck. He has a wife and three
children. We have been doing our best for him with hotwater
bottles and stimulants, but he has not the courage to
help us. You have an extraordinary effect on them all, Lord
Mount Dunstan. When they are depressed, they always ask
when you are coming in, and this man--Patton, his name is--
has asked for you several times. Upon my word, I believe
you might set him going again."
Mount Dunstan walked to the bed, and, going behind the
screen, stood looking down at the young fellow lying breathing
pantingly. His eyes were closed as he laboured, and his
pinched white nostrils drew themselves in and puffed out at
each breath. A nurse on the other side of the cot had just
surrounded him with fresh hot-water bottles.
Suddenly the sunken eyelids flew open, and the eyes met
Mount Dunstan's in imploring anxiousness.
"Here I am, Patton," Mount Dunstan said. "You need not speak."
But he must speak. Here was the strength his sinking soul
had longed for.
"Cruel bad--goin' fast--m' lord," he panted.
Mount Dunstan made a sign to the nurse, who gave him a
chair. He sat down close to the bed, and took the bloodless
hand in his own.
"No," he said, "you are not going. You'll stay here. I
will see to that."
The poor fellow smiled wanly. Vague yearnings had led
him sometimes, in the past, to wander into chapels or stop
and listen to street preachers, and orthodox platitudes came
back to him.
"God's--will," he trailed out.
"It's nothing of the sort. It's God's will that you pull
yourself together. A man with a wife and three children has
no right to slip out."
A yearning look flickered in the lad's eyes--he was scarcely
more than a lad, having married at seventeen, and had a child
each year.
"She's--a good--girl."
"Keep that in your mind while you fight this out," said
Mount Dunstan. "Say it over to yourself each time you
feel yourself letting go. Hold on to it. I am going to fight
it out with you. I shall sit here and take care of you all day
--all night, if necessary. The doctor and the nurse will tell
me what to do. Your hand is warmer already. Shut your eyes."
He did not leave the bedside until the middle of the night.
By that time the worst was over. He had acted throughout
the hours under the direction of nurse and doctor. No one
but himself had touched the patient. When Patton's eyes
were open, they rested on him with a weird growing belief.
He begged his lordship to hold his hand, and was uneasy when
he laid it down.
"Keeps--me--up," he whispered.
"He pours something into them--vigour--magnetic power
--life. He's like a charged battery," Dr. Thwaite said to his
co-workers. "He sat down by Patton just in time. It sets
one to thinking."
Having saved Patton, he must save others. When a man
or woman sank, or had increased fever, they believed that he
alone could give them help. In delirium patients cried out
for him. He found himself doing hard work, but he did not
flinch from it. The adoration for him became a sort of
passion. Haggard faces lighted up into life at the sound
of his footstep, and heavy heads turned longingly on their
pillows as he passed by. In the winter days to come there
would be many an hour's talk in East End courts and alleys
of the queer time when a score or more of them had lain in
the great room with the dancing and floating goddesses looking
down at them from the high, painted ceiling, and the swell,
who was a lord, walking about among them, working for them
as the nurses did, and sitting by some of them through awful
hours, sometimes holding burning or slackening and chilling
hands with a grip whose steadiness seemed to hold them back
from the brink of the abyss they were slipping into. The
mere ignorantly childish desire to do his prowess credit and to
play him fair saved more than one man and woman from
going out with the tide.
"It is the first time in my life that I have fairly counted
among men. It's the first time I have known human affection,
other than yours, Penzance. They want me, these people;
they are better for the sight of me. It is a new experience,
and it is good for a man's soul," he said.
CHAPTER XLIII
HIS CHANCE
Betty walked much alone upon the marshes with Roland at
her side. At intervals she heard from Mr. Penzance, but his
notes were necessarily brief, and at other times she could only
rely upon report for news of what was occurring at Mount
Dunstan. Lord Mount Dunstan's almost military supervision
of and command over his villagers had certainly saved them
from the horrors of an uncontrollable epidemic; his decision
and energy had filled the alarmed Guardians with respect and this
respect had begun to be shared by many other persons. A man as
prompt in action, and as faithful to such responsibilities
as many men might have found plausible reasons enough
for shirking, inevitably assumed a certain dignity of aspect,
when all was said and done. Lord Dunholm was most clear
in his expressions of opinion concerning him. Lady Alanby
of Dole made a practice of speaking of him in public frequently,
always with admiring approval, and in that final manner of
hers, to whose authority her neighbours had so long submitted.
It began to be accepted as a fact that he was a new development
of his race--as her ladyship had put it, "A new order of Mount
Dunstan."
The story of his power over the stricken people, and of
their passionate affection and admiration for him, was one
likely to spread far, and be immensely popular. The drama
of certain incidents appealed greatly to the rustic mind, and by
cottage firesides he was represented with rapturous awe, as
raising men, women, and children from the dead, by the mere
miracle of touch. Mrs. Welden and old Doby revelled in
thrilling, almost Biblical, versions of current anecdotes, when
Betty paid her visits to them.
"It's like the Scripture, wot he done for that young man
as the last breath had gone out of him, an' him lyin' stiffening
fast. `Young man, arise,' he says. `The Lord Almighty
calls. You've got a young wife an' three children to take
care of. Take up your bed an' walk.' Not as he wanted
him to carry his bed anywheres, but it was a manner of speaking.
An' up the young man got. An' a sensible way," said
old Mrs. Welden frankly, "for the Lord to look at it--
for I must say, miss, if I was struck down for it, though I
s'pose it's only my sinful ignorance--that there's times when
the Lord seems to think no more of sweepin' away a steady
eighteen-shillin' a week, and p'raps seven in family, an' one at
the breast, an' another on the way--than if it was nothin'.
But likely enough, eighteen shillin' a week an' confinements
does seem paltry to the Maker of 'eaven an' earth."
But, to the girl walking over the marshland, the humanness
of the things she heard gave to her the sense of nearness--of
being almost within sight and sound--which Mount Dunstan
himself had felt, when each day was filled with the result
of her thought of the needs of the poor souls thrown by fate
into his hands. In these days, after listening to old Mrs.
Welden's anecdotes, through which she gathered the simpler truth
of things, Betty was able to construct for herself a less
Scriptural version of what she had heard. She was glad--glad
in his sitting by a bedside and holding a hand which lay
in his hot or cold, but always trusting to something which
his strong body and strong soul gave without stint. There
would be no restraint there. Yes, he was kind--kind--kind
--with the kindness a woman loves, and which she, of all
women, loved most. Sometimes she would sit upon some
mound, and, while her eyes seemed to rest on the yellowing
marsh and its birds and pools, they saw other things, and their
colour grew deep and dark as the marsh water between the
rushes.
The time was pressing when a change in her life must come.
She frequently asked herself if what she saw in Nigel
Anstruthers' face was the normal thinking of a sane man, which
he himself could control. There had been moments when she
had seriously doubted it. He was haggard, aging and restless.
Sometimes he--always as if by chance--followed her as she
went from one room to another, and would seat himself and
fix his miserable eyes upon her for so long a time that it
seemed he must be unconscious of what he was doing. Then
he would appear suddenly to recollect himself and would
start up with a muttered exclamation, and stalk out of the
room. He spent long hours riding or driving alone about
the country or wandering wretchedly through the Park and
gardens. Once he went up to town, and, after a few days'
absence, came back looking more haggard than before, and
wearing a hunted look in his eyes. He had gone to see a
physician, and, after having seen him, he had tried to lose
himself in a plunge into deep and turbid enough waters; but
he found that he had even lost the taste of high flavours, for
which he had once had an epicurean palate. The effort had
ended in his being overpowered again by his horrors--the
horrors in which he found himself staring at that end of things
when no pleasure had spice, no debauchery the sting of life,
and men, such as he, stood upon the shore of time shuddering
and naked souls, watching the great tide, bearing its treasures,
recede forever, and leave them to the cold and hideous dark.
During one day of his stay in town he had seen Teresita, who
had at first stared half frightened by the change she saw in
him, and then had told him truths he could have wrung her
neck for putting into words.
"You look an old man," she said, with the foreign accent
he had once found deliciously amusing, but which now seemed
to add a sting. "And somesing is eating you op. You are
mad in lofe with some beautiful one who will not look at you.
I haf seen it in mans before. It is she who eats you op--your
evil thinkings of her. It serve you right. Your eyes look
mad."
He himself, at times, suspected that they did, and cursed
himself because he could not keep cool. It was part of his
horrors that he knew his internal furies were worse than
folly, and yet he could not restrain them. The creeping
suspicion that this was only the result of the simple fact that
he had never tried to restrain any tendency of his own was
maddening. His nervous system was a wreck. He drank a great
deal of whisky to keep himself "straight" during the day,
and he rose many times during his black waking hours in the
night to drink more because he obstinately refused to give up
the hope that, if he drank enough, it would make him sleep.
As through the thoughts of Mount Dunstan, who was a clean
and healthy human being, there ran one thread which would
not disentangle itself, so there ran through his unwholesome
thinking a thread which burned like fire. His secret ravings
would not have been good to hear. His passion was more than
half hatred, and a desire for vengeance, for the chance to reassert
his own power, to prove himself master, to get the better
in one way or another of this arrogant young outsider and her
high-handed pride. The condition of his mind was so far
from normal that he failed to see that the things he said to
himself, the plans he laid, were grotesque in their folly. The
old cruel dominance of the man over the woman thing, which
had seemed the mere natural working of the law among men
of his race in centuries past, was awake in him, amid the
limitations of modern days.
"My God," he said to himself more than once, "I would
like to have had her in my hands a few hundred years ago.
Women were kept in their places, then."
He was even frenzied enough to think over what he would
have done, if such a thing had been--of her utter helplessness
against that which raged in him--of the grey thickness of the
walls where he might have held and wrought his will upon
her--insult, torment, death. His alcohol-excited brain ran
riot--but, when it did its foolish worst, he was baffled by one
thing.
"Damn her!" he found himself crying out. "If I had hung
her up and cut her into strips she would have died staring
at me with her big eyes--without uttering a sound."
There was a long reach between his imaginings and the
time he lived in. America had not been discovered in those
decent days, and now a man could not beat even his own
wife, or spend her money, without being meddled with by
fools. He was thinking of a New York young woman of the
nineteenth century who could actually do as she hanged
pleased, and who pleased to be damned high and mighty. For
that reason in itself it was incumbent upon a man to get even
with her in one way or another. High and mightiness was not
the hardest thing to reach. It offered a good aim.
His temper when he returned to Stornham was of the order
which in past years had set Rosalie and her child shuddering
and had sent the servants about the house with pale or sullen
faces. Betty's presence had the odd effect of restraining him,
and he even told her so with sneering resentment.
"There would be the devil to pay if you were not here," he
said. "You keep me in order, by Jove! I can't work up
steam properly when you watch me."
He himself knew that it was likely that some change would
take place. She would not stay at Stornham and she would not
leave his wife and child alone with him again. It would be
like her to hold her tongue until she was ready with her
infernal plans and could spring them on him. Her letters to
her father had probably prepared him for such action as such
a man would be likely to take. He could guess what it would
be. They were free and easy enough in America in their
dealings with the marriage tie. Their idea would doubtless
be a divorce with custody of the child. He wondered a little
that they had remained quiet so long. There had been American
shrewdness in her coming boldly to Stornham to look over
the ground herself and actually set the place in order. It did
not present itself to his mind that what she had done had
been no part of a scheme, but the mere result of her temperament
and training. He told himself that it had been planned
beforehand and carried out in hard-headed commercial American
fashion as a matter of business. The thing which most
enraged him was the implied cool, practical realisation of the
fact that he, as inheritor of an entailed estate, was but owner
in charge, and not young enough to be regarded as an
insurmountable obstacle to their plans. He could not undo the
greater part of what had been done, and they were calculating,
he argued, that his would not be likely to be a long life, and if
--if anything happened--Stornham would be Ughtred's and
the whole vulgar lot of them would come over and take possession
and swagger about the place as if they had been born on
it. As to divorce or separation--if they took that line, he
would at least give them a good run for their money. They would
wish they had let sleeping dogs lie before the thing was over.
The right kind of lawyer could bully Rosalie into saying
anything he chose on the witness-stand. There was not much limit
to the evidence a man could bring if he was experienced enough
to be circumstantial, and knew whom he was dealing with. The
very fact that the little fool could be made to appear to have
been so sly and sanctimonious would stir the gall of any jury
of men. His own condoning the matter for the sake of his
sensitive boy, deformed by his mother's unrestrained and violent
hysteria before his birth, would go a long way. Let them get
their divorce, they would have paid for it, the whole lot of
them, the beautiful Miss Vanderpoel and all. Such a story as the
newspapers would revel in would not be a recommendation to
Englishmen of unsmirched reputation. Then his exultation
would suddenly drop as his mental excitement produced its
effect of inevitable physical fatigue. Even if he made them
pay for getting their own way, what would happen to himself
afterwards? No morbid vanity of self-bolstering could make
the outlook anything but unpromising. If he had not had such
diabolical luck in his few investments he could have lived his
own life. As it was, old Vanderpoel would possibly condescend
to make him some insufficient allowance because Rosalie would
wish that it might be done, and he would be expected to drag
out to the end the kind of life a man pensioned by his wife's
relatives inevitably does. If he attempted to live in the
country he should blow out his brains. When his depression was
at its worst, he saw himself aging and shabby, rambling about
from one cheap Continental town to another, blackballed by
good clubs, cold-shouldered even by the Teresitas, cut off from
society by his limited means and the stories his wife's friends
would spread. He ground his teeth when he thought of Betty.
Her splendid vitality had done something to life for him--had
given it savour. When he had come upon her in the avenue
his blood had stirred, even though it had been maliciously, and
there had been spice in his very resentment of her presence.
And she would go away. He would not be likely to see her
again if his wife broke with him; she would be swept out of
his days. It was hideous to think of, and his rage would
overpower him and his nerves go to pieces again.
"What are you going to do?" he broke forth suddenly one
evening, when he found himself temporarily alone with her.
"You are going to do something. I see it in your eyes."
He had been for some time watching her from behind his
newspaper, while she, with an unread book upon her lap, had,
in fact, been thinking deeply and putting to herself serious
questions.
Her answer made him stir rather uncomfortably.
"I am going to write to my father to ask him to come to England."
So this was what she had been preparing to spring upon him.
He laughed insolently.
"To ask him to come here?"
"With your permission."
"With mine? Does an American father-in-law wait for permission?"
"Is there any practical reason why you should prefer that
he should NOT come?"
He left his seat and walked over to her.
"Yes. Your sending for him is a declaration of war."
"It need not be so. Why should it?"
"In this case I happen to be aware that it is. The choice is
your own, I suppose," with ready bravado, "that you and he
are prepared to face the consequences. But is Rosalie, and is
your mother?"
"My father is a business man and will know what can be
done. He will know what is worth doing," she answered, without
noticing his question. "But," she added the words slowly,
"I have been making up my mind--before I write to him--to
say something to you--to ask you a question."
He made a mock sentimental gesture.
"To ask me to spare my wife, to `remember that she is the
mother of my child'?"
She passed over that also.
"To ask you if there is no possible way in which all this
unhappiness can be ended decently."
"The only decent way of ending it would be that there
should be no further interference. Let Rosalie supply the
decency by showing me the consideration due from a wife to
her husband. The place has been put in order. It was not
for my benefit, and I have no money to keep it up. Let Rosalie
be provided with means to do it."
As he spoke the words he realised that he had opened a way
for embarrassing comment. He expected her to remind him
that Rosalie had not come to him without money. But she
said nothing about the matter. She never said the things he
expected to hear.
"You do not want Rosalie for your wife," she went on
"but you could treat her courteously without loving her. You
could allow her the privileges other men's wives are allowed.
You need not separate her from her family. You could allow
her father and mother to come to her and leave her free to go
to them sometimes. Will you not agree to that? Will you not
let her live peaceably in her own simple way? She is very
gentle and humble and would ask nothing more."
"She is a fool!" he exclaimed furiously. "A fool! She
will stay where she is and do as I tell her."
"You knew what she was when you married her. She was
simple and girlish and pretended to be nothing she was not.
You chose to marry her and take her from the people who
loved her. You broke her spirit and her heart. You would
have killed her if I had not come in time to prevent it."
"I will kill her yet if you leave her," his folly made him
say.
"You are talking like a feudal lord holding the power of
life and death in his hands," she said. "Power like that is
ancient history. You can hurt no one who has friends--without
being punished."
It was the old story. She filled him with the desire to
shake or disturb her at any cost, and he did his utmost. If
she was proposing to make terms with him, he would show
her whether he would accept them or not. He let her hear all
he had said to himself in his worst moments--all that he had
argued concerning what she and her people would do, and
what his own actions would be--all his intention to make them
pay the uttermost farthing in humiliation if he could not
frustrate them. His methods would be definite enough. He had
not watched his wife and Ffolliott for weeks to no end. He
had known what he was dealing with. He had put other
people upon the track and they would testify for him. He
poured forth unspeakable statements and intimations, going,
as usual, further than he had known he should go when he
began. Under the spur of excitement his imagination served
him well. At last he paused.
"Well," he put it to her, "what have you to say?"
"I?" with the remote intent curiosity growing in her eyes.
"I have nothing to say. I am leaving you to say things."
"You will, of course, try to deny----" he insisted.
"No, I shall not. Why should I?"
"You may assume your air of magnificence, but I am dealing
with uncomfortable factors." He stopped in spite of himself,
and then burst forth in a new order of rage. "You are
trying some confounded experiment on me. What is it?"
She rose from her chair to go out of the room, and stood a
moment holding her book half open in her hand.
"Yes. I suppose it might be called an experiment," was
her answer. "Perhaps it was a mistake. I wanted to make
quite sure of something."
"Of what?"
"I did not want to leave anything undone. I did not want
to believe that any man could exist who had not one touch of
decent feeling to redeem him. It did not seem human."
White dints showed themselves about his nostrils.
"Well, you have found one," he cried. "You have a
lashing tongue, by God, when you choose to let it go. But I
could teach you a good many things, my girl. And before I
have done you will have learned most of them."
But though he threw himself into a chair and laughed aloud
as she left him, he knew that his arrogance and bullying were
proving poor weapons, though they had done him good service
all his life. And he knew, too, that it was mere simple truth
that, as a result of the intellectual, ethical vagaries he
scathingly derided--she had actually been giving him a sort of
chance to retrieve himself, and that if he had been another sort
of man he might have taken it.
CHAPTER XLIV
A FOOTSTEP
It was cold enough for fires in halls and bedrooms, and Lady
Anstruthers often sat over hers and watched the glowing bed
of coals with a fixed thoughtfulness of look. She was so
sitting when her sister went to her room to talk to her, and she
looked up questioningly when the door closed and Betty came
towards her.
"You have come to tell me something," she said.
A slight shade of anxiousness showed itself in her eyes, and
Betty sat down by her and took her hand. She had come
because what she knew was that Rosalie must be prepared for
any step taken, and the time had arrived when she must not
be allowed to remain in ignorance even of things it would be
unpleasant to put into words.
"Yes," she answered. "I want to talk to you about
something I have decided to do. I think I must write to father
and ask him to come to us."
Rosalie turned white, but though her lips parted as if she
were going to speak, she said nothing.
"Do not be frightened," Betty said. "I believe it is the
only thing to do."
"I know! I know!"
Betty went on, holding the hand a little closer. "When I
came here you were too weak physically to be able to face even
the thought of a struggle. I saw that. I was afraid it must
come in the end, but I knew that at that time you could not
bear it. It would have killed you and might have killed
mother, if I had not waited; and until you were stronger, I
knew I must wait and reason coolly about you--about everything."
