CHAPTER III
YOUNG LADY ANSTRUTHERS
When the marriage took place the event was accompanied by
an ingenuously elate flourish of trumpets. Miss Vanderpoel's
frocks were multitudinous and wonderful, as also her jewels
purchased at Tiffany's. She carried a thousand trunks--more
or less--across the Atlantic. When the ship steamed away
from the dock, the wharf was like a flower garden in the blaze
of brilliant and delicate attire worn by the bevy of relatives
and intimates who stood waving their handkerchiefs and laughingly
calling out farewell good wishes.
Sir Nigel's mental attitude was not a sympathetic or
admiring one as he stood by his bride's side looking back. If
Rosy's half happy, half tearful excitement had left her the
leisure to reflect on his expression, she would not have felt it
encouraging.
"What a deuce of a row Americans make," he said even
before they were out of hearing of the voices. "It will be
a positive rest to be in a country where the women do not
cackle and shriek with laughter."
He said it with that simple rudeness which at times
professed to be almost impersonal, and which Rosalie had usually
tried to believe was the outcome of a kind of cool British
humour. But this time she started a little at his words.
"I suppose we do make more noise than English people,"
she admitted a second or so later. "I wonder why?" And
without waiting for an answer--somewhat as if she had not
expected or quite wanted one--she leaned a little farther over
the side to look back, waving her small, fluttering
handkerchief to the many still in tumult on the wharf. She was
not perceptive or quick enough to take offence, to realise that
the remark was significant and that Sir Nigel had already begun
as he meant to go on. It was far from being his intention
to play the part of an American husband, who was plainly
a creature in whom no authority vested itself. Americans let
their women say and do anything, and were capable of fetching
and carrying for them. He had seen a man run upstairs
for his wife's wrap, cheerfully, without the least apparent
sense that the service was the part of a footman if there was
one in the house, a parlour maid if there was not. Sir Nigel
had been brought up in the good Early Victorian days when
"a nice little woman to fetch your slippers for you" figured
in certain circles as domestic bliss. Girls were educated to
fetch slippers as retrievers were trained to go into the water
after sticks, and terriers to bring back balls thrown for them.
The new Lady Anstruthers had, it supervened, several
opportunities to obtain a new view of her bridegroom's character
before their voyage across the Atlantic was over. At this
period of the slower and more cumbrous weaving of the
Shuttle, the world had not yet awakened even to the possibilities
of the ocean greyhound. An Atlantic voyage at times was
capable of offering to a bride and bridegroom days enough to
begin to glance into their future with a premonition of the
waning of the honeymoon, at least, and especially if they were
not sea-proof, to wish wearily that the first half of it were
over. Rosalie was not weary, but she began to be bewildered. As
she had never been a clever girl or quick to perceive, and had
spent her life among women-indulging American men, she
was not prepared with any precedent which made her situation
clear. The first time Sir Nigel showed his temper to
her she simply stared at him, her eyes looking like those of a
puzzled, questioning child. Then she broke into her nervous
little laugh, because she did not know what else to do. At
his second outbreak her stare was rather startled and she did
not laugh.
Her first awakening was to an anxious wonderment
concerning certain moods of gloom, or what seemed to be gloom,
to which he seemed prone. As she lay in her steamer chair
he would at times march stiffly up and down the deck,
apparently aware of no other existence than his own, his
features expressing a certain clouded resentment of whose very
unexplainableness she secretly stood in awe. She was not
astute enough, poor girl, to leave him alone, and when with
innocent questionings she endeavoured to discover his trouble,
the greatest mystification she encountered was that he had
the power to make her feel that she was in some way taking
a liberty, and showing her lack of tact and perspicuity.
"Is anything the matter, Nigel?" she asked at first,
wondering if she were guilty of silliness in trying to slip her
hand into his. She was sure she had been when he answered her.
"No," he said chillingly.
"I don't believe you are happy," she returned. "Somehow
you seem so--so different."
"I have reasons for being depressed," he replied, and it was
with a stiff finality which struck a note of warning to her,
signifying that it would be better taste in her to put an end to
her simple efforts.
