AN UNFAIR ENDOWMENT
To Bettina Vanderpoel had been given, to an extraordinary extent, the
extraordinary thing which is called beauty--which is a thing
entirely set apart from mere good looks or prettiness. This thing
is extraordinary because, if statistics were taken, the result would
probably be the discovery that not three human beings in a million
really possess it. That it should be bestowed at all--since it is so
rare--seems as unfair a thing as appears to the mere mortal mind the
bestowal of unbounded wealth, since it quite as inevitably places the
life of its owner upon an abnormal plane. There are millions of pretty
women, and billions of personable men, but the man or woman of entire
physical beauty may cross one's pathway only once in a lifetime--or not
at all. In the latter case it is natural to doubt the absolute truth of
the rumours that the thing exists. The abnormal creature seems a mere
freak of nature and may chance to be angel, criminal, total insipidity,
virago or enchanter, but let such an one enter a room or appear in the
street, and heads must turn, eyes light and follow, souls yearn or
envy, or sink under the discouragement of comparison. With the complete
harmony and perfect balance of the singular thing, it would be folly for
the rest of the world to compete. A human being who had lived in poverty
for half a lifetime, might, if suddenly endowed with limitless fortune,
retain, to a certain extent, balance of mind; but the same creature
having lived the same number of years a wholly unlovely thing, suddenly
awakening to the possession of entire physical beauty, might find the
strain upon pure sanity greater and the balance less easy to preserve.
The relief from the conscious or unconscious tension bred by the sense
of imperfection, the calm surety of the fearlessness of meeting in
any eye a look not lighted by pleasure, would be less normal than the
knowledge that no wish need remain unfulfilled, no fancy ungratified.
Even at sixteen Betty was a long-limbed young nymph whose small head,
set high on a fine slim column of throat, might well have been crowned
with the garland of some goddess of health and the joy of life. She was
light and swift, and being a creature of long lines and tender curves,
there was pleasure in the mere seeing her move. The cut of her spirited
lip, and delicate nostril, made for a profile at which one turned to
look more than once, despite one's self. Her hair was soft and black and
repeated its colour in the extravagant lashes of her childhood, which
made mysterious the changeful dense blue of her eyes. They were eyes
with laughter in them and pride, and a suggestion of many deep things
yet unstirred. She was rather unusually tall, and her body had the
suppleness of a young bamboo. The deep corners of her red mouth curled
generously, and the chin, melting into the fine line of the lovely
throat, was at once strong and soft and lovely. She was a creature of
harmony, warm richness of colour, and brilliantly alluring life.
When her school days were over she returned to New York and gave
herself into her mother's hands. Her mother's kindness of heart and
sweet-tempered lovingness were touching things to Bettina. In the midst
of her millions Mrs. Vanderpoel was wholly unworldly. Bettina knew that
she felt a perpetual homesickness when she allowed herself to think of
the daughter who seemed lost to her, and the girl's realisation of this
caused her to wish to be especially affectionate and amenable. She was
glad that she was tall and beautiful, not merely because such physical
gifts added to the colour and agreeableness of life, but because
hers gave comfort and happiness to her mother. To Mrs. Vanderpoel, to
introduce to the world the loveliest debutante of many years was to be
launched into a new future. To concern one's self about her exquisite
wardrobe was to have an enlivening occupation. To see her surrounded,
to watch eyes as they followed her, to hear her praised, was to feel
something of the happiness she had known in those younger days when New
York had been less advanced in its news and methods, and slim little
blonde Rosalie had come out in white tulle and waltzed like a fairy with
a hundred partners.
“I wonder what Rosy looks like now,” the poor woman said involuntarily
one day. Bettina was not a fairy. When her mother uttered her
exclamation Bettina was on the point of going out, and as she stood near
her, wrapped in splendid furs, she had the air of a Russian princess.
“She could not have worn the things you do, Betty,” said the affectionate
maternal creature. “She was such a little, slight thing. But she was
very pretty. I wonder if twelve years have changed her much?”
