CHAPTER XVI
THE PARTICULAR INCIDENT
Betty Vanderpoel's walk back to Stornham did not, long
though it was, give her time to follow to its end the thread of
her thoughts. Mentally she walked again with her
uncommunicative guide, through woodpaths and gardens, and stood
gazing at the great blind-faced house. She had not given the
man more than an occasional glance until he had told her his
name. She had been too much absorbed, too much moved,
by what she had been seeing. She wondered, if she had been
more aware of him, whether his face would have revealed a
great deal. She believed it would not. He had made himself
outwardly stolid. But the thing must have been bitter.
To him the whole story of the splendid past was familiar
even if through his own life he had looked on only at gradual
decay. There must be stories enough of men and women who
had lived in the place, of what they had done, of how they had
loved, of what they had counted for in their country's wars
and peacemakings, great functions and law-building. To be
able to look back through centuries and know of one's blood
that sometimes it had been shed in the doing of great deeds,
must be a thing to remember. To realise that the courage and
honour had been lost in ignoble modern vices, which no sense
of dignity and reverence for race and name had restrained--
must be bitter--bitter! And in the role of a servant to lead a
stranger about among the ruins of what had been--that must
have been bitter, too. For a moment Betty felt the bitterness
of it herself and her red mouth took upon itself a grim line.
The worst of it for him was that he was not of that strain
of his race who had been the "bad lot." The "bad
lot" had been the weak lot, the vicious, the self-degrading.
Scandals which had shut men out from their class and kind
were usually of an ugly type. This man had a strong jaw, a
powerful, healthy body, and clean, though perhaps hard, eyes.
The First Man of them, who hewed his way to the front,
who stood fierce in the face of things, who won the first lands
and laid the first stones, might have been like him in build
and look.
"It's a disgusting thing," she said to herself, "to think of
the corrupt weaklings the strong ones dwindled down to. I
hate them. So does he."
There had been many such of late years, she knew. She had
seen them in Paris, in Rome, even in New York. Things
with thin or over-thick bodies and receding chins and foreheads;
things haunting places of amusement and finding inordinate
entertainment in strange jokes and horseplay. She herself
had hot blood and a fierce strength of rebellion, and she
was wondering how, if the father and elder brother had been
the "bad lot," he had managed to stand still, looking on, and
keeping his hands off them.
The last gold of the sun was mellowing the grey stone of
the terrace and enriching the green of the weeds thrusting
themselves into life between the uneven flags when she reached
Stornham, and passing through the house found Lady
Anstruthers sitting there. In sustenance of her effort to keep
up appearances, she had put on a weird little muslin dress and
had elaborated the dressing of her thin hair. It was no longer
dragged back straight from her face, and she looked a trifle
less abject, even a shade prettier. Bettina sat upon the edge
of the balustrade and touched the hair with light fingers,
ruffling it a little becomingly.
"If you had worn it like this yesterday," she said, "I should
have known you."
"Should you, Betty? I never look into a mirror if I can
help it, but when I do I never know myself. The thing that
stares back at me with its pale eyes is not Rosy. But, of
course, everyone grows old."
"Not now! People are just discovering how to grow young
instead."
Lady Anstruthers looked into the clear courage of her laughing
eyes.
"Somehow," she said, "you say strange things in such a
way that one feels as if they must be true, however--however
unlike anything else they are."
"They are not as new as they seem," said Betty. "Ancient
philosophers said things like them centuries ago, but
people did not believe them. We are just beginning to drag
them out of the dust and furbish them up and pretend they
are ours, just as people rub up and adorn themselves with
jewels dug out of excavations."
"In America people think so many new things," said poor
little Lady Anstruthers with yearning humbleness.
"The whole civilised world is thinking what you call new
things," said Betty. "The old ones won't do. They have
been tried, and though they have helped us to the place we have
reached, they cannot help us any farther. We must begin again."
"It is such a long time since I began," said Rosy, "such
a long time."
"Then there must be another beginning for you, too. The
hour has struck."
Lady Anstruthers rose with as involuntary a movement as
if a strong hand had drawn her to her feet. She stood facing
Betty, a pathetic little figure in her washed-out muslin frock
and with her washed-out face and eyes and being, though on
her faded cheeks a flush was rising.
