SETTING THEM THINKING
Old Doby, sitting at his open window, with his pipe and illustrated
papers on the table by his side, began to find life a series of thrills.
The advantage of a window giving upon the village street unspeakably
increased. For many years he had preferred the chimney corner greatly,
and had rejoiced at the drawing in of winter days when a fire must be
well kept up, and a man might bend over it, and rub his hands slowly
gazing into the red coals or little pointed flames which seemed the only
things alive and worthy the watching. The flames were blue at the base
and yellow at the top, and jumped looking merry, and caught at bits of
black coal, and set them crackling and throwing off splinters till they
were ablaze and as much alive as the rest. A man could get comfort and
entertainment therefrom. There was naught else so good to live with.
Nothing happened in the street, and every dull face that passed was an
old story, and told an old tale of stupefying hard labour and hard days.
But now the window was a better place to sit near. Carts went by with
men whistling as they walked by the horses heads. Loads of things wanted
for work at the Court. New faces passed faces of workmen--sometimes
grinning, “impident youngsters,” who larked with the young women, and
called out to them as they passed their cottages, if a good-looking
one was loitering about her garden gate. Old Doby chuckled at their
love-making chaff, remembering dimly that seventy years ago he had been
just as proper a young chap, and had made love in the same way. Lord,
Lord, yes! He had been a bold young chap as ever winked an eye. Then,
too, there were the vans, heavy-loaded and closed, and coming along
slowly. Every few days, at first, there had come a van from “Lunnon.”
Going to the Court, of course. And to sit there, and hear the women talk
about what might be in them, and to try to guess one's self, that was a
rare pastime. Fine things going to the Court these days--furniture and
grandeur filling up the shabby or empty old rooms, and making them look
like other big houses--same as Westerbridge even, so the women said.
The women were always talking and getting bits of news somehow, and
were beginning to be worth listening to, because they had something more
interesting to talk about than children's worn-out shoes, and whooping
cough.
Doby heard everything first from them. “Dang the women, they always
knowed things fust.” It was them as knowed about the smart carriages
as began to roll through the one village street. They were gentry's
carriages, with fine, stamping horses, and jingling silver harness, and
big coachmen, and tall footmen, and such like had long ago dropped off
showing themselves at Stornham.
“But now the gentry has heard about Miss Vanderpoel, and what's being
done at the Court, and they know what it means,” said young Mrs. Doby.
“And they want to see her, and find out what she's like. It's her brings
them.”
Old Doby chuckled and rubbed his hands. He knew what she was like. That
straight, slim back of hers, and the thick twist of black hair, and the
way she had of laughing at you, as cheery as if a bell was ringing. Aye,
he knew all about that.
“When they see her once, they'll come agen, for sure,” he quavered
shrilly, and day by day he watched for the grand carriages with vivid
eagerness. If a day or two passed without his seeing one, he grew
fretful, and was injured, feeling that his beauty was being neglected!
“None to-day, nor yet yest'day,” he would cackle. “What be they folk
a-doin'?”
Old Mrs. Welden, having heard of the pipe, and come to see it, had
struck up an acquaintance with him, and dropped in almost every day to
talk and sit at his window. She was a young thing, by comparison, and
could bring him lively news, and, indeed, so stir him up with her gossip
that he was in danger of becoming a young thing himself. Her groceries
and his tobacco were subjects whose interest was undying.
A great curiosity had been awakened in the county, and visitors came
from distances greater than such as ordinarily include usual calls.
Naturally, one was curious about the daughter of the Vanderpoel who was
a sort of national institution in his own country. His name had not been
so much heard of in England when Lady Anstruthers had arrived but
there had, at first, been felt an interest in her. But she had been a
failure--a childish-looking girl--whose thin, fair, prettiness had no
distinction, and who was obviously overwhelmed by her surroundings. She
had evidently had no influence over Sir Nigel, and had not been able to
prevent his making ducks and drakes of her money, which of course
ought to have been spent on the estate. Besides which a married woman
represented fewer potentialities than a handsome unmarried girl entitled
to expectations from huge American wealth.
So the carriages came and came again, and, stately or unstately far-off
neighbours sat at tea upon the lawn under the trees, and it was observed
that the methods and appointments of the Court had entirely changed.
Nothing looked new and American. The silently moving men-servants
could not have been improved upon, there was plainly an excellent
chef somewhere, and the massive silver was old and wonderful. Upon
everybody's word, the change was such as it was worth a long drive
merely to see!
The most wonderful thing, however, was Lady Anstruthers herself. She
had begun to grow delicately plump, her once drawn and haggard face had
rounded out, her skin had smoothed, and was actually becoming pink and
fair, a nimbus of pale fine hair puffed airily over her forehead, and
she wore the most charming little clothes, all of which made her look
fifteen years younger than she had seemed when, on the grounds of
ill-health, she had retired into seclusion. The renewed relations with
her family, the atmosphere by which she was surrounded, had evidently
given her a fresh lease of life, and awakened in her a new courage.
When the summer epidemic of garden parties broke forth, old Doby
gleefully beheld, day after day, the Court carriage drive by bearing her
ladyship and her sister attired in fairest shades and tints “same as if
they was flowers.” Their delicate vaporousness, and rare colours,
were sweet delights to the old man, and he and Mrs. Welden spent happy
evenings discussing them as personal possessions. To these two Betty WAS
a personal possession, bestowing upon them a marked distinction. They
were hers and she was theirs. No one else so owned her. Heaven had given
her to them that their last years might be lighted with splendour.
