CHAPTER XII
UGHTRED
Bettina stood alone in her bedroom a couple of hours later.
Lady Anstruthers had taken her to it, preparing her for its
limitations by explaining that she would find it quite different
from her room in New York. She had been pathetically nervous
and flushed about it, and Bettina had also been aware that the
apartment itself had been hastily, and with much moving of
objects from one chamber to another, made ready for her.
The room was large and square and low. It was panelled
in small squares of white wood. The panels were old enough
to be cracked here and there, and the paint was stained and
yellow with time, where it was not knocked or worn off.
There was a small paned, leaded window which filled a large
part of one side of the room, and its deep seat was an agreeable
feature. Sitting in it, one looked out over several red-
walled gardens, and through breaks in the trees of the park to
a fair beyond. Bettina stood before this window for a few
moments, and then took a seat in the embrasure, that she
might gaze out and reflect at leisure.
Her genius, as has before been mentioned, was the genius
for living, for being vital. Many people merely exist, are
kept alive by others, or continue to vegetate because the
persistent action of normal functions will allow of their doing
no less. Bettina Vanderpoel had lived vividly, and in the
midst of a self-created atmosphere of action from her first
hour. It was not possible for her to be one of the horde of
mere spectators. Wheresoever she moved there was some
occult stirring of the mental, and even physical, air. Her
pulses beat too strongly, her blood ran too fast to allow of
inaction of mind or body. When, in passing through the village,
she had seen the broken windows and the hanging palings
of the cottages, it had been inevitable that, at once, she
should, in thought, repair them, set them straight. Disorder
filled her with a sort of impatience which was akin to physical
distress. If she had been born a poor woman she would have
worked hard for her living, and found an interest, almost an
exhilaration, in her labour. Such gifts as she had would have
been applied to the tasks she undertook. It had frequently
given her pleasure to imagine herself earning her livelihood
as a seamstress, a housemaid, a nurse. She knew what she
could have put into her service, and how she could have found
it absorbing. Imagination and initiative could make any service
absorbing. The actual truth was that if she had been a
housemaid, the room she set in order would have taken a
character under her touch; if she had been a seamstress, her work
would have been swiftly done, her imagination would have
invented for her combinations of form and colour; if she
had been a nursemaid, the children under her care would
never have been sufficiently bored to become tiresome or
intractable, and they also would have gained character to which
would have been added an undeniable vividness of outlook.
She could not have left them alone, so to speak. In obeying
the mere laws of her being, she would have stimulated them.
Unconsciously she had stimulated her fellow pupils at school;
when she was his companion, her father had always felt himself
stirred to interest and enterprise.
"You ought to have been a man, Betty," he used to say to
her sometimes.
But Betty had not agreed with him.
"You say that," she once replied to him, "because you see
I am inclined to do things, to change them, if they need
changing. Well, one is either born like that, or one is not.
Sometimes I think that perhaps the people who must ACT are of
a distinct race. A kind of vigorous restlessness drives them.
I remember that when I was a child I could not see a pin
lying upon the ground without picking it up, or pass a drawer
which needed closing, without giving it a push. But there
has always been as much for women to do as for men."
There was much to be done here of one sort of thing and
another. That was certain. As she gazed through the small
panes of her large windows, she found herself overlooking
part of a wilderness of garden, which revealed itself through
an arch in an overgrown laurel hedge. She had glimpses of
unkempt grass paths and unclipped topiary work which had
lost its original form. Among a tangle of weeds rose the
heads of clumps of daffodils, stirred by a passing wind of
spring. In the park beyond a cuckoo was calling.
She was conscious both of the forlorn beauty and significance
of the neglected garden, and of the clear quaintness of
the cuckoo call, as she thought of other things.
"Her spirit and her health are broken," was her summing
up. "Her prettiness has faded to a rag. She is as nervous
as an ill-treated child. She has lost her wits. I do not know
where to begin with her. I must let her tell me things as
gradually as she chooses. Until I see Nigel I shall not know
what his method with her has been. She looks as if she had
ceased to care for things, even for herself. What shall I write
to mother?"
She knew what she should write to her father. With him
she could be explicit. She could record what she had found
and what it suggested to her. She could also make clear
her reason for hesitance and deliberation. His discretion and
affection would comprehend the thing which she herself felt
and which affection not combined with discretion might not
take in. He would understand, when she told him that one
of the first things which had struck her, had been that Rosy
herself, her helplessness and timidity, might, for a period at
least, form obstacles in their path of action. He not only
loved Rosy, but realised how slight a sweet thing she had
always been, and he would know how far a slight creature's
gentleness might be overpowered and beaten down.