She vaguely felt herself put in the wrong, and he preferred
that it should be so. It was the best form of preparation for
any mood he might see that it might pay him to show her in
the future. He was, in fact, confronting disdainfully his
position. He had her on his hands and he was returning to
his relations with no definite advantage to exhibit as the result
of having married her. She had been supplied with an income
but he had no control over it. It would not have been so if
he had not been in such straits that he had been afraid to
risk his chance by making a stand. To have a wife with money,
a silly, sweet temper and no will of her own, was of course
better than to be penniless, head over heels in debt and hemmed
in by difficulties on every side. He had seen women trained
to give in to anything rather than be bullied in public, to
accede in the end to any demand rather than endure the shame
of a certain kind of scene made before servants, and a certain
kind of insolence used to relatives and guests. The quality
he found most maddeningly irritating in Rosalie was her
obviously absolute unconsciousness of the fact that it was
entirely natural and proper that her resources should be in her
husband's hands. He had, indeed, even in these early days,
made a tentative effort or so in the form of a suggestive
speech; he had given her openings to give him an opening to
put things on a practical basis, but she had never had the
intelligence to see what he was aiming at, and he had found
himself almost floundering ungracefully in his remarks, while
she had looked at him without a sign of comprehension in
her simple, anxious blue eyes. The creature was actually
trying to understand him and could not. That was the worst
of it, the blank wall of her unconsciousness, her childlike
belief that he was far too grand a personage to require
anything. These were the things he was thinking over when he
walked up and down the deck in unamiable solitariness.
Rosy awakened to the amazed consciousness of the fact that,
instead of being pleased with the luxury and prettiness of her
wardrobe and appointments, he seemed to dislike and disdain them.
"You American women change your clothes too much and
think too much of them," was one of his first amiable
criticisms. "You spend more than well-bred women should spend
on mere dresses and bonnets. In New York it always strikes
an Englishman that the women look endimanche at whatever
time of day you come across them."
"Oh, Nigel!" cried Rosy woefully. She could not think
of anything more to say than, "Oh, Nigel!"
"I am sorry to say it is true," he replied loftily. That
she was an American and a New Yorker was being impressed
upon poor little Lady Anstruthers in a new way--somehow
as if the mere cold statement of the fact put a fine edge of
sarcasm to any remark. She was of too innocent a loyalty to
wish that she was neither the one nor the other, but she did
wish that Nigel was not so prejudiced against the places and
people she cared for so much.
She was sitting in her stateroom enfolded in a dressing gown
covered with cascades of lace, tied with knots of embroidered
ribbon, and her maid, Hannah, who admired her greatly, was
brushing her fair long hair with a gold-backed brush, ornamented
with a monogram of jewels.
If she had been a French duchess of a piquant type, or an
English one with an aquiline nose, she would have been beyond
criticism; if she had been a plump, over-fed woman, or
an ugly, ill-natured, gross one, she would have looked vulgar,
but she was a little, thin, fair New Yorker, and though she
was not beyond criticism--if one demanded high distinction--
she was pretty and nice to look at. But Nigel Anstruthers
would not allow this to her. His own tailors' bills being far
in arrears and his pocket disgustingly empty, the sight of her
ingenuous sumptuousness and the gay, accustomed simpleness
of outlook with which she accepted it as her natural right,
irritated him and roused his venom. Bills would remain
unpaid if she was permitted to spend her money on this sort of
thing without any consideration for the requirements of other
people.
He inhaled the air and made a gesture of distaste.
"This sachet business is rather overpowering," he said. "It is
the sort of thing a woman should be particularly discreet about."
"Oh, Nigel!" cried the poor girl agitatedly. "Hannah,
do go and call the steward to open the windows. Is it really
strong?" she implored as Hannah went out. "How dreadful. It's
only orris and I didn't know Hannah had put it in the trunks."
"My dear Rosalie," with a wave of the hand taking in
both herself and her dressing case, "it is all too strong."
"All--wh--what?" gaspingly.
"The whole thing. All that lace and love knot arrangement,
the gold-backed brushes and scent bottles with diamonds
and rubies sticking in them."
