LIFE
Mount Dunstan, walking through the park next morning on his way to the
vicarage, just after post time, met Mr. Penzance himself coming to make
an equally early call at the Mount. Each of them had a letter in his
hand, and each met the other's glance with a smile.
“G. Selden,” Mount Dunstan said. “And yours?”
“G. Selden also,” answered the vicar. “Poor young fellow, what ill-luck.
And yet--is it ill-luck? He says not.”
“He tells me it is not,” said Mount Dunstan. “And I agree with him.”
Mr. Penzance read his letter aloud.
“DEAR SIR:
“This is to notify you that owing to my bike going back on me when going
down hill, I met with an accident in Stornham Park. Was cut about the
head and leg broken. Little Willie being far from home and mother, you
can see what sort of fix he'd been in if it hadn't been for the kindness
of Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughters--Miss Bettina and her sister Lady
Anstruthers. The way they've had me taken care of has been great.
I've been under a nurse and doctor same as if I was Albert Edward with
appendycytus (I apologise if that's not spelt right). Dear Sir, this is
to say that I asked Miss Vanderpoel if I should be butting in too much
if I dropped a line to ask if you could spare the time to call and see
me. It would be considered a favour and appreciated by
“G. SELDEN,
“Delkoff Typewriter Co. Broadway.
“P. S. Have already sold three Delkoffs to Miss Vanderpoel.”
“Upon my word,” Mr. Penzance commented, and his amiable fervour quite
glowed, “I like that queer young fellow--I like him. He does not wish to
'butt in too much.' Now, there is rudimentary delicacy in that. And what
a humorous, forceful figure of speech! Some butting animal--a goat, I
seem to see, preferably--forcing its way into a group or closed circle
of persons.”
His gleeful analysis of the phrase had such evident charm for him that
Mount Dunstan broke into a shout of laughter, even as G. Selden had done
at the adroit mention of Weber & Fields.
“Shall we ride over together to see him this morning? An hour with G.
Selden, surrounded by the atmosphere of Reuben S. Vanderpoel, would be a
cheering thing,” he said.
“It would,” Mr. Penzance answered. “Let us go by all means. We
should not, I suppose,” with keen delight, “be 'butting in' upon Lady
Anstruthers too early?” He was quite enraptured with his own aptness.
“Like G. Selden, I should not like to 'butt in,'” he added.
The scent and warmth and glow of a glorious morning filled the hour.
Combining themselves with a certain normal human gaiety which surrounded
the mere thought of G. Selden, they were good things for Mount Dunstan.
Life was strong and young in him, and he had laughed a big young laugh,
which had, perhaps tended to the waking in him of the feeling he was
suddenly conscious of--that a six-mile ride over a white, tree-dappled,
sunlit road would be pleasant enough, and, after all, if at the end of
the gallop one came again upon that other in whom life was strong and
young, and bloomed on rose-cheek and was the far fire in the blue deeps
of lovely eyes, and the slim straightness of the fair body, why would
it not be, in a way, all to the good? He had thought of her on more than
one day, and felt that he wanted to see her again.
“Let us go,” he answered Penzance. “One can call on an invalid at any
time. Lady Anstruthers will forgive us.”
In less than an hour's time they were on their way. They laughed and
talked as they rode, their horses' hoofs striking out a cheerful ringing
accompaniment to their voices. There is nothing more exhilarating than
the hollow, regular ring and click-clack of good hoofs going well over
a fine old Roman road in the morning sunlight. They talked of the junior
assistant salesman and of Miss Vanderpoel. Penzance was much pleased by
the prospect of seeing “this delightful and unusual girl.” He had heard
stories of her, as had Lord Westholt. He knew of old Doby's pipe, and
of Mrs. Welden's respite from the Union, and though such incidents would
seem mere trifles to the dweller in great towns, he had himself lived
and done his work long enough in villages to know the village mind
and the scale of proportions by which its gladness and sadness were
measured. He knew more of all this than Mount Dunstan could, since Mount
Dunstan's existence had isolated itself, from rather gloomy choice. But
as he rode, Mount Dunstan knew that he liked to hear these things.
There was the suggestion of new life and new thought in them, and such
suggestion was good for any man--or woman, either--who had fallen into
living in a dull, narrow groove.
