CHAPTER IV
A MISTAKE OF THE POSTBOY'S
As the weeks passed at Stornham Court the Atlantic Ocean
seemed to Rosalie Anstruthers to widen endlessly, and gay,
happy, noisy New York to recede until it was as far away
as some memory of heaven. The girl had been born in the
midst of the rattling, rumbling bustle, and it had never struck
her as assuming the character of noise; she had only thought
of it as being the cheerful confusion inseparable from town.
She had been secretly offended and hurt when strangers said
that New York was noisy and dirty; when they called it
vulgar, she never wholly forgave them. She was of the New
Yorkers who adore their New York as Parisians adore Paris
and who feel that only within its beloved boundaries can the
breath of life be breathed. People were often too hot or too
cold there, but there was usually plenty of bright glaring sun,
and the extremes of the weather had at least something rather
dramatic about them. There were dramatic incidents connected
with them, at any rate. People fell dead of sunstroke
or were frozen to death, and the newspapers were full of
anecdotes during a "cold snap" or a "torrid wave," which
all made for excitement and conversation.
But at Stornham the rain seemed to young Lady Anstruthers
to descend ceaselessly. The season was a wet one, and when
she rose in the morning and looked out over the huge stretch of
trees and sward she thought she always saw the rain falling
either in hopeless sheets or more hopeless drizzle. The
occasions upon which this was a dreary truth blotted out or
blurred the exceptions, when in liquid ultramarine deeps of sky,
floated islands and mountains of snow-white fleece, of a beauty
of which she had before had no conception.
In the English novels she had read, places such as Stornham
Court were always filled with "house parties," made up of
wonderful town wits and beauties, who provided endless
entertainment for each other, who played games, who hunted and
shot pheasants and shone in dazzling amateur theatricals. There
were, however, no visitors at Stornham, and there were in
fact, no accommodations for any. There were numberless
bedrooms, but none really fit for guests to occupy. Carpets
and curtains were ancient and ragged, furniture was dilapidated,
chimneys would not draw, beds were falling to pieces.
The Dowager Lady Anstruthers had never either attracted
desired, or been able to afford company. Her son's wife
suffered from the resulting boredom and unpopularity without
being able to comprehend the significance of the situation.
As the weeks dragged by a few heavy carriages deposited at
the Court a few callers. Some of the visitors bore imposing
titles, which made Rosalie very nervous and caused her hastily
to array herself to receive them in toilettes much too pretty and
delicate for the occasion. Her innocent idea was that she
must do her husband credit by appearing as "stylish" as possible.
As a result she was stared at, either with open disfavour,
or with well-bred, furtive criticism, and was described
afterwards as being either "very American" or "very over-
dressed." When she had lived in huge rooms in Fifth Avenue,
Rosalie had changed her attire as many times a day as she had
changed her fancy; every hour had been filled with engagements
and amusements; the Vanderpoel carriages had driven
up to the door and driven away again and again through the
mornings and afternoons and until midnight and later. Someone
was always going out or coming in. There had been in
the big handsome house not much more of an air of repose than
one might expect to find at a railway station; but the flurry,
the coming and going, the calling and chatting had all been
cheery, amiable. At Stornham, Rosalie sat at breakfast before
unchanging boiled eggs, unfailing toast and unalterable broiled
bacon, morning after morning. Sir Nigel sat and munched
over the newspapers, his mother, with an air of relentless
disapproval from a lofty height of both her food and companions,
disposed of her eggs and her rasher at Rosalie's right
hand. She had transferred to her daughter-in-law her previously
occupied seat at the head of the table. This had been
done with a carefully prepared scene of intense though correct
disagreeableness, in which she had managed to convey all
the rancour of her dethroned spirit and her disapproval and
disdain of international alliances.
"It is of course proper that you should sit at the head
of your husband's table," she had said, among other agreeable
things. "A woman having devoted her life to her son
must relinquish her position to the person he chooses to marry.
If you should have a son you will give up your position to
his wife. Since Nigel has married you, he has, of course, a
right to expect that you will at least make an effort to learn
something of what is required of women of your position."
"Sit down, Rosalie," said Nigel. "Of course you take the
head of the table, and naturally you must learn what is
expected of my wife, but don't talk confounded rubbish, mother,
about devoting your life to your son. We have seen about as
little of each other as we could help. We never agreed." They
were both bullies and each made occasional efforts at bullying
the other without any particular result. But each could at
least bully the other into intensified unpleasantness.