"They--they were wedding presents. They came from
Tiffany's. Everyone thought them lovely."
"They look as if they belonged to the dressing table of a
French woman of the demi-monde. I feel as if I had actually
walked into the apartment of some notorious Parisian soubrette."
Rosalie Vanderpoel was a clean-minded little person, her
people were of the clean-minded type, therefore she did not
understand all that this ironic speech implied, but she gathered
enough of its significance to cause her to turn first red and
then pale and then to burst into tears. She was crying and
trying to conceal the fact when Hannah returned. She bent
her head and touched her eyes furtively while her toilette was
completed.
Sir Nigel had retired from the scene, but he had done so
feeling that he had planted a seed and bestowed a practical
lesson. He had, it is true, bestowed one, but again she had
not understood its significance and was only left bewildered
and unhappy. She began to be nervous and uncertain about
herself and about his moods and points of view. She had
never been made to feel so at home. Everyone had been
kind to her and lenient to her lack of brilliancy. No one
had expected her to be brilliant, and she had been quite sweet-
temperedly resigned to the fact that she was not the kind of
girl who shone either in society or elsewhere. She did not
resent the fact that she knew people said of her, "She isn't
in the least bit bright, Rosy Vanderpoel, but she's a nice,
sweet little thing." She had tried to be nice and sweet and
had aspired to nothing higher.
But now that seemed so much less than enough. Perhaps
Nigel ought to have married one of the clever ones, someone
who would have known how to understand him and who
would have been more entertaining than she could be. Perhaps
she was beginning to bore him, perhaps he was finding
her out and beginning to get tired. At this point the always
too ready tears would rise to her eyes and she would be
overwhelmed by a sense of homesickness. Often she cried herself
silently to sleep, longing for her mother--her nice, comfortable,
ordinary mother, whom she had several times felt Nigel had
some difficulty in being unreservedly polite to--though he had
been polite on the surface.
By the time they landed she had been living under so much
strain in her effort to seem quite unchanged, that she had lost
her nerve. She did not feel well and was sometimes afraid
that she might do something silly and hysterical in spite of
herself, begin to cry for instance when there was really no
explanation for her doing it. But when she reached London
the novelty of everything so excited her that she thought she
was going to be better, and then she said to herself it would
be proved to her that all her fears had been nonsense. This
return of hope made her quite light-spirited, and she was almost
gay in her little outbursts of delight and admiration as she
drove about the streets with her husband. She did not know
that her ingenuous ignorance of things he had known all his
life, her rapture over common monuments of history, led him
to say to himself that he felt rather as if he were taking a
housemaid to see a Lord Mayor's Show.
Before going to Stornham Court they spent a few days in
town. There had been no intention of proclaiming their
presence to the world, and they did not do so, but unluckily
certain tradesmen discovered the fact that Sir Nigel
Anstruthers had returned to England with the bride he had
secured in New York. The conclusion to be deduced from
this circumstance was that the particular moment was a good
one at which to send in bills for "acct. rendered." The
tradesmen quite shared Anstruthers' point of view. Their
reasoning was delightfully simple and they were wholly unaware
that it might have been called gross. A man over his
head and ears in debt naturally expected his creditors would
be paid by the young woman who had married him. America
had in these days been so little explored by the thrifty
impecunious well-born that its ingenuous sentimentality in
certain matters was by no means comprehended.
By each post Sir Nigel received numerous bills. Sometimes
letters accompanied them, and once or twice respectful but
firm male persons brought them by hand and demanded interviews
which irritated Sir Nigel extremely. Given time to
arrange matters with Rosalie, to train her to some sense of
her duty, he believed that the "acct. rendered" could be
wiped off, but he saw he must have time. She was such a
little fool. Again and again he was furious at the fate which
had forced him to take her.
The truth was that Rosalie knew nothing whatever about
unpaid bills. Reuben Vanderpoel's daughters had never
encountered an indignant tradesman in their lives. When they
went into "stores" they were received with unfeigned rapture.
Everything was dragged forth to be displayed to them,
attendants waited to leap forth to supply their smallest behest.
