"I talk as if--as if I were Betty," she said. "You have forgotten. I have not. I have been looking forward to this for years. I have been planning to come to you since I was eleven years old. And here we sit."
"You didn"t forget? You didn"t?" faltered the poor wreck of Rosy. "Oh!
Oh! I thought you had all forgotten me--quite--quite!"
And her face went down in her spare, small hands, and she began to cry again.
CHAPTER XII
UGHTRED
Bettina stood alone in her bedroom a couple of hours later. Lady Anstruthers had taken her to it, preparing her for its limitations by explaining that she would find it quite different from her room in New York. She had been pathetically nervous and flushed about it, and Bettina had also been aware that the apartment itself had been hastily, and with much moving of objects from one chamber to another, made ready for her.
The room was large and square and low. It was panelled in small squares of white wood. The panels were old enough to be cracked here and there, and the paint was stained and yellow with time, where it was not knocked or worn off. There was a small paned, leaded window which filled a large part of one side of the room, and its deep seat was an agreeable feature. Sitting in it, one looked out over several red-walled gardens, and through breaks in the trees of the park to a fair beyond. Bettina stood before this window for a few moments, and then took a seat in the embrasure, that she might gaze out and reflect at leisure.
Her genius, as has before been mentioned, was the genius for living, for being vital. Many people merely exist, are kept alive by others, or continue to vegetate because the persistent action of normal functions will allow of their doing no less. Bettina Vanderpoel had lived vividly, and in the midst of a self-created atmosphere of action from her first hour. It was not possible for her to be one of the horde of mere spectators. Wheresoever she moved there was some occult stirring of the mental, and even physical, air. Her pulses beat too strongly, her blood ran too fast to allow of inaction of mind or body. When, in pa.s.sing through the village, she had seen the broken windows and the hanging palings of the cottages, it had been inevitable that, at once, she should, in thought, repair them, set them straight. Disorder filled her with a sort of impatience which was akin to physical distress. If she had been born a poor woman she would have worked hard for her living, and found an interest, almost an exhilaration, in her labour. Such gifts as she had would have been applied to the tasks she undertook. It had frequently given her pleasure to imagine herself earning her livelihood as a seamstress, a housemaid, a nurse. She knew what she could have put into her service, and how she could have found it absorbing. Imagination and initiative could make any service absorbing. The actual truth was that if she had been a housemaid, the room she set in order would have taken a character under her touch; if she had been a seamstress, her work would have been swiftly done, her imagination would have invented for her combinations of form and colour; if she had been a nursemaid, the children under her care would never have been sufficiently bored to become tiresome or intractable, and they also would have gained character to which would have been added an undeniable vividness of outlook. She could not have left them alone, so to speak. In obeying the mere laws of her being, she would have stimulated them. Unconsciously she had stimulated her fellow pupils at school; when she was his companion, her father had always felt himself stirred to interest and enterprise.
"You ought to have been a man, Betty," he used to say to her sometimes.
But Betty had not agreed with him.
"You say that," she once replied to him, "because you see I am inclined to do things, to change them, if they need changing. Well, one is either born like that, or one is not. Sometimes I think that perhaps the people who must ACT are of a distinct race. A kind of vigorous restlessness drives them. I remember that when I was a child I could not see a pin lying upon the ground without picking it up, or pa.s.s a drawer which needed closing, without giving it a push. But there has always been as much for women to do as for men."
There was much to be done here of one sort of thing and another. That was certain. As she gazed through the small panes of her large windows, she found herself overlooking part of a wilderness of garden, which revealed itself through an arch in an overgrown laurel hedge. She had glimpses of unkempt gra.s.s paths and unclipped topiary work which had lost its original form. Among a tangle of weeds rose the heads of clumps of daffodils, stirred by a pa.s.sing wind of spring. In the park beyond a cuckoo was calling.
She was conscious both of the forlorn beauty and significance of the neglected garden, and of the clear quaintness of the cuckoo call, as she thought of other things.
"Her spirit and her health are broken," was her summing up. "Her prettiness has faded to a rag. She is as nervous as an ill-treated child. She has lost her wits. I do not know where to begin with her.
I must let her tell me things as gradually as she chooses. Until I see Nigel I shall not know what his method with her has been. She looks as if she had ceased to care for things, even for herself. What shall I write to mother?"