The vicar's wife having made her call of ceremony upon the
new Lady Anstruthers, followed up the acquaintance, and
found her quite exotically unlike her mother-in-law, whose
charities one may be sure had neither been lavish nor dispensed
by any hand less impressive than her own. The younger woman
was of wholly malleable material. Her sympathies were easily
awakened and her purse was well filled and readily opened.
Small families or large ones, newly born infants or newly buried
ones, old women with "bad legs" and old men who needed
comforts, equally touched her heart. She innocently bestowed
sovereigns where an Englishwoman would have known that
half-crowns would have been sufficient. As the vicaress was
her almoner that lady felt her importance rapidly on the
increase. When she left a cottage saying, "I'll speak to young
Lady Anstruthers about you," the good woman of the house
curtsied low and her husband touched his forehead respectfully.
But this did not advance the fortunes of Sir Nigel, who
personally required of her very different things. Two weeks
after her arrival at Stornham, Rosalie began to see that somehow
she was regarded as a person almost impudently in the wrong.
It appeared that if she had been an English girl she would
have been quite different, that she would have been an advantage
instead of a detriment. As an American she was a detriment.
That seemed to go without saying. She tried to do
everything she was told, and learn something from each cold
insinuation. She did not know that her very amenability and
timidity were her undoing. Sir Nigel and his mother
thoroughly enjoyed themselves at her expense. They knew they
could say anything they chose, and that at the most she would
only break down into crying and afterwards apologise for
being so badly behaved. If some practical, strong-minded
person had been near to defend her she might have been rescued
promptly and her tyrants routed. But she was a young girl,
tender of heart and weak of nature. She used to cry a great
deal when she was alone, and when she wrote to her mother
she was too frightened to tell the truth concerning her
unhappiness.
"Oh, if I could just see some of them!" she would wail
to herself. "If I could just see mother or father or anybody
from New York! Oh, I know I shall never see New York
again, or Broadway or Fifth Avenue or Central Park--I never
--never--never shall!" And she would grovel among her
pillows, burying her face and half stifling herself lest her sobs
should be heard. Her feeling for her husband had become
one of terror and repulsion. She was almost more afraid of
his patronising, affectionate moments than she was of his temper.
His conjugal condescensions made her feel vaguely--
without knowing why--as if she were some lower order of
little animal.
American women, he said, had no conception of wifely
duties and affection. He had a great deal to say on the
subject of wifely duty. It was part of her duty as a wife to
be entirely satisfied with his society, and to be completely
happy in the pleasure it afforded her. It was her wifely duty
not to talk about her own family and palpitatingly expect
letters by every American mail. He objected intensely to this
letter writing and receiving, and his mother shared his
prejudices.
"You have married an Englishman," her ladyship said.
"You have put it out of his power to marry an Englishwoman,
and the least consideration you can show is to let
New York and Nine-hundredth street remain upon the other
side of the Atlantic and not insist on dragging them into
Stornham Court."
The Dowager Lady Anstruthers was very fine in her
picture of her mental condition, when she realised, as she seemed
periodically to do, that it was no longer possible for her son
to make a respectable marriage with a woman of his own
nation. The unadorned fact was that both she and Sir Nigel
were infuriated by the simplicity which made Rosalie slow in
comprehending that it was proper that the money her father
allowed her should be placed in her husband's hands, and left
there with no indelicate questioning. If she had been an
English girl matters would have been made plain to her from the
first and arranged satisfactorily before her marriage. Sir
Nigel's mother considered that he had played the fool, and
would not believe that New York fathers were such touchy,
sentimental idiots as not to know what was expected of them.
They wasted no time, however, in coming to the point, and
in a measure it was the vicaress who aided them. Not she
entirely, however.