Betty turned towards her rather suddenly.
“Mother,” she said, “sometime, before very long, I am going to see.”
“To see!” exclaimed Mrs. Vanderpoel. “To see Rosy!”
“Yes,” Betty answered. “I have a plan. I have never told you of it, but
I have been thinking over it ever since I was fifteen years old.”
She went to her mother and kissed her. She wore a becoming but resolute
expression.
“We will not talk about it now,” she said. “There are some things I must
find out.”
When she had left the room, which she did almost immediately, Mrs.
Vanderpoel sat down and cried. She nearly always shed a few tears
when anyone touched upon the subject of Rosy. On her desk were some
photographs. One was of Rosy as a little girl with long hair, one was of
Lady Anstruthers in her wedding dress, and one was of Sir Nigel.
“I never felt as if I quite liked him,” she said, looking at this last,
“but I suppose she does, or she would not be so happy that she could
forget her mother and sister.”
There was another picture she looked at. Rosalie had sent it with the
letter she wrote to her father after he had forwarded the money she
asked for. It was a little study in water colours of the head of her
boy. It was nothing but a head, the shoulders being fancifully draped,
but the face was a peculiar one. It was over-mature, and unlovely, but
for a mouth at once pathetic and sweet.
“He is not a pretty child,” sighed Mrs. Vanderpoel. “I should have
thought Rosy would have had pretty babies. Ughtred is more like his
father than his mother.”
She spoke to her husband later, of what Betty had said.
“What do you think she has in her mind, Reuben?” she asked.
“What Betty has in her mind is usually good sense,” was his response.
“She will begin to talk to me about it presently. I shall not ask
questions yet. She is probably thinking things over.”
She was, in truth, thinking things over, as she had been doing for some
time. She had asked questions on several occasions of English people she
had met abroad. But a schoolgirl cannot ask many questions, and though
she had once met someone who knew Sir Nigel Anstruthers, it was a person
who did not know him well, for the reason that she had not desired
to increase her slight acquaintance. This lady was the aunt of one
of Bettina's fellow pupils, and she was not aware of the girl's
relationship to Sir Nigel. What Betty gathered was that her
brother-in-law was regarded as a decidedly bad lot, that since his
marriage to some American girl he had seemed to have money which he
spent in riotous living, and that the wife, who was said to be a silly
creature, was kept in the country, either because her husband did not
want her in London, or because she preferred to stay at Stornham. About
the wife no one appeared to know anything, in fact.
“She is rather a fool, I believe, and Sir Nigel Anstruthers is the kind
of man a simpleton would be obliged to submit to,” Bettina had heard the
lady say.
Her own reflections upon these comments had led her through various
paths of thought. She could recall Rosalie's girlhood, and what
she herself, as an unconsciously observing child, had known of her
character. She remembered the simple impressionability of her mind. She
had been the most amenable little creature in the world. Her yielding
amiability could always be counted upon as a factor by the calculating;
sweet-tempered to weakness, she could be beguiled or distressed into any
course the desires of others dictated. An ill-tempered or self-pitying
person could alter any line of conduct she herself wished to pursue.
“She was neither clever nor strong-minded,” Betty said to herself. “A
man like Sir Nigel Anstruthers could make what he chose of her. I wonder
what he has done to her?”
Of one thing she thought she was sure. This was that Rosalie's aloofness
from her family was the result of his design.
She comprehended, in her maturer years, the dislike of her childhood.
She remembered a certain look in his face which she had detested. She
had not known then that it was the look of a rather clever brute, who
was malignant, but she knew now.
“He used to hate us all,” she said to herself. “He did not mean to know
us when he had taken Rosalie away, and he did not intend that she should
know us.”