"Oh, Betty!" she said, "I don't know what there is about
you, but there is something which makes one feel as if you
believed everything and could do everything, and as if one
believes YOU. Whatever you were to say, you would make it
seem TRUE. If you said the wildest thing in the world I should
BELIEVE you."
Betty got up, too, and there was an extraordinary steadiness
in her eyes.
"You may," she answered. "I shall never say one thing
to you which is not a truth, not one single thing."
"I believe that," said Rosy Anstruthers, with a quivering
mouth. "I do believe it so."
"I walked to Mount Dunstan," Betty said later.
"Really?" said Rosy. "There and back?"
"Yes, and all round the park and the gardens."
Rosy looked rather uncertain.
"Weren't you a little afraid of meeting someone?"
"I did meet someone. At first I took him for a game-
keeper. But he turned out to be Lord Mount Dunstan."
Lady Anstruthers gasped.
"What did he do?" she exclaimed. "Did he look angry
at seeing a stranger? They say he is so ill-tempered and rude."
"I should feel ill-tempered if I were in his place," said
Betty. "He has enough to rouse his evil passions and make
him savage. What a fate for a man with any sense and
decency of feeling! What fools and criminals the last
generation of his house must have produced! I wonder how such
things evolve themselves. But he is different--different. One
can see it. If he had a chance--just half a chance--he would
build it all up again. And I don't mean merely the place, but
all that one means when one says `his house.' "
"He would need a great deal of money," sighed Lady Anstruthers.
Betty nodded slowly as she looked out, reflecting, into the
park.
"Yes, it would require money," was her admission.
"And he has none," Lady Anstruthers added. "None whatever."
"He will get some," said Betty, still reflecting. "He will
make it, or dig it up, or someone will leave it to him. There
is a great deal of money in the world, and when a strong
creature ought to have some of it he gets it."
"Oh, Betty!" said Rosy. "Oh, Betty! "
"Watch that man," said Betty; "you will see. It will come."
Lady Anstruthers' mind, working at no time on complex
lines, presented her with a simple modern solution.
"Perhaps he will marry an American," she said, and saying
it, sighed again.
"He will not do it on purpose." Bettina answered slowly and with
such an air of absence of mind that Rosy laughed a little.
"Will he do it accidentally, or against his will?" she said.
Betty herself smiled.
"Perhaps he will," she said. "There are Englishmen who
rather dislike Americans. I think he is one of them."
It apparently became necessary for Lady Anstruthers, a
moment later, to lean upon the stone balustrade and pick off
a young leaf or so, for no reason whatever, unless that in doing
so she averted her look from her sister as she made her next
remark.
"Are you--when are you going to write to father and mother?"
"I have written," with unembarrassed evenness of tone.
"Mother will be counting the days."
"Mother!" Rosy breathed, with a soft little gasp. "Mother!" and
turned her face farther away. "What did you tell her?"
Betty moved over to her and stood close at her side. The
power of her personality enveloped the tremulous creature as
if it had been a sense of warmth.
"I told her how beautiful the place was, and how Ughtred
adored you--and how you loved us all, and longed to see New
York again."
The relief in the poor little face was so immense that Betty's
heart shook before it. Lady Anstruthers looked up at her
with adoring eyes.
"I might have known," she said; "I might have known
that--that you would only say the right thing. You couldn't
say the wrong thing, Betty."
Betty bent over her and spoke almost yearningly.
"Whatever happens," she said, "we will take care that mother is
not hurt. She's too kind--she's too good--she's too tender."
"That is what I have remembered," said Lady Anstruthers
brokenly. "She used to hold me on her lap when I was
quite grown up. Oh! her soft, warm arms--her warm shoulder!
I have so wanted her."
"She has wanted you," Betty answered. "She thinks of
you just as she did when she held you on her lap."
"But if she saw me now--looking like this! If she saw
me! Sometimes I have even been glad to think she never
would."
"She will." Betty's tone was cool and clear. "But before
she does I shall have made you look like yourself."
Lady Anstruthers' thin hand closed on her plucked leaves
convulsively, and then opening let them drop upon the stone of
the terrace.
"We shall never see each other. It wouldn't be possible,"
she said. "And there is no magic in the world now, Betty.