Since her mother-in-law's first mention of a possible son
whose wife would eventually thrust her from her seat at the
head of the table, Rosalie had several times heard this son
referred to. It struck her that in England such things seemed
discussed with more freedom than in America. She had never
heard a young woman's possible family arranged for and made
the subject of conversation in the more crude atmosphere of
New York. It made her feel rather awkward at first. Then
she began to realise that the son was part of her wifely duty
also; that she was expected to provide one, and that he was
in some way expected to provide for the estate--to rehabilitate
it--and that this was because her father, being a rich man,
would provide for him. It had also struck her that in England
there was a tendency to expectation that someone would
"provide" for someone else, that relatives even by marriage
were supposed to "make allowances" on which it was quite
proper for other persons to live. Rosalie had been accustomed
to a community in which even rich men worked, and
in which young and able-bodied men would have felt rather
indignant if aunts or uncles had thought it necessary to
pension them off as if they had been impotent paupers. It was
Rosalie's son who was to be "provided for" in this case, and
who was to "provide for" his father.
"When you have a son," her mother-in-law had remarked
severely, "I suppose something will be done for Nigel and
the estate."
This had been said before she had been ten days in the
house, and had set her not-too-quick brain working. She had
already begun to see that life at Stornham Court was not the
luxurious affair it was in the house in Fifth Avenue. Things
were shabby and queer and not at all comfortable. Fires were
not lighted because a day was chilly and gloomy. She had
once asked for one in her bedroom and her mother-in-law had
reproved her for indecent extravagance in a manner which took
her breath away.
"I suppose in America you have your house at furnace heat
in July," she said. "Mere wastefulness and self-indulgence!
That is why Americans are old women at twenty. They are
shrivelled and withered by the unhealthy lives they lead.
Stuffing themselves with sweets and hot bread and never
breathing the fresh air."
Rosalie could not at the moment recall any withered and
shrivelled old women of twenty, but she blushed and stammered
as usual.
"It is never cold enough for fires in July," she answered,
"but we--we never think fires extravagant when we are not
comfortable without them."
"Coal must be cheaper than it is in England," said her
ladyship. "When you have a daughter, I hope you do not
expect to bring her up as girls are brought up in New York."
This was the first time Rosalie had heard of her daughter,
and she was not ready enough to reply. She naturally went
into her room and cried again, wondering what her father
and mother would say if they knew that bedroom fires were
considered vulgarly extravagant by an impressive member of
the British aristocracy.
She was not at all strong at the time and was given to
feeling chilly and miserable on wet, windy days. She used to
cry more than ever and was so desolate that there were days
when she used to go to the vicarage for companionship. On
such days the vicar's wife would entertain her with stories of
the villagers' catastrophes, and she would empty her purse upon
the tea table and feel a little consoled because she was the
means of consoling someone else.
"I suppose it gratifies your vanity to play the Lady
Bountiful," Sir Nigel sneered one evening, having heard in the
village what she was doing.
"I--never thought of such a thing," she stammered feebly.
"Mrs. Brent said they were so poor."
"You throw your money about as if you were a child,"
said her mother-in-law. "It is a pity it is not put in the
hands of some person with discretion."
It had begun to dawn upon Rosalie that her ladyship was deeply
convinced that either herself or her son would be admirably
discreet custodians of the money referred to. And even
the dawning of this idea had frightened the girl. She was so
inexperienced and ignorant that she felt it might be possible
that in England one's husband and one's mother-in-law could
do what they liked. It might be that they could take possession
of one's money as they seemed to take possession of one's
self and one's very soul. She would have been very glad to
give them money, and had indeed wondered frequently if she
might dare to offer it to them, if they would be outraged and
insulted and slay her in their wrath at her purse-proud daring.
She had tried to invent ways in which she could approach the
subject, but had not been able to screw up her courage to any
sticking point. She was so overpowered by her consciousness
that they seemed continually to intimate that Americans with
money were ostentatious and always laying stress upon the
amount of their possessions. She had no conception of the
primeval simpleness of their attitude in such matters, and that
no ceremonies were necessary save the process of transferring
sufficiently large sums as though they were the mere right of
the recipients. She was taught to understand this later. In
the meantime, however, ready as she would have been to give
large sums if she had known how, she was terrified by the
thought that it might be possible that she could be deprived of
her bank account and reduced to the condition of a sort of
dependent upon the humours of her lately acquired relations.
