CHAPTER XXVIII
SETTING THEM THINKING
Old Doby, sitting at his open window, with his pipe and
illustrated papers on the table by his side, began to find life
a series of thrills. The advantage of a window giving upon
the village street unspeakably increased. For many years
he had preferred the chimney corner greatly, and had rejoiced
at the drawing in of winter days when a fire must be well
kept up, and a man might bend over it, and rub his hands
slowly gazing into the red coals or little pointed flames which
seemed the only things alive and worthy the watching. The
flames were blue at the base and yellow at the top, and jumped
looking merry, and caught at bits of black coal, and set them
crackling and throwing off splinters till they were ablaze
and as much alive as the rest. A man could get comfort and
entertainment therefrom. There was naught else so good to
live with. Nothing happened in the street, and every dull
face that passed was an old story, and told an old tale of
stupefying hard labour and hard days.
But now the window was a better place to sit near. Carts
went by with men whistling as they walked by the horses
heads. Loads of things wanted for work at the Court. New
faces passed faces of workmen--sometimes grinning, "impident
youngsters," who larked with the young women, and
called out to them as they passed their cottages, if a good-
looking one was loitering about her garden gate. Old Doby
chuckled at their love-making chaff, remembering dimly that
seventy years ago he had been just as proper a young chap,
and had made love in the same way. Lord, Lord, yes! He
had been a bold young chap as ever winked an eye. Then, too,
there were the vans, heavy-loaded and closed, and coming along
slowly. Every few days, at first, there had come a van from
"Lunnon." Going to the Court, of course. And to sit there,
and hear the women talk about what might be in them, and
to try to guess one's self, that was a rare pastime. Fine things
going to the Court these days--furniture and grandeur filling
up the shabby or empty old rooms, and making them look like
other big houses--same as Westerbridge even, so the women
said. The women were always talking and getting bits of news
somehow, and were beginning to be worth listening to, because
they had something more interesting to talk about than children's
worn-out shoes, and whooping cough.
Doby heard everything first from them. "Dang the women,
they always knowed things fust." It was them as knowed
about the smart carriages as began to roll through the one
village street. They were gentry's carriages, with fine,
stamping horses, and jingling silver harness, and big coachmen,
and tall footmen, and such like had long ago dropped off showing
themselves at Stornham.
"But now the gentry has heard about Miss Vanderpoel,
and what's being done at the Court, and they know what it
means," said young Mrs. Doby. "And they want to see her,
and find out what she's like. It's her brings them."
Old Doby chuckled and rubbed his hands. He knew what
she was like. That straight, slim back of hers, and the thick
twist of black hair, and the way she had of laughing at you, as
cheery as if a bell was ringing. Aye, he knew all about that.
"When they see her once, they'll come agen, for sure,"
he quavered shrilly, and day by day he watched for the grand
carriages with vivid eagerness. If a day or two passed without
his seeing one, he grew fretful, and was injured, feeling that
his beauty was being neglected! "None to-day, nor yet yest'day,"
he would cackle. "What be they folk a-doin'?"
Old Mrs. Welden, having heard of the pipe, and come to
see it, had struck up an acquaintance with him, and dropped
in almost every day to talk and sit at his window. She was
a young thing, by comparison, and could bring him lively
news, and, indeed, so stir him up with her gossip that he was
in danger of becoming a young thing himself. Her groceries
and his tobacco were subjects whose interest was undying.
A great curiosity had been awakened in the county, and
visitors came from distances greater than such as ordinarily
include usual calls. Naturally, one was curious about
the daughter of the Vanderpoel who was a sort of national
institution in his own country. His name had not been so
much heard of in England when Lady Anstruthers had arrived
but there had, at first, been felt an interest in her. But she
had been a failure--a childish-looking girl--whose thin, fair,
prettiness had no distinction, and who was obviously overwhelmed
by her surroundings. She had evidently had no influence
over Sir Nigel, and had not been able to prevent his making ducks
and drakes of her money, which of course ought to have been spent
on the estate. Besides which a married woman represented fewer
potentialities than a handsome unmarried girl entitled to
expectations from huge American wealth.
So the carriages came and came again, and, stately or
unstately far-off neighbours sat at tea upon the lawn under the
trees, and it was observed that the methods and appointments
of the Court had entirely changed. Nothing looked new and
American. The silently moving men-servants could not have
been improved upon, there was plainly an excellent chef
somewhere, and the massive silver was old and wonderful. Upon
everybody's word, the change was such as it was worth a long
drive merely to see!
The most wonderful thing, however, was Lady Anstruthers
herself. She had begun to grow delicately plump, her once
drawn and haggard face had rounded out, her skin had
smoothed, and was actually becoming pink and fair, a nimbus
of pale fine hair puffed airily over her forehead, and she wore
the most charming little clothes, all of which made her look
fifteen years younger than she had seemed when, on the grounds
of ill-health, she had retired into seclusion. The renewed
relations with her family, the atmosphere by which she was
surrounded, had evidently given her a fresh lease of life, and
awakened in her a new courage.
When the summer epidemic of garden parties broke forth,
old Doby gleefully beheld, day after day, the Court carriage
drive by bearing her ladyship and her sister attired in fairest
shades and tints "same as if they was flowers." Their delicate
vaporousness, and rare colours, were sweet delights to the
old man, and he and Mrs. Welden spent happy evenings discussing
them as personal possessions. To these two Betty
WAS a personal possession, bestowing upon them a marked
distinction. They were hers and she was theirs. No one else
so owned her. Heaven had given her to them that their last
years might be lighted with splendour.
