 CHAPTER X All that she had brought with her to England, combined with what she had called sophistication, but which was rather her exquisite appreciation of values and effects, she took with her when she went the next day to Charing Cross Station and arranged herself at her ease in the railway carriage while her maid bought their tickets for Stornham. What the people in the station saw, the guards and porters, the men in the bookstalls, the travellers hurrying past, was a striking looking girl, whose colouring and carriage made one turn to glance after her, and who, having bought some periodicals and papers, took her place in a first-class compartment and watched the passers-by interestedly through the open window. Having been looked at and remarked on during her whole life, Bettina did not find it disturbing that more than one corduroy clothed porter and fresh-coloured elderly gentleman, or freshly attired young one, having caught a glimpse of her through her window, made it convenient to saunter past or hover around. She looked at them much more frankly than they looked at her. To her they were all specimens of the type she was at present interested in. For practical reason she was summing up English character with more deliberate intention than she had felt in the years when she had gradually learned to know continental types and differentiate such peculiarities as were significant of their ranks and nations. As the first Reuben van der Poel had studied the continents as an indicative methods of the inhabitants of the new parts of the country in which it was his intention to do business, so the modernity of his descendant applied itself to observation for reasons parallel in nature, though not in actual kind. As he had brought beads and fire-water to bear as agents upon savages who would barter for them, skins and products which might be turned into money, so she brought her nineteenth-century beauty, steadfastness of purpose and alertness of brain, to bear upon the matter the practical dealing with which was the end she held in view. To bear herself in this matter, with this practical control of situations, as that with which her great-grandfather would have borne himself in making a trade with a previously unknown tribe of Indians, was quite her intention, though it had not occurred to her to put it to herself in any such form. Still, whether she was aware of the fact or not, her point of view was exactly what the first Reuben van der Poel's had been on many very different occasions. She had before her the task of dealing with facts and factors of which at present she knew but little. A stuteness of perception, self-command and adaptability were her chief resources. She was ready, either for calm, bold approach, or equally calm and wholly non-committal retreat. The perception she had brought with her filled her journey into Kent with delicious things, delicious recognition of beauty she had before known the existence of only through the reading of books, and the dwelling upon their charms as reproduced more or less perfectly on canvas. She saw role by her, with the passing of the train, the loveliness of land and picturesqueness of living, which she had saved for herself with Epicurean intention for years. Her fancy, when detached from her thoughts of her sister, had been Epicurean, and she had been quite aware that it was so. When she had left the suburbs and those villages already touched with suburbannity behind, she felt herself settle into a glow of luxurious enjoyment in the freshness of her pleasure in the familiar and yet unfamiliar objects in the thick-hedged fields, whose broad branched, thick-foliaged oaks and beaches were more empowering in their shade and sweeter in their green than anything she remembered that other countries had offered her, even at their best. In the fields the Hawthorne hedges beautifully enclosed were groups of resigned mother-sheep with their young lambs about them. The curious pointed tops of the red hop-kilns piercing the trees near the farmhouses were an almost intentional air of adding picturesque detail. There were clusters of old building and dots of cottages and cottage gardens which made her now in their nutter exclamations of delight. Little inarticulate Rosie had seen and felt it all twelve years before on her hopeless bridal homecoming when Idle had sat huddled unbecomingly in the corner of the railway carriage. Her power of expression had been limited to little joyful gasps and obvious laudatory adjectives smothered in their birth by her first glance at her bridegroom. Betty on seeing it knew all the exquisiteness of her own pleasure and all the meanings of it. Yes, it was England, England. It was the England of Constable and Warland of Miss Mitford and Miss Austen, the Brontes and George Elliot. The land which softly rolled and clothed itself in the rich verger of many trees, sometimes in lovely clusters, sometimes in covering cops, was Constables. The ripe young woman with the fat-legged children and the farmyard beasts about her, as she fed the hens from the wooden pigan under her arm, was Maul and Zone. The village street might be Miss Mitford's, the well-to-do house Jane Austen's own fancy, in its warm brick and comfortable decorum. She laughed a little as she thought of it. "'That is American,' she said, the habit of comparing every stick and stone and breathing thing to some literary parallel. We almost invariably say that things remind us of pictures or books, most usually books. It seems a little crude, but perhaps it means that we are an intensely literary and artistic people.' She continued to find comparisons revealing to her their appositeness, until her journey had ended by the train's slackening speed and coming to a standstill before the rural looking little station which had presented its quaint aspect to Lady Anstrother's on her homecoming of years before. It had not, during the years which certainly had given time for change, altered in the least. The stationmaster had grown stouter and more rosy and came forward with his respectful hospitable air to attend to the unusual-looking young lady who was the only first-class passenger. He thought she might be a visitor expected at some country house, but none of the carriages whose coachmen or his familiar acquaintances were in waiting. That such a fine young lady should be paying a visit at any house whose owners did not send an equipage to attend her coming struck him as unusual. The broom from the crown, though a decent country town vehicle, seemed inadequate. But there it stood, drawn up outside the station, and she went to it with the manner of a young lady who had audited its attendance and knew it would be there. Wells felt a good deal of interest. Among the many young ladies who descended from the first-class compartments and passed through the little waiting-room on their way to the carriages of the gentry they were going to visit, he did not know when a young lady had caught his eye, so to speak, as this one did. She was not exactly the kind of young lady one would immediately class mentally as a foreigner, but the blue of her eyes was so deep, and her hair and eyelashes so dark, that these things, combining themselves with a certain way she had, made him feel her to be of a type unfamiliar to the region at least. He was struck also by the fact the young lady had no maid with her. The truth was that Bettina had purposely left her maid in town. If awkward things occurred, the presence of an attendant would be a sort of complication. It was better on the first approach to be wholly unencumbered. How far are we from Stornham Court, she inquired. Five miles, my lady, he answered, touching his cap. She expressed something which to the rural and ingenious who standards were defined demanded a recognition of probable rank. I'd like to know, with his comment to his wife, when he went home to dinner, who has gone to Stornham Court today, as few enough visitors go there and none such as her for certain. She don't live anywhere on the line above here, either, for I've never seen her face before. She was a tall handsome one, she was, but it isn't just that major look after her. She was a clever one with spirit, I'll be bound. I was wondering what a ladyship would have to say to her. Perhaps she was one of his fine ladies, suggestively. She wasn't, either, and as for that I wonder what he'd have to say as such as she is. There was complexity of element enough in the thing she was on her way to do, Bettina was thinking, as she was driven over the white ribbon of country road that unrolled over Rhys and Hollow between the sheep-dotted greenness of fields and the scented hedges. The soft beauty enclosing her was a little shut out from her by her mental attitude. She brought forward for her own decisions upon suitable action a number of possible situations she might find herself called upon to confront. The one thing necessary was that she should be prepared for anything whatever, even for Rosy's not being pleased to see her or for finding Sennigela thoroughly reformed an amiable character. It is the one thing which seemingly cannot happen which one is most likely to find oneself face to face with. It will be a little awkward to arrange if he has developed every domestic virtue and is delighted to see me. Under such rather confusing conditions her plan would be to present to them as an affectionate surprise the unheralded visit which might appear a trifle uncalled for. She felt happily sure of herself under any circumstances not by taking of the nature of collisions at sea, yet she had not behaved absolutely ill at the time of the threatened catastrophe in the meridiana. Her remembrance, an oddly sudden one of the definite manner of the red-haired second-class passenger, assured her of that. He had certainly had all his senses about him and he had spoken to her as a person to be counted on. The pulse beat a little more hurriedly as the broom entered Stornham Village. It was picturesque, but struck her as looking neglected. Many of the cottages had an air of dilapidation. There were many broken windows and unmended garden palings. A suggested lack of whitewash in several cases was not cheerful. I know nothing of the duties of English landlord, she said, looking through her carriage window, but I should do it myself if I were Rosy. She saw, as she was taken through the park-gateway, that that structure was out of order, and the damaged diamond panes peered out from under the thickness of the ivy, masting itself over the lodge. Ah, was her thought. It does not promise as it should. Happy people do not let things fall to pieces. Even winding avenue and spreading sword and gorse and broom and bracken and folding all the earth beneath huge trees were not fair enough to remove a sudden remote fear which arose in her rapidly reasoning mind. It suggested to her a point of view so new that while she was amazed at herself for not having contemplated it before, she found herself wishing that the coachman would drive rather more slowly, actually that she might have more time to reflect. They