She thought over this a good deal, and would have found
immense relief if she dared have consulted anyone. But she
could not make up her mind to reveal her unhappiness to her
people. She had been married so recently, everybody had
thought her marriage so delightful, she could not bear that her
father and mother should be distressed by knowing that she
was wretched. She also reflected with misery that New York
would talk the matter over excitedly and that finally the
newspapers would get hold of the gossip. She could even imagine
interviewers calling at the house in Fifth Avenue and
endeavouring to obtain particulars of the situation. Her father
would be angry and refuse to give them, but that would make no
difference; the newspapers would give them and everybody would
read what they said, whether it was true or not. She could not
possibly write facts, she thought, so her poor little letters
were restrained and unlike herself, and to the warm-hearted souls
in New York, even appearing stiff and unaffectionate, as if her
aristocratic surroundings had chilled her love for them. In
fact, it became far from easy for her to write at all, since Sir
Nigel so disapproved of her interest in the American mail. His
objections had indeed taken the form of his feeling himself
quite within his rights when he occasionally intercepted letters
from her relations, with a view of finding out whether they
contained criticisms of himself, which would betray that she
had been guilty of indiscreet confidences. He discovered that
she had not apparently been so guilty, but it was evident that
there were moments when Mrs. Vanderpoel was uneasy and
disposed to ask anxious questions. When this occurred he
destroyed the letters, and as a result of this precaution on his
part her motherly queries seemed to be ignored, and she several
times shed tears in the belief that Rosy had grown so
patrician that she was capable of snubbing her mother in her
resentment at feeling her privacy intruded upon and an unrefined
effusiveness shown.
"I just feel as if she was beginning not to care about us at
all, Betty," she said. "I couldn't have believed it of Rosy.
She was always such an affectionate girl."
"I don't believe it now," replied Betty sharply. "Rosy
couldn't grow hateful and stuck up. It's that nasty Nigel
I know it is."
Sir Nigel's intention was that there should be as little
intercourse between Fifth Avenue and Stornham Court as was
possible. Among other things, he did not intend that a lot of
American relations should come tumbling in when they chose
to cross the Atlantic. He would not have it, and took
discreet steps to prevent any accident of the sort. He wrote to
America occasionally himself, and knowing well how to make
himself civilly repellent, so subtly chilled his parents-in-law
as to discourage in them more than once their half-formed plan
of paying a visit to their child in her new home. He opened,
read and reclosed all epistles to and from New York, and while
Mrs. Vanderpoel was much hurt to find that Rosalie never
condescended to make any response to her tentatives concerning
her possible visit, Rosalie herself was mystified by the fact
that the journey "to Europe" was never spoken of.
"I don't see why they never seem to think of coming over,"
she said plaintively one day. "They used to talk so much
about it."
"They?" ejaculated the Dowager Lady Anstruthers. "Whom may you
mean?"
"Mother and father and Betty and some of the others."
Her mother-in-law put up her eye-glasses to stare at her.
"The whole family?" she inquired.
"There are not so many of them," Rosalie answered.
"A family is always too many to descend upon a young
woman when she is married," observed her ladyship unmovedly.
Nigel glanced over the top of his Times.
"I may as well tell you that it would not do at all," he put in.
"Why--why not?" exclaimed Rosalie, aghast.
"Americans don't do in English society," slightingly.
"But they are coming over so much. They like London so--
all Americans like London."
"Do they?" with a drawl which made Rosalie blush until
the tears started to her eyes. "I am afraid the sentiment is
scarcely mutual."
Rosalie turned and fled from the room. She turned and
fled because she realised that she should burst out crying if
she waited to hear another word, and she realised that of
late she seemed always to be bursting out crying before one
or the other of those two. She could not help it. They always
seemed to be implying something slighting or scathing. They
were always putting her in the wrong and hurting her
feelings.
The day was damp and chill, but she put on her hat and
ran out into the park. She went down the avenue and turned
into a coppice. There, among the wet bracken, she sank down
on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree and huddled herself in a
small heap, her head on her arms, actually wailing.
"Oh, mother! Oh, mother!" she cried hysterically. "Oh,
I do wish you would come. I'm so cold, mother; I'm so ill!
I can't bear it! It seems as if you'd forgotten all about me!
You're all so happy in New York that perhaps you have forgotten--
perhaps you have! Oh, don't, mother--don't! "
It was a month later that through the vicar's wife she
reached a discovery and a climax. She had heard one morning
from this lady of a misfortune which had befallen a small
farmer. It was a misfortune which was an actual catastrophe
to a man in his position. His house had caught fire during a
gale of wind and the fire had spread to the outbuildings and
rickyard and swept away all his belongings, his house, his
furniture, his hayricks, and stored grain, and even his few cows
and horses. He had been a poor, hard-working fellow, and
his small insurance had lapsed the day before the fire. He
was absolutely ruined, and with his wife and six children
stood face to face with beggary and starvation.
