 CHAPTER I. THE WEAVING OF THE SHUTTLE No man knew when the shuttle began its slow and heavy weaving, from shore to shore, that it was held and guided by the great hand of fate. Fate alone saw the meaning of the web it wove, the might of it and its place in the making of a world's history. Men thought but little of either web or weaving, calling them by other names and lighter ones, for the time unconscious of the strength of the thread thrown across thousands of miles of leaping, heaving, gray or blue ocean. Fate and life planned the weaving, and it seemed mere circumstance which guided the shuttle to and fro between two worlds, divided by a gulf broader and deeper than the thousands of miles of salt fierce sea, the gulf of a bitter quarrel deepened by hatred in the shedding of brother's blood. Between the two worlds of east and west there was no will to draw nearer, each held apart. Those who had rebelled against that which their souls called tyranny, having struggled madly and shed blood in tearing themselves free, turned stern backs upon their unconquered enemies, broke all cords that bound them to the past, flinging off ties of name, kinship and rank, beginning with fierce disdain and new life. Those who, being rebelled against, found the rebels too passionate in their determination, and too desperate in their defence of their strongholds to be less than unconquerable, sailed back haughtily to the world which seemed so far the greater power. Plunging into new battles they added new conquests and splendour to their land, working back with something of contempt to the half-savage west, left to build its own civilisation without other aid than the strength of its own strong right hand and strong uncultured brain. But while the two worlds held apart, the shuttle, weaving slowly in the great hand of fate, drew them closer and held them firm, each of them all unknowing for many a year that what had first been mere threads of gossamer was forming a web whose strength in time none could compute, whose severance could be accomplished but by tragedy and convulsion. The weaving was but in its early and slow-moving years when this story opens. Steamers crossed and recrossed the Atlantic, but they accomplished the journey at leisure and with heavy rollings, and all such discomforts as small craft can afford. Their staterooms and decks were not crowded with people to whom the voyage was a mere incident, in many cases a yearly one. A crossing in those days was an event. It was planned seriously, long thought-off, discussed and rediscussed, with and among the various members of the family to whom the voyage had belonged. A certain boldness bordering on recklessness was almost to be presupposed in the individual who turning his back upon New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and like cities, turned his face towards Europe. In those days when the shuttle wove at leisure a man did not likely run over to London or Paris or Berlin, he gravely went to Europe. The journey, being likely to be made once in a lifetime, the traveller's intention was to see as much as possible, to visit as many cities, cathedrals, ruins, galleries, as his time and purse would allow. People who could speak with any degree of familiarity of Hyde Park, the Champs Elysees, the Pincio, had gained a certain dignity. The ability to touch with an intimate bearing upon such localities was a raison d'applue for being asked out to tea or to dinner. To possess photographs and relics was to be of interest, to have seen European celebrities even at a distance, to have wondered about the outside of poets' gardens and philosophers' houses was to be entitled to respect. The period was a far cry from the time when the shuttle, having shot to and fro faster and faster, week by week, month by month, weaving new threads into its web each year, has woven warp and woof until they bind far shore to shore. It was incomparatively early days that the first thread we follow was woven into the web. Many such have been woven since and have added greater strength than any others, twining the cord of sex and home-building and race-founding. But this was a slight and weak one, being only the thread of the life of one of Ruben Van der Poel's daughters, the pretty little simple one whose name was Rosalie. They were the Van der Poel's of the Americans whose fortunes were a portion of the history of their country. The building of these fortunes had been a part of or had created epochs and crises. Their millions could scarcely be regarded as private property. Newspapers bandied them about, so to speak, employing them as factors in argument, using them as figures of speech, incorporating them into methods of calculation. Literature touched upon them. Moral systems considered them. Stories for the young treated them gravely as illustrative. The first Ruben Van der Poel, who in early days of danger had traded with savages for the pelts of wild animals, was the lauded hero of stories of thrift and enterprise. Throughout his hard-working life he had been irresistibly impelled to action by an absolute genius of commerce, expressing itself at the outset by the exhibition of courage in mere exchange and barter. An alert power to perceive the potential value of things and the possible malleability of men and circumstances had stood him in marvellous good stead. He had bought at low prices things which in the eyes of the less discerning were worthless, but having obtained possession of such things, the less discerning had almost invariably awakened to the fact that in his hands values increased, and methods of remunerative disposition being sought were found. Nothing remained unutilizable. The practical sordid, uneducated little man developed the power to create demand for his own supplies. If he was betrayed into an error he quickly retrieved it. He could live upon nothing, and consequently could travel anywhere in search of such things as he desired. He could barely read and write, and could not spell, but he was daring and astute. His untaught brain was that of a financier. His blood burned with the fever of but one desire, the desire to accumulate. Money expressed to his nature, not expenditure, but investment in such small or large properties as could be resold for profit in the near or far future. The future held fascinations for him. He bought nothing for his own pleasure or comfort, nothing which could not be sold or bartered again. He married a woman who was a trader's daughter and shared his passion for gain. She was of north of England blood, her father having been a hard-fisted small tradesman in an unimportant town, who had been daring enough to emigrate when emigration meant the facing of unknown dangers in a half-savage land. She had excited Ruben Vanderpool's admiration by taking off her petticoat one bitter winter's day to sell it to a squaw in exchange for an ornament for which she chanced to know another squaw would pay with a skin of value. The first Mrs. Vanderpool was as wonderful as her husband, they were both wonderful. They were the founders of the fortune which, a century and a half later, was the delight, in fact the pierce de resistance of New York society reporters, its enormity being restated in round figures when a blank space must be filled up. The method of statement lent itself to infinite variety and was always interesting to a particular class, some elements of which felt it encouraging to be assured that so much money could be a personal possession, some elements feeling the fact an additional argument to be used against the infamy of monopoly. The first Ruben Vanderpool transmitted to his son his accumulations and his fever for gain, he had but one child. The second Ruben, built upon the foundations this afforded him, a fortune as much larger than the first as the rapid growth and increasing capabilities of the country gave him enlarging opportunities to acquire. It was no longer necessary to deal with savages, his powers were called upon to cope with those of white men who came to a new country to struggle for livelihood and fortune. Some were shrewd, some were desperate, some were dishonest, but shrewdness never outwitted, desperation never overcame, dishonesty never deceived the second Ruben Vanderpool. Each characteristic ended by adapting itself to his own purposes and qualities, and as a result of each it was he who in any business transaction was the gainer. It was the common saying that the Vanderpools were possessed of a money-making spell. Their spell lay in their entire mental and physical absorption in one idea. Their peculiarity was not so much that they wished to be rich, as that nature itself impelled them to collect wealth as the lodestone draws towards it iron. Having possessed nothing they became rich. Having become rich they became richer. Having founded their fortunes on small schemes they increased them by enormous ones. In time they attained that omnipotence of wealth which it would seem no circumstance can control or limit. The first Ruben Vanderpool could not spell, the second could. The third was as well educated as a man could be whose sole profession is money-making. His children were taught all that expensive teachers and expensive opportunities could teach them. After the second generation the meagre and mercantile physical type of the Vanderpools improved upon itself. Feminine good looks appeared and were made the most of. The Vanderpool element invested even good looks to an advantage. The fourth Ruben Vanderpool had no son and two daughters. They were brought up in a brownstone mansion built upon a fashionable New York thoroughfare roaring with traffic. To the furthest point of the Rocky Mountains the number of dollars this mansion, it was always called so, had cost was known. There may have existed Pueblo Indians who had heard rumours of the price of it. All the shopkeepers and farmers in the United States had read newspaper descriptions of its furnishings and knew the value of the brocade which hung in the bedrooms and boudoirs of the Mrs. Vanderpool. It was a fact much cherished that Miss Rosalie's bath was of Carrara marble, and a good soul was actively engaged in doing their own washing in small New England or western towns. It was a distinct luxury to be aware that the water in the Carrara marble bath was perfumed with Florentine iris. Relationships such as these seemed to become personal possessions and even to lighten somewhat the burden of toil. Rosalie Vanderpool married an Englishman of title, and part of the story of her married life forms my prologue. Hers was of the early international marriages, and the Republican mind had not yet adjusted itself to all that such alliances might imply. It was yet ingenious, imaginative and confiding in such matters. A baronet see in a manor house reigning over an old English village and over villages in possible smock frocks, presented elements of picturesque dignity to people whose intimacy with such allurements had been limited by the novels of Mrs. Oliphant and other writers. The most ordinary little anecdotes in which vicarages, gamekeepers and dowagers figured were exciting in these early days. Sir Nigel Anst others when engraved upon a visiting card wore an air of distinction almost startling. Sir Nigel himself was not as picturesque as his name, although he was not entirely without attraction when, for reasons of his own, he chose to aim at agreeableness of bearing. He was a man with a good figure and a good voice, and but for a heaviness of feature the result of objectionable living might have given the impression of being better looking than he really was. New York laid amused, and at the same time the charm stressed upon the fact that he spoke with an English accent. His annunciation was in fact clear-cut and treated its vowels well. He was a man who observed with an air of accustomed punctiliousness such social rules and courtesies as he deemed it expedient to consider. An astute whirlbling had remarked that he was at once more ceremonious and more casual in his manner than men bred in America. If you invite him to dinner, the whirlbling said, or if you die or marry or meet with an accident, his notes of condolence or congratulation are prompt and civil. But the actual truth is that he cares nothing whatever about you or your relations, and if you don't please him he doesn't hesitate to sulk or be astonishingly rude, which last an American does not allow himself to be as a rule. By many people Sir Nigel was not analysed but accepted. He was of the early English who came to New York and was a novelty of interest with his background of manor house and village and old family name. He was very much talked of at vivacious ladies' lunch and parties. He was very much talked to at equally vivacious afternoon teas. At dinner parties he was vertically watched a good deal, but after dinner when he sat with the men over their wine he was not popular. He was not perhaps exactly disliked, but men whose chief interest at that period lay in stocks and railroads did not find conversation easy with a man whose sole occupation had been the shooting of birds and the hunting of foxes, when he was not absolutely loitering about London with his time on his hands. The stories he told, and they were few, were chiefly anecdotes whose points gained their humour by the fact that a man was a comically bad shot or bad rider, and either peppered a game-peeper or was thrown into a ditch when his horse went over a hedge, and such relations did not increase in the poignancy of their interest by being filtered through brains accustomed to applying their powers to problems of speculation and commerce. He was not so dull but that he perceived this at an early stage of his visit to New York, which was probably the reason of the infrequency of his stories. He on his side was naturally not quick to rise to the humour of a big deal or a big blunder made on Wall Street or to the wit of jokes concerning them. On the whole he would have been glad to have understood such matters more clearly. His circumstances were such as had at last forced him to contemplate the world of money-makers with something of an annoyed respect. These fellows, who had neither titles nor estates to keep up, could make money. He, as he acknowledged disgustedly to himself, was much worse than a beggar. There was Stornham Court in a state of ruin, the estate going to the dogs, the farm-houses tumbling to pieces, and he, so to speak, without a sixpence to bless himself with, and head over heels in debt. Englishmen of the rank which in bygone times had not associated itself with trade had begun at least to trifle with it, to