CHAPTER XXXIX
ON THE MARSHES
THE marshes stretched mellow in the autumn sun, sheep wandered
about, nibbling contentedly, or lay down to rest in groups,
the sky reflecting itself in the narrow dykes gave a blue colour
to the water, a scent of the sea was in the air as one breathed
it, flocks of plover rose, now and then, crying softly. Betty,
walking with her dog, had passed a heron standing at the edge
of a pool.
From her first discovery of them, she had been attracted by
the marshes with their English suggestion of the Roman
Campagna, their broad expanse of level land spread out to the
sun and wind, the thousands of white sheep dotted or clustered
as far as eye could reach, the hues of the marsh grass and the
plants growing thick at the borders of the strips of water. Its
beauty was all its own and curiously aloof from the softly-
wooded, undulating world about it. Driving or walking along
the high road--the road the Romans had built to London town
long centuries ago--on either side of one were meadows, farms,
scattered cottages, and hop gardens, but beyond and below
stretched the marsh land, golden and grey, and always alluring
one by its silence.
"I never pass it without wanting to go to it--to take solitary
walks over it, to be one of the spots on it as the sheep are. It
seems as if, lying there under the blue sky or the low grey
clouds with all the world held at bay by mere space and
stillness, they must feel something we know nothing of. I want
to go and find out what it is."
This she had once said to Mount Dunstan.
So she had fallen into the habit of walking there with her
dog at her side as her sole companion, for having need for time
and space for thought, she had found them in the silence and
aloofness.
Life had been a vivid and pleasurable thing to her, as far
as she could look back upon it. She began to realise that she
must have been very happy, because she had never found herself
desiring existence other than such as had come to her day
by day. Except for her passionate childish regret at Rosy's
marriage, she had experienced no painful feeling. In fact,
she had faced no hurt in her life, and certainly had been
confronted by no limitations. Arguing that girls in their teens
usually fall in love, her father had occasionally wondered that
she passed through no little episodes of sentiment, but the fact
was that her interests had been larger and more numerous than
the interests of girls generally are, and her affectionate
intimacy with himself had left no such small vacant spaces as are
frequently filled by unimportant young emotions. Because she
was a logical creature, and had watched life and those living
it with clear and interested eyes, she had not been blind to the
path which had marked itself before her during the summer's
growth and waning. She had not, at first, perhaps, known
exactly when things began to change for her--when the clarity
of her mind began to be disturbed. She had thought in the
beginning--as people have a habit of doing--that an instance
--a problem--a situation had attracted her attention because
it was absorbing enough to think over. Her view of the matter
had been that as the same thing would have interested her
father, it had interested herself. But from the morning when
she had been conscious of the sudden fury roused in her by
Nigel Anstruthers' ugly sneer at Mount Dunstan, she had
better understood the thing which had come upon her. Day
by day it had increased and gathered power, and she realised
with a certain sense of impatience that she had not in any
degree understood it when she had seen and wondered at its
effect on other women. Each day had been like a wave
encroaching farther upon the shore she stood upon. At the outset
a certain ignoble pride--she knew it ignoble--filled her with
rebellion. She had seen so much of this kind of situation, and
had heard so much of the general comment. People had learned
how to sneer because experience had taught them. If she gave
them cause, why should they not sneer at her as at things? She
recalled what she had herself thought of such things--the folly
of them, the obviousness--the almost deserved disaster. She
had arrogated to herself judgment of women--and men--who
might, yes, who might have stood upon their strip of sand, as
she stood, with the waves creeping in, each one higher, stronger,
and more engulfing than the last. There might have been those
among them who also had knowledge of that sudden deadly
joy at the sight of one face, at the drop of one voice. When
that wave submerged one's pulsing being, what had the world
to do with one--how could one hear and think of what its
speech might be? Its voice clamoured too far off.
