A MISTAKE OF THE POSTBOY'S
As the weeks passed at Stornham Court the Atlantic Ocean seemed to
Rosalie Anstruthers to widen endlessly, and gay, happy, noisy New York
to recede until it was as far away as some memory of heaven. The girl
had been born in the midst of the rattling, rumbling bustle, and it
had never struck her as assuming the character of noise; she had only
thought of it as being the cheerful confusion inseparable from town. She
had been secretly offended and hurt when strangers said that New York
was noisy and dirty; when they called it vulgar, she never wholly
forgave them. She was of the New Yorkers who adore their New York
as Parisians adore Paris and who feel that only within its beloved
boundaries can the breath of life be breathed. People were often too hot
or too cold there, but there was usually plenty of bright glaring sun,
and the extremes of the weather had at least something rather dramatic
about them. There were dramatic incidents connected with them, at any
rate. People fell dead of sunstroke or were frozen to death, and the
newspapers were full of anecdotes during a “cold snap” or a “torrid
wave,” which all made for excitement and conversation.
But at Stornham the rain seemed to young Lady Anstruthers to descend
ceaselessly. The season was a wet one, and when she rose in the morning
and looked out over the huge stretch of trees and sward she thought she
always saw the rain falling either in hopeless sheets or more hopeless
drizzle. The occasions upon which this was a dreary truth blotted out or
blurred the exceptions, when in liquid ultramarine deeps of sky, floated
islands and mountains of snow-white fleece, of a beauty of which she had
before had no conception.
In the English novels she had read, places such as Stornham Court were
always filled with “house parties,” made up of wonderful town wits and
beauties, who provided endless entertainment for each other, who played
games, who hunted and shot pheasants and shone in dazzling amateur
theatricals. There were, however, no visitors at Stornham, and there
were in fact, no accommodations for any. There were numberless bedrooms,
but none really fit for guests to occupy. Carpets and curtains were
ancient and ragged, furniture was dilapidated, chimneys would not draw,
beds were falling to pieces. The Dowager Lady Anstruthers had never
either attracted desired, or been able to afford company. Her son's wife
suffered from the resulting boredom and unpopularity without being able
to comprehend the significance of the situation.
As the weeks dragged by a few heavy carriages deposited at the Court
a few callers. Some of the visitors bore imposing titles, which made
Rosalie very nervous and caused her hastily to array herself to receive
them in toilettes much too pretty and delicate for the occasion. Her
innocent idea was that she must do her husband credit by appearing as
“stylish” as possible.
As a result she was stared at, either with open disfavour, or with
well-bred, furtive criticism, and was described afterwards as being
either “very American” or “very over-dressed.” When she had lived in
huge rooms in Fifth Avenue, Rosalie had changed her attire as many times
a day as she had changed her fancy; every hour had been filled with
engagements and amusements; the Vanderpoel carriages had driven up
to the door and driven away again and again through the mornings and
afternoons and until midnight and later. Someone was always going out or
coming in. There had been in the big handsome house not much more of an
air of repose than one might expect to find at a railway station; but
the flurry, the coming and going, the calling and chatting had all been
cheery, amiable. At Stornham, Rosalie sat at breakfast before unchanging
boiled eggs, unfailing toast and unalterable broiled bacon, morning
after morning. Sir Nigel sat and munched over the newspapers, his
mother, with an air of relentless disapproval from a lofty height of
both her food and companions, disposed of her eggs and her rasher at
Rosalie's right hand. She had transferred to her daughter-in-law her
previously occupied seat at the head of the table. This had been
done with a carefully prepared scene of intense though correct
disagreeableness, in which she had managed to convey all the rancour of
her dethroned spirit and her disapproval and disdain of international
alliances.
“It is of course proper that you should sit at the head of your
husband's table,” she had said, among other agreeable things. “A woman
having devoted her life to her son must relinquish her position to the
person he chooses to marry. If you should have a son you will give
up your position to his wife. Since Nigel has married you, he has, of
course, a right to expect that you will at least make an effort to learn
something of what is required of women of your position.”
“Sit down, Rosalie,” said Nigel. “Of course you take the head of the
table, and naturally you must learn what is expected of my wife, but
don't talk confounded rubbish, mother, about devoting your life to your
son. We have seen about as little of each other as we could help. We
never agreed.” They were both bullies and each made occasional efforts
at bullying the other without any particular result. But each could at
least bully the other into intensified unpleasantness.