You can't bring back----"
"Yes, you can," said Bettina. "And what used to be
called magic is only the controlled working of the law and
order of things in these days. We must talk it all over."
Lady Anstruthers became a little pale.
"What?" she asked, low and nervously, and Betty saw
her glance sideways at the windows of the room which opened
on to the terrace.
Betty took her hand and drew her down into a chair. She
sat near her and looked her straight in the face.
"Don't be frightened," she said. "I tell you there is no
need to be frightened. We are not living in the Middle
Ages. There is a policeman even in Stornham village, and
we are within four hours of London, where there are thousands."
Lady Anstruthers tried to laugh, but did not succeed very
well, and her forehead flushed.
"I don't quite know why I seem so nervous," she said.
"It's very silly of me."
She was still timid enough to cling to some rag of pretence,
but Betty knew that it would fall away. She did the wisest
possible thing, which was to make an apparently impersonal
remark.
"I want you to go over the place with me and show me
everything. Walls and fences and greenhouses and outbuildings
must not be allowed to crumble away."
"What?" cried Rosy. "Have you seen all that already?"
She actually stared at her. "How practical and--and American!"
"To see that a wall has fallen when you find yourself
obliged to walk round a pile of grass-grown brickwork?" said
Betty.
Lady Anstruthers still softly stared.
"What--what are you thinking of?" she asked.
"Thinking that it is all too beautiful----" Betty's look swept
the loveliness spread about her, "too beautiful and too valuable
to be allowed to lose its value and its beauty." She turned
her eyes back to Rosy and the deep dimple near her mouth
showed itself delightfully. "It is a throwing away of capital,"
she added.
"Oh!" cried Lady Anstruthers, "how clever you are!
And you look so different, Betty."
"Do I look stupid?" the dimple deepening. "I must try
to alter that."
"Don't try to alter your looks," said Rosy. "It is your
looks that make you so--so wonderful. But usually women--
girls----" Rosy paused.
"Oh, I have been trained," laughed Betty. "I am the
spoiled daughter of a business man of genius. His business is
an art and a science. I have had advantages. He has let me
hear him talk. I even know some trifling things about stocks.
Not enough to do me vital injury--but something. What I
know best of all,"--her laugh ended and her eyes changed
their look,--"is that it is a blunder to think that beauty is not
capital--that happiness is not--and that both are not the
greatest assets in the scheme. This," with a wave of her hand,
taking in all they saw, "is beauty, and it ought to be happiness,
and it must be taken care of. It is your home and Ughtred's----"
"It is Nigel's," put in Rosy.
"It is entailed, isn't it?" turning quickly. "He cannot
sell it?"
"If he could we should not be sitting here," ruefully.
"Then he cannot object to its being rescued from ruin."
"He will object to--to money being spent on things he
does not care for." Lady Anstruthers' voice lowered itself, as
it always did when she spoke of her husband, and she indulged
in the involuntary hasty glance about her.
"I am going to my room to take off my hat," Betty said.
"Will you come with me?"
She went into the house, talking quietly of ordinary things,
and in this way they mounted the stairway together and passed
along the gallery which led to her room. When they entered
it she closed the door, locked it, and, taking off her hat, laid
it aside. After doing which she sat.
"No one can hear and no one can come in," she said. "And
if they could, you are afraid of things you need not be afraid
of now. Tell me what happened when you were so ill after
Ughtred was born."
"You guessed that it happened then," gasped Lady Anstruthers.
"It was a good time to make anything happen," replied
Bettina. "You were prostrated, you were a child, and
felt yourself cast off hopelessly from the people who loved
you."
"Forever! Forever!" Lady Anstruthers' voice was a
sharp little moan. "That was what I felt--that nothing
could ever help me. I dared not write things. He told me
he would not have it--that he would stop any hysterical
complaints--that his mother could testify that he behaved
perfectly to me. She was the only person in the room with us
when-- when----"
"When?" said Betty.
Lady Anstruthers shuddered. She leaned forward and
caught Betty's hand between her own shaking ones.