On her way to one of the garden parties she stopped the
carriage before old Doby's cottage, and went in to him to speak
a few words. She was of pale convolvulus blue that afternoon,
and Doby, standing up touching his forelock and
Mrs. Welden curtsying, gazed at her with prayer in their
eyes. She had a few flowers in her hand, and a book of
coloured photographs of Venice.
"These are pictures of the city I told you about--the city
built in the sea--where the streets are water. You and Mrs.
Welden can look at them together," she said, as she laid
flowers and book down. "I am going to Dunholm Castle
to a garden party this afternoon. Some day I will come and
tell you about it."
The two were at the window staring spellbound, as she
swept back to the carriage between the sweet-williams and
Canterbury bells bordering the narrow garden path.
"Do you know I really went in to let them see my dress,"
she said, when she rejoined Lady Anstruthers. "Old Doby's
granddaughter told me that he and Mrs. Welden have little
quarrels about the colours I wear. It seems that they find
my wardrobe an absorbing interest. When I put the book
on the table, I felt Doby touch my sleeve with his trembling
old hand. He thought I did not know."
"What will they do with Venice?" asked Rosy.
"They will believe the water is as blue as the photographs
make it--and the palaces as pink. It will seem like a chapter
out of Revelations, which they can believe is true and not
merely `Scriptur,'--because _I_ have been there. I wish I
had been to the City of the Gates of Pearl, and could tell
them about that."
On the lawns at the garden parties she was much gazed
at and commented upon. Her height and her long slender
neck held her head above those of other girls, the dense black
of her hair made a rich note of shadow amid the prevailing
English blondness. Her mere colouring set her apart. Rosy
used to watch her with tender wonder, recalling her memory
of nine-year-old Betty, with the long slim legs and the
demanding and accusing child-eyes. She had always been this
creature even in those far-off days. At the garden party at
Dunholm Castle it became evident that she was, after a manner,
unusually the central figure of the occasion. It was not
at all surprising, people said to each other. Nothing could have
been more desirable for Lord Westholt. He combined rank
with fortune, and the Vanderpoel wealth almost constituted
rank in itself. Both Lord and Lady Dunholm seemed pleased
with the girl. Lord Dunholm showed her great attention.
When she took part in the dancing on the lawn, he looked on
delightedly. He walked about the gardens with her, and it
was plain to see that their conversation was not the ordinary
polite effort to accord, usually marking the talk between a
mature man and a merely pretty girl. Lord Dunholm sometimes
laughed with unfeigned delight, and sometimes the two
seemed to talk of grave things.
"Such occasions as these are a sort of yearly taking of the
social census of the county," Lord Dunholm explained. "One
invites ALL one's neighbours and is invited again. It is a
friendly duty one owes."
"I do not see Lord Mount Dunstan," Betty answered. "Is he here?"
She had never denied to herself her interest in Mount
Dunstan, and she had looked for him. Lord Dunholm hesitated
a second, as his son had done at Miss Vanderpoel's mention
of the tabooed name. But, being an older man, he felt
more at liberty to speak, and gave her a rather long kind look.
"My dear young lady," he said, "did you expect to see him here?"
"Yes, I think I did," Betty replied, with slow softness.
"I believe I rather hoped I should."
"Indeed! You are interested in him?"
"I know him very little. But I am interested. I will tell you
why."
She paused by a seat beneath a tree, and they sat down
together. She gave, with a few swift vivid touches, a sketch
of the red-haired second-class passenger on the Meridiana, of
whom she had only thought that he was an unhappy, rough-
looking young man, until the brief moment in which they
had stood face to face, each comprehending that the other was
to be relied on if the worst should come to the worst. She
had understood his prompt disappearance from the scene, and
had liked it. When she related the incident of her meeting
with him when she thought him a mere keeper on his own
lands, Lord Dunholm listened with a changed and thoughtful
expression. The effect produced upon her imagination by
what she had seen, her silent wandering through the sad
beauty of the wronged place, led by the man who tried stiffly
to bear himself as a servant, his unintended self-revelations,
her clear, well-argued point of view charmed him. She had seen
the thing set apart from its county scandal, and so had read
possibilities others had been blind to. He was immensely
touched by certain things she said about the First Man.
"He is one of them," she said. "They find their way in
the end--they find their way. But just now he thinks there
is none. He is standing in the dark--where the roads meet."
"You think he will find his way?" Lord Dunholm said.
"Why do you think so? "
"Because I KNOW he will," she answered. "But I cannot
tell you WHY I know."
"What you have said has been interesting to me, because
of the light your own thought threw upon what you saw. It
has not been Mount Dunstan I have been caring for, but for
the light you saw him in. You met him without prejudice,
and you carried the light in your hand. You always carry
a light, my impression is," very quietly. "Some women do."
"The prejudice you speak of must be a bitter thing for a
proud man to bear. Is it a just prejudice? What has he done?"
Lord Dunholm was gravely silent for a few moments.
"It is an extraordinary thing to reflect,"--his words came
slowly--"that it may NOT be a just prejudice. _I_ do not
know that he has done anything--but seem rather sulky, and
be the son of his father, and the brother of his brother."
"And go to America," said Betty. "He could have avoided
doing that--but he cannot be called to account for his relations.
If that is all--the prejudice is NOT just."
"No, it is not," said Lord Dunholm, "and one feels rather
awkward at having shared it. You have set me thinking
again, Miss Vanderpoel."