"I used to guess--sometimes," said Lady Anstruthers.
"I can tell you about it now. You are not as you were
then," Betty said. "I did not know Nigel at first, and I felt
I ought to see more of him. I wanted to make sure that my
child hatred of him did not make me unfair. I even tried to
hope that when he came back and found the place in order and
things going well, he might recognise the wisdom of behaving
with decent kindness to you. If he had done that I knew father
would have provided for you both, though he would not have
left him the opportunity to do again what he did before. No
business man would allow such a thing as that. But as time
has gone by I have seen I was mistaken in hoping for a
respectable compromise. Even if he were given a free hand he
would not change. And now----" She hesitated, feeling it
difficult to choose such words as would not be too unpleasant.
How was she to tell Rosy of the ugly, morbid situation which
made ordinary passiveness impossible. "Now there is a
reason----" she began again.
To her surprise and relief it was Rosalie who ended for her.
She spoke with the painful courage which strong affection gives
a weak thing. Her face was pale no longer, but slightly
reddened, and she lifted the hand which held hers and kissed it.
"You shall not say it," she interrupted her. "I will. There
is a reason now why you cannot stay here--why you shall not
stay here. That was why I begged you to go. You must go,
even if I stay behind alone."
Never had the beautiful Miss Vanderpoel's eyes worn so fully
their look of being bluebells under water. That this timid
creature should so stand at bay to defend her was more moving
than anything else could have been.
"Thank you, Rosy--thank you," she answered. "But you
shall not be left alone. You must go, too. There is no other
way. Difficulties will be made for us, but we must face
them. Father will see the situation from a practical man's
standpoint. Men know the things other men cannot do.
Women don't. Generally they know nothing about the law
and can be bullied into feeling that it is dangerous and
compromising to inquire into it. Nigel has always seen that it
was easy to manage women. A strong business man who has
more exact legal information than he has himself will be a
new factor to deal with. And he cannot make objectionable
love to him. It is because he knows these things that he
says that my sending for father will be a declaration of war."
"Did he say that?" a little breathlessly.
"Yes, and I told him that it need not be so. But he would
not listen."
"And you are sure father will come?"
"I am sure. In a week or two he will be here."
Lady Anstruthers' lips shook, her eyes lifted themselves to
Betty's in a touchingly distressed appeal. Had her momentary
courage fled beyond recall? If so, that would be the worst
coming to the worst, indeed. Yet it was not ordinary fear
which expressed itself in her face, but a deeper piteousness, a
sudden hopeless pain, baffling because it seemed a new emotion,
or perhaps the upheaval of an old one long and carefully hidden.
"You will be brave?" Betty appealed to her. "You will
not give way, Rosy?"
"Yes, I must be brave--I am not ill now. I must not fail
you--I won't, Betty, but----"
She slipped upon the floor and dropped her face upon the
girl's knee, sobbing.
Betty bent over her, putting her arms round the heaving
shoulders, and pleading with her to speak. Was there something
more to be told, something she did not know?
"Yes, yes. Oh, I ought to have told you long ago--but I
have always been afraid and ashamed. It has made everything
so much worse. I was afraid you would not understand
and would think me wicked--wicked."
It was Betty who now lost a shade of colour. But she held
the slim little body closer and kissed her sister's cheek.
"What have you been afraid and ashamed to tell me? Do
not be ashamed any more. You must not hide anything, no
matter what it is, Rosy. I shall understand."
"I know I must not hide anything, now that all is over and
father is coming. It is--it is about Mr. Ffolliott."
"Mr. Ffolliott?" repeated Betty quite softly.
Lady Anstruthers' face, lifted with desperate effort, was
like a weeping child's. So much so in its tear-wet simpleness
and utter lack of any effort at concealment, that after one
quick look at it Betty's hastened pulses ceased to beat at
double-quick time.
"Tell me, dear," she almost whispered.
"Mr. Ffolliott himself does not know--and I could not help
it. He was kind to me when I was dying of unkindness. You
don't know what it was like to be drowning in loneliness and
misery, and to see one good hand stretched out to help you.
Before he went away--oh, Betty, I know it was awful because
I was married!--I began to care for him very much, and I
have cared for him ever since. I cannot stop myself caring,
even though I am terrified."
Betty kissed her again with a passion of tender pity. Poor
little, simple Rosy, too! The tide had crept around her also,
and had swept her off her feet, tossing her upon its surf like
a wisp of seaweed and bearing her each day farther from firm
shore.
"Do not be terrified," she said. "You need only be afraid
if--if you had told him."
"He will never know--never. Once in the middle of the
night," there was anguish in the delicate face, pure anguish,
"a strange loud cry wakened me, and it was I myself who
had cried out--because in my sleep it had come home to me
that the years would go on and on, and at last some day he
would die and go out of the world--and I should die and go
out of the world. And he would never know--even KNOW."
Betty's clasp of her loosened and she sat very still, looking
straight before her into some unseen place.
"Yes," she said involuntarily. "Yes, _I_ know--I know--I
know."
Lady Anstruthers fell back a little to gaze at her.
"YOU know? YOU know?" she breathed. "Betty?"
But Betty at first did not speak. Her lovely eyes dwelt on
the far-away place.
"Betty," whispered Rosy, "do you know what you have said?"
The lovely eyes turned slowly towards her, and the soft
corners of Betty's mouth deepened in a curious unsteadiness.
"Yes. I did not intend to say it. But it is true. _I_ know--
I know--I know. Do not ask me how."
Rosalie flung her arms round her waist and for a moment
hid her face.
"YOU! YOU!" she murmured, but stopped herself almost as
she uttered the exclamation. "I will not ask you," she said
when she spoke again. "But now I shall not be so ashamed.
You are a beauty and wonderful, and I am not; but if you
KNOW, that makes us almost the same. You will understand
why I broke down. It was because I could not bear to think
of what will happen. I shall be saved and taken home, but
Nigel will wreak revenge on HIM. And I shall be the shame
that is put upon him--only because he was kind--KIND. When
father comes it will all begin." She wrung her hands, becoming
almost hysterical.
"Hush," said Betty. "Hush! A man like that CANNOT
be hurt, even by a man like Nigel. There is a way out--
there IS. Oh, Rosy, we must BELIEVE it."
She soothed and caressed her and led her on to relieving her
long locked-up misery by speech. It was easy to see the ways
in which her feeling had made her life harder to bear. She
was as inexperienced as a girl, and had accused herself cruelly.
When Nigel had tormented her with evil, carefully chosen
taunts, she had felt half guilty and had coloured scarlet or
turned pale, afraid to meet his sneeringly smiling face. She
had tried to forget the kind voice, the kindly, understanding
eyes, and had blamed herself as a criminal because she could not.
"I had nothing else to remember--but unhappiness--and it
seemed as if I could not help but remember HIM," she said as
simply as the Rosy who had left New York at nineteen might
have said it. "I was afraid to trust myself to speak his name.
When Nigel made insulting speeches I could not answer him, and he
used to say that women who had adventures should train their
faces not to betray them every time they were looked at.
"Oh!" broke from Betty's lips, and she stood up on the
hearth and threw out her hands. "I wish that for one day
I might be a man--and your brother instead of your sister!"
"Why?"
Betty smiled strangely--a smile which was not amused--
which was perhaps not a smile at all. Her voice as she
answered was at once low and tense.
"Because, then I should know what to do. When a male creature
cannot be reached through manhood or decency or shame, there is
one way in which he can be punished. A man--a real man--should
take him by his throat and lash him with a whip--while others
look on--lash him until he howls aloud like a dog."
She had not expected to say it, but she had said it. Lady
Anstruthers looked at her fascinated, and then she covered her
face with her hands, huddling herself in a heap as she knelt
on the rug, looking singularly small and frail.
"Betty," she said presently, in a new, awful little voice,
"I--I will tell you something. I never thought I should dare
to tell anyone alive. I have shuddered at it myself. There
have been days--awful, helpless days, when I was sure there
was no hope for me in all the world--when deep down in my
soul I understood what women felt when they MURDERED people
--crept to them in their wicked sleep and STRUCK them again
--and again--and again. Like that!" She sat up suddenly,
as if she did not know what she was doing, and uncovering her
little ghastly face struck downward three fierce times at
nothingness--but as if it were not nothingness, and as if she
held something in her hand.
There was horror in it--Betty sprang at the hand and caught it.
"No! no!" she cried out. "Poor little Rosy! Darling
little Rosy! No! no! no!"
That instant Lady Anstruthers looked up at her shocked and
awake. She was Rosy again, and clung to her, holding to her
dress, piteous and panting.
"No! no!" she said. "When it came to me in the night--
it was always in the night--I used to get out of bed and pray
that it might never, never come again, and that I might be
forgiven--just forgiven. It was too horrible that I should
even UNDERSTAND it so well." A woeful, wry little smile twisted
her mouth. "I was not brave enough to have done it. I could
never have DONE it, Betty; but the thought was there--it was
there! I used to think it had made a black mark on my soul."
. . . . .
The letter took long to write. It led a consecutive story
up to the point where it culminated in a situation which
presented itself as no longer to be dealt with by means at hand.
Parts of the story previous letters had related, though some of
them it had not seemed absolutely necessary to relate in detail.
Now they must be made clear, and Betty made them so.
"Because you trusted me you made me trust myself," was
one of the things she wrote. "For some time I felt that it
was best to fight for my own hand without troubling you. I
hoped perhaps I might be able to lead things to a decorous sort
of issue. I saw that secretly Rosy hoped and prayed that it
might be possible. She gave up expecting happiness before she
was twenty, and mere decent peace would have seemed heaven
to her, if she could have been allowed sometimes to see those
she loved and longed for. Now that I must give up my hope
--which was perhaps a rather foolish one--and now that I
cannot remain at Stornham, she would have no defence at all
if she were left alone. Her condition would be more hopeless
than before, because Nigel would never forget that we had
tried to rescue her and had failed. If I were a man, or if I
were very much older, I need not be actually driven away, but
as it is I think that you must come and take the matter into
your own hands."
She had remained in her sister's room until long after
midnight, and by the time the American letter was completed and
sealed, a pale touch of dawning light was showing itself. She
rose, and going to the window drew the blind up and looked
out. The looking out made her open the window, and when
she had done so she stood feeling the almost unearthly freshness
of the morning about her. The mystery of the first faint
light was almost unearthly, too. Trees and shrubs were beginning
to take form and outline themselves against the still pallor
of the dawn. Before long the waking of the birds would begin
--a brief chirping note here and there breaking the silence and
warning the world with faint insistence that it had begun to
live again and must bestir itself. She had got out of her bed
sometimes on a summer morning to watch the beauty of it, to
see the flowers gradually reveal their colour to the eye, to hear
the warmly nesting things begin their joyous day. There were
fewer bird sounds now, and the garden beds were autumnal.
But how beautiful it all was! How wonderful life in such a
place might be if flowers and birds and sweep of sward, and
mass of stately, broad-branched trees, were parts of the home
one loved and which surely would in its own way love one in
return. But soon all this phase of life would be over. Rosalie,
once safe at home, would look back, remembering the place with
a shudder. As Ughtred grew older the passing of years would
dim miserable child memories, and when his inheritance fell
to him he might return to see it with happier eyes. She began
to picture to herself Rosy's voyage in the ship which would
carry her across the Atlantic to her mother and the scenes
connected in her mind only with a girl's happiness. Whatsoever
happened before it took place, the voyage would be made in the
end. And Rosalie would be like a creature in a dream--a
heavenly, unbelievable dream. Betty could imagine how she
would look wrapped up and sitting in her steamer chair, gazing
out with rapturous eyes upon the racing waves
"She will be happy," she thought. "But I shall not. No,
I shall not."
She drew in the morning air and unconsciously turned towards the
place where, across the rising and falling lands and behind the
trees, she knew the great white house stood far away, with
watchers' lights showing dimly behind the line of ballroom
windows.
"I do not know how such a thing could be! I do not know
how such a thing could be!" she said. "It COULD not." And
she lifted a high head, not even asking herself what remote sense
in her being so obstinately defied and threw down the glove to
Fate.
Sounds gain a curious distinctness and meaning in the hour
of the break of the dawn; in such an hour they seem even
more significant than sounds heard in the dead of night. When
she had gone to the window she had fancied that she heard
something in the corridor outside her door, but when she had
listened there had been only silence. Now there was sound
again--that of a softly moved slippered foot. She went to the
room's centre and waited. Yes, certainly something had stirred
in the passage. She went to the door itself. The dragging
step had hesitated--stopped. Could it be Rosalie who had
come to her for something. For one second her impulse was
to open the door herself; the next, she had changed her mind
with a sense of shock. Someone had actually touched the
handle and very delicately turned it. It was not pleasant to
stand looking at it and see it turn. She heard a low, evidently
unintentionally uttered exclamation, and she turned away, and
with no attempt at softening the sound of her footsteps walked
across the room, hot with passionate disgust. As well as if
she had flung the door open, she knew who stood outside. It
was Nigel Anstruthers, haggard and unseemly, with burnedout,
sleepless eyes and bitten lip.
Bad and mad as she had at last seen the situation to be, it
was uglier and more desperate than she could well know.
CHAPTER XLV
THE PASSING BELL
The following morning Sir Nigel did not appear at the
breakfast table. He breakfasted in his own room, and it be
came known throughout the household that he had suddenly
decided to go away, and his man was packing for the journey.
What the journey or the reason for its being taken happened
to be were things not explained to anyone but Lady
Anstruthers, at the door of whose dressing room he appeared
without warning, just as she was leaving it.
Rosalie started when she found herself confronting him. His
eyes looked hot and hollow with feverish sleeplessness.
"You look ill," she exclaimed involuntarily. "You look as
if you had not slept."
"Thank you. You always encourage a man. I am not in
the habit of sleeping much," he answered. "I am going away
for my health. It is as well you should know. I am going to
look up old Broadmorlands. I want to know exactly where
he is, in case it becomes necessary for me to see him. I also
require some trifling data connected with Ffolliott. If your
father is coming, it will be as well to be able to lay my hands
on things. You can explain to Betty. Good-morning." He
waited for no reply, but wheeled about and left her.
Betty herself wore a changed face when she came down. A
cloud had passed over her blooming, as clouds pass over a morning
sky and dim it. Rosalie asked herself if she had not noticed
something like this before. She began to think she had. Yes,
she was sure that at intervals there had been moments when
she had glanced at the brilliant face with an uneasy and yet
half-unrealising sense of looking at a glowing light temporarily
waning. The feeling had been unrealisable, because it was
not to be explained. Betty was never ill, she was never lowspirited,
she was never out of humour or afraid of things--that
was why it was so wonderful to live with her. But--yes, it
was true--there had been days when the strong, fine light of
her had waned. Lady Anstruthers' comprehension of it arose
now from her memory of the look she had seen the night
before in the eyes which suddenly had gazed straight before her,
as into an unknown place.
"Yes, I know--I know--I know!" And the tone in the
girl's voice had been one Rosy had not heard before.
Slight wonder--if you KNEW--at any outward change which
showed itself, though in your own most desperate despite. It
would be so even with Betty, who, in her sister's eyes, was
unlike any other creature. But perhaps it would be better to
make no comment. To make comment would be almost like
asking the question she had been forbidden to ask.
While the servants were in the room during breakfast they
talked of common things, resorting even to the weather and
the news of the village. Afterwards they passed into the morning
room together, and Betty put her arm around Rosalie and
kissed her.
"Nigel has suddenly gone away, I hear," she said. "Do you
know where he has gone?"
"He came to my dressing-room to tell me." Betty felt the
whole slim body stiffen itself with a determination to seem
calm. "He said he was going to find out where the old Duke
of Broadmorlands was staying at present."
"There is some forethought in that," was Betty's answer. "He is
not on such terms with the Duke that he can expect to be received
as a casual visitor. It will require apt contrivance to arrange
an interview. I wonder if he will be able to accomplish it?"
"Yes, he will," said Lady Anstruthers. "I think he can
always contrive things like that." She hesitated a moment, and
then added: "He said also that he wished to find out certain
things about Mr. Ffolliott--`trifling data,' he called it--that
he might be able to lay his hands on things if father came.
He told me to explain to you."
"That was intended for a taunt--but it's a warning," Betty
said, thinking the thing over. "We are rather like ladies left
alone to defend a besieged castle. He wished us to feel that."
She tightened her enclosing arm. "But we stand together--
together. We shall not fail each other. We can face siege
until father comes."
"You wrote to him last night?"
"A long letter, which I wish him to receive before he sails.
He might decide to act upon it before leaving New York, to
advise with some legal authority he knows and trusts, to prepare
our mother in some way--to do some wise thing we cannot
foresee the value of. He has known the outline of the story,
but not exact details--particularly recent ones. I have held
back nothing it was necessary he should know. I am going
out to post the letter myself. I shall send a cable asking him
to prepare to come to us after he has reflected on what I
have written."
Rosalie was very quiet, but when, having left the room to
prepare to go to the village, Betty came back to say a last
word, her sister came to her and laid her hand on her arm.
"I have been so weak and trodden upon for years that it
would not be natural for you to quite trust me," she said. "But
I won't fail you, Betty--I won't."
The winter was drawing in, the last autumn days were
short and often grey and dreary; the wind had swept the
leaves from the trees and scattered them over park lands and
lanes, where they lay a mellow-hued, rustling carpet, shifting
with each chill breeze that blew. The berried briony garlands
clung to the bared hedges, and here and there flared scarlet,
still holding their red defiantly until hard frosts should come
to shrivel and blacken them. The rare hours of sunshine were
amber hours instead of golden.
As she passed through the park gate Betty was thinking of
the first morning on which she had walked down the village
street between the irregular rows of red-tiled cottages with the
ragged little enclosing gardens. Then the air and sunshine had
been of the just awakening spring, now the sky was brightly
cold, and through the small-paned windows she caught glimpses
of fireglow. A bent old man walking very slowly, leaning upon
two sticks, had a red-brown woollen muffler wrapped round his
neck. Seeing her, he stopped and shuffled the two sticks into
one hand that he might leave the other free to touch his wrinkled
forehead stiffly, his face stretching into a slow smile as
she stopped to speak to him.
"Good-morning, Marlow," he said. "How is the rheumatism to-day?"
He was a deaf old man, whose conversation was carried on
principally by guesswork, and it was easy for him to gather that
when her ladyship's handsome young sister had given him
greeting she had not forgotten to inquire respecting the
"rheumatics," which formed the greater part of existence.
"Mornin', miss--mornin'," he answered in the high, cracked
voice of rural ancientry. "Winter be nigh, an' they damp
days be full of rheumatiz. 'T'int easy to get about on my old
legs, but I be main thankful for they warm things you sent,
miss. This 'ere," fumbling at his red-brown muffler proudly,
" 'tis a comfort on windy days, so 'tis, and warmth be a good
thing to a man when he be goin' down hill in years."
"All of you who are not able to earn your own fires shall be
warm this winter," her ladyship's handsome sister said, speaking
closer to his ear. "You shall all be warm. Don't be afraid of
the cold days coming."
He shuffled his sticks and touched his forehead again,
looking up at her admiringly and chuckling.
" 'T'will be a new tale for Stornham village," he cackled.
" 'T'will be a new tale. Thank ye, miss. Thank ye."