There was so much that her mother must be spared, there
was indeed so little that it would be wise to tell her, that
Bettina sat gently rubbing her forehead as she thought of it.
The truth was that she must tell her nothing, until all was
over, accomplished, decided. Whatsoever there was to be
"over," whatsoever the action finally taken, must be a
matter lying as far as possible between her father and herself.
Mrs. Vanderpoel's trouble would be too keen, her anxiety
too great to keep to herself, even if she were not overwhelmed
by them. She must be told of the beauties and dimensions of
Stornham, all relatable details of Rosy's life must be generously
dwelt on. Above all Rosy must be made to write letters,
and with an air of freedom however specious.
A knock on the door broke the thread of her reflection. It
was a low-sounding knock, and she answered the summons
herself, because she thought it might be Rosy's.
It was not Lady Anstruthers who stood outside, but
Ughtred, who balanced himself on his crutches, and lifted his
small, too mature, face.
"May I come in?" he asked.
Here was the unexpected again, but she did not allow him
to see her surprise.
"Yes," she said. "Certainly you may."
He swung in and then turned to speak to her.
"Please shut the door and lock it," he said.
There was sudden illumination in this, but of an order almost
whimsical. That modern people in modern days should feel bolts
and bars a necessity of ordinary intercourse was suggestive. She
was plainly about to receive enlightenment. She turned the key
and followed the halting figure across the room.
"What are you afraid of?" she asked.
"When mother and I talk things over," he said, "we always do it
where no one can see or hear. It's the only way to be safe."
"Safe from what?"
His eyes fixed themselves on her as he answered her almost
sullenly.
"Safe from people who might listen and go and tell that
we had been talking."
In his thwarted-looking, odd child-face there was a shade
of appeal not wholly hidden by his evident wish not to be
boylike. Betty felt a desire to kneel down suddenly and
embrace him, but she knew he was not prepared for such a
demonstration. He looked like a creature who had lived
continually at bay, and had learned to adjust himself to any
situation with caution and restraint.
"Sit down, Ughtred," she said, and when he did so she
herself sat down, but not too near him.
Resting his chin on the handle of a crutch, he gazed at her
almost protestingly.
"I always have to do these things," he said, "and I am
not clever enough, or old enough. I am only eleven."
The mention of the number of his years was plainly not
apologetic, but was a mere statement of his limitations. There
the fact was, and he must make the best of it he could.
"What things do you mean?"
"Trying to make things easier--explaining things when
she cannot think of excuses. To-day it is telling you what
she is too frightened to tell you herself. I said to her that
you must be told. It made her nervous and miserable, but
I knew you must."
"Yes, I must," Betty answered. "I am glad she has you
to depend on, Ughtred."
His crutch grated on the floor and his boy eyes forbade her
to believe that their sudden lustre was in any way connected
with restrained emotion.
"I know I seem queer and like a little old man," he said.
"Mother cries about it sometimes. But it can't be helped.
It is because she has never had anyone but me to help her.
When I was very little, I found out how frightened and
miserable she was. After his rages," he used no name, "she
used to run into my nursery and snatch me up in her arms and
hide her face in my pinafore. Sometimes she stuffed it into
her mouth and bit it to keep herself from screaming. Once--
before I was seven--I ran into their room and shouted out,
and tried to fight for her. He was going out, and had his
riding whip in his hand, and he caught hold of me and struck
me with it--until he was tired."
Betty stood upright.
"What! What! What!" she cried out.
He merely nodded his head shortly. She saw what the
thing had been by the way his face lost colour.
"Of course he said it was because I was impudent, and
needed punishment," he said. "He said she had encouraged
me in American impudence. It was worse for her than for
me. She kneeled down and screamed out as if she was crazy,
that she would give him what he wanted if he would stop."
"Wait," said Betty, drawing in her breath sharply. " `He,'
is Sir Nigel? And he wanted something."
He nodded again
"Tell me," she demanded, "has he ever struck her?"
"Once," he answered slowly, "before I was born--he
struck her and she fell against something. That is why I am
like this." And he touched his shoulder.
The feeling which surged through Betty Vanderpoel's
being forced her to go and stand with her face turned towards the
windows, her hands holding each other tightly behind her back.
"I must keep still," she said. "I must make myself keep still."
She spoke unconsciously half aloud, and Ughtred heard her
and replied hurriedly.