“It is the new life in her which strikes me,” he said. “She has brought
wealth with her, and wealth is power to do the good or evil that grows
in a man's soul; but she has brought something more. She might have come
here and brought all the sumptuousness of a fashionable young beauty,
who drove through the village and drew people to their windows, and made
clodhoppers scratch their heads and pull their forelocks, and children
bob curtsies and stare. She might have come and gone and left a
mind-dazzling memory and nothing else. A few sovereigns tossed here
and there would have earned her a reputation--but, by gee! to quote
Selden--she has begun LIVING with them, as if her ancestors had done it
for six hundred years. And what _I_ see is that if she had come without
a penny in her pocket she would have done the same thing.” He paused a
pondering moment, and then drew a sharp breath which was an exclamation
in itself. “She's Life!” he said. “She's Life itself! Good God! what a
thing it is for a man or woman to be Life--instead of a mass of tissue
and muscle and nerve, dragged about by the mere mechanism of living!”
Penzance had listened seriously.
“What you say is very suggestive,” he commented. “It strikes me as true,
too. You have seen something of her also, at least more than I have.”
“I did not think these things when I saw her--though I suppose I
felt them unconsciously. I have reached this way of summing her up by
processes of exclusion and inclusion. One hears of her, as you know
yourself, and one thinks her over.”
“You have thought her over?”
“A lot,” rather grumpily. “A beautiful female creature inevitably
gives an unbeautiful male creature something to think of--if he is not
otherwise actively employed. I am not. She has become a sort of dawning
relief to my hopeless humours. Being a low and unworthy beast, I am
sometimes resentful enough of the unfairness of things. She has too
much.”
When they rode through Stornham village they saw signs of work already
done and work still in hand. There were no broken windows or palings or
hanging wicket gates; cottage gardens had been put in order, and there
were evidences of such cheering touches as new bits of window curtain
and strong-looking young plants blooming between them. So many small,
but necessary, things had been done that the whole village wore the
aspect of a place which had taken heart, and was facing existence in a
hopeful spirit. A year ago Mount Dunstan and his vicar riding through it
had been struck by its neglected and dispirited look.
As they entered the hall of the Court Miss Vanderpoel was descending the
staircase. She was laughing a little to herself, and she looked pleased
when she saw them.
“It is good of you to come,” she said, as they crossed the hall to the
drawing-room. “But I told him I really thought you would. I have just
been talking to him, and he was a little uncertain as to whether he had
assumed too much.”
“As to whether he had 'butted in,'” said Mr. Penzance. “I think he must
have said that.”
“He did. He also was afraid that he might have been 'too fresh.'”
answered Betty.
“On our part,” said Mr. Penzance, with gentle glee, “we hesitated a
moment in fear lest we also might appear to be 'butting in.'”
Then they all laughed together. They were laughing when Lady Anstruthers
entered, and she herself joined them. But to Mount Dunstan, who felt her
to be somehow a touching little person, there was manifest a tenderness
in her feeling for G. Selden. For that matter, however, there was
something already beginning to be rather affectionate in the attitude of
each of them. They went upstairs to find him lying in state upon a
big sofa placed near a window, and his joy at the sight of them was a
genuine, human thing. In fact, he had pondered a good deal in secret
on the possibility of these swell people thinking he had “more than his
share of gall” to expect them to remember him after he passed on his
junior assistant salesman's way. Reuben S. Vanderpoel's daughters
were of the highest of his Four Hundred, but they were Americans, and
Americans were not as a rule so “stuck on themselves” as the English.
And here these two swells came as friendly as you please. And that nice
old chap that was a vicar, smiling and giving him “the glad hand”!
Betty and Mount Dunstan left Mr. Penzance talking to the convalescent
after a short time. Mount Dunstan had asked to be shown the gardens. He
wanted to see the wonderful things he had heard had been already done to
them.
They went down the stairs together and passed through the drawing-room
into the pleasure grounds. The once neglected lawns had already been
mown and rolled, clipped and trimmed, until they spread before the eye
huge measures of green velvet; even the beds girdling and adorning them
were brilliant with flowers.