She had heard rumours of cases somewhat parallel, cases in which girls'
lives had become swamped in those of their husbands, and their husbands'
families. And she had also heard unpleasant details of the means
employed to reach the desired results. Annie Butterfield's husband had
forbidden her to correspond with her American relatives. He had argued
that such correspondence was disturbing to her mind, and to the domestic
duties which should be every decent woman's religion. One of the
occasions of his beating her had been in consequence of his finding her
writing to her mother a letter blotted with tears. Husbands frequently
objected to their wives' relatives, but there was a special order
of European husband who opposed violently any intimacy with American
relations on the practical ground that their views of a wife's position,
with regard to her husband, were of a revolutionary nature.
Mrs. Vanderpoel had in her possession every letter Rosalie or her
husband had ever written. Bettina asked to be allowed to read them, and
one morning seated herself in her own room before a blazing fire, with
the collection on a table at her side. She read them in order. Nigel's
began as they went on. They were all in one tone, formal, uninteresting,
and requiring no answers. There was not a suggestion of human feeling in
one of them.
“He wrote them,” said Betty, “so that we could not say that he had never
written.”
Rosalie's first epistles were affectionate, but timid. At the outset
she was evidently trying to conceal the fact that she was homesick.
Gradually she became briefer and more constrained. In one she said
pathetically, “I am such a bad letter writer. I always feel as if I want
to tear up what I have written, because I never say half that is in my
heart.” Mrs. Vanderpoel had kissed that letter many a time. She was sure
that a mark on the paper near this particular sentence was where a tear
had fallen. Bettina was sure of this, too, and sat and looked at the
fire for some time.
That night she went to a ball, and when she returned home, she persuaded
her mother to go to bed.
“I want to have a talk with father,” she exclaimed. “I am going to ask
him something.”
She went to the great man's private room, where he sat at work, even
after the hours when less seriously engaged people come home from balls.
The room he sat in was one of the apartments newspapers had with much
detail described. It was luxuriously comfortable, and its effect was
sober and rich and fine.
When Bettina came in, Vanderpoel, looking up to smile at her in welcome,
was struck by the fact that as a background to an entering figure of
tall, splendid girlhood in a ball dress it was admirable, throwing up
all its whiteness and grace and sweep of line. He was always glad to see
Betty. The rich strength of the life radiating from her, the reality and
glow of her were good for him and had the power of detaching him from
work of which he was tired.
She smiled back at him, and, coming forward took her place in a
big armchair close to him, her lace-frilled cloak slipping from
her shoulders with a soft rustling sound which seemed to convey her
intention to stay.
“Are you too busy to be interrupted?” she asked, her mellow voice
caressing him. “I want to talk to you about something I am going to do.”
She put out her hand and laid it on his with a clinging firmness which
meant strong feeling. “At least, I am going to do it if you will help
me,” she ended.
“What is it, Betty?” he inquired, his usual interest in her accentuated
by her manner.
She laid her other hand on his and he clasped both with his own.
“When the Worthingtons sail for England next month,” she explained, “I
want to go with them. Mrs. Worthington is very kind and will be good
enough to take care of me until I reach London.”
Mr. Vanderpoel moved slightly in his chair. Then their eyes met
comprehendingly. He saw what hers held.
“From there you are going to Stornham Court!” he exclaimed.
“To see Rosy,” she answered, leaning a little forward. “To SEE her.
“You believe that what has happened has not been her fault?” he said.
There was a look in her face which warmed his blood.
“I have always been sure that Nigel Anstruthers arranged it.”
“Do you think he has been unkind to her?”
“I am going to see,” she answered.
“Betty,” he said, “tell me all about it.”
He knew that this was no suddenly-formed plan, and he knew it would
be well worth while to hear the details of its growth. It was so
interestingly like her to have remained silent through the process of
thinking a thing out, evolving her final idea without having disturbed
him by bringing to him any chaotic uncertainties.
“It's a sort of confession,” she answered. “Father, I have been thinking
about it for years. I said nothing because for so long I knew I was only
a child, and a child's judgment might be worth so little. But through
all those years I was learning things and gathering evidence. When I was
at school, first in one country and then another, I used to tell myself
that I was growing up and preparing myself to do a particular thing--to
go to rescue Rosy.”