were nearing a dip in the park where there was a lonely looking pool. The bracken was thick and high there, and the sun which had just broken through a cloud had pierced the trees with a golden gleam. A little withdrawn from the shaft of brightness stood two figures, a dowdy little woman and a hunchbacked boy. The woman held some ferns in her hand, and the boy was sitting down and resting his chin on his hands which were folded on the top of a stick. Stop here for a moment, Bettina said to the coachman, I want to ask that woman a question. She had thought that she might discover if her sister was at the court. She realized that to know would be a point of advantage. She leaned forward and spoke. I beg your pardon, she said, I wonder if you can tell me. The woman came forward a little. She had a listless step and a faded listless face. What did you ask, she said? Bettie leaned still further forward. Can you tell me? She began and stopped. A sense of stricture in the throat stopped her, as her eyes took in the washed-out colour of the thin face, the washed-out colour of the thin hair, thin drab hair dragged in straight-heart unbecomingness from the forehead and cheeks. Was it true that her heart was thumping, as she had heard it said that agitation made hearts thump? She began again. Can you tell me if Lady Anstruthers is at home? She inquired. As she said it, she felt the blood surge up from the furious heart, and the hand she had laid on the handle of the door of the broom clutched it involuntarily. The dowdy little woman answered her indifferently, staring at her a little. I am Lady Anstruthers, she said. Bettina opened the carriage door and stood upon the ground. Go on to the house, she gave order to the coachman, and with a somewhat startled look he drove away. Rosie! Bettina's voice was a hushed, almost awed thing. You are Rosie! The faded little wreck of a creature began to look frightened. Rosie! she repeated, with a small, wry, painful smile. She was the next moment held in the folding of strong young arms, against a quickly beating heart. She was being wildly kissed, and the very air seemed rich with warmth and life. I am Betty, she heard. Look at me, Rosie, I am Betty. Look at me, and remember. Lady Anstruthers gasped and broke into a faint hysteric laugh. She suddenly clutched at Bettina's arm. For a minute her gaze was wild as she looked up. Betty! she cried out. No, no, no, I can't believe it. I can't. I can't. The justice thing could have taken place in her, but Bettina had never thought. As she had reflected on her way from the station, the impossible is what one finds oneself face to face with. Twelve years should not have changed a pretty blonde thing of nineteen to a worn, unintelligent looking dowdy of the order of doudiness which seems to have lived beyond age and sex. She looked even stupid, or at least stupefied. At this moment she was a silly middle-aged woman who did not know what to do. For a few seconds Bettina wondered if she was glad to see her, or only felt awkward and unequal to the situation. I can't believe you, she cried out again and began to shiver. Betty! Little Betty! No, no, it isn't. She turned to the boy, who had lifted his chin from his stick and was staring. Utread! Utread! She called to him. Come! She says. She says. She sat down upon a clump of heather and began to cry. She hid her face in her spare hands and broke into sobbing. Oh! Betty! No! She gasped so long ago, so far away! You never came! No one! No one came! The hunchback boy drew near. He had limped up on his stick. He spoke like an elderly affectionate gnome, not like a child. Don't do that, mother, he said. Don't let it upset you so, whatever it is. It's so long ago, it's so far away! She wept with catches in her breath and voice. You never came! Betty knelt down and enfolded her again. Her bell-like voice was firm and clear. I have come now, she said, and it's not far away. A cable will reach farther in two hours. Pursuing a certain vivid thought in her mind, she looked at her watch. If you spoke to mother by cable this moment, she added, with a custom coolness, and she felt her sister actually start as she spoke, she could answer you by five o'clock. Lady Anstra the start ended in a laugh and gasp, nor hysteric than her first. There was even a kind of one awakening in her face as she lifted it to look at the wonderful newcomer. She caught her hand and held it, trembling as she weakly laughed. It must be Betty, she cried, that little stern way. It's so like her, Betty, Betty dear! She fell into a sobbing, shaken heap upon the heather. The harrowing thought passed through Betty's mind that she looked almost like a limp bundle of shabby clothes. She was so helpless in her pathetic, apologetic hysteria. I shall be better, she gasped. It's nothing, Utread tell her. She is very weak really, said the boy Utread in his mature way. She can't help it sometimes, I'll get some water from the pool. Let me go, said Betty, and she darted down to the water. She was back in a moment, the boy was rubbing and patting his mother's hands tenderly. At any rate, he remarked, as one consoled by a reflection, father is not at home. CHAPTER X As after a singular half-hour spent among the bracken under the trees, they began their return to the house, Bettina felt that her sense of adventure had altered its character. She was still in the midst of a remarkable sort of exploit, which might end anywhere or in anything, but it had become at once more prosaic in detail and more intense in its significance. What its significance might prove likely to be when she faced it, she had not known it is true, but this was different from anything. As they walked up the sun-dabbled avenue, she kept glancing aside at Rosie and endeavouring to draw useful conclusions. The poor girl's air of being a plain insignificant front-long-past youth struck an extraordinary and, for the time, unexplainable note. Her ill-cut out-of-date dress, the cheap suit of the hunchbacked boy who limped patiently along, helped by his crutch, suggested possible explanations which were, without doubt, connected with the thought which had risen in Bettina's mind as she had driven through the broken hinged entrance-gate. What extraordinary disposal was being made of Rosie's money. But her each glance at her sister also suggested complication upon complication. The singular half-hour under the trees by the pool, spent after the first hysteric moments were over, in vague exclamings and questions which seemed half-frightened and all at sea, had gradually shown her that she was talking to a creature wholly other than the Rosalie who had so well known and loved them all and whom they had so well loved and known. They did not know this one, and she did not know them. She was even a little afraid of the stir and movement of their life in being. The Rosie they had known seemed to be imprisoned within the wall the years of her separated life had built about her. At each breath she drew Bettina saw how long the years had been to her, and how far her home had seemed to lie away, so far that it could not touch her and was only a sort of dream, the recalling of which made her suddenly begin to cry again every few minutes. To Bettina's sensitively alert mind it was plain that it would not do in the least to drag her suddenly out of her prison or cloister which soever it might be. To do so would be like forcing a creature accustomed only to darkness to stare at the blazing sun. To have burst upon her with the old impetuous candid fondness would have been to frighten and shock her as if with something bordering on indecency. She could not have stood it. Perhaps such fondness was so remote from her in these days that she had even ceased to be able to understand it. Where are your little girls? Bettina asked, remembering that there had been notice given of the advent of two girl babies. They died, Lady Anstrother's answered unemotionally. They both died before they were a year old. There is only Utrid. Bettie glanced at the boy and saw a small flame of red creep up on his cheek. Instinctively she knew what it meant, and she put out her hand and lightly touched his shoulder. I hope you'll like me, Utrid, she said. He almost started at the sound of her voice, but when he turned his face towards her he only grew redder and looked awkward without answering. His manner was that of a boy who was unused to the amenities of polite society and who was only made shy by them. Without warning a moment or so later Bettina stopped in the middle of the avenue and looked up at the arching giant branches of the trees which had reached out from one side to the other as if to clasp hands or encompass an interlacing embrace. As far as the eye reached they did this, and the beholder stood as in a high stately pergola with breaks of deep azure sky between. Several mellow, coring rooks were floating solemnly beneath or above the branches, now and then settling in some highest one or disappearing in the thick greeners. Lady Anstrother stopped when her sister did so and glanced at her in vague inquiry. It was plain that she had outlived even her sense of the beauty surrounding her. "'What are you looking at, Betty?' she asked. "'At all of it,' Betty answered, it is so wonderful." "'She likes it,' said Utrid, and then rather slunk a step behind his mother as if he were ashamed of himself. "'The house is just beyond those trees,' said Lady Anstrother's. They came in full view of it three minutes later. When she saw it, Betty uttered an exclamation, stopped again to enjoy effects. "'She likes that, too,' said Utrid, and although he said it sheepishly, there was imperfectly concealed beneath the awkwardness a pleasure in the fact. "'Do you?' asked Rosalie, with her small, painful smile. Betty laughed. "'It is too picturesque in its special way to be quite credible,' she said. "'I thought that when I first saw it,' said Rosy. "'Don't you think so now?' "'Well,' was the rather uncertain reply, as Nigel says, there's not much good in a place that's falling to pieces. "'Why, let it fall to pieces,' Betty put it to her with impartial promptness. "'We haven't money enough to hold it together, resignedly. As they climbed a low-broad, like-and-lodge steps whose broken stone balustrades were almost hidden in clutching untrimmed ivy, Betty felt them to be almost incredible, too. Uneven stones of the terrace the steps mounted to were like-and-lodged and broken also. Tufts of green growths had forced themselves between the flags and added an untidy beauty. The ivy tossed in branches over the red roof and walls of the house. It had been left unclipped until it was rather an endlessly clambering tree than a creeper. The hall they entered had the beauty of spacious form and good old oak and panelling. There were deep window-seats and an ancient high-backed settle or so, and a massive table by the fireless hearth. But there were no pictures in places where pictures had evidently once hung, and the only coverings on the stone floor were the faded remnants of a central rug and a worn tiger-skin, the head almost bald, and a