As she nodded smilingly and passed on, she heard him cackling
still under his breath as he hobbled on his slow way,
comforted and elate. How almost shamefully easy it was; a few
loads of coal and faggots here and there, a few blankets and
warm garments whose cost counted for so little when one's
hands were full, could change a gruesome village winter into
a season during which labour-stiffened and broken old things,
closing their cottage doors, could draw their chairs round the
hearth and hover luxuriously over the red glow, which in its
comforting fashion of seeming to have understanding of the
dull dreams in old eyes, was more to be loved than any human
friend.
But she had not needed her passing speech with Marlow to
stimulate realisation of how much she had learned to care for
the mere living among these people, to whom she seemed to have
begun to belong, and whose comfortably lighting faces when
they met her showed that they knew her to be one who might
be turned to in any hour of trouble or dismay. The centuries
which had trained them to depend upon their "betters" had
taught the slowest of them to judge with keen sight those who
were to be trusted, not alone as power and wealth holders,
but as creatures humanly upright and merciful with their kind.
"Workin' folk allus knows gentry," old Doby had once
shrilled to her. "Gentry's gentry, an' us knows 'em wheresoever
they be. Better'n they know theirselves. So us do!"
Yes, they knew. And though they accepted many things as
being merely their natural rights, they gave an unsentimental
affection and appreciation in return. The patriarchal note in
the life was lovable to her. Each creature she passed was a
sort of friend who seemed almost of her own blood. It had
come to that. This particular existence was more satisfying
to her than any other, more heart-filling and warmly complete.
"Though I am only an impostor," she thought; "I was born
in Fifth Avenue; yet since I have known this I shall be quite
happy in no other place than an English village, with a Norman
church tower looking down upon it and rows of little
gardens with spears of white and blue lupins and Canterbury
bells standing guard before cottage doors."
And Rosalie--on the evening of that first strange day when
she had come upon her piteous figure among the heather under
the trees near the lake--Rosalie had held her arm with a hot
little hand and had said feverishly:
"If I could hear the roar of Broadway again! Do the stages
rattle as they used to, Betty? I can't help hoping that they
do."
She carried her letter to the post and stopped to talk a few
minutes with the postmaster, who transacted his official
business in a small shop where sides of bacon and hams hung
suspended from the ceiling, while groceries, flannels, dress
prints, and glass bottles of sweet stuff filled the shelves.
"Mr. Tewson's" was the central point of Stornham in a commercial
sense. The establishment had also certain social qualifications.
Mr. Tewson knew the secrets of all hearts within the village
radius, also the secrets of all constitutions. He knew by some
occult means who had been "taken bad," or who had "taken
a turn," and was aware at once when anyone was "sinkin'
fast." With such differences of opinion as occasionally arose
between the vicar and his churchwardens he was immediately
familiar. The history of the fever among the hop pickers at
Dunstan village he had been able to relate in detail from the
moment of its outbreak. It was he who had first dramatically
revealed the truth of the action Miss Vanderpoel had taken in
the matter, which revelation had aroused such enthusiasm as
had filled The Clock Inn to overflowing and given an impetus
to the sale of beer. Tread, it was said, had even made a speech
which he had ended with vague but excellent intentions by
proposing the joint healths of her ladyship's sister and the
"President of America." Mr. Tewson was always glad to see
Miss Vanderpoel cross his threshold. This was not alone
because she represented the custom of the Court, which since her
arrival had meant large regular orders and large bills promptly
paid, but that she brought with her an exotic atmosphere of
interest and excitement.
He had mentioned to friends that somehow a talk with her
made him feel "set up for the day." Betty was not at all
sure that he did not prepare and hoard up choice remarks or
bits of information as openings to conversation.
This morning he had thrilling news for her and began with
it at once.
"Dr. Fenwick at Stornham is very low, miss," he said.
"He's very low, you'll be sorry to hear. The worry about
the fever upset him terrible and his bronchitis took him bad.
He's an old man, you know."
Miss Vanderpoel was very sorry to hear it. It was quite in
the natural order of things that she should ask other questions
about Dunstan village and the Mount, and she asked several.
The fever was dying out and pale convalescents were sometimes
seen in the village or strolling about the park. His lordship
was taking care of the people and doing his best for them
until they should be strong enough to return to their homes.
"But he's very strict about making it plain that it's you,
miss, they have to thank for what he does."
"That is not quite just," said Miss Vanderpoel. "He and
Mr. Penzance fought on the field. I only supplied some of
the ammunition."
"The county doesn't think of him as it did even a year
ago, miss," said Tewson rather smugly. "He was very ill
thought of then among the gentry. It's wonderful the change
that's come about. If he should fall ill there'll be a deal of
sympathy."
"I hope there is no question of his falling ill," said Miss
Vanderpoel.
Mr. Tewson lowered his voice confidentially. This was
really his most valuable item of news.
"Well, miss," he admitted, "I have heard that he's been
looking very bad for a good bit, and it was told me quite
private, because the doctors and the vicar don't want the people
to be upset by hearing it--that for a week he's not been well
enough to make his rounds."
"Oh!" The exclamation was a faint one, but it was an
exclamation. "I hope that means nothing really serious,"
Miss Vanderpoel added. "Everyone will hope so."
"Yes, miss," said Mr. Tewson, deftly twisting the string
round the package he was tying up for her. "A sad reward it
would be if he lost his life after doing all he has done. A
sad reward! But there'd be a good deal of sympathy."
The small package contained trifles of sewing and knitting
materials she was going to take to Mrs. Welden, and she held
out her hand for it. She knew she did not smile quite naturally
as she said her good-morning to Tewson. She went
out into the pale amber sunshine and stood a few moments,
glad to find herself bathed in it again. She suddenly needed
air and light. "A sad reward!" Sometimes people were not
rewarded. Brave men were shot dead on the battlefield when
they were doing brave things; brave physicians and nurses
died of the plagues they faithfully wrestled with. Here were
dread and pain confronting her--Betty Vanderpoel--and while
almost everyone else seemed to have faced them, she was wholly
unused to their appalling clutch. What a life hers had been--
that in looking back over it she should realise that she had
never been touched by anything like this before! There came
back to her the look of almost awed wonder in G. Selden's
honest eyes when he said: "What it must be to be you--just
YOU!" He had been thinking only of the millions and of the
freedom from all everyday anxieties the millions gave. She
smiled faintly as the thought crossed her brain. The millions!
The rolling up of them year by year, because millions were
breeders! The newspaper stories of them--the wonder at and
belief in their power! It was all going on just as before, and
yet here stood a Vanderpoel in an English village street, of no
more worth as far as power to aid herself went than Joe Buttle's
girl with the thick waist and round red cheeks. Jenny
Buttle would have believed that her ladyship's rich American
sister could do anything she chose, open any door, command
any presence, sweep aside any obstacle with a wave of her hand.
But of the two, Jenny Buttle's path would have laid straighter
before her. If she had had "a young man" who had fallen
ill she would have been free if his mother had cherished no
objection to their "walking out"--to spend all her spare
hours in his cottage, making gruel and poultices, crying until
her nose and eyes were red, and pouring forth her hopes and
fears to any neighbour who came in or out or hung over the
dividing garden hedge. If the patient died, the deeper her
mourning and the louder her sobs at his funeral the more
respectable and deserving of sympathy and admiration would
Jenny Buttle have been counted. Her ladyship's rich American
sister had no "young man"; she had not at any time been
asked to "walk out." Even in the dark days of the fever, each
of which had carried thought and action of hers to the scene
of trouble, there had reigned unbroken silence, except for the
vicar's notes of warm and appreciative gratitude.
"You are very obstinate, Fergus," Mr. Penzance had said.
And Mount Dunstan had shaken his head fiercely and answered:
"Don't speak to me about it. Only obstinacy will save me
from behaving like--other blackguards."
Mr. Penzance, carefully polishing his eyeglasses as he
watched him, was not sparing in his comment.
"That is pure folly," he said, "pure bull-necked, stubborn
folly, charging with its head down. Before it has done with
you it will have made you suffer quite enough."
"Be sure of that," Mount Dunstan had said, setting his
teeth, as he sat in his chair clasping his hands behind his head
and glowering into space.
Mr. Penzance quietly, speculatively, looked him over, and
reflected aloud--or, so it sounded.
"It is a big-boned and big-muscled characteristic, but there
are things which are stronger. Some one minute will arrive--
just one minute--which will be stronger. One of those moments
when the mysteries of the universe are at work."
"Don't speak to me like that, I tell you!" Mount Dunstan
broke out passionately. And he sprang up and marched out of
the room like an angry man.
Miss Vanderpoel did not go to Mrs. Welden's cottage at
once, but walked past its door down the lane, where there
were no more cottages, but only hedges and fields on either side
of her. "Not well enough to make his rounds" might mean
much or little. It might mean a temporary breakdown from
overfatigue or a sickening for deadly illness. She looked at a
group of cropping sheep in a field and at a flock of rooks
which had just alighted near it with cawing and flapping of
wings. She kept her eyes on them merely to steady herself.
The thoughts she had brought out with her had grown heavier
and were horribly difficult to control. One must not allow
one's self to believe the worst will come--one must not allow it.
She always held this rule before herself, and now she was not
holding it steadily. There was nothing to do. She could write
a mere note of inquiry to Mr. Penzance, but that was all. She
could only walk up and down the lanes and think--whether he
lay dying or not. She could do nothing, even if a day came
when she knew that a pit had been dug in the clay and he had
been lowered into it with creaking ropes, and the clods shovelled
back upon him where he lay still--never having told her that
he was glad that her being had turned to him and her heart cried
aloud his name. She recalled with curious distinctness the
effect of the steady toll of the church bell--the "passing bell."
She could hear it as she had heard it the first time it fell
upon her ear, and she had inquired what it meant. Why did
they call it the "passing bell"? All had passed before it began
to toll--all had passed. If it tolled at Dunstan and the pit
was dug in the churchyard before her father came, would he
see, the moment they met, that something had befallen her--that
the Betty he had known was changed--gone? Yes, he would
see. Affection such as his always saw. Then he would sit alone
with her in some quiet room and talk to her, and she would
tell him the strange thing that had happened. He would
understand--perhaps better than she.
She stopped abruptly in her walk and stood still. The hand
holding her package was quite cold. This was what one must
not allow one's self. But how the thoughts had raced through
her brain! She turned and hastened her steps towards Mrs.
Welden's cottage.
In Mrs. Welden's tiny back yard there stood a "coal
lodge" suited to the size of the domicile and already stacked
with a full winter's supply of coal. Therefore the well-polished
and cleanly little grate in the living-room was bright with fire.
Old Doby, who had tottered round the corner to pay his fellow
gossip a visit, was sitting by it, and old Mrs. Welden, clean as
to cap and apron and small purple shoulder shawl, had evidently
been allaying his natural anxiety as to the conduct of
foreign sovereigns by reading in a loud voice the "print"
under the pictures in an illustrated paper.
This occupation had, however, been interrupted a few
moments before Miss Vanderpoel's arrival. Mrs. Bester, the
neighbour in the next cottage, had stepped in with her youngest
on her hip and was talking breathlessly. She paused to drop
her curtsy as Betty entered, and old Doby stood up and made
his salute with a trembling hand
"She'll know," he said. "Gentry knows the ins an' outs
of gentry fust. She'll know the rights."
"What has happened?"
Mrs. Bester unexpectedly burst into tears. There was an
element in the female villagers' temperament which Betty had
found was frequently unexpected in its breaking forth.
"He's down, miss," she said. "He's down with it crool
bad. There'll be no savin' of him--none."
Betty laid her package of sewing cotton and knitting wool
quietly on the blue and white checked tablecloth.
"Who--is he?" she asked.
"His lordship--and him just saved all Dunstan parish from
death--to go like this!"
In Stornham village and in all others of the neighbourhood
the feminine attitude towards Mount Dunstan had been one
of strongly emotional admiration. The thwarted female longing
for romance--the desire for drama and a hero had been
fed by him. A fine, big young man, one that had been "spoke
ill of" and regarded as an outcast, had suddenly turned the
tables on fortune and made himself the central figure of the
county, the talk of gentry in their grand houses, of cottage
women on their doorsteps, and labourers stopping to speak to
each other by the roadside. Magic stories had been told of
him, beflowered with dramatic detail. No incident could have
been related to his credit which would not have been believed
and improved upon. Shut up in his village working among his
people and unseen by outsiders, he had become a popular idol.
Any scrap of news of him--any rumour, true or untrue, was
seized upon and excitedly spread abroad. Therefore Mrs. Bester
wept as she talked, and, if the truth must be told, enjoyed the
situation. She was the first to tell the story to her ladyship's
sister herself, as well as to Mrs. Welden and old Doby.
"It's Tom as brought it in," she said. "He's my brother,
miss, an' he's one of the ringers. He heard it from Jem
Wesgate, an' he heard it at Toomy's farm. They've been
keepin' it hid at the Mount because the people that's ill hangs
on his lordship so that the doctors daren't let them know the
truth. They've been told he had to go to London an' may come
back any day. What Tom was sayin', miss, was that we'd
all know when it was over, for we'd hear the church bell toll
here same as it'd toll at Dunstan, because they ringers have
talked it over an' they're goin' to talk it over to-day with the
other parishes--Yangford an' Meltham an' Dunholm an' them.
Tom says Stornham ringers met just now at The Clock an' said
that for a man that's stood by labouring folk like he has, toll
they will, an' so ought the other parishes, same as if he was
royalty, for he's made himself nearer. They'll toll the minute
they hear it, miss. Lord help us!" with a fresh outburst of
crying. "It don't seem like it's fair as it should be. When
we hear the bell toll, miss----"
"Don't!" said her ladyship's handsome sister suddenly.
"Please don't say it again."
She sat down by the table, and resting her elbows on the
blue and white checked cloth, covered her face with her hands.
She did not speak at all. In this tiny room, with these two
old souls who loved her, she need not explain. She sat quite
still, and Mrs. Welden after looking at her for a few seconds
was prompted by some sublimely simple intuition, and gently
sidled Mrs. Bester and her youngest into the little kitchen,
where the copper was.
"Her helpin' him like she did, makes it come near," she
whispered. "Dessay it seems as if he was a'most like a
relation."
Old Doby sat and looked at his goddess. In his slowly
moving old brain stirred far-off memories like long-dead things
striving to come to life. He did not know what they were, but
they wakened his dim eyes to a new seeing of the slim young
shape leaning a little forward, the soft cloud of hair, the fair
beauty of the cheek. He had not seen anything like it in his
youth, but--it was Youth itself, and so was that which the
ringers were so soon to toll for; and for some remote and
unformed reason, to his scores of years they were pitiful and
should be cheered. He bent forward himself and put out his
ancient, veined and knotted, gnarled and trembling hand, to
timorously touch the arm of her he worshipped and adored.
"God bless ye!" he said, his high, cracked voice even more
shrill and thin than usual. "God bless ye!" And as she let
her hands slip down, and, turning, gently looked at him, he
nodded to her speakingly, because out of the dimness of his
being, some part of Nature's working had strangely answered
and understood.
CHAPTER XLVI
LISTENING
On her way back to the Court her eyes saw only the white
road before her feet as she walked. She did not lift them
until she found herself passing the lych-gate at the entrance
to the churchyard. Then suddenly she looked up at the square
grey stone tower where the bells hung, and from which they
called the village to church, or chimed for weddings--or gave
slowly forth to the silent air one heavy, regular stroke after
another. She looked and shuddered, and spoke aloud with a
curious, passionate imploring, like a child's.
"Oh, don't toll! Don't toll! You must not! You
cannot!" Terror had sprung upon her, and her heart was being
torn in two in her breast. That was surely what it seemed
like--this agonising ache of fear. Now from hour to hour she
would be waiting and listening to each sound borne on the
air. Her thought would be a possession she could not escape.
When she spoke or was spoken to, she would be listening--
when she was silent every echo would hold terror, when she
slept--if sleep should come to her--her hearing would be
awake, and she would be listening--listening even then. It
was not Betty Vanderpoel who was walking along the white
road, but another creature--a girl whose brain was full of
abnormal thought, and whose whole being made passionate
outcry against the thing which was being slowly forced upon
her. If the bell tolled--suddenly, the whole world would be
swept clean of life--empty and clean. If the bell tolled.
Before the entrance of the Court she saw, as she approached
it, the vicarage pony carriage, standing as it had stood on the
day she had returned from her walk on the marshes. She felt
it quite natural that it should be there. Mrs. Brent always
seized upon any fragment of news, and having seized on something
now, she had not been able to resist the excitement of
bringing it to Lady Anstruthers and her sister.
She was in the drawing-room with Rosalie, and was full of
her subject and the emotion suitable to the occasion. She had
even attained a certain modified dampness of handkerchief.
Rosalie's handkerchief, however, was not damp. She had not
even attempted to use it, but sat still, her eyes brimming with
tears, which, when she saw Betty, brimmed over and slipped
helplessly down her cheeks.
"Betty!" she exclaimed, and got up and went towards her,
"I believe you have heard."
"In the village, I heard something--yes," Betty answered,
and after giving greeting to Mrs. Brent, she led her sister
back to her chair, and sat near her.
This--the thought leaped upon her--was the kind of situation
she must be prepared to be equal to. In the presence of
these who knew nothing, she must bear herself as if there was
nothing to be known. No one but herself had the slightest
knowledge of what the past months had brought to her--no
one in the world. If the bell tolled, no one in the world but
her father ever would know. She had no excuse for emotion.
None had been given to her. The kind of thing it was proper
that she should say and do now, in the presence of Mrs. Brent,
it would be proper and decent that she should say and do in
all other cases. She must comport herself as Betty Vanderpoel
would if she were moved only by ordinary human sympathy
and regret.
"We must remember that we have only excited rumour to
depend upon," she said. "Lord Mount Dunstan has kept his
village under almost military law. He has put it into
quarantine. No one is allowed to leave it, so there can be no
direct source of information. One cannot be sure of the entire
truth of what one hears. Often it is exaggerated cottage talk.
The whole neighbourhood is wrought up to a fever heat of
excited sympathy. And villagers like the drama of things."
Mrs. Brent looked at her admiringly, it being her fixed
habit to admire Miss Vanderpoel, and all such as Providence
had set above her.
"Oh, how wise you are, Miss Vanderpoel!" she exclaimed,
even devoutly. "It is so nice of you to be calm and logical
when everybody else is so upset. You are quite right about
villagers enjoying the dramatic side of troubles. They always
do. And perhaps things are not so bad as they say. I ought
not to have let myself believe the worst. But I quite broke
down under the ringers--I was so touched."
"The ringers?" faltered Lady Anstruthers
"The leader came to the vicar to tell him they wanted
permission to toll--if they heard tolling at Dunstan. Weaver's
family lives within hearing of Dunstan church bells, and one
of his boys is to run across the fields and bring the news to
Stornham. And it was most touching, Miss Vanderpoel.
They feel, in their rustic way, that Lord Mount Dunstan has
not been treated fairly in the past. And now he seems to them
a hero and a martyr--or like a great soldier who has died
fighting."
"Who MAY die fighting," broke from Miss Vanderpoel sharply.
"Who--who may----" Mrs. Brent corrected herself,
"though Heaven grant he will not. But it was the ringers
who made me feel as if all really was over. Thank you, Miss
Vanderpoel, thank you for being so practical and--and cool."
"It WAS touching," said Lady Anstruthers, her eyes brimming over
again. "And what the villagers feel is true. It goes
to one's heart," in a little outburst. "People have been
unkind to him! And he has been lonely in that great empty place
--he has been lonely. And if he is dying to-day, he is lonely
even as he dies--even as he dies."