They knew no other phase of existence than the one in which
one could buy anything one wanted and pay any price
demanded for it.
Consequently Rosalie did not recognise signs which would
have been obviously recognisable by the initiated. If Sir Nigel
Anstruthers had been a nice young fellow who had loved her,
and he had been honest enough to make a clean breast of his
difficulties, she would have thrown herself into his arms and
implored him effusively to make use of all her available funds,
and if the supply had been insufficient, would have immediately
written to her father for further donations, knowing that her
appeal would be responded to at once. But Sir Nigel
Anstruthers cherished no sentiment for any other individual than
himself, and he had no intention of explaining that his mere
vanity had caused him to mislead her, that his rank and estate
counted for nothing and that he was in fact a pauper loaded
with dishonest debts. He wanted money, but he wanted it
to be given to him as if he conferred a favour by receiving it.
It must be transferred to him as though it were his by right.
What did a man marry for? Therefore his wife's unconsciousness
that she was inflicting outrage upon him by her mere
mental attitude filled his being with slowly rising gall.
Poor Rosalie went joyfully forth shopping after the manner
of all newly arrived Americans. She bought new toilettes
and gewgaws and presents for her friends and relations in New
York, and each package which was delivered at the hotel added
to Sir Nigel's rage.
That the little blockhead should be allowed to do what
she liked with her money and that he should not be able to
forbid her! This he said to himself at intervals of five minutes
through the day--which led to another small episode.
"You are spending a great deal of money," he said one
morning in his condemnatory manner. Rosalie looked up from
the lace flounce which had just been delivered and gave the
little nervous laugh, which was becoming entirely uncertain
of propitiating.
"Am I?" she answered. "They say all Americans spend
a good deal."
"Your money ought to be in proper hands and properly
managed," he went on with cold precision. "If you were
an English woman, your husband would control it."
"Would he?" The simple, sweet-tempered obtuseness of
her tone was an infuriating thing to him. There was the
usual shade of troubled surprise in her eyes as they met his.
"I don't think men in America ever do that. I don't believe
the nice ones want to. You see they have such a pride about
always giving things to women, and taking care of them. I
believe a nice American man would break stones in the street
rather than take money from a woman--even his wife. I mean
while he could work. Of course if he was ill or had ill luck or
anything like that, he wouldn't be so proud as not to take it
from the person who loved him most and wanted to help him.
You do sometimes hear of a man who won't work and lets
his wife support him, but it's very seldom, and they are always
the low kind that other men look down on."
"Wanted to help him." Sir Nigel selected the phrase and
quoted it between puffs of the cigar he held in his fine, rather
cruel-looking hands, and his voice expressed a not too subtle
sneer. "A woman is not `helping' her husband when she
gives him control of her fortune. She is only doing her duty
and accepting her proper position with regard to him. The law
used to settle the thing definitely."
"Did-did it?" Rosy faltered weakly. She knew he was
offended again and that she was once more somehow in the
wrong. So many things about her seemed to displease him, and
when he was displeased he always reminded her that she was
stupidly, objectionably guilty of not being an English woman.
Whatsoever it happened to be, the fault she had committed
out of her depth of ignorance, he did not forget it. It was no
habit of his to endeavour to dismiss offences. He preferred to
hold them in possession as if they were treasures and to turn
them over and over, in the mental seclusion which nourishes
the growth of injuries, since within its barriers there is no
chance of their being palliated by the apologies or explanations
of the offender.
During their journey to Stornham Court the next day he
was in one of his black moods. Once in the railway carriage
he paid small attention to his wife, but sat rigidly reading his
Times, until about midway to their destination he descended at
a station and paid a visit to the buffet in the small refreshment
room, after which he settled himself to doze in an exceedingly
unbecoming attitude, his travelling cap pulled down, his
rather heavy face congested with the dark flush Rosalie had
not yet learned was due to the fact that he had hastily tossed
off two or three whiskies and sodas. Though he was never
either thick of utterance or unsteady on his feet, whisky and
soda formed an important factor in his existence. When he
was annoyed or dull he at once took the necessary precautions
against being overcome by these feelings, and the effect upon
a constitutionally evil temper was to transform it into an
infernal one. The night had been a bad one for Rosy. Such
floods of homesick longing had overpowered her that she had
not been able to sleep. She had risen feeling shaky and
hysterical and her nervousness had been added to by her fear that
Nigel might observe her and make comment. Of course she
told herself it was natural that he should not wish her to
appear at Stornham Court looking a pale, pink-nosed little
fright. Her efforts to be cheerful had indeed been somewhat
touching, but they had met with small encouragement.