glass eye knocked out. The Tina took in the unpromising details without a quiver of the extravagant lashes. These indeed, and the eyes pertaining to them, seemed rather to sweep the fine roof and a certain minstrel's gallery and staircase than which nothing could have been much finer with the look of an appreciative admirer of architectural features and old oak. She had not journeyed to Stornham Court with the intention of disturbing Rosie or of being herself obviously disturbed. She had come to observe situations and rearrange them with that intelligence of which unconsidered emotion or exclamation form no part. "'It is the first old English house I've seen,' she said with a sigh of pleasure. "'I'm so glad, Rosie. I'm so glad that it's yours.'" She put a hand on each of Rosie's thin shoulders. She felt sharply defined bones as she did so, and bent to kiss her. It was the natural affectionate expression of her feeling, but tears started to Rosie's eyes, and the boy Utrid, who had sat down on a window-seat, turned red again and shifted in his place. "'Oh, Betty,' was Rosie's faint nervous exclamation, "'you seem so beautiful and so, so strange that you frighten me.'" Betty laughed with the softest possible cheerfulness, shaking her a little. "'I shall not seem strange long,' she said, "'after I have stayed with you a few weeks if you will let me stay with you.' "'Let you, let you,' in a sort of gasp. Poor little lady Unstruthers sank on to a settle and began to cry again. It was plain that she always cried when things occurred. Utrid's speech from his window-seat testified at once to that. "'Don't cry, mother,' he said, "'you know how we've talked that over together. It's her nerves,' he explained to Bettina. "'We know it only makes things worse, but she can't stop it.'" Bettina sat on the settle, too. She herself was not then aware of the wonderful feeling the poor little spare figure experienced as her softly strong young arms curved about it. She was only aware that she herself felt that this was a heart-breaking thing, and that she must not, must not, let it be seen how much she recognised its woefulness. This was pretty fair Rosie, who had never done a harm in her happy life. This forlorn thing was her Rosie. "'Never mind,' she said, half- laughing again, "'I rather want to cry myself, and I'm stronger than she is. I am immensely strong.' "'Yes, yes,' said Lady Ann Struthers, wiping her eyes, and making a tremendous effort at self-respecting composure. "'You are strong. I have grown so weak in—well, in every way. Bettie, I'm afraid this is a poor welcome. You see, I'm afraid you'll find it all so different from—from New York.' "'I wanted to find it different,' said Bettie. "'But—but—I mean, you know,' Lady Ann Struthers turned helplessly to the boy. Bettina was struck with the painful truth that she looked even sillier as she turned to him. "'Utrid, tell her,' she ended, and hung her head. Utrid had got down at once from his seat and limped forward. His unprepossessing face looked as if he pulled his childishness together with an unchildish effort. "'She means,' he said in his awkward way, "'that she doesn't know how to make you comfortable. The rooms are all so shabby—everything is so shabby. Perhaps you won't stay when you see.' Bettina perceptibly increased the firmness of her hold on her sister's body. It was as if she drew it nearer to her side in a kind of taking possession. She knew that the moment had come when she might go this far at least without expressing alarming things. "'You cannot show me anything that will frighten me,' was the answer she made. "'I have come to stay, Rosie. We can make things right if they require it. Why not?' Lady Ansta the started a little, and stared at her. She knew ten thousand reasons why things had not been made right, and the casual inference that such reasons could be lightly swept away as if by the mere wave of a hand implied a power appertaining to a time seeming so lost forever that it was too much for her. "'Oh, Betty, Betty,' she cried, "'you talk as if you—you are so—' The fact so simple to the members of the abnormal class to which she of a truth belonged, the class which heaped up its millions, the absolute knowledge that there was a great deal of money in the world, and that she was of those who were among its chief owners, had ceased to seem a fact, and had vanished into the region of fairy stories. That she could not believe it a reality revealed itself to Bettina as by a flash, which was also a revelation of many things. There would be unpleasing truths to be learned, and she had not made her pilgrimage for nothing. But in any event there were advantages without doubt in the circumstance which subjected one to being perpetually pointed out as the daughter of a multimillionaire. As this argued itself out for her with rapid lucidity, she bent and kissed Rosie once more. She even tried to do it lightly and not to allow the rush of love and pity in her soul to betray her. I talk as if I were Betty, she said. You have forgotten, I have not. I have been looking forward to this for years. I have been planning to come to you since I was eleven years old. And here we sit. You didn't forget, you didn't, faulted the poor wreck of Rosie. Oh, I thought you'd all forgotten me quite, quite. And her face went down in her spare small hands, and she began to cry again. CHAPTER XII. 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 paneled in small squares of white wood. The panels were old enough to be cracked here and there, and the paint was stained in yellow width time where it was not knocked or worn off. There was a small pane ledded 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 Vanderpool 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 in 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 a woman 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 a 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 quickness 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 would 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 Rosie herself, her helplessness and timidity, might for a period at least form obstacles in their path of action. He not only loved Rosie, but realized 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. Vanderpool'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 beauty's and dimensions of Stornham, all relatable details of Rosie's life must be generously dwelt on. Above all, Rosie 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 Rosie's. It was not Lady Anne's brothers who stood outside, but Utread, who balanced himself on his crutches, and lifted his small, too mature face. May I come in, he asked. Here was he 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 and 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 boy-like. 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, Utread, 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. Today 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, Utread. 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's 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 away 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 Vanderpool's being, forced her to go and stand with her face turned toward 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 uttered hurt 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's a liar, is he? The helpless rage in the unchallenged eyes, the shaking voices 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 be a murderer if he dared, but he'd dent. And his face dropped on his arms, folded on his crutch, and he broke into a passion of crying. Then Betty knew she must go to him. She went and knelt down and put her arm around him. Utrecht, he 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 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 ringing 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 realized that it was well that she had been warned in time. Utrecht, 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 wait until you have let her 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, Utrecht, 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 realized 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 a 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 civilized existence in London and New York as did that which had inflicted torches 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. She a lack of power to resist bound them hand and foot. And she, Betty Van der Poel, 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 defenseless against circumstances and be obliged to submit to outrage. To be a Van der Poel was, it is true, to be a shining mark for envious 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 for 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 Uhtrid, what does he give as his reason? He must profess to have a reason. When he gets in a rage he says it's 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 rigged 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 Rosie 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. Rosie 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 Utreet's birth, she had risen from what had been so nearly her death bed, prostrated in both mind and body. Utreet 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 things 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 cause of time a horrible scene in which all three of them had raved at each other, and she herself had shrieked in 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 hunchback baby. She was glad when the Dowager died and when Nigel spent his time in London or in the Continent and left her with Utrid. When he said that he must spend her money on the estate she had acquiesced without comment because that ensured 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 Utrid, 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, Utrid 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 didn't 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 thought they were places in fairyland. Betty padded his shoulder and looked away for a moment when he said this. In her remote and helpless loneliness to Rosie's homesick yearning soul, noisy rattling New York, Fifth Avenue with its traffic and people, its brownstone houses and rickety 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 things she had suspected as she 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, Utrid 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. case later on her way to dinner Ms. Vanderpool saw on all sides signs of the extent of the nakedness of the land. She was in a fine old house stripped of most of its saleable belongings, uncared for, deteriorating year by year, gradually going to ruin. One need not possess particular keenness of sight to observe this, and she had chance to see old houses in like condition in other countries than England. A man's servant in a shabby livery opened the drawing-room door for her. He was not a picturesque servitor of fallen fortunes, but an awkward person who was not accustomed to his duties. Betty wondered