Betty drew a deep breath. For one moment there seemed to
rise before her vision of a huge room, whose stately size made
its bareness a more desolate thing. And Mr. Penzance bent
low over the bed. She tore her thought away from it.
"No! No!" she cried out in low, passionate protest. "There will
be love and yearning all about him everywhere. The villagers who
are waiting--the poor things he has worked for--the very ringers
themselves, are all pouring forth the same thoughts. He will
feel even ours--ours too! His soul cannot be lonely."
A few minutes earlier, Mrs. Brent had been saying to
herself inwardly: "She has not much heart after all, you know."
Now she looked at her in amazement.
The blue bells were under water in truth--drenched and
drowned. And yet as the girl stood up before her, she looked
taller--more the magnificent Miss Vanderpoel than ever--
though she expressed a new meaning.
"There is one thing the villagers can do for him," she said.
"One thing we can all do. The bell has not tolled yet. There is
a service for those who are--in peril. If the vicar will
call the people to the church, we can all kneel down there--
and ask to be heard. The vicar will do that I am sure--and the
people will join him with all their hearts."
Mrs. Brent was overwhelmed.
"Dear, dear, Miss Vanderpoel!" she exclaimed. "THAT is touching,
indeed it is! And so right and so proper. I will drive back to
the village at once. The vicar's distress is as great
as mine. You think of everything. The service for the sick
and dying. How right--how right!"
With a sense of an increase of value in herself, the vicar,
and the vicarage, she hastened back to the pony carriage, but
in the hall she seized Betty's hand emotionally.
"I cannot tell you how much I am touched by this," she murmured.
"I did not know you were--were a religious girl, my dear."
Betty answered with grave politeness.
"In times of great pain and terror," she said, "I think almost
everybody is religious--a little. If that is the right word."
There was no ringing of the ordinary call to service. In
less than an hour's time people began to come out of their
cottages and wend their way towards the church. No one had
put on his or her Sunday clothes. The women had hastily
rolled down their sleeves, thrown off their aprons, and donned
everyday bonnets and shawls. The men were in their corduroys,
as they had come in from the fields, and the children wore
their pinafores. As if by magic, the news had flown from house
to house, and each one who had heard it had left his or her
work without a moment's hesitation. They said but little
as they made their way to the church. Betty, walking with
her sister, was struck by the fact that there were more of
them than formed the usual Sunday morning congregation.
They were doing no perfunctory duty. The men's faces were
heavily moved, most of the women wiped their eyes at intervals,
and the children looked awed. There was a suggestion
of hurried movement in the step of each--as if no time must
be lost--as if they must begin their appeal at once. Betty
saw old Doby tottering along stiffly, with his granddaughter
and Mrs. Welden on either side of him. Marlow, on his
two sticks, was to be seen moving slowly, but steadily.
Within the ancient stone walls, stiff old knees bent
themselves with care, and faces were covered devoutly by workhardened
hands. As she passed through the churchyard Betty
knew that eyes followed her affectionately, and that the touching
of foreheads and dropping of curtsies expressed a special
sympathy. In each mind she was connected with the man
they came to pray for--with the work he had done--with the
danger he was in. It was vaguely felt that if his life ended, a
bereavement would have fallen upon her. This the girl knew.
The vicar lifted his bowed head and began his service.
Every man, woman and child before him responded aloud
and with a curious fervour--not in decorous fear of seeming to
thrust themselves before the throne, making too much of their
petitions, in the presence of the gentry. Here and there sobs
were to be heard. Lady Anstruthers followed the service
timorously and with tears. But Betty, kneeling at her side, by
the round table in the centre of the great square Stornham pew,
which was like a room, bowed her head upon her folded arms,
and prayed her own intense, insistent prayer.
"God in Heaven!" was her inward cry. "God of all the
worlds! Do not let him die. `If ye ask anything in my name
that I will do.' Christ said it. In the name of Jesus of
Nazareth--do not let him die! All the worlds are yours--all
the power--listen to us--listen to us. Lord, I believe--help
thou my unbelief. If this terror robs me of faith, and I pray
madly--forgive, forgive me. Do not count it against me as
sin. You made him. He has suffered and been alone. It is
not time--it is not time yet for him to go. He has known no
joy and no bright thing. Do not let him go out of the warm
world like a blind man. Do not let him die. Perhaps this is
not prayer, but raging. Forgive--forgive! All power is gone
from me. God of the worlds, and the great winds, and the
myriad stars--do not let him die!"
She knew her thoughts were wild, but their torrent bore her
with them into a strange, great silence. She did not hear the
vicar's words, or the responses of the people. She was not
within the grey stone walls. She had been drawn away as into
the darkness and stillness of the night, and no soul but her
own seemed near. Through the stillness and the dark her
praying seemed to call and echo, clamouring again and again.
It must reach Something--it must be heard, because she cried
so loud, though to the human beings about her she seemed
kneeling in silence. She went on and on, repeating her words,
changing them, ending and beginning again, pouring forth a
flood of appeal. She thought later that the flood must have
been at its highest tide when, singularly, it was stemmed.
Without warning, a wave of awe passed over her which
strangely silenced her--and left her bowed and kneeling, but
crying out no more. The darkness had become still, even as
it had not been still before. Suddenly she cowered as she knelt
and held her breath. Something had drawn a little near.
No thoughts--no words--no cries were needed as the great
stillness grew and spread, and folded her being within it.
She waited--only waited. She did not know how long a time
passed before she felt herself drawn back from the silent and
shadowy places--awakening, as it were, to the sounds in the
church.
"Our Father," she began to say, as simply as a child.
"Our Father who art in Heaven--hallowed be thy name."
There was a stirring among the congregation, and sounds of
feet, as the people began to move down the aisle in reverent
slowness. She caught again the occasional sound of a subdued
sob. Rosalie gently touched her, and she rose, following her
out of the big pew and passing down the aisle after the
villagers.
Outside the entrance the people waited as if they wanted
to see her again. Foreheads were touched as before, and eyes
followed her. She was to the general mind the centre of the
drama, and "the A'mighty" would do well to hear her. She
had been doing his work for him "same as his lordship."
They did not expect her to smile at such a time, when she
returned their greetings, and she did not, but they said
afterwards, in their cottages, that "trouble or not she was a
wonder for looks, that she was--Miss Vanderpoel."
Rosalie slipped a hand through her arm, and they walked home
together, very close to each other. Now and then there was a
questioning in Rosy's look. But neither of them spoke once.
On an oak table in the hall a letter from Mr. Penzance
was lying. It was brief, hurried, and anxious. The rumour
that Mount Dunstan had been ailing was true, and that they
had felt they must conceal the matter from the villagers was
true also. For some baffling reason the fever had not
absolutely declared itself, but the young doctors were beset by
grave forebodings. In such cases the most serious symptoms
might suddenly develop. One never knew. Mr. Penzance
was evidently torn by fears which he desperately strove to
suppress. But Betty could see the anguish on his fine old face,
and between the lines she read dread and warning not put
into words. She believed that, fearing the worst, he felt he
must prepare her mind.
"He has lived under a great strain for months," he ended.
"It began long before the outbreak of the fever. I am not
strong under my sense of the cruelty of things--and I have
never loved him as I love him to-day."
Betty took the letter to her room, and read it two or three
times. Because she had asked intelligent questions of the
medical authority she had consulted on her visit to London, she
knew something of the fever and its habits. Even her unclerical
knowledge was such as it was not well to reflect upon. She
refolded the letter and laid it aside.
"I must not think. I must do something. It may prevent
my listening," she said aloud to the silence of her room.
She cast her eyes about her as if in search. Upon her
desk lay a notebook. She took it up and opened it. It contained
lists of plants, of flower seeds, of bulbs, and shrubs.
Each list was headed with an explanatory note.
"Yes, this will do," she said. "I will go and talk to Kedgers."
Kedgers and every man under him had been at the service,
but they had returned to their respective duties. Kedgers,
giving directions to some under gardeners who were clearing
flower beds and preparing them for their winter rest, turned
to meet her as she approached. To Kedgers the sight of her
coming towards him on a garden path was a joyful thing.
He had done wonders, it is true, but if she had not stood by
his side with inspiration as well as confidence, he knew that
things might have "come out different."
"You was born a gardener, miss--born one," he had said months
ago.
It was the time when flower beds must be planned for the
coming year. Her notebook was filled with memoranda of
the things they must talk about.
It was good, normal, healthy work to do. The scent of the
rich, damp, upturned mould was a good thing to inhale. They
walked from one end to another, stood before clumps of shrubs,
and studied bits of wall. Here a mass of blue might grow, here
low things of white and pale yellow. A quickly-climbing
rose would hang sheets of bloom over this dead tree. This
sheltered wall would hold warmth for a Marechal Niel.
"You must take care of it all--even if I am not here next
year," Miss Vanderpoel said.
Kedgers' absorbed face changed.
"Not here, miss," he exclaimed. "You not here! Things
wouldn't grow, miss." He checked himself, his weathertoughened
skin reddening because he was afraid he had
perhaps taken a liberty. And then moving his hat uneasily on
his head, he took another. "But it's true enough," looking
down on the gravel walk, "we--we couldn't expect to keep you."
She did not look as if she had noticed the liberty, but she did
not look quite like herself, Kedgers thought. If she had been
another young lady, and but for his established feeling that
she was somehow immune from all ills, he would have thought
she had a headache, or was low in her mind.
She spent an hour or two with him, and together they
planned for the changing seasons of the year to come. How she
could keep her mind on a thing, and what a head she had for
planning, and what an eye for colour! But yes--there was
something a bit wrong somehow. Now and then she would
stop and stand still for a moment, and suddenly it struck
Kedgers that she looked as if she were listening.
"Did you think you heard something, miss?" he asked her
once when she paused and wore this look.
"No," she answered, "no." And drew him on quickly--
almost as if she did not want him to hear what she had seemed
listening for.
When she left him and went back to the house, all the
loveliness of spring, summer and autumn had been thought out
and provided for. Kedgers stood on the path and looked after
her until she passed through the terrace door. He chewed his
lip uneasily. Then he remembered something and felt a bit
relieved. It was the service he remembered.
"Ah! it's that that's upset her--and it's natural, seeing how
she's helped him and Dunstan village. It's only natural."
He chewed his lip again, and nodded his head in odd reflection.
"Ay! Ay!" he summed her up. "She's a great lady
that--she's a great lady--same as if she'd been born in a
civilised land."
During the rest of the day the look of question in Rosalie's
eyes changed in its nature. When her sister was near her
she found herself glancing at her with a new feeling. It was
a growing feeling, which gradually became--anxiousness.
Betty presented to her the aspect of one withdrawn into some
remote space. She was not living this day as her days were
usually lived. She did not sit still or stroll about the gardens
quietly. The consecutiveness of her action seemed
broken. She did one thing after another, as if she must fill
each moment. This was not her Betty. Lady Anstruthers
watched and thought until, in the end, a new pained fear
began to creep slowly into her mind, and make her feel as
if she were slightly trembling though her hands did not shake.
She did not dare to allow herself to think the thing she knew
she was on the brink of thinking. She thrust it away from
her, and tried not to think at all. Her Betty--her splendid
Betty, whom nothing could hurt--who could not be touched
by any awful thing--her dear Betty!
In the afternoon she saw her write notes steadily for an
hour, then she went out into the stables and visited the horses,
talked to the coachman and to her own groom. She was
very kind to a village boy who had been recently taken on as
an additional assistant in the stable, and who was rather
frightened and shy. She knew his mother, who had a large family,
and she had, indeed, given the boy his place that he might be
trained under the great Mr. Buckham, who was coachman
and head of the stables. She said encouraging things which
quite cheered him, and she spoke privately to Mr. Buckham
about him. Then she walked in the park a little, but not for
long. When she came back Rosalie was waiting for her.
"I want to take a long drive," she said. "I feel restless.
Will you come with me, Betty?" Yes, she would go with
her, so Buckham brought the landau with its pair of big
horses, and they rolled down the avenue, and into the smooth,
white high road. He took them far--past the great marshes,
between miles of bared hedges, past farms and scattered
cottages. Sometimes he turned into lanes, where the hedges were
closer to each other, and where, here and there, they caught
sight of new points of view between trees. Betty was glad to
feel Rosy's slim body near her side, and she was conscious
that it gradually seemed to draw closer and closer. Then
Rosy's hand slipped into hers and held it softly on her lap.
When they drove together in this way they were usually
both of them rather silent and quiet, but now Rosalie spoke of
many things--of Ughtred, of Nigel, of the Dunholms, of New
York, and their father and mother.
"I want to talk because I'm nervous, I think," she said
half apologetically. "I do not want to sit still and think too
much--of father's coming. You don't mind my talking, do
you, Betty?"
"No," Betty answered. "It is good for you and for me."
And she met the pressure of Rosy's hand halfway.
But Rosy was talking, not because she did not want to sit
still and think, but because she did not want Betty to do so.
And all the time she was trying to thrust away the thought
growing in her mind.
They spent the evening together in the library, and Betty
read aloud. She read a long time--until quite late. She
wished to tire herself as well as to force herself to stop
listening.
When they said good-night to each other Rosy clung to her
as desperately as she had clung on the night after her arrival.
She kissed her again and again, and then hung her head and
excused herself.
"Forgive me for being--nervous. I'm ashamed of myself,"
she said. "Perhaps in time I shall get over being a coward."
But she said nothing of the fact that she was not a coward
for herself, but through a slowly formulating and struggled--
against fear, which chilled her very heart, and which she could
best cover by a pretence of being a poltroon.
She could not sleep when she went to bed. The night
seemed crowded with strange, terrified thoughts. They were
all of Betty, though sometimes she thought of her father's
coming, of her mother in New York, and of Betty's steady
working throughout the day. Sometimes she cried, twisting
her hands together, and sometimes she dropped into a feverish
sleep, and dreamed that she was watching Betty's face, yet
was afraid to look at it.
She awakened suddenly from one of these dreams, and sat
upright in bed to find the dawn breaking. She rose and threw
on a dressing-gown, and went to her sister's room because she
could not bear to stay away.
The door was not locked, and she pushed it open gently.
One of the windows had its blind drawn up, and looked like
a patch of dull grey. Betty was standing upright near it.
She was in her night-gown, and a long black plait of hair
hung over one shoulder heavily. She looked all black and white
in strong contrast. The grey light set her forth as a tall
ghost.
Lady Anstruthers slid forward, feeling a tightness in her
chest.
"The dawn wakened me too," she said.
"I have been waiting to see it come," answered Betty. "It
is going to be a dull, dreary day."
CHAPTER XLVII
"I HAVE NO WORD OR LOOK TO REMEMBER"
It was a dull and dreary day, as Betty had foreseen it would
be. Heavy rain clouds hung and threatened, and the atmosphere
was damp and chill. It was one of those days of the
English autumn which speak only of the end of things,
bereaving one of the power to remember next year's spring and
summer, which, after all, must surely come. Sky is grey,
trees are grey, dead leaves lie damp beneath the feet, sunlight
and birds seem forgotten things. All that has been sad and
to be regretted or feared hangs heavy in the air and sways all
thought. In the passing of these hours there is no hope
anywhere. Betty appeared at breakfast in short dress and close
hat. She wore thick little boots, as if for walking.
"I am going to make visits in the village," she said. "I
want a basket of good things to take with me. Stourton's
children need feeding after their measles. They looked very
thin when I saw them playing in the road yesterday."
"Yes, dear," Rosalie answered. "Mrs. Noakes shall
prepare the basket. Good chicken broth, and jelly, and
nourishing things. Jennings," to the butler, "you know the kind
of basket Miss Vanderpoel wants. Speak to Mrs. Noakes, please."
"Yes, my lady," Jennings knew the kind of basket and so
did Mrs. Noakes. Below stairs a strong sympathy with Miss
Vanderpoel's movements had developed. No one resented the
preparation of baskets. Somehow they were always managed,
even if asked for at untimely hours.
Betty was sitting silent, looking out into the greyness of the
autumn-smitten park.
"Are--are you listening for anything, Betty?" Lady
Anstruthers asked rather falteringly. "You have a sort of
listening look in your eyes."
Betty came back to the room, as it were.
"Have I," she said. "Yes, I think I was listening for--
something."
And Rosalie did not ask her what she listened for. She was
afraid she knew.
It was not only the Stourtons Betty visited this morning.
She passed from one cottage to another--to see old women,
and old men, as well as young ones, who for one reason or
another needed help and encouragement. By one bedside
she read aloud; by another she sat and told cheerful stories;
she listened to talk in little kitchens, and in one house
welcomed a newborn thing. As she walked steadily over grey
road and down grey lanes damp mist rose and hung about
her. And she did not walk alone. Fear walked with her,
and anguish, a grey ghost by her side. Once she found herself
standing quite still on a side path, covering her face with
her hands. She filled every moment of the morning, and
walked until she was tired. Before she went home she called
at the post office, and Mr. Tewson greeted her with a solemn
face. He did not wait to be questioned.
"There's been no news to-day, miss, so far," he said. "And
that seems as if they might be so given up to hard work at a
dreadful time that there's been no chance for anything to get
out. When people's hanging over a man's bed at the end, it's
as if everything stopped but that--that's stopping for all time."
After luncheon the rain began to fall softly, slowly, and with
a suggestion of endlessness. It was a sort of mist itself, and
became a damp shadow among the bare branches of trees which
soon began to drip.
"You have been walking about all morning, and you are
tired, dear," Lady Anstruthers said to her. "Won't you go
to your room and rest, Betty?"
Yes, she would go to her room, she said. Some new books
had arrived from London this morning, and she would look
over them. She talked a little about her visits before she went,
and when, as she talked, Ughtred came over to her and stood
close to her side holding her hand and stroking it, she smiled
at him sweetly--the smile he adored. He stroked the hand
and softly patted it, watching her wistfully. Suddenly he
lifted it to his lips, and kissed it again and again with a sort
of passion.
"I love you so much, Aunt Betty," he cried. "We both
love you so much. Something makes me love you to-day more
than ever I did before. It almost makes me cry. I love you so."
She stooped swiftly and drew him into her arms and kissed
him close and hard. He held his head back a little and looked
into the blue under her lashes.
"I love your eyes," he said. "Anyone would love your
eyes, Aunt Betty. But what is the matter with them? You
are not crying at all, but--oh! what is the matter?"
"No, I am not crying at all," she said, and smiled--almost
laughed.
But after she had kissed him again she took her books and
went upstairs.
She did not lie down, and she did not read when she was
alone in her room. She drew a long chair before the window
and watched the slow falling of the rain. There is nothing like
it--that slow weeping of the rain on an English autumn day.
Soft and light though it was, the park began to look sodden.
The bare trees held out their branches like imploring arms,
the brown garden beds were neat and bare. The same rain
was drip-dripping at Mount Dunstan--upon the desolate
great house--upon the village--upon the mounds and ancient
stone tombs in the churchyard, sinking into the earth--sinking
deep, sucked in by the clay beneath--the cold damp clay.
She shook herself shudderingly. Why should the thought come
to her--the cold damp clay? She would not listen to it, she
would think of New York, of its roaring streets and crash of
sound, of the rush of fierce life there--of her father and
mother. She tried to force herself to call up pictures of
Broadway, swarming with crowds of black things, which, seen
from the windows of its monstrous buildings, seemed like
swarms of ants, burst out of ant-hills, out of a thousand anthills.
She tried to remember shop windows, the things in
them, the throngs going by, and the throngs passing in and out
of great, swinging glass doors. She dragged up before her a
vision of Rosalie, driving with her mother and herself, looking
about her at the new buildings and changed streets, flushed and
made radiant by the accelerated pace and excitement of her
beloved New York. But, oh, the slow, penetrating rainfall,
and--the cold damp clay!