Rosalie Anstruthers entered the vicarage to find the poor
woman who was his companion in calamity sobbing in the
hall. A child of a few weeks was in her arms, and two
small creatures clung crying to her skirts.
"We've worked hard," she wept; "we have, ma'am. Father,
he's always been steady, an' up early an' late. P'r'aps it's the
Lord's 'and, as you say, ma'am, but we've been decent people
an' never missed church when we could 'elp it--father didn't
deserve it--that he didn't."
She was heartbroken in her downtrodden hopelessness. Rosalie
literally quaked with sympathy. She poured forth her pity
in such words as the poor woman had never heard spoken by
a great lady to a humble creature like herself. The villagers
found the new Lady Anstruthers' interviews with them curiously
simple and suggestive of an equality they could not understand.
Stornham was a conservative old village, where the
distinction between the gentry and the peasants was clearly
marked. The cottagers were puzzled by Sir Nigel's wife, but
they decided that she was kind, if unusual.
As Rosalie talked to the farmer's wife she longed for her
father's presence. She had remembered a time when a man
in his employ had lost his all by fire, the small house he
had just made his last payment upon having been burned
to the ground. He had lost one of his children in the fire, and
the details had been heartrending. The entire Vanderpoel
household had wept on hearing them, and Mr. Vanderpoel had
drawn a cheque which had seemed like a fortune to the
sufferer. A new house had been bought, and Mrs. Vanderpoel
and her daughters and friends had bestowed furniture and
clothing enough to make the family comfortable to the verge
of luxury.
"See, you poor thing," said Rosalie, glowing with memories
of this incident, her homesick young soul comforted by the
mere likeness in the two calamities. "I brought my cheque
book with me because I meant to help you. A man
worked for my father had his house burned, just as yours
was, and my father made everything all right for him again.
I'll make it all right for you; I'll make you a cheque for a
hundred pounds now, and then when your husband begins to
build I'll give him some more."
The woman gasped for breath and turned pale. She was
frightened. It really seemed as if her ladyship must have lost
her wits a little. She could not mean this. The vicaress
turned pale also.
"Lady Anstruthers," she said, "Lady Anstruthers, it--it
is too much. Sir Nigel----"
"Too much!" exclaimed Rosalie. "They have lost everything,
you know; their hayricks and cattle as well as their
house; I guess it won't be half enough."
Mrs. Brent dragged her into the vicar's study and talked to
her. She tried to explain that in English villages such things
were not done in a manner so casual, as if they were the mere
result of unconsidered feeling, as if they were quite natural
things, such as any human person might do. When Rosalie
cried: "But why not--why not? They ought to be." Mrs.
Brent could not seem to make herself quite clear. Rosalie only
gathered in a bewildered way that there ought to be more
ceremony, more deliberation, more holding off, before a person
of rank indulged in such munificence. The recipient ought
to be made to feel it more, to understand fully what a great
thing was being done.
"They will think you will do anything for them."
"So I will," said young Lady Anstruthers, "if I have the
money when they are in such awful trouble. Suppose we
lost everything in the world and there were people who could
easily help us and wouldn't?"
"You and Sir Nigel--that is quite different," said Mrs.
Brent. "I am afraid that if you do not discuss the matter
and ask advice from your husband and mother-in-law they
will be very much offended."
"If I were doing it with their money they would have
the right to be," replied Rosalie, with entire ingenuousness.
"I wouldn't presume to do such a thing as that. That wouldn't
be right, of course."
"They will be angry with me," said the vicaress
awkwardly. This queer, silly girl, who seemed to see nothing in
the right light, frequently made her feel awkward. Mrs. Brent
told her husband that she appeared to have no sense of dignity
or proper appreciation of her position.
The wife of the farmer, John Wilson, carried away the
cheque, quite stunned. She was breathless with amazement
and turned rather faint with excitement, bewilderment and
her sense of relief. She had to sit down in the vicarage kitchen
for a few minutes and drink a glass of the thin vicarage beer.