“I used to guess you thought of her in a way of your own,” Vanderpoel
said, “but I did not guess you were thinking that much. You were always
a solid, loyal little thing, and there was business capacity in your
keeping your scheme to yourself. Let us look the matter in the face.
Suppose she does not need rescuing. Suppose, after all, she is a
comfortable, fine lady and adores her husband. What then?”
“If I should find that to be true, I will behave myself very well--as
if we had expected nothing else. I will make her a short visit and come
away. Lady Cecilia Orme, whom I knew in Florence, has asked me to stay
with her in London. I will go to her. She is a charming woman. But I
must first see Rosy--SEE her.”
Mr. Vanderpoel thought the matter over during a few moments of silence.
“You do not wish your mother to go with you?” he said presently.
“I believe it will be better that she should not,” she answered. “If
there are difficulties or disappointments she would be too unhappy.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, “and she could not control her feelings. She
would give the whole thing away, poor girl.”
He had been looking at the carpet reflectively, and now he looked at
Bettina.
“What are you expecting to find, at the worst?” he asked her. “The kind
of thing which will need management while it is being looked into?”
“I do not know what I am expecting to find,” was her reply. “We know
absolutely nothing; but that Rosy was fond of us, and that her marriage
has seemed to make her cease to care. She was not like that; she was not
like that! Was she, father?”
“No, she wasn't,” he exclaimed. The memory of her in her short-frocked
and early girlish days, a pretty, smiling, effusive thing, given to
lavish caresses and affectionate little surprises for them all, came
back to him vividly. “She was the most affectionate girl I ever knew,”
he said. “She was more affectionate than you, Betty,” with a smile.
Bettina smiled in return and bent her head to put a kiss on his hand, a
warm, lovely, comprehending kiss.
“If she had been different I should not have thought so much of the
change,” she said. “I believe that people are always more or less LIKE
themselves as long as they live. What has seemed to happen has been so
unlike Rosy that there must be some reason for it.”
“You think that she has been prevented from seeing us?”
“I think it so possible that I am not going to announce my visit
beforehand.”
“You have a good head, Betty,” her father said.
“If Sir Nigel has put obstacles in our way before, he will do it again.
I shall try to find out, when I reach London, if Rosalie is at Stornham.
When I am sure she is there, I shall go and present myself. If Sir Nigel
meets me at the park gates and orders his gamekeepers to drive me off
the premises, we shall at least know that he has some reason for not
wishing to regard the usual social and domestic amenities. I feel rather
like a detective. It entertains me and excites me a little.”
The deep blue of her eyes shone under the shadow of the extravagant
lashes as she laughed.
“Are you willing that I should go, father?” she said next.
“Yes,” he answered. “I am willing to trust you, Betty, to do things I
would not trust other girls to try at. If you were not my girl at all,
if you were a man on Wall Street, I should know you would be pretty safe
to come out a little more than even in any venture you made. You know
how to keep cool.”
Bettina picked up her fallen cloak and laid it over her arm. It was made
of billowy frills of Malines lace, such as only Vanderpoels could buy.
She looked down at the amazing thing and touched up the frills with her
fingers as she whimsically smiled.
“There are a good many girls who can be trusted to do things in these
days,” she said. “Women have found out so much. Perhaps it is because
the heroines of novels have informed them. Heroines and heroes always
bring in the new fashions in character. I believe it is years since a
heroine 'burst into a flood of tears.' It has been discovered, really,
that nothing is to be gained by it. Whatsoever I find at Stornham Court,
I shall neither weep nor be helpless. There is the Atlantic cable, you
know. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why heroines have changed. When
they could not escape from their persecutors except in a stage coach,
and could not send telegrams, they were more or less in everyone's
hands. It is different now. Thank you, father, you are very good to
believe in me.”