“Kedgers!” said Betty, waving her hand. “In my ignorance I thought we
must wait for blossoms until next year; but it appears that wonders can
be brought all ready to bloom for one from nursery gardens, and can be
made to grow with care--and daring--and passionate affection. I
have seen Kedgers turn pale with anguish as he hung over a bed of
transplanted things which seemed to droop too long. They droop just at
first, you know, and then they slowly lift their heads, slowly, as if
to listen to a Voice calling--calling. Once I sat for quite a long time
before a rose, watching it. When I saw it BEGIN to listen, I felt a
little trembling pass over my body. I seemed to be so strangely near to
such a strange thing. It was Life--Life coming back--in answer to what
we cannot hear.”
She had begun lightly, and then her voice had changed. It was very
quiet at the end of her speaking. Mount Dunstan simply repeated her last
words.
“To what we cannot hear.”
“One feels it so much in a garden,” she said. “I have never lived in a
garden of my own. This is not mine, but I have been living in it--with
Kedgers. One is so close to Life in it--the stirring in the brown earth,
the piercing through of green spears, that breaking of buds and pouring
forth of scent! Why shouldn't one tremble, if one thinks? I have stood
in a potting shed and watched Kedgers fill a shallow box with damp rich
mould and scatter over it a thin layer of infinitesimal seeds; then he
moistens them and carries them reverently to his altars in a greenhouse.
The ledges in Kedgers' green-houses are altars. I think he offers
prayers before them. Why not? I should. And when one comes to see them,
the moist seeds are swelled to fulness, and when one comes again they
are bursting. And the next time, tiny green things are curling outward.
And, at last, there is a fairy forest of tiniest pale green stems and
leaves. And one is standing close to the Secret of the World! And why
should not one prostrate one's self, breathing softly--and touching
one's awed forehead to the earth?”
Mount Dunstan turned and looked at her--a pause in his step--they were
walking down a turfed path, and over their heads meeting branches of
new leaves hung. Something in his movement made her turn and pause also.
They both paused--and quite unknowingly.
“Do you know,” he said, in a low and rather unusual voice, “that as
we were on our way here, I said of you to Penzance, that you were
Life--YOU!”
For a few seconds, as they stood so, his look held her--their eyes
involuntarily and strangely held each other. Something softly glowing in
the sunlight falling on them both, something raining down in the song
of a rising skylark trilling in the blue a field away, something in the
warmed incense of blossoms near them, was calling--calling in the Voice,
though they did not know they heard. Strangely, a splendid blush rose
in a fair flood under her skin. She was conscious of it, and felt a
second's amazed impatience that she should colour like a schoolgirl
suspecting a compliment. He did not look at her as a man looks who has
made a pretty speech. His eyes met hers straight and thoughtfully, and
he repeated his last words as he had before repeated hers.
“That YOU were Life--you!”
The bluebells under water were for the moment incredibly lovely. Her
feeling about the blush melted away as the blush itself had done.
“I am glad you said that!” she answered. “It was a beautiful thing to
say. I have often thought that I should like it to be true.”
“It is true,” he said.
Then the skylark, showering golden rain, swept down to earth and its
nest in the meadow, and they walked on.
She learned from him, as they walked together, and he also learned from
her, in a manner which built for them as they went from point to point,
a certain degree of delicate intimacy, gradually, during their ramble,
tending to make discussion and question possible. Her intelligent and
broad interest in the work on the estate, her frank desire to acquire
such practical information as she lacked, aroused in himself an interest
he had previously seen no reason that he should feel. He realised that
his outlook upon the unusual situation was being illuminated by an
intelligence at once brilliant and fine, while it was also full of
nice shading. The situation, of course, WAS unusual. A beautiful young
sister-in-law appearing upon the dark horizon of a shamefully ill-used
estate, and restoring, with touches of a wand of gold, what a fellow
who was a blackguard should have set in order years ago. That Lady
Anstruthers' money should have rescued her boy's inheritance instead
of being spent upon lavish viciousness went without saying. What
Mount Dunstan was most struck by was the perfect clearness, and its
combination with a certain judicial good breeding, in Miss Vanderpoel's
view of the matter. She made no confidences, beautifully candid as her
manner was, but he saw that she clearly understood the thing she was
doing, and that if her sister had had no son she would not have
done this, but something totally different. He had an idea that Lady
Anstruthers would have been swiftly and lightly swept back to New York,
and Sir Nigel left to his own devices, in which case Stornham Court
and its village would gradually have crumbled to decay. It was for Sir
Ughtred Anstruthers the place was being restored. She was quite clear on
the matter of entail. He wondered at first--not unnaturally--how a girl
had learned certain things she had an obviously clear knowledge of. As
they continued to converse he learned. Reuben S. Vanderpoel was without
doubt a man remarkable not only in the matter of being the owner of vast
wealth. The rising flood of his millions had borne him upon its strange
surface a thinking, not an unthinking being--in fact, a strong and
fine intelligence. His thousands of miles of yearly journeying in his
sumptuous private car had been the means of his accumulating not merely
added gains, but ideas, points of view, emotions, a human outlook worth
counting as an asset. His daughter, when she had travelled with him, had
seen and talked with him of all he himself had seen. When she had not
been his companion she had heard from him afterwards all best worth
hearing. She had become--without any special process--familiar with
the technicalities of huge business schemes, with law and commerce
and political situations. Even her childish interest in the world
of enterprise and labour had been passionate. So she had
acquired--inevitably, while almost unconsciously--a remarkable
education.