The vicar's wife having made her call of ceremony upon the new
Lady Anstruthers, followed up the acquaintance, and found her quite
exotically unlike her mother-in-law, whose charities one may be sure had
neither been lavish nor dispensed by any hand less impressive than her
own. The younger woman was of wholly malleable material. Her sympathies
were easily awakened and her purse was well filled and readily opened.
Small families or large ones, newly born infants or newly buried ones,
old women with “bad legs” and old men who needed comforts, equally
touched her heart. She innocently bestowed sovereigns where an
Englishwoman would have known that half-crowns would have been
sufficient. As the vicaress was her almoner that lady felt her
importance rapidly on the increase. When she left a cottage saying,
“I'll speak to young Lady Anstruthers about you,” the good woman of the
house curtsied low and her husband touched his forehead respectfully.
But this did not advance the fortunes of Sir Nigel, who personally
required of her very different things. Two weeks after her arrival at
Stornham, Rosalie began to see that somehow she was regarded as a person
almost impudently in the wrong. It appeared that if she had been an
English girl she would have been quite different, that she would have
been an advantage instead of a detriment. As an American she was a
detriment. That seemed to go without saying. She tried to do everything
she was told, and learn something from each cold insinuation. She did
not know that her very amenability and timidity were her undoing. Sir
Nigel and his mother thoroughly enjoyed themselves at her expense. They
knew they could say anything they chose, and that at the most she would
only break down into crying and afterwards apologise for being so badly
behaved. If some practical, strong-minded person had been near to defend
her she might have been rescued promptly and her tyrants routed. But she
was a young girl, tender of heart and weak of nature. She used to cry a
great deal when she was alone, and when she wrote to her mother she was
too frightened to tell the truth concerning her unhappiness.
“Oh, if I could just see some of them!” she would wail to herself. “If
I could just see mother or father or anybody from New York! Oh, I know
I shall never see New York again, or Broadway or Fifth Avenue or Central
Park--I never--never--never shall!” And she would grovel among her
pillows, burying her face and half stifling herself lest her sobs should
be heard. Her feeling for her husband had become one of terror and
repulsion. She was almost more afraid of his patronising, affectionate
moments than she was of his temper.
His conjugal condescensions made her feel vaguely--without knowing
why--as if she were some lower order of little animal.
American women, he said, had no conception of wifely duties and
affection. He had a great deal to say on the subject of wifely duty.
It was part of her duty as a wife to be entirely satisfied with his
society, and to be completely happy in the pleasure it afforded her. It
was her wifely duty not to talk about her own family and palpitatingly
expect letters by every American mail. He objected intensely to this
letter writing and receiving, and his mother shared his prejudices.
“You have married an Englishman,” her ladyship said. “You have put it
out of his power to marry an Englishwoman, and the least consideration
you can show is to let New York and Nine-hundredth street remain upon
the other side of the Atlantic and not insist on dragging them into
Stornham Court.”
The Dowager Lady Anstruthers was very fine in her picture of her mental
condition, when she realised, as she seemed periodically to do, that it
was no longer possible for her son to make a respectable marriage with
a woman of his own nation. The unadorned fact was that both she and
Sir Nigel were infuriated by the simplicity which made Rosalie slow in
comprehending that it was proper that the money her father allowed
her should be placed in her husband's hands, and left there with no
indelicate questioning. If she had been an English girl matters would
have been made plain to her from the first and arranged satisfactorily
before her marriage. Sir Nigel's mother considered that he had played
the fool, and would not believe that New York fathers were such touchy,
sentimental idiots as not to know what was expected of them.
They wasted no time, however, in coming to the point, and in a measure
it was the vicaress who aided them. Not she entirely, however.
