"What?" she asked, low and nervously, and Betty saw her glance sideways at the windows of the room which opened on to the terrace.
Betty took her hand and drew her down into a chair. She sat near her and looked her straight in the face.
"Don"t be frightened," she said. "I tell you there is no need to be frightened. We are not living in the Middle Ages. There is a policeman even in Stornham village, and we are within four hours of London, where there are thousands."
Lady Anstruthers tried to laugh, but did not succeed very well, and her forehead flushed.
"I don"t quite know why I seem so nervous," she said. "It"s very silly of me."
She was still timid enough to cling to some rag of pretence, but Betty knew that it would fall away. She did the wisest possible thing, which was to make an apparently impersonal remark.
"I want you to go over the place with me and show me everything. Walls and fences and greenhouses and outbuildings must not be allowed to crumble away."
"What?" cried Rosy. "Have you seen all that already?" She actually stared at her. "How practical and--and American!"
"To see that a wall has fallen when you find yourself obliged to walk round a pile of gra.s.s-grown brickwork?" said Betty.
Lady Anstruthers still softly stared.
"What--what are you thinking of?" she asked.
"Thinking that it is all too beautiful----" Betty"s look swept the loveliness spread about her, "too beautiful and too valuable to be allowed to lose its value and its beauty." She turned her eyes back to Rosy and the deep dimple near her mouth showed itself delightfully. "It is a throwing away of capital," she added.
"Oh!" cried Lady Anstruthers, "how clever you are! And you look so different, Betty."
"Do I look stupid?" the dimple deepening. "I must try to alter that."
"Don"t try to alter your looks," said Rosy. "It is your looks that make you so--so wonderful. But usually women--girls----" Rosy paused.
"Oh, I have been trained," laughed Betty. "I am the spoiled daughter of a business man of genius. His business is an art and a science. I have had advantages. He has let me hear him talk. I even know some trifling things about stocks. Not enough to do me vital injury--but something.
What I know best of all,"--her laugh ended and her eyes changed their look,--"is that it is a blunder to think that beauty is not capital--that happiness is not--and that both are not the greatest a.s.sets in the scheme. This," with a wave of her hand, taking in all they saw, "is beauty, and it ought to be happiness, and it must be taken care of. It is your home and Ughtred"s----"
"It is Nigel"s," put in Rosy.
"It is entailed, isn"t it?" turning quickly. "He cannot sell it?"
"If he could we should not be sitting here," ruefully.
"Then he cannot object to its being rescued from ruin."
"He will object to--to money being spent on things he does not care for." Lady Anstruthers" voice lowered itself, as it always did when she spoke of her husband, and she indulged in the involuntary hasty glance about her.
"I am going to my room to take off my hat," Betty said. "Will you come with me?"
She went into the house, talking quietly of ordinary things, and in this way they mounted the stairway together and pa.s.sed along the gallery which led to her room. When they entered it she closed the door, locked it, and, taking off her hat, laid it aside. After doing which she sat.
"No one can hear and no one can come in," she said. "And if they could, you are afraid of things you need not be afraid of now. Tell me what happened when you were so ill after Ughtred was born."
"You guessed that it happened then," gasped Lady Anstruthers.
"It was a good time to make anything happen," replied Bettina. "You were prostrated, you were a child, and felt yourself cast off hopelessly from the people who loved you."
"Forever! Forever!" Lady Anstruthers" voice was a sharp little moan.
"That was what I felt--that nothing could ever help me. I dared not write things. He told me he would not have it--that he would stop any hysterical complaints--that his mother could testify that he behaved perfectly to me. She was the only person in the room with us when--when----"
"When?" said Betty.
Lady Anstruthers shuddered. She leaned forward and caught Betty"s hand between her own shaking ones.
"He struck me! He struck me! He said it never happened--but it did--it did! Betty, it did! That was the one thing that came back to me clearest. He said that I was in delirious hysterics, and that I had struggled with his mother and himself, because they tried to keep me quiet, and prevent the servants hearing. One awful day he brought Lady Anstruthers into the room, and they stood over me, as I lay in bed, and she fixed her eyes on me and said that she--being an Englishwoman, and a person whose word would be believed, could tell people the truth--my father and mother, if necessary, that my spoiled, hysterical American tempers had created unhappiness for me--merely because I was bored by life in the country and wanted excitement. I tried to answer, but they would not let me, and when I began to shake all over, they said that I was throwing myself into hysterics again. And they told the doctor so, and he believed it."
The possibilities of the situation were plainly to be seen. Fate, in the form of temperament itself, had been against her. It was clear enough to Betty as she patted and stroked the thin hands. "I understand. Tell me the rest," she said.
Lady Anstruthers" head dropped.
"When I was loneliest, and dying of homesickness, and so weak that I could not speak without sobbing, he came to me--it was one morning after I had been lying awake all night--and he began to seem kinder. He had not been near me for two days, and I had thought I was going to be left to die alone--and mother would never know. He said he had been reflecting and that he was afraid that we had misunderstood each other--because we belonged to different countries, and had been brought up in different ways----" she paused.
"And that if you understood his position and considered it, you might both be quite happy," Betty gave in quiet termination.
Lady Anstruthers started.
"Oh, you know it all!" she exclaimed
"Only because I have heard it before. It is an old trick. And because he seemed kind and relenting, you tried to understand--and signed something."
"I WANTED to understand. I WANTED to believe. What did it matter which of us had the money, if we liked each other and were happy? He told me things about the estate, and about the enormous cost of it, and his bad luck, and debts he could not help. And I said that I would do anything if--if we could only be like mother and father. And he kissed me and I signed the paper."
"And then?"
"He went to London the next day, and then to Paris. He said he was obliged to go on business. He was away a month. And after a week had pa.s.sed, Lady Anstruthers began to be restless and angry, and once she flew into a rage, and told me I was a fool, and that if I had been an Englishwoman, I should have had some decent control over my husband, because he would have respected me. In time I found out what I had done.
It did not take long."
"The paper you signed," said Betty, "gave him control over your money?"
A forlorn nod was the answer.
"And since then he has done as he chose, and he has not chosen to care for Stornham. And once he made you write to father, to ask for more money?"
"I did it once. I never would do it again. He has tried to make me. He always says it is to save Stornham for Ughtred."
"Nothing can take Stornham from Ughtred. It may come to him a ruin, but it will come to him."
"He says there are legal points I cannot understand. And he says he is spending money on it."
"Where?"
"He--doesn"t go into that. If I were to ask questions, he would make me know that I had better stop. He says I know nothing about things. And he is right. He has never allowed me to know and--and I am not like you, Betty."