CHAPTER X
"IS LADY ANSTRUTHERS AT HOME?"
All that she had brought with her to England, combined
with what she had called "sophistication," but which was rather
her exquisite appreciation of values and effects, she took with
her when she went the next day to Charing Cross Station
and arranged herself at her ease in the railway carriage, while
her maid bought their tickets for Stornham.
What the people in the station saw, the guards and porters,
the men in the book stalls, the travellers hurrying past, was a
striking-looking girl, whose colouring and carriage made one
turn to glance after her, and who, having bought some periodicals
and papers, took her place in a first-class compartment
and watched the passersby interestedly through the open
window. Having been looked at and remarked on during her
whole life, Bettina did not find it disturbing that more than
one corduroy-clothed porter and fresh-coloured, elderly
gentleman, or freshly attired young one, having caught a glimpse
of her through her window, made it convenient to saunter
past or hover round. She looked at them much more frankly
than they looked at her. To her they were all specimens of
the types she was at present interested in. For practical
reasons she was summing up English character with more
deliberate intention than she had felt in the years when she
had gradually learned to know Continental types and differentiate
such peculiarities as were significant of their ranks and
nations. As the first Reuben Vanderpoel had studied the
countenances and indicative methods of the inhabitants of the
new parts of the country in which it was his intention to do
business, so the modernity of his descendant applied itself to
observation for reasons parallel in nature though not in actual
kind. As he had brought beads and firewater to bear as
agents upon savages who would barter for them skins and
products which might be turned into money, so she brought
her nineteenth-century beauty, steadfastness of purpose and
alertness of brain to bear upon the matter the practical dealing
with which was the end she held in view. To bear herself
in this matter with as practical a control of situations as that
with which her great-grandfather would have borne himself
in making a trade with a previously unknown tribe of
Indians was quite her intention, though it had not occurred
to her to put it to herself in any such form. Still, whether
she was aware of the fact or not, her point of view was
exactly what the first Reuben Vanderpoel's had been on many
very different occasions. She had before her the task of dealing
with facts and factors of which at present she knew but
little. Astuteness of perception, self-command, and adaptability
were her chief resources. She was ready, either for calm, bold
approach, or equally calm and wholly non-committal retreat.
The perceptions she had brought with her filled her journey
into Kent with delicious things, delicious recognition of
beauties she had before known the existence of only through the
reading of books, and the dwelling upon their charms as
reproduced, more or less perfectly, on canvas. She saw roll by
her, with the passing of the train, the loveliness of land and
picturesqueness of living which she had saved for herself
with epicurean intention for years. Her fancy, when detached
from her thoughts of her sister, had been epicurean, and she
had been quite aware that it was so. When she had left
the suburbs and those villages already touched with suburbanity
behind, she felt herself settle into a glow of luxurious
enjoyment in the freshness of her pleasure in the familiar, and
yet unfamiliar, objects in the thick-hedged fields, whose broad-
branched, thick-foliaged oaks and beeches were more embowering
in their shade, and sweeter in their green than anything
she remembered that other countries had offered her, even at
their best. Within the fields the hawthorn hedges beautifully
enclosed were groups of resigned mother sheep with
their young lambs about them. The curious pointed tops of
the red hopkilns, piercing the trees near the farmhouses,
wore an almost intentional air of adding picturesque detail.
There were clusters of old buildings and dots of cottages and
cottage gardens which made her now and then utter exclamations
of delight. Little inarticulate Rosy had seen and felt it
all twelve years before on her hopeless bridal home-coming
when Nigel had sat huddled unbecomingly in the corner of
the railway carriage. Her power of expression had been limited
to little joyful gasps and obvious laudatory adjectives,
smothered in their birth by her first glance at her bridegroom.
Betty, in seeing it, knew all the exquisiteness of her own
pleasure, and all the meanings of it.
Yes, it was England--England. It was the England of
Constable and Morland, of Miss Mitford and Miss Austen,
the Brontes and George Eliot. The land which softly rolled
and clothed itself in the rich verdure of many trees,
sometimes in lovely clusters, sometimes in covering copse, was
Constable's; the ripe young woman with the fat-legged children
and the farmyard beasts about her, as she fed the hens
from the wooden piggin under her arm, was Morland's own.
The village street might be Miss Mitford's, the well-to-do
house Jane Austen's own fancy, in its warm brick and comfortable
decorum. She laughed a little as she thought it.
"That is American," she said, "the habit of comparing
every stick and stone and breathing thing to some literary
parallel. We almost invariably say that things remind us
of pictures or books--most usually books. It seems a little
crude, but perhaps it means that we are an intensely literary
and artistic people."
She continued to find comparisons revealing to her their
appositeness, until her journey had ended by the train's
slackening speed and coming to a standstill before the
rural-looking little station which had presented its quaint
aspect to Lady Anstruthers on her home-coming of years before.
