“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 body-worn, 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 properly-trained 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 note-paper. 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 re-found 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 hot-water 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 re-assert 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
burned-out, 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 became 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 low-spirited, 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.