if he had been called in from the gardens to meet the necessities of the moment. His furtive glance at the tall young woman who passed him took in with sudden embarrassment the fact that she plainly did not belong to the dispirited world bounded by Stornham Court. Without sparkling gems or trailing richness in her wake she was suggestively splendid. He did not know whether it was her hair or the build of her neck and shoulders that did it, but it was revealed to him that tiaras and collars of stones which blazed belonged without doubt to her equipment. He recalled that there was a legend to the effect that the present Lady Anstruthers, who looked like a rag doll, had been the daughter of a rich American, and that better things might have been expected of her if she had not been such a poor-spirited creature. If this was her sister she perhaps was a young woman of fortune, and that she was not of poor spirit was plain. The large drawing-room presented but another aspect of the banness of the rest of the house. In times, probably long past, possibly in the dowager Lady Anstruthers' early years of marriage, the walls had been hung with white and gold paper of a pattern which dominated the scene and had been furnished with gilded chairs, tables, and ottomans. Some of these lasts had evidently been removed as they became too much out of repair for use or ornament. Such as remained, tarnished as to gilding and worn in the matter of upholstery, stood sparsely scattered on a desert of carpet whose huge flowered medallions had faded almost from view. Lady Anstruthers, looking shy and awkward as she fingered an ornament on a small table, seemed singularly a part of her background. Her evening dress, slipping off her thin shoulders, was as faded and out of date as her carpet. It had once been delicately blue and gauzy, but its gauziness hung in crushed folds, and its blue was almost grey. It was also the dress of a girl, not that of a colourless, worn woman, and her consciousness of its unfitness showed in her small featured face as she came forward. Do you recognise it, Betty? she asked hesitatingly. It was one of my New York dresses. I put it on because—because—and her stammering ended helplessly. Because you wanted to remind me, Betty said. If she felt it easier to begin with an excuse, she should be provided with one. Perhaps but for this readiness to fall into any tone she chose to adopt, Rosie might have endeavoured to carry her poor farce on. But as it was, she suddenly gave it up. I put it on because I have no other, she said. We never have visitors, and I haven't dressed for dinner for so long that I seem to have nothing left that is fit to wear. I dragged this out because it was better than anything else. It was pretty once—she gave a little laugh—twelve years ago. How long years seem! Was I—was I pretty, Betty, twelve years ago? Twelve years is not such a long time. Betty took her hand and drew her to a sofa. Let us sit down and talk about it. There is nothing much to talk about. This is it. Taking in the room with the wave of her hand. I am it. Utrecht is it. Then let us talk about England, was Bettina's light skim over the thin ice. A red spot grew on each of Lady Anstra's cheekbones and made her faded eyes look intense. Let us talk about America. Her little birdclaw of a hand, clinging feverishly, is New York still—still? It is still there, Betty answered with one of the adorable smiles which showed a deep dimple near her lip. But it is much nearer England than it used to be. Nearer? The hand tightened as Rosie caught her breath. Betty bent rather suddenly and kissed her. It was the easiest way of hiding the look she knew had risen to her eyes. She began to talk gaily, half laughingly. It's quite nearer, she said. Don't you realize it? American swoop over here by thousands every year. They come for business, they come for pleasure, they come for rest. They cannot keep away. They come to buy and sell pictures and books and luxuries and lands. They come to give and take. They are building a bridge from shore to shore of their work and their thoughts and their plannings out of the lives and souls of them. It'll be a great bridge, and great things will pass over it. She kissed the faded cheek again. She wanted to sweep Rosie away from the dreariness of it. Lady Anstruthers looked at her with faintly smiling eyes. She didn't follow all this quite readily, but she felt pleased and vaguely comforted. I know how they come here and marry, she said. The new Duchess of Downs is an American. She has a fortune of two million pounds. If she chooses to rebuild a great house and a great name, said Betty, lifting her shoulders lightly, why not, if it's an honest bargain? I suppose it's part of the building of the bridge. Little Lady Anstruthers, trying to pull up the sleeves of the gauzy body, slipping off her small sharp bones, stared at a half in wondering adoration, half in alarm. Betty, you are so handsome and so clever and strange, she fluttered. Oh, Betty, stand up so that I can see how tall and handsome you are. Betty did as she was told, and upon her feet she was a young woman of long lines and fine curves, so inspiring to behold, that Lady Anstruthers clasped her hands together on her knees in an excited gesture. Oh, yes, oh, yes, she cried. You're just as wonderful as you looked when I turned and saw you under the trees. You almost make me feel afraid. Because I'm wonderful, said Betty, then I will not be wonderful any more. It's not because I think you're wonderful, but because other people will. Would you rebuild a great house, hesitatingly? The fine line of Betty's black brows do itself slightly together. No, she said. Wouldn't you? How could the man who owned it persuade me that he was in earnest if he said he loved me? How could I persuade him that I was worth caring for, not a mere ambitious fool? There would be too much against us. Against you, repeated Lady Anstruthers. I don't say I'm fair, said Betty. People who are proud are often not fair, but we should both of us have seen and known too much. You have seen me now, said Lady Anstruthers in her listless voice, and at the same moment dinner was announced and she got up from the sofa so that luckily there was no time for the impersonal answer it would have been difficult to invent at a moment's notice. As they went into the dining room, Betty was thinking restlessly. She remembered all the material she had collected during her education in France and Germany, and there was added to it the fact that she had seen Rosie, and having her before her eyes, she felt that there was small prospect of her contemplating the rebuilding of any great house requiring reconstruction. There was fine panelling in the dining room and a great fireplace and a few family portraits. The service upon the table was shabby, and the dinner was not a bounteous meal. Lady Anstruthers in her girlish, gauzy dress and looking too small for her big, high-backed chair tried to talk rapidly, and every few minutes forgot herself and sank into silence with her eyes unconsciously fixed upon her sister's face. Utrid watched Betty also and with a hungry questioning. The man's servant in the worn livery was not as efficiently well trained and experienced domestic to make any effort to keep his eyes from her. He was young enough to be excited by an innovation so unusual as the presence of a young and beautiful person surrounded by an unmistakable atmosphere of ease and fearlessness. He had been talking of her below stairs and felt that he had failed in describing her. He had found himself barely supported by the suggestion of a housemaid that sometimes these dresses that looked plain had been made in Paris at expensive places and had cost a lot. He furtively examined the dress which looked plain, and while he admitted that for some mysterious reason it might represent expensiveness, it was not the dress which was the secret of the effect, but a something not altogether mere good looks expressed by the wearer. It was, in fact, the thing which the second-class passenger Salter had been at once attracted and stirred to rebellion by when Miss Vanderpool came on board the Maridiana. Betty did not look too small for her high-backed chair, and she did not forget herself when she talked. In spite of all she had found, her imagination was stirred by the surroundings. Her sense of the fine spaces and possibilities of dignity in the Baron House, her knowledge that outside the windows there lay stretched broad views of the park and its heavy branched trees, and that outside the gates stood the neglected picturesqueness of the village in all the rural and to her interesting life it slowly lived, this pleased and attracted her. If she had been as helpless and discouraged as Rosalie, she could see that it would all have meant a totally different and depressing thing, but strong and spirited, and with the power of full hands she was remotely rejoicing in what might be done with it all. As she talked she was gradually learning detail. Sir Nigel was on the Continent, apparently he often went there. Also it revealed itself that no one knew at what moment he might return, for what reason he would return, or if he would return at all during the summer. It was evident that no one had been at any time encouraged to ask questions as to his intentions or to feel that they had a right to do so. This she knew and a number of other things before they left the table. When they did so they went out to stroll upon the moss-grown stone terrace and listened to the nightingale throwing into the air silver fountains of chilling song. When Bettina paused leaning against the balustrade of the terrace that she might hear all the beauty of it and feel all the beauty of the warm spring night, Rosalie went on making her effort to talk. It's not much of a neighbourhood, Betty, she said. You're too accustomed to livelier places to like it. That is my reason for feeling that I shall like it. I don't think I could be called a lively person, and I rather hate lively places. But you are accustomed—accustomed, Rosie hocked back, uncertainly. I have been accustomed to wishing I could come to you, said Betty, and now I am here. Lady Anstruthers laid a hand on her dress. I can't believe it, I can't believe it, she breathed. You will believe it, said Betty, drawing the hand around her waist and enclosing in her own arm the narrow shoulders. Tell me about the neighbourhood. There isn't any really, said Lady Anstruthers. The houses are so far away from each other. The nearest is six miles from here, and it is one that doesn't count. Why? There is no family, and the man who owns it is so poor. It's a big place, but it's falling to pieces as this is. What is it called? Mount Dunstan. The present Earl only succeeded about three years ago. Nigel doesn't know him. He's queer and not liked. He's been away. Where? No one knows. To Australia or somewhere, he has odd ideas. The Mount Dunstan's have been awful people for two generations. This man's father was almost mad with wickedness. So was the elder son. This is the second son, and he