consider its potentialities as fact as possibly to be made useful by the aristocracy. Countesses had not yet spiritedly opened milliner's shops nor belted oles adorned the stage, but certain noblemen had dallyed with beer and cook-headed with stocks. One of the first commercial developments had been the discovery of America, particularly of New York, as a place where, if one could make up one's mind at the plunge, one might marry one's sons profitably. At the outset it presented a field so promising as to lead to rashness and indiscretion on the part of persons not given to analysis of character, and in consequence relying too serenely upon an ingeniousness which rather speedily revealed that it had its limits. Ingeniousness, combining itself with remarkable alertness of perception on occasion, is rather American than English, and is therefore to the English mind misleading. At first younger sons who gave trouble to their families were sent out. Their names, their backgrounds of castles or manners, relatives of distinction, London Seasons, Fox Hunting, Buckingham Palace, and Goodwood Races formed a picturesque allurement, that the castles and manners would belong to their elder brothers, that the relatives of distinction did not encourage intimacy with swarms of the younger branches of their families, that London Seasons, Hunting and Racing, were for their elders and betters, were facts not realised in all their importance by the Republican mind. In the course of time they were realised to the full, but in Rosalie Vanderpool's nineteenth year they covered what was at that time almost unknown territory. One may rest assured Sir Nigel Anstothers said nothing whatsoever in New York of an interview he had had before sailing, with an intensely disagreeable great-aunt, who was the wife of a bishop. She was a horrible old woman, with a broad face, blunt features, and a raucous voice, whose tones added a credity to her observations when she was indulging in her favourite pastime of interfering with the business of her acquaintances and relations. I do not know what you're going chasing off to America for, Nigel, she commented. You can't afford it, and it's perfectly ridiculous of you to take it upon yourself to travel for pleasure as if you were a man of means instead of being in such a state of pocket that Mariah tells me you cannot pay your tailor. Neither the bishop nor I can do anything for you, and I hope you don't expect it. All I can hope is that you know yourself what you're going to America in search of and that it is something more practical than buffaloes. You had better stop in New York. Those big shopkeepers' daughters are enormously rich, they say, and they are immensely pleased by attentions from men of your class. They say they'll marry anything if it has an aunt or a grandmother with a title. You can mention the Marchioness, you know. You need not refer to the fact that she thought your father had blagged in your mother an interloper and that you have never been invited to Broadmere since you were born. You can refer casually to me and to the bishop and to the palace too. A palace, even a bishop, ought to go a long way with Americans. They think it's something royal. She ended her remarks with one of her most insulting snorts of laughter, and Sir Nigel became dark red and looked as if he would like to knock her down. It was not, however, her sentiments which were particularly revolting to him. If she had expressed them in a manner more flattering to himself, he would have felt that there was a good deal to be said for them. In fact he had put the same thing to himself some time previously, and in summing up the American matter had reached certain thrifty decisions. The impulse to knock her down surged within him solely because he had a brutally bad temper when his vanity was insulted, and he was furious at her impudence in speaking to him as if he were a villager out of work whom she was at liberty to bully and lecture. For a woman who is supposed to have been born of gentle people, he said to his mother afterwards, Aunt Marion is the most vulgar old beast I have ever beheld. She has the taste of a female cost among her. Which was entirely true, but it might be added that his own was no better, and his points of view and morals wholly coincided with his taste. Naturally Rosalie Vanderpool knew nothing of this side of the matter. She had been a petted butterfly child who had been pretty and admired and indulged from her infancy. She had grown up into a petted butterfly girl, pretty and admired and surrounded by an ordinary luxury. Her world had been made up of good-natured, lavish friends and relations who enjoyed themselves and felt at a light in her girlish toilettes and triumphs. She had spent her one season of beldum in being world from festivity to festivity, in dancing in rooms festooned with thousands of dollars' worth of flowers, in lunching or dining at tables loaded with roses and violets and orchards, from which ballrooms or feasts she had borne away wonderful favours and gifts, whose prices, being recorded in the newspapers, caused a thrill of delight or envy to pass over the land. She was a slim little creature with quantities of light feathery hair like a French doll's. She had small hands and small feet and a small waist. A small brain also it must be admitted, but she was an innocent, sweet-tempered girl with a childlike simpleness of mind. In fine she was exactly the girl to find her nightly, domineering temperament at once imposing and attractive, so long as it was cloaked by the ceremonies of external good-breeding. Her sister, Bettina, who was still a child, was of a stronger and less susceptible nature. Bettie, at eight, had long legs and a square but delicate small face. Her well-opened, steel-blue eyes were noticeable for rather extravagant ink-black lashes and a straight young stare which seemed to accuse if not to condemn. She was being educated at a ruinously expensive school with a number of other inordinately rich little girls, who were all too wonderfully dressed and too lavishly supplied with pocket money. The school considered itself especially refined and select, but was in fact interestingly vulgar. The inordinately rich little girls, who had most of them pretty in spiritual or pretty in pecan faces, ate a great many bonbons and chatted a great deal in high unmodulated voices about the parties their sisters and other relatives went to and the dresses they wore. Some of them were nice little souls who in the future would emerge from their chrysalis state enchanting women, but they used colloquialisms freely and had an ingenious habit of referring to the prices of things. Bettina Vanderpool, who was the richest and cleverest and most promisingly handsome among them, was colloquial to slanginess, but she had a deep mellow child voice and an amazing carriage. She could not endure Sir Nigel Ann Struthers, and being an American child did not hesitate to express herself with force if with some crudeness. "'He's a hateful thing,' she said. I loathe him. He's stuck up and he thinks you're afraid of him, and he likes it.' Sir Nigel had known only English children, little girls who lived in that discreet corner of their parents' town or country houses known as the schoolroom, apparently emerging only for daily walks with governesses, girls with long hair and boys in little high hats and with faces which seemed curiously made to match them. Both boys and girls were decently kept out of the way and not in the least dwelt on except when brought out for inspection during the holidays and taken to the pantomime. Sir Nigel had not realized that an American child was an absolute factor to be counted with, and a youngster who entered the drawing-room when she chose and joined fearlessly in adult conversation was an element he considered annoying. It was quite true that Bettina talked too much and too readily at times, but it had not been explained to her that the opinions of eight years are not always of absorbing interest to the mature. It was also true that Sir Nigel was a great fool for interfering with what was clearly no affair of his, in such a manner as would have made him an enemy, even had not the child's instinct arrayed her against him at the outset. "'You American youngsters are too cheeky,' he said on one of the occasions when Betty had talked too much, "'if you were my sister and lived at Stornham Court, you would be learning lessons in the school-room and wearing a pinafore—nobody ever saw my sister Emily when she was your age.' "'Well, I'm not your sister Emily,' retorted Betty, and I guess I'm glad of it. It was rather impudent of her, but it must be confessed that she was not infrequently rather impudent in a rude little girl way, but she was serenely unconscious of the fact.' Sir Nigel flushed darkly and laughed a short unpleasant laugh. If she had been his sister Emily she would have fair deal at that moment that his villainous temper would have got the better of him. "'I guess that I may be congratulated too,' he sneered. "'If I was going to be anybody's sister Emily,' said Betty, excited a little by the sense of the fray, "'I wouldn't want to be yours.' "'Now, Betty, don't be hateful,' interposed Rosalie, laughing, and her laugh was nervous. There's Mina Thalberg coming up the front steps, go and meet her.' Only poor girl always found herself nervous when Sir Nigel and Betty were in the room together. She instinctively recognized their antagonism and was afraid Betty would do something an English baronet would think vulgar. Her simple brain could not have explained to her why it was that she knew Sir Nigel often thought New Yorker's vulgar. She was, however, quite aware of this but imperfectly concealed fact and felt a timid desire to be explanatory. When Bettina marched out of the room with her extraordinary carriage finally manifest, Rosalie's little laugh was propitiatory. "'You mustn't mind her,' she said. "'She's a real splendid little thing, but she's got a quick temper. It's all over in a minute.' "'They wouldn't stand that sort of thing in England,' said Sir Nigel. "'She's ducidly spoiled, you know.' He detested the child. He disliked all children, but this one awakened in him more than mere dislike. The fact was that though Betty herself was wholly unconscious of the subtle truth, the as yet undeveloped intellect which later made her a brilliant and captivating personality vaguely saw him as he was, an unscrupulous, sordid brute, as remorseless and adventurer and swindler in his special line, as if he had been engaged in drawing false checks and arranging huge jewel robberies, instead of planning to entrap into a disadvantageous marriage, a girl whose gentleness and fortune could be used by a blaggard of reputable name. The man was cold-blooded enough to see that her gentle weakness was of value because it could be bullied, her money was to be countered on because it could be spent on himself and his degenerate vices, and on his wracked and ruined name and estate, which must be rebuilt and restocked at an early date by some one or other, lest they tumbled into ignominious collapse which could not be concealed. The tina of the accusing eyes did not know that in the depth of her yet crude young being, instinct was summing up for her the potentialities of an unusually fine specimen of the British blaggard. But this was nevertheless the interesting truth. When later she was told that her sister had become engaged to Sir Nigel Anstrother's, a flame of colour flashed over her face, she stared silently a moment, then bit her lip and burst into tears. Well, bet, exclaimed Rosalie, you are the queerest thing I ever saw. But Tina's tears were an outburst, not a flow. She swept them away passionately with her small handkerchief. He'll do something awful to you, she said. He'll nearly kill you. I know he will. I'd rather be dead myself." She dashed out of the room and could never be induced to say a word further about the matter. She would indeed have found it impossible to express her intense antipathy and sense of impending calamity. She had not the phrases to make herself clear even to herself. And after all, what controlling effort can one produce when one is only eight years old? CHAPTER II A LACK OF PERCEPTION Mercantile, as Americans were proclaimed to be, the opinion of Sir Nigel Anstrother's was that they were, on some points, singularly unbusinesslike. In the perfectly obvious and simple matter of the settlement of his daughter's fortune, he had felt that Ruben Vanderpool was obtuse to the point of idiocy. He seemed to have none of the ordinary points of view. Naturally there was to Anstrother's mind but one point of view to take. A man of birth and rank, he argued, does not career across the Atlantic to marry a New York millionaire's daughter unless he anticipates deriving some advantage from the alliance. Such a man, being of Anstrother's type, would not have married a rich woman even in his own country without making sure that advantages were to accrue to himself as a result of the union. In England, to use his own words, there was no nonsense about it. Women's fortunes as well as themselves belonged to their husbands, and a man who was master in his own house could make his wife do as he chose. He had seen girls with money managed very satisfactorily by fellows who held a tight reign and were not moved by tears and did not allow talking to relations. If he had been desirous of marrying and could have afforded to take a penniless wife, there were hundreds of portionless girls ready to thank God for a decent chance to settle themselves for life, and one need not stir out of one's native land to find them. But Sir Nigel had not in the least desired to saddle himself with a domestic encumbrance. In fact, nothing would have induced him to consider the step if he had not been driven hard by circumstances. His fortunes had reached a stage where money must be forthcoming somehow from somewhere. He and his mother had been living from hand to mouth, so to speak, for years, and they had also been obliged to keep up appearances, which is sometimes embittering even to persons of amiable tempers. Lady Anne Struthers, it is true, had lived in a country in as niggardly a manner as possible. She had narrowed her existence to absolute privation, presenting at the same time a stern bold front to the persons who saw her, to the insufficient staff of servants, to the village, to the vicar and his wife, and the few far distant neighbours who perhaps once a year drove miles to call or leave a card. She was an old woman, sufficiently unattractive, to find no difficulty in the