Rosalie promised that she would discuss the matter and ask
advice when she returned to the Court. Just as she left the
house Mrs. Brent suddenly remembered something she had forgotten.
"The Wilson trouble completely drove it out of my mind,"
she said. "It was a stupid mistake of the postboy's. He left
a letter of yours among mine when he came this morning. It
was most careless. I shall speak to his father about it. It
might have been important that you should receive it early."
When she saw the letter Rosalie uttered an exclamation. It
was addressed in her father's handwriting.
"Oh!" she cried. "It's from father! And the postmark
is Havre. What does it mean?"
She was so excited that she almost forgot to express her
thanks. Her heart leaped up in her throat. Could they have
come over from America--could they? Why was it written
from Havre? Could they be near her?
She walked along the road choked with ecstatic, laughing
sobs. Her hand shook so that she could scarcely tear open
the envelope; she tore a corner of the letter, and when the
sheet was spread open her eyes were full of wild, delighted
tears, which made it impossible for her to see for the moment.
But she swept the tears away and read this:
DEAR DAUGHTER:
It seems as if we had had pretty bad luck in not seeing you.
We had counted on it very much, and your mother feels it
all the more because she is weak after her illness. We don't
quite understand why you did not seem to know about her
having had diphtheria in Paris. You did not answer Betty's
letter. Perhaps it missed you in some way. Things do sometimes
go wrong in the mail, and several times your mother has
thought a letter has been lost. She thought so because you
seemed to forget to refer to things. We came over to leave
Betty at a French school and we had expected to visit you
later. But your mother fell ill of diphtheria and not hearing
from you seemed to make her homesick, so we decided to return
to New York by the next steamer. I ran over to London,
however, to make some inquiries about you, and on the
first day I arrived I met your husband in Bond Street. He at
once explained to me that you had gone to a house party
at some castle in Scotland, and said you were well and
enjoying yourself very much, and he was on his way to join you.
I am sorry, daughter, that it has turned out that we could
not see each other. It seems a long time since you left us.
But I am very glad, however, that you are so well and
really like English life. If we had time for it I am sure it
would be delightful. Your mother sends her love and wants
very much to hear of all you are doing and enjoying. Hoping
that we may have better luck the next time we cross--
Your affectionate father,
REUBEN L. VANDERPOEL.
Rosalie found herself running breathlessly up the avenue.
She was clutching the letter still in her hand, and staggering
from side to side. Now and then she uttered horrible little
short cries, like an animal's. She ran and ran, seeing nothing,
and now and then with the clenched hand in which the letter
was crushed striking a sharp blow at her breast.
She stumbled up the big stone steps she had mounted on the
day she was brought home as a bride. Her dress caught her
feet and she fell on her knees and scrambled up again, gasping;
she dashed across the huge dark hall, and, hurling herself
against the door of the morning room, appeared, dishevelled,
haggard-eyed, and with scarlet patches on her wild,
white face, before the Dowager, who started angrily to her
feet:
"Where is Nigel? Where is Nigel?" she cried out frenziedly.
"What in heaven's name do you mean by such manners?"
demanded her ladyship. "Apologise at once!"
"Where is Nigel? Nigel! Nigel!" the girl raved. "I will
see him--I will--I will see him!"
She who had been the mildest of sweet-tempered creatures
all her life had suddenly gone almost insane with heartbroken,
hysteric grief and rage. She did not know what she was saying
and doing; she only realised in an agony of despair that she
was a thing caught in a trap; that these people had her in their
power, and that they had tricked and lied to her and kept her
apart from what her girl's heart so cried out to and longed for.
Her father, her mother, her little sister; they had been near
her and had been lied to and sent away
"You are quite mad, you violent, uncontrolled creature!"
cried the Dowager furiously. "You ought to be put in a
straitjacket and drenched with cold water."
Then the door opened again and Nigel strode in. He was
in riding dress and was breathless and livid with anger. He
was in a nice mood to confront a wife on the verge of screaming
hysterics. After a bad half hour with his steward, who
had been talking of impending disasters, he had heard by
chance of Wilson's conflagration and the hundred-pound
cheque. He had galloped home at the top of his horse's speed.
"Here is your wife raving mad," cried out his mother.
Rosalie staggered across the room to him. She held up her
hand clenching the letter and shook it at him.
"My mother and father have been here," she shrieked.
My mother has been ill. They wanted to come to see me.