Since her mother-in-law's first mention of a possible son whose wife
would eventually thrust her from her seat at the head of the table,
Rosalie had several times heard this son referred to. It struck her
that in England such things seemed discussed with more freedom than in
America. She had never heard a young woman's possible family arranged
for and made the subject of conversation in the more crude atmosphere
of New York. It made her feel rather awkward at first. Then she began
to realise that the son was part of her wifely duty also; that she was
expected to provide one, and that he was in some way expected to provide
for the estate--to rehabilitate it--and that this was because her
father, being a rich man, would provide for him. It had also struck her
that in England there was a tendency to expectation that someone
would “provide” for someone else, that relatives even by marriage were
supposed to “make allowances” on which it was quite proper for other
persons to live. Rosalie had been accustomed to a community in which
even rich men worked, and in which young and able-bodied men would have
felt rather indignant if aunts or uncles had thought it necessary to
pension them off as if they had been impotent paupers. It was Rosalie's
son who was to be “provided for” in this case, and who was to “provide
for” his father.
“When you have a son,” her mother-in-law had remarked severely, “I
suppose something will be done for Nigel and the estate.”
This had been said before she had been ten days in the house, and had
set her not-too-quick brain working. She had already begun to see that
life at Stornham Court was not the luxurious affair it was in the
house in Fifth Avenue. Things were shabby and queer and not at all
comfortable. Fires were not lighted because a day was chilly and gloomy.
She had once asked for one in her bedroom and her mother-in-law had
reproved her for indecent extravagance in a manner which took her breath
away.
“I suppose in America you have your house at furnace heat in July,” she
said. “Mere wastefulness and self-indulgence! That is why Americans are
old women at twenty. They are shrivelled and withered by the unhealthy
lives they lead. Stuffing themselves with sweets and hot bread and never
breathing the fresh air.”
Rosalie could not at the moment recall any withered and shrivelled old
women of twenty, but she blushed and stammered as usual.
“It is never cold enough for fires in July,” she answered, “but we--we
never think fires extravagant when we are not comfortable without them.”
“Coal must be cheaper than it is in England,” said her ladyship. “When
you have a daughter, I hope you do not expect to bring her up as girls
are brought up in New York.”
This was the first time Rosalie had heard of her daughter, and she was
not ready enough to reply. She naturally went into her room and cried
again, wondering what her father and mother would say if they knew that
bedroom fires were considered vulgarly extravagant by an impressive
member of the British aristocracy.
She was not at all strong at the time and was given to feeling chilly
and miserable on wet, windy days. She used to cry more than ever and was
so desolate that there were days when she used to go to the vicarage for
companionship. On such days the vicar's wife would entertain her with
stories of the villagers' catastrophes, and she would empty her purse
upon the tea table and feel a little consoled because she was the means
of consoling someone else.
“I suppose it gratifies your vanity to play the Lady Bountiful,” Sir
Nigel sneered one evening, having heard in the village what she was
doing.
“I--never thought of such a thing,” she stammered feebly. “Mrs. Brent
said they were so poor.”
“You throw your money about as if you were a child,” said her
mother-in-law. “It is a pity it is not put in the hands of some person
with discretion.”
It had begun to dawn upon Rosalie that her ladyship was deeply convinced
that either herself or her son would be admirably discreet custodians of
the money referred to. And even the dawning of this idea had frightened
the girl. She was so inexperienced and ignorant that she felt it might
be possible that in England one's husband and one's mother-in-law could
do what they liked. It might be that they could take possession of one's
money as they seemed to take possession of one's self and one's very
soul. She would have been very glad to give them money, and had indeed
wondered frequently if she might dare to offer it to them, if they would
be outraged and insulted and slay her in their wrath at her purse-proud
daring. She had tried to invent ways in which she could approach the
subject, but had not been able to screw up her courage to any sticking
point. She was so overpowered by her consciousness that they seemed
continually to intimate that Americans with money were ostentatious and
always laying stress upon the amount of their possessions. She had no
conception of the primeval simpleness of their attitude in such matters,
and that no ceremonies were necessary save the process of transferring
sufficiently large sums as though they were the mere right of the
recipients. She was taught to understand this later. In the meantime,
however, ready as she would have been to give large sums if she had
known how, she was terrified by the thought that it might be possible
that she could be deprived of her bank account and reduced to the
condition of a sort of dependent upon the humours of her lately acquired
relations. She thought over this a good deal, and would have found
immense relief if she dared have consulted anyone. But she could not
make up her mind to reveal her unhappiness to her people. She had been
married so recently, everybody had thought her marriage so delightful,
she could not bear that her father and mother should be distressed by
knowing that she was wretched. She also reflected with misery that
New York would talk the matter over excitedly and that finally the
newspapers would get hold of the gossip. She could even imagine
interviewers calling at the house in Fifth Avenue and endeavouring
to obtain particulars of the situation. Her father would be angry and
refuse to give them, but that would make no difference; the newspapers
would give them and everybody would read what they said, whether it was
true or not. She could not possibly write facts, she thought, so her
poor little letters were restrained and unlike herself, and to the
warm-hearted souls in New York, even appearing stiff and unaffectionate,
as if her aristocratic surroundings had chilled her love for them. In
fact, it became far from easy for her to write at all, since Sir Nigel
so disapproved of her interest in the American mail. His objections had
indeed taken the form of his feeling himself quite within his rights
when he occasionally intercepted letters from her relations, with a view
of finding out whether they contained criticisms of himself, which would
betray that she had been guilty of indiscreet confidences. He discovered
that she had not apparently been so guilty, but it was evident that
there were moments when Mrs. Vanderpoel was uneasy and disposed to ask
anxious questions. When this occurred he destroyed the letters, and as a
result of this precaution on his part her motherly queries seemed to be
ignored, and she several times shed tears in the belief that Rosy had
grown so patrician that she was capable of snubbing her mother in
her resentment at feeling her privacy intruded upon and an unrefined
effusiveness shown.