way of limiting her acquaintances. The unprepossessing wardrobe she had gathered in the passing years was remade again and again by the village dressmaker. She wore dingy old silk gowns and appalling bonnets, and mantles stripping with rusty fringes and bugle beads, but these mitigated not in the least the unflinching arrogance of her bearing, or the simple intolerant rudeness which she considered proper and becoming in persons like herself. She did not, of course, allow that there existed many persons like herself. That society rejoiced in this fact was but the stamp of its inferiority and folly. While she pinched herself and harried her few hirelings at Stornham, it was necessary for Sennigel to show himself in town and present as decent an appearance as possible. His vanity was far too arrogant to allow of his permitting himself to drop out of the world to which he could not afford to belong. That he should have been forgotten or ignored would have been intolerable to him. For a few years he was invited to dine at good houses and got shooting and hunting as part of the hospitality of his acquaintances. But a man who cannot afford to return hospitalities will find that he need not expect to avail himself of those of his acquaintance to the end of his career unless he is an extremely engaging person. The Nigel and Struthers was not an engaging person. He never gave a thought to the comfort or interest of any other human being than himself. He was also dominated by the kind of nasty temper which so reveals itself when let loose that its owner cannot control it even when it would be distinctly to his advantage to do so. Finding that he had nothing to give in return for what he took as if it were his right, society gradually began to cease to retain any lively recollection of his existence. The tradespeople he had borne himself loftily towards awakened to the fact that he was the kind of man it was at once safe and wise to done, and therefore proceeded to make his life a burden to him. At his clubs he had never been a member surrounded and rejoiced over when he made his appearance. The time came when he began to fancy that he was rather edged away from, and he endeavored to sustain his dignity by being sulky and making caustic speeches when he was approached. Then occasionally down to Stornham by actual pressure of circumstances he found the outlook there more embittering still. Lady Anstrowthers laid the banness of the land before him without any effort to palliate unpleasantness. If he chose to stalk about and look glum she could sit still and call his attention to revolting truths which he could not deny. She could point out to him that he had no money and that tenants would not stay in houses which were tumbling to pieces and work land which had been starved. She could tell him just how long a time had elapsed since wages had been paid and accounts cleared off, and she had an engaging unbiased way of seeming to drive these maddening details home by the mere manner of her statement. "'You make the whole thing as damn disagreeable as you can,' Nigel would snarl. "'I merely state facts,' she would reply with acrid serenity. A man who cannot keep up his estate pay his tailor or the rent of his lodgings in town is in a strait which may drive him to desperation. So Nigel Anstrowthers borrowed some money, went to New York and made his suit to nice little silly Rosalie Vanderpool. But the whole thing was unexpectedly disappointing and surrounded by irritating circumstances. He found himself face-to-face with a state of affairs such as he had not contemplated. In England, when a man married, certain practical matters could be inquired into and arranged by solicitors, the amount of the prospective bride's fortune, the allowances and settlements to be made, the position of the bridegroom with regard to pecuniary matters. To put it simply, a man found out where he stood and what he was to gain. But at first to his sardonic entertainment and later to his disgusted annoyance, so Nigel gradually discovered that in the matter of marriage Americans had an ingenious tendency to believe in the sentimental feelings of the parties concerned. The general impression seemed to be that a man married purely for love, and the delicacy would make it impossible for him to ask questions as to what his bride's parents were in a position to hand over to him as a sort of indemnity for the loss of his bachelor freedom. Anstrowthers began to discover this fact before he had been many weeks in New York. He reached the realization of its existence by processes of exclusion and inclusion, by hearing casual remarks people let drop, by asking roundabout and careful questions, by leading both men and women to the innocent expounding of certain points of view. Millionaires it appeared did not expect to make allowances to men who married their daughters. Young women it transpired did not in the least realize that a man should be liberally endowed in payment for assuming the duties of a husband. If rich fathers made allowances they made them to their daughters themselves who disposed of them as they pleased. In this case, of course, Senaigel privately argued with Fine Ackerman, it became the husband's business to see that what his wife pleased should be what most agreeably coincided with his own views and conveniences. His most illuminating experience had been the hearing of some men, hard-headed, rich stockbrokers with a vulgar sense of humour, enjoying themselves quite uproariously one night at a club, over a story one of them was relating of an unsatisfactory German son-in-law who had demanded an income. He was a man of small title who had married the narrator's daughter, and after some months spent in his father-in-law's house had felt it but proper that his financial position should be put on a practical footing. He brought her back after the bridal tour to make us a visit, said the storyteller, a sharp-featured man with a quaint rye mouth which seemed to express a perpetual repressed appreciation of passing events. I had nothing to say against that because we were all glad to see her home and her mother had been missing her. But weeks passed and months passed and there was no mention made of them going over to settle in the slosh we had heard so much of, and in time it came out that the slosh thing, and stothers realised with gall in his soul that the brute, as he called him, meant schloss, and that his mispronunciation was at once a matter of humour and derision. Wasn't his at all? It was his elder brothers. The whole lot of them were accounts and not one of them seemed to own a dime. The slosh count hadn't more than twenty-five cents and he wasn't the kind to deal any of it doubt to his family. So Lily's count would have to go clerking in a dry good-store if he promised to support himself, but he didn't propose to do it. He thought he'd got on to a soft thing. Of course we're an easy-going lot and we should have stood him if he'd been a nice fellow, but he wasn't. Lily's mother used to find her crying in her bedroom and it came up by degrees that it was because Adolf had been quarreling with her and saying sneering things about her family. When her mother talked to him he was insulting, then bills began to come in and Lily was expected to get me to pay for them. And they were not the kind of bills a decent fellow calls on another man to pay, but I did it five or six times to make it easy for her. I didn't tell her that they gave an older chap than himself sidelights on the situation. But that didn't work well. He thought I did it because I had to, and he began to feel free and easy about it and didn't try to cover up his tracks so much when he sent in a new lot. He was always working, Lily. He began to consider himself master of the house. He intimated that a private carriage ought to be kept for them. He said it was beggarly that he should have to consider the rest of the family when he wanted to go out. When I got under the situation I began to enjoy it. I let him spread himself for a while, just to see what he would do. Good Lord! I couldn't have believed that any fellow could have thought any other fellow could be such a fool as he thought I was. He went perfectly crazy after a month or two and ordered me about and patronized me as if I were a boot-black he meant to teach something to. So at last I had a talk with Lily and I told her I was going to put an end to it. Of course she cried and was half frightened to death, but by that time he dill used her so that she only wanted to get rid of him. So I sent for him and had a talk with him in my office. I led him on to saying all he had on his mind. He explained to me what a condescension it was for a man like himself to marry a girl like Lily. He made a dignified touching picture of all the disadvantages of such an alliance and all the advantages they ought to bring in exchange to the man who bore up under them. I rubbed my head and looked worried every now and then and cleared my throat apologetically just to warm him up. I can tell you that fellow felt happy, downright happy when he saw how humbly I listened to him. He positively swelled up with hope and comfort. He thought I was going to turn out well, real well. I was going to pay up just as a vulgar New York father-in-law ordered do, and thank God for the blessed privilege. Why, he was real eloquent about his blood and his ancestors and the hoary-headed slosh. So when it finished I cleared my throat in a nervous, ingratiating kind of way again, and I asked him, kind of anxiously, what he thought would be the proper thing for a base-born New York millionaire to do under the circumstances, what he would approve of himself. Sir Nigel was disgusted to see the narrator twist his mouth into a sweet, shrewd, repressed grin, even as he expectorated into the nearest receptacle. The grin was greeted by a shout of laughter from the companions. What did he say, Stebbins? Someone cried. He said, explained Mr. Stebbins deliberately, he said that an allowance was the proper thing. He said that a man of his rank must have resources, and that it wasn't dignified for him to have to ask his wife or his wife's father for money when he wanted it. He said an allowance was what he felt he had a right to expect, and then he twisted his moustache and said, what proposition did I make? What would I allow him? The storytellers' hearers evidently knew him well, their laughter was louder than before. Let's hear the rest, Joe, let's hear it. Well, explained Mr. Stebbins almost thoughtfully, I just got up and said, well, it won't take long for me to answer that. I've always been fond of my children, and Lily is rather my pet. I've always had everything she wanted, and she always shall. She's a good girl, and she deserves it. I'll allow you, the significant deliberation of his drawl could scarcely be described. I'll allow you just five minutes to get out of this room before I kick you out, and if I kick you out of this room I'll kick you down the stairs, and if I kick you down the stairs I shall have got my blood comfortably warmed up and I'll kick you down the street and round the block and down to Hoboken, because you're going to take the steamer there and go back to the place you came from, to the slosh thing, or whatever you call it. We haven't a damn bit of use for you here. And believe it or not, gentlemen, looking around with the rye-mouthed smile, he took that passage and back he went, and Lily's living with her mother, and I mean to hold on to her. So Nigel got up and left the club when the story was finished. He took a long walk down Broadway, gnawing his lip and holding his head in the air. He used blasphemous language at intervals in a low voice. Some of it was addressed to his fate, and some of it to the vulgar mercantile coarseness and obtuseness of other people. They don't know what they're talking of, he said, it's unheard of. What do they expect? I never thought of this. Damn it, I'm like a rat in a trap." It was plain enough that he could not arrange his fortune as he had anticipated when he decided to make love to little pink and white, doll-faced Rosie Vanderpool. If he began to demand monetary advantages in his dealing with his future wife's people in their settlement of her fortune, he might arouse suspicion and inquiry. He did not want inquiry either in connection with his own means or his past manner of living. People who hated him would be sure to crop up with stories of things better left alone. There were always meddling fools ready to interfere. His walk was long and full of savage thinking. Once or twice as he realized what the disinterestedness of his sentiments was supposed to be, a short laugh broke from him which was rather like the snort of the bishopess. I am supposed to be moon-struck over a simpering American chit— moon-struck? Damn! But when he returned to his hotel he'd made up his mind and was beginning to look over the situation in evil cold blood. Matters must be settled without delay, and he wished rude enough to realize that with his temper and its varied resources a timid girl would not be difficult to manage. He had seen at an early stage of their acquaintance that Rosie was greatly impressed by the superiority of his bearing, that he could make her blush with embarrassment when he conveyed to her that she'd made a mistake, that he could chill her miserably when he chose to assume a lofty stiffness. A man's domestic armory was filled with weapons if he could make a woman feel gauche inexperienced in the wrong. When he was safely married he could pave the way to what he felt was the only practical and feasible end. If he had been marrying a woman with more brain she would be more difficult to subdue, but with Rosalie Vanderpool processes were not necessary. If you shocked, bewildered or frightened her with accusations, sulks or sneers, her light innocent head was set in such a whirl that the rest was easy. It was possible upon the whole that the thing might not turn out so infernally ill after all, supposing that it had been Bettina who had been the marriageable one. Appreciating to the fall the many reasons for rejoicing that she had not been, he walked in gloomy reflection home. CHAPTER III When the marriage took place the event was accompanied by an ingeniously elate flourish of trumpets. Miss Vanderpool's frocks were multitudinous and wonderful as also her jewels purchased at Tiffany's. She carried a thousand trunks, more or less, across the Atlantic. When the ship steamed away from the dock the wharf was like a flower garden in the blaze of brilliant and delicate attire worn by the bevy of relatives and intimates who