As she walked across the marsh she was thinking this first
phase over. She had reached a new one, and at first she looked
back with a faint, even rather hard, smile. She walked straight
ahead, her mastiff, Roland, padding along heavily close at her
side. How still and wide and golden it was; how the cry of
plover and lifting trill of skylark assured one that one was
wholly encircled by solitude and space which were more
enclosing than any walls! She was going to the mounds to which
Mr. Penzance had trundled G. Selden in the pony chaise, when
he had given him the marvellous hour which had brought
Roman camp and Roman legions to life again. Up on the
largest hillock one could sit enthroned, resting chin in hand and
looking out under level lids at the unstirring, softly-living
loveliness of the marsh-land world. So she was presently seated,
with her heavy-limbed Roland at her feet. She had come here to
try to put things clearly to herself, to plan with such reason as
she could control. She had begun to be unhappy, she had begun
--with some unfairness--to look back upon the Betty Vanderpoel
of the past as an unwittingly self-sufficient young woman,
to find herself suddenly entangled by things, even to know a
touch of desperateness.
"Not to take a remnant from the ducal bargain counter,"
she was saying mentally. That was why her smile was a little
hard. What if the remnant from the ducal bargain counter
had prejudices of his own?
"If he were passionately--passionately in love with me," she
said, with red staining her cheeks, "he would not come--he
would not come--he would not come. And, because of that,
he is more to me--MORE! And more he will become every day
--and the more strongly he will hold me. And there we stand."
Roland lifted his fine head from his paws, and, holding it
erect on a stiff, strong neck, stared at her in obvious inquiry.
She put out her hand and tenderly patted him.
"He will have none of me," she said. "He will have none
of me." And she faintly smiled, but the next instant shook her
head a little haughtily, and, having done so, looked down with
an altered expression upon the cloth of her skirt, because she
had shaken upon it, from the extravagant lashes, two clear
drops.
It was not the result of chance that she had seen nothing of
him for weeks. She had not attempted to persuade herself of
that. Twice he had declined an invitation to Stornham, and
once he had ridden past her on the road when he might have
stopped to exchange greetings, or have ridden on by her side.
He did not mean to seem to desire, ever so lightly, to be counted
as in the lists. Whether he was drawn by any liking for her
or not, it was plain he had determined on this.
If she were to go away now, they would never meet again.
Their ways in this world would part forever. She would not
know how long it took to break him utterly--if such a man
could be broken. If no magic change took place in his fortunes
--and what change could come?--the decay about him would
spread day by day. Stone walls last a long time, so the house
would stand while every beauty and stateliness within it fell
into ruin. Gardens would become wildernesses, terraces and
fountains crumble and be overgrown, walls that were to-day
leaning would fall with time. The years would pass, and his
youth with them; he would gradually change into an old man
while he watched the things he loved with passion die slowly
and hard. How strange it was that lives should touch and pass
on the ocean of Time, and nothing should result--nothing at
all! When she went on her way, it would be as if a ship loaded
with every aid of food and treasure had passed a boat in
which a strong man tossed, starving to death, and had not even
run up a flag.
"But one cannot run up a flag," she said, stroking Roland.
"One cannot. There we stand."
To her recognition of this deadlock of Fate, there had been
adding the growing disturbance caused by yet another thing
which was increasingly troubling, increasingly difficult to face.
Gradually, and at first with wonderful naturalness of bearing,
Nigel Anstruthers had managed to create for himself a singular
place in her everyday life. It had begun with a certain
personalness in his attitude, a personalness which was a thing to
dislike, but almost impossible openly to resent. Certainly, as
a self-invited guest in his house, she could scarcely protest
against the amiability of his demeanour and his exterior
courtesy and attentiveness of manner in his conduct towards
her. She had tried to sweep away the objectionable quality in
his bearing, by frankness, by indifference, by entire lack of
response, but she had remained conscious of its increasing as a
spider's web might increase as the spider spun it quietly over
one, throwing out threads so impalpable that one could not
brush them away because they were too slight to be seen. She
was aware that in the first years of his married life he had
alternately resented the scarcity of the invitations sent them
and rudely refused such as were received. Since he had
returned to find her at Stornham, he had insisted that no
invitations should be declined, and had escorted his wife and
herself wherever they went. What could have been conventionally
more proper--what more improper than that he should have
persistently have remained at home? And yet there came a
time when, as they three drove together at night in the closed
carriage, Betty was conscious that, as he sat opposite to her in
the dark, when he spoke, when he touched her in arranging the
robe over her, or opening or shutting the window, he subtly,
but persistently, conveyed that the personalness of his voice,
look, and physical nearness was a sort of hideous confidence
between them which they were cleverly concealing from
Rosalie and the outside world.