She thought the green-clothed country lovely as the train
sped through it, and a lump rose in her small throat because
she knew she might have been so happy if she had not been so
frightened and miserable. The thing which had been dawning
upon her took clearer, more awful form. Incidents she had
tried to explain and excuse to herself, upon all sorts of futile,
simple grounds, began to loom up before her in something like
their actual proportions. She had heard of men who had
changed their manner towards girls after they had married
them, but she did not know they had begun to change so
soon. This was so early in the honeymoon to be sitting in a
railway carriage, in a corner remote from that occupied by a
bridegroom, who read his paper in what was obviously intentional,
resentful solitude. Emily Soame's father, she remembered
it against her will, had been obliged to get a divorce for
Emily after her two years of wretched married life. But Alfred
Soames had been quite nice for six months at least. It seemed
as if all this must be a dream, one of those nightmare things,
in which you suddenly find yourself married to someone you
cannot bear, and you don't know how it happened, because
you yourself have had nothing to do with the matter. She
felt that presently she must waken with a start and find herself
breathing fast, and panting out, half laughing, half crying,
"Oh, I am so glad it's not true! I am so glad it's not true!"
But this was true, and there was Nigel. And she was in a
new, unexplored world. Her little trembling hands clutched
each other. The happy, light girlish days full of ease and
friendliness and decency seemed gone forever. It was not Rosalie
Vanderpoel who pressed her colourless face against the glass of
the window, looking out at the flying trees; it was the wife
of Nigel Anstruthers, and suddenly, by some hideous magic,
she had been snatched from the world to which she belonged
and was being dragged by a gaoler to a prison from which she
did not know how to escape. Already Nigel had managed to
convey to her that in England a woman who was married could
do nothing to defend herself against her husband, and that
to endeavour to do anything was the last impossible touch of
vulgar ignominy.
The vivid realisation of the situation seized upon her like a
possession as she glanced sideways at her bridegroom and
hurriedly glanced away again with a little hysterical shudder.
New York, good-tempered, lenient, free New York, was millions
of miles away and Nigel was so loathly near and--and so
ugly. She had never known before that he was so ugly, that
his face was so heavy, his skin so thick and coarse and his
expression so evilly ill-tempered. She was not sufficiently
analytical to be conscious that she had with one bound leaped to
the appalling point of feeling uncontrollable physical abhorrence
of the creature to whom she was chained for life. She was
terrified at finding herself forced to combat the realisation
that there were certain expressions of his countenance which made
her feel sick with repulsion. Her self-reproach also was as
great as her terror. He was her husband--her husband--and she
was a wicked girl. She repeated the words to herself again and
again, but remotely she knew that when she said, "He is my
husband," that was the worst thing of all.
This inward struggle was a bad preparation for any added
misery, and when their railroad journey terminated at Stornham
Station she was met by new bewilderment.
The station itself was a rustic place where wild roses climbed
down a bank to meet the very train itself. The station master's
cottage had roses and clusters of lilies waving in its tiny
garden. The station master, a good-natured, red-faced man, came
forward, baring his head, to open the railroad carriage door
with his own hand. Rosy thought him delightful and bowed
and smiled sweet-temperedly to him and to his wife and little
girls, who were curtseying at the garden gate. She was
sufficiently homesick to be actually grateful to them for their
air of welcoming her. But as she smiled she glanced furtively
at Nigel to see if she was doing exactly the right thing.
He himself was not smiling and did not unbend even when
the station master, who had known him from his boyhood, felt
at liberty to offer a deferential welcome.