“I just feel as if she was beginning not to care about us at all,
Betty,” she said. “I couldn't have believed it of Rosy. She was always
such an affectionate girl.”
“I don't believe it now,” replied Betty sharply. “Rosy couldn't grow
hateful and stuck up. It's that nasty Nigel I know it is.”
Sir Nigel's intention was that there should be as little intercourse
between Fifth Avenue and Stornham Court as was possible. Among other
things, he did not intend that a lot of American relations should come
tumbling in when they chose to cross the Atlantic. He would not have it,
and took discreet steps to prevent any accident of the sort. He wrote
to America occasionally himself, and knowing well how to make himself
civilly repellent, so subtly chilled his parents-in-law as to discourage
in them more than once their half-formed plan of paying a visit to their
child in her new home. He opened, read and reclosed all epistles to
and from New York, and while Mrs. Vanderpoel was much hurt to find
that Rosalie never condescended to make any response to her tentatives
concerning her possible visit, Rosalie herself was mystified by the fact
that the journey “to Europe” was never spoken of.
“I don't see why they never seem to think of coming over,” she said
plaintively one day. “They used to talk so much about it.”
“They?” ejaculated the Dowager Lady Anstruthers. “Whom may you mean?”
“Mother and father and Betty and some of the others.”
Her mother-in-law put up her eye-glasses to stare at her.
“The whole family?” she inquired.
“There are not so many of them,” Rosalie answered.
“A family is always too many to descend upon a young woman when she is
married,” observed her ladyship unmovedly. Nigel glanced over the top of
his Times.
“I may as well tell you that it would not do at all,” he put in.
“Why--why not?” exclaimed Rosalie, aghast.
“Americans don't do in English society,” slightingly.
“But they are coming over so much. They like London so--all Americans
like London.”
“Do they?” with a drawl which made Rosalie blush until the tears started
to her eyes. “I am afraid the sentiment is scarcely mutual.”
Rosalie turned and fled from the room. She turned and fled because she
realised that she should burst out crying if she waited to hear another
word, and she realised that of late she seemed always to be bursting out
crying before one or the other of those two. She could not help it. They
always seemed to be implying something slighting or scathing. They were
always putting her in the wrong and hurting her feelings.
The day was damp and chill, but she put on her hat and ran out into the
park. She went down the avenue and turned into a coppice. There, among
the wet bracken, she sank down on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree and
huddled herself in a small heap, her head on her arms, actually wailing.
“Oh, mother! Oh, mother!” she cried hysterically. “Oh, I do wish you
would come. I'm so cold, mother; I'm so ill! I can't bear it! It seems
as if you'd forgotten all about me! You're all so happy in New York that
perhaps you have forgotten--perhaps you have! Oh, don't, mother--don't!”
It was a month later that through the vicar's wife she reached a
discovery and a climax. She had heard one morning from this lady of a
misfortune which had befallen a small farmer. It was a misfortune which
was an actual catastrophe to a man in his position. His house had caught
fire during a gale of wind and the fire had spread to the outbuildings
and rickyard and swept away all his belongings, his house, his
furniture, his hayricks, and stored grain, and even his few cows and
horses. He had been a poor, hard-working fellow, and his small insurance
had lapsed the day before the fire. He was absolutely ruined, and
with his wife and six children stood face to face with beggary and
starvation.