stood waving their handkerchiefs and laughingly calling out farewell-good wishes. Sir Nigel's mental attitude was not as sympathetic or admiring one as he stood by his bride's side looking back. If Rosie's half-happy, half-tearful excitement had left her the leisure to reflect on his expression she would not have felt it encouraging. What a deuce of a row Americans make, he said even before they were out of hearing of the voices. It will be a positive rest to be in a country where the women do not cackle and shriek with laughter. He said it with that simple rudeness which at times profess to be almost impersonal and which Rosalie had usually tried to believe with the outcome of a kind of cool British humour, but this time she started a little at his words. I suppose we do make more noise than English people, she admitted a second or so later. I wonder why. And without waiting for an answer, somewhat as if she had not expected or quite wanted one, she leaned a little further over the side to look back waving her small, fluttering handkerchief to the many still in tumult on the wharf. She was not perceptive or quick enough to take offence to realise that the remark was significant and that Sir Nigel had already begun as he meant to go on. It was far from being his intention to play the part of an American husband who was plainly a creature in whom no authority vested itself. Americans let their women do and say anything and were capable of fetching and carrying for them. He had seen a man run upstairs for his wife's wrap cheerfully without the least apparent sense that the service was the part of a footman, if there was one in the house, and a parlor maid if there was not. Sir Nigel had been brought up in the good early Victorian days when a nice little woman to fetch your slippers for you figured in certain circles as domestic bliss. Girls were educated to fetch slippers as retrievers were trained to go into the water after sticks and terriers to bring back balls thrown for them. The new lady and stothers had it supervene several opportunities to obtain a new view of her Bridegroom's character before their voyage across the Atlantic was over. At this period of the slower and more cumbersome weaving of the shuttle, the world had not yet awakened even to the possibilities of the ocean greyhound. An Atlantic voyage at times was capable of offering to a bride and bridegroom days enough to begin to glance into their future with a premonition of the waning of the honeymoon, at least and especially if they were not sea-proof, to wish wearily that the first half of it were over. Rosalie was not weary, but she began to be bewildered. As she had never been a clever girl or quick to perceive, and had spent her life among women indulging American men, she was not prepared with any precedent which made her situation clear. The first time Sir Nigel showed his temper to her, she simply stared at him, her eyes looking like those of a puzzled, questioning child. Then she broke into her nervous little laugh because she didn't know what else to do. At his second outbreak her stare was rather startled, and she did not laugh. Her first awakening was to an anxious wonderment concerning certain moods of gloom or what seemed to be gloom to which she seemed prone. As she lay in her steamer-chair he would at times march stiffly up and down the deck, apparently aware of no other existence than his own, his features expressing a certain clouded resentment of whose very unexplainableness she secretly stood in awe. She was not astute enough, poor girl, to leave him alone, and when with innocent questioning she endeavoured to discover his trouble, the greatest mystification she encountered was that he had the power to make her feel that she was in some way taking a liberty and showing her lack of tact and perspecurity. Is anything the matter, Nigel? She asked at first, wondering if she were guilty of silliness in trying to slip her hand into his. She was sure she had been when he answered her. He said chillingly, I don't believe you're happy, she returned. Somehow you seem so, so different. I have reasons for being depressed, he replied, and it was with a stiff finality which struck a note of warning to her, signifying that it would be better taste in her to put an end to her simple efforts. She vaguely felt herself put in the wrong, and he preferred that it should be so. It was the best form of preparation for any mood he might see that it might pay him to show her in the future. He was, in fact, confronting disdainfully his position. He had her on his hands, and he was returning to his relations with no definite advantage to exhibit as the result of having married her. She had been supplied with an income, but he had no control over it. It would not have been so if he had not been in such straits that he had been afraid to risk his chance by making a stand. To have a wife with money, a silly sweet temper and no will of her own was, of course, better than to be penniless head over heels in debt and hemmed in by difficulties on every side. He had seen women trained to give in to anything rather than be bullied in public, to exceed in the end to any demand rather than endure the shame of a certain kind of scene made before servants and a certain kind of insolence used to relatives and guests. The quality he found most maddeningly irritating in Rosalie was her obviously absolute unconsciousness of the fact that it was entirely natural and proper that her resources should be in her husband's hands. He had, indeed, even in these early days, made a tentative effort also in the form of a suggestive speech. He had given her openings to give him an opening to put things on a practical basis, but she had never had the intelligence to see what he was aiming at, and he had found himself almost floundering ungracefully in his remarks while she had looked at him without a sign of comprehension in her simple anxious blue eyes. The creature was actually trying to understand him and could not. That was the worst of it. The blank wall of her unconsciousness, her childlike belief that he was far too grand a personage to require anything. These were the things he was thinking over when he walked up and down the deck in unameable solitriness. Rosalie awakened to the amazed consciousness of the fact that instead of being pleased with the luxury and prettiness of her wardrobe and appointments, he seemed to dislike and disdain them. You American women change your clothes too much and think too much of them, was one of his first amiable criticisms. You spend more than well-bred women should spend on mere dresses and bonnets. In New York it always strikes an Englishman that the women look on de-march at whatever time of day you come across them. Oh, Nigel, cried Rosie woefully. She couldn't think of anything more to say than, Oh, Nigel! I'm sorry to say it's true, he replied loftily. That she was an American and a New Yorker was being impressed upon poor little lady Anstruthers in a new way. Somehow as if the mere cold statement of the fact put a fine edge of sarcasm to any remark. She was of too innocent a loyalty to wish that she were neither the one nor the other, but she did wish that Nigel was not so prejudiced against the people and places she cared for so much. She was sitting in her stateroom and folded in a dressing-gown covered with cascades of lace, tied with knots of embroidered ribbon, and her maid Hannah, who admired her greatly, was brushing her fair long hair with a gold-backed brush ornamented with a monogram of jewels. If she had been a French duchess of a Piquant type, or an English one with an aquiline nose she would have been beyond criticism. If she had been a plump overfed woman or an ugly ill-natured gross one she would have looked vulgar. But she was a little thin, fair New Yorker, and although she was not beyond criticism, if one demanded high distinction, she was pretty and nice to look at. But Nigel Anstruthers would not allow this to her. His own tailor's bills, being far in arrears, and his pocket disgustingly empty, the sight of her ingenious sumptuousness and the gay accustomed simpleness of outlook with which he accepted it as her natural right, irritated him, and roused his venom. Bills would remain unpaid if she was permitted to spend her money on this sort of thing without any consideration for the requirements of other people. He inhaled the air and made a gesture of distaste. This sachet business is rather overpowering, he said. It's the sort of thing a woman should be particularly discreet about. Oh, Nigel, cried the poor girl agitatedly. Hannah, do go and call the steward to open the windows. Is it really strong? She implored as Hannah went out. How dreadful! It's only arrears, and I didn't know Hannah had put it in the trunks. My dear Rosalie, with the wave of the hand taking in both herself and her dressing-case, it is all too strong. Oh, what! gaspingly. The whole thing! All that lace and love-not arrangement! The gold-backed brushes and scent-bottles with diamonds and rubies sticking in them. They—they were wedding-presence. They came from Tiffany's. Everyone thought them lovely. They look as if they belonged to the dressing-table of a French woman of the Demimonde. I feel as if I had actually walked into the apartment of some notorious Parisian soubrette. Rosalie Vanderpool was a clean-minded little person. Her people were of the clean-minded type. Therefore she did not understand all that this ironic speech implied, but she gathered enough of its significance to cause her to turn first red and then pale and then to burst into tears. She was crying and trying to conceal the fact when Hannah returned. She bent her head and touched her eyes furtively while her toilette was completed. St. Nigel had retired from the scene, but he had done so feeling that he had planted a seed and bestowed a practical lesson. He had—it is true—bestowed one, but again she had not understood its significance and was only left bewildered and unhappy. She began to be nervous and uncertain about herself and about his moods and points of view. She had never been made to feel so at home. Everyone had been kind to her and lenient to her lack of brilliancy. No one had expected her to be brilliant, and she had been quite sweet-temperately resigned to the fact that she was not the kind of girl who shone either in society or elsewhere. She did not resent the fact that she knew people said of her, she isn't in the least bit bright, Rosie Vanderpool, but she's a nice sweet little thing. She had tried to be nice and sweet, and had aspired to nothing higher. But now that seemed so much less than enough. Perhaps Nigel ought to have married one of the clever ones, somebody who would have known how to understand him, and who would have been more entertaining than she could be. Perhaps she was beginning to bore him, perhaps he was finding her out and beginning to get tired. At this point the always-too-ready tears would rise to her eyes, and she would be overwhelmed by a sense of homesickness. Often she cried herself silently to sleep, longing for her mother, her nice comfortable ordinary mother, whom she had several times felt Nigel had some difficulty in being unreservedly polite to, though he had been polite on the surface. By the time they landed she had been living under so much strain in her effort to seem quite unchanged that she had lost her nerve. She did not feel well, and was sometimes afraid that she might do something silly and hysterical in spite of herself, begin to cry, for instance, when there was really no explanation for her doing it. But when she reached London the novelty of everything so excited her that she thought she was going to be better, and then she said to herself it would be proved to her that all her fears had been nonsense. This return of hope made her quite light-spirited, and she was almost gay in her little outbursts of delight and admiration as she drove about the streets with her husband. She did not know that her ingenious ignorance of things he had known all his life, her rapture over common monuments of history, led him to say to himself that he felt rather as if he were taking a housemaid to see a Lord Mayor's show. Before going to Stornham Court they spent a few days in town. There had been no intention of proclaiming their presence to the world and they didn't do so, but, unluckily, certain tradesmen discovered the fact that Sir Nigel Anstruthers had returned to England with the bride he had secured in New York. The conclusion to be deduced from this circumstance was that the particular moment was a good one in which to send in bills for account rendered. The tradesmen quite shared Anstruthers' point of view. Their reasoning was delightfully simple, and they were wholly unaware that it might have been called gross. A man over his head and ears in debt naturally expected his creditors would be paid by the young woman who had married him. America had in these days been so little explored by the thrifty, impecunious well-born that its ingenious sentimentality in certain matters was by no means comprehended. By each post Sir Nigel received numerous bills, sometimes letters accompanied them, and once or twice respectful but firm male persons brought them by hand, and demanded interviews which irritated Sir Nigel extremely. Given time to arrange matters with Rosalie to train her to some sense of her duty, he believed that the account rendered could be wiped off, but he saw he must have time. She was such a little fool, again and again he was furious at the fate which had forced him to take her. The truth was that Rosalie knew nothing whatever about unpaid bills. Even Vanderpool's daughters had never encountered an indignant tradesman in their lives. When they went into stores they were received with unfeigned rapture. Everything was dragged forth to be displayed to them, attendance waited to leap forth to supply their smallest behest. They knew no other phase of existence than the one in which one could buy anything one wanted and pay any price demanded for it. Consequently Rosalie did not recognize signs which would have been obviously recognizable by the initiated. Yet Sir Nigel and Struthers had been a nice young fellow who had loved her, and he had been honest enough to make a clean breast of his difficulties. She would have thrown herself into his arms and implored him effusively to make use of all her available funds, and if the supply had been insufficient would have immediately written to her father for further donations, knowing that her appeal would be responded to at once. But Sir Nigel and Struthers cherished no