"Happy to see you home with her ladyship, Sir Nigel," he
said; "very happy, if I may say so."
Sir Nigel responded to the respectful amiability with a half-
military lifting of his right hand, accompanied by a grunt.
"D'ye do, Wells," he said, and strode past him to speak to
the footman who had come from Stornham Court with the
carriage.
The new and nervous little Lady Anstruthers, who was left
to trot after her husband, smiled again at the ruddy, kind-
looking fellow, this time in conscious deprecation. In the
simplicity of her republican sympathy with a well-meaning fellow
creature who might feel himself snubbed, she could have shaken
him by the hand. She had even parted her lips to venture a
word of civility when she was startled by hearing Sir Nigel's
voice raised in angry rating.
"Damned bad management not to bring something else,"
she heard. "Kind of thing you fellows are always doing."
She made her way to the carriage, flurried again by not
knowing whether she was doing right or wrong. Sir Nigel had
given her no instructions and she had not yet learned that
when he was in a certain humour there was equal fault in
obeying or disobeying such orders as he gave.
The carriage from the Court--not in the least a new or
smart equipage--was drawn up before the entrance of the
station and Sir Nigel was in a rage because the vehicle brought
for the luggage was too small to carry it all.
"Very sorry, Sir Nigel," said the coachman, touching his
hat two or three times in his agitation. "Very sorry. The
omnibus was a little out of order--the springs, Sir Nigel--and
I thought----"
"You thought!" was the heated interruption. "What right
had you to think, damn it! You are not paid to think, you are
paid to do your work properly. Here are a lot of damned
boxes which ought to go with us and--where's your maid?"
wheeling round upon his wife.
Rosalie turned towards the woman, who was approaching
from the waiting room.
"Hannah," she said timorously.
"Drop those confounded bundles," ordered Sir Nigel, "and
show James the boxes her ladyship is obliged to have this
evening. Be quick about it and don't pick out half a dozen. The
cart can't take them."
Hannah looked frightened. This sort of thing was new to
her, too. She shuffled her packages on to a seat and followed
the footman to the luggage. Sir Nigel continued rating the
coachman. Any form of violent self-assertion was welcome to
him at any time, and when he was irritated he found it a distinct
luxury to kick a dog or throw a boot at a cat. The springs
of the omnibus, he argued, had no right to be broken when it
was known that he was coming home. His anger was only
added to by the coachman's halting endeavours in his excuses
to veil a fact he knew his master was aware of, that everything
at Stornham was more or less out of order, and that dilapidations
were the inevitable result of there being no money to pay
for repairs. The man leaned forward on his box and spoke at
last in a low tone.
"The bus has been broken some time," he said. "It's--it's
an expensive job, Sir Nigel. Her ladyship thought it better
to----" Sir Nigel turned white about the mouth.
"Hold your tongue," he commanded, and the coachman got
red in the face, saluted, biting his lips, and sat very stiff and
upright on his box.
The station master edged away uneasily and tried to look as
if he were not listening. But Rosalie could see that he could
not help hearing, nor could the country people who had been
passengers by the train and who were collecting their belongings
and getting into their traps.
Lady Anstruthers was ignored and remained standing while
the scene went on. She could not help recalling the manner
in which she had been invariably received in New York on her
return from any journey, how she was met by comfortable,
merry people and taken care of at once. This was so strange,
it was so queer, so different.
"Oh, never mind, Nigel dear," she said at last, with
innocent indiscretion. "It doesn't really matter, you know."
Sir Nigel turned upon her a blaze of haughty indignation.
"If you'll pardon my saying so, it does matter," he said.
"It matters confoundedly. Be good enough to take your place
in the carriage."
He moved to the carriage door, and not too civilly put her
in. She gasped a little for breath as she sat down. He had
spoken to her as if she had been an impertinent servant who
had taken a liberty. The poor girl was bewildered to the
verge of panic. When he had ended his tirade and took his
place beside her he wore his most haughtily intolerant air.
"May I request that in future you will be good enough not
to interfere when I am reproving my servants," he remarked.
"I didn't mean to interfere," she apologised tremulously.