"He struck me! He struck me! He said it never happened--
but it did--it did! Betty, it did! That was the one
thing that came back to me clearest. He said that I was in
delirious hysterics, and that I had struggled with his mother
and himself, because they tried to keep me quiet, and prevent
the servants hearing. One awful day he brought Lady
Anstruthers into the room, and they stood over me, as I lay in
bed, and she fixed her eyes on me and said that she--being
an Englishwoman, and a person whose word would be believed,
could tell people the truth--my father and mother, if
necessary, that my spoiled, hysterical American tempers had
created unhappiness for me--merely because I was bored by
life in the country and wanted excitement. I tried to
answer, but they would not let me, and when I began to shake
all over, they said that I was throwing myself into hysterics
again. And they told the doctor so, and he believed it."
The possibilities of the situation were plainly to be seen.
Fate, in the form of temperament itself, had been against her.
It was clear enough to Betty as she patted and stroked the
thin hands. "I understand. Tell me the rest," she said.
Lady Anstruthers' head dropped.
"When I was loneliest, and dying of homesickness, and so
weak that I could not speak without sobbing, he came to
me--it was one morning after I had been lying awake all
night--and he began to seem kinder. He had not been near
me for two days, and I had thought I was going to be left
to die alone--and mother would never know. He said he had been
reflecting and that he was afraid that we had misunderstood each
other--because we belonged to different countries, and had been
brought up in different ways----" she paused.
"And that if you understood his position and considered
it, you might both be quite happy," Betty gave in quiet
termination.
Lady Anstruthers started.
"Oh, you know it all!" she exclaimed
"Only because I have heard it before. It is an old trick.
And because he seemed kind and relenting, you tried to
understand--and signed something."
"I WANTED to understand. I WANTED to believe. What did
it matter which of us had the money, if we liked each other
and were happy? He told me things about the estate, and
about the enormous cost of it, and his bad luck, and debts he
could not help. And I said that I would do anything if--if we
could only be like mother and father. And he kissed me and
I signed the paper."
"And then?"
"He went to London the next day, and then to Paris. He
said he was obliged to go on business. He was away a month.
And after a week had passed, Lady Anstruthers began to be
restless and angry, and once she flew into a rage, and told
me I was a fool, and that if I had been an Englishwoman,
I should have had some decent control over my husband,
because he would have respected me. In time I found out what
I had done. It did not take long."
"The paper you signed," said Betty, "gave him control
over your money?"
A forlorn nod was the answer.
"And since then he has done as he chose, and he has not
chosen to care for Stornham. And once he made you write
to father, to ask for more money?"
"I did it once. I never would do it again. He has tried
to make me. He always says it is to save Stornham for Ughtred."
"Nothing can take Stornham from Ughtred. It may come
to him a ruin, but it will come to him."
"He says there are legal points I cannot understand. And
he says he is spending money on it."
"Where?"
"He--doesn't go into that. If I were to ask questions, he
would make me know that I had better stop. He says I know
nothing about things. And he is right. He has never allowed
me to know and--and I am not like you, Betty."
"When you signed the paper, you did not realise that
you were doing something you could never undo and that
you would be forced to submit to the consequences?"
"I--I didn't realise anything but that it would kill me to
live as I had been living--feeling as if they hated me. And
I was so glad and thankful that he seemed kinder. It was
as if I had been on the rack, and he turned the screws back,
and I was ready to do anything--anything--if I might be
taken off. Oh, Betty! you know, don't you, that--that if
he would only have been a little kind--just a little--I would
have obeyed him always, and given him everything."
Betty sat and looked at her, with deeply pondering eyes.
She was confronting the fact that it seemed possible that one
must build a new soul for her as well as a new body. In
these days of science and growing sanity of thought, one did
not stand helpless before the problem of physical rebuilding,
and--and perhaps, if one could pour life into a creature, the
soul of it would respond, and wake again, and grow.
"You do not know where he is?" she said aloud. "You
absolutely do not know?"
"I never know exactly," Lady Anstruthers answered. "He
was here for a few days the week before you came. He said
he was going abroad. He might appear to-morrow, I might
not hear of him for six months. I can't help hoping now that
it will be the six months."
"Why particularly now?" inquired Betty.
Lady Anstruthers flushed and looked shy and awkward.
"Because of--you. I don't know what he would say. I
don't know what he would do."
"To me?" said Betty.
"It would be sure to be something unreasonable and
wicked," said Lady Anstruthers. "It would, Betty."