She rose, making an involuntary sound which was half a
moan. The long mirror set between two windows showed
her momentarily an awful young figure, throwing up its arms.
Was that Betty Vanderpoel--that?
"What does one do," she said, "when the world comes
to an end? What does one do?"
All her days she had done things--there had always been
something to do. Now there was nothing. She went suddenly
to her bell and rang for her maid. The woman answered
the summons at once.
"Send word to the stable that I want Childe Harold. I
do not want Mason. I shall ride alone."
"Yes, miss," Ambleston answered, without any exterior
sign of emotion. She was too well-trained a person to express
any shade of her internal amazement. After she had transmitted
the order to the proper manager she returned and
changed her mistress's costume.
She had contemplated her task, and was standing behind
Miss Vanderpoel's chair, putting the last touch to her veil,
when she became conscious of a slight stiffening of the neck
which held so well the handsome head, then the head slowly
turned towards the window giving upon the front park. Miss
Vanderpoel was listening to something, listening so intently
that Ambleston felt that, for a few moments, she did not seem
to breathe. The maid's hands fell from the veil, and she began
to listen also. She had been at the service the day before.
Miss Vanderpoel rose from her chair slowly--very slowly, and took
a step forward. Then she stood still and listened again.
"Open that window, if you please," she commanded--"as
if a stone image was speaking"--Ambleston said later. The
window was thrown open, and for a few seconds they both
stood still again. When Miss Vanderpoel spoke, it was as
if she had forgotten where she was, or as if she were in a dream.
"It is the ringers," she said. "They are tolling the passing
bell."
The serving woman was soft of heart, and had her feminine
emotions. There had been much talk of this thing in the
servant's hall. She turned upon Betty, and forgot all rules and
training.
"Oh, miss!" she cried. "He's gone--he's gone! That
good man--out of this hard world. Oh, miss, excuse me--
do!" And as she burst into wild tears, she ran out of the room.
. . . . .
Rosalie had been sitting in the morning room. She also
had striven to occupy herself with work. She had written
to her mother, she had read, she had embroidered, and then read
again. What was Betty doing--what was she thinking now?
She laid her book down in her lap, and covering her face
with her hands, breathed a desperate little prayer. That life
should be pain and emptiness to herself, seemed somehow natural
since she had married Nigel--but pain and emptiness for
Betty--No! No! No! Not for Betty! Piteous sorrow
poured upon her like a flood. She did not know how the time
passed. She sat, huddled together in her chair, with hidden
face. She could not bear to look at the rain and ghost mist
out of doors. Oh, if her mother were only here, and she might
speak to her! And as her loving tears broke forth afresh, she
heard the door open.
"If you please, my lady--I beg your pardon, my lady," as
she started and uncovered her face.
"What is it, Jennings?"
The figure at the door was that of the serious, elderly
butler, and he wore a respectfully grave air.
"As your ladyship is sitting in this room, we thought it
likely you would not hear, the windows being closed, and we
felt sure, my lady, that you would wish to know----"
Lady Anstruthers' hands shook as they clung to the arms
of her chair.
"To know----" she faltered. "Hear what?"
"The passing bell is tolling, my lady. It has just begun.
It is for Lord Mount Dunstan. There's not a dry eye downstairs,
your ladyship, not one."
He opened the windows, and she stood up. Jennings quietly
left the room. The slow, heavy knell struck ponderously on
the damp air, and she stood and shivered.
A moment or two later she turned, because it seemed as if
she must.
Betty, in her riding habit, was standing motionless against
the door, her wonderful eyes still as death, gazing at her,
gazing in an awful, simple silence.
Oh, what was the use of being afraid to speak at such a
time as this? In one moment Rosy was kneeling at her feet,
clinging about her knees, kissing her hands, the very cloth of
her habit, and sobbing aloud.
"Oh, my darling--my love--my own Betty! I don't
know--and I won't ask--but speak to me--speak just a word
--my dearest dear!"
Betty raised her up and drew her within the room, closing
the door behind them.
"Kind little Rosy," she said. "I came to speak--because
we two love each other. You need not ask, I will tell you.
That bell is tolling for the man who taught me--to KNOW.
He never spoke to me of love. I have not one word or look to
remember. And now---- Oh, listen--listen! I have been
listening since the morning of yesterday." It was an awful
thing--her white face, with all the flame of life swept out
of it.
"Don't listen--darling--darling!" Rosy cried out in
anguish. "Shut your ears--shut your ears!" And she tried to
throw her arms around the high black head, and stifle all sound
with her embrace.
"I don't want to shut them," was the answer. "All the
unkindness and misery are over for him, I ought to thank God--
but I don't. I shall hear--O Rosy, listen!--I shall hear
that to the end of my days."
Rosy held her tight, and rocked and sobbed.
"My Betty," she kept saying. "My Betty," and she could
say no more. What more was there to say? At last Betty
withdrew herself from her arms, and then Rosalie noticed for
the first time that she wore the habit.
"Dearest," she whispered, "what are you going to do?"
"I was going to ride, and I am going to do it still. I
must do something. I shall ride a long, long way--and ride
hard. You won't try to keep me, Rosy. You will understand."
"Yes," biting her lip, and looking at her with large, awed
eyes, as she patted her arm with a hand that trembled. "I
would not hold you back, Betty, from anything in the world
you chose to do."
And with another long, clinging clasp of her, she let her go.
Mason was standing by Childe Harold when she went
down the broad steps. He also wore a look of repressed emotion,
and stood with bared head bent, his eyes fixed on the
gravel of the drive, listening to the heavy strokes of the bell
in the church tower, rather as if he were taking part in some
solemn ceremony.
He mounted her silently, and after he had given her the
bridle, looked up, and spoke in a somewhat husky voice:
"The order was that you did not want me, miss? Was that
correct?"
"Yes, I wish to ride alone."
"Yes, miss. Thank you, miss."
Childe Harold was in good spirits. He held up his head,
and blew the breath through his delicate, dilated, red nostrils
as he set out with his favourite sidling, dancing steps. Mason
watched him down the avenue, saw the lodge keeper come out
to open the gate, and curtsy as her ladyship's sister passed
through it. After that he went slowly back to the stables,
and sat in the harness-room a long time, staring at the floor, as
the bell struck ponderously on his ear.
The woman who had opened the gate for her Betty saw
had red eyes. She knew why.
"A year ago they all thought of him as an outcast. They
would have believed any evil they had heard connected with
his name. Now, in every cottage, there is weeping--weeping.
And he lies deaf and dumb," was her thought.
She did not wish to pass through the village, and turned
down a side road, which would lead her to where she could
cross the marshes, and come upon lonely places. The more
lonely, the better. Every few moments she caught her breath
with a hard short gasp. The slow rain fell upon her, big
round, crystal drops hung on the hedgerows, and dripped upon
the grass banks below them; the trees, wreathed with mist, were
like waiting ghosts as she passed them by; Childe Harold's
hoof upon the road, made a hollow, lonely sound.
A thought began to fill her brain, and make insistent pressure
upon it. She tried no more to thrust thought away. Those
who lay deaf and dumb, those for whom people wept--where
were they when the weeping seemed to sound through all the
world? How far had they gone? Was it far? Could they
hear and could they see? If one plead with them aloud, could
they draw near to listen? Did they begin a long, long journey
as soon as they had slipped away? The "wonder of the
world," she had said, watching life swelling and bursting the
seeds in Kedgers' hothouses! But this was a greater wonder
still, because of its awesomeness. This man had been, and who
dare say he was not--even now? The strength of his great
body, the look in his red-brown eyes, the sound of his deep
voice, the struggle, the meaning of him, where were they?
She heard herself followed by the hollow echo of Childe
Harold's hoofs, as she rode past copse and hedge, and wet
spreading fields. She was this hour as he had been a month ago.
If, with some strange suddenness, this which was Betty
Vanderpoel, slipped from its body----She put her hand up to her
forehead. It was unthinkable that there would be no more.
Where was he now--where was he now?
This was the thought that filled her brain cells to the
exclusion of all others. Over the road, down through by-lanes,
out on the marshes. Where was he--where was he--WHERE?
Childe Harold's hoofs began to beat it out as a refrain. She
heard nothing else. She did not know where she was going
and did not ask herself. She went down any road or lane
which looked empty of life, she took strange turnings, without
caring; she did not know how far she was afield.
Where was he now--this hour--this moment--where was
he now? Did he know the rain, the greyness, the desolation
of the world?
Once she stopped her horse on the loneliness of the marsh
land, and looked up at the low clouds about her, at the creeping
mist, the dank grass. It seemed a place in which a newlyreleased
soul might wander because it did not yet know its way.
"If you should be near, and come to me, you will understand,"
her clear voice said gravely between the caught breaths,
"what I gave you was nothing to you--but you took it with
you. Perhaps you know without my telling you. I want
you to know. When a man is dead, everything melts away.
I loved you. I wish you had loved me."
CHAPTER XLVIII
THE MOMENT
In the unnatural unbearableness of her anguish, she lost
sight of objects as she passed them, she lost all memory of what
she did. She did not know how long she had been out, or how
far she had ridden. When the thought of time or distance
vaguely flitted across her mind, it seemed that she had been
riding for hours, and might have crossed one county and
entered another. She had long left familiar places behind.
Riding through and inclosed by the mist, she, herself, might
have been a wandering ghost, lost in unknown places. Where
was he now--where was he now?
Afterwards she could not tell how or when it was that
she found herself becoming conscious of the evidences that
her horse had been ridden too long and hard, and that he
was worn out with fatigue. She did not know that she
had ridden round and round over the marshes, and had passed
several times through the same lanes. Childe Harold, the
sure of foot, actually stumbled, out of sheer weariness of limb.
Perhaps it was this which brought her back to earth, and led
her to look around her with eyes which saw material objects
with comprehension. She had reached the lonely places, indeed
and the evening was drawing on. She was at the edge of the
marsh, and the land about her was strange to her and desolate.
At the side of a steep lane, overgrown with grass, and seeming
a mere cart-path, stood a deserted-looking, black and white,
timbered cottage, which was half a ruin. Close to it was a
dripping spinney, its trees forming a darkling background to
the tumble-down house, whose thatch was rotting into holes,
and its walls sagging forward perilously. The bit of garden
about it was neglected and untidy, here and there windows
were broken, and stuffed with pieces of ragged garments.
Altogether a sinister and repellent place enough.
She looked at it with heavy eyes. (Where was he now--
where was he now?--This repeating itself in the far chambers
of her brain.) Her sight seemed dimmed, not only by the
mist, but by a sinking faintness which possessed her. She did
not remember how little food she had eaten during more than
twenty-four hours. Her habit was heavy with moisture, and
clung to her body; she was conscious of a hot tremor passing
over her, and saw that her hands shook as they held the bridle
on which they had lost their grip. She had never fainted
in her life, and she was not going to faint now--women did
not faint in these days--but she must reach the cottage and
dismount, to rest under shelter for a short time. No smoke
was rising from the chimney, but surely someone was living
in the place, and could tell her where she was, and give her
at least water for herself and her horse. Poor beast! how
wickedly she must have been riding him, in her utter absorption
in her thoughts. He was wet, not alone with rain, but
with sweat. He snorted out hot, smoking breaths.
She spoke to him, and he moved forward at her command.
He was trembling too. Not more than two hundred yards,
and she turned him into the lane. But it was wet and slippery,
and strewn with stones. His trembling and her uncertain
hold on the bridle combined to produce disaster. He set his
foot upon a stone which slid beneath it, he stumbled, and she
could not help him to recover, so he fell, and only by Heaven's
mercy not upon her, with his crushing, big-boned weight, and
she was able to drag herself free of him before he began to
kick, in his humiliated efforts to rise. But he could not rise,
because he was hurt--and when she, herself, got up, she
staggered, and caught at the broken gate, because in her
wrenching leap for safety she had twisted her ankle, and for
a moment was in cruel pain.
When she recovered from her shock sufficiently to be able
to look at the cottage, she saw that it was more of a ruin than
it had seemed, even at a short distance. Its door hung open
on broken hinges, no smoke rose from the chimney, because
there was no one within its walls to light a fire. It was quite
empty. Everything about the place lay in dead and utter
silence. In a normal mood she would have liked the mystery
of the situation, and would have set about planning her way
out of her difficulty. But now her mind made no effort,
because normal interest in things had fallen away from her.
She might be twenty miles from Stornham, but the possible
fact did not, at the moment, seem to concern her. (Where is
he now--where is he now?) Childe Harold was trying to rise,
despite his hurt, and his evident determination touched her. He
was too proud to lie in the mire. She limped to him, and
tried to steady him by his bridle. He was not badly injured,
though plainly in pain.
"Poor boy, it was my fault," she said to him as he at last
struggled to his feet. "I did not know I was doing it. Poor
boy!"
He turned a velvet dark eye upon her, and nosed her forgivingly
with a warm velvet muzzle, but it was plain that, for
the time, he was done for. They both moved haltingly to the
broken gate, and Betty fastened him to a thorn tree near it,
where he stood on three feet, his fine head drooping.
She pushed the gate open, and went into the house through
the door which hung on its hinges. Once inside, she stood still
and looked about her. If there was silence and desolateness
outside, there was within the deserted place a stillness
like the unresponse of death. It had been long since anyone
had lived in the cottage, but tramps or gipsies had at times
passed through it. Dead, blackened embers lay on the hearth,
a bundle of dried grass which had been slept on was piled in
the corner, an empty nail keg and a wooden box had been
drawn before the big chimney place for some wanderer to sit
on when the black embers had been hot and red.
Betty gave one glance around her and sat down upon the
box standing on the bare hearth, her head sinking forward, her
hands falling clasped between her knees, her eyes on the brick
floor.
"Where is he now?" broke from her in a loud whisper,
whose sound was mechanical and hollow. "Where is he now?"
And she sat there without moving, while the grey mist from
the marshes crept close about the door and through it and stole
about her feet.
So she sat long--long--in a heavy, far-off dream.
Along the road a man was riding with a lowering, fretted
face. He had come across country on horseback, because to
travel by train meant wearisome stops and changes and endlessly
slow journeying, annoying beyond endurance to those who
have not patience to spare. His ride would have been pleasant
enough but for the slow mist-like rain. Also he had taken
a wrong turning, because he did not know the roads he
travelled. The last signpost he had passed, however, had given
him his cue again, and he began to feel something of security.
Confound the rain! The best road was slippery with it, and
the haze of it made a man's mind feel befogged and lowered
his spirits horribly--discouraged him--would worry him into
an ill humour even if he had reason to be in a good one.
As for him, he had no reason for cheerfulness--he never had
for the matter of that, and just now----! What was the matter
with his horse? He was lifting his head and sniffing the
damp air restlessly, as if he scented or saw something. Beasts
often seemed to have a sort of second sight--horses particularly.
What ailed him that he should prick up his ears and snort after
his sniffing the mist! Did he hear anything? Yes, he did, it
seemed. He gave forth suddenly a loud shrill whinny, turning his
head towards a rough lane they were approaching, and
immediately from the vicinity of a deserted-looking cottage
behind a hedge came a sharp but mournful-sounding neigh in
answer.
"What horse is that?" said Nigel Anstruthers, drawing in
at the entrance to the lane and looking down it. "There is a
fine brute with a side-saddle on," he added sharply. "He is
waiting for someone. What is a woman doing there at this
time? Is it a rendezvous? A good place----"
He broke off short and rode forward. "I'm hanged if it
is not Childe Harold," he broke out, and he had no sooner
assured himself of the fact than he threw himself from his
saddle, tethered his horse and strode up the path to the brokenhinged
door.
He stood on the threshold and stared. What a hole it was--
what a hole! And there SHE sat--alone--eighteen or twenty
miles from home--on a turned-up box near the black embers,
her hands clasped loosely between her knees, her face rather
awful, her eyes staring at the floor, as if she did not see it.
"Where is he now?" he heard her whisper to herself with
soft weirdness. "Where is he now?"
Sir Nigel stepped into the place and stood before her. He
had smiled with a wry unpleasantness when he had heard her
evidently unconscious words.
"My good girl," he said, "I am sure I do not know where
he is--but it is very evident that he ought to be here, since you
have amiably put yourself to such trouble. It is fortunate for
you perhaps that I am here before him. What does this mean?"
the question breaking from him with savage authority.
He had dragged her back to earth. She sat upright and recognised
him with a hideous sense of shock, but he did not give her time
to speak. His instinct of male fury leaped within him.
"YOU!" he cried out. "It takes a woman like you to come
and hide herself in a place of this sort, like a trolloping gipsy
wench! It takes a New York millionairess or a Roman empress
or one of Charles the Second's duchesses to plunge as deep
as this. You, with your golden pedestal--you, with your
ostentatious airs and graces--you, with your condescending to
give a man a chance to repent his sins and turn over a new leaf!
Damn it," rising to a sort of frenzy, "what are you doing
waiting in a hole like this--in this weather--at this hour--you
--you!"
The fool's flame leaped high enough to make him start
forward, as if to seize her by the shoulder and shake her.
But she rose and stepped back to lean against the side of the
chimney--to brace herself against it, so that she could stand in
her lame foot's despite. Every drop of blood had been swept
from her face, and her eyes looked immense. His coming was
a good thing for her, though she did not know it. It brought
her back from unearthly places. All her child hatred woke and
blazed in her. Never had she hated a thing so, and it set her
slow, cold blood running like something molten.
"Hold your tongue!" she said in a clear, awful young voice of
warning. "And take care not to touch me. If you do--I have my
whip here--I shall lash you across your mouth!"
He broke into ribald laughter. A certain sudden thought which
had cut into him like a knife thrust into flesh drove him on.
"Do!" he cried. "I should like to carry your mark back
to Stornham--and tell people why it was given. I know who
you are here for. Only such fellows ask such things of women.
But he was determined to be safe, if you hid in a ditch. You
are here for Mount Dunstan--and he has failed you!"
But she only stood and stared at him, holding her whip
behind her, knowing that at any moment he might snatch it from
her hand. And she knew how poor a weapon it was. To strike
out with it would only infuriate him and make him a wild
beast. And it was becoming an agony to stand upon her foot.
And even if it had not been so--if she had been strong enough
to make a leap and dash past him, her horse stood outside
disabled.
Nigel Anstruthers' eyes ran over her from head to foot, down
the side of her mud-stained habit, while a curious light dawned
in them.
"You have had a fall from your horse," he exclaimed. "You
are lame!" Then quickly, "That was why Childe Harold
was trembling and standing on three feet! By Jove!"
Then he sat down on the nail keg and began to laugh. He
laughed for a full minute, but she saw he did not take his
eyes from her.
"You are in as unpleasant a situation as a young woman
can well be," he said, when he stopped. "You came to a dirty
hole to be alone with a man who felt it safest not to keep his
appointment. Your horse stumbled and disabled himself and
you. You are twenty miles from home in a deserted cottage in
a lane no one passes down even in good weather. You are
frightened to death and you have given me even a better story
to play with than your sister gave me. By Jove!"
His face was an unholy thing to look upon. The situation
and her powerlessness were exciting him.
"No," she answered, keeping her eyes on his, as she might
have kept them on some wild animal's, "I am not frightened
to death."
His ugly dark flush rose.
"Well, if you are not," he said, "don't tell me so. That
kind of defiance is not your best line just now. You have been
disdaining me from magnificent New York heights for some
time. Do you think that I am not enjoying this?"
"I cannot imagine anyone else who would enjoy it so much."