Rosalie Anstruthers entered the vicarage to find the poor woman who was
his companion in calamity sobbing in the hall. A child of a few weeks
was in her arms, and two small creatures clung crying to her skirts.
“We've worked hard,” she wept; “we have, ma'am. Father, he's always been
steady, an' up early an' late. P'r'aps it's the Lord's 'and, as you
say, ma'am, but we've been decent people an' never missed church when we
could 'elp it--father didn't deserve it--that he didn't.”
She was heartbroken in her downtrodden hopelessness. Rosalie literally
quaked with sympathy. She poured forth her pity in such words as the
poor woman had never heard spoken by a great lady to a humble creature
like herself. The villagers found the new Lady Anstruthers' interviews
with them curiously simple and suggestive of an equality they could
not understand. Stornham was a conservative old village, where the
distinction between the gentry and the peasants was clearly marked. The
cottagers were puzzled by Sir Nigel's wife, but they decided that she
was kind, if unusual.
As Rosalie talked to the farmer's wife she longed for her father's
presence. She had remembered a time when a man in his employ had lost
his all by fire, the small house he had just made his last payment upon
having been burned to the ground. He had lost one of his children in
the fire, and the details had been heartrending. The entire Vanderpoel
household had wept on hearing them, and Mr. Vanderpoel had drawn a
cheque which had seemed like a fortune to the sufferer. A new house
had been bought, and Mrs. Vanderpoel and her daughters and friends had
bestowed furniture and clothing enough to make the family comfortable to
the verge of luxury.
“See, you poor thing,” said Rosalie, glowing with memories of this
incident, her homesick young soul comforted by the mere likeness in the
two calamities. “I brought my cheque book with me because I meant to
help you. A man worked for my father had his house burned, just as yours
was, and my father made everything all right for him again. I'll make it
all right for you; I'll make you a cheque for a hundred pounds now, and
then when your husband begins to build I'll give him some more.”
The woman gasped for breath and turned pale. She was frightened. It
really seemed as if her ladyship must have lost her wits a little. She
could not mean this. The vicaress turned pale also.
“Lady Anstruthers,” she said, “Lady Anstruthers, it--it is too much. Sir
Nigel----”
“Too much!” exclaimed Rosalie. “They have lost everything, you know;
their hayricks and cattle as well as their house; I guess it won't be
half enough.”
Mrs. Brent dragged her into the vicar's study and talked to her. She
tried to explain that in English villages such things were not done in
a manner so casual, as if they were the mere result of unconsidered
feeling, as if they were quite natural things, such as any human person
might do. When Rosalie cried: “But why not--why not? They ought to be.”
Mrs. Brent could not seem to make herself quite clear. Rosalie only
gathered in a bewildered way that there ought to be more ceremony, more
deliberation, more holding off, before a person of rank indulged in
such munificence. The recipient ought to be made to feel it more, to
understand fully what a great thing was being done.
“They will think you will do anything for them.”
“So I will,” said young Lady Anstruthers, “if I have the money when they
are in such awful trouble. Suppose we lost everything in the world and
there were people who could easily help us and wouldn't?”
“You and Sir Nigel--that is quite different,” said Mrs. Brent. “I am
afraid that if you do not discuss the matter and ask advice from your
husband and mother-in-law they will be very much offended.”
“If I were doing it with their money they would have the right to be,”
replied Rosalie, with entire ingenuousness. “I wouldn't presume to do
such a thing as that. That wouldn't be right, of course.”
“They will be angry with me,” said the vicaress awkwardly. This queer,
silly girl, who seemed to see nothing in the right light, frequently
made her feel awkward. Mrs. Brent told her husband that she appeared to
have no sense of dignity or proper appreciation of her position.
The wife of the farmer, John Wilson, carried away the cheque, quite
stunned. She was breathless with amazement and turned rather faint with
excitement, bewilderment and her sense of relief. She had to sit down
in the vicarage kitchen for a few minutes and drink a glass of the thin
vicarage beer.
Rosalie promised that she would discuss the matter and ask advice
when she returned to the Court. Just as she left the house Mrs. Brent
suddenly remembered something she had forgotten.