You knew and you kept it from me. You told my father lies
--lies--hideous lies! You said I was away in Scotland--
enjoying myself--when I was here and dying with homesickness.
You made them think I did not care for them--or for New York!
You have killed me! Why did you do such a wicked thing!
He looked at her with glaring eyes. If a man born a
gentleman is ever in the mood to kick his wife to death, as
costermongers do, he was in that mood. He had lost control over
himself as completely as she had, and while she was only a
desperate, hysteric girl, he was a violent man.
"I did it because I did not mean to have them here," he
said. "I did it because I won't have them here."
"They shall come," she quavered shrilly in her wildness.
"They shall come to see me. They are my own father and
mother, and I will have them."
He caught her arm in such a grip that she must have thought he
would break it, if she could have thought or felt anything.
"No, you will not have them," he ground forth between
his teeth. "You will do as I order you and learn to behave
yourself as a decent married woman should. You will learn
to obey your husband and respect his wishes and control your
devilish American temper."
"They have gone--gone!" wailed Rosalie. "You sent them
away! My father, my mother, my sister!"
"Stop your indecent ravings!" ordered Sir Nigel, shaking
her. "I will not submit to be disgraced before the servants."
"Put your hand over her mouth, Nigel," cried his mother.
"The very scullery maids will hear."
She was as infuriated as her son. And, indeed, to behold
civilised human beings in the state of uncontrolled violence
these three had reached was a sight to shudder at.
"I won't stop," cried the girl. "Why did you take me
away from everything--I was quite happy. Everybody was
kind to me. I loved people, I had everything. No one ever--
ever--ever ill-used anyone----"
Sir Nigel clutched her arm more brutally still and shook
her with absolute violence. Her hair broke loose and fell
about her awful little distorted, sobbing face.
"I did not take you to give you an opportunity to display
your vulgar ostentation by throwing away hundred-pound
cheques to villagers," he said. "I didn't take you to give you
the position of a lady and be made a fool of by you."
"You have ruined him," burst forth his mother. "You
have put it out of his power to marry an Englishwoman who
would have known it was her duty to give something in return
for his name and protection."
Her ladyship had begun to rave also, and as mother and
son were of equal violence when they had ceased to control
themselves, Rosalie began to find herself enlightened
unsparingly. She and her people were vulgar sharpers. They had
trapped a gentleman into a low American marriage and had
not the decency to pay for what they had got. If she had
been an Englishwoman, well born, and of decent breeding,
all her fortune would have been properly transferred to her
husband and he would have had the dispensing of it. Her
husband would have been in the position to control her
expenditure and see that she did not make a fool of herself. As
it was she was the derision of all decent people, of all people
who had been properly brought up and knew what was in
good taste and of good morality.
First it was the Dowager who poured forth, and then it
was Sir Nigel. They broke in on each other, they interrupted
one another with exclamations and interpolations. They had
so far lost themselves that they did not know they became
grotesque in the violence of their fury. Rosalie's brain
whirled. Her hysteria mounted and mounted. She stared first at
one and then at the other, gasping and sobbing by turns; she
swayed on her feet and clutched at a chair.
"I did not know," she broke forth at last, trying to make
her voice heard in the storm. "I never understood. I knew
something made you hate me, but I didn't know you were
angry about money." She laughed tremulously and wildly.
"I would have given it to you--father would have given you
some--if you had been good to me." The laugh became
hysterical beyond her management. Peal after peal broke from
her, she shook all over with her ghastly merriment, sobbing
at one and the same time.
"Oh! oh! oh!" she shrieked. "You see, I thought you
were so aristocratic. I wouldn't have dared to think of such
a thing. I thought an English gentleman--an English gentleman--
oh! oh! to think it was all because I did not give you
money--just common dollars and cents that--that I daren't
offer to a decent American who could work for himself."
Sir Nigel sprang at her. He struck her with his open hand
upon the cheek, and as she reeled she held up her small,
feverish, shaking hand, laughing more wildly than before.
"You ought not to strike me," she cried. "You oughtn't!
You don't know how valuable I am. Perhaps----" with a
little, crazy scream--"perhaps I might have a son."
She fell in a shuddering heap, and as she dropped she struck
heavily against the protruding end of an oak chest and lay upon
the floor, her arms flung out and limp, as if she were a dead
thing.