“If he had not been HIMSELF he might easily have grown tired of a little
girl constantly wanting to hear things--constantly asking questions,”
she said. “But he did not get tired. We invented a special knock on the
door of his private room. It said, 'May I come in, father?' If he was
busy he answered with one knock on his desk, and I went away. If he had
time to talk he called out, 'Come, Betty,' and I went to him. I used to
sit upon the floor and lean against his knee. He had a beautiful way of
stroking my hair or my hand as he talked. He trusted me. He told me of
great things even before he had talked of them to men. He knew I would
never speak of what was said between us in his room. That was part of
his trust. He said once that it was a part of the evolution of race,
that men had begun to expect of women what in past ages they really only
expected of each other.”
Mount Dunstan hesitated before speaking.
“You mean--absolute faith--apart from affection?”
“Yes. The power to be quite silent, even when one is tempted to
speak--if to speak might betray what it is wiser to keep to one's self
because it is another man's affair. The kind of thing which is good
faith among business men. It applies to small things as much as to
large, and to other things than business.”
Mount Dunstan, recalling his own childhood and his own father, felt
again the pressure of the remote mental suggestion that she had had
too much, a childhood and girlhood like this, the affection and
companionship of a man of large and ordered intelligence, of clear and
judicial outlook upon an immense area of life and experience. There was
no cause for wonder that her young womanhood was all it presented to
himself, as well as to others. Recognising the shadow of resentment in
his thought, he swept it away, an inward sense making it clear to him
that if their positions had been reversed, she would have been more
generous than himself.
He pulled himself together with an unconscious movement of his
shoulders. Here was the day of early June, the gold of the sun in
its morning, the green shadows, the turf they walked on together, the
skylark rising again from the meadow and showering down its song. Why
think of anything else. What a line that was which swept from her chin
down her long slim throat to its hollow! The colour between the velvet
of her close-set lashes--the remembrance of her curious splendid
blush--made the man's lost and unlived youth come back to him. What
did it matter whether she was American or English--what did it matter
whether she was insolently rich or beggarly poor? He would let himself
go and forget all but the pleasure of the sight and hearing of her.
So as they went they found themselves laughing together and talking
without restraint. They went through the flower and kitchen gardens;
they saw the once fallen wall rebuilt now with the old brick; they
visited the greenhouses and came upon Kedgers entranced with business,
but enraptured at being called upon to show his treasures. His eyes,
turning magnetised upon Betty, revealed the story of his soul. Mount
Dunstan remarked that when he spoke to her of his flowers it was as
if there existed between them the sympathy which might be engendered
between two who had sat up together night after night with delicate
children.
“He's stronger to-day, miss,” he said, as they paused before a new
wonderful bloom. “What he's getting now is good for him. I had to change
his food, miss, but this seems all right. His colour's better.”
Betty herself bent over the flower as she might have bent over a child.
Her eyes softened, she touched a leaf with a slim finger, as delicately
as if it had been a new-born baby's cheek. As Mount Dunstan watched her
he drew a step nearer to her side. For the first time in his life
he felt the glow of a normal and simple pleasure untouched by any
bitterness.