“The Wilson trouble completely drove it out of my mind,” she said. “It
was a stupid mistake of the postboy's. He left a letter of yours among
mine when he came this morning. It was most careless. I shall speak
to his father about it. It might have been important that you should
receive it early.”
When she saw the letter Rosalie uttered an exclamation. It was addressed
in her father's handwriting.
“Oh!” she cried. “It's from father! And the postmark is Havre. What does
it mean?”
She was so excited that she almost forgot to express her thanks.
Her heart leaped up in her throat. Could they have come over from
America--could they? Why was it written from Havre? Could they be near
her?
She walked along the road choked with ecstatic, laughing sobs. Her hand
shook so that she could scarcely tear open the envelope; she tore a
corner of the letter, and when the sheet was spread open her eyes were
full of wild, delighted tears, which made it impossible for her to see
for the moment. But she swept the tears away and read this:
DEAR DAUGHTER:
It seems as if we had had pretty bad luck in not seeing you. We had
counted on it very much, and your mother feels it all the more because
she is weak after her illness. We don't quite understand why you did
not seem to know about her having had diphtheria in Paris. You did not
answer Betty's letter. Perhaps it missed you in some way. Things do
sometimes go wrong in the mail, and several times your mother has
thought a letter has been lost. She thought so because you seemed to
forget to refer to things. We came over to leave Betty at a French
school and we had expected to visit you later. But your mother fell ill
of diphtheria and not hearing from you seemed to make her homesick,
so we decided to return to New York by the next steamer. I ran over to
London, however, to make some inquiries about you, and on the first day
I arrived I met your husband in Bond Street. He at once explained to me
that you had gone to a house party at some castle in Scotland, and said
you were well and enjoying yourself very much, and he was on his way to
join you. I am sorry, daughter, that it has turned out that we could not
see each other. It seems a long time since you left us. But I am very
glad, however, that you are so well and really like English life. If we
had time for it I am sure it would be delightful. Your mother sends
her love and wants very much to hear of all you are doing and enjoying.
Hoping that we may have better luck the next time we cross--
Your affectionate father,
REUBEN L. VANDERPOEL.
Rosalie found herself running breathlessly up the avenue. She was
clutching the letter still in her hand, and staggering from side to
side. Now and then she uttered horrible little short cries, like an
animal's. She ran and ran, seeing nothing, and now and then with the
clenched hand in which the letter was crushed striking a sharp blow at
her breast.
She stumbled up the big stone steps she had mounted on the day she was
brought home as a bride. Her dress caught her feet and she fell on her
knees and scrambled up again, gasping; she dashed across the huge
dark hall, and, hurling herself against the door of the morning room,
appeared, dishevelled, haggard-eyed, and with scarlet patches on her
wild, white face, before the Dowager, who started angrily to her feet:
“Where is Nigel? Where is Nigel?” she cried out frenziedly.
“What in heaven's name do you mean by such manners?” demanded her
ladyship. “Apologise at once!”
“Where is Nigel? Nigel! Nigel!” the girl raved. “I will see him--I
will--I will see him!”
She who had been the mildest of sweet-tempered creatures all her life
had suddenly gone almost insane with heartbroken, hysteric grief and
rage. She did not know what she was saying and doing; she only realised
in an agony of despair that she was a thing caught in a trap; that these
people had her in their power, and that they had tricked and lied to her
and kept her apart from what her girl's heart so cried out to and longed
for. Her father, her mother, her little sister; they had been near her
and had been lied to and sent away.
“You are quite mad, you violent, uncontrolled creature!” cried the
Dowager furiously. “You ought to be put in a straitjacket and drenched
with cold water.”
Then the door opened again and Nigel strode in. He was in riding dress
and was breathless and livid with anger. He was in a nice mood to
confront a wife on the verge of screaming hysterics. After a bad half
hour with his steward, who had been talking of impending disasters,
he had heard by chance of Wilson's conflagration and the hundred-pound
cheque. He had galloped home at the top of his horse's speed.
“Here is your wife raving mad,” cried out his mother.
Rosalie staggered across the room to him. She held up her hand clenching
the letter and shook it at him.
“My mother and father have been here,” she shrieked. My mother has been
ill. They wanted to come to see me. You knew and you kept it from me.