sentiment for any other individual than himself, and he had no intention of explaining that his mere vanity had caused him to mislead her, that his rank and estate counted for nothing, and that he was in fact a pauper loaded with dishonest debts. He wanted money, but he wanted it to be given to him as if he conferred a favour by receiving it. It must be transferred to him as though it were his by right, or to demand marry for. Therefore his wife's unconsciousness that she was inflicting outrage upon him by her mere mental attitude filled his being with slowly rising gall. Poor Rosalie went joyfully forth shopping after the manner of all newly arrived Americans. She bought new toilettes and gurgles and presents for her friends and relations in New York, and each package which was delivered at the hotel added to Sir Nigel's rage. That the little block-edge should be allowed to do what she liked with her money and that he should not be able to forbid her. This he said to himself at intervals of five minutes through the day which led to another small episode. You are spending a great deal of money, he said one morning in his condemnatory manner. Rosalie looked up from the lace flounce which had just been delivered, and gave the little nervous laugh which was becoming entirely uncertain of propitiating. Am I, she answered, they say all Americans spend a good deal. All money ought to be in proper hands and properly managed, he went on with cold precision. If you were an English woman your husband would control it. Would he? The simple sweet tempered obtuseness of her tone was an infuriating thing to him. There was the usual shade of troubled surprise in her eyes as they met his. I don't think men in America ever do that. I don't believe the nice ones want to. You see, they have such a pride at about always giving things to women and taking care of them. I believe a nice American man would break stones in the street rather than take money from a woman, even his wife. I mean, while he could work. Of course, if he was ill or had ill luck or anything like that he wouldn't be so proud as not to take it from the person who loved him most and wanted to help him. You do sometimes hear of a man who won't work and lets his wife support him, but it's very seldom, and they're always the low kind that other men look down on. Wanted to help him, Sir Nigel selected the phrase and quoted it between puffs of the cigar he held in his fine rather cruel-looking hands, and his voice expressed a not-too-subtle sneer. A woman is not helping her husband when she gives him control of her fortune. She is only doing her duty in accepting her proper position with regard to him. The law used to settle the thing definitely. Did—did it, Rosie faulted weakly. She knew he was offended again, and that she was once more somehow in the wrong. So many things about her seemed to displease him, and when he was displeased he always reminded her that she was stupidly, objectionably guilty of not being an English woman. Whatsoever it happened to be, the fault she had committed out of her depth of ignorance he did not forget it. It was no habit of his to endeavor to dismiss offences. He preferred to hold them in possession as if they were treasures and to turn them over and over in the mental seclusion which nourishes the growth of injuries, since within its barriers there is no chance of their being palliated by the apologies or explanations of the offender. During their journey to Stornham Court the next day he was in one of his black moods. Once in the railway carriage he paid small attention to his wife, but sat rigidly reading his times, until about midway to their destination he descended at a station and paid a visit to the buffet in the small refreshment room. After which he settled himself to doze in an exceedingly unbecoming attitude, his travelling cap pulled down, his rather heavy face congested with the dark flash Rosalie had not yet learned, was due to the fact that he had hastily tossed off two or three whiskeys and sodas. Though he was never either thick of utterance or unsteady on his feet, whisky and soda formed an important factor in his existence. When he was annoyed or dull he had once took the necessary precautions against being overcome by these feelings, and the effect upon a constitutionally evil temper was to transform it into an infernal one. The night had been a bad one for Rosalie. Such floods of homesick longing had overpowered her that she had not been able to sleep. She had risen feeling shaky and hysterical, and her nervousness had been added to by her fear that Nigel might observe her and make comment. Of course she told herself it was natural that he should not wish her to appear at Stornham Court looking a pale, pink-nosed little fright. Her efforts to be cheerful had indeed been somewhat touching, but they had met with small encouragement. She thought the green-clothed country lovely as the train sped through it and a lump rose in her small throat because she knew she might have been so happy if she had not been so frightened and miserable. The thing which had been dawning upon her took clear a more awful form. Incidents she had tried to explain and excuse to herself upon all sorts of futile simple grounds began to loom up before her in something like their actual proportions. She had heard of men who had changed their manner towards girls after they had married them, but she did not know they had begun to change so soon. This was so early in the honeymoon to be sitting in a railway carriage in a corner remote from that occupied by a bridegroom who read his paper in what was obviously intentional, resentful solitude. Emily Somes' father, she remembered it against her will, had been obliged to get a divorce for Emily after her two years of wretched married life. But Alfred Somes had been quite nice for six months at least. It seemed as if all this must be a dream, one of those nightmare things in which you suddenly find yourself married to someone you cannot bear, and you don't know how it happened because you yourself had had nothing to do with the matter. She felt that presently she must waken with a start and find herself breathing fast and panting out, half laughing, half crying, oh, I'm so glad it's not true, I'm so glad it's not true. But this was true, and there was Nigel. And she was in a new unexplored world. Her little trembling hands clutched each other. Her happy light-girlish days full of ease and friendliness and decency seemed gone forever. It was not Rosalie Vanderpool who pressed her colorless face against the glass of the window, looking out at the flying trees. It was the wife of Nigel Anstruthers. And suddenly, by some hideous magic, she had been snatched from the world to which she belonged and was being dragged by a jailer to a prison from which she didn't know how to escape. Suddenly Nigel had managed to convey to her that in England a woman who was married could do nothing to defend herself against her husband, and that to endeavor to do anything was the last impossible touch of vulgar ignominy. The vivid realization of the situation seized upon her like a possession as she glanced sideways at her bridegroom and hurriedly glanced away again with a little hysterical shudder. New York, good-tempered, lenient, free New York, was millions of miles away, and Nigel was so loathily near and so ugly. She had never known before that he was so ugly, that his face was so heavy, his skin so thick and coarse, and his expression so evilly ill-tempered. She was not sufficiently analytical to be conscious that she had, with one bound, leapt to the appalling point of feeling uncontrollable physical abhorrence of the creature to whom she was chained for life. She was terrified at finding herself forced to combat the realization that there were certain expressions of his countenance which made her feel sick with repulsion. Her self-reproach also was as great as her terror. He was her husband, her husband, and she was a wicked girl. She repeated the words to herself again and again, but remotely she knew that when she said, He is my husband, that was the worst thing of all. This inward struggle was a bad preparation for any added misery, and when their railroad journey terminated at Stornham Station, she was met by new bewilderment. The station itself was a rustic place where wild roses climbed down a bank to meet the very train itself. The stationmaster's cottage had roses and clusters of lilies waving in its tiny garden. The stationmaster, a good-natured red-faced man, came forward bearing his head to open the railroad carriage door with his own hand. Nancy thought him delightful, and bowed and smiled sweet-temperedly to him and to his wife and little girls, who were curtsying at the garden gate. She was sufficiently homesick to be actually grateful to them for their air of welcoming her. But as she smiled, she glanced furtively at Nigel to see if she was doing exactly the right thing. He himself was not smiling, and did not unbend even when the stationmaster, who had known him from his boyhood, felt at liberty to offer a deferential welcome. Happy to see you home with her, ladyship, Sir Nigel, he said, very happy, if I may say so. Sir Nigel responded to the respectful amiability with a half-military lifting of his right hand, accompanied by a grunt. You do well, he said, and strode past him to speak to the footmen who had come from Stornham Court with the carriage. The new and nervous little lady and struthers, who was left to trot after her husband, smiled again at the ruddy, kind-looking fellow, this time in conscious deprecation. In the simplicity of her republic and sympathy with a well-meaning fellow-creature, who might feel himself snubbed, she could have shaken him by the hand. She had even parted her lips to venture a word of civility when she was startled by hearing Sir Nigel's voice raised in angry rating. Damned bad management not to bring something else, she heard. Kind of thing you fellas are always doing. She made her way to the carriage, flurried again by not knowing whether she was doing right or wrong. Sir Nigel had given her no instructions, and she had not yet learned that when he was in a certain humour there was equal fault in obeying or disobeying such orders as he gave. The carriage from the court, not in the least a new or smart equipage, was drawn up before the entrance of the station, and Sir Nigel was in a rage because the vehicle brought for the luggage was too small to carry at all. Very sorry, Sir Nigel, said the coachman, touching his hat two or three times in his agitation. Very sorry, the omnibus was a little out of order, the spring, Sir Nigel, and I thought... You thought, was the heated interruption, what right had you to think, damn it? You're not paid to think, you're paid to do your work properly. Here are a lot of damned boxes which are sure to go with us, and where's your maid, wheeling around upon his wife? Rosalie turned towards the woman who was approaching from the waiting-room. Hannah, she said timorously, dropped those confounded bundles, ordered Sir Nigel, and showed James the boxes her ladyship is obliged to have this evening, be quick about it, and don't pick out half a dozen, the cart can't take them. Hannah looked frightened. This sort of thing was new to her, too. She shuffled her packages onto a seat and followed the footmen to the luggage. Sir Nigel continued rating the coachman. Any form of violent self-assertion was welcome to him at any time, and when he was irritated he found it a distinct luxury to kick a dog or throw a boot at a cat. The springs of the omnibus, he argued, had no right to be broken when it was known that he was coming home. His anger was only added to by the coachman's halting endeavours in his excuses to veil a fact he knew his master was aware of, that everything at Stornham was more or less out of order, and that dilapidations were the inevitable result of there being no money to pay for repairs. The man leaned forward on his box and spoke at last in a low voice. The bus has been broken some time, he said. It's an expensive job, Sir Nigel. A ladyship thought it better to— Sir Nigel turned white about the mouth. Hold your tongue, he commanded, and the coachman got read in the face, saluted, biting his lips, and sat very stiff and upright on his box. The stationmaster edged away uneasily and tried to look as if he were not listening. But Rosalie could see that he couldn't help hearing, nor could the country people who had been passengers by the train, and who were collecting their belongings and getting into their traps. Lady Anstruthers was ignored and remained standing while the scene went on. She could not help recalling the manner in which she had been invariably received in New York on her return from any journey, how she was met by comfortable merry people and taken care of at once. It was so strange, it was so queer, so different. Oh, never mind, Nigel, dear, she said at last, with innocent indiscretion. It doesn't really matter, you know. Sir Nigel turned upon her a blaze of haughty indignation. If you're pardoned my saying, so it does matter, he said. It matters confoundedly. Be good enough to take your place in the carriage. He moved to the carriage-door, and not too civilly put her in. She gasped a little for breath as she sat down. He had spoken to her as if she had been an impertinent servant who had taken a liberty. The poor girl was bewildered to the verge of panic. When he had ended his tirade and took its place beside her, he wore his most haughtily intolerant air. May I request that in future you will be good enough not to interfere when I am reproving my servants? he remarked. I didn't mean to interfere, she apologized tremulously. I don't know what you meant, I only know what you did, was his response. You American women are too fond of cutting in, and Englishman can think for himself without his wife's assistance. The tears rose to her eyes. The introduction of the international question overpowered her as always. Don't begin to be hysterical, with the ameliorating tenderness with which he observed the two hot salt drops which fell despite her. I should hardly wish to present you to my mother bathed in tears. She wiped the salt drops hastily away and sat for a moment in silence in the corner of the carriage. Being wholly primitive and unanalytical, she was ashamed and began to blame herself. He was right. She must not be silly because she was unused to things. She ought not to be disturbed by trifles. She must try to be nice and look cheerful. She made an effort and did not speak for a few minutes. When she had