She knew what she should write to her father. With him she could be explicit. She could record what she had found and what it suggested to her. She could also make clear her reason for hesitance and deliberation. His discretion and affection would comprehend the thing which she herself felt and which affection not combined with discretion might not take in. He would understand, when she told him that one of the first things which had struck her, had been that Rosy herself, her helplessness and timidity, might, for a period at least, form obstacles in their path of action. He not only loved Rosy, but realised how slight a sweet thing she had always been, and he would know how far a slight creature"s gentleness might be overpowered and beaten down.
There was so much that her mother must be spared, there was indeed so little that it would be wise to tell her, that Bettina sat gently rubbing her forehead as she thought of it. The truth was that she must tell her nothing, until all was over, accomplished, decided. Whatsoever there was to be "over," whatsoever the action finally taken, must be a matter lying as far as possible between her father and herself. Mrs.
Vanderpoel"s trouble would be too keen, her anxiety too great to keep to herself, even if she were not overwhelmed by them. She must be told of the beauties and dimensions of Stornham, all relatable details of Rosy"s life must be generously dwelt on. Above all Rosy must be made to write letters, and with an air of freedom however specious.
A knock on the door broke the thread of her reflection. It was a low-sounding knock, and she answered the summons herself, because she thought it might be Rosy"s.
It was not Lady Anstruthers who stood outside, but Ughtred, who balanced himself on his crutches, and lifted his small, too mature, face.
"May I come in?" he asked.
Here was the unexpected again, but she did not allow him to see her surprise.
"Yes," she said. "Certainly you may."
He swung in and then turned to speak to her.
"Please shut the door and lock it," he said.
There was sudden illumination in this, but of an order almost whimsical.
That modern people in modern days should feel bolts and bars a necessity of ordinary intercourse was suggestive. She was plainly about to receive enlightenment. She turned the key and followed the halting figure across the room.
"What are you afraid of?" she asked.
"When mother and I talk things over," he said, "we always do it where no one can see or hear. It"s the only way to be safe."
"Safe from what?"
His eyes fixed themselves on her as he answered her almost sullenly.
"Safe from people who might listen and go and tell that we had been talking."
In his thwarted-looking, odd child-face there was a shade of appeal not wholly hidden by his evident wish not to be boylike. Betty felt a desire to kneel down suddenly and embrace him, but she knew he was not prepared for such a demonstration. He looked like a creature who had lived continually at bay, and had learned to adjust himself to any situation with caution and restraint.
"Sit down, Ughtred," she said, and when he did so she herself sat down, but not too near him.
Resting his chin on the handle of a crutch, he gazed at her almost protestingly.
"I always have to do these things," he said, "and I am not clever enough, or old enough. I am only eleven."
The mention of the number of his years was plainly not apologetic, but was a mere statement of his limitations. There the fact was, and he must make the best of it he could.
"What things do you mean?"
"Trying to make things easier--explaining things when she cannot think of excuses. To-day it is telling you what she is too frightened to tell you herself. I said to her that you must be told. It made her nervous and miserable, but I knew you must."
"Yes, I must," Betty answered. "I am glad she has you to depend on, Ughtred."
His crutch grated on the floor and his boy eyes forbade her to believe that their sudden l.u.s.tre was in any way connected with restrained emotion.
"I know I seem queer and like a little old man," he said. "Mother cries about it sometimes. But it can"t be helped. It is because she has never had anyone but me to help her. When I was very little, I found out how frightened and miserable she was. After his rages," he used no name, "she used to run into my nursery and s.n.a.t.c.h me up in her arms and hide her face in my pinafore. Sometimes she stuffed it into her mouth and bit it to keep herself from screaming. Once--before I was seven--I ran into their room and shouted out, and tried to fight for her. He was going out, and had his riding whip in his hand, and he caught hold of me and struck me with it--until he was tired."
Betty stood upright.
"What! What! What!" she cried out.
He merely nodded his head shortly. She saw what the thing had been by the way his face lost colour.
"Of course he said it was because I was impudent, and needed punishment," he said. "He said she had encouraged me in American impudence. It was worse for her than for me. She kneeled down and screamed out as if she was crazy, that she would give him what he wanted if he would stop."
"Wait," said Betty, drawing in her breath sharply. ""He," is Sir Nigel?
And he wanted something."
He nodded again
"Tell me," she demanded, "has he ever struck her?"