came into nothing but debt. Perhaps he feels the disgrace, and it makes him rude and ill-tempered. His father and elder brother had been in such scandals that people did not invite them. Do they invite this man? No, he probably wouldn't go to their houses if they did, and he went away soon after he came into the title. Is the place beautiful? There's a fine deer park, and the gardens were wonderful a long time ago. The house is worth looking at outside. I will go and look at it, said Betty. The carriage is out of order. There is only Uhtred's cart. I'm a good walker, said Betty. Are you? It would be twelve miles there and back. When I was in New York, people didn't walk much, particularly girls. They do now, Betty answered. They have learned to do it in England. They live out of doors and play games. They have grown athletic and tall. As they talk, the nightingales sang, sometimes near, sometimes in the distance, and sense of dewy grass and leaves and earth were wafted towards them. Sometimes they stalled up and down the terrace, sometimes they paused and leaned against the stone balustrade. Betty allowed Rosie to talk as she chose. She herself asked no obviously leading questions, and passed over trying moments with likeness. Her desire was to place herself in a position where she might hear the things which would aid her to draw conclusions. Lady Amstrad thus gradually grew less nervous and afraid of her subjects. In the wonder of the luxury of talking to someone who listened with sympathy, she once or twice almost forgot herself and made revelations she had not intended to make. She had often the manner of a person who was afraid of being overheard. Sometimes, even when she was making speeches quite simple in themselves, her voice dropped and she glanced furtively aside, as if there were chances that something she dreaded might step out of the shadow. When they went upstairs together and parted for the night, the clinging of Rosie's embrace was for a moment almost convulsive, but she tried to laugh off its suggestion of intensity. I held you tight so that I could feel sure you were real and would not melt away, she said. I hope you will be here in the morning. I shall never really go quite away again now I have come," Betty answered. It is not only your house I have come to, I have come back into your life. After she had entered her room and locked the door, she sat down and wrote a letter to her father. It was a long letter, but a clear one. She painted a definite and detailed picture and made distinct her chief point. She is afraid of me, she wrote. That is the first and worst obstacle. She is actually afraid that I will do something which will only add to her trouble. She has lived under dominion so long that she has forgotten that there are people who have no reason to fear. Her old life seems nothing but a dream. The first thing I must teach her is that I am to be trusted not to do futile things and that she need neither be afraid of nor for me. After writing these sentences, she found herself leaving her desk and walking up and down the room to relieve herself. She could not sit still because suddenly the blood ran fast and hot through her veins. She put her hands against her cheeks and laughed a little low laugh. I feel violent, she said. I feel violent and I must get over it. This is rage. Rage is worth nothing. It was rage. The rage of splendid hot blood which surged in answer to leaping hot thoughts. There would have been a sort of luxury in giving way to the sway of it, but the self-indulgence would have been no aid to future action. Rage was worth nothing. She said it as the first Ruben van der Poel might have said of a useless but glittering weapon. This gun is worth nothing and cast it aside. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Of The Shuttle This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chapter 14 In The Gardens She came out upon the stone terrace again rather early in the morning. She wanted to wander about in the first freshness of the day which was always an uplifting thing to her. She wanted to see the dew on the grass and on the ragged flower borders and to hear the tender broken fluting of the birds in the trees. One cuckoo was calling to another in the park and she stopped and listened intently. Until yesterday she had never heard a cuckoo call and its hollow mellowness gave her delight. It meant the spring in England and nowhere else. There was space enough to ramble about in the gardens. Baths and beds were alike overgrown with weeds, but some strong early blooming things were fighting for life, refusing to be strangled. Against the beautiful old red walls over which age it's stolen with a wonderful grey bloom, venerable fruit trees were spread and nailed, and here and there showed bloom. Clumps of low-growing things sturdily advanced their yellowness or whiteness as if defying neglect. In one place a wall slanted and threatened to fall, bearing its nectron trees with it. In another there was a gap so evidently not of today that the heap of its masonry upon the border bed was already covered with greenery and the roots of the fruit tree it had supported had sent up strong insistent shoots. She passed down broad paths and narrow ones, sometimes walking under trees, sometimes pushing her way between encroaching shrubs. She descended delightful mossy and broken steps and came upon dilapidated urns in which weeds grew instead of flowers and over which rampant but lovely, savage little creepers clambered and clung. In one of the walled kitchen gardens she came upon an elderly gardener at work. At the sound of her approaching steps he glanced around and then stood up, touching his forelock in respectful but startled salute. He was so plainly amazed at the sight of her that she explained herself. Good morning, she said. I am her ladyship's sister, Ms. Vanderpool. I came yesterday evening. I'm looking over your gardens." He touched his forehead again and looked around him. His manner was not cheerful. He cast a troubled eye about him. They're not much to see, miss, he said. They ought to be, but they're not. Growing things thus to be fed and took care of. A man and a boy can't do it. Oh, yet four or five of them. How many ought there to be, Betty inquired with business-like directness. It was not only the dew on the grass she had come out to see. If there was eight or ten of us we might put it in order and keep it that way. It's a big place, miss. Betty looked about her as he had done but with less discouraged eye. It's a beautiful place as well as a large one, she said. I can see that there ought to be more workers. As no one, said the gardener, as it has as many enemies as a gardener, and as many things to fight. This crubs in his green fly and his drought and wet and cold and mildew, and is what the soil wants and staffs without, and if you haven't got it, nor your hands and feet and tools enough, has things to feed and fight and live, let alone bloom and bear. I don't know much about gardens, said miss Vanderpool, but I can understand that. The scent of fresh-bedewed things was in the air. It was true that she had not known much about gardens, but here, standing in the midst of one, she began to awaken to a new practical interest. A creature of initiative could not let such a place as this alone. It was beauty being slowly slain. One could not pass it by and do nothing. What is your name? she asked. Gage has missed. I've only been here about a twelve months. I was took on because I'm getting on in years and can't ask much wage. Can you spare time to take me through the gardens and show me things? Yes, he could do it. In truth, he privately welcomed an opportunity offering a prospect of excitement so novel. He had shown more flourishing gardens to other young ladies in his past years of service, but young ladies did not come to storn them, and that one having, with such extraordinary unexpectedness arrived, should want to look over the desolation of these, was curious enough to rouse any one to a sense of a break in a custom monotony. The young lady herself mystified him by her difference from such others as he had seen. What the man in the shabby livery had felt he felt also, and added to this was a sense of the practicalness of the question she asked and the interest she showed, and a way she had of seeming singularly to suggest by the look in her eyes and the tone of her voice that nothing was necessarily without remedy. When her ladyship walked through the place and looked at things, a pale resignation expressed itself in the very droop of her figure. When this one walked through the tumbledown grapehouses, potting sheds and conservatories, she saw where glass was broken, where benches had fallen, and where roofs sagged and leaked. She inquired about the heating apparatus and asked that she might see it. She asked about the village and its resources, about labourers and their wages. As if, commented Kedges mentally, she was what so Nigel is, least ways what he ought to be innate. She led the way back to the fallen wall and stood and looked at it. It's a beautiful old wall, she said. It should be rebuilt with the old brick, new would spoil it. Some of this is broken and crumbled away, said Kedges, picking up a piece to show it to her. Perhaps old brick could be brought somewhere, replied the young lady speculatively. One ought to be able to buy old brick in England, if one is willing to pay for it. Kedges scratched his head and gazed at her in respectful wonder, which was almost trouble. Who was going to pay for things, and who was going to look for things, which were not on the spot? Enterprise like this was not to be explained. When she left him, he stood and watched her upright figure disappear through the ivy-grown door of the kitchen gardens, with a disturbed but elated expression on his countenance. He did not know why he felt elated, but he was conscious of elation. Something new had walked into the place. He stopped his work and grinned and scratched his head several times after he went back to his pottering among the cabbage plants. My word, he muttered, she's a fine straight young woman. If she was a ladyship things would be different. Sir Nigel would be different, too, or there'd be some fine upsets. There was a huge stable-yard, and Betty passed through that on her way back. The door of the carriage-house was open, and she saw two or three tumbled-down vehicles. One was a land-door with a wheel-off, one was a shabby old-fashioned low fair-ton. She'd caught sight of a patently venerable cob in one of the stables. The stalls near him were empty. I suppose that is all they have to depend on, she thought, and the stables are like the gardens. She found Lady Anstruthers and Uthrid waiting for her upon the terrace, each of them regarding her with an expression suggestive of repressed curiosity as she approached. Lady Anstruthers flushed a little and went to meet her with an eager kiss. You look like—I don't quite know what you look like, Betty, she exclaimed. The girl stimpled deepened, and her eyes said smiling things. It's the