You told my father lies--lies--hideous lies! You said I was away in
Scotland--enjoying myself--when I was here and dying with homesickness.
You made them think I did not care for them--or for New York! You have
killed me! Why did you do such a wicked thing!
He looked at her with glaring eyes. If a man born a gentleman is ever in
the mood to kick his wife to death, as costermongers do, he was in that
mood. He had lost control over himself as completely as she had, and
while she was only a desperate, hysteric girl, he was a violent man.
“I did it because I did not mean to have them here,” he said. “I did it
because I won't have them here.”
“They shall come,” she quavered shrilly in her wildness. “They shall
come to see me. They are my own father and mother, and I will have
them.”
He caught her arm in such a grip that she must have thought he would
break it, if she could have thought or felt anything.
“No, you will not have them,” he ground forth between his teeth. “You
will do as I order you and learn to behave yourself as a decent married
woman should. You will learn to obey your husband and respect his wishes
and control your devilish American temper.”
“They have gone--gone!” wailed Rosalie. “You sent them away! My father,
my mother, my sister!”
“Stop your indecent ravings!” ordered Sir Nigel, shaking her. “I will
not submit to be disgraced before the servants.”
“Put your hand over her mouth, Nigel,” cried his mother. “The very
scullery maids will hear.”
She was as infuriated as her son. And, indeed, to behold civilised human
beings in the state of uncontrolled violence these three had reached was
a sight to shudder at.
“I won't stop,” cried the girl. “Why did you take me away from
everything--I was quite happy. Everybody was kind to me. I loved people,
I had everything. No one ever--ever--ever ill-used anyone----”
Sir Nigel clutched her arm more brutally still and shook her with
absolute violence. Her hair broke loose and fell about her awful little
distorted, sobbing face.
“I did not take you to give you an opportunity to display your vulgar
ostentation by throwing away hundred-pound cheques to villagers,” he
said. “I didn't take you to give you the position of a lady and be made
a fool of by you.”
“You have ruined him,” burst forth his mother. “You have put it out of
his power to marry an Englishwoman who would have known it was her duty
to give something in return for his name and protection.”
Her ladyship had begun to rave also, and as mother and son were of equal
violence when they had ceased to control themselves, Rosalie began to
find herself enlightened unsparingly. She and her people were vulgar
sharpers. They had trapped a gentleman into a low American marriage and
had not the decency to pay for what they had got. If she had been an
Englishwoman, well born, and of decent breeding, all her fortune would
have been properly transferred to her husband and he would have had the
dispensing of it. Her husband would have been in the position to control
her expenditure and see that she did not make a fool of herself. As it
was she was the derision of all decent people, of all people who had
been properly brought up and knew what was in good taste and of good
morality.
First it was the Dowager who poured forth, and then it was Sir
Nigel. They broke in on each other, they interrupted one another with
exclamations and interpolations. They had so far lost themselves that
they did not know they became grotesque in the violence of their fury.
Rosalie's brain whirled. Her hysteria mounted and mounted. She stared
first at one and then at the other, gasping and sobbing by turns; she
swayed on her feet and clutched at a chair.
“I did not know,” she broke forth at last, trying to make her voice
heard in the storm. “I never understood. I knew something made you
hate me, but I didn't know you were angry about money.” She laughed
tremulously and wildly. “I would have given it to you--father would have
given you some--if you had been good to me.” The laugh became hysterical
beyond her management. Peal after peal broke from her, she shook all
over with her ghastly merriment, sobbing at one and the same time.
“Oh! oh! oh!” she shrieked. “You see, I thought you were so
aristocratic. I wouldn't have dared to think of such a thing. I thought
an English gentleman--an English gentleman--oh! oh! to think it was
all because I did not give you money--just common dollars and cents
that--that I daren't offer to a decent American who could work for
himself.”
Sir Nigel sprang at her. He struck her with his open hand upon the
cheek, and as she reeled she held up her small, feverish, shaking hand,
laughing more wildly than before.
“You ought not to strike me,” she cried. “You oughtn't! You don't know
how valuable I am. Perhaps----” with a little, crazy scream--“perhaps I
might have a son.”
She fell in a shuddering heap, and as she dropped she struck heavily
against the protruding end of an oak chest and lay upon the floor, her
arms flung out and limp, as if she were a dead thing.