It had not, during the years which certainly had given time
for change, altered in the least. The station master had
grown stouter and more rosy, and came forward with his
respectful, hospitable air, to attend to the unusual-looking
young lady, who was the only first-class passenger. He
thought she must be a visitor expected at some country house,
but none of the carriages, whose coachmen were his familiar
acquaintances, were in waiting. That such a fine young lady
should be paying a visit at any house whose owners did not
send an equipage to attend her coming, struck him as unusual.
The brougham from the "Crown," though a decent country
town vehicle, seemed inadequate. Yet, there it stood drawn
up outside the station, and she went to it with the manner of
a young lady who had ordered its attendance and knew it
would be there.
Wells felt a good deal of interest. Among the many young
ladies who descended from the first-class compartments and
passed through the little waiting-room on their way to the
carriages of the gentry they were going to visit, he did not
know when a young lady had "caught his eye," so to speak,
as this one did. She was not exactly the kind of young lady
one would immediately class mentally as "a foreigner," but
the blue of her eyes was so deep. and her hair and eyelashes
so dark, that these things, combining themselves with a certain
"way" she had, made him feel her to be of a type unfamiliar
to the region, at least.
He was struck, also, by the fact that the young lady had no
maid with her. The truth was that Bettina had purposely
left her maid in town. If awkward things occurred, the
presence of an attendant would be a sort of complication. It
was better, on the first approach, to be wholly unencumbered.
"How far are we from Stornham Court?" she inquired.
"Five miles, my lady," he answered, touching his cap. She
expressed something which to the rural and ingenuous, whose
standards were defined, demanded a recognition of probable rank.
"I'd like to know," was his comment to his wife when he went
home to dinner, "who has gone to Stornham Court to-day.
There's few enough visitors go there, and none such as her, for
certain. She don't live anywhere on the line above here, either,
for I've never seen her face before. She was a tall, handsome
one--she was, but it isn't just that made you look after her.
She was a clever one with a spirit, I'll be bound. I was
wondering what her ladyship would have to say to her."
"Perhaps she was one of HIS fine ladies?" suggestively.
"That she wasn't, either. And, as for that, I wonder what
he'd have to say to such as she is."
There was complexity of element enough in the thing she
was on her way to do, Bettina was thinking, as she was
driven over the white ribbon of country road that unrolled over
rise and hollow, between the sheep-dotted greenness of fields
and the scented hedges. The soft beauty enclosing her was
a little shut out from her by her mental attitude. She brought
forward for her own decisions upon suitable action a number
of possible situations she might find herself called upon to
confront. The one thing necessary was that she should be
prepared for anything whatever, even for Rosy's not being
pleased to see her, or for finding Sir Nigel a thoroughly
reformed and amiable character
"It is the thing which seemingly CANNOT happen which one
is most likely to find one's self face to face with. It will be
a little awkward to arrange, if he has developed every domestic
virtue, and is delighted to see me."
Under such rather confusing conditions her plan would be
to present to them, as an affectionate surprise, the unheralded
visit, which might appear a trifle uncalled for. She felt
happily sure of herself under any circumstances not partaking
of the nature of collisions at sea. Yet she had not behaved
absolutely ill at the time of the threatened catastrophe in the
Meridiana. Her remembrance, an oddly sudden one, of the
definite manner of the red-haired second-class passenger,
assured her of that. He had certainly had all his senses about
him, and he had spoken to her as a person to be counted on.
Her pulse beat a little more hurriedly as the brougham
entered Stornham village. It was picturesque, but struck her
as looking neglected. Many of the cottages had an air of
dilapidation. There were many broken windows and unmended
garden palings. A suggested lack of whitewash in several cases
was not cheerful.
"I know nothing of the duties of English landlords," she
said, looking through her carriage window, "but I should
do it myself, if I were Rosy."
She saw, as she was taken through the park gateway, that that
structure was out of order, and that damaged diamond panes
peered out from under the thickness of the ivy massing itself
over the lodge.
"Ah!" was her thought, "it does not promise as it should.
Happy people do not let things fall to pieces."
Even winding avenue, and spreading sward, and gorse, and
broom, and bracken, enfolding all the earth beneath huge
trees, were not fair enough to remove a sudden remote fear
which arose in her rapidly reasoning mind. It suggested to
her a point of view so new that, while she was amazed at
herself for not having contemplated it before, she found
herself wishing that the coachman would drive rather more
slowly, actually that she might have more time to reflect.
They were nearing a dip in the park, where there was a
lonely looking pool. The bracken was thick and high there,
and the sun, which had just broken through a cloud, had
pierced the trees with a golden gleam.