morning, and your gardens, she answered, I have been around your gardens. They were beautiful once, I suppose, said Rosie deprecatingly. They are beautiful now—there's nothing like them in America, at least. I don't remember any gardens in America, Lady Anstruthers owned reluctantly, but everything seemed so cheerful and well cared for and new. Don't laugh, Betty, I have begun to like new things. You would, if you had watched old ones tumbling to pieces for twelve years. They ought not to be allowed to tumble to pieces, said Betty. She added her next words with simple directness, she could only discover how any advancing steps would be taken by taking them. Why do you love them to do it? Lady Anstruthers looked away, but as she looked her eyes past Uthrid's. I, she said, there are so many other things to do, it would cost so much, such an enormity to keep it all in order. But it ought to be done for Uthrid's sake. I know that, faltered Rosie, but I can't help it. You can, answered Betty, and you put her arm around her as they turned to enter the house. When you have become more used to me in my driving American ways, I will show you how. The likeness with which she said it had an old effect on Lady Anstruthers, such casual readiness was so full of the suggestion of unheard possibilities that it was a kind of shock. I've been twelve years in getting unused to you. I feel as if it would take twelve years more to get used again, she said. It won't take twelve weeks, said Betty. End of Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen of the Shuttle The mystery of the apparently occult methods of communication among the natives between whom it is said news flies by means too strange and subtle to be humanly explainable is no more difficult a problem to solve than that of the lightning rapidity with which a knowledge of the transpiring of any new local event darts through the slowest, and as far as outward signs go, the least communicative English village slumbering drowsily among its pastures and trees. That which the Hall or Manor House believed last night, known only to the four walls of its drawing-room, is discussed over the cottage breakfast tables as though presented in detail through the columns of the morning post. The vicarage, the smithy, the post office, the little provision shop are instantaneously informed as if by magic of such incidents of interest as occur, and are prepared to assist vicariously in any future developments. Through what agency information is given no one can tell, and indeed the agency is of small moment. Facts of interest are perhaps like flights of swallows, and dart chattering from one red roof to another, proclaiming themselves aloud. Nothing is so true as that in such villages they are the property and innocent playthings of man, woman, and child, providing conversation and drama otherwise likely to be lacked. When Miss Vanderpool walked through Stornham Village Street, she became aware that she was an exciting object of interest. Faces appeared at cottage windows, women sauntered to doors, men in the taproom of the clock-in left beer mugs to cast an eye on her. Children pushed open gates instead as they bobbed their curtsies. The young woman who kept the shop left her counter and came out upon her doorstep to pick up her straying baby and glance over at shoulder at the face with the red mouth and the massive black hair rolled upward under a rough blue straw hat. Everyone knew who this exotic-looking young lady was. She had arrived yesterday from London and a week ago by means of a ship from far away America, from the country in connection with which the rural mind curiously mixed up large wages, great fortunes, and Indians. George Lundston, having spent five years of his youth labouring heavily for sixteen shillings a week, had gone to America and had earned there eight shillings a day. This was a well-known and much talked-over fact, and had elevated the western continent to a position of trust and importance it had seriously lacked before the emigration of Lundston. A place where a man could earn eight shillings a day inspired interest as well as confidence. When Sir Nigel's wife had arrived twelve years ago as the new lady and Struthers, the story that she herself had money had been verified by her fine clothes and her way of handing out sovereigns in cases where the rest of the gentry, if they gave it tall, would have bestowed tea and flannel or shillings. There had been for a few months a period of unheard of well-being in Stornham Village. Everyone remembered the hundred pounds the bride had given to Paul Wilson when his place had burned down, but the village had, of course, learned by its occult means that Sir Nigel and the dowager had been angry and that there had been a quarrel. Afterwards her ladyship had been dangerously ill, the baby had been born a hunchback, and a year had passed before its mother had been seen again. Since then she had been a changed creature, she had lost her looks and seemed to care for nothing but the child. Stornham Village saw next to nothing of her, and it certainly was not she who had the dispensing of her fortune. Rumour said Sir Nigel lived high in London and foreign parts, but there was no high living at the court. Her ladyship's family had never been near her, and belief in them and their wealth almost ceased to exist. If they were rich, Stornham felt that it was their business to mend roofs and windows and not allow chimneys and kitchen-boilers to fall into ruin. The simple leading article of faith being that even American money belonged properly to England. As Miss Vanderpool walked at a light-swinging pace through the One Village Street, the gazes felt with cages that something new was passing and stirring the atmosphere. She looked straight and with a friendliness somehow dominating at the curious women. Her handsome eyes met those of the men in a human questioning. She smiled and nodded to the bobbing children. One of these, young enough to be uncertain on its feet, in running to join some others, stumbled and fell on the path before her. Opening its mouth in the inevitable resultant roar, it was shocked almost into silence by the tall young lady stooping at once, picking it up and cheerfully dusting its pinnifor. Don't cry, she said, you're not hurt, you know. The deep dimple near her mouth showed itself, and the laugh in her eyes was so reassuring that the penny she put into the grubby hand was less productive of effect than her mere self. She walked on leaving the group staring after her breathless because of a sense of having met with a wonderful adventure. The grand young lady with the black hair and the blue hat and tall straight body was the adventure. She left the same sense of event with the village itself. They talked of her all day over their garden palings on their doorsteps in the street of her looks, of her height, of the black room of latches around her eyes, of the chance that she might be rich and ready to give half-prounds and sovereigns of the miracle she had come from, and above all of the reason for her coming. Petty swung with the light firm step of a good walker out onto the highway. To walk upon the fine smooth old Roman road was a pleasure in itself, but she soon struck away from it and went through lanes and byways, following signposts, because she knew where she was going. Her walk was to take her to Mount Dunstan and home again by another road. In walking an objective point forms an interest, and what she had heard of the estate from Rosalie was a vague reason for her caring to see it. It was another place like Stornham, one stignified and nobly representative of fine things, now losing their meanings and values. Values and meanings other than mere signs of wealth and power there had been. Centuries ago strong creatures had planned and built it for such reasons as strength has for planning and building. In Bettina Vanderpool's imagination the first man held powerful and moving sway. It was he whom she always saw. In history as a child at school she had understood and drawn close to him. There was always a first man behind all that one saw or was told, one who was the fighter, the human thing who snatched weapons and tools from stones and trees and wielded them in the carrying out of the thought which was his possession and his strength. He was the God-made human, others waited without knowledge of their waiting for the signal he gave. A man like others with a man's body, hands and limbs and eyes, the moving of a whole world was subtly altered by his birth. One could not always trace him, but with stone-axe and spear-point he had won savage lands in savage ways, and so ruled them that leaving them to other hands their march towards less savage life could not stay itself, but must sweep on. Others of his kind, striking rude hops, had so sung that the loud clearness of their wild songs had rung through the ages and echo still in strains which are theirs, though voices of to-day repeat the note of them. The first man of Britain, stained with woad and hung with skins, had tilled the luscious greenness of the lands richly rolling now within hedge boundaries. The square church-towers rose holding their slender corn aspires above the trees as a result of the first man Norman William. The thought which held its place, the work which did not pass away, had paid its first man wages. But beauties crumbling, homes falling to waste were bitter things. The first man, who having won his splendid acres, had built his home upon them and reared his young, and passed his possession on with a proud heart, seemed but ill treated. Through centuries the home had enriched itself, the acres had borne harvests, the trees had grown and spread huge branches. Full lives had been lived within the embrace of the massive walls. There had been loves and lives, and marriages and births. The breathings of them made warm and full the very air. To Betty it seemed that the land itself would have worn another face, if it had not been trodden by so many springing feet, if so many harvests had not waved above it, if so many eyes had not looked upon and loved it. She passed through variations of the rural loveliness she had seen on her way from the station to the court, and felt them growing beauty as she saw them again. She came at last to a village somewhat larger than Stornham, and marked by the signs of the lack of money-spending care which Stornham showed. Just beyond its limits a big park gate opened on to an avenue of massive trees. She stopped and looked down it, but could see nothing but its curves, and under the branches glimpses of a spacious sweep of park, with other trees standing in groups or alone on the sword. The avenue was unswept and untended, and here and there boughs broken off by wind. Storms lay upon it. She turned to the road again and followed it, because it enclosed the park and she wanted to see more of its evident beauty. It was very beautiful. As she walked on she saw it rolled into woods and deeps filled with bracken. She saw stretches of hilly-key fine-grasped rabbit-warren and hollows holding