"I wonder what it would be?" Betty said musingly.
"He has told lies for years to keep you all from me. If
he came now, he would know that he had been found out.
He would say that I had told you things. He would be
furious because you have seen what there is to see. He would
know that you could not help but realise that the money he
made me ask for had not been spent on the estate. He,--
Betty, he would try to force you to go away."
"I wonder what he would do?" Betty said again musingly.
She felt interested, not afraid.
"It would be something cunning," Rosy protested. "It
would be something no one could expect. He might be so
rude that you could not remain in the room with him,
or he might be quite polite, and pretend he was rather glad
to see you. If he was only frightfully rude we should be
safer, because that would not be an unexpected thing, but if
he was polite, it would be because he was arranging something
hideous, which you could not defend yourself against."
"Can you tell me," said Betty quite slowly, because, as she
looked down at the carpet, she was thinking very hard, "the
kind of unexpected thing he has done to you?" Lifting her
eyes, she saw that a troubled flush was creeping over Lady
Anstruthers' face.
"There--have been--so many queer things," she faltered.
Then Betty knew there was some special thing she was afraid
to talk about, and that if she desired to obtain illuminating
information it would be well to go into the matter.
"Try," she said, "to remember some particular incident."
Lady Anstruthers looked nervous.
"Rosy," in the level voice, "there has been a particular
incident--and I would rather hear of it from you than from him.
Rosy's lap held little shaking hands.
"He has held it over me for years," she said breathlessly.
"He said he would write about it to father and mother. He
says he could use it against me as evidence in--in the divorce
court. He says that divorce courts in America are for women,
but in England they are for men, and--he could defend himself
against me."
The incongruity of the picture of the small, faded creature
arraigned in a divorce court on charges of misbehaviour would
have made Betty smile if she had been in smiling mood.
"What did he accuse you of?"
"That was the--the unexpected thing," miserably.
Betty took the unsteady hands firmly in her own.
"Don't be afraid to tell me," she said. "He knew you
so well that he understood what would terrify you the most. I
know you so well that I understand how he does it. Did he do
this unexpected thing just before you wrote to father for the
money?" As she quite suddenly presented the question, Rosy
exclaimed aloud.
"How did you know?" she said. "You--you are like a
lawyer. How could you know?"
How simple she was! How obviously an easy prey!
She had been unconsciously giving evidence with every word.
"I have been thinking him over," Betty said. "He
interests me. I have begun to guess that he always wants
something when he professes that he has a grievance."
Then with drooping head, Rosy told the story.
"Yes, it happened before he made me write to father for
so much money. The vicar was ill and was obliged to go away
for six months. The clergyman who came to take his place
was a young man. He was kind and gentle, and wanted to
help people. His mother was with him and she was like him.
They loved each other, and they were quite poor. His name
was Ffolliott. I liked to hear him preach. He said things
that comforted me. Nigel found out that he comforted me,
and--when he called here, he was more polite to him than
he had ever been to Mr. Brent. He seemed almost as if he
liked him. He actually asked him to dinner two or three
times. After dinner, he would go out of the room and leave
us together. Oh, Betty!" clinging to her hands, "I was so
wretched then, that sometimes I thought I was going out of
my mind. I think I looked wild. I used to kneel down and
try to pray, and I could not."
"Yes, yes," said Betty.
"I used to feel that if I could only have one friend, just
one, I could bear it better. Once I said something like that
to Nigel. He only shrugged his shoulders and sneered when
I said it. But afterwards I knew he had remembered. One
evening, when he had asked Mr. Ffolliott to dinner, he led
him to talk about religion. Oh, Betty! It made my blood
turn cold when he began. I knew he was doing it for some
wicked reason. I knew the look in his eyes and the awful,
agreeable smile on his mouth. When he said at last, `If
you could help my poor wife to find comfort in such things,'
I began to see. I could not explain to anyone how he did it,
but with just a sentence, dropped here and there, he seemed
to tell the whole story of a silly, selfish, American girl,
thwarted in her vulgar little ambitions, and posing as a martyr,
because she could not have her own way in everything.
He said once, quite casually, `I'm afraid American women are
rather spoiled.' And then he said, in the same tolerant way--
`A poor man is a disappointment to an American girl. America
does not believe in rank combined with lack of fortune.'