"Yes," he said, "you must make yourself keep still. That
is what we have to do whatever happens. That is one of the
things mother wanted you to know. She is afraid. She daren't
let you----"
She turned from the window, standing at her full height
and looking very tall for a girl.
"She is afraid? She daren't? See--that will come to an
end now. There are things which can be done."
He flushed nervously.
"That is what she was afraid you would say," he spoke
fast and his hands trembled. "She is nearly wild about it,
because she knows he will try to do something that will make
you feel as if she does not want you."
"She is afraid of that?" Betty exclaimed.
"He'd do it! He'd do it--if you did not know beforehand."
"Oh!" said Betty, with unflinching clearness. "He is a liar, is
he?"
The helpless rage in the unchildish eyes, the shaking voice, as
he cried out in answer, were a shock. It was as if he wildly
rejoiced that she had spoken the word.
"Yes, he's a liar--a liar!" he shrilled. "He's a liar and
a bully and a coward. He'd--he'd be a murderer if he dared
--but he daren't." And his face dropped on his arms folded
on his crutch, and he broke into a passion of crying. Then
Betty knew she might go to him. She went and knelt down
and put her arm round him.
"Ughtred," she said, "cry, if you like, I should do it, if I were
you. But I tell you it can all be altered--and it shall be."
He seemed quite like a little boy when he put out his hand
to hers and spoke sobbingly:
"She--she says--that because you have only just come from
America--and in America people--can do things--you will
think you can do things here--and you don't know. He will
tell lies about you lies you can't bear. She sat wringing her
hands when she thought of it. She won't let you be hurt
because you want to help her." He stopped abruptly and
clutched her shoulder.
"Aunt Betty! Aunt Betty--whatever happens--whatever
he makes her seem like--you are to know that it is not true.
Now you have come--now she has seen you it would KILL her
if you were driven away and thought she wanted you to go."
"I shall not think that," she answered, slowly, because she
realised that it was well that she had been warned in time.
"Ughtred, are you trying to tell me that above all things I
must not let him think that I came here to help you, because
if he is angry he will make us all suffer--and your mother
most of all?"
"He'll find a way. We always know he will. He would
either be so rude that you would not stay here--or he would
make mother seem rude--or he would write lies to grandfather.
Aunt Betty, she scarcely believes you are real yet. If
she won't tell you things at first, please don't mind." He
looked quite like a child again in his appeal to her, to try to
understand a state of affairs so complicated. "Could you--
could you wait until you have let her get--get used to you?"
"Used to thinking that there may be someone in the world
to help her?" slowly. "Yes, I will. Has anyone ever tried
to help her?"
"Once or twice people found out and were sorry at first,
but it only made it worse, because he made them believe things."
"I shall not TRY, Ughtred," said Betty, a remote spark
kindling in the deeps of the pupils of her steel-blue eyes. "I
shall not TRY. Now I am going to ask you some questions."
Before he left her she had asked many questions which were
pertinent and searching, and she had learned things she realised
she could have learned in no other way and from no other
person. But for his uncanny sense of the responsibility he
clearly had assumed in the days when he wore pinafores, and
which had brought him to her room to prepare her mind for
what she would find herself confronted with in the way of
apparently unexplainable obstacles, there was a strong likelihood
that at the outset she might have found herself more
than once dangerously at a loss. Yes, she would have been at
a loss, puzzled, perhaps greatly discouraged. She was face to
face with a complication so extraordinary.
That one man, through mere persistent steadiness in evil
temper and domestic tyranny, should have so broken the creatures
of his household into abject submission and hopelessness,
seemed too incredible. Such a power appeared as remote from
civilised existence in London and New York as did that which
had inflicted tortures in the dungeons of castles of old.
Prisoners in such dungeons could utter no cry which could reach
the outside world; the prisoners at Stornham Court, not four
hours from Hyde Park Corner, could utter none the world
could hear, or comprehend if it heard it. Sheer lack of power
to resist bound them hand and foot. And she, Betty Vanderpoel,
was here upon the spot, and, as far as she could understand,
was being implored to take no steps, to do nothing.
The atmosphere in which she had spent her life, the world she
had been born into, had not made for fearfulness that one
would be at any time defenceless against circumstances and
be obliged to submit to outrage. To be a Vanderpoel was, it
was true, to be a shining mark for envy as for admiration, but
the fact removed obstacles as a rule, and to find one's self
standing before a situation with one's hands, figuratively
speaking, tied, was new enough to arouse unusual sensations. She
recalled, with an ironic sense of bewilderment, as a sort of
material evidence of her own reality, the fact that not a week
ago she had stepped on to English soil from the gangway of
a solid Atlantic liner. It aided her to resist the feeling that
she had been swept back into the Middle Ages.