"I don't know what you meant. I only know what you
did," was his response. "You American women are too fond
of cutting in. An Englishman can think for himself without
his wife's assistance."
The tears rose to her eyes. The introduction of the
international question overpowered her as always.
"Don't begin to be hysterical," was the ameliorating
tenderness with which he observed the two hot salt drops which
fell despite her. "I should scarcely wish to present you to my
mother bathed in tears."
She wiped the salt drops hastily away and sat for a moment
silent in the corner of the carriage. Being wholly primitive
and unanalytical, she was ashamed and began to blame herself.
He was right. She must not be silly because she was unused
to things. She ought not to be disturbed by trifles. She must
try to be nice and look cheerful. She made an effort and did
no speak for a few minutes. When she had recovered herself
she tried again.
"English country is so pretty," she said, when she thought
she was quite sure that her voice would not tremble. "I do
so like the hedges and the darling little red-roofed cottages."
It was an innocent tentative at saying something agreeable
which might propitiate him. She was beginning to realise that
she was continually making efforts to propitiate him. But one
of the forms of unpleasantness most enjoyable to him was the
snubbing of any gentle effort at palliating his mood. He
condescended in this case no response whatever, but merely
continued staring contemptuously before him.
"It is so picturesque, and so unlike America," was the
pathetic little commonplace she ventured next. "Ain't it,
Nigel?"
He turned his head slowly towards her, as if she had taken
a new liberty in disturbing his meditations.
"Wha--at?" he drawled.
It was almost too much for her to sustain herself under.
Her courage collapsed.
"I was only saying how pretty the cottages were," she
faltered. "And that there's nothing like this in America."
"You ended your remark by adding, `ain't it,' " her
husband condescended. "There is nothing like that in England.
I shall ask you to do me the favour of leaving Americanisms
out of your conversation when you are in the society of English
ladies and gentlemen. It won't do."
"I didn't know I said it," Rosy answered feebly.
"That is the difficulty," was his response. "You never
know, but educated people do."
There was nothing more to be said, at least for a girl who
had never known what it was to be bullied. This one felt
like a beggar or a scullery maid, who, being rated by her
master, had not the refuge of being able to "give warning."
She could never give warning. The Atlantic Ocean was between
her and those who had loved and protected her all her
short life, and the carriage was bearing her onwards to the
home in which she was to live alone as this man's companion
to the end of her existence.
She made no further propitiatory efforts, but sat and stared
in simple blankness at the country, which seemed to increase
in loveliness at each new point of view. Sometimes she saw
sweet wooded, rolling lands made lovelier by the homely farm-
houses and cottages enclosed and sheltered by thick hedges and
trees; once or twice they drove past a park enfolding a great
house guarded by its huge sentinel oaks and beeches; once the
carriage passed through an adorable little village, where
children played on the green and a square-towered grey church
seemed to watch over the steep-roofed cottages and creeper-
covered vicarage. If she had been a happy American tourist
travelling in company with impressionable friends, she would
have broken into ecstatic little exclamations of admiration
every five minutes, but it had been driven home to her that
to her present companion, to whom nothing was new, her
rapture would merely represent the crudeness which had existed
in contentment in a brown-stone house on a noisy thoroughfare,
through a life which had been passed tramping up and
down numbered streets and avenues.
They approached at last a second village with a green, a
grass-grown street and the irregular red-tiled cottages, which
to the unaccustomed eye seemed rather to represent studies for
sketches than absolute realities. The bells in the church tower
broke forth into a chime and people appeared at the doors
of the cottages. The men touched their foreheads as the
carriage passed, and the children made bobbing curtsies. Sir
Nigel condescended to straighten himself a trifle in his seat,
and recognised the greetings with the stiff, half-military
salute. The poor girl at his side felt that he put as little
feeling as possible into the movement, and that if she herself
had been a bowing villager she would almost have preferred to be
wholly ignored. She looked at him questioningly.
"Are they--must _I_?" she began.
"Make some civil recognition," answered Sir Nigel, as if
he were instructing an ignorant child. "It is customary."