I dared not defend myself. I am not clever enough to think
of the right things to say. He meant Mr. Ffolliott to understand
that I had married him because I thought he was grand
and rich, and that I was a disappointed little spiteful shrew. I
tried to act as if he was not hurting me, but my hands trembled,
and a lump kept rising in my throat. When we returned to
the drawing-room, and at last he left us together, I was praying
and praying that I might be able to keep from breaking down.
She stopped and swallowed hard. Betty held her hands
firmly until she went on.
"For a few minutes, I sat still, and tried to think of some
new subject--something about the church or the village. But
I could not begin to speak because of the lump in my throat.
And then, suddenly, but quietly, Mr. Ffolliott got up. And
though I dared not lift my eyes, I knew he was standing
before the fire, quite near me. And, oh! what do you think
he said, as low and gently as if his voice was a woman's.
I did not know that people ever said such things now, or even
thought them. But never, never shall I forget that strange
minute. He said just this:
" `God will help you. He will. He will.'
"As if it was true, Betty! As if there was a God--and--
He had not forgotten me. I did not know what I was doing,
but I put out my hand and caught at his sleeve, and when
I looked up into his face, I saw in his kind, good eyes, that
he knew--that somehow--God knows how--he understood
and that I need not utter a word to explain to him that he
had been listening to lies."
"Did you talk to him?" Betty asked quietly.
"He talked to me. We did not even speak of Nigel. He
talked to me as I had never heard anyone talk before. Somehow
he filled the room with something real, which was hope
and comfort and like warmth, which kept my soul from
shivering. The tears poured from my eyes at first, but the lump
in my throat went away, and when Nigel came back I actually did
not feel frightened, though he looked at me and sneered quietly."
"Did he say anything afterwards?"
"He laughed a little cold laugh and said, `I see you have
been seeking the consolation of religion. Neurotic women
like confessors. I do not object to your confessing, if you
confess your own backslidings and not mine.' "
"That was the beginning," said Betty speculatively. "The
unexpected thing was the end. Tell me the rest?"
"No one could have dreamed of it," Rosy broke forth.
"For weeks he was almost like other people. He stayed at
Stornham and spent his days in shooting. He professed that
he was rather enjoying himself in a dull way. He encouraged
me to go to the vicarage, he invited the Ffolliotts here. He
said Mrs. Ffolliott was a gentlewoman and good for me.
He said it was proper that I should interest myself in parish
work. Once or twice he even brought some little message
to me from Mr. Ffolliott."
It was a pitiably simple story. Betty saw, through its
relation, the unconsciousness of the easily allured victim, the
adroit leading on from step to step, the ordinary, natural,
seeming method which arranged opportunities. The two had been
thrown together at the Court, at the vicarage, the church
and in the village, and the hawk had looked on and bided his
time. For the first time in her years of exile, Rosy had begun
to feel that she might be allowed a friend--though she lived in
secret tremor lest the normal liberty permitted her should
suddenly be snatched away.
"We never talked of Nigel," she said, twisting her hands.
"But he made me begin to live again. He talked to me of
Something that watched and would not leave me--would never
leave me. I was learning to believe it. Sometimes when
I walked through the wood to the village, I used to stop among
the trees and look up at the bits of sky between the branches,
and listen to the sound in the leaves--the sound that never
stops--and it seemed as if it was saying something to me.
And I would clasp my hands and whisper, `Yes, yes,' `I
will,' `I will.' I used to see Nigel looking at me at table
with a queer smile in his eyes and once he said to me--`You
are growing young and lovely, my dear. Your colour is
improving. The counsels of our friend are of a salutary nature.'
It would have made me nervous, but he said it almost good-
naturedly, and I was silly enough even to wonder if it could
be possible that he was pleased to see me looking less ill. It
was true, Betty, that I was growing stronger. But it did not
last long."
"I was afraid not," said Betty.
"An old woman in the lane near Bartyon Wood was ill. Mr.
Ffolliott had asked me to go to see her, and I used to go.
She suffered a great deal and clung to us both. He comforted
her, as he comforted me. Sometimes when he was called away
he would send a note to me, asking me to go to her. One
day he wrote hastily, saying that she was dying, and asked
if I would go with him to her cottage at once. I knew it
would save time if I met him in the path which was a short cut.