recovered herself, she tried again. English country is so pretty, she said, when she thought she was quite sure that her voice would not tremble. I do so like the hedges and the darling little red-roofed cottages. It was an innocent tentative at saying something agreeable which might propitiate him. She was beginning to realise that she was continually making efforts to propitiate him. But one of the forms of unpleasantness most enjoyable to him was the snubbing of any gentle effort at palliating his mood. He condescended in this case no response whatever, but merely continued staring contemptuously before him. It is so picturesque and so unlike America, was the pathetic little common-place she ventured next, aimed at Nigel. He turned his head slowly towards her as if she had taken a new liberty in disturbing his meditations. What! He drawled. It was almost too much for her to sustain herself under. Her courage collapsed. I was only saying how pretty the cottages were, she faltered, and that there's nothing like this in America. You ended your remark by adding, ain't it, her husband condescended. There's nothing like that in England. I shall ask you to do me the favour of leaving Americanisms out of your conversation when you're in the society of English, ladies and gentlemen. It won't do. I didn't know I said it, rosey answered feebly. That is the difficulty, was his response. You never know, but educated people do. There was nothing more to be said, at least for a girl who had never known what it was to be bullied. This one felt like a beggar, or a scullery maid, who being rated by her master had not the refuge of being able to give warning. She could never give warning. The Atlantic Ocean was between her and those who had loved and protected her all her short life, and the carriage was bearing her onwards to the home in which she was to live alone as this man's companion to the end of her existence. She made no further propitiatory efforts, but sat and stared in simple blankness at the country, which seemed to increase in loveliness at each new point of view. Sometimes she saw sweet-wooded, rolling lands made lovelier by the homely farmhouses and cottages enclosed and sheltered by thick hedges and trees. Once or twice they drove past a park and folding a great house, guarded by its huge central oaks and beaches. Once the carriage passed through an adorable little village where children played on the green, and a square-towered gray church seemed to watch over the steep-roofed cottages and creeper-covered vicarage. If she had been a happy American tourist travelling in company with impressionable friends, she would have broken into ecstatic little exclamations of admiration every five minutes. But it had been driven home to her that to her present companion, to whom nothing was new, her rapture would merely represent the crudeness which had existed in contentment in a brownstone house on a noisy thoroughfare, through a life which had been past-tramping up and down numbered streets and avenues. They approached at last a second village with a green, a grass-growing street, and the irregular red-tiled cottages which to the unaccustomed eyes seemed rather to represent studies for sketches than absolute realities. The bells in the church-tower broke forth into a chime, and people appeared at the doors of the cottages. The men touched their foreheads as the carriage passed, and the children made bobbing curtsies. The Nigel condescended to straighten himself a trifle in his seat, and recognized the greetings with a stiff half-military salute. The poor girl at his side felt that he put as little feeling as possible into the movement, and that if she herself had been a bowing villager, she would almost have preferred to be wholly ignored. She looked at him questioningly. Are they? Must I? She began. Make some civil recognition, answered Sir Nigel, as if he were instructing an ignorant child. It is customary. So she bowed and tried to smile, and the joyous clamor of the bells brought the awful lump into her throat again. It reminded her of the ringing of the chimes at the New York Church on that day of her marriage, which had been so full of gay, luxurious bustle, so crowded with wedding-presence and flowers, and warm-hearted affectionate congratulations, and good wishes uttered in merry American voices. The park at Stornham Court was large and beautiful and old. The trees were magnificent, and the broad sweep of sword and rich dip of ferny dell, all that the imagination could desire. The court itself was old, and many gabled, and mellow red and fine. Rosalie had learned from no precedent as yet that houses of its kind may represent the apotheosis of discomfort and elapidation within, and only become more beautiful without. Tumbled-down chimneys and broken tiles, being clambered over by tossing ivy, are pictures to delight the soul. As she descended from the carriage, the girl was tremulous and uncertain of herself, and much overpowered by the unbending air of the man-servant who received her, as if she were a parcel in which it was no part of his duty to take the smallest interest. As she mounted the stone steps, she caught a glimpse of broad gloom within the threshold, a big square dingy hall where some other servants were drawn up in a row. She had read of something of the sort in English novels, and she was suddenly embarrassed afresh by her realization of the fact that she did not know what to do, and that if she made a mistake Nigel would never forgive her. An elderly woman came out of a room opening into the hall. She was an ugly woman of a rigid carriage, which, with the obvious intention of being severely majestic, was only antagonistic. She had a flaccid chin, and was curiously like Nigel. She had also his expression when he intended to be disagreeable. She was the dowager, Lady Anstruthers, and being an entirely revolting old person at her best, she objected extremely to the transatlantic bride who had made her a dowager, though she was determinedly prepared to profit by any practical benefit likely to accrue. Well, Nigel, she said in a deep voice, here you are at last. This was, of course, a statement not to be refuted. She held out a leaven cheek, and as Sir Nigel also presented his, their caress of greeting was a singular and not a fusive one. Is this your wife? She asked, giving Rosalie a bony hand, and as he did not indignantly deny this to be the fact, she added, How do you do? Rosalie murmured a reply, and tried to control herself by making another effort to swallow the lump in her throat. But she could not swallow it. She had been keeping a desperate hold on herself too long. The bewildered misery of her awakening, the awkwardness of the public row at the station, the sulks which had filled the carriage to repletion through all the long drive, and finally the jangling bells which had so recalled that last joyous day at home, at home, had brought her to a point where this meeting between mother and son, these two stony, unpleasant creatures exchanging a reluctant rub of uninviting cheeks, as two savages might have rubbed noses, proved the finishing impetus to hysteria. They were so hideous, these two, and so ghastly, comic and fantastic in their unresponsive glumness, that the poor girl lost all hold upon herself, and broke into a trembling shriek of laughter. Oh! she gasped in terror at what she felt to be her indecent madness. Oh! How! How! And then seeing Nigel's furious start, his mother's glare, and all the servants' alarmed stare at her, she rushed staggering to the only creature she felt she knew, her maid Hannah, clutched her, and broke down into wild sobbing. Oh! Take me away! she cried. Oh! Do! Oh! Do! Oh! Hannah! Oh! Mother! Mother! Take your mistress to her room, commanded Sir Nigel. Go downstairs, he called out to the servants. Take her upstairs at once, and throw water in her face, to the excited Hannah. And as the new lady answered others, was half led, half dragged, and humiliated hysteric disorder up the staircase. He took his mother by the elbow, marched her into the nearest room, and shut the door. There they stood in stead at each other, breathing quick and raged breaths, and looking particularly alike with their heavy-featured, thick-skinned, infuriated faces. It was the dowager who spoke first, and her whole voice and manner expressed all she intended that they should, all the derision, dislike, and scathing, resignment to a grotesque fate. Well! said her ladyship, so this is what you have brought home from America. CHAPTER IV As the weeks passed at Stornham Court, the Atlantic Ocean seemed to Rosalie Anstrothers to widen endlessly, and gay, happy, noisy New York, to recede until it was as far away as some memory of heaven. The girl had been born in the midst of the rattling, stirring bustle, and it had never struck her as assuming the character of noise. She had only thought of it as being the cheerful confusion inseparable from town. She had been secretly offended and hurt when strangers said that New York was noisy and dirty. When they called it vulgar, she never wholly forgave them. She was of the New Yorkers who adore their New York as Parisians adore Paris, and who feel that only within its beloved boundaries can the breath of life be breathed. People were often too hot or too cold air, but there was usually plenty of bright, glaring sun, and the extremes of the weather had at least something rather dramatic about them. The word dramatic incidents connected with them at any rate. People fell dead of sunstroke or were frozen to death, and the newspapers were full of anecdotes during a cold snap or a torrid wave, which all made for excitement and conversation. But at Stornham the rain seemed to young Lady Anstrothers to descend ceaselessly. The season was a wet one, and when she rose in the morning and looked out over the huge stretch of trees and swad, she thought she always saw the rain falling, either in hopeless sheets or more hopeless drizzle. The occasions upon which this was a dreary truth blotted out or blurred the exceptions, when in liquid ultramarine deeps of sky floated islands and mountains of snow-white fleece, of a beauty of which yet before had no conception. In the English novels she had read, places such as Stornham Court were always filled with house parties, made up of wonderful town wits and beauties, who provided endless entertainment for each other, who played games, who hunted and shot pheasants, and shone in dazzling amateur theatricals. There were, however, no visitors at Stornham, and there were in fact no accommodations for any. There were numberless bedrooms, but none really fit for guests to occupy. Carpets and curtains were ancient and ragged, furniture was dilapidated, chimneys would not draw, beds were falling to pieces. The dowager lady and stothers had never either attracted, desired, or been able to afford company. Her son's wife suffered from the resulting boredom and unpopularity without being able to comprehend the significance of the situation. As the weeks dragged by a few heavy carriages deposited at the court a few callers. Some of the visitors bore imposing titles which made Rosalie very nervous and caused her hastily to array herself to receive them in toilets much too pretty and delicate for the occasion. Her innocent idea was that she must do her husband credit by appearing as stylish as possible. As a result she was stared at, either with open disfavor or with well-bred furtive criticism, and was described afterwards as being either very American or very overdressed. When she had lived in huge rooms in Fifth Avenue Rosalie had changed her attire as many times a day as she had changed her fancy. Every hour had been filled with engagements and amusements. The Vanderpool carriages had driven up to the door and driven away again and again through the mornings and afternoons and until midnight and later. Someone was always going out or coming in. There had been in the big handsome house not much more of an error of her pose than one might expect to find at a railway station, but the flurrys are coming and going, the calling and chatting had all been cheery, amiable. At Stornham Rosalie sat at breakfast before unchanging boiled eggs, unfailing toast, and unalterable broiled bacon, morning after morning. Sir Nigel sat and munched over the newspapers. His mother, with an air of relentless disapproval from a lofty height of both her food and companions, disposed of her eggs and her rasher at Rosalie's right hand. She had transferred to her daughter-in-law her previously occupied seat at the head of the table. This had been done with a carefully prepared scene of intense though correct disagreeableness, in which she had managed to convey all the ranker of her dethroned spirit and her disapproval and disdain of international alliances. It is, of course, proper that you should sit at the head of your husband's table, she had said, among other agreeable things. A woman, having devoted her life to her son, must relinquish her position to the person he chooses to marry. If you should have a son, you will give up your position to his wife. Since Nigel has married you, he has, of course, a right to expect that you will at least make an effort to learn something of what is required of women in your position. Sit down, Rosalie, said Nigel. Of course you take the head of the table, and naturally you must learn what is expected of my wife, but don't talk confounded rubbish mother about devoting your life to your son. We have seen about as little of each other as we could help. We never agreed. They were both bullies, and each made occasional efforts at bullying the other without any particular result, but each could at least bully the other into intensified unpleasantness. The vicar's wife, having made her call of ceremony upon the new Lady Anstrowthers, followed up the acquaintance, and found her quite exotically unlike her mother-in-law, whose charities one may be sure had neither been lavish nor dispensed by any hand less impressive than her own. The younger woman was of wholly malleable material. Her sympathies were easily awakened, and her purse was well filled and readily opened. Small families or large ones, newly-born infants or newly buried ones, old women with bad legs, and old men who needed comforts equally touched her heart. She innocently bestowed sovereigns, where an English woman would have known that half-grounds would have been sufficient. As the vicar's was her armina, that Lady felt her importance rapidly on the increase. When she left a cottage saying, I'll speak to young Lady Anstrowthers about you, the good woman of the house