shadowy pools. She caught the gleam of a lake with swans sailing slowly upon it with curved necks. There were wonderful lights and wonderful shadows, and brooding stillness, which made her footfall upon the road a too material thing. Suddenly she heard a stirring in the bracken a yard or two away from her. Something was moving slowly among the waving masses of huge fronds and caused them to sway to and fro. It was an antlered stag who rose from his bed in the midst of them, and with majestic deliberation got upon his feet and stood gazing at her with a calmness of pose so splendid and a liquid darkness and lustre of eyes so stilly and fearlessly beautiful that she caught her breath. He simply gazed at her, as a great king might gaze at an intruder, scarcely deigning wonder. As she had passed on her way Betty had seen that the enclosing park palings were decaying, covered was lichen and falling at intervals. It had even passed through her mind that here was one of the demands for expenditure on a larger state which limited resources could not confront with composure. The dear fence itself, a thing of wire ten feet high to form an obstacle to leaps, she had marked to be in such condition as to threaten to become shortly a useless thing. Until this moment she had seen no dear but looking beyond the stag and across the sword she now saw groups near each other, stags cropping or looking towards her with lifted heads, doze at a respectful but affectionate distance from them, some caring for their fawns. The stag who had risen near her had merely walked through a gap in the boundary and now stood free to go where he would. He will get away, said Betty, knitting her black brows. Ah, what a shame! Even with the best intentions one could not give chase to a stag. She looked up and down the road, but no one was within sight. Her brows continued to knit themselves, and her eyes ranged over the park itself in the hope that some labourer on the estate, some woodman or game-keeper, might be about. It's no affair of mine, she said, but it would be too bad to let him get away, although what happens to stray stags one doesn't exactly know. As she said it she caught sight of someone, a man in leggings and shabby clothes, and with a gun over his shoulder, evidently an under-keeper. He was big, rather rough-looking fellow, but as he lurched out into the open from a wood, Betty saw that she could reach him if she passed through a narrow gate a few yards away and walked quickly. He was slouching along, his head drooping and his broad shoulders expressing the definite antipodes of good spirits. Betty studied his back as she strode after him, her conclusion being that he was perhaps not a good human man to approach it any time, and this was by ill luck one of his less fortunate hours. Wait a moment, if you please. Her clear mellow voice flung out after him when she was within hearing distance. I want to speak to you, keeper. He turned with an air of far from pleased surprise. The afternoon sun was in his eyes and made him scowl. For a moment he did not see distinctly who was approaching him, but he had at once recognized a certain cool tone of command in the voice whose suddenness had roused him from a black mood. A few steps brought them to close quarters, and when he found himself looking into the eyes of his pursuer, he made a movement as if to lift his cap, then checking himself touched it, keeper fashion. Oh! he said shortly. Miss Vanderpool, beg pardon. Bettina stood still a second. She had her surprise also. Here was the unexpected again. The underkeeper was the red-haired second-class passenger of the meridiana. He did not look pleased to see her, and the suddenness of his appearance excluded the possibility of her realizing that upon the whole she was at least not displeased to see him. How do you do? she said, filling the remark fantastically conventional, but not being inspired by any alternative. I came to tell you that one of the stags has got through a gap in the fence. Damn! she heard him say under his breath, aloud, he said. Thank you. He's a splendid creature, she said. I did not know what to do. I was glad to see a keeper coming. Thank you, he said again, and stood towards the place where the stag still stood gazing up the road, as if reflecting as to whether it allured him or not. Bettina walked back more slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, and he put his hand in the pocket of his rough coat and gave it something to eat. Afterwards he went to the gap in the fence and drew the wires together, fastening them with other wire which he also took out of the coat pocket. He's not afraid of making himself useful, thought Betty, and the animals know him. He's not as bad as he looks. She lingered a moment watching him, and then walked towards the gate through which she had entered. He glanced up as she neared him. I don't see your carriage, he said. Your man is probably around the trees. I walked, answered Betty. I had heard of this place and wanted to see it. He stood up, putting his wire back into his pocket. There's not much to be seen from the road, he said. Would you like to see more of it? His manner was civil enough, but not the correct one for a servant. He did not say miss or touch his cap in making the suggestion. Betty hesitated a moment. As the family at home, she inquired. There is no family, but his lordship is off the place. Does he object to trespassers? Not if they're respectable and take no liberties. I am respectable, and I shall not take liberties, said Miss Vanderpool with the touch of her turd. The truth was that she had spent a sufficient number of years on the Continent to have become familiar with conventions which led her not to approve wholly of his bearing. Perhaps he had lived long enough in America to forget such conventions and to lack something which centuries of custom had decided should belong to his class. A certain suggestion of rough force in the man rather attracted her, and a slight distaste for his manner arose from the realization that a gentleman's servant who did not address his superior as was required by custom was not doing his work in a finished way—in his place she knew her own demeanor would have been finished. If you are sure that Lord Mount Dunstan would not object to my walking about, I should like very much to see the gardens and the house, she said. If you show them to me shall I be interfering with your duties? No, he answered, and then for the first time rather glumly added, Miss. I am interested, she said, as they crossed the grass together, because places like this are quite new to me. I have never been in England before. There are not many places like this, he answered. Not many as old and fine, and not many as nearly gone to ruin. Even Stornham is not quite as far gone. It is far gone, said Miss Vanderpool. I am staying there with my sister, Lady Ann Struthers. Beg pardon, Miss, he said. This time he touched his cap in apology. Enormous as the gulf between their positions was, he knew that he had offered to take her over the place because he was, in a sense, glad to see her again. Why, he was glad, he did not profess to know, or even to ask himself. Coarsely speaking, it might be because she was one of the handsomest young women he had ever chance to meet with, and while her youth was apparent in the rich red of her mouth, the mass of her thick, soft hair, and the splendid blue of her eyes, there spoke in every line of face and pose something intensely more interesting and compelling than goal-hood. Also, since the night there had come together on the ship's deck for an appalling moment, he had liked her better and rebelled less against the unnatural wealth she represented. He led her first to the wood from which she had seen him emerge. I will show you this first, he explained. Keep your eyes on the ground until I tell you to raise them. Odd as this was, she obeyed, and her lower glance showed her that she was being guided along a narrow path between trees. The light was mellow golden green, and birds were singing in the boughs above her. In a few minutes he stopped. Now, look up, he said. She uttered an exclamation when she did so. She was in a fairy dell thick with ferns, and at beautiful distances from each other, incredibly splendid oaks spread and almost trailed their lovely giant branches. The glow shining through and between them, the shadows beneath them, their great bowls and moss-covered roots, and the stately mellow distances revealed under their branches, the ancient wildness and richness which meant after all centuries of cultivation made a picture in this exact perfect moment of ripening afternoon sun of an almost unbelievable beauty. There is nothing lovelier, he said in a low voice, in all England. Bettina turned to look at him because his tone was a curious one for a man like himself. He was standing, resting on his gun and taking in the loveliness with a strange look in his rugged face. You, you love it, she said. Yes, but with suggestion of stubborn reluctance in the admission, she was rather moved. Have you been keeper here long, she asked? No, only a few years, but I've known the place all my life. Does Lord Mount Dunstan love it? In his way, yes. He was plainly not disposed to talk of his master. He was perhaps not on particularly good terms with him. He led her away and volunteered no further information. He was upon the whole uncommunicative. He did not once refer to the circumstance of their having met before. It was plain that he had no intention of presuming upon the fact that he, as a second-class passenger on a ship, had once been forced by accident across the barriers between himself and the saloon deck. He was stubbornly resolved to keep his place, so stubbornly the patina felt that to broach the subject herself would verge upon offence. But the golden ways through which he led her made the afternoon one she knew she should never forget. They wandered through moss walks and alleys, through tangled shrubberies bursting into bloom, beneath avenues of blossoming horse-chestnuts and centred limes, between thickets of budding red and white may, and jungles of neglected rhododendrons, through sunken gardens and walled ones, past terraces with broken balustrades of stone and fallen flores and dianas, past moss-grown fountains splashing in lovely corners, arches overgrown with yet unblooming roses crumbled in their time-stained beauty. Stillness brooded over it all, and they met no one. They scarcely broke the silence themselves. The man led the way as one who knew it by heart, and patina followed, not caring for speech herself, because the stillness seemed to add a spell of enchantment. What could one say to a stranger of such beauty so lost and given over to ruin and decay? But, oh! she murmured once standing still with in-drawn breath, if it were mine, if it were mine. And she said the thing forgetting that her guide was a living creature and stood near. Afterwards her memories of it all seemed to her like the memories of a dream. The lack of speech between herself and the man who led her is often