So I wrote a few words and gave them to the messenger.
I said, `Do not come to the house. I will meet you in
Bartyon Wood.' "
Betty made a slight movement, and in her face there was a
dawning of mingled amazement and incredulity. The thought
which had come to her seemed--as Ughtred's locking of the
door had seemed--too wild for modern days.
Lady Anstruthers saw her expression and understood it.
She made a hopeless gesture with her small, bony hand.
"Yes," she said, "it is just like that. No one would
believe it. The worst cleverness of the things he does, is
that when one tells of them, they sound like lies. I have a
bewildered feeling that I should not believe them myself if
I had not seen them. He met the boy in the park and took
the note from him. He came back to the house and up to
my room, where I was dressing quickly to go to Mr. Ffolliott."
She stopped for quite a minute, rather as if to recover breath.
"He closed the door behind him and came towards me
with the note in his hand. And I saw in a second the look
that always terrifies me, in his face. He had opened the note
and he smoothed out the paper quietly and said, `What is
this. I could not help it--I turned cold and began to shiver.
I could not imagine what was coming."
" `Is it my note to Mr. Ffolliott?' I asked.
" `Yes, it is your note to Mr. Ffolliott,' and he read it
aloud. ` "Do not come to the house. I will meet you in
Bartyon Wood." That is a nice note for a man's wife to have
written, to be picked up and read by a stranger, if your
confessor is not cautious in the matter of letters from
women----'
"When he begins a thing in that way, you may always know
that he has planned everything--that you can do nothing--I
always know. I knew then, and I knew I was quite white
when I answered him:
" `I wrote it in a great hurry, Mrs. Farne is worse. We are
going together to her. I said I would meet him--to save time.'
"He laughed, his awful little laugh, and touched the paper.
" `I have no doubt. And I have no doubt that if other
persons saw this, they would believe it. It is very likely.
" `But you believe it,' I said. `You know it is true. No
one would be so silly--so silly and wicked as to----' Then
I broke down and cried out. `What do you mean? What
could anyone think it meant?' I was so wild that I felt
as if I was going crazy. He clenched my wrist and shook me.
" `Don't think you can play the fool with me,' he said. `I
have been watching this thing from the first. The first time
I leave you alone with the fellow, I come back to find you
have been giving him an emotional scene. Do you suppose
your simpering good spirits and your imbecile pink cheeks told
me nothing? They told me exactly this. I have waited to
come upon it, and here it is. "Do not come to the house--I
will meet you in the wood."
"That was the unexpected thing. It was no use to argue
and try to explain. I knew he did not believe what he was
saying, but he worked himself into a rage, he accused me of
awful things, and called me awful names in a loud voice, so
that he could be heard, until I was dumb and staggering.
All the time, I knew there was a reason, but I could not tell
then what it was. He said at last, that he was going to Mr.
Ffolliott. He said, `I will meet him in the wood and I
will take your note with me.'
"Betty, it was so shameful that I fell down on my knees.
`Oh, don't--don't--do that,' I said. `I beg of you, Nigel.
He is a gentleman and a clergyman. I beg and beg of you.
If you will not, I will do anything--anything.' And at that
minute I remembered how he had tried to make me write
to father for money. And I cried out--catching at his coat,
and holding him back. `I will write to father as you asked
me. I will do anything. I can't bear it.' "
"That was the whole meaning of the whole thing," said
Betty with eyes ablaze. "That was the beginning, the middle
and the end. What did he say?"
"He pretended to be made more angry. He said, `Don't
insult me by trying to bribe me with your vulgar money.
Don't insult me.' But he gradually grew sulky instead of
raging, and though he put the note in his pocket, he did not
go to Mr. Ffolliott. And--I wrote to father."
"I remember that," Betty answered. "Did you ever speak
to Mr. Ffolliott again?"
"He guessed--he knew--I saw it in his kind, brown eyes
when he passed me without speaking, in the village. I daresay
the villagers were told about the awful thing by some
servant, who heard Nigel's voice. Villagers always know what
is happening. He went away a few weeks later. The day
before he went, I had walked through the wood, and just
outside it, I met him. He stopped for one minute--just
one--he lifted his hat and said, just as he had spoken them
that first night--just the same words, `God will help you.