curtsied low, and her husband touched his forehead respectfully. But this did not advance the fortunes of Sir Nigel, who personally required of her very different things. Two weeks after her arrival at Stornham Rosalie began to see that somehow she was regarded as a person almost impudently in the wrong. It appeared that if she had been an English girl she would have been quite different that she would have been an advantage instead of a detriment. As an American she was a detriment. That seemed to go without saying. She tried to do everything she was told and learn something from each cold insinuation. She didn't know that her very amenability and timidity were her undoing. Sir Nigel and his mother thoroughly enjoyed themselves at her expense. They knew they could say anything they chose, and at the most she would only break down into crying and afterwards apologize for being so badly behaved. If some practical, strong-minded person had been near to defend her, she might have been rescued promptly and her tyrants routed. But she was a young girl, tender of heart and weak of nature. She used to cry a great deal when she was alone, and when she wrote to her mother she was too frightened to tell the truth concerning her unhappiness. Oh! if I could just see some of them, she would wail to herself. If I could just see mother, or father, or anybody from New York. Oh! I know, she'll never see New York again, or Broadway, or Fifth Avenue, or Central Park. I never, never, never shout. And she would grovel among her pillows, burying her face and half stifling herself, lest her sob should be heard. Her feeling for her husband had become one of terror and repulsion. She was almost more afraid of his patronising affectionate moments than she was of his temper. His conjugal condescensions made her feel vaguely, without knowing why, as if she were some lower order of little animal. American women, he said, had no conception of wifely duties and affection. He had a great deal to say on the subject of wifely duty. It was part of her duty as a wife to be entirely satisfied with his society and to be completely happy in the pleasure it afforded her. It was her wifely duty not to talk about her own family and palpitatingly expect letters by every American male. He objected intensely to this letter writing and receiving, and his mother shared his prejudices. You have married an Englishman, her ladyship said. You have put it out of his power to marry an Englishwoman, and the least consideration you can show is to let New York and 900th Street remain upon the other side of the Atlantic, and not insist on dragging them into Stornham Court. The dowager, Lady Anstruthers, was very fine in her picture of her mental condition when she realised, as she seemed periodically to do, that it was no longer possible for her son to make a respectable marriage with a woman of his own nation. The unadorned fact was that both she and Sennigel were infuriated by the simplicity which made Rosalie slow in comprehending that it was proper that the money her father allowed her should be placed in her husband's hands, and left there with no indelicate questioning. If she had been an English girl, matters would have been made plain to her from the first and arranged satisfactorily before her marriage. Sennigel's mother considered that he had played the fool and would not believe that New York fathers were such touchy sentimental idiots as not to know what was expected of them. They wasted no time, however, in coming to the point, and in a measure it was the vigorous who aided them. Not she entirely, however. Since her mother-in-law's first mention of a possible son whose wife would eventually thrust her from her seat at the head of the table, Rosalie had several times heard this son referred to. It struck her that in England such things seemed discussed with more freedom than in America. She had never heard a young woman's possible family arranged for and made the subject of conversation in the more crude atmosphere of New York. It made her feel rather awkward at first. Then she began to realize that the son was part of her wifely duty also, that she was expected to provide one, and that he was in some way expected to provide for the estate to rehabilitate it, and that this was because her father, being a rich man, would provide for him. It had also struck her that in England there was a tendency to expectation that someone would provide for someone else, that relatives, even by marriage, were supposed to make allowances on which it was quite proper for other persons to live. Rosalie had been accustomed to a community in which even rich men worked, and in which young and able-bodied men would have felt rather indignant if aunts and uncles had thought it necessary to pension them off as if they had been impotent paupers. It was Rosalie's son who was to be provided for in this case, and who was to provide for his father. When you have a son, her mother-in-law had remarked severely, I suppose something will be done for Nigel in the estate. This had been said before she had been ten days in the house, and had set her not too quick brain working. She had already begun to see that life at Stornham Court was not the luxurious affair it was in the house in Fifth Avenue. Things were shabby and queer and not at all comfortable. Fires were not lighted because the day was chilly and gloomy. She had once asked for one in her bedroom, and her mother-in-law had reproved her for indecent extravagance in a manner which took her breath away. I suppose in America you have your house at Furnace Heat in July, she said, mere wastefulness and self-indulgence. That's why Americans are old women at twenty, they're shriveled and withered by the unhealthy lives they lead, stuffing themselves with sweets and hot bread and never breathing the fresh air. Rosalie could not at the moment recall any withered and shriveled old women of twenty, but she blushed and stammered as usual. It's never cold enough for fires in July, she answered, but we never think fires extravagant when we're not comfortable without them. Coe must be cheaper than it is in England, said her ladyship. When you have a daughter, I hope you do not expect to bring her up as girls are brought up in New York. This was the first time Rosalie had heard of her daughter, and she was not ready enough to reply. She naturally went into her room and cried again, wondering what her father and mother would say if they knew that bedroom fires were considered vulgarly extravagant by an impressive member of the British aristocracy. She was not at all strong at the time, and was given to feeling chilly and miserable on wet windy days. She used to cry more than ever, and was so desolate that there were days when she used to go to the vicarage for companionship. On such days the vicar's wife would entertain her with stories of the village's catastrophes, and she would empty her purse upon the tea-table and feel a little consoled because she was the means of consoling someone else. I suppose it gratifies your vanity to play the Lady Bountiful, so Nigel sneered one evening, having heard in the village what she was doing. I never thought of such a thing, she stammered feebly. Mrs. Brent said there was so poor. You throw your money about as if you were a child, said her mother-in-law. It's a pity it's not put in the hands of some person with discretion. It had begun to dawn upon Rosalie that her ladyship was deeply convinced that either herself or her son would be admirably discreet custodians of the money referred to. And even the dawning of this idea had frightened the girl. She was so inexperienced and ignorant that she felt it might be possible that in England one's husband and one's mother-in-law could do what they liked. It might be that they could take possession of one's money as they seemed to take possession of one's self and one's very soul. She would have been very glad to give them money, and had indeed wandered frequently if she might dare to offer it to them, if they would be outraged and insulted and slay her with their wrath at her purse-proud daring. She had tried to invent ways in which she could approach the subject, but had not been able to screw up her courage to any sticking-point. She was so overpowered by her consciousness that they seemed continually to intimate that Americans with money were ostentatious and always laying stress upon the amount of their possessions. She had no conception of the primeval simpleness of their attitude in such matters, and that no ceremonies were necessary save the process of transferring sufficiently large sums as though they were the mere right of the recipients. She was taught to understand this later. In the meantime, however, ready as she would have been to give large sums if she had known how, she was terrified by the thought that it might be possible that she could be deprived of her bank account and reduced to the condition of a sort of dependent upon the humours of her lately acquired relations. She thought over this a good deal, and would have found immense relief if she dared have consulted any one, but she could not make up her mind to reveal her unhappiness to her people. She had been married so recently, everybody thought her marriage so delightful, she could not bear that her father and mother should be distressed by knowing that she was wretched. She also reflected with misery that New York would talk the matter over excitedly, and that finally the newspapers would get hold of the gossip. She could even imagine interviewers calling at the house in Fifth Avenue and endeavouring to obtain particulars of the situation. Her father would be angry and refuse to give them, but that would make no difference, the newspapers would give them and everybody would read what they said, whether it was true or not. She could not possibly write fact, she thought, so her poor little letters were restrained and unlike herself, and to the warm-hearted souls in New York even appearing stiff and unaffectionate as if her aristocratic surroundings had chilled her love for them. In fact it became far from easy for her to write at all since her Nigel so disapproved of her interest in the American mail. His objections had indeed taken the form of his feeling himself quite within his rights when he occasionally intercepted letters from her relations with the view of finding out whether they contained criticisms of himself which would betray that she had been guilty of indiscreet confidences. He discovered that she had not apparently been so guilty, but it was evident that there were moments when Mrs. Vanderpool was uneasy and disposed to ask anxious questions. When this occurred he destroyed the letters, and as a result of this precaution on his part her motherly queries seemed to be ignored and she several times shed tears in the belief that Rosie had grown so patrician that she was capable of snubbing her mother in her resentment at feeling her privacy intruded upon and an unrefined effusiveness shown. I just feel as if she was beginning not to care about us at all, Betty, she said. I couldn't have believed it of Rosie. She was always such an affectionate girl. I don't believe it now," replied Betty sharply. Rosie couldn't grow hateful and stuck up. It's that nasty Nigel, I know it is. So Nigel's intention was that there should be as little intercourse between Fifth Avenue and Stornham Court as was possible. Amongst other things he did not intend that a lot of American relations should come tumbling in when they chose to cross the Atlantic. He would not have it, and took discrete steps to prevent any accident of the sort. He wrote to America occasionally himself, and knowing well how to make himself civilly repellent, so subtly chilled his parents-in-law as to discourage in them more than once their half-formed plan of paying a visit to their child in her new home. He opened, read, and reclosed all epistles to and from New York, and while Mrs. Vandepool was much hurt to find that Rosie never condescended to make any response to her tentatives concerning her possible visit, Rosie herself was mystified by the fact that the journey to Europe was never spoken of. I don't see why they never seemed to think of coming over, as she said plaintively one day, they used to talk so much about it. They ejaculated the dowager-lady and struthers, whom may you mean? Mother and father and Betty and some of the others. Her mother-in-law put up her eyeglasses to stare at her. The whole family, she inquired, there are not so many of them, Rosalie answered. Her family is always too many to descend upon a young woman when she is married, observed her ladyship unmovedly. Nigel glanced over the top of his tines. I may as well tell you that it would not do at all, he put in. Why, why not? exclaimed Rosalie aghast. Americans don't do in English society, slightingly. But they're coming over so much, they like London so. Are Americans like London? Do they? With a draw which made Rosalie blush until the tears started to her eyes. I'm afraid the sentiment is scarcely mutual. Rosalie turned and fled from the room. She turned and fled, because she realised that she should burst out crying if she waited to hear another word, and she realised that of late she seemed always to be bursting out crying before one or the other of those two. She couldn't help it. They always seemed to be implying something slighting or scathing. They were always putting her in the wrong and hurting her feelings. The day was damp and chill, but she put on her hat and ran out into the park. She went down the avenue and turned into a coppers. There among the wet bracken she sank down on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree and huddled herself in a small heap, her head on her arms actually wailing. Oh, mother! Oh, mother! she cried hysterically. Oh, I do wish it would come. I'm so cold, mother! I'm so ill. I can't bear it. It seems as if you'd forgotten all about me. You're all so happy in New York that perhaps you have forgotten. Perhaps you have. Oh, don't, mother, don't!" It was a month later that through the vicar's wife she reached a discovery in a climax. She had heard one morning from this lady of a misfortune which had befallen a small farmer. It was a misfortune which was an actual catastrophe to a man in his position. His house had caught fire during a gale of wind, and the fire had spread to the outbuildings and rickyard, and swept away all his belongings, his house, his furniture, his hay-ricks and stored grain, and even his few cows and horses. He had been a poor, hard-working fellow, and his small insurance had lapsed the