averted face, her own sense of the desertedness of each beautyous spot she passed through. The mossy paths which gave back no sound of footfalls as they walked, suggested one and all unreality. When at last they passed through a door half hidden in an ivied wall, and crossing a grass-bowling green mounted a short flight of broken steps which led them to a point through which they saw the house through a break in the trees, this last was the final touch of all. It was a great place, stately in its masses of gray stone, to which thick ivy clung. To patina it seemed that a hundred windows stared at her with closed, blind eyes. All were shuttered but two or three on the lower floors. Not one showed signs of life. The silent stone things stood sightless among all of which it was dead master, rolling acres, great trees, lost gardens, and deserted groves. Oh! she sighed. Oh! her companion stood still and leaned upon his gun again, looking as he had looked before. Some of it, he said, was here before the conquest. It belonged to Mount Dunstan's then. And only one of them is left, she cried, and it is like this. There have been a bad lot the last hundred years was the surly liberty of speech he took, a bad lot. It was not his place to speak in such manner of those of his master's house, and it was not the part of Miss Vanderpool to encourage him by response. She remained silent, standing perhaps a trifle more lightly erect, as she gazed at the rows of blind windows in silence. Neither of them uttered a word for some time, but at length patina roused herself. She had a six-mile walk before her and must go. I am very much obliged to you, she began, and then paused a second. A curious hesitance came upon her, though she knew that under ordinary circumstances such hesitation would have been totally out of place. She had occupied the man's time for an hour or more. He was of the working class, and one must not be guilty of the error of imagining that a man who has worked to do can justly spend his time in one service for the mere pleasure of it. She knew what Custom demanded. Why should she hesitate before this man with his not too courteous surly face? She felt slightly irritated by her own unpractical embarrassment as she put her hand into the small latched bag at her belt. I am very much obliged, Keeper, she said. You have given me a great deal of your time. You know the place so well that it has been a pleasure to be taken about by you. I have never seen anything so beautiful and so sad. Thank you, thank you." And she put a gold piece in his palm. His fingers closed over it quietly. Why it was to her great relief she did not know, because something in the simple act annoyed her, even while she congratulated herself that her hesitance had been absurd. The next moment she wondered if it could be possible that he had expected a larger fee. He opened his hand and looked at the money with a grim steadiness. Thank you, Miss, he said, and touched his cap in the proper manner. He did not look gracious or grateful, but he began to put it in a small pocket in the breast of his worn corduroy shooting-jacket. Suddenly he stopped as if with abrupt resolve. He handed the coin back without any change in his glum look. Hang at all, he said. I can't take this, you know. I suppose I ought to have told you. It would have been less awkward for us both. I am that unfortunate beggar Mount Dunstan myself. Her pause was inevitable. It was a rather long one. After it, Betty took back her half-sovereign and returned it to her bag, but she pleased a certain perversity in him by looking more annoyed than confused. Yes, she said, you ought to have told me, Lord Mount Dunstan. He slightly shrugged his big shoulders. Why shouldn't you take me for a keeper? You crossed the Atlantic with a fourth-rate-looking fellow separated from you by barriers of wood and iron. You came upon him tramping over a nobleman's estate in shabby corduroy's and gators, with a gun over his shoulder and a scowl on his ugly face. Why should you leap to the conclusion that he is the belted earl himself? There's no cause for embarrassment. I'm not embarrassed, said Bettina. That is what I like, gruffly. I'm pleased in her mellowest velvet voice that you like it. Their eyes met with a singular directness of gaze. Between them a spark passed which was not afterwards to be extinguished, though neither of them knew the moment of its kindling, and Mount Dunstan slightly frowned. I beg pardon, he said, you are quite right. It had a ducidly patronising sound. As he stood before her, Bettie was given her opportunity to see him as she had not seen him before, to confront the sum total of his physique. His red-brown eyes looked out from rather fine, heavy brows. His features were strong and clear, though ruggedly cut. His build showed weight of bone, not of flesh, and his limbs were big and long. He would have wielded a battleaxe with power in centuries in which men hewed their way with them. Also it occurred to her he would have looked well in a coat of mail. He did not look ill in his corduroy's and gaiters. I myself absorbed beggar he went on. I had been slouching about to place, almost driven mad, by my thoughts, and when I saw you took me for a servant my fancy was for letting the thing go on. If I had been a rich man instead of a pauper I would have kept your half-sovereign. I should not have enjoyed that when I found out the truth, said Miss Vanderpool. No, I suppose you wouldn't, but I should not have cared. He was looking at her straightly and summing her up as she had summed him up. A man and young, he did not miss a line or a tint of her chin or cheek, shoulder or brow, or dense uplifted hair. He had already, even in his guise of keeper, noticed one thing, which was that while at times her eyes were the blue of steel, sometimes they melted to the colour of blue-bells under water. There had been of this last hue when she had stood in the sunken garden, forgetting him and crying low, oh, if it were mine, if it were mine. He did not like American women with millions, but while he would not have said that he liked her, he did not wish her yet to move away. And she too did not wish just yet to move away. There was something dramatic and absorbing in the situation. She looked over the softly stirring grass and saw the sunshine was deepening its gold and the shadows were growing long. It was not a habit of hers to ask questions, but she asked one. Did you not like America? was what she said. Hated it, hated it. I went there lured by a belief that a man like myself with muscle and will, even without experience, could make a fortune out of small capital on a sheep-branch. Wind and weather and disease played the devil with me. I lost the little I had and came back to begin over again on nothing here. And he waved his hand over the park with its ward and coppers and bracken and the deer cropping in the late afternoon gold. To begin what again, said Betty, it was an extraordinary enough thing seen in the light of conventions that they should stand and talk like this. But the spark had kindled between eye and eye, and because of it they suddenly had forgotten that they were strangers. You are an American, so it may not seem as mad to you as it would to others. To begin to build up again, in one man's life, what has taken centuries to grow and fall into this. It would be a splendid thing to do, she said slowly, and as she said it her eyes took on their colour of bluebells, because what she had seen had moved her. She had not looked at him but at the cropping deer as she spoke, but at her next sentence she turned to him again. Where should you begin, she asked, and in saying it thought of Stornham. He laughed shortly. That is American enough, he said. Your people have not finished their beginnings yet and live in the spirit of them. I tell you of a wild fancy, and you accept it as a possibility and turn on me with, where should you begin? That is one way of beginning, said Bettina. In fact it is the only way. He did not tell her that he liked that, but he knew that he did like it, and that her mere words touched him like a spur. It was, of course, her lifelong breathing of the atmosphere of millions, which made for this fashion of moving at once in the direction of obstacles, presenting to the rest of the world barriers seemingly insurmountable. And yet there was something else in it, some quality of nature, which did not alone suggest the omnipotence of wealth, but another thing which might be even stronger and therefore carried conviction. He who had raged and clenched his hands in the face of his knowledge of the aspect his dream would have presented if he had revealed it to the ordinary practical mind, felt that a point of view like this was good for him. There was in it stimulus for a fleeting moment at least. That's a good idea, he answered. Where should you begin? She replied quite seriously, though he could have imagined some girls rather simpering over the question as a casual joke. One would begin at the fences, she said. Don't you think so? That's practical. That's where I shall begin at Stornham, reflectively. You are going to begin at Stornham? How could one help it? It's not as large or as splendid as this has been, but it's like it in a way, and it will belong to my sister's son. No, I could not help it. I suppose you could not. There was a hint of wholly unconscious resentment in his tone. He was thinking that the effect produced by their boundless wealth was to make these people feel as a race of giants might, even their women unknowingly revealed it. No, I could not, was her reply. I suppose I am on the whole a sort of commercial working-person. I have no doubt it is commercial, that instinct which makes one resent seeing things lose their value. Shall you begin it for that reason? Partly for that one, partly for another. She held out her hand to him. Look at the length of the shadows. I must go. Thank you, Lord Mount Dunstan, for showing me the place, and thank you for undeceiving me. He held the side gate open for her, and lifted his cap as she passed through. He admitted to himself with some reluctance that he was not content that she should go even yet, but of course she must go. There passed through his mind a remote wonder why he had suddenly unbwsomed himself to her in a way so extraordinarily unlike himself. It was, he thought next, because as he had taken her about from one place to another, he had known that she had seen in things what he had seen in them so long—the melancholy loneliness, the significance of it, the lost hopes that lay behind it, the touching pain of the statelyness wrecked. She had shown it in the way in which he tenderly looked from side to side in the very likeness of her footfall, in the blue-bell softening of her eyes. Oh yes, she had understood and cared, American as she was. She had felt it all, even with her hideous background of Fifth Avenue behind her. When he had spoken it had been an involuntary response to an emotion in herself. So he stood, thinking, as he for some time watched her walking up the sunset glowing road.