And she knew the answer was daring, but would have made it
if he had held a knife's point at her throat.
He got up, and walking to the door drew it back on its
crazy hinges and managed to shut it close. There was a big
wooden bolt inside and he forced it into its socket.
"Presently I shall go and put the horses into the cowshed,"
he said. "If I leave them standing outside they will attract
attention. I do not intend to be disturbed by any gipsy tramp
who wants shelter. I have never had you quite to myself
before."
He sat down again and nursed his knee gracefully.
"And I have never seen you look as attractive," biting his
under lip in cynical enjoyment. "To-day's adventure has roused
your emotions and actually beautified you--which was not
necessary. I daresay you have been furious and have cried.
Your eyes do not look like mere eyes, but like splendid blue
pools of tears. Perhaps _I_ shall make you cry sometime, my dear
Betty."
"No, you will not."
"Don't tempt me. Women always cry when men annoy
them. They rage, but they cry as well."
"I shall not."
"It's true that most women would have begun to cry before
this. That is what stimulates me. You will swagger to the
end. You put the devil into me. Half an hour ago I was
jogging along the road, languid and bored to extinction. And
now----" He laughed outright in actual exultation. "By
Jove!" he cried out. "Things like this don't happen to a
man in these dull days! There's no such luck going about.
We've gone back five hundred years, and we've taken New
York with us." His laugh shut off in the middle, and he got
up to thrust his heavy, congested face close to hers. "Here
you are, as safe as if you were in a feudal castle, and here is
your ancient enemy given his chance--given his chance. Do you
think, by the Lord, he is going to give it up? No. To quote
your own words, `you may place entire confidence in that.' "
Exaggerated as it all was, somehow the melodrama dropped
away from it and left bare, simple, hideous fact for her to
confront. The evil in him had risen rampant and made him lose
his head. He might see his senseless folly to-morrow and know
he must pay for it, but he would not see it to-day. The place
was not a feudal castle, but what he said was insurmountable
truth. A ruined cottage on the edge of miles of marsh land, a
seldom-trodden road, and night upon them! A wind was rising
on the marshes now, and making low, steady moan. Horrible
things had happened to women before, one heard of them with
shudders when they were recorded in the newspapers. Only
two days ago she had remembered that sometimes there seemed
blunderings in the great Scheme of things. Was all this real,
or was she dreaming that she stood here at bay, her back
against the chimney-wall, and this degenerate exulting over her,
while Rosy was waiting for her at Stornham--and at this very
hour her father was planning his journey across the Atlantic?
"Why did you not behave yourself?" demanded Nigel
Anstruthers, shaking her by the shoulder. "Why did you not
realise that I should get even with you one day, as sure as you
were woman and I was man?"
She did not shrink back, though the pupils of her eyes dilated.
Was it the wildest thing in the world which happened to her--
or was it not? Without warning--the sudden rush of a
thought, immense and strange, swept over her body and soul
and possessed her--so possessed her that it changed her pallor
to white flame. It was actually Anstruthers who shrank back a
shade because, for the moment, she looked so near unearthly.
"I am not afraid of you," she said, in a clear, unshaken voice.
"I am not afraid. Something is near me which will stand
between us--something which DIED to-day."
He almost gasped before the strangeness of it, but caught
back his breath and recovered himself.
"Died to-day! That's recent enough," he jeered. "Let us
hear about it. Who was it?"
"It was Mount Dunstan," she flung at him. "The churchbells
were tolling for him when I rode away. I could not stay
to hear them. It killed me--I loved him. You were right
when you said it. I loved him, though he never knew. I
shall always love him--though he never knew. He knows now.
Those who died cannot go away when THAT is holding them.
They must stay. Because I loved him, he may be in this place.
I call on him----" raising her clear voice. "I call on him to
stand between us."
He backed away from her, staring an evil, enraptured stare.
"What! There is that much temperament in you?" he said.
"That was what I half-suspected when I saw you first. But
you have hidden it well. Now it bursts forth in spite of you.
Good Lord! What luck--what luck!"
He moved to the door and opened it.
"I am a very modern man, and I enjoy this to the utmost,"
he said. "What I like best is the melodrama of it--in connection
with Fifth Avenue. I am perfectly aware that you will
not discuss this incident in the future. You are a clever enough
young woman to know that it will be more to your interest
than to mine that it shall be kept exceedingly quiet."
The white fire had not died out of her and she stood straight.
"What I have called on will be near me, and will stand
between us," she said.
Old though it was, the door was massive and heavy to lift.
To open it cost him some muscular effort.
"I am going to the horses now," he explained before he
dragged it back into its frame and shut her in. "It is safe
enough to leave you here. You will stay where you are."
He felt himself secure in leaving her because he believed she
could not move, and because his arrogance made it impossible
for him to count on strength and endurance greater than his
own. Of endurance he knew nothing and in his keen and
cynical exultance his devil made a fool of him.
As she heard him walk down the path to the gate, Betty
stood amazed at his lack of comprehension of her.
"He thinks I will stay here. He absolutely thinks I will
wait until he comes back," she whispered to the emptiness of
the bare room.
Before he had arrived she had loosened her boot, and now
she stooped and touched her foot.
"If I were safe at home I should think I could not walk,
but I can walk now--I can--I can--because I will bear the
pain."
In such cottages there is always a door opening outside
from the little bricked kitchen, where the copper stands. She
would reach that, and, passing through, would close it behind
her. After that SOMETHING would tell her what to do--something
would lead her.
She put her lame foot upon the floor, and rested some of her
weight upon it--not all. A jagged pain shot up from it
through her whole side it seemed, and, for an instant, she
swayed and ground her teeth.
"That is because it is the first step," she said. "But if I
am to be killed, I will die in the open--I will die in the
open."
The second and third steps brought cold sweat out upon her,
but she told herself that the fourth was not quite so unbearable,
and she stiffened her whole body, and muttered some words
while she took a fifth and sixth which carried her into the tiny
back kitchen.
"Father," she said. "Father, think of me now--think of
me! Rosy, love me--love me and pray that I may come home.
You--you who have died, stand very near!"
If her father ever held her safe in his arms again--if she ever
awoke from this nightmare, it would be a thing never to let
one's mind hark back to again--to shut out of memory with
iron doors.
The pain had shot up and down, and her forehead was wet
by the time she had reached the small back door. Was it locked
or bolted--was it? She put her hand gently upon the latch
and lifted it without making any sound. Thank God Almighty,
it was neither bolted nor locked, the latch lifted, the door
opened, and she slid through it into the shadow of the grey
which was already almost the darkness of night. Thank God
for that, too.
She flattened herself against the outside wall and listened.
He was having difficulty in managing Childe Harold, who
snorted and pulled back, offended and made rebellious by his
savagely impatient hand. Good Childe Harold, good boy! She
could see the massed outline of the trees of the spinney. If she
could bear this long enough to get there--even if she crawled
part of the way. Then it darted through her mind that he
would guess that she would be sure to make for its cover, and
that he would go there first to search.
"Father, think for me--you were so quick to think!" her
brain cried out for her, as if she was speaking to one who could
physically hear.
She almost feared she had spoken aloud, and the thought
which flashed upon her like lightning seemed to be an answer
given. He would be convinced that she would at once try to
get away from the house. If she kept near it--somewhere--
somewhere quite close, and let him search the spinney, she might
get away to its cover after he gave up the search and came
back. The jagged pain had settled in a sort of impossible
anguish, and once or twice she felt sick. But she would die in
the open--and she knew Rosalie was frightened by her absence,
and was praying for her. Prayers counted and, yet, they had
all prayed yesterday.
"If I were not very strong, I should faint," she thought.
"But I have been strong all my life. That great French
doctor--I have forgotten his name--said that I had the physique
to endure anything."
She said these things that she might gain steadiness and
convince herself that she was not merely living through a
nightmare. Twice she moved her foot suddenly because she found
herself in a momentary respite from pain, beginning to believe
that the thing was a nightmare--that nothing mattered--because
she would wake up presently--so she need not try to hide.
"But in a nightmare one has no pain. It is real and I must
go somewhere," she said, after the foot was moved. Where
could she go? She had not looked at the place as she rode up.
She had only half-consciously seen the spinney. Nigel was
swearing at the horses. Having got Childe Harold into the
shed, there seemed to be nothing to fasten his bridle to. And
he had yet to bring his own horse in and secure him. She must
get away somewhere before the delay was over.
How dark it was growing! Thank God for that again!
What was the rather high, dark object she could trace in the
dimness near the hedge? It was sharply pointed, is if it were
a narrow tent. Her heart began to beat like a drum as she
recalled something. It was the shape of the sort of wigwam
structure made of hop poles, after they were taken from the
fields. If there was space between it and the hedge--even a
narrow space--and she could crouch there? Nigel was furious
because Childe Harold was backing, plunging, and snorting
dangerously. She halted forward, shutting her teeth in her
terrible pain. She could scarcely see, and did not recognise
that near the wigwam was a pile of hop poles laid on top of each
other horizontally. It was not quite as high as the hedge whose
dark background prevented its being seen. Only a few steps
more. No, she was awake--in a nightmare one felt only terror,
not pain.
"YOU, WHO DIED TO-DAY," she murmured.
She saw the horizontal poles too late. One of them had
rolled from its place and lay on the ground, and she trod on
it, was thrown forward against the heap, and, in her blind
effort to recover herself, slipped and fell into a narrow,
grassed hollow behind it, clutching at the hedge. The great
French doctor had not been quite right. For the first time in
her life she felt herself sinking into bottomless darkness--which
was what happened to people when they fainted.
When she opened her eyes she could see nothing, because
on one side of her rose the low mass of the hop poles, and on
the other was the long-untrimmed hedge, which had thrown
out a thick, sheltering growth and curved above her like
a penthouse. Was she awakening, after all? No, because
the pain was awakening with her, and she could hear,
what seemed at first to be quite loud sounds. She could
not have been unconscious long, for she almost immediately
recognised that they were the echo of a man's hurried footsteps
upon the bare wooden stairway, leading to the bedrooms
in the empty house. Having secured the horses, Nigel had
returned to the cottage, and, finding her gone had rushed to
the upper floor in search of her. He was calling her name
angrily, his voice resounding in the emptiness of the rooms.
"Betty; don't play the fool with me!"
She cautiously drew herself further under cover, making
sure that no end of her habit remained in sight. The overgrowth
of the hedge was her salvation. If she had seen the
spot by daylight, she would not have thought it a possible place
of concealment.
Once she had read an account of a woman's frantic flight
from a murderer who was hunting her to her death, while
she slipped from one poor hiding place to another, sometimes
crouching behind walls or bushes, sometimes lying flat in
long grass, once wading waist-deep through a stream, and at
last finding a miserable little fastness, where she hid shivering
for hours, until her enemy gave up his search. One never felt
the reality of such histories, but there was actually a sort of
parallel in this. Mad and crude things were let loose, and the
world of ordinary life seemed thousands of miles away.
She held her breath, for he was leaving the house by the
front door. She heard his footsteps on the bricked path, and
then in the lane. He went to the road, and the sound of
his feet died away for a few moments. Then she heard
them returning--he was back in the lane--on the brick path,
and stood listening or, perhaps, reflecting. He muttered
something exclamatory, and she heard a match struck, and shortly
afterwards he moved across the garden patch towards the
little spinney. He had thought of it, as she had believed
he would. He would not think of this place, and in the end he
might get tired or awakened to a sense of his lurid folly, and
realise that it would be safer for him to go back to Stornham
with some clever lie, trusting to his belief that there existed
no girl but would shrink from telling such a story in connection
with a man who would brazenly deny it with contemptuous
dramatic detail. If he would but decide on this, she would be
safe--and it would be so like him that she dared to hope. But,
if he did not, she would lie close, even if she must wait until
morning, when some labourer's cart would surely pass, and
she would hear it jolting, and drag herself out, and call aloud
in such a way that no man could be deaf. There was more
room under her hedge than she had thought, and she found
that she could sit up, by clasping her knees and bending her
head, while she listened to every sound, even to the rustle
of the grass in the wind sweeping across the marsh.
She moved very gradually and slowly, and had just settled
into utter motionlessness when she realised that he was coming
back through the garden--the straggling currant and
gooseberry bushes were being trampled through.
"Betty, go home," Rosalie had pleaded. "Go home--go
home." And she had refused, because she could not desert her.
She held her breath and pressed her hand against her side,
because her heart beat, as it seemed to her, with an actual
sound. He moved with unsteady steps from one point to another,
more than once he stumbled, and his angry oath reached
her; at last he was so near her hiding place that his short hard
breathing was a distinct sound. A moment later he spoke, raising
his voice, which fact brought to her a rush of relief,
through its signifying that he had not even guessed her nearness.
"My dear Betty," he said, "you have the pluck of the
devil, but circumstances are too much for you. You are not
on the road, and I have been through the spinney. Mere
logic convinces me that you cannot be far away. You may
as well give the thing up. It will be better for you."
"You who died to-day--do not leave me," was Betty's
inward cry, and she dropped her face on her knees.
"I am not a pleasant-tempered fellow, as you know, and I
am losing my hold on myself. The wind is blowing the mist
away, and there will be a moon. I shall find you, my good
girl, in half an hour's time--and then we shall be jolly
well even."
She had not dropped her whip, and she held it tight. If,
when the moonlight revealed the pile of hop poles to him, he
suspected and sprang at them to tear them away, she would
be given strength to make one spring, even in her agony, and
she would strike at his eyes--awfully, without one touch of
compunction--she would strike--strike.
There was a brief silence, and then a match was struck
again, and almost immediately she inhaled the fragrance of an
excellent cigar.
"I am going to have a comfortable smoke and stroll about
--always within sight and hearing. I daresay you are watching
me, and wondering what will happen when I discover you,
I can tell you what will happen. You are not a hysterical
girl, but you will go into hysterics--and no one will hear you."
(All the power of her--body and soul--in one leap on him
and then a lash that would cut to the bone. And it was not
a nightmare--and Rosy was at Stornham, and her father looking
over steamer lists and choosing his staterooms.)
He walked about slowly, the scent of his cigar floating
behind him. She noticed, as she had done more than once
before, that he seemed to slightly drag one foot, and she
wondered why. The wind was blowing the mist away, and there
was a faint growing of light. The moon was not full, but
young, and yet it would make a difference. But the upper
part of the hedge grew thick and close to the heap of wood,
and, but for her fall, she would never have dreamed of the
refuge.
She could only guess at his movements, but his footsteps
gave some clue. He was examining the ground in as far as
the darkness would allow. He went into the shed and round
about it, he opened the door of the tiny coal lodge, and looked
again into the small back kitchen. He came near--nearer
--so near once that, bending sidewise, she could have put out
a hand and touched him. He stood quite still, then made a step
or so away, stood still again, and burst into a laugh once more.
"Oh, you are here, are you?" he said. "You are a fine
big girl to be able to crowd yourself into a place like that!"
Hot and cold dew stood out on her forehead and made her
hair damp as she held her whip hard.
"Come out, my dear!" alluringly. "It is not too soon. Or
do you prefer that I should assist you?"
Her heart stood quite still--quite. He was standing by the
wigwam of hop poles and thought she had hidden herself inside
it. Her place under the hedge he had not even glanced at.
She knew he bent down and thrust his arm into the wigwam,
for his fury at the result expressed itself plainly enough. That
he had made a fool of himself was worse to him than all else.
He actually wheeled about and strode away to the house.
Because minutes seemed hours, she thought he was gone long,
but he was not away for twenty minutes. He had, in fact,
gone into the bare front room again, and sitting upon the box
near the hearth, let his head drop in his hands and remained
in this position thinking. In the end he got up and went out
to the shed where he had left the horses.
Betty was feeling that before long she might find herself
making that strange swoop into the darkness of space again, and
that it did not matter much, as one apparently lay quite still
when one was unconscious--when she heard that one horse was being
led out into the lane. What did that mean? Had he got tired of
the chase--as the other man did--and was he going away because
discomfort and fatigue had cooled and disgusted
him--perhaps even made him feel that he was playing
the part of a sensational idiot who was laying himself open to
derision? That would be like him, too.
Presently she heard his footsteps once more, but he did not
come as near her as before--in fact, he stood at some yards'
distance when he stopped and spoke--in quite a new manner.
"Betty," his tone was even cynically cool, "I shall stalk
you no more. The chase is at an end. I think I have taken
all out of you I intended to. Perhaps it was a bad joke and
was carried too far. I wanted to prove to you that there were
circumstances which might be too much even for a young
woman from New York. I have done it. Do you suppose I
am such a fool as to bring myself within reach of the law?
I am going away and will send assistance to you from the
next house I pass. I have left some matches and a few broken
sticks on the hearth in the cottage. Be a sensible girl. Limp
in there and build yourself a fire as soon as you hear me gallop
away. You must be chilled through. Now I am going."
He tramped across the bit of garden, down the brick path,
mounted his horse and put it to a gallop at once. Clack, clack,
clack--clacking fainter and fainter into the distance--and he
was gone.
When she realised that the thing was true, the effect upon
her of her sense of relief was that the growing likelihood of
a second swoop into darkness died away, but one curious sob
lifted her chest as she leaned back against the rough growth
behind her. As she changed her position for a better one she
felt the jagged pain again and knew that in the tenseness of
her terror she had actually for some time felt next to nothing
of her hurt. She had not even been cold, for the hedge behind
and over her and the barricade before had protected her from
both wind and rain. The grass beneath her was not damp
for the same reason. The weary thought rose in her mind that
she might even lie down and sleep. But she pulled herself
together and told herself that this was like the temptation of
believing in the nightmare. He was gone, and she had a
respite--but was it to be anything more? She did not make
any attempt to leave her place of concealment, remembering
the strange things she had learned in watching him, and the
strange terror in which Rosalie lived.
"One never knows what he will do next; I will not stir,"
she said through her teeth. "No, I will not stir from here."
And she did not, but sat still, while the pain came back to
her body and the anguish to her heart--and sometimes such
heaviness that her head dropped forward upon her knees again,
and she fell into a stupefied half-doze.
From one such doze she awakened with a start, hearing a
slight click of the gate. After it, there were several seconds
of dead silence. It was the slightness of the click which was
startling--if it had not been caused by the wind, it had been
caused by someone's having cautiously moved it--and this
someone wishing to make a soundless approach had immediately
stood still and was waiting. There was only one person
who would do that. By this time, the mist being blown away,
the light of the moon began to make a growing clearness.
She lifted her hand and delicately held aside a few twigs that
she might look out.
She had been quite right in deciding not to move. Nigel
Anstruthers had come back, and after his pause turned, and
avoiding the brick path, stole over the grass to the cottage
door. His going had merely been an inspiration to trap her,
and the wood and matches had been intended to make a beacon
light for him. That was like him, as well. His horse he had
left down the road.
But the relief of his absence had been good for her, and she
was able to check the shuddering fit which threatened her for a
moment. The next, her ears awoke to a new sound. Something
was stumbling heavily about the patch of garden--some
animal. A cropping of grass, a snorting breath, and more
stumbling hoofs, and she knew that Childe Harold had managed
to loosen his bridle and limp out of the shed. The mere
sense of his nearness seemed a sort of protection.
He had limped and stumbled to the front part of the garden
before Nigel heard him. When he did hear, he came out of the
house in the humour of a man the inflaming of whose mood
has been cumulative; Childe Harold's temper also was not to
be trifled with. He threw up his head, swinging the bridle
out of reach; he snorted, and even reared with an ugly lashing
of his forefeet.
"Good boy!" whispered Betty. "Do not let him take you
--do not!"