day before the fire. He was absolutely ruined, and with his wife and six children stood face to face with beggary and starvation. Rosalie Amstrad has entered the vicarage to find the poor woman who was his companion in Calamity sobbing in the hall. A child for a few weeks was in her arms, and two small creatures clung crying to her skirts. We've worked hard, she wept. We have, ma'am. Father has always been steady and not early and late. Perhaps it's the Lord's hand, as you say, ma'am, but we've been decent people and never missed church when we could help it. Father didn't deserve it that he didn't. She was heartbroken in her downtrodden hopelessness. Rosalie literally quaked with sympathy. She poured forth her pity in such words as the poor woman had never heard spoken by a great lady to a humble creature like herself. The villagers found the new lady Amstrad's interviews with them curiously simple and suggestive of an equality they couldn't understand. Stornham was a conservative old village where the distinction between the gentry and the peasants was clearly marked. The cottagers were puzzled by Senaigel's wife, but they decided that she was kind, if unusual. As Rosalie talked to the farmer's wife, she longed for her father's presence. She had remembered a time when a man in his employ had lost his all by fire. The small house he had just made his last payment upon having been burnt to the ground. He had lost one of his children in the fire, and the details had been heart-rending. The entire Vanderpool household had wept on hearing them, and Mr. Vanderpool had drawn a check which had seemed like a fortune to the sufferer. A new house had been bought, and Mrs. Vanderpool and her daughters and friends had bestowed furniture and clothing enough to make the family comfortable to the verge of luxury. "'See, you poor thing,' said Rosalie, glowing with memories of this incident, a homesick young soul comforted by the mere likeness in the two calamities. I brought my check-book with me because I meant to help you. A man worked for my father had his house burned just as yours was, and my father made everything all right for him again. I'll make it all right for you. I'll make you a check for a hundred pounds now, and then when your husband begins to build, I'll give him some more.' The woman gasped for breath and turned pale. She was frightened. It really seemed as if her ladyship must have lost her wits a little. She could not mean this. The vicar has turned pale, too. "'Lady Anstruthers,' she said, "'Lady Anstruthers, it—it's too much, Sir Nigel.' "'Too much,' exclaimed Rosalie. They have lost everything, you know. Their hay ricks and cattle, as well as their house. I guess it won't be half enough.' Mrs. Brent dragged her into the vicar's study and talked to her. She tried to explain that in English villages such things were not done in a manner so casual as if they were the mere result of unconsidered feeling as if they were quite natural things such as any human person might do. When Rosalie cried, "'But why not? Why not? They ought to be!' Mrs. Brent could not seem to make herself quite clear. Rosalie only gathered in a bewildered way that there ought to be more ceremony, more deliberation, more holding off, before a person of rank indulged in such munificence. The recipient ought to be made to feel it more, to understand fully what a great thing was being done. They will think you will do anything for them.' "'So I will,' said young lady Anstruthers. "'If I have the money when they are in such awful trouble, suppose we last everything in the world, and there were people who could easily help us and wouldn't. You and Sir Nigel, that is quite different,' said Mrs. Brent. "'I am afraid that if you do not discuss the matter and ask advice from your husband and mother-in-law they will be very much offended.' If I were doing it with their money they would have the right to be,' replied Rosalie, with entire ingeniousness. "'I wouldn't presume to do such a thing as that. That wouldn't be right, of course.' "'They will be angry with me,' said the vicarous awkwardly. This queer, silly girl who seemed to see nothing in the right light frequently made her feel awkward. Mrs. Brent told her husband that she appeared to have no sense of dignity or proper appreciation of her position.' The wife of the farmer, John Wilson, carried away the check quite stunned. She was breathless with amazement and turned rather faint with excitement for wilderness and her sense of relief. She had to sit down in the vicarage kitchen for a few minutes and drink a glass of the thin vicarage beer. Rosalie promised that she would discuss the matter and ask advice when she returned to the court. Just as she left the house Mrs. Brent suddenly remembered something she'd forgotten. The Wilson trouble completely drove it out of my mind, she said. It was a stupid mistake of the post-boys. He left a letter of yours among mine when he came this morning. It was most careless. I shall speak to his father about it. It might have been important that you should receive it early." When she saw the letter, Rosalie uttered an exclamation. It was addressed in her father's handwriting. "'Oh!' she cried. It's from father. And the post-mark is half. For what does it mean?' She was so excited that she almost forgot to express her thanks. Her heart leapt up in her throat. Could they have come over from America? Could they? Why was it written from half? Could they be near her?' She walked along the road choked with ecstatic laughing sobs. Her hand shook so that she could scarcely tear open the envelope. She tore a corner of the letter, and when the sheet was spread open her eyes were full of wild, delighted tears, which made it impossible for her to see for the moment. But she swept the tears away and read this. "'Dear daughter, it seems as if we had had pretty bad luck in not seeing you.' We had counted on it very much, and your mother feels it all the more because she is weak after her illness. We don't quite understand why you did not seem to know about her having had diphtheria in Paris. You did not answer Betty's letter. Perhaps it missed you in some way. Things do sometimes go wrong in the mail, and several times your mother has thought a letter has been lost. She thought so because you seemed to forget to refer to things. We came over to leave Betty at a French school, and we had expected to visit you later. But your mother fell ill of diphtheria, and not hearing from you seemed to make her homesick, so we decided to return to New York by the next steamer. I ran over to London, however, to make some inquiries about you, and on the first day I arrived I met your husband in Bond Street. He had once explained to me that you had gone to a house party at some castle in Scotland, and said you were well and enjoying yourself very much, and he was on his way to join you. I'm sorry, daughter, that it has turned out that we could not see each other. It seems a long time since you left us, but I am very glad, however, that you are so well and really like English life. If we had time for it, I'm sure it would be delightful. Your mother sends her love and wants very much to hear of all you were doing and enjoying, hoping that we may have better luck the next time we cross. Your affectionate father, Ruben L. Banderpaw, Rosalie found herself running breathlessly up the avenue. She was clutching the letter still in her hand, and staggering from side to side. Now and then she uttered horrible little short cries like an animal's. She ran and ran seeing nothing, and now and then with the clenched hand in which the letter was crushed striking a sharp blow at her breast. She stumbled up the big stone steps she had mounted on the day she was brought home as a bride. Her dress caught her feet, and she fell on her knees, and scrambled up again, gasping. She dashed across the huge dark hall, and hurling herself against the door of the morning-room appeared dishevelled, haggard-eyed, and with scarlet patches on her wild white face before the dowager, who started angrily to her feet. Where is Nigel? Where is Nigel? She cried out frenziedly. What, in heaven's name, do you mean by such manners, demanded her ladyship? Apologize at once. Where is Nigel? Nigel? Nigel? The girl raved. I will see him. I will. I will see him. She, who had been the mildest of sweet-tempered creatures all her life, had suddenly gone almost insane with heartbroken hysteric grief and rage. She did not know what she was saying and doing. She only realized, in an agony of despair, that she was a thing caught in a trap, that these people had her in their power, and that they had tricked her and lied to her, and kept her apart from what her girls had so cried out to and longed for. Her father, her mother, her little sister, they had been near her, and had been lied to and sent away. You are quite mad, you violent, uncontrolled creature, cried the dowager furiously. You ought to be put in a straight jacket and drenched with cold water. Then the door opened again and Nigel strode in. He was in riding-dress and was breathless and livid with anger. He was in a nice mood to confront a wife on the verge of screaming hysterics. After a bad half-hour with his steward, who had been talking of impending disasters, he had heard by chance of Wilson's conflagration and the hundred-pound check. He had galloped home at the top of his horse's speed. Here is your wife, raving mad, cried out his mother. Rosalie staggered across the room to him. She held up her hand, clenching the letter, and shook it at him. My mother and father have been here, she shrieked. My mother has been ill. They wanted to come and see me. You knew and you kept it from me. You told my father lies, lies, hideous lies. You said I was away in Scotland enjoying myself when I was here and dying with homesickness. You made them think I did not care for them. Or for New York. You have killed me. Why did you do such a wicked thing? He looked at her with glaring eyes. If a man born a gentleman is ever in the mood to kick his wife to death, as cost among us do, he was in that mood. He had lost control over himself as completely as she had, and while she was only a desperate hysteric girl, he was a violent man. I did it because I did not mean to have them here, he said. I did it because I won't have them here. They shall come, she quavered shrilly in her wildness. They shall come to see me. They are my own father and mother, and I will have them." He caught her arm in such a grip that she must have thought he would break it, if she could have thought or felt anything. No, you will not have them, he ground forth between his teeth. You will do as I order you, and learn to behave yourself as a decent married woman should. You will learn to obey your husband and respect his wishes and control your devilish American temper. They have gone, gone, well, Rosalie. You sent them away, my father, my mother, my sister. Stop your indecent ravings, ordered Sir Nigel, shaking her. I will not submit to be disgraced before the servants. Put your hand over her mouth, Nigel, cried his mother. The very scullery maids will hear. She was as infuriated as her son, and indeed, to behold civilized human beings in the state of uncontrolled violence these three had reached, was a sight to shudder at. I won't stop, cried the girl. Why did you take me away from everything? I was quite happy. Everybody was kind to me. I loved people. I had everything. No one ever, ever ill-used any one. Sir Nigel clutched her arm more brutally still and shook her with absolute violence. Her hair broke loose and fell about her awful little distorted sobbing face. I did not take you to give you an opportunity to display your vulgar ostentation by throwing away a hundred-pound checks to villagers, he said. I didn't take you to give you the position of a lady and be made a fool of by you. You have ruined him, burst forth his mother. You have put it out of his power to marry an English woman who would have known it was her duty to give him something in return for his name and protection. Her ladyship had begun to rave also, and as mother and son were of equal violence when they had ceased to control themselves, Rosalie began to find herself enlightened unsparingly. She and her people were vulgar sharpers. They had trapped a gentleman into a low American marriage, and had not the decency to pay for what they had got. If she had been an English woman, well-born and of decent breeding, all her fortune would have been properly transferred to her husband, and he would have had the dispensing of it. Her husband would have been in a position to control her expenditure, and see that she did not make a fool of herself. As it was, she was the derision of all decent people, of all people who had been properly brought up and knew what was in good taste and of good morality. First it was the dowager who poured forth, and then it was Sennigel. They broke in on each other. They interrupted one another with exclamations in interpolations. They had so far lost themselves that they did not know they became grotesque in the violence of their fury. Rosalie's brain whirled. Her hysteria mounted and mounted. She stared first at one, and then at the other, gasping and sobbing by turns. She swayed on her feet and clutched at a chair. I did not know, she broke forth at last, trying to make her voice heard in the storm. I never understood. I knew something made you hate me, but I didn't know you were angry about money. She laughed tremulously and wildly. I would have given it to you. Father would have given you some, if you had been good to me. The laugh became hysterical beyond her management. Peel after peel broke from her. She shook all over with her ghastly merriment, sobbing at one at the same time. Oh! oh! she shrieked. You see, I thought she was so aristocratic. I wouldn't have dared to think of such a thing. I thought an English gentleman, an English gentleman. Oh! I had to think it was all because I did not give you money, just common dollars and cents that I daren't offer to a decent American who could work for himself. Sennigel sprang at her. He struck her with his open hand upon the cheek, and as she reeled she held up a small, feverish shaking hand, laughing more wildly than before. You ought not to strike me, she cried. You oughtn't. You don't know how valuable I am. Perhaps, with a little crazy scream, perhaps I might have a son. She fell in a shuddering heap, and as she dropped she struck heavily against the protruding end of an oak chest and lay upon the floor, her arms flung out and limp as if she were a dead thing. End of chapter four