A little withdrawn from this shaft of brightness stood two
figures, a dowdy little woman and a hunchbacked boy. The
woman held some ferns in her hand, and the boy was sitting
down and resting his chin on his hands, which were folded
on the top of a stick.
"Stop here for a moment," Bettina said to the coachman.
"I want to ask that woman a question."
She had thought that she might discover if her sister was at
the Court. She realised that to know would be a point of
advantage. She leaned forward and spoke.
"I beg your pardon," she said, "I wonder if you can tell
me----"
The woman came forward a little. She had a listless step
and a faded, listless face.
"What did you ask?" she said.
Betty leaned still further forward.
"Can you tell me----" she began and stopped. A sense
of stricture in the throat stopped her, as her eyes took in the
washed-out colour of the thin face, the washed-out colour of
the thin hair--thin drab hair, dragged in straight, hard
unbecomingness from the forehead and cheeks.
Was it true that her heart was thumping, as she had heard
it said that agitation made hearts thump?
She began again.
"Can you--tell me if--Lady Anstruthers is at home?"
she inquired. As she said it she felt the blood surge up from
the furious heart, and the hand she had laid on the handle of
the door of the brougham clutched it involuntarily.
The dowdy little woman answered her indifferently,
staring at her a little.
"I am Lady Anstruthers," she said.
Bettina opened the carriage door and stood upon the ground.
"Go on to the house," she gave order to the coachman,
and, with a somewhat startled look, he drove away.
"Rosy!" Bettina's voice was a hushed, almost awed, thing.
"YOU are Rosy?"
The faded little wreck of a creature began to look frightened.
"Rosy!" she repeated, with a small, wry, painful smile.
She was the next moment held in the folding of strong, young
arms, against a quickly beating heart. She was being wildly
kissed, and the very air seemed rich with warmth and life.
"I am Betty," she heard. "Look at me, Rosy! I am
Betty. Look at me and remember!"
Lady Anstruthers gasped, and broke into a faint, hysteric
laugh. She suddenly clutched at Bettina's arm. For a minute
her gaze was wild as she looked up.
"Betty," she cried out. "No! No! No! I can't believe
it! I can't! I can't!"
That just this thing could have taken place in her, Bettina
had never thought. As she had reflected on her way from the
station, the impossible is what one finds one's self face
to face with. Twelve years should not have changed a pretty
blonde thing of nineteen to a worn, unintelligent-looking
dowdy of the order of dowdiness which seems to have lived
beyond age and sex. She looked even stupid, or at least
stupefied. At this moment she was a silly, middle-aged woman,
who did not know what to do. For a few seconds Bettina wondered
if she was glad to see her, or only felt awkward and unequal
to the situation.
"I can't believe you," she cried out again, and began to
shiver. "Betty! Little Betty? No! No! it isn't!"
She turned to the boy, who had lifted his chin from his
stick, and was staring.
"Ughtred! Ughtred!" she called to him. "Come! She
says--she says----"
She sat down upon a clump of heather and began to cry.
She hid her face in her spare hands and broke into sobbing.
"Oh, Betty! No!" she gasped. "It's so long ago--it's
so far away. You never came--no one--no one--came!"
The hunchbacked boy drew near. He had limped up on
his stick. He spoke like an elderly, affectionate gnome, not
like a child.
"Don't do that, mother," he said. "Don't let it upset you
so, whatever it is."
"It's so long ago; it's so far away!" she wept, with catches
in her breath and voice. "You never came!"
Betty knelt down and enfolded her again. Her bell-like
voice was firm and clear.
"I have come now," she said. "And it is not far away.
A cable will reach father in two hours."
Pursuing a certain vivid thought in her mind, she looked
at her watch.
"If you spoke to mother by cable this moment," she added,
with accustomed coolness, and she felt her sister actually
start as she spoke, "she could answer you by five o'clock."
Lady Anstruther's start ended in a laugh and gasp more
hysteric than her first. There was even a kind of wan awakening
in her face, as she lifted it to look at the wonderful
newcomer. She caught her hand and held it, trembling, as she
weakly laughed.
"It must be Betty," she cried. "That little stern way!
It is so like her. Betty--Betty--dear!" She fell into a
sobbing, shaken heap upon the heather. The harrowing thought
passed through Betty's mind that she looked almost like a limp
bundle of shabby clothes. She was so helpless in her pathetic,
apologetic hysteria.
"I shall--be better," she gasped. "It's nothing. Ughtred,
tell her."
"She's very weak, really," said the boy Ughtred, in his
mature way. "She can't help it sometimes. I'll get some
water from the pool."
"Let me go," said Betty, and she darted down to the water.
She was back in a moment. The boy was rubbing and patting
his mother's hands tenderly.
"At any rate," he remarked, as one consoled by a reflection,
"father is not at home."