"When he is angry," was one of the first questions she put
to Ughtred, "what does he give as his reason? He must
profess to have a reason."
"When he gets in a rage he says it is because mother is
silly and common, and I am badly brought up. But we always
know he wants money, and it makes him furious. He could
kill us with rage."
"Oh!" said Betty. "I see."
"It began that time when he struck her. He said then that
it was not decent that a woman who was married should keep
her own money. He made her give him almost everything she
had, but she wants to keep some for me. He tries to make
her get more from grandfather, but she will not write begging
letters, and she won't give him what she is saving for me."
It was a simple and sordid enough explanation in one sense,
and it was one of which Bettina had known, not one parallel,
but several. Having married to ensure himself power over
unquestioned resources, the man had felt himself disgustingly
taken in, and avenged himself accordingly. In him had been
born the makings of a domestic tyrant who, even had he been
favoured by fortune, would have wreaked his humours upon the
defenceless things made his property by ties of blood and
marriage, and who, being unfavoured, would do worse. Betty
could see what the years had held for Rosy, and how her weakness
and timidity had been considered as positive assets. A
woman who will cry when she is bullied, may be counted upon
to submit after she has cried. Rosy had submitted up to a
certain point and then, with the stubbornness of a weak
creature, had stood at timid bay for her young.
What Betty gathered was that, after the long and terrible
illness which had followed Ughtred's birth, she had risen from
what had been so nearly her deathbed, prostrated in both mind
and body. Ughtred did not know all that he revealed when
he touched upon the time which he said his mother could not
quite remember--when she had sat for months staring vacantly
out of her window, trying to recall something terrible which
had happened, and which she wanted to tell her mother, if the
day ever came when she could write to her again. She had
never remembered clearly the details of the thing she had wanted
to tell, and Nigel had insisted that her fancy was part of her
past delirium. He had said that at the beginning of her
delirium she had attacked and insulted his mother and himself
but they had excused her because they realised afterwards what
the cause of her excitement had been. For a long time she
had been too brokenly weak to question or disbelieve, but, later
she had vaguely known that he had been lying to her, though
she could not refute what he said. She recalled, in course of
time, a horrible scene in which all three of them had raved at
each other, and she herself had shrieked and laughed and hurled
wild words at Nigel, and he had struck her. That she knew
and never forgot. She had been ill a year, her hair had fallen
out, her skin had faded and she had begun to feel like a
nervous, tired old woman instead of a girl. Girlhood, with
all the past, had become unreal and too far away to be more
than a dream. Nothing had remained real but Stornham and
Nigel and the little hunchbacked baby. She was glad when
the Dowager died and when Nigel spent his time in London or
on the Continent and left her with Ughtred. When he said
that he must spend her money on the estate, she had acquiesced
without comment, because that insured his going away. She
saw that no improvement or repairs were made, but she could
do nothing and was too listless to make the attempt. She only
wanted to be left alone with Ughtred, and she exhibited will-
power only in defence of her child and in her obstinacy with
regard to asking money of her father.
"She thought, somehow, that grandfather and grandmother
did not care for her any more--that they had forgotten her
and only cared for you," Ughtred explained. "She used to
talk to me about you. She said you must be so clever and so
handsome that no one could remember her. Sometimes she
cried and said she did not want any of you to see her again,
because she was only a hideous, little, thin, yellow old woman.
When I was very little she told me stories about New York
and Fifth Avenue. I thought they were not real places--I
though they were places in fairyland."
Betty patted his shoulder and looked away for a moment
when he said this. In her remote and helpless loneliness, to
Rosy's homesick, yearning soul, noisy, rattling New York,
Fifth Avenue with its traffic and people, its brown-stone houses
and ricketty stages, had seemed like THAT--so splendid and bright
and heart-filling, that she had painted them in colours which
could belong only to fairyland. It said so much.
The thing she had suspected as she had talked to her sister
was, before the interview ended, made curiously clear. The
first obstacle in her pathway would be the shrinking of a
creature who had been so long under dominion that the mere
thought of seeing any steps taken towards her rescue filled her
with alarm. One might be prepared for her almost praying
to be let alone, because she felt that the process of her
salvation would bring about such shocks and torments as she could
not endure the facing of.
"She will have to get used to you," Ughtred kept saying.
"She will have to get used to thinking things."
"I will be careful," Bettina answered. "She shall not be
troubled. I did not come to trouble her,"