When she rode about the country, he had a way of appearing
at some turning and making himself her companion, riding too
closely at her side, and assuming a noticeable air of being
engaged in meaningly confidential talk. Once, when he had been
leaning towards her with an audaciously tender manner, they
had been passed by the Dunholm carriage, and Lady Dunholm
and the friend driving with her had evidently tried not to look
surprised. Lady Alanby, meeting them in the same way at
another time, had put up her glasses and stared in open
disapproval. She might admire a strikingly handsome American
girl, but her favour would not last through any such vulgar
silliness as flirtations with disgraceful brothers-in-law. When
Betty strolled about the park or the lanes, she much too often
encountered Sir Nigel strolling also, and knew that he did not
mean to allow her to rid herself of him. In public, he made
a point of keeping observably close to her, of hovering in her
vicinity and looking on at all she did with eyes she rebelled
against finding fixed on her each time she was obliged to turn in
his direction. He had a fashion of coming to her side and
speaking in a dropped voice, which excluded others, as a favoured
lover might. She had seen both men and women glance at her
in half-embarrassment at their sudden sense of finding
themselves slightly de trop. She had said aloud to him on one
such occasion--and she had said it with smiling casualness for
the benefit of Lady Alanby, to whom she had been talking:
"Don't alarm me by dropping your voice, Nigel. I am easily
frightened--and Lady Alanby will think we are conspirators."
For an instant he was taken by surprise. He had been pleased
to believe that there was no way in which she could defend
herself, unless she would condescend to something stupidly like a
scene. He flushed and drew himself up.
"I beg your pardon, my dear Betty," he said, and walked
away with the manner of an offended adorer, leaving her to
realise an odiously unpleasant truth--which is that there are
incidents only made more inexplicable by an effort to explain.
She saw also that he was quite aware of this, and that his
offended departure was a brilliant inspiration, and had left her,
as it were, in the lurch. To have said to Lady Alanby: "My
brother-in-law, in whose house I am merely staying for my
sister's sake, is trying to lead you to believe that I allow him
to make love to me," would have suggested either folly or
insanity on her own part. As it was--after a glance at Sir
Nigel's stiffly retreating back--Lady Alanby merely looked away
with a wholly uninviting expression.
When Betty spoke to him afterwards, haughtily and with
determination, he laughed.
"My dearest girl," he said, "if I watch you with interest
and drop my voice when I get a chance to speak to you, I only
do what every other man does, and I do it because you are an
alluring young woman--which no one is more perfectly aware
of than yourself. Your pretence that you do not know you
are alluring is the most captivating thing about you. And what
do you think of doing if I continue to offend you? Do you
propose to desert us--to leave poor Rosalie to sink back again
into the bundle of old clothes she was when you came? For
Heaven's sake, don't do that!"
All that his words suggested took form before her vividly.
How well he understood what he was saying. But she
answered him bravely.
"No. I do not mean to do that."
He watched her for a few seconds. There was curiosity in
his eyes.
"Don't make the mistake of imagining that I will let my
wife go with you to America," he said next. "She is as far
off from that as she was when I brought her to Stornham. I
have told her so. A man cannot tie his wife to the bedpost in
these days, but he can make her efforts to leave him so decidedly
unpleasant that decent women prefer to stay at home and take
what is coming. I have seen that often enough `to bank on it,'
if I may quote your American friends."
"Do you remember my once saying," Betty remarked, "that
when a woman has been PROPERLY ill-treated the time comes
when nothing matters--nothing but release from the life she
loathes?"
"Yes," he answered. "And to you nothing would matter
but--excuse my saying it--your own damnable, headstrong
pride. But Rosalie is different. Everything matters to her.
And you will find it so, my dear girl."
And that this was at least half true was brought home to
her by the fact that late the same night Rosy came to her white
with crying.
"It is not your fault, Betty," she said. "Don't think that I
think it is your fault, but he has been in my room in one of
those humours when he seems like a devil. He thinks you will
go back to America and try to take me with you. But, Betty,
you must not think about me. It will be better for you to go.
I have seen you again. I have had you for--for a time. You
will be safer at home with father and mother."
Betty laid a hand on her shoulder and looked at her fixedly.
"What is it, Rosy?" she said. "What is it he does to you
--that makes you like this?"