If he remained where he was he would attract attention if
anyone passed by. "Fight, Childe Harold, be as vicious as
you choose--do not allow yourself to be dragged back."
And fight he did, with an ugliness of temper he had never
shown before--with snortings and tossed head and lashed--out
heels, as if he knew he was fighting to gain time and with a
purpose.
But in the midst of the struggle Nigel Anstruthers stopped
suddenly. He had stumbled again, and risen raging and
stained with damp earth. Now he stood still, panting for
breath--as still as he had stood after the click of the gate.
Was he--listening? What was he listening to? Had she
moved in her excitement, and was it possible he had caught
the sound? No, he was listening to something else. Far up
the road it echoed, but coming nearer every moment, and very
fast. Another horse--a big one--galloping hard. Whosoever
it was would pass this place; it could only be a man--God
grant that he would not go by so quickly that his attention
would not be arrested by a shriek! Cry out she must--and if
he did not hear and went galloping on his way she would have
betrayed herself and be lost.
She bit off a groan by biting her lip.
"You who died to-day--now--now!"
Nearer and nearer. No human creature could pass by a
thing like this--it would not be possible. And Childe Harold,
backing and fighting, scented the other horse and neighed
fiercely and high. The rider was slackening his pace; he was
near the lane. He had turned into it and stopped. Now for
her one frantic cry--but before she could gather power to give
it forth, the man who had stopped had flung himself from his
saddle and was inside the garden speaking. A big voice and
a clear one, with a ringing tone of authority.
"What are you doing here? And what is the matter with
Miss Vanderpoel's horse?" it called out.
Now there was danger of the swoop into the darkness--
great danger--though she clutched at the hedge that she
might feel its thorns and hold herself to the earth.
"YOU!" Nigel Anstruthers cried out. "You!" and flung
forth a shout of laughter.
"Where is she?" fiercely. "Lady Anstruthers is terrified.
We have been searching for hours. Only just now I heard on
the marsh that she had been seen to ride this way. Where is
she, I say?"
A strong, angry, earthly voice--not part of the melodrama--
not part of a dream, but a voice she knew, and whose sound
caused her heart to leap to her throat, while she trembled from
head to foot, and a light, cold dampness broke forth on her
skin. Something had been a dream--her wild, desolate ride--
the slew tolling; for the voice which commanded with such
human fierceness was that of the man for whom the heavy bell
had struck forth from the church tower.
Sir Nigel recovered himself brilliantly. Not that he did not
recognise that he had been a fool again and was in a nasty
place; but it was not for the first time in his life, and he had
learned how to brazen himself out of nasty places.
"My dear Mount Dunstan," he answered with tolerant
irritation, "I have been having a devil of a time with female
hysterics. She heard the bell toll and ran away with the idea
that it was for you, and paid you the compliment of losing her
head. I came on her here when she had ridden her horse half
to death and they had both come a cropper. Confound women's
hysterics! I could do nothing with her. When I left her for
a moment she ran away and hid herself. She is concealed
somewhere on the place or has limped off on to the marsh. I
wish some New York millionairess would work herself into
hysteria on my humble account."
"Those are lies," Mount Dunstan answered--"every damned
one of them!"
He wheeled around to look about him, attracted by a sound,
and in the clearing moonlight saw a figure approaching which
might have risen from the earth, so far as he could guess where
it had come from. He strode over to it, and it was Betty
Vanderpoel, holding her whip in a clenched hand and showing
to his eagerness such hunted face and eyes as were barely
human. He caught her unsteadiness to support it, and felt
her fingers clutch at the tweed of his coatsleeve and move
there as if the mere feeling of its rough texture brought
heavenly comfort to her and gave her strength.
"Yes, they are lies, Lord Mount Dunstan," she panted.
"He said that he meant to get what he called `even' with
me. He told me I could not get away from him and that no
one would hear me if I cried out for help. I have hidden like
some hunted animal." Her shaking voice broke, and she held
the cloth of his sleeve tightly. "You are alive--alive!" with
a sudden sweet wildness. "But it is true the bell tolled!
While I was crouching in the dark I called to you--who died
to-day--to stand between us!"
The man absolutely shuddered from head to foot.
"I was alive, and you see I heard you and came," he
answered hoarsely.
He lifted her in his arms and carried her into the cottage.
Her cheek felt the enrapturing roughness of his tweed shoulder
as he did it. He laid her down on the couch of hay and
turned away.
"Don't move," he said. "I will come back. You are safe."
If there had been more light she would have seen that his
jaw was set like a bulldog's, and there was a red spark in his
eyes--a fearsome one. But though she did not clearly see, she
KNEW, and the nearness of the last hours swept away all
relenting.
Nigel Anstruthers having discreetly waited until the two
had passed into the house, and feeling that a man would be an
idiot who did not remove himself from an atmosphere so highly
charged, was making his way toward the lane and was, indeed,
halfway through the gate when heavy feet were behind him
and a grip of ugly strength wrenched him backward.
"Your horse is cropping the grass where you left him, but
you are not going to him," said a singularly meaning voice.
"You are coming with me."
Anstruthers endeavoured to convince himself that he did not
at that moment turn deadly sick and that the brute would not
make an ass of himself.
"Don't be a bally fool!" he cried out, trying to tear
himself free.
The muscular hand on his shoulder being reinforced by
another, which clutched his collar, dragged him back, stumbling
ignominiously through the gooseberry bushes towards the cartshed.
Betty lying upon her bed of hay heard the scuffling,
mingled with raging and gasping curses. Childe Harold, lifting
his head from his cropping of the grass, looked after the
violently jerking figures and snorted slightly, snuffing with
dilated red nostrils. As a war horse scenting blood and battle,
he was excited.
When Mount Dunstan got his captive into the shed the blood which
had surged in Red Godwyn's veins was up and leaping.
Anstruthers, his collar held by a hand with fingers of iron,
writhed about and turned a livid, ghastly face upon his captor.
"You have twice my strength and half my age, you beast
and devil!" he foamed in a half shriek, and poured forth
frightful blasphemies.
"That counts between man and man, but not between vermin
and executioner," gave back Mount Dunstan.
The heavy whip, flung upward, whistled down through the
air, cutting through cloth and linen as though it would cut
through flesh to bone.
"By God!" shrieked the writhing thing he held, leaping
like a man who has been shot. "Don't do that again! DAMN
you!" as the unswerving lash cut down again--again.
What followed would not be good to describe. Betty
through the open door heard wild and awful things--and more
than once a sound as if a dog were howling.
When the thing was over, one of the two--his clothes cut to
ribbons, his torn white linen exposed, lay, a writhing, huddled
worm, hiccoughing frenzied sobs upon the earth in a
corner of the cart-shed. The other man stood over him,
breathless and white, but singularly exalted.
"You won't want your horse to-night, because you can't
use him," he said. "I shall put Miss Vanderpoel's saddle upon
him and ride with her back to Stornham. You think you are
cut to pieces, but you are not, and you'll get over it. I'll ask
you to mark, however, that if you open your foul mouth to
insinuate lies concerning either Lady Anstruthers or her sister
I will do this thing again in public some day--on the steps of
your club--and do it more thoroughly."
He walked into the cottage soon afterwards looking, to Betty
Vanderpoel's eyes, pale and exceptionally big, and also more
a man than it is often given even to the most virile male
creature to look--and he walked to the side of her resting place
and stood there looking down.
"I thought I heard a dog howl," she said.
"You did hear a dog howl," he answered. He said no
other word, and she asked no further question. She knew what
he had done, and he was well aware that she knew it.
There was a long, strangely tense silence. The light of the
moon was growing. She made at first no effort to rise, but lay
still and looked up at him from under splendid lifted lashes,
while his own gaze fell into the depth of hers like a plummet
into a deep pool. This continued for almost a full minute,
when he turned quickly away and walked to the hearth, indrawing
a heavy breath.
He could not endure that which beset him; it was unbearable,
because her eyes had maddeningly seemed to ask him
some wistful question. Why did she let her loveliness so call
to him. She was not a trifler who could play with meanings.
Perhaps she did not know what her power was. Sometimes he
could believe that beautiful women did not.
In a few moments, almost before he could reach her, she was
rising, and when she got up she supported herself against the
open door, standing in the moonlight. If he was pale, she
was pale also, and her large eyes would not move from his
face, so drawing him that he could not keep away from her.
"Listen," he broke out suddenly. "Penzance told me--
warned me--that some time a moment would come which
would be stronger than all else in a man--than all else in the
world. It has come now. Let me take you home."
"Than what else?" she said slowly, and became even paler
than before.
He strove to release himself from the possession of the
moment, and in his struggle answered with a sort of savagery.
"Than scruple--than power--even than a man's determination
and decent pride."
"Are you proud?" she half whispered quite brokenly. "I
am not--since I waited for the ringing of the church bell--
since I heard it toll. After that the world was empty--and it
was as empty of decent pride as of everything else. There was
nothing left. I was the humblest broken thing on earth."
"You!" he gasped. "Do you know I think I shall go
mad directly perhaps it is happening now. YOU were humble
and broken--your world was empty! Because----?"
"Look at me, Lord Mount Dunstan," and the sweetest
voice in the world was a tender, wild little cry to him. "Oh
LOOK at me!"
He caught her out-thrown hands and looked down into the
beautiful passionate soul of her. The moment had come, and the
tidal wave rising to its height swept all the common earth away
when, with a savage sob, he caught and held her close and
hard against that which thudded racing in his breast.
And they stood and swayed together, folded in each other's
arms, while the wind from the marshes lifted its voice like an
exulting human thing as it swept about them.
CHAPTER XLIX
AT STORNHAM AND AT BROADMORLANDS
The exulting wind had swept the clouds away, and the moon
rode in a dark blue sea of sky, making the night light purely
clear, when they drew a little apart, that they might better
see the wonderfulness in each other's faces. It was so
mysteriously great a thing that they felt near to awe.
"I fought too long. I wore out my body's endurance, and now I am
quaking like a boy. Red Godwyn did not begin his wooing like
this. Forgive me," Mount Dunstan said at last.
"Do you know," with lovely trembling lips and voice,
"that for long--long--you have been unkind to me?"
It was merely human that he should swiftly enfold her
again, and answer with his lips against her cheek.
"Unkind! Unkind! Oh, the heavenly woman's sweetness
of your telling me so--the heavenly sweetness of it!" he
exclaimed passionately and low. "And I was one of those who
are `by the roadside everywhere,' an unkempt, raging beggar,
who might not decently ask you for a crust."
"It was all wrong--wrong!" she whispered back to him,
and he poured forth the tenderest, fierce words of confession
and prayer, and she listened, drinking them in, with now and
then a soft sob pressed against the roughness of the enrapturing
tweed. For a space they had both forgotten her hurt,
because there are other things than terror which hypnotise
pain. Mount Dunstan was to be praised for remembering it
first. He must take her back to Stornham and her sister without
further delay.
"I will put your saddle on Anstruthers' horse, or mine, and
lift you to your seat. There is a farmhouse about two miles
away, where I will take you first for food and warmth. Perhaps
it would be well for you to stay there to rest for an hour
or so, and I will send a message to Lady Anstruthers."
"I will go to the place, and eat and drink what you
advise," she answered. "But I beg you to take me back to
Rosalie without delay. I feel that I must see her."
"I feel that I must see her, too," he said. "But for
her--God bless her!" he added, after his sudden pause.
Betty knew that the exclamation meant strong feeling, and
that somehow in the past hours Rosalie had awakened it. But
it was only when, after their refreshment at the farm, they
had taken horse again and were riding homeward together,
that she heard from him what had passed between them.
"All that has led to this may seem the merest chance,"
he said. "But surely a strange thing has come about. I
know that without understanding it." He leaned over and
touched her hand. "You, who are Life--without understanding
I ride here beside you, believing that you brought me back."
"I tried--I tried! With all my strength, I tried."
"After I had seen your sister to-day, I guessed--I knew.
But not at first. I was not ill of the fever, as excited rumour
had it; but I was ill, and the doctors and the vicar were
alarmed. I had fought too long, and I was giving up, as I
have seen the poor fellows in the ballroom give up. If they
were not dragged back they slipped out of one's hands. If
the fever had developed, all would have been over quickly.
I knew the doctors feared that, and I am ashamed to say I
was glad of it. But, yesterday, in the morning, when I was
letting myself go with a morbid pleasure in the luxurious relief
of it--something reached me--some slow rising call to effort
and life."
She turned towards him in her saddle, listening, her lips
parted.
"I did not even ask myself what was happening, but I
began to be conscious of being drawn back, and to long
intensely to see you again. I was gradually filled with a
restless feeling that you were near me, and that, though I could
not physically hear your voice, you were surely CALLING to
me. It was the thing which could not be--but it was--and
because of it I could not let myself drift."
"I did call you! I was on my knees in the church asking
to be forgiven if I prayed mad prayers--but praying the same
thing over and over. The villagers were kneeling there, too.
They crowded in, leaving everything else. You are their
hero, and they were in deep earnest."
His look was gravely pondering. His life had not made a mystic
of him--it was Penzance who was the mystic --but he felt himself
perplexed by mysteriously suggestive thought.
"I was brought back--I was brought back," he said. "In
the afternoon I fell asleep and slept profoundly until the
morning. When I awoke, I realised that I was a remade man.
The doctors were almost awed when I first spoke to them.
Old Dr. Fenwick died later, and, after I had heard about it,
the church bell was tolled. It was heard at Weaver's farmhouse,
and, as everybody had been excitedly waiting for the
sound, it conveyed but one idea to them--and the boy was
sent racing across the fields to Stornham village. Dearest!
Dearest!" he exclaimed.
She had bowed her head and burst into passionate sobbing.
Because she was not of the women who wept, her moment's
passion was strong and bitter.
"It need not have been!" she shuddered. "One cannot
bear it--because it need not have been!"
"Stop your horse a moment," he said, reining in his own,
while, with burning eyes and swelling throat, he held and
steadied her. But he did not know that neither her sister
nor her father had ever seen her in such mood, and that she
had never so seen herself.
"You shall not remember it," he said to her.
"I will not," she answered, recovering herself. "But for one
moment all the awful hours rushed back. Tell me the rest."
"We did not know that the blunder had been made until
a messenger from Dole rode over to inquire and bring messages
of condolence. Then we understood what had occurred
and I own a sort of frenzy seized me. I knew I must see you,
and, though the doctors were horribly nervous, they dare not
hold me back. The day before it would not have been
believed that I could leave my room. You were crying out
to me, and though I did not know, I was answering, body and
soul. Penzance knew I must have my way when I spoke to
him--mad as it seemed. When I rode through Stornham village,
more than one woman screamed at sight of me. I shall
not be able to blot out of my mind your sister's face. She
will tell you what we said to each other. I rode away from
the Court quite half mad----" his voice became very gentle,
"because of something she had told me in the first wild moments."
Lady Anstruthers had spent the night moving restlessly
from one room to another, and had not been to bed when
they rode side by side up the avenue in the early morning
sunlight. An under keeper, crossing the park a few hundred
yards above them, after one glance, dashed across the sward
to the courtyard and the servants' hall. The news flashed
electrically through the house, and Rosalie, like a small ghost,
came out upon the steps as they reined in. Though her lips
moved, she could not speak aloud, as she watched Mount
Dunstan lift her sister from her horse.
"Childe Harold stumbled and I hurt my foot," said Betty,
trying to be calm.
"I knew he would find you!" Rosalie answered quite
faintly. "I knew you would!" turning to Mount Dunstan,
adoring him with all the meaning of her small paled face.
She would have been afraid of her memory of what she
had said in the strange scene which had taken place before
them a few hours ago, but almost before either of the two
spoke she knew that a great gulf had been crossed in some
one inevitable, though unforeseen, leap. How it had been
taken, when or where, did not in the least matter, when she
clung to Betty and Betty clung to her.
After a few moments of moved and reverent waiting, the
admirable Jennings stepped forward and addressed her in
lowered voice.
"There's been little sleep in the village this night, my lady,"
he murmured earnestly. "I promised they should have a sign,
with your permission. If the flag was run up--they're all
looking out, and they'd know."
"Run it up, Jennings," Lady Anstruthers answered, "at once."
When it ran up the staff on the tower and fluttered out in
gay answering to the morning breeze, children in the village
began to run about shouting, men and women appeared at
cottage doors, and more than one cap was thrown up in the
air. But old Doby and Mrs. Welden, who had been waiting
for hours, standing by Mrs. Welden's gate, caught each
other's dry, trembling old hands and began to cry.
The Broadmorlands divorce scandal, having made conversation
during a season quite forty years before Miss Vanderpoel
appeared at Stornham Court, had been laid upon a lower
shelf and buried beneath other stories long enough to be
forgotten. Only one individual had not forgotten it, and he
was the Duke of Broadmorlands himself, in whose mind it
remained hideously clear. He had been a young man,
honestly and much in love when it first revealed itself to him,
and for a few months he had even thought it might end by
being his death, notwithstanding that he was strong and in
first-rate physical condition. He had been a fine, hearty
young man of clean and rather dignified life, though he was
not understood to be brilliant of mind. Privately he had
ideals connected with his rank and name which he was not
fluent enough clearly to express. After he had realised that
he should not die of the public humiliation and disgrace, which
seemed to point him out as having been the kind of gullible
fool it is scarcely possible to avoid laughing at--or, so it
seemed to him in his heart-seared frenzy--he thought it not
improbable that he should go mad. He was harried so by
memories of lovely little soft ways of Edith's (his wife's
name was Edith), of the pretty sound of her laugh, and of
her innocent, girlish habit of kneeling down by her bedside
every night and morning to say her prayers. This had so
touched him that he had sometimes knelt down to say his, too,
saying to her, with slight awkward boyishness, that a fellow
who had a sort of angel for his wife ought to do his best to
believe in the things she believed in.
"And all the time----!" a devil who laughed used to
snigger in his ear over and over again, until it was almost
like the ticking of a clock during the worst months, when it
did not seem probable that a man could feel his brain whirling
like a Catherine wheel night and day, and still manage
to hold on and not reach the point of howling and shrieking
and dashing his skull against wails and furniture.
But that passed in time, and he told himself that he passed
with it. Since then he had lived chiefly at Broadmorlands
Castle, and was spoken of as a man who had become religious,
which was not true, but, having reached the decision that
religion was good for most people, he paid a good deal of
attention to his church and schools, and was rigorous in the
matter of curates.
He had passed seventy now, and was somewhat despotic
and haughty, because a man who is a Duke and does not go
out into the world to rub against men of his own class and
others, but lives altogether on a great and splendid estate,
saluted by every creature he meets, and universally obeyed and
counted before all else, is not unlikely to forget that he is a
quite ordinary human being, and not a sort of monarch.
He had done his best to forget Edith, who had soon died
of being a shady curate's wife in Australia, but he had not
been able to encompass it. He used, occasionally, to dream
she was kneeling by the bed in her childish nightgown saying
her prayers aloud, and would waken crying--as he had cried
in those awful young days. Against social immorality or
village light-mindedness he was relentlessly savage. He
allowed for no palliating or exonerating facts. He began to
see red when he heard of or saw lightness in a married woman,
and the outside world frequently said that this characteristic
bordered on monomania.