So she bowed and tried to smile, and the joyous clamour of
the bells brought the awful lump into her throat again. It
reminded her of the ringing of the chimes at the New York
church on that day of her marriage, which had been so full
of gay, luxurious bustle, so crowded with wedding presents,
and flowers, and warm-hearted, affectionate congratulations,
and good wishes uttered in merry American voices.
The park at Stornham Court was large and beautiful and
old. The trees were magnificent, and the broad sweep of
sward and rich dip of ferny dell all that the imagination could
desire. The Court itself was old, and many-gabled and
mellow-red and fine. Rosalie had learned from no precedent
as yet that houses of its kind may represent the apotheosis of
discomfort and dilapidation within, and only become more
beautiful without. Tumbled-down chimneys and broken tiles,
being clambered over by tossing ivy, are pictures to delight
the soul.
As she descended from the carriage the girl was tremulous
and uncertain of herself and much overpowered by the unbending
air of the man-servant who received her as if she were a
parcel in which it was no part of his duty to take the smallest
interest. As she mounted the stone steps she caught a glimpse
of broad gloom within the threshold, a big, square, dingy hall
where some other servants were drawn up in a row. She had
read of something of the sort in English novels, and she was
suddenly embarrassed afresh by her realisation of the fact that
she did not know what to do and that if she made a mistake Nigel
would never forgive her.
An elderly woman came out of a room opening into the
hall. She was an ugly woman of a rigid carriage, which, with
the obvious intention of being severely majestic, was only
antagonistic. She had a flaccid chin, and was curiously like
Nigel. She had also his expression when he intended to be
disagreeable. She was the Dowager Lady Anstruthers, and being an
entirely revolting old person at her best, she objected extremely
to the transatlantic bride who had made her a dowager, though
she was determinedly prepared to profit by any practical benefit
likely to accrue.
"Well, Nigel," she said in a deep voice. "Here you are
at last."
This was of course a statement not to be refuted. She held
out a leathern cheek, and as Sir Nigel also presented his, their
caress of greeting was a singular and not effusive one.
"Is this your wife?" she asked, giving Rosalie a bony hand.
And as he did not indignantly deny this to be the fact, she
added, "How do you do?"
Rosalie murmured a reply and tried to control herself by
making another effort to swallow the lump in her throat.
But she could not swallow it. She had been keeping a desperate
hold on herself too long. The bewildered misery of
her awakening, the awkwardness of the public row at the
station, the sulks which had filled the carriage to repletion
through all the long drive, and finally the jangling bells which
had so recalled that last joyous day at home--at home--had
brought her to a point where this meeting between mother and
son--these two stony, unpleasant creatures exchanging a
reluctant rub of uninviting cheeks--as two savages might have
rubbed noses--proved the finishing impetus to hysteria. They
were so hideous, these two, and so ghastly comic and fantastic
in their unresponsive glumness, that the poor girl lost all hold
upon herself and broke into a trembling shriek of laughter.
"Oh!" she gasped in terror at what she felt to be her
indecent madness. "Oh! how--how----" And then seeing
Nigel's furious start, his mother's glare and all the servants'
alarmed stare at her, she rushed staggering to the only creature
she felt she knew--her maid Hannah, clutched her and broke
down into wild sobbing.
"Oh, take me away!" she cried. "Oh, do! Oh, do! Oh, Hannah!
Oh, mother--mother!"
"Take your mistress to her room," commanded Sir Nigel.
"Go downstairs," he called out to the servants. "Take her
upstairs at once and throw water in her face," to the excited
Hannah.
And as the new Lady Anstruthers was half led, half dragged,
in humiliated hysteric disorder up the staircase, he took his
mother by the elbow, marched her into the nearest room and
shut the door. There they stood and stared at each other,
breathing quick, enraged breaths and looking particularly alike
with their heavy-featured, thick-skinned, infuriated faces.
It was the Dowager who spoke first, and her whole voice and
manner expressed all she intended that they should, all the
derision, dislike and scathing resignment to a grotesque fate.
"Well," said her ladyship. "So THIS is what you have
brought home from America!"