On her way to one of the garden parties she stopped the carriage before
old Doby's cottage, and went in to him to speak a few words. She was of
pale convolvulus blue that afternoon, and Doby, standing up touching his
forelock and Mrs. Welden curtsying, gazed at her with prayer in
their eyes. She had a few flowers in her hand, and a book of coloured
photographs of Venice.
“These are pictures of the city I told you about--the city built in the
sea--where the streets are water. You and Mrs. Welden can look at them
together,” she said, as she laid flowers and book down. “I am going to
Dunholm Castle to a garden party this afternoon. Some day I will come
and tell you about it.”
The two were at the window staring spellbound, as she swept back to the
carriage between the sweet-williams and Canterbury bells bordering the
narrow garden path.
“Do you know I really went in to let them see my dress,” she said, when
she rejoined Lady Anstruthers. “Old Doby's granddaughter told me that he
and Mrs. Welden have little quarrels about the colours I wear. It seems
that they find my wardrobe an absorbing interest. When I put the book on
the table, I felt Doby touch my sleeve with his trembling old hand. He
thought I did not know.”
“What will they do with Venice?” asked Rosy.
“They will believe the water is as blue as the photographs make it--and
the palaces as pink. It will seem like a chapter out of Revelations,
which they can believe is true and not merely 'Scriptur,'--because _I_
have been there. I wish I had been to the City of the Gates of Pearl,
and could tell them about that.”
On the lawns at the garden parties she was much gazed at and commented
upon. Her height and her long slender neck held her head above those of
other girls, the dense black of her hair made a rich note of shadow amid
the prevailing English blondness. Her mere colouring set her apart.
Rosy used to watch her with tender wonder, recalling her memory of
nine-year-old Betty, with the long slim legs and the demanding and
accusing child-eyes. She had always been this creature even in those
far-off days. At the garden party at Dunholm Castle it became evident
that she was, after a manner, unusually the central figure of the
occasion. It was not at all surprising, people said to each other.
Nothing could have been more desirable for Lord Westholt. He combined
rank with fortune, and the Vanderpoel wealth almost constituted rank in
itself. Both Lord and Lady Dunholm seemed pleased with the girl. Lord
Dunholm showed her great attention. When she took part in the dancing
on the lawn, he looked on delightedly. He walked about the gardens
with her, and it was plain to see that their conversation was not the
ordinary polite effort to accord, usually marking the talk between a
mature man and a merely pretty girl. Lord Dunholm sometimes laughed with
unfeigned delight, and sometimes the two seemed to talk of grave things.
“Such occasions as these are a sort of yearly taking of the social
census of the county,” Lord Dunholm explained. “One invites ALL one's
neighbours and is invited again. It is a friendly duty one owes.”
“I do not see Lord Mount Dunstan,” Betty answered. “Is he here?”
She had never denied to herself her interest in Mount Dunstan, and she
had looked for him. Lord Dunholm hesitated a second, as his son had done
at Miss Vanderpoel's mention of the tabooed name. But, being an older
man, he felt more at liberty to speak, and gave her a rather long kind
look.
“My dear young lady,” he said, “did you expect to see him here?”
“Yes, I think I did,” Betty replied, with slow softness. “I believe I
rather hoped I should.”
“Indeed! You are interested in him?”
“I know him very little. But I am interested. I will tell you why.”
She paused by a seat beneath a tree, and they sat down together.
She gave, with a few swift vivid touches, a sketch of the red-haired
second-class passenger on the Meridiana, of whom she had only thought
that he was an unhappy, rough-looking young man, until the brief moment
in which they had stood face to face, each comprehending that the other
was to be relied on if the worst should come to the worst. She had
understood his prompt disappearance from the scene, and had liked it.
When she related the incident of her meeting with him when she thought
him a mere keeper on his own lands, Lord Dunholm listened with a changed
and thoughtful expression. The effect produced upon her imagination by
what she had seen, her silent wandering through the sad beauty of the
wronged place, led by the man who tried stiffly to bear himself as a
servant, his unintended self-revelations, her clear, well-argued point
of view charmed him. She had seen the thing set apart from its county
scandal, and so had read possibilities others had been blind to. He was
immensely touched by certain things she said about the First Man.
“He is one of them,” she said. “They find their way in the end--they
find their way. But just now he thinks there is none. He is standing in
the dark--where the roads meet.”
“You think he will find his way?” Lord Dunholm said. “Why do you think
so?”
“Because I KNOW he will,” she answered. “But I cannot tell you WHY I
know.”
“What you have said has been interesting to me, because of the light
your own thought threw upon what you saw. It has not been Mount Dunstan
I have been caring for, but for the light you saw him in. You met him
without prejudice, and you carried the light in your hand. You always
carry a light, my impression is,” very quietly. “Some women do.”
“The prejudice you speak of must be a bitter thing for a proud man to
bear. Is it a just prejudice? What has he done?”
Lord Dunholm was gravely silent for a few moments.
“It is an extraordinary thing to reflect,”--his words came slowly--“that
it may NOT be a just prejudice. _I_ do not know that he has done
anything--but seem rather sulky, and be the son of his father, and the
brother of his brother.”
“And go to America,” said Betty. “He could have avoided doing that--but
he cannot be called to account for his relations. If that is all--the
prejudice is NOT just.”
“No, it is not,” said Lord Dunholm, “and one feels rather awkward at
having shared it. You have set me thinking again, Miss Vanderpoel.”