He will. He will.' "
A strange, almost unearthly joy suddenly flashed across her
face.
"It must be true," she said. "It must be true. He has
sent you, Betty. It has been a long time--it has been so
long that sometimes I have forgotten his words. But you
have come!"
"Yes, I have come," Betty answered. And she bent forward
and kissed her gently, as if she had been soothing a child.
There were other questions to ask. She was obliged to ask
them. "The unexpected thing" had been used as an instrument
for years. It was always efficacious. Over the yearningly
homesick creature had hung the threat that her father
and mother, those she ached and longed for, could be told the
story in such a manner as would brand her as a woman with a
shameful secret. How could she explain herself? There
were the awful, written words. He was her husband. He
was remorseless, plausible. She dared not write freely. She
had no witnesses to call upon. She had discovered that he
had planned with composed steadiness that misleading
impressions should be given to servants and village people.
When the Brents returned to the vicarage, she had observed,
with terror, that for some reason they stiffened, and looked
askance when the Ffolliotts were mentioned.
"I am afraid, Lady Anstruthers, that Mr. Ffolliott was
a great mistake," Mrs. Brent said once.
Lady Anstruthers had not dared to ask any questions. She
had felt the awkward colour rising in her face and had known
that she looked guilty. But if she had protested against the
injustice of the remark, Sir Nigel would have heard of her
words before the day had passed, and she shuddered to think
of the result. He had by that time reached the point of
referring to Ffolliott with sneering lightness, as "Your lover."
"Do you defend your lover to me," he had said on one
occasion, when she had entered a timid protest. And her
white face and wild helpless eyes had been such evidence
as to the effect the word had produced, that he had seen the
expediency of making a point of using it.
The blood beat in Betty Vanderpoel's veins.
"Rosy," she said, looking steadily in the faded face, "tell
me this. Did you never think of getting away from him, of
going somewhere, and trying to reach father, by cable, or letter,
by some means?"
Lady Anstruthers' weary and wrinkled little smile was a
pitiably illuminating thing.
"My dear" she said, "if you are strong and beautiful and
rich and well dressed, so that people care to look at you, and
listen to what you say, you can do things. But who, in
England, will listen to a shabby, dowdy, frightened woman,
when she runs away from her husband, if he follows her and
tells people she is hysterical or mad or bad? It is the shabby,
dowdy woman who is in the wrong. At first, I thought of nothing
else but trying to get away. And once I went to Stornham
station. I walked all the way, on a hot day. And just as I
was getting into a third-class carriage, Nigel marched in and
caught my arm, and held me back. I fainted and when I
came to myself I was in the carriage, being driven back to
the Court, and he was sitting opposite to me. He said, `You
fool! It would take a cleverer woman than you to carry that
out.' And I knew it was the awful truth."
"It is not the awful truth now," said Betty, and she rose
to her feet and stood looking before her, but with a look which
did not rest on chairs and tables. She remained so, standing
for a few moments of dead silence.
"What a fool he was!" she said at last. "And what a
villain! But a villain is always a fool."
She bent, and taking Rosy's face between her hands, kissed
it with a kiss which seemed like a seal. "That will do," she
said. "Now I know. One must know what is in one's
hands and what is not. Then one need not waste time in
talking of miserable things. One can save one's strength for
doing what can be done."
"I believe you would always think about DOING things,"
said Lady Anstruthers. "That is American, too."
"It is a quality Americans inherited from England," lightly;
"one of the results of it is that England covers a rather
large share of the map of the world. It is a practical quality.
You and I might spend hours in talking to each other of what
Nigel has done and what you have done, of what he has said,
and of what you have said. We might give some hours, I
daresay, to what the Dowager did and said. But wiser people
than we are have found out that thinking of black things
past is living them again, and it is like poisoning one's blood.
It is deterioration of property."
She said the last words as if she had ended with a jest.
But she knew what she was doing.
"You were tricked into giving up what was yours, to a
person who could not be trusted. What has been done with
it, scarcely matters. It is not yours, but Sir Nigel's. But we
are not helpless, because we have in our hands the most powerful
material agent in the world.
"Come, Rosy, and let us walk over the house. We will
begin with that."