"I don't know--but that he makes me feel that there is
nothing but evil and lies in the world and nothing can help
one against them. Those things he says about everyone--men
and women--things one can't repeat--make me sick. And when
I try to deny them, he laughs."
"Does he say things about me?" Betty inquired, very
quietly, and suddenly Rosalie threw her arms round her.
"Betty, darling," she cried, "go home--go home. You
must not stay here."
"When I go, you will go with me," Betty answered. "I
am not going back to mother without you."
She made a collection of many facts before their interview
was at an end, and they parted for the night. Among the first
was that Nigel had prepared for certain possibilities as wise
holders of a fortress prepare for siege. A rather long sitting
alone over whisky and soda had, without making him loquacious,
heated his blood in such a manner as led him to be less
subtle than usual. Drink did not make him drunk, but malignant,
and when a man is in the malignant mood, he forgets his
cleverness. So he revealed more than he absolutely intended.
It was to be gathered that he did not mean to permit his wife
to leave him, even for a visit; he would not allow himself to
be made ridiculous by such a thing. A man who could not
control his wife was a fool and deserved to be a laughing-stock.
As Ughtred and his future inheritance seemed to have become
of interest to his grandfather, and were to be well nursed and
taken care of, his intention was that the boy should remain under
his own supervision. He could amuse himself well enough at
Stornham, now that it had been put in order, if it was kept
up properly and he filled it with people who did not bore
him. There were people who did not bore him--plenty of
them. Rosalie would stay where she was and receive his guests.
If she imagined that the little episode of Ffolliott had been
entirely dormant, she was mistaken. He knew where the man
was, and exactly how serious it would be to him if scandal was
stirred up. He had been at some trouble to find out. The
fellow had recently had the luck to fall into a very fine living.
It had been bestowed on him by the old Duke of Broadmorlands,
who was the most strait-laced old boy in England.
He had become so in his disgust at the light behaviour of the
wife he had divorced in his early manhood. Nigel cackled
gently as he detailed that, by an agreeable coincidence, it
happened that her Grace had suddenly become filled with pious
fervour--roused thereto by a good-looking locum tenens--
result, painful discoveries--the pair being now rumoured to be
keeping a lodging-house together somewhere in Australia. A
word to good old Broadmorlands would produce the effect of a
lighted match on a barrel of gunpowder. It would be the end
of Ffolliott. Neither would it be a good introduction to Betty's
first season in London, neither would it be enjoyed by her
mother, whom he remembered as a woman with primitive views
of domestic rectitude. He smiled the awful smile as he took out
of his pocket the envelope containing the words his wife had
written to Mr. Ffolliott, "Do not come to the house. Meet
me at Bartyon Wood." It did not take much to convince people,
if one managed things with decent forethought. The
Brents, for instance, were fond neither of her nor of Betty, and
they had never forgotten the questionable conduct of their locum
tenens. Then, suddenly, he had changed his manner and had
sat down, laughing, and drawn Rosalie to his knee and kissed
her--yes, he had kissed her and told her not to look like a
little fool or act like one. Nothing unpleasant would happen if
she behaved herself. Betty had improved her greatly, and she had
grown young and pretty again. She looked quite like a child
sometimes, now that her bones were covered and she dressed
well. If she wanted to please him she could put her arms
round his neck and kiss him, as he had kissed her.
"That is what has made you look white," said Betty.
"Yes. There is something about him that sometimes makes
you feel as if the very blood in your veins turned white,"
answered Rosy--in a low voice, which the next moment rose.
"Don't you see--don't you see," she broke out, "that to
displease him would be like murdering Mr. Ffolliott--like
murdering his mother and mine--and like murdering Ughtred,
because he would be killed by the shame of things--and by being
taken from me. We have loved each other so much--so much.
Don't you see?"
"I see all that rises up before you," Betty said, "and I
understand your feeling that you cannot save yourself by bringing
ruin upon an innocent man who helped you. I realise that
one must have time to think it over. But, Rosy," a sudden ring
in her voice, "I tell you there is a way out--there is a way
out! The end of the misery is coming--and it will not be what
he thinks."
"You always believe----" began Rosy.
"I know," answered Betty. "I know there are some things
so bad that they cannot go on. They kill themselves through
their own evil. I KNOW! I KNOW! That is all."