Nigel Anstruthers, having met him once or twice, had at
first been much amused by him, and had even, by giving him
an adroitly careful lead, managed to guide him into an
expression of opinion. The Duke, who had heard men of his class
discussed, did not in the least like him, notwithstanding his
sympathetic suavity of manner and his air of being intelligently
impressed by what he heard. Not long afterwards,
however, it transpired that the aged rector of Broadmorlands
having died, the living had been given to Ffolliott, and, hearing
it, Sir Nigel was not slow to conjecture that quite decently
utilisable tools would lie ready to his hand if circumstances
pressed; this point of view, it will be seen, being not
illogical. A man who had not been a sort of hermit would have
heard enough of him to be put on his guard, and one who was a man
of the world, looking normally on existence, would have
reasoned coolly, and declined to concern himself about what was
not his affair. But a parallel might be drawn between
Broadmorlands and some old lion wounded sorely in his youth and
left to drag his unhealed torment through the years of age. On
one subject he had no point of view but his own, and could be
roused to fury almost senseless by wholly inadequately supported
facts. He presented exactly the material required--and
that in mass.
About the time the flag was run up on the tower at Stornham
Court a carter, driving whistling on the road near the
deserted cottage, was hailed by a man who was walking slowly
a few yards ahead of him. The carter thought that he was a
tramp, as his clothes were plainly in bad case, which seeing,
his answer was an unceremonious grunt, and it certainly did
not occur to him to touch his forehead. A minute later,
however, he "got a start," as he related afterwards. The tramp
was a gentleman whose riding costume was torn and muddied,
and who looked "gashly," though he spoke with the manner
and authority which Binns, the carter, recognised as that of
one of the "gentry" addressing a day-labourer.
"How far is it from here to Medham?" he inquired.
"Medham be about four mile, sir," was the answer. "I
be carryin' these 'taters there to market."
"I want to get there. I have met with an accident. My
horse took fright at a pheasant starting up rocketting under
his nose. He threw me into a hedge and bolted. I'm badly
enough bruised to want to reach a town and see a doctor. Can
you give me a lift?"
"That I will, sir, ready enough," making room on the seat
beside him. "You be bruised bad, sir," he said sympathetically,
as his passenger climbed to his place, with a twisted face
and uttering blasphemies under his breath.
"Damned badly," he answered. "No bones broken, however."
"That cut on your cheek and neck'll need plasterin', sir."
"That's a scratch. Thorn bush," curtly.
Sympathy was plainly not welcome. In fact Binns was
soon of the opinion that here was an ugly customer, gentleman
or no gentleman. A jolting cart was, however, not the best
place for a man who seemed sore from head to foot, and done
for out and out. He sat and ground his teeth, as he clung
to the rough seat in the attempt to steady himself. He became
more and more "gashly," and a certain awful light in his
eyes alarmed the carter by leaping up at every jolt. Binns
was glad when he left him at Medham Arms, and felt he
had earned the half-sovereign handed to him.
Four days Anstruthers lay in bed in a room at the Inn. No
one saw him but the man who brought him food. He did
not send for a doctor, because he did not wish to see one. He
sent for such remedies as were needed by a man who had
been bruised by a fall from his horse. He made no remark
which could be considered explanatory, after he had said
irritably that a man was a fool to go loitering along on a
nervous brute who needed watching. Whatsoever happened was his
own damned fault.
Through hours of day and night he lay staring at the whitewashed
beams or the blue roses on the wall paper. They were
long hours, and filled with things not pleasant enough to
dwell on in detail. Physical misery which made a man
writhe at times was not the worst part of them. There were
a thousand things less endurable. More than once he foamed
at the mouth, and recognised that he gibbered like a madman.
There was but one memory which saved him from feeling
that this was the very end of things. That was the memory
of Broadmorlands. While a man had a weapon left, even
though it could not save him, he might pay up with it--get
almost even. The whole Vanderpoel lot could be plunged
neck deep in a morass which would leave mud enough sticking
to them, even if their money helped them to prevent its
entirely closing over their heads. He could attend to that,
and, after he had set it well going, he could get out. There
were India, South Africa, Australia--a dozen places that
would do. And then he would remember Betty Vanderpoel,
and curse horribly under the bed clothes. It was the memory
of Betty which outdid all others in its power to torment.
On the morning of the fifth day the Duke of Broadmorlands
received a note, which he read with somewhat annoyed
curiosity. A certain Sir Nigel Anstruthers, whom it appeared
he ought to be able to recall, was in the neighbourhood, and
wished to see him on a parochial matter of interest. "Parochial
matter" was vague, and so was the Duke's recollection of the
man who addressed him. If his memory served him rightly,
he had met him in a country house in Somersetshire, and had
heard that he was the acquaintance of the disreputable eldest
son. What could a person of that sort have to say of parochial
matters? The Duke considered, and then, in obedience to
a rigorous conscience, decided that one ought, perhaps, to give
him half an hour.
There was that in the intruder's aspect, when he arrived in
the afternoon, which produced somewhat the effect of shock. In
the first place, a man in his unconcealable physical condition
had no right to be out of his bed. Though he plainly refused to
admit the fact, his manner of bearing himself erect, and even
with a certain touch of cool swagger, was, it was evident,
achieved only by determined effort. He looked like a man
who had not yet recovered from some evil fever. Since the
meeting in Somersetshire he had aged more than the year
warranted. Despite his obstinate fight with himself it was
obvious that he was horribly shaky. A disagreeable scratch or
cut, running from cheek to neck, did not improve his personal
appearance.
He pleased his host no more than he had pleased him at
their first encounter; he, in fact, repelled him strongly, by
suggesting a degree of abnormality of mood which was
smoothed over by an attempt at entire normality of manner.
The Duke did not present an approachable front as, after
Anstruthers had taken a chair, he sat and examined him
with bright blue old eyes set deep on either side of a dominant
nose and framed over by white eyebrows. No, Nigel
Anstruthers summed him up, it would not be easy to open the
matter with the old fool. He held himself magnificently aloof,
with that lack of modernity in his sense of place which, even
at this late day, sometimes expressed itself here and there in
the manner of the feudal survival.
"I am afraid you have been ill," with rigid civility.
"A man feels rather an outsider in confessing he has let
his horse throw him into a hedge. It was my own fault
entirely. I allowed myself to forget that I was riding a
dangerously nervous brute. I was thinking of a painful and
absorbing subject. I was badly bruised and scratched, but
that was all."
"What did your doctor say?"
"That I was in luck not to have broken my neck."
"You had better have a glass of wine," touching a bell.
"You do not look equal to any exertion."
In gathering himself together, Sir Nigel felt he was forced
to use enormous effort. It had cost him a gruesome physical
struggle to endure the drive over to Broadmorlands, though it
was only a few miles from Medham. There had been something
unnatural in the exertion necessary to sit upright and keep
his mind decently clear. That was the worst of it. The fever
and raging hours of the past days and nights had so shaken him
that he had become exhausted, and his brain was not alert. He
was not thinking rapidly, and several times he had lost sight of
a point it was important to remember. He grew hot and cold
and knew his hands and voice shook, as he answered. But,
perhaps--he felt desperately--signs of emotion were not bad.
"I am not quite equal to exertion," he began slowly. "But
a man cannot lie on his bed while some things are undone--
a MAN cannot."
As the old Duke sat upright, the blue eyes under his bent
brows were startled, as well as curious. Was the man going
out of his mind about something? He looked rather like it,
with the dampness starting out on his haggard face, and the
ugly look suddenly stamped there. The fact was that the
insensate fury which had possessed and torn Anstruthers as he
had writhed in his inn bedroom had sprung upon him again
in full force, and his weakness could not control it, though it
would have been wiser to hold it in check. He also felt
frightfully ill, which filled him with despair, and, through
this fact, he lost sight of the effect he produced, as he stood
up, shaking all over.
"I come to you because you are the one man who can most
easily understand the thing I have been concealing for a good
many years."
The Duke was irritated. Confound the objectionable idiot,
what did he mean by taking that intimate tone with a man
who was not prepared to concern himself in his affairs?
"Excuse me," he said, holding up an authoritative hand,
"are you going to make a confession? I don't like such
things. I prefer to be excused. Personal confidences are not
parochial matters."
"This one is." And Sir Nigel was sickeningly conscious that
he was putting the statement rashly, while at the same time
all better words escaped him. "It is as much a parochial
matter," losing all hold on his wits and stammering, "as
was--as was--the affair of--your wife."
It was the Duke who stood up now, scarlet with anger.
He sprang from his chair as if he had been a young man in
whom some insult had struck blazing fire.
"You--you dare!" he shouted. "You insolent blackguard!
You force your way in here and dare--dare----!"
And he clenched his fist, wildly shaking it.
Nigel Anstruthers, staggering on his uncertain feet, would
have shouted also, but could not, though he tried, and he
heard his own voice come forth brokenly.
"Yes, I dare! I--your--my own--my----!"
Swaying and tottering, he swung round to the chair he
had left, and fell into it, even while the old Duke, who stood
raging before him, started back in outraged amazement. What
was the fellow doing? Was he making faces at him? The
drawn malignant mouth and muscles suggested it. Was he
a lunatic, indeed? But the sense of disgusted outrage changed
all at once to horror, as, with a countenance still more
hideously livid and twisted, his visitor slid helplessly from his
seat and lay a huddling heap of clothes on the floor.
CHAPTER L
THE PRIMEVAL THING
When Mr. Vanderpoel landed in England his wife was with
him. This quiet-faced woman, who was known to be on
her way to join her daughter in England, was much discussed,
envied, and glanced at, when she promenaded the deck with
her husband, or sat in her chair softly wrapped in wonderful
furs. Gradually, during the past months, she had been told
certain modified truths connected with her elder daughter's
marriage. They had been painful truths, but had been so
softened and expurgated of their worst features that it had
been possible to bear them, when one realised that they did
not, at least, mean that Rosy had forgotten or ceased to love
her mother and father, or wish to visit her home. The steady
clearness of foresight and readiness of resource which were
often spoken of as being specially characteristic of Reuben S.
Vanderpoel, were all required, and employed with great
tenderness, in the management of this situation. As little as it
was possible that his wife should know, was the utmost she
must hear and be hurt by. Unless ensuing events compelled
further revelations, the rest of it should be kept from her. As
further protection, her husband had frankly asked her to content
herself with a degree of limited information.
"I have meant all our lives, Annie, to keep from you the
unpleasant things a woman need not be troubled with," he
had said. "I promised myself I would when you were a girl.
I knew you would face things, if I needed your help, but you
were a gentle little soul, like Rosy, and I never intended that
you should bear what was useless. Anstruthers was a blackguard,
and girls of all nations have married blackguards before.
When you have Rosy safe at home, and know nothing can hurt
her again, you both may feel you would like to talk it over.
Till then we won't go into detail. You trust me, I know, when
I tell you that you shall hold Rosy in your arms very soon.
We may have something of a fight, but there can only be one
end to it in a country as decent as England. Anstruthers isn't
exactly what I should call an Englishman. Men rather like
him are to be found in two or three places." His good-looking,
shrewd, elderly face lighted with a fine smile. "My handsome
Betty has saved us a good deal by carrying out her
fifteen-year-old plan of going to find her sister," he ended.
Before they landed they had decided that Mrs. Vanderpoel
should be comfortably established in a hotel in London, and
that after this was arranged, her husband should go to Stornham
Court alone. If Sir Nigel could be induced to listen to logic,
Rosalie, her child, and Betty should come at once to town.
"And, if he won't listen to logic," added Mr. Vanderpoel,
with a dry composure, "they shall come just the same, my
dear." And his wife put her arms round his neck and kissed
him because she knew what he said was quite true, and she
admired him--as she had always done--greatly.
But when the pilot came on board and there began to stir
in the ship the agreeable and exciting bustle of the delivery
of letters and welcoming telegrams, among Mr. Vanderpoel's
many yellow envelopes he opened one the contents of which
caused him to stand still for some moments--so still, indeed,
that some of the bystanders began to touch each other's elbows
and whisper. He certainly read the message two or three
times before he folded it up, returned it to its receptacle, and
walked gravely to his wife's sitting-room.
"Reuben!" she exclaimed, after her first look at him,
"have you bad news? Oh, I hope not!"
He came and sat down quietly beside her, taking her hand.
"Don't be frightened, Annie, my dear," he said. "I have
just been reminded of a verse in the Bible--about vengeance not
belonging to mere human beings. Nigel Anstruthers has had
a stroke of paralysis, and it is not his first. Apparently, even
if he lies on his back for some months thinking of harm, he
won't be able to do it. He is finished."
When he was carried by the express train through the
country, he saw all that Betty had seen, though the summer
had passed, and there were neither green trees nor hedges.
He knew all that the long letters had meant of stirred emotion
and affection, and he was strongly moved, though his mind
was full of many things. There were the farmhouses, the
square-towered churches, the red-pointed hop oasts, and the
village children. How distinctly she had made him see them!
His Betty--his splendid Betty! His heart beat at the thought
of seeing her high, young black head, and holding her safe
in his arms again. Safe! He resented having used the word,
because there was a shock in seeming to admit the possibility
that anything in the universe could do wrong to her. Yet
one man had been villain enough to mean her harm, and to
threaten her with it. He slightly shuddered as he thought of
how the man was finished--done for.
The train began to puff more loudly, as it slackened its pace.
It was drawing near to a rustic little station, and, as it passed
in, he saw a carriage standing outside, waiting on the road, and
a footman in a long coat, glancing into each window as the
train went by. Two or three country people were watching it
intently. Miss Vanderpoel's father was coming up from London
on it. The stationmaster rushed to open the carriage door,
and the footman hastened forward, but a tall lovely thing
in grey was opposite the step as Mr. Vanderpoel descended
it to the platform. She did not recognise the presence of any
other human being than himself. For the moment she seemed
to forget even the broad-shouldered man who had plainly
come with her. As Reuben S. Vanderpoel folded her in his
arms, she folded him and kissed him as he was not sure she
had ever kissed him before.
"My splendid Betty! My own fine girl!" he said.
And when she cried out "Father! Father!" she bent and
kissed the breast of his coat.
He knew who the big young man was before she turned to
present him.
"This is Lord Mount Dunstan, father," she said. "Since
Nigel was brought home, he has been very good to us."
Reuben S. Vanderpoel looked well into the man's eyes, as
he shook hands with him warmly, and this was what he said
to himself:
"Yes, she's safe. This is quite safe. It is to be trusted
with the whole thing."
Not many days after her husband's arrival at Stornham
Court, Mrs. Vanderpoel travelled down from London, and,
during her journey, scarcely saw the wintry hedges and bare
trees, because, as she sat in her cushioned corner of the railway
carriage, she was inwardly offering up gentle, pathetically
ardent prayers of gratitude. She was the woman who prays,
and the many sad petitions of the past years were being
answered at last. She was being allowed to go to Rosy--
whatsoever happened, she could never be really parted from her
girl again. She asked pardon many times because she had not been
able to be really sorry when she had heard of her son-in-law's
desperate condition. She could feel pity for him in his awful
case, she told herself, but she could not wish for the thing
which perhaps she ought to wish for. She had confided this to
her husband with innocent, penitent tears, and he had stroked
her cheek, which had always been his comforting way since
they had been young things together.
"My dear," he said, "if a tiger with hydrophobia were
loose among a lot of decent people--or indecent ones, for
the matter of that--you would not feel it your duty to be very
sorry if, in springing on a group of them, he impaled himself
on an iron fence. Don't reproach yourself too much." And,
though the realism of the picture he presented was such as to
make her exclaim, "No! No!" there were still occasional
moments when she breathed a request for pardon if she was
hard of heart--this softest of creatures human.
It was arranged by the two who best knew and loved her
that her meeting with Rosalie should have no spectators, and
that their first hour together should be wholly unbroken in
upon.
"You have not seen each other for so long," Betty said,
when, on her arrival, she led her at once to the morning-room
where Rosy waited, pale with joy, but when the door was
opened, though the two figures were swept into each other's
arms by one wild, tremulous rush of movement, there were no
sounds to be heard, only caught breaths, until the door had
closed again.
The talks which took place between Mr. Vanderpoel and
Lord Mount Dunstan were many and long, and were of
absorbing interest to both. Each presented to the other a new
world, and a type of which his previous knowledge had been
but incomplete.
"I wonder," Mr. Vanderpoel said, in the course of one of
them, "if my world appeals to you as yours appeals to me.
Naturally, from your standpoint, it scarcely seems probable.
Perhaps the up-building of large financial schemes presupposes
a certain degree of imagination. I am becoming a romantic
New York man of business, and I revel in it. Kedgers, for
instance," with the smile which, somehow, suggested Betty,
"Kedgers and the Lilium Giganteum, Mrs. Welden and old
Doby threaten to develop into quite necessary factors in the
scheme of happiness. What Betty has felt is even more
comprehensible than it seemed at first."
They walked and rode together about the countryside; when
Mount Dunstan itself was swept clean of danger, and only
a few convalescents lingered to be taken care of in the huge
ballroom, they spent many days in going over the estate. The
desolate beauty of it appealed to and touched Mr. Vanderpoel,
as it had appealed to and touched his daughter, and, also,
wakened in him much new and curious delight. But Mount
Dunstan, with a touch of his old obstinacy, insisted that he
should ignore the beauty, and look closely at less admirable
things.
"You must see the worst of this," he said. "You must
understand that I can put no good face upon things, that I
offer nothing, because I have nothing to offer."
If he had not been swept through and through by a powerful
and rapturous passion, he would have detested and abhorred
these days of deliberate proud laying bare of the nakedness of
the land. But in the hours he spent with Betty Vanderpoel
the passion gave him knowledge of the things which, being
elemental, do not concern themselves with pride and obstinacy,
and do not remember them. Too much had ended, and too
much begun, to leave space or thought for poor things. In
their eyes, when they were together, and even when they were
apart, dwelt a glow which was deeply moving to those who,
looking on, were sufficiently profound of thought to understand.
Watching the two walking slowly side by side down the
leafless avenue on a crystal winter day, Mr. Vanderpoel
conversed with the vicar, whom he greatly liked.
"A young man of the name of Selden," he remarked, "told
me more of this than he knew."
"G. Selden," said the vicar, with affectionate smiling. "He
is not aware that he was largely concerned in the matter. In
fact, without G. Selden, I do not know how, exactly, we
should have got on. How is he, nice fellow?"
"Extremely well, and in these days in my employ. He
is of the honest, indefatigable stuff which makes its way."
His own smiles, as he watched the two tall figures in
the distance, settled into an expression of speculative
absorption, because he was reflecting upon profoundly interesting
matters.
"There is a great primeval thing which sometimes--not
often, only sometimes--occurs to two people," he went on.
"When it leaps into being, it is well if it is not thwarted, or
done to death. It has happened to my girl and Mount Dunstan.
If they had been two young tinkers by the roadside, they
would have come together, and defied their beggary. As it
is, I recognise, as I sit here, that the outcome of what is to
be may reach far, and open up broad new ways."
"Yes," said the vicar. "She will live here and fill a strong
man's life with wonderful human happiness--her splendid
children will be born here, and among them will be those who
lead the van and make history."
. . . . .
For some time Nigel Anstruthers lay in his room at
Stornham Court, surrounded by all of aid and luxury that wealth
and exalted medical science could gather about him. Sometimes
he lay a livid unconscious mask, sometimes his nurses and
doctors knew that in his hollow eyes there was the light of
a raging half reason, and they saw that he struggled to utter
coherent sounds which they might comprehend. This he never
accomplished, and one day, in the midst of such an effort, he
was stricken dumb again, and soon afterwards sank into stillness
and died.
And the Shuttle in the hand of Fate, through every hour
of every day, and through the slow, deep breathing of all the
silent nights, weaves to and fro--to and fro--drawing with
it the threads of human life and thought which strengthen
its web: